In a certain kingdom, in a certain land, there lived a merchant. For twenty years, he lived together with his wife, but they only had one child, a daughter, Vasilissa the Beautiful. When her mother died, Vasilissa was only eight years old. As the mother lay dying, she called Vasilissa to her side, and she pulled out a doll from under her coverlet and gave it to her, and she said, “Listen, my dear little Vasilissa. Remember my final words and make sure to do what I say. I am dying, but with my parental blessing, I am leaving you this doll. Always keep it with you. Never show it to anyone, and if anything bad should ever happen to you, feed the doll some food and ask her advice. She’ll eat and she’ll tell you how to overcome your troubles.” Then she kissed her daughter, and she died.

After she died, the merchant grieved for a while, as was proper, but soon he started to think once again about marrying. He was a good man, so there was no lack of brides to choose from. But more than any others, he liked a certain widow. She was no longer young and had two daughters of her own. And he thought that she would make an excellent housekeeper for that reason, and perhaps a good mother, too. The merchant married the widow, but he made a terrible mistake. She made neither a good housekeeper nor a mother for his Vasilissa.

You see, Vasilissa was the most beautiful girl in the village, and her stepmother and her two stepsisters envied her beauty greatly. So they thought up all kinds of work for her to do so that she would become as skinny as a reed from all the overwork and so that her skin would become rough and blackened by the constant sun. But Vasilissa never complained, and instead of losing her beauty, she only became more and more rosy-cheeked, and fuller and fuller in her figure, while the stepmother and stepsisters became thinner and uglier by the day from their anger, in spite of the fact that they all sat around all day like noblemen, doing nothing.

But how could that be? do you ask. Vasilissa had help from her doll. Without her doll, the girl would never have been able to deal with all the work. But with all that, Vasilissa made sure to go without food herself if need be, but always made sure to feed her doll. Then every evening, as soon as everyone went to sleep, she’d lock herself in her closet—that’s where she lived now—and fed her doll, saying, “Here, Dolly. Eat a little bit. But make sure to hear my sorrow. I live in my own father’s house, but I have no joy here. My evil stepmother is trying to drive me off this good earth. Tell me what to do and how to live.”

And so the doll would eat a little bit; then she would give her advice and console Vasilissa. And while Vasilissa slept, she would do all her work for her! It was good to live with Dolly.

A few years passed. Vasilissa grew up and reached marriageable age. All the grooms in the town came to ask for her hand, while not a single one of them so much as looked on the stepmother’s ugly daughters. Oh, the stepmother got even angrier, if that were possible, and she answered all the young men, “I will not give my youngest away before the elders!” And as she led the young men out, she took her anger out on Vasilissa by beating her.

One day, the merchant father had to leave home for a long, long time. As soon as he left, his wife moved to an entirely different house. This house bordered the dark forest. Oh, there were rumors that deep in that forest stood a clearing, and in that clearing stood a hut, while in the hut lived Baba Yaga. They also said she let no one near her, and ate people like people eat chicken! The stepmother started to send Vasilissa more and more often into the forest on various stupid errands, but Vasilissa always managed to come back alive. The doll would show her the right path and never lead her near Baba Yaga’s hut.

And so autumn came. The stepmother gave work to all her daughters. One of them had to weave lace, the other darned socks, while Vasilissa was put on the spinning wheel. She told them all what to do, then blew out all the lamps and left only a single candle in the working room. Then the stepmother went to sleep. The girls worked. Soon the candle started to flicker, because of the bad wick. One of the girls took some scissors to cut it, but instead she put the candle out! It seemed to be by accident, but actually she had been told to do it by her mother.

“What will we do now?” the girls said. “There’s no fire anywhere in the house! But we haven’t finished our work. Someone will have to go get fire—from Baba Yaga!”

And the first girl quickly said, “I won’t go. I can see by the light of the moon as it reflects off my needles.

And the second girl quickly answered, “I won’t go either. I can see by the light of the stars as they reflect on my darning needle.”

And both of them turned on Vasilissa. “You have to go! Go and get fire from Baba Yaga.”

Vasilissa went into her closet, put her own dinner in front of the doll and said, “Here you go, Dolly. Eat my dinner and listen to my sorrow. They’re sending me out to get fire from Baba Yaga. She’s going to eat me!”

The doll ate her dinner, and her eyes sparkled like two candles. “Don’t be afraid, Vasilissa,” she answered. “Go on, only keep me with you always. Nothing will happen to you, even at Baba Yaga’s.”

