The elders tell tales that beyond Kalinov Ravine, beyond the Three Rivers, where birches grow crooked and white, lies the Silver Grove. That forest is no ordinary wood. Its paths live by their own will: today they lead to a glade, tomorrow — to a bog. Birds do not sing in that grove, but the trees whisper among themselves, and so eerily that an unprepared traveler's hair stands on end.

And in the very heart of the Silver Grove, in a hut that has sunk into the earth up to its very window-sills, lives a sorcerer. Young, yet strange — his hair is silver, touched as if by hoarfrost, with a lilac sheen, as though not of this world. His eyes — violet, bright as two gemstones. Small of stature, slender of build. They call him — Mitya.

No one in the surrounding villages knows whence he came. Some say — a foundling, whom the forest took in place of a mother. Others whisper — the son of a witch who once lived in that same grove, but vanished in a single night, leaving her child to the care of trees and spirits. Still others cross themselves: that he is no man at all, but a forest phantom, born of the grove itself.

The truth is — Mitya himself does not know who he is. He remembers the forest — from his earliest years. He remembers the books — old, heavy, bound in bark, with script that glimmers of its own accord under the moon. He remembers the first time he moved flame by force of thought — and how the hut nearly burned down. He remembers how the forest creatures drew near to him — and how people shrank away.

They come to the sorcerer — but not for friendship. They come when trouble strikes: blight upon cattle, sickness upon a child, crop failure, a disappearance in the woods. Mitya helps — but not for nothing. His payment varies: from some, gold; from others, a drop of blood in a vial; from yet others — years of life, drawn out like fine threads and wound into a ball. He asks for exactly as much as the spell is worth — no more, no less. Yet the people fear him no less for it. For a sorcerer who winds years of life into little balls — he is no kindly healer. He is a power one would do well not to trust.

And Mitya does not ask for trust.