“Tell me, what does Nataliya want as a story before she goes to sleep?”

“V tantsevali obuv', Papa, though Feodor does not like it.”

“No matter what your brother thinks. I shall tell it just for you, moya malen'kaya krasnaya lisa.” Perched on the end of her bed, stiff mattress sagging under his spindly weight. Her small hand curled around his knuckles.

His voice was soft and creaky, words well-rehearsed:

“There were once twelve princesses, each more lovely than the last. They slept in twelve beds in the same room. Every night their door was locked by the king so they could not get out and be lost, but each morning their dancing shoes were found to be worn through as if they had been dancing all night.

“The king was much puzzled by this and sent word to the kingdom that any man who could discover the princess’ secret might have his pick of the king’s daughters in marriage. A young soldier wished to have the eldest princess as his wife. She was the most beautiful of the princesses, with hair as red as the embers and eyes dusky gray as ash.” A rough hand brushed soft red bangs off her forehead. A giggle in the dark.

“So the soldier perched himself outside the window of the princesses’ room like a bird of prey so that he might find out where they went. He waited until the very stroke of midnight when the girls dressed themselves in the finest of dancing gowns and escaped from the locked room by a trap door in the floor. The soldier stole into their room and followed them through the passageway that led them to a lake as clear as crystal surrounded by three groves. The first grove had trees of silver as fine as the twine of a bow, the second of gold as lithe as a shaft, and the third of glittering diamonds as strong and sharp as the point of an arrow.

“Here the twelve sisters danced to harps and flutes as though hypnotized by the sickly sweetness of the melody, and the soldier was transfixed by the beauty of their swirling gowns and limbs as graceful as swans. But it seemed to the soldier there was something disconcerting in the princesses’ dance, almost as if they were puppets being prompted by the whims of their controllers, or else spiders approaching their prey with a carefully precise, erotic tread.

“The princesses danced until their shoes of silk and ribbon were worn through and they were obliged to leave. The soldier followed them back through the grove and to the passage of the trap door, but not before he broke off a pointed leaf of diamond as a token he might show the king for proof of the princesses’ strange adventure.

“The eldest princess was the last of her sisters and before she disappeared through the trap door she seemed to wake from her dream and her eyes alighted upon the soldier, standing behind her with the leaf clasped in his hand.

“The soldier approached her gently, offering her his leaf as a tiding of peace. The princess accepted his gift and threaded the leaf as a necklace with a strand of her own hair, and let it hang from her neck looking like the pointed arrow.”

“Together they confronted the king in the morning and, true to his word, the king granted the soldier the eldest daughter for his wife. The soldier took the princess away from her sisters. And the princess and soldier fled to a far-off land where they could live in the freedom of their love.”

“It is a sad story, Papa.”

“Yes, ryzhaya lisa, sad in parts but also very happy I think. Do you know why?”

“No, Papa. Unless you mean because the soldier rescues the princess.”

“True, but it is not so much, I think, that the soldier rescues the princess but more that she learns to rescue herself.”

“But she leaves all the rest of her sisters.”

“Yes, ryzhaya lisa, but there is good and bad, happy and sad in every story – just as there is in life. Someday you will come to realize that.”

“I suppose, Papa.”

“Yes my little princess. And now you must shut your eyes and go to sleep.”

“Papa?”

“Yes, ryzhaya lisa?”

“I should like to have a pair of silk shoes and dance like the princesses.”

“Maybe in the morning, ryzhaya lisa. But first you must sleep.” Chapped lips pressed against her cool forehead, gently tuck the covers to her chin, candle blown out, the smell of smoke curling in the air, creak of a door as it shut, and darkness.

This sounds like a really interesting start to a story! I look forward to reading more. :)