57 pages • 1 hour read
A. B. PoranekWhere the Dark Stands Still
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 32-EpilogueChapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 32 Summary: “In Which Liska Sets the Leszy on Fire”
Liska and Maksio return to the manor. She finds the Leszy collapsed in pain as branches break through his skin. He urges her to leave because Weles will claim a sacrifice in two days. If the Leszy dies, then the old god will reign over the Driada, and Liska is determined not to let this happen. Liska uses her magic to set the branches growing from the Leszy’s heart on fire, which temporarily weakens Weles.
The Leszy explains that he invented the legend of the fern flower to lure potential sacrifices into the Driada. Although he initially wanted to repair Liska’s magic so that he could offer her to Weles, he fell in love with her when she smiled at him after he grew the garden. He apologizes for keeping secrets from her and reveals that he has a plan to stop Weles but that it involves her killing him. However, Liska refuses to give up hope.
After Liska helps the Leszy to his bedroom and treats his wounds, he tells her, “I do not know how many nights I have left, Liska Radost, and I would very much like to spend this one with you” (300). They have sex and fall asleep in one another’s arms. The next morning, Liska proposes that they use an exorcism and the soul-searching spell to defeat Weles. The Leszy doesn’t share her optimism because he has already tried to break his bargain with the old god in countless ways, but Maksio and Liska remind him that he’s not fighting alone anymore.
Chapter 33 Summary: “Stodoła”
Before Liska, Maksio, and the Leszy leave the manor, Liska says goodbye to Jaga and tells the hearth-spirit who she was during her human life. Jaga answers that she isn’t looking for closure because she doesn’t want to leave the realm of the living yet. Before dawn, the Leszy opens a spelldoor to Stodoła. This is the first time Liska has set foot in her village in four months, and she feels ashamed when she imagines how the people there would judge her for her magic. Liska’s mother spots them on their way to the chapel. Dobrawa admits that she was afraid of her daughter after her husband’s death but insists that she did her best to protect her. Liska argues, “If you had done your best, you would have stood by my side instead of trying to send me away” (311). Dobrawa agrees to help them secure Father Paweł’s aid, but she tells Liska that she must leave the village afterward.
Chapter 34 Summary: “The Trick to a Good Exorcism”
Father Paweł met the Leszy once before, and he agrees to help. While the priest prepares for the exorcism, the Leszy makes Liska promise to destroy his heart if their plan fails. They embrace and voice their love for each other. Father Paweł performs the exorcism, which awakens Weles from his slumber. The old god takes control of the Leszy’s body and tries to attack the priest, but Maksio uses his rusałka powers to distract him. Liska casts the soul-searching spell and sees that the Leszy’s most cherished memories are all of her. This gives her strength to fight Weles’s grip on the Leszy’s soul. However, the old god breaks her spell with a mocking laugh.
Chapter 35 Summary: “A Clever Fox”
Back in her own body, Liska sees that bark and branches are overtaking the Leszy’s body as Weles claims his sacrifice. Eliasz begs Liska to kill him, and then Weles seizes control. The old god has no intention of killing him because he is the perfect vessel to permit Weles to walk the mortal plane. Weles tries to attack Dobrawa, but Liska uses her magic to shield her. Liska tells Maksio to use his magical song to make the villagers barricade themselves in their homes and asks Father Paweł to go to the city for help.
Weles vows to wreak vengeance upon humanity because they stopped worshiping him: “This is your punishment. This time I am going to make sure I am remembered. Destroying your little village will be the first step of my return to glory” (327). Liska tricks Weles into thinking that her wooden fetter contains some of the Leszy’s power, and he falls through a spelldoor with her. They land in the Driada, and Weles leaves a trail of destruction as he chases her through the forest. Liska uses her magic to contact the Driada’s soul, and it guides her to Weles’s temple.
Chapter 36 Summary: “Liska and the Leszy”
Weles corners Liska and takes the wooden fetter. While he’s distracted, she sets his temple on fire with her magic. Because the structure is the old god’s stronghold, its destruction weakens him. Eliasz kisses Liska and shares his power with her, making her the warden of the Driada. Suddenly, Weles begins to overtake his body once more, and Eliasz stabs himself in the heart with Liska’s dagger. He explains that he gave Liska his power so that Weles can never claim it for himself and that this is possible because they are twin souls. He tells her, “You are my soul, Liska Radost. I lived seven hundred years to find you” (337). With Weles gone, Eliasz is human again, and he feels at peace even as Liska futilely strives to keep him alive.
Chapter 37 Summary: “Endure”
Liska buries the Leszy in white flowers like the one that he placed in her hair. She falls asleep and awakens two days later in her mother’s home. Marysieńka, who now works as a seamstress in Gwiazdno, returned to the village when Father Paweł came to the city for aid. She apologizes to Liska for turning against her after Tomasz’s death, but Liska is too stricken with grief for her cousin’s words to make her feel better. With Maksio’s comforting presence beside her, Liska tells her cousin and her mother about her time with the Leszy. She decides to return to the House under the Rowan Tree because “[t]he wood must always have a warden” (349).
