Episode Details

Afanasyev — The Feather of Finist, Part Two

Part Two picks up the Vologda telling where Part One left it: the father rides home with the little scarlet flower, taken on the stranger's condition — and his youngest daughter, who met Finist at church and loves him already, sets the flower in water, opens her window, and receives from the falcon's wing a feather that summons carriages, servants, and gowns at a wave. Three Sundays she rides to church unknown, a tsarevna in crystal and gold, betrayed only by a diamond pin forgotten in her braid; then her sisters' hidden knives cut Finist's leg, and she walks after him in iron shoes, an iron cap on her head and an iron crutch in her hand, through a forest that blackens to three cast-iron huts on hen's legs, where three Baba Yagas arm her with a golden hammer, a diamond ball, and a swift horse that feeds on glowing coals. By the blue sea, beneath the golden domes of Finist's palace, she buys sight of her sleeping husband — held under a magic pin by the tsarevna who married him — three times, and the third time the pin falls.

The Feather of Finist the Bright Falcon (Перышко Финиста ясна сокола) — from the collection of Alexander Afanasyev, in a new English translation made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.

Afanasyev.

Intermission: "2-24" — instrumental.

KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.