Episode 61 – Don’t be a Karen – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 61 Show Notes

Source: Danish Fairy Tale

This week on MYTH, we’ll dance back into the magical world of Hans Christian Andersen. You’ll discover why poor kids shouldn’t want nice things, why you should never trust a compliment, and why you should never dance. Then, in Gods and Monsters, we’ll discover the version of Toy Story that was depressing kids over a century before Buzz and Woody. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 61, “Don’t Be a Karen”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
Both the main story and the Gods and Monsters segment this week come from the seminal works of Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (last seen in Episode 24). Our first tale, The Red Shoes, is not as well known as some of his other stories, but has been adapted into a lot of very different forms, including a flamenco fairy tale, several ballets, numerous songs, several novels, a movie, a manga, a Barbie movie, and a Looney Tunes short, so odds are good that you’ve seen the story without realizing it.
Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Karen who lived in a small village. Everyone agreed that she was a very beautiful little girl, quite tiny and delicate, and they muttered that it was a shame that she was so very poor. In the summer, she would go barefoot quite happily, but in the winters, when the weather turned harsh and icy, she would wear heavy, boxy wooden shoes that fit her sensitive feet very poorly. They rubbed her poor feet raw, chafed her tiny ankles, and left her with angry, aching blisters.
At the center of this little village lived an old shoemaker. She was a kindly woman, and she felt pity for the sweet little Karen and her poor abused feet, so she decided to use some leftover strips of red cloth she had around her shop to make a pair of shoes for the little girl. The scrap cloth wasn’t the easiest thing to make shoes out of, but the old shoemaker put time and care into her work, and they came out fairly nicely, all things considered. They weren’t especially nice, but they certainly fit better than Karen’s awful wooden shoes!
Coincidence can be a real dick sometimes, and it so happened that the old woman finished the bright red shoes and gave them to little Karen just as her mother died. New shoes were hard to get excited over when your only living family has died (for once, it’s the father who isn’t mentioned or explained, so pick your favorite reason for his absence). She was as grateful as she could be under the circumstances, thanking the kind old woman and wearing the shoes to her mother’s burial. Bright red shoes weren’t exactly ideal mourning attire, but she couldn’t even shove her feet in the wooden ones anymore (and didn’t even own a pair of stockings that fit any longer), so she wore the red shoes as she followed her mother’s cheap pauper’s coffin to the potter’s field.
As pretty little Karen stood there, weeping for her mother and shivering in the cold, a large carriage drove by along the street. Inside sat a large, stately, wealthy woman who had no children of her own. She saw the miserable looking little girl standing in the graveyard and suspected correctly that she had just become an orphan with no real prospects. She asked the priest overseeing the meager funeral about her and was informed that Karen had indeed just become an orphan. He tutted that the poor thing would probably die before the end of winter, but he knew that no one in the tiny village would be able to help out. The wealthy lady, on the other hand, could absolutely afford to be charitable, so she called the little girl over and adopted her on the spot.
Karen, with the innocence of a child, believed that her new red shoes were lucky. Just as she’d lost her mother and been left to her certain doom, the shoes had come to her and then she’d been saved by this rich old woman! Her new mother, however, thought the shoes, made with love from carefully saved scraps, were absolutely hideous and ordered them to be burned. She replaced all of Karen’s threadbare, often-mended clothes with new, more fashionable ones, and had the girl cleaned and groomed for the first time in her life. She was taught to read and sew and to become a proper young lady. Everyone who saw her in her new life said that she was a pretty little thing, but her mirror showed Karen that she was more than pretty – she was gorgeous (and maybe a little vain).
After Karen had been living in her new life for some time, the Queen traveled through the land with her daughter, the princess, in tow. Everyone swarmed into the castle to see the royals, including the wealthy woman and her adopted daughter Karen. The princess stood in a window to present herself to her people. She wore neither crown nor train, opting instead for a simple white dress set off by a pair of bright red morocco shoes (a flat woven shoe). Karen stared at the incredible shoes, which reminded her of her long-burned footware (though of course the princess’ shoes were much nicer than the ones the old shoemaker had sewn for her from scraps and rags). They were the most incredible thing that Karen had ever seen. Nothing in the world could possibly compare to those shoes!
