Once upon a time and in a land that is not quite here, a girl and her brother are left in the woods on the cusp of winter and lose their way home. They find, instead, a little house that smells of ginger and cinnamon and the ancient, bent woman who presides over it and calls herself Oma Yaga. Three tasks she sets before the girl, with the promise of food as her reward. She accepts, not knowing that this deep, the woods are a strange and hungry place: you do not make it out the same as when you entered, if you make it out at all.

You have heard this story before, you think, or one like it—listen again. It is never the same twice.