Leshy

The leshy (leshiy in Russian, and kindred names across the Slavic world) is the guardian spirit of the forest. He can change his size at will — towering above the trees one moment, shorter than the grass the next — and often appears as a wild old man, sometimes with a greenish cast, glowing eyes, or his shoes on the wrong feet. Woodsmen, hunters and herders knew him as the true owner of the woods and its animals.

His chief trick is to lead travellers astray, walking them in circles until they are hopelessly lost; the countermeasure in folk practice was to turn one's clothes inside out and swap left and right shoes — meeting his disorder with disorder. He was not evil so much as sovereign: to enter the forest was to enter his domain, and herders would strike bargains with him for the safety of their flocks.

Belief in the leshy persisted in rural Slavic communities well into modern times, especially among those whose living depended on the forest. Like the Baba Yaga who shares his woods, he is a threshold figure between the human world and the wild — and, like her, he takes a different shape in every village that tells of him.