The New Fairy-Tales Of Kamchatka

There lived one girl - an orphan. She had no relatives left. Her father had been carried away on ice to the sea, and her mother died soon after girl's birth. The only thing left from mother was a song, which she had been singing by the cradle. Once the girl began to starve. But there was no place to go to. She climbed to the roof of the dugout and started to sing the song from her childhood. Immediately after the end of the song, an exhalation of a whale sounded far in the sea. The girl started the song again. The whale's exhalation sounded nearer. The girl sang the song for the third time. The whale's breathing got very near. And when the song began for the fourth time, the whale swam up to the shore and leaned his head on the steep shore-rock. A man came out of the whale and said: "What is the use of your sitting on the shore and looking to the sea, while all your relatives are of the whales' kind?" He said that and took the girl with him to the sea. Nobody has seen her on the shore since then, but sometimes people hear whales' songs sounding like those of the seaside.

©Marina Fandee

The New Fairy-Tales Of Kamchatka

In one village there lived a girl - the most beautiful in the whole coast. People from all neighbouring villages tried to woo her, but she kept rejecting the would-be grooms. Chaps from the fist village came to her. The beauty said: "May be I will marry some of you, if you attach sticks on your cheeks and if you crawl on the shore". Shortly afterwards the grooms were crawling on the beach and the bride was laughing. The grooms turned into walruses and since then they have lived on the shore. Young men came from the second village to woo her. The beauty said: "May be, I will marry you, if you attach axes to your noses and if you climb up the cliffs". They did everything like she had said. Тhey moved along on the cliffs and the beauty laughed. So the grooms turned into puffins and dwelt on the cliffs. A group came to her from the third village. The beauty said to them: "Fasten branches to your heads and start running around yaranga on all fours". They began to run on all fours, but the beauty did not laugh anymore. The grooms got tired and walked to different places in tundra as deer. And the beauty exclaimed: "What is it?! - They make every silly thing I ask. Are they men at all?!" She jumped into the bonfire and turned into a fire-fox. People tried to quench her, but water reached only her tail. Since then the tips of foxes' tails have been white, and the foxes do not seek grooms among men.

It's a series of illustrated stories, based on myths and legends of the people of the North. Today many traditions and rituals described in fairy tales may seem too cruel. But we want to actually read these stories to our children. So we adapted them in accordance with moral norms of modern society, and now they can be passed to the young generation as an important part of our cultural heritage.
©Marina Fandee