Photo by Michael Mazzone on Unsplash
For my creative writing class at school, I wrote a short story, taking a faerie tale, choosing a character from that faerie tale, and writing a first-person narrative from their point-of-view. I selected the character of the gray wolf from Russian faerie tale "The Firebird." I hope you enjoy it!
"The Gray Wolf and the Firebird"
As I predicted, the prince completely ignored the pillar at the crossroads clearly stating that this path led to the inevitable death of his horse and rode the doomed creature closer to where I lay behind a large patch of brush, waiting. My haunches curled, muscles taut—every bit of me prepared to ambush him. Even my pelt barely moved in the crisp, Russian wind, the dark gray hackles along my shoulders and back raised. I crouched lower, smothering my belly against the powdered snow, digging my muzzle into the drift and smelling its sweetness. Fate has many agents, and I am one of them.
Word travels quickly among the beasts of the wood; word of princes and quests travels at an especially hasty rate. Ivan was this dull-witted boy’s name, if my sources were to be trusted, and they were. My brothers and sisters, the lesser wolves who roam the wood, never lied, not to me. Being, as I was, more than two-and-a-half times their size, they dared not mislead me.
Ivan reeked of days on the road, and his horse, once a lusty beast, stumbled wearily along the path. Thus, I considered it a mercy when I sprang from my hiding place, maw open and teeth bared, and before the prince raised his head to see what disturbed the wood, my jaws clamped around the horse’s tender neck. The beast tried to shriek, but by that time, a large portion of its flesh hung loosely from my mouth with the muscles and tendons dripping blood, and I stood several yards away. Delicious blood flowed, almost scalding hot, over my tongue. How I relished in it as the beast crumpled and lay dead in the snow, which soaked up the gushing blood and formed a scarlet carpet beneath the animal. Soon, I knew my lesser brothers and sisters would pick up the beast’s scent and come to feast.
Of all my forms, the giant wolf and its enviable strength and stealth was my favorite.
Meanwhile, Ivan struggled to pull himself from beneath the corpse, and after a time, during which I feasted on the bit of flesh from the death blow, he managed to free himself. He gawked at me, pale and trembling, a layer of powdery snow coating his right side. Raising my hackles and crouching over my meal, I bared my fangs and snarled, taking pleasure as the cherry blood drained from the young prince’s complexion. Once I finished my snack, I fixed my gaze upon the prince and summoned a voice.
Although I knew of his quest, I asked him anyway, reveling in the shocked amazement that replaced his terror when I spoke man’s tongue. Perhaps the boy was not so dull-witted as I presumed, for he answered truthfully: he sought the Firebird, whose location I alone knew out of all the animals in the wood.
Turning, I offered to take him there, for what fun is immortality if one cannot stir up mischief between the current tsars every now and then? The boy hesitated, and wisely so. After all, I had torn the throat from his steed and consumed the flesh before his eyes. Its blood still soaked my muzzle. But he approached, slowly; I fought the urge to lunge at him in jest and send the poor fool wailing back to his father. Tentatively, he hoisted himself upon my back with the uncertainty of a newborn and sank his fingers into my thick pelt, securing himself onto my back. When I stood to my full height—several hands above that of his horse—I felt him shudder, but to his credit, he held tightly and did not fall even as I loped and bounded through the wood, over frozen streams, and across the azure lakes.
We arrived at the fortress, the home of the Firebird’s master, and there I commanded young Ivan to climb the wall. I knew the guards to be asleep and told him as much, advising him to climb through the attic window where he would find a golden cage, and within the cage, the Firebird. As he grasped the wall with strong hands—archer’s hands, by their callouses—I warned him to seize the bird only, not its cage.
And so, I settled back in the snow to watch and wait.
It was some time before I heard Ivan trudging through the snow in my direction. To my chagrin, he revealed that he had touched the golden cage, desiring it, and that the tsar’s men captured him. For his attempted theft, the tsar commanded that Ivan steal a golden horse from another tsar and bring it to him in exchange for the Firebird.
At his confession, I snarled, vexed by his greed. Did he not hear my words, my warning? Even so, I carried him to the home of the second tsar where a golden bridle proved his folly. By this time, I was beginning to loathe the boy, but I aided him anyway, this time in kidnapping the daughter of a third tsar in exchange for the horse and bridle.
Unwilling to risk his foolishness a third time, I ordered him to remain outside the third tsar’s fortress wall. Gathering my legs beneath me, I leapt and cleared the wall in a bound, landing in the lush gardens on the other side. From behind the hedge, I spied the girl walking with her attendants. She appeared as one in a daze, loitering behind to stop and admire the garden plants and creatures, and in her dawdling I saw my opportunity. Her maidens rounded a corner, and I sprang, snatching her up by the dress and bounding once again over the wall. So frightened was she that she couldn’t utter a scream.
Ivan, for once, obeyed, and I met him where we departed. He freed the princess, who had by this moment fainted, from my mouth—her skirts tore on one of my teeth when he pulled her free. Then he clambered on my back, wrapping his arms tightly around the girl to prevent her from slipping off. Captivated by the allure of the princess’ beauty, Ivan desired to keep her rather than exchange her with the second tsar for the horse and bridle.
Reluctantly, I shifted forms and assumed that of the girl and accompanied Ivan to the tsar’s throne room, where Ivan saw me married off to the bow-legged king who stank of spirits and received the horse and bridle. I tarried longer than I should have in the girl’s form, but I could not resist the prospect of shocking the king. When he entered into my—his wife’s—chambers to consummate the marriage, I shifted once more to my wolf’s form. Upon seeing me, the tsar shrieked and ran, tripping, from the bedchambers. I howled in laughter and glee.
Ivan and his lady, whose name I learned was Helen, were astride the golden horse when I caught up with them later that night, and at the sight of the horse, my wolf’s stomach churned with hunger. I quelled the instinct.
Ivan, once again enthralled with foolhardy greed, petitioned to keep the horse, and although I believed this entire venture ill-advised, I agreed to repeat the events of the night before, shifting into a reflection of the horse and repeating the scenario by which Ivan won Helen, sending another royal tsar and a few stable boys into fits of frightened screams.
Thus, I helped Ivan obtain the Firebird and its golden cage, the horse and its golden bridle, and the golden-haired Helen (the latter prize still appeared too shocked and confused by her circumstances to protest his claiming of her). Ivan and I parted in the same wood where the remains of his steed lay, picked apart by my lesser brothers and sisters.
The following afternoon, I discovered Ivan lying dead by the side of the road, thick, arterial blood seeping from multiple gashes that left gaping holes in his torso and throat.
A black blanket of crows covered his body, picking at him in a peckish manner I found revolting and broodish. Stalking the murder from the shadows of the wood’s edge, I spotted a mother crow and her chick. I had invested too much energy and time into this boy’s fortune and fate to allow him to die so soon and made the decision to help him one final time. Fate, it seems, was not finished with young, if stupid, Ivan yet, and I was its faithful agent.
Darting into the black cloak and sending up screeching birds, I snatched the chick, gripping it by the wing by my teeth. The mother cawed in terror, her eyes rolling.
I promised her I would free the chick, who hung limp from my mouth, if she brought me two types of water: one still, one sparkling. She returned within the hour with what I desired, and I released her chick before pouring the waters over Ivan’s corpse. The still water closed his wounds; the sparkling water restored life to his flesh. He sat up and yawned lazily, as though waking from a pleasant nap and not as though his own brothers had slain him mere hours before.
Urging him along, I departed. Blood thrummed in my veins, and bloodlust pulsed behind my eyes, and in my mouth and beating heart. Quickly, I caught up with the treacherous brothers, the Firebird, the horse, and the girl, who appeared just as dazed and vacuous as before. In seconds, I tore out the throats of the brothers and their horses, and once they lay expiring on the ground, I tore the limbs from their bodies in exquisite fountains of blood, which spattered the snow around them. The girl might have screamed, but I was too preoccupied to notice, or care.
Before long, Ivan, red-faced and puffing from his brisk, post-resurrection run, arrived, and he and the distraught Helen rode back to his father’s castle, the golden cage swinging from a hook on the saddle fixed to the back of the golden horse, and in it, the Firebird.
Adapted from the Russian faerietale “The Firebird.” Retrieved from http://www.artrusse.ca/fairytales/firebird.htm
Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think in the comments!
~Abigail Blair
