A Fairy Tale Rediscovered

As a child, one of my fondest memories was going to the library and walking through the aisles full of books, running my fingers over the spines. As a voracious reader, I consumed anything I could get my hands on. At that time I usually read novels, but the vivid illustrations from picture books begged me to open them all too often. One of my favorite picture books was The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring by Ruth Sanderson, a rendition of a classic Russian folktale in rich paintings and thick pages. If all the books in the world were to disappear, this is the book I would want to save. 

I heard the tale initially from my father, who told me the fairy tale as a bedtime story, but as I stumbled upon it a second time in the library, the story was retold – this time with colorful paintings of a huntsman as he runs away from an evil Tsar, searching for Princess Vasilisa. My tiny fingers roamed over the golden fields of Imperial Russia, traced the scarlet wings of the firebird and dipped into the icy waves of the Barents Sea as I followed the huntsman on his quest. Now I could touch palpable images of a tale from so long ago. As a nine-year-old, I was entranced by the vivid colors as much as the simple plot of the fairy tale.

Eventually I moved on past picture books, delving into chaptered novels, and then hundred-paged trilogies and chronicles. But even then, I remembered the brilliant colors of The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring, and in my mind, I imagined the scenes of whatever book I was reading as vividly as the images from the Firebird picture book were.

And then in my freshmen year of high school, I joined a local orchestra and there we played the Firebird suite, composed by the Russian composer Stravinsky as the score for the Firebird ballet. Here, I rediscovered the Firebird for the third time, through music. It took little effort to see the footsteps of the huntsman, tip-toeing through the forest to find the firebird as plucked bass notes filled the air, and the supremacy of the greedy Tsar as the timpani rolled and the cymbal crashed.

Now, along with the words from my father and the illustrations from the story book, I put together the Firebird as I envision it – a theatrical mélange of sights and sounds woven together to form the folktale I love so dearly. For me, the story was no longer just words in the air, but a tale engaging all of my senses.  

 Walking through the library now, I spy The Golden Mare, the Firebird, and the Magic Ring, and ten years after I heard the story orally for the first time, I thumb through the pages. As a teenager, the premise of the story is simple enough, and yet I’m still drawn to the deep colors of the firebird’s feathers, the pale folds of the princess’s dress. The story is told plainly yet beautifully, embodying the rudiments of a fairy tale.

As I read, I can hear a cascade of violins as the golden mare trots through an ecru field, the lament of an oboe as the huntsman dives into the freezing ocean. And when the huntsman finally marries the Princess, I hear Stravinsky’s trumpets ringing. As the story draws to an end, the firebird rests in the corner of the last page, waiting for the next time someone will open the book.