He is an orphan, an outcast from his clan. He survived his own death. The herbalist Juga goes through countless trials to learn his fate. What is he destined to be—unknown: is he a magician, a healer, or a warrior? The story takes place in medieval Europe, where fairy tales live—and not always kindly. The novel is filled with numerous references and hidden quotations from a wide variety of works of world literature, from Grimm’s fairy tales to Edgar Allan Poe, Astrid Lindgren, and Vladimir Vysotsky.