The Bear and the Nightingale characters

Appears from the start

Lord of Lesnaya Zemlya, a boyar whose lands lie far north of Moscow at the edge of deep forest. A careful, hard-working man who married into the Grand Prince's family and has kept his people fed through bad winters by paying close attention to his fields, his horses and his household. He is fond of his children in an undemonstrative way and expects them to take the places the world has laid out for them.

Appears from the start

Pyotr's wife and the mother of his children, a daughter of the Grand Prince's house in Moscow. Her own mother was a woman who walked out of the forest, married a prince, bore one daughter and was never satisfactorily explained; Moscow decided she had been a witch. Marina is quiet and watchful and knows she inherited a little of whatever that was. As the book opens she is pregnant again, certain that this child will be a daughter who inherits far more than she did, and equally certain that bearing her will be her own death.

Also known as Avdotya

Appears from the start

The old nurse of Pyotr's household, who came north with Marina and has raised all of her children. She tells them the winter tales by the oven, among them the story of Frost, the cold-demon of the forest, and the girl whose stepmother sent her out into the snow. Practical, devout and superstitious in equal measure, she still leaves bread out for the spirits of house and byre while crossing herself, and she knows more about where Marina's family came from than she cares to say.

Also known as Kolya

Appears from the start

Pyotr's eldest son and his heir, blunt, hot-tempered and thoroughly practical, more interested in his father's land, horses and quarrels than in anything his youngest sister has to say.

Also known as Sasha

Appears from the start

Pyotr's second son, good with horses and weapons and closer to his sisters than his elder brother is. He is also drawn towards God in a way his father finds inconvenient in a boy who is supposed to inherit land and marry well.

Appears from the start

Pyotr's elder daughter: gentle, sensible and entirely conventional, the one of Marina's children who wants exactly the life she was born to have, with a good marriage, a warm house and children of her own. She is fond of her youngest sister and is often the only person in the household who can manage her.

Also known as Vasya

First appears in chapter 2

The youngest child of Pyotr Vladimirovich, born in his household in the northern forests of Rus' at the cost of her mother's life. Marina carried her deliberately, wanting a daughter who might inherit the sight her own mother had. Vasya grows up plain, restless and half-wild, happier in the woods and the stable than in the women's rooms, and unwilling to be shaped into anybody's wife. She sees what nobody else on her father's lands can see: the spirit that lives in the oven, the one in the stable, others in the water and the trees. She talks to them and feeds them and takes them entirely for granted, long before she understands what it will cost to be the only person who does.

Also known as Alyosha

First appears in chapter 2

Pyotr's youngest son and the sibling nearest Vasya in age, and so her companion in most of what she gets up to as a child. Steady, unimaginative and stubbornly loyal, he is the one member of the family who tends to take her word for things he cannot see himself.

First appears in chapter 6

A daughter of the Grand Prince of Moscow, given in marriage to Pyotr Vladimirovich. Since childhood she has seen creatures nobody else will admit to seeing, and has concluded that she is surrounded by demons and probably damned; she wanted nothing in the world but permission to take vows and hide in a convent. Devout, frightened and brittle, she is sent instead to a household at the edge of the forest where the things she dreads live in every oven, stable and bathhouse.

First appears in chapter 11

The spirit of Pyotr's house, who lives in the oven and keeps the family safe from what is outside. He grows strong on the bread and porridge left out for him and thin and grey when the offerings stop. Vasya has fed him since she was small and can see and speak with him. He is her first proof that the winter tales are describing something real, and his health is a fair measure of the household's.

First appears in chapter 12

A young priest sent north from Moscow: famous for the icons he paints and for a voice that can hold a congregation completely still. He is genuinely gifted and genuinely devout, and also proud, ambitious and badly stung at being posted to a village at the edge of the world rather than a great church. He finds a people who keep the fasts and also leave bread out for the spirits of house and yard, and he sets about burning the second habit out of them. Pyotr's strange younger daughter, who neither fears him nor believes him, unsettles him from the start.

First appears in chapter 12

Anna's daughter by Pyotr, and Vasya's half-sister: a sweet, timid, obedient little girl who is everything her mother hoped for and nothing like the stepdaughter her mother is afraid of. Vasya is fond of her.

First appears in chapter 15

A water-spirit of the forest near Lesnaya Zemlya, a drowned-looking woman who lives by a lake and an old oak. She takes an interest in Vasya, combs her hair, and begins teaching her what a girl who can see is able to do. She is also candid about how badly things are going for her own kind now that the village has stopped putting out offerings.

Also known as Frost, the winter-king, Karachun

First appears in chapter 20

The frost-demon of Dunya's winter tales, who in the stories rewards a patient girl and freezes a greedy one. He turns out to be entirely real: a pale-eyed man who appears in the winter woods, and who is death as much as cold, the one who comes for people who die in the snow. He has been paying attention to Vasya's family for longer than she has been alive, and to her in particular. He does not explain himself, his gifts have costs, and he is a great deal less free than he looks.

First appears in chapter 25

A bay stallion out of the winter-king's own herd, and not an ordinary horse: he understands what is said to him and answers, he chooses his rider rather than the other way round, and he will wear neither saddle nor bridle. His name means nightingale. He attaches himself to Vasya.

Also known as the Bear, the one-eyed man, the Eater

First appears in chapter 27

The winter-king's twin and opposite: a one-eyed spirit who feeds on fear and madness and grows strongest where people are most frightened. He was bound long ago, and what has kept him bound is not only his brother's work but the small, steady habit of ordinary people leaving bread for the powers of house and forest. As that habit is preached out of them his chains slacken. He raises the dead, whispers to the devout in language they will mistake for holiness, and wants only to be loose.