Vasilissa gathered her things, put the doll in her pocket, and crossed herself. Then she went into the dark, terrifying forest. She walked and she walked, shivering from the cold. Suddenly, right in front of her, a rider on a horse rode by. He was all in white: the horse under him was white, and the harness on the horse was white, too. As soon as he passed, daylight began to glimmer.

She walked on, and suddenly another rider rode right in front of her. He was all red: dressed in red, astride a red horse. He rode by and the sun began to rise.

All night, Vasilissa had walked, and now all the day after that. Only toward the next evening did she reach the clearing where Baba Yaga’s hut stood. It hid behind a fence made all of human bones, and each stake of that fence was covered with a skull. Instead of gates, the hut had human feet, and instead of a latch it had human hands; instead of a lock, it had a mouth with sharp teeth.

Vasilissa froze in place from utter terror, unable to move. Suddenly, a third rider rode by her. He was all in black, on a black horse. He rode right up to the gates of Baba Yaga and then—disappeared! as though he fell into the earth itself, and night fell.

But the darkness didn’t last long. All the skulls had glowing eyes, and the clearing became bright as day again. Vasilissa stood, shaking from fear, but, not knowing where to go, she remained in place. Suddenly, a terrible noise was heard all over the forest. The trees creaked, the dry leaves crunched, and Baba Yaga arrived from the forest. She sat in her mortar, hurrying herself along with her pestle, brushing away her tracks with her broom.

She stopped at her gate and gave a great sniff. [Sniffing] “Phew! Phew! It smells of Russian stink! Who’s here?”

Vasilissa screwed up her courage and came up to Baba Yaga, bowing deeply, all the way to the ground, and said, “It’s me, Grandmother. My stepmother’s daughters sent me to get fire from you.”

“Very well,” said Baba Yaga, “I know those girls. Come, live with me for a bit, and do some work for me. Then I’ll give you some fire. But if not—then I’ll eat you!” Then Baba Yaga turned to her gates and exclaimed, “Hey, my strong latches, unlock yourselves! Hey, my wide gates, open wide!” The gates opened, and Baba Yaga rode in, whistling all the while. Vasilissa came in after her, and everything closed up again.

As she walked into her living room, Baba Yaga stretched out, yawned, and said to Vasilissa, “Come, give me whatever food’s in the stove. I’m hungry!” Vasilissa lit a chip of wood from one of the skulls on the fence and began to pull all the food out of the stove. There was enough there for ten people at least! From the cellar she brought up kvas, mead, beer, and wine. The old woman ate everything, and then she drank everything. She only left Vasilissa a bit of soup, a tiny piece of bread, and some bits of pork.

Baba Yaga lay down on the stove-top and said, “When I leave tomorrow, make sure to clean the yard, sweep the hut, make lunch, wash all the laundry, then go and take a quarter of all my wheat from the granary and husk it. If you don’t do all of that, I’ll eat you when I get back!” After saying this, Baba Yaga fell instantly to sleep and began to snore.

Vasilissa took all of the old woman’s leavings and put them in front of her doll, as her eyes filled with tears. “Here, Dolly. Have my dinner. Listen to my sorrow. Baba Yaga gave me so much work, but if I don’t finish it, she says she’ll eat me. Help me!”

And the doll answered, “Don’t be afraid, Vasilissa the Beautiful. Come, eat. Say your prayers and lie down to sleep. The morning is wiser than the evening.”

Vasilissa woke up before the sun, but Baba Yaga was already up. The glowing eyes of the skulls were fading already, and the white rider rode by, and day broke. Baba Yaga came outside and whistled, and her mortar and pestle appeared right before her, and then the red rider rode by and the sun rose. Baba Yaga sat in her mortar and flew off, hurrying herself along with her pestle, and brushing away her tracks with her broom. Vasilissa was left alone.

She started looking around the hut and was amazed at how big it was and how many wonderful things it had inside it. Where would she even begin her work? But then she realized that everything had already been done! And even as she looked, the doll was just finishing husking the last bit of wheat.

“Oh, my little savior!” said Vasilissa. “You’ve saved me from certain doom!”

“All you have left to do is make a good lunch,” said the doll. “Go ahead and make it, then take a much-deserved rest.”

By evening, Vasilissa had prepared a gorgeous dinner, and sat there, waiting for Baba Yaga. As soon as the black rider rode by, darkness fell, and the skulls’ eyes started to glow again. The trees creaked, the leaves crunched, and—here comes Baba Yaga! Vasilissa came out to greet here.

“Is everything done?” asked Baba Yaga.