More time passed, and soon Karen was old enough to be confirmed, a sacrament of the Catholic Church. As part of this incredibly important ceremony, Karen was to have new clothes and a new pair of shoes as well. The wealthy woman preferred the finer things for herself and for her daughter, so Karen was sent to the home of the richest shoemaker in the city (since shoes at that time were all made custom). The shop held many glass cases filled with elegant shoes and stunning boots, and Karen was awe-struck at the accumulated beauty. The old woman, on the other hand, was starting to go blind, so the sight of a bunch of fuzzy blobs didn’t do much for her.
In one of these cases stood a pair of bright red shoes, almost identical to the ones the princess had worn on that distant day she had visited the city. Karen was drawn to them immediately, asking the shopkeep about them. “Oh yes, you have very fine taste. Those shoes were made for a count’s daughter, but they didn’t fit her quite right.” The old lady squinted at the shoes, but could make out almost nothing. “They are, uh, very shiny. They must be patent leather, I guess.” Karen bounced up and down in excitement as the shopkeeper brought out the red shoes and let her try them on. They fit her like they had been made for her, and so she convinced her mother to buy them (which she definitely would not have done if she could have seen that they were bright red, since red shoes were about as appropriate for confirmation as they had been for her mother’s funeral).
On confirmation Sunday, everyone stared at her scarlet-clad feet as she walked up the church to the chancel. Karen fancied that even the eyes in the dusty old paintings of preachers and preachers’ wives in their stiff ruffed collars and somber black dresses, and the eyes of the stone figures carved into the tombs stared at her beautiful shoes as she walked. Even as she went through the actual sacrament, as the priest laid his hand on her head and prayed over her and told her of the solemn promise she was making, Karen thought only of her pretty new shoes.
As soon as church was over, everyone began to whisper about the absolute scandal of Karen’s scarlet shoes. It didn’t take long for those whispers to reach her mother’s ears. She was incredibly embarrassed at Karen’s faux paus and scolded her for being naughty, admonishing her that she should only ever wear black shoes to church from here on out. Even when she became an adult, she should never, ever wear red shoes to church. It just wasn’t done.
Karen nodded and agreed and the next Sunday, which was to be her very first communion (another holy sacrament), she sat in her room and considered her shoes. She stared at the red shoes, then at the black ones, then at the red again. Karen finally decided ‘fuck you, mom – I’m wearing the red shoes!’ Her mother, still quite blind, had no idea and fully expected her daughter to comply with her orders. Together, they walked in the bright sunshine on the path by the cornfield, which was rather dusty.
By the time they’d reached the church, Karen’s shoes had gone from bright and shiny to dull and dusty. At the door to the church stood an old soldier, leaning on a crutch. He had a long, bushy beard that Karen thought should be white, as old as he was, but instead it was a deep and surprising red. He asked the two women if he might dust their shoes for them, and being charitable, the old woman consented. He bent down to do so, and Karen held out her fancy little shoe. “My, what beautiful dancing shoes! Stick on their firmly when you dance,” and he struck the bottom of her sole with his hand. It was an odd thing to say, but old beggars often said odd things, so the two women paid it no mind. They paid the poor soldier a copper for his trouble and went into the church.
As on the previous Sunday, everyone stared at Karen’s bright red shoes as she walked down the aisle, and she felt the eyes of all the dusty, disapproving old pictures as well. She knelt at the altar to sip the wine and eat the bread, but her thoughts were entirely on her beautiful shoes and on how everyone was watching her. She could almost see them floating right there before her eyes. She forgot to pray during the sacrament and she forgot to sing the Psalm; she was just too damn focused on her shoes to care about anything else.
After mass, she followed her mother back to the carriage, but when she lifted her foot to climb in after the old woman, the beggar soldier called out “what beautiful dancing shoes!” Karen couldn’t help herself – she danced a few graceful steps to show off her new shoes. Once she had begun however, Karen found that she couldn’t seem to stop. Her feet moved of their own accord, completely ignoring her frantic attempts to stand still. They danced her around the corner of the church, ignoring completely the angry cries of her mother. The coachman was sent to snatch her off her feet and carry her bodily to the carriage so they could all go home. She hoped that she could sit down peacefully once she was inside the carriage, but no such luck. The whole way home, she danced all across the cramped carriage, kicking and stepping on the old woman in the process. It wasn’t until she got home and was able to pry them off her still-restless, dancing feet that her legs finally obeyed her commands again.
