Spinning Silver

Magic is utilized differently by the characters who possess it, leading them to hold different interpretations of it based on their own experiences. To Miryem, magic is a means to an end, a way to get respect and way to leave the Staryk. To Irina, magic is an escape that provides her safe harbor away from her husband. To Mirnatius, magic is power and security. With his “beauty, crown, and power” (286), he is confident that he will be safe from the fates that met his father, brother, and mother. Still, that magic comes at a cost he did not agree to—being at the mercy of the demon Chernobog. To Wanda, Sergey, and Stepon, magic is a mystery that makes life easier. Their mother’s spirit saves and guides them through the Staryk tree’s magic, and the witch’s house shelters and feeds them through its magic. To the Staryk, however, magic is life. The magic of the gold strengthens their winters, protecting their fortress and keeping them alive. When Chernobog comes to power, draining them, it is only the introduction of Miryem’s magic—and its reciprocal effect on the Staryk king’s own—that protects them.

Throughout the story, many characters feel “othered” in one way or another. This “othering” is described well by Wanda when she is welcomed into Miryem’s grandparents’ home. She calls it “a strange feeling,” like suddenly “everyone around you was the same as each other but not like you” (303). She recognizes that Miryem, who repeatedly endures anti-Semitic insults and prejudice from the townspeople, experiences this all the time, and so “maybe it hadn’t been so strange” (303).

As Wanda realizes, this othering is a part of daily life for Miryem and her family, given the history of anti-Semitism found in their daily lives. This presents itself in small ways, such as an unwillingness to eat food that has been prayed over, refusing to shake hands with Miryem, reducing Miryem’s family to their Jewish heritage, addressing them as “Jew” rather than by their names, and perceiving Jews as greedy cheats seeking to steal money from others. In addition to these microaggressions and prejudices, anti-Semitism comes with a real danger for Miryem and her family. Rakhel points this out to her daughter when the Staryk take an interest in their home. While Miryem does not see the point in hiring Sergey to sleep in the house, Rakhel explains that it is not about protection from the Staryk but from anti-Semitic gossip leading to violence. She recounts an incident where “a band of Staryk went through the countryside to three towns, towns not much bigger than this” (42), burning the churches and houses of rich men, and seizing what little gold they found. But when the Staryk rode past the village where the Jews lived, leaving it unscathed, the townspeople suspected the Jews and Staryk had made a pact—“and now there are no Jews in Yazuda” (42).

Regardless of the purity of intention, actions have consequences—often unintended ones. This fact of life is reflected in the lives of several characters, Miryem especially. When Miryem asks what compensation the Staryk king will give her, her ignorance of the rules of magic does not save her from an unwanted marriage. Miryem’s intention to save her own life by selling silver Staryk jewelry does not prevent the duke from using it to force Irina to marry a reported sadist for his own political gain. While Miryem does not mean to bind her servants’ lives to her own, that does not make them any less her bondsmen. And all her regret for turning the storerooms’ silver into gold will not end the winter that she has unwittingly caused.

Miryem does not hold a monopoly on moral anguish over the consequences of her decisions. When Irina decides to continue with her plan, knowing that it will cause the deaths of innocent Staryk, she considers her regret to be immaterial. All that matters are her actions and their consequences: “It didn’t matter that I cared, that I was sorry; what mattered was what I had done, what I would do” (429). Similarly, Miryem comes to regret her part in the capture of the Staryk king. Though, like Irina, she intended to end the winter that would cause human deaths through cold and starvation, she also accepts that her actions have consequences—namely the deaths of the Staryk. She regretfully thinks of “Flek, and Tsop, and Shofer, whose lives I’d bound to mine, and a little girl I’d given a Jewish name like a gift, before I’d gone away to destroy her home” (377). Miryem must learn to consider all the potential outcomes of action and inaction, weigh them, make a decision, and live with the consequences.