“Come and see, Grandmother,” said Vasilissa. Baba Yaga looked around, looked around, grumbled a bit because she had nothing to get mad at, and then she croaked, “My faithful servants, friends of my heart, come and grind my wheat!” Three pairs of hands appeared, grabbed the wheat, and carried it away.

Baba Yaga ate her fill, lay down on the stove-top and once again told Vasilissa, “Tomorrow, do the same thing you did today, but one more thing: take the poppy seeds from the granary, and clean all the bits of dirt from it. Some nasty person has mixed it all up in the mud.” No sooner said than Baba Yaga turned around and started to snore.

Vasilissa fed her doll. The doll ate and said, “Pray to God and lie down to sleep. The morning is wiser than the evening.”

In the morning, Baba Yaga rode away again, while Vasilissa and the doll managed all the work again. The old woman came back, looked around, grumbled a bit, and croaked, “My faithful servants, friends of my heart, come and squeeze the oil from the poppy seeds!” Three pairs of hands appeared, grabbed the poppy seeds, and disappeared.

Baba Yaga sat down to eat. She sat there, eating, but Vasilissa stood by her and said nothing. “Why are you standing there and saying nothing to me?” asked Baba Yaga. “Are you a mute?”

“I don’t dare say anything,” answered Vasilissa. “But if you will allow me, I’d like to ask you about a few things.”

“Hmm. Ask away, but not every question leads to good answers. If you know too much, you’ll get old faster.”

“I only wanted to ask, Grandmother, about what I saw. The white rider who rode by me. Who is he?”

“Oh, that’s my bright Day,” answered Baba Yaga.

“Then another rider rode past me on a red horse, all dressed in red. Who was he?”

“That’s my red Sun,” answered Baba Yaga.

“And who is the black rider, who rode past me at your gates, Grandmother?”

“That’s my dark Night. They’re all my faithful servants.”

Vasilissa remembered the three pairs of hands, but said nothing else.

“Well? Why aren’t you asking me anything else?” asked Baba Yaga.

“What do you expect?” answered Vasilissa. “You yourself said if I know too much, I’ll get old faster.”

“Heh heh heh. It’s a good thing,” said Baba Yaga, “that you only asked about what’s beyond my gates, not within them. I don’t like busybodies, and the over-curious, well, I like to eat them! Now I’m going to ask you a question. How do you manage to do all the work I give to you?”

“My mother’s blessing helps me,” answered Vasilissa.

“Oh! Is that it!?” screeched Baba Yaga. “Get out of here, daughter of blessing! I don’t need any blessed daughters!” She pulled Vasilissa out of the hut and pushed her past the gates. But then she took one of the skulls off the fence; its eyes were still glowing. Sticking it on a staff, she gave it to Vasilissa and said, “This is the fire that those daughters of your stepmother asked for. Go ahead, take it. After all, that’s what you came for, isn’t it?” [Evil cackling]

Vasilissa ran home, her path lit by the glowing eyes of the skull. Finally, on the evening of the following day, she arrived home. As she approached, she thought about tossing the skull away. Well, they’d probably managed to find some fire on their own by now, she thought to herself. But then the skull started to talk to her in an empty, echoey kind of voice. “Don’t toss me away. Take me to your stepmother.”

And then she looked at her stepmother’s house, and seeing not a single fire lit in any window, decided to bring the skull. For the first time ever, they met her kindly and said that for all the days since she had left, they had no fire in their house at all. They couldn’t manage to so much as catch a spark, and every person who brought them fire couldn’t bring it past the threshold; it immediately went out.

And so they brought the skull into the living room. But the eyes on the skull started to stare at the stepmother and stepsisters, so intensely it felt like they were on fire. They tried to hide; they tried to run away, to go to a different room—but it didn’t matter. No matter where they went, the eyes followed them everywhere. By the morning, the eyes had burned them down completely to ash. Only Vasilissa remained untouched.

That morning, Vasilissa took the skull and buried it deep in the earth. She locked the house and went into the city. She found an old woman with no family and asked to live with her, and the old woman took her in. She lived there for a while, waiting for her father, but she soon got bored.

“Grandmother,” she said, “I don’t like sitting around without work. Can you get me some linen? I want to sew something.”

The old woman bought her some of the best linen she could find. Vasilissa sat down, and the work just flowed out of her. She spun the linen thread so fine, so straight, it was almost like human hair. Soon it was time to begin weaving, but no loom was found that could fit such fine thread, and no one bothered to help Vasilissa to find another one. So Vasilissa asked her doll for help.

The doll said, “Bring me an old loom, an old shuttle, and some horsehair. I’ll fix everything up for you.”