The red shoes were put away into a closet, but even knowing how much trouble they had caused, Karen couldn’t help but open the door every now and again to stare wistfully at their crimson beauty. More time passed, and Karen’s mother grew ill. The doctor said it was the kind of sickness that didn’t get better. She grew weaker and weaker, and soon she had to be fed, and cared for, and waited on, and being her daughter, this duty fell to Karen. This was fine, more or less, until word came that a grand ball was going to be thrown in the city and Karen was invited to attend. Karen stared at the dying old woman, then at the red shoes in the closet. I mean, it wasn’t like nursing the old lady was helping anything right? The doctor said she wasn’t going to get better no matter what, so would it really be so wrong to play hookey for a night and go dancing? Hypnotized by the lure of the red shoes, Karen convinced herself that there was nothing at all wrong with abandoning the old woman who had taken her in off the streets and cared for her ever since her birth mother died. Sure, nothing wrong with that at all.
Her decision made, Karen slipped on the lovely red shoes and headed out to the ball. Things began to go wrong almost immediately. Her feet refused to obey her commands: when she wanted to dance to the right, her feet took her left; when she wanted to cross the room, the shoes took her out the door, into the street, and out the city gate. Her terror mounting, Karen’s disobedient dancing feet carried her out into the deep gloom of the forest.
Deeper into the darkness they carried her until the night was suddenly split with light as bright as the sun itself. She looked up at the huge ball of light hanging in the empty sky above the trees, fully expecting to see the full moon coming out from behind a cloud bank, but she let out a shriek when her brain told her what was actually there – it was a face, a huge, burning, gloating face staring down at her from the blackness. Worse still, it was a face she knew – the gleeful, red-bearded face of the old beggar soldier. He chortled at her obvious terror. “What beautiful dancing shoes!”
Karen’s abject horror cranked up another notch at this awful booming voice, and she clawed at her madly dancing feet, desperate to tear the terrible shoes off her aching feet, but they clung like living things. She ripped down her stockings, trying to use the fabric as leverage to get those horrible shoes off, but the thin stockings tore from her legs, leaving the shoes still attached and still dancing their unending dance. It was like they’d become one with her feet, an awful second skin.
Under the scarlet light of the unholy bearded face, Karen danced away into the night, screaming in fear and anger and regret. She danced over the fields and through the meadows. She danced in the rain and in the scorching sun. She danced in the brightest day and the darkest nights. The nights were the worst.
On she danced across the earth until at last she came to a cemetery. She danced across the graves, and she wondered that the corpses didn’t rise from their graves to join her dance macabre, but the dead had better things to do. She saw a pauper’s grave in one corner and she longed to sit herself down and rest on this humble patch of earth, where the bitter tansy grew, but for her, there was neither peace nor rest – only endless, exhausting dance. Her bloodied, blistered feet carried her towards the church, and Karen saw an angel standing in the open doorway. He had beautiful wings stretching all the way from his shoulders to his feet, beating ever so slightly, the air stirring his shimmering white garments. His face was beautiful but terrible, his expression harsh and unyielding, and a naked sword glittered in his hand.
His voice rang out like trumpets. “Dance shalt thou! Dance in thy red shoes til thou art pale and cold and lifeless, til thy skin shrivels and rots, and thou art nothing but a dancing skeleton clad in rags! Dance shalt thou from door to door, and wherever proud, vain, ungrateful children dwell, thou shalt knock that they may hear thee and tremble in terror at thy lot! Dance shalt thou…”
Weeping and desperate, Karen threw her hands towards the angel in supplication, trying to hurl herself at his feet to beg but prevented by the awful shoes. “Mercy! Mercy, I beg you!” Karen never knew if he answered her plea, for her shoes carried her away into the night and out of earshot. They carried her out of the cemetery gates and into the fields, across the roads and bridges, and on into eternity. Forever, Karen’s feet kept dancing.
