Fandom: Spinning Silver – Naomi Novik

Summary:

It had always been clear to me that people from throughout our quarter came to my grandfather for advice, knowing his reputation for wisdom and clear-eyed business sense. What took me longer to notice—because my eye wasn’t trained for it—was that people sought out my grandmother as well.

Characters: Miryem Mandelstam, Miryem's grandmother, other characters

Notes: The first of my Purimgifts fics for chestnut_pod, belatedly cross-posting here... Here are the original notes:

Happy Purim – chag Purim sameach – chestnut_filly! It’s been such fun to write for you. We actually matched on a different fandom, but I felt drawn to write something Jewish and fun for this fun Jewish holiday, so I veered over into the world of Spinning Silver instead. :-)

A few notes: I hope you don’t mind that I set this within the headcanon of the original, short-story version of Spinning Silver, rather than the novel. It shouldn’t matter if you haven’t read the short story, though; just consider this a canon-divergent AU in which Miryem outwits the Staryk instead of marrying him, and stays in Vysnia near her grandparents.

You’ll almost certainly recognize many other elements as well, because I set out here to fuse Miryem’s world with some classic Yiddish folktales. I’ll give the sources of those tales in the endnotes. (There’s also a brief Yiddish glossary at the end, for anyone not already familiar with the terms used here.)

Thank you to my friend A. for betareading!

Read on AO3, or here below:

 

( It Could Always Be... )