Epilogue Summary
Liska takes in a 10-year-old named Basia whose mother was abusive. The girl has magic, which takes the form of yellow bees. Weles turned the restless souls of Orlica’s dead into demons because humans stopped worshiping him. Now that he has stopped corrupting them, the spirits who dwell in the Driada no longer eat humans. Still, the wood needs a warden because the spirits like to play tricks on mortals. Night after night, Liska goes into the forest to meet a beautiful spectral stag. At last, the stag becomes tangible one night.
Chapter 32-Epilogue Analysis
Poranek takes inspiration from the horror and romance genres to give her dark fantasy an eerie but ultimately hopeful ending. For example, Weles’s pursuit of Liska in Chapter 35 exhibits the horror conventions of chase scenes and jump scares: “A sigh of relief escapes her. She begins to stand, holding Onegdaj in front of her to— ‘There you are, little mouse.’ Her heart leaps into her throat” (331). This chilling scene also contains an element of body horror because the old god has taken over the body of Liska’s lover and turned him into a monster.
Poranek juxtaposes the story’s horror elements with romantic scenes. Chapter 34 contains a montage of Eliasz’s memories, charting his relationship with Liska from the moment he first fell in love with her to their last night together: “Liska, pushing him down onto his bed, hands hungry and commanding as they rake through his hair, tighten around his antlers. Desire courses through him, an irresistible riptide” (320). The love that fills these memories fuels Liska in her fight against Weles. Happy endings are one of romance novels’ primary conventions, and the epilogue reunites the two lovers after their tragic parting in Chapter 36. The author adds to the epilogue’s joyful, hopeful mood by expanding Liska’s found family and by revealing that the spirits in the wood are no longer corrupted by Weles. Liska’s world is safer thanks to her and the Leszy’s sacrifices, and the happy ending allows them to share this world.
Both main characters demonstrate significant growth in these final chapters as they confront their literal and figurative demons. In Chapter 32, Eliasz apologizes for the ways his taciturn nature hurt Liska and jeopardized their love: “‘I wish I could do it over,’ he murmurs. ‘Without secrets, without fear, without the demon between us’” (298). Such honest and humble words from the once haughty Leszy emphasize how much he has grown thanks to his relationship with Liska. Poranek showcases the protagonist’s growth by titling Chapter 35 “A Clever Fox.” At the start of the novel, Eliasz gives her the nickname “fox” to mock her, but she has since vindicated herself and reclaimed the name. She thoroughly demonstrates her cleverness by using her magic and her understanding of the spirit-wood to trick an old god.
Liska’s return to Stodoła leads to important developments for the theme of The Magic of Self-Acceptance. She makes progress toward embracing herself and her power during her time in the Driada, but being back in the village shows how her community conditioned her to feel guilt: “[S]he is very much everything she was taught to fear. Witch, czarownik, warden-in-training. Suddenly ashamed, she ducks her head, unable to look straight at the village” (307). Although confronting her past is painful, the experience is necessary for her healing. The revelation that her mother will always see her as a monster because of her father’s death leads Liska to discover that “she would have never truly belonged in Stodoła” (312). By standing up to her mother, the protagonist achieves catharsis and affirms that she no longer relies on her old community for acceptance.
Both Liska and Eliasz succeed in their quest for belonging and redemption. Eliasz redeems himself and ends Weles’s reign of terror through his death. He tells Liska, “[I]t is only right that I was the last sacrifice” (339). He stabs himself with Onegdaj, which means “the past,” to underline that this is his way of atoning for his past misdeeds. In addition, the human blood that Eliasz sheds instead of tree sap offers proof that he is “truly free” both from the old god and the guilt he bore for centuries. While the Leszy finds his redemption in death, Liska finds belonging by summoning the strength to go on living. After she saves Stodoła, she has the option to remain in the village. At the start of the novel, she would have leapt at this opportunity, but she has found where she truly belongs: “This was all she wanted once: [...] Live a proper, mundane village life. But Liska is not proper. She is a czarownik [...], and she has carved out a place for herself that is fully her own” (349). Liska chooses to return to the spirit-wood, a home where she can be her fullest self.
The novel’s epilogue speaks to The Enduring Relevance of Myths and Folktales. Basia compares Liska and the Leszy’s love story to “watching a fairy tale unfold” (353), a comparison that celebrates the beauty of their love and the fairy tale genre. Additionally, the protagonist utilizes the power of oral storytelling to find other individuals with magic. Some Orlicans believe that czarownik and the Driada’s warden are the stuff of myth, but these tales help Liska give Basia a loving home and work toward a brighter future for all czarownik.
