Through Waters And Woods is a short novel published in 1943 by Bulgarian writer Emilian Stanev. The novel tells the adventures of an unlikely pair of animals, the hedgehog Quickfoot and the tortoise Sluggy.
This work features the following tropes:
- Always a Bigger Fish: Quickfoot and Sluggy are kidnapped by a golden eagle (one of the largest birds of prey on the Balkans) and the only thing that saves them is an attack by a bearded vulture (the absolute largest).
- Feathered Fiend: You can't really find it in yourself to admire it when you're the prey. All birds of prey are portrayed as larger-than-life forces of nature or malevolent at best.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Despite being a hedgehog and a tortoise, Quickfoot and Sluggy are portrayed as friends or perhaps a couple, wandering and living together.
- Ironic Name: Quickfoot's name is given for his inability to live up to it.
- Lovable Rogue: Sharpnose the water rat, who is cold and cynical, but the pair grow fond of him as he takes them through the swamp.
- Mouse World: In the world of a hedgehog and a tortoise, distances, threats and challenges are appropriately scaled.
- Predators Are Mean: Invariably. Obligate predators such as eagles, owls and wolves are portrayed this way. Other carnivores like ferrets or the water rat are given more neutral but still cold and aloof personalities.
- Punny Name: Some. For example, Siika the jay (Bulgarian for jay is "soika").
- Sliding Scale Of Animal Anthropomorphism: All characters are wild animals, with humans only receiving an occasional mention. Being a child-oriented novel, however, all animals have human-like personalities and relationships.
- Soft Water: The two are kidnapped by an eagle and dropped from a height that's equivalent to a helicopter flight, into a swamp. The impact merely dazes them.
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: A colony of great crested grebes serves as this when they bar the protagonists' way across the swamp. An even more dangerous one are the night herons, but Sharpnose tricks them into attacking the grebes, thus freeing their territory for passage.
- Xenofiction: Written entirely through the perspective of the two animals.
