Feather and the Prince Snippet - Chapter One - The Story Keeper

Every night, after finishing homework and chores, my mother would tuck me into bed and tell me a story. Sometimes it was Little Red Riding Hood. Sometimes it was The Three Bears or Jack and the Magic Beans. I had heard each story dozens of times, but I never grew tired of them. That quiet time with my mother, her voice soft in the lamplight, was my favorite part of each day.

When we visited my grandmother, she would tell stories instead. She knew all the same ones my mother did, which made sense because she had told them to my mother when she was small, just as her mother had told them to her. Stories, I learned, are gifts that get passed down like treasures.

The summer I turned eight, someone new visited us. My father's grandmother traveled all the way from what my family called the "Old Country" to stay with us. She was ninety-seven years old, but her eyes were bright, and her mind was sharp. She walked slightly hunched, with a carved wooden cane, and wore her silver hair in a long braid down her back. When she spoke, her words carried an accent that made even ordinary things sound magical.

Every morning, I would beg her, "Tell me about where you come from," and she would never refuse.

She told me about winters so cold that your breath would freeze in the air. She told me about summers when the sun barely set, and the flowers bloomed in colorful carpets across the hills. She told me about Czars who lived in golden palaces, and poor farmers who had almost nothing but shared what little they had. She told me about hardship and hunger, but also about courage and hope.

I could listen to her forever.

Each night, when my mother came to tell me a bedtime story, my great-grandmother would follow and sit at the foot of my bed to listen. She never interrupted. She simply sat with her hands folded in her lap, smiling as my mother told the familiar tales. When the story ended, and my mother kissed my forehead, my great-grandmother would lean close and kiss me too.

"Spi spokoyno, malen'kaya printsessa," she would whisper.

"What does that mean?" I asked her once.

She smiled, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened with warmth. "It means 'sleep well, little princess.' It is what my mother said to me when I was your age, in our language, in our homeland."