Sisters of the Lake Waters

Lesya wakes up in a dense, impenetrable forest with a bleeding wound on her head and the slightest idea how she ended up here. A stranger rescues her and carries her, half-alive, into the home of his family. That’s how Lesya ends up with the old woman Aksinya. Here, in the impenetrable thicket, people live side by side with forest spirits and swamp creatures. The laws and morals familiar to city dwellers are useless here, and to return home, Lesya will have to understand this world and learn to negotiate with its inhabitants. “Sisters of the Lake Waters” is the first part of Olga Ptitseva’s diptych “The Chronicles of the Swamp Edge.” Witches and sprites of the woods, rumors and spells—this colorful and dark Slavic folklore bursts into the lives of modern city residents, overturning their ideas about the world and about themselves.