Vasilissa did as she was told and went to sleep. Overnight the doll made her a beautiful, brand-new loom. By the end of the winter, Vasilissa finished her weaving. The fabric was so thin, so fine, that it could actually fit through the eye of a needle.

In spring, she whitened the linen, and then Vasilissa told the old woman, “Go ahead, Grandmother. Sell the linen. You can keep the money.”

But the old woman looked at it and said, “No, my child! No one but the king can wear such linen! I am going to bring it to the palace!”

The old woman went to the palace grounds, but kept walking back and forth in front of the windows. Finally, the king saw her and asked, “What do you need, old woman?”

“Your royal highness,” she said, “I have brought you a wondrous thing! I want to show it to you, but to no one but you!”

The king ordered that she be led in. He took one look at the linen and gasped aloud. “What do you want for it?”

“It is priceless, my lord king. I will give it to you for free.”

The king thanked her and let her go home, laden with gifts.

Then it came time to make a shirt from that linen cloth, but it was so fine no seamstress even dared to try it! Finally, the king had to call the old woman back, and he said, “If you could weave such fine fabric, you should be able to make a shirt out of it!”

“But it wasn’t me, highness!” said the old woman. “It was a young girl in my charge.”

“Well, then, have her make me a shirt.”

And the old woman came home and told Vasilissa everything. Vasilissa smiled knowingly and said, “I suspected that this work would come back to me.”

So she locked herself up in her room and started to work. She worked and worked without stopping for as long as it took, until she had twelve shirts ready for the king. The old woman brought the king his shirts, and Vasilissa washed up, did her hair, got dressed, and sat by her window. She sat and sat, and waited, to see what would happen.

Then she saw that the king’s own servant was walking up to the house. He walked into the living room and said, “The king wants to see the one who made these wonderful shirts so that he can reward her with his own hands.”

And so Vasilissa came before the eyes of the king himself. As soon as the king saw Vasilissa the Beautiful, he fell head over heels in love with her. “No,” he said, “my beauty, I will never part from you. You must, you must be my wife.”

And so the king took Vasilissa by her lily-white hands, sat her next to himself, and then—he married her!

Soon Vasilissa’s father came back, overjoyed at her fate. He stayed to live with her at the palace. Vasilissa took the old woman in as well. Until the very end of her days, she always carried her doll in her pocket.

I recently received a wonderful question from one of my listeners. I include it here because it gets at the heart of what I’m trying to show you by telling you these stories. Here’s the question, slightly edited for clarity and brevity.

Regarding the pattern at the end of Finist, where the beautiful girl has endured much hardship, she manages to win back her beloved from his new wife. We see a phenomenon here. If you take the storyline literally, the morals exhibited are not good, but if you read the same story in a more spiritual way, then the morals are very good.

Let me explain. So this girl comes back to her beloved and steals another woman’s husband. In fact, the last fairy tale where I heard this same pattern, the king even cuts off the head of his wife once his beautiful old love returns. This doesn’t make sense!

However, if you read the story in a non-literal way, and this is the story of a soul achieving the good, then it is a moral achievement that she gets her beloved back.

I have often wondered how this phenomenon works in fairy tales. I wonder about it also from the perspective of telling such stories to my very young children. Am I giving them an obviously bad moral, or a pattern for spiritual truth?

So there are two wonderful things in this question that I’d like to get at. The first is a kind of a confession on my part. Yes, as this listener suggested, not all stories are good for you. The description of this podcast actually puts it quite bluntly: Is fiction dangerous? You expect me to say, “No, no, no!” Well, actually: Yes, fiction is very dangerous. Stories speak a visceral language of the heart, and if our heart is unformed or disordered, then we can be easily swayed by stories that have a bad heart—and believe me, some do.

Theologian and writer Vigen Guroian reminds us of this in his essay, “On Fairy Tales and the Moral Imagination,” where he says:

Our society is failing to cultivate the moral imagination, because very often the stories we live by, the stories we read ourselves or read to our children, the stories we watch on television or at the movies, are not stories that grow the moral imagination, but stories that rather crowd it out.

One of the worst kinds of story that we often tell ourselves, whether we realize it or not, is the story of the supreme good of actualizing the self, of finding your own true love, finding your passion, and of making your unique mark in the world. Well, it’s a compelling story for the imagination because it does, it speaks directly to the heart.

But there’s a dark side to this. Take this passage from a recent best-seller, titled [Untamed], that has been chosen for Reese Witherspoon’s massive book club, ensuring it best-seller status. Here’s an excerpt from the synopsis on the Amazon page.

There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good—good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive; instead it [leaves] us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder: Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this?

For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind: There She is.

At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high, but she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiance. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free.