One morning (Karen no longer had any idea how long she had been cursed to her unceasing dance), her feet carried her past a door she knew well. From the other side, she could hear voices raised in a Psalm. The door opened, and a wooden coffin was carried out, decked with flowers and Karen knew that her second mother had died, and Karen felt alone as she had never felt before, abandoned by all the world, and condemned by the angels themselves.
On and on she danced, carried along on feet that were raw and bloody until she no longer knew whether the red of the shoes was the cloth or her own blood. They carried her over the heath until she came to a little house. Here, Karen knew, lived the city’s executioner. As she danced by, she knocked desperately on the window. “Come out! Come out, please, for I cannot come in!”
The door opened and a confused executioner stepped forth. “You asked to see me? You do know who I am, right? I strike the heads off of wicked men, and I can feel my axe quivering with a desire to ring out.” “Please sir, do not behead me or I won’t be able to confess my sins, but if your axe wants blood, then strike off my feet! Cut off these damned red shoes!” The executioner nodded, fetching his weapon. Karen confessed all of her sins (which should really be to a priest, but any port in a storm I suppose). Once she finished her litany of misdeeds (which her cursed shoes obligingly gave her time to get through), the executioner swung his wicked axe and, with one clean stroke, he lopped off both of her feet at the knees. For the first time in who knew how long, Karen collapsed to the earth to rest. Her feet danced off without her, still wearing the bloody shoes, and vanished into the forest.
In spite of his brutal work, the executioner was a kind man and he took pity on the long-suffering girl. He made her crutches and wooden legs so she could hobble around (and presumably kept her from bleeding to death). He taught her the psalm that criminals sang to beg forgiveness of the world, and she learned every word by heart. Then, Karen kissed the hands that had swung the axe and headed out over the blasted heath.
She knew that she had been wicked and selfish for far too long, and that the awful shoes had been a result of this, so she resolved to go immediately to church. “I have suffered enough for those damned red shoes. I will let everyone see me in church!” She hobbled as fast as her wooden legs could carry her (none too steady on them yet), hurrying for the church door. As she approached the blessed sanctuary, something stirred in the darkness: it was the fucking shoes, still forcing the severed stumps of her devastated feet to dance unceasingly. They stepped and twirled between Karen and the church. She was understandably terrified at this grisly sight, and she turned and fled from the church.
That whole week, Karen was terrified and miserable. She wept countless bitter tears at her misfortune, but hope returned the following Sunday. “Surely now I have suffered and struggled enough! I’m definitely every bit as good as any of those assholes sitting in the church with their heads held high every week!” She set out boldly for the church, but got no farther than the churchyard gate before the awful red shoes danced out of the forest to harry and harass her into fleeing the sacred place yet again, though this time she well and truly repented of the sins that had led her here.
Knowing that she couldn’t escape the curse of the red shoes on her own, Karen went to the parsonage (the home of the church’s clergy) and begged that they take her into service. She swore that she would be the hardest worker they’d ever seen, and do anything they asked without complaint. She didn’t care what they paid her; all she needed was a place to live and good people to live beside. The parson’s wife took pity on the wretched girl with the wooden legs and did as Karen asked. She couldn’t have asked for a better servant than Karen – she worked hard, took initiative, and listened when the parson read from the Bible in the evening. The children loved her, but whenever they chattered on about her dress and her beauty and her grace, she shook her head sadly. She had learned that lesson.
The following Sunday, the whole family dressed up and headed out to church. They asked Karen if she wanted to come with them, but she shook her head ruefully, eyeing her crutches. They shrugged and left without her, leaving Karen to sit alone in her tiny room to read her prayer book. She read with hope and piety, and on the wind, she could hear the faint strains of the organ rising triumphantly. Tears streaming from her eyes, she raised her gaze to the sky and begged her god for help.
In answer, the angel she had seen that night outside the church appeared before her in a blinding beam of sunlight. This time, however, he didn’t carry a wicked blade, but a spectacular spray of roses on a green, living branch. He brushed the ceiling with the flowers, and to her astonishment, the ceiling raised up, up, up to an incredible, impossible distance above her head and a golden star appeared where the flowers had touched it. Then he touched the walls, and they too expanded away from her. Suddenly, she could hear the organ as clear as if she were in the same room. No, she was in the same room. She could see it standing before her. She could see the dusty old pictures of the dour preