Cottage on mule legs

Baba Yaga, stop, don't do any magic! Chaloupka, turn my back on life! While in Frosty she could only turn to Ivan and back to the forest through the entrance, this creepy cottage of the dreaded baby Jaga has a much wider repertoire. If he moves his little legs a little and runs around fresh, he can carry his aged mistress and her twelve-year-old ward, Marinka, to any place on Earth - but always to the edge, so that they are not so visible. Old Jaga is the guardian of the Gate, where the dead go to the stars forever, and her teenage charge is about to take over the witch's trade. But no matter whether Marinka wanders with her grandmother and the cottage through northern England, the African desert, an Arab port, the steppes or the mountains, she is desperately tired of this eternal harping on the edge between life and death. An orphaned girl, who knows nothing but how to see off the dead, is drawn to the living: He wants to go to school, to have friends and thanks to them to know what is beautiful around us, what is cruel and what is just a delusion. How do we do this? He is strictly forbidden to leave the land bounded by a fence of bones, grandmother does not pretend that anything should change and the cottage has its quirks. How about trying a trick like Hansel used to do? And it won't be a shovel! This modern fairy tale for older children combines Slavic folklore with the resources of the fantasy genre. As part of the symbolic rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, her heroine must be prepared to accept her responsibilities while defending her right to embark on the journey of her own story. "The scraps of rumors and legends circulating among the world's worth of people have been pieced together into something new and utterly amazing. Readers of all ages will fall under the spell of prose." - Booklist "A fresh combination of folklore and a novel of initiation presents teenagers with the uneasy subject of the last things human while celebrating the essential joy of life." - The Sunday Times "This original debut delivers a poignant, terrifying and philosophical insight into how difficult it can be to fight against one's predestination, and how important it is to have the freedom of choice in doing so." - The Guardian "A beautifully written book. One must remember that the heroine is only twelve. You can see how he tries to please everyone and correct his mistakes and especially how important it is not to lie at least to himself. Eventually, she will realize what she needs and others will help her with what she can't do on her own." - from reader reviews on Databazeknih.cz Deep down, I feel that it just has to work out somehow. The legs grip me tightly and the cottage tilts until we are both lying on our backs with our eyes fixed on the star-studded sky. Streaks of green aurora dance across their shimmering splendour, and a warm feeling spreads through my body as I think the cottage has finally understood me. In this universe full of possibilities, there must be some other way to make things right without being forced to accept a lot in life I don't want. I lay my hand on the liana that holds me, and the stars themselves are my witness as I whisper into the night: "I want to have my own life and I want to be the mistress of my own destiny." - excerpt from the book