Nevermind what this “untaming” could do to this woman’s immortal soul. Nevermind what it might do to her husband and children—oh, yes, she was married, with a family when this “untaming” happened. So at first glance, it might seem that the story of Finist has a bad heart, because it might seem to suggest that true love can simply disregard the conventions of marriage. It sounds like a pretty bad moral—but no, it’s not that at all.

And the listener who asked the question started answering her own objection when she suggested that there might be a spiritual, not literal, reading of the fairy tale. Well, actually, there is neither a literal nor a spiritual interpretation, not really, of a fairy tale. There is simply the fairy tale. Its language, by its very nature, is the language of symbol and of imagination and of transcendence.

Vigen Guroian writes, later on in the same essay:

Plato argued that conversion to that which is moral, that which is just, that which is right and good is like an awakening, like remembering something long forgotten. Good stories have a special capacity to bring back to life the starved or atrophied moral imagination, to bring back to mind what we once knew. Fairy tales are not scientific hypotheses, nor are they practical guidelines to living. They do something even better, however: they resonate, with the deepest qualities of our humility. They enable us to envision a world in which there are norms and limits, a world in which freedom respects the moral law, or pays an especially high price.

So when our children listen to “Finist, the Bright Falcon,” do they think, “Oh, this Finist is a bad character because he chucked his lawful wife for his one, true love?” Well, no; they are much more likely to think something like this: Perseverance and self-sacrifice can overcome even the worst injustice. Because, you see, children are wise—or at least wise enough to know, even without being told, that marriage to a sorceress is no marriage at all! It’s [we] parents who need to have our moral imagination restored sometimes.

So, to recapitulate, it’s absolutely true that we must encounter the right kinds of stories—at the peril of our very lives. Much of the madness of the current political and cultural moment is a result of the proliferation of the worst kinds of stories. In “Vasilissa the Beautiful,” today’s fairy tale, is an example of one of the best kinds of stories, because it awakens the moral imagination on several levels. The surface level of the story—the rather simple tale of a young girl, like Cinderella, being put upon unfairly by her stepmother, even to the threat of her life—well, that’s compelling enough. I can hardly think of a more frightening image than this version of Baba Yaga’s house, with its collection of human bones and its toothy locking mechanism. And that story, the good-versus-evil tale of the vindication of the beautiful girl and the punishment of her unjust persecutors, is enough of a reason to include this in any list of stories that form the moral imagination for children.

But there’s another story going on, and this is meant for both children but especially adults. It’s the inner growth of Vasilissa as a character. After all, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that she starts out almost as a loafer: her doll seems to do everything for her. Vasilissa can eat as much as she likes, collect flowers as much as she likes, and the stepmother is none the wiser. But then when the next stage comes and she visits the kingdom of death, headed by Baba Yaga, she notices that Baba Yaga also has these three pairs of hands that do all the work for her. And notice the story says that Vasilissa takes special note of this detail, but strangely the story doesn’t elaborate on that point, not directly.

But after that, Vasilissa changes. Notice that after her stepmother and stepsisters die a horrible but perhaps just death, she starts to work for herself. Work a lot! Using her doll only when there is no other way out of a difficult situation. And it’s at that point, when she gives herself completely to the very spiritual mature task of creating something beautiful out of almost nothing, that is, a shirt from simple linen thread, this is when she shows her growth. She doesn’t need her doll any more; she’s passed through the kingdom of death. Now she can create something truly amazing: a shirt that no one else will even dare try to sew.

And her reward is not simply marriage to the king. It is union with the King, as in King with a capital K. It is spiritual oneness with the only one who can truly appreciate the fruit of our spiritual labors, the only one who can give us the fitting reward, of lasting rest after a life of hardship. I’m speaking, of course, of union with God. So this version of Cinderella, if you read it carefully, if you read it slowly, is a spiritually rich parable about the stages of the spiritual life.

But it’s also a wonderful story, and an adventure about a girl going out into the deep forest and facing her fears and coming out the wiser. All of this, by definition, is what I think is a good story.

Thank you for listening. If you’d like to find out more about the exciting and dangerous world of Slavic fairy tales, you might like to check out The Raven’s Son epic fantasy series, which is inspired by these stories. If you sign up for my mailing list, you will receive book one, The Song of the Sirin, for free. Just visit nicholaskotar.com to find out more. You might also be interested in my monthly “Good Books for Great Lives” book club and other exclusive content available at patreon.com/nicholaskotar. This show was edited and its beautiful music is originally composed by Natalie Wilson at nwcomposing.com. In a Certain Kingdom is a listener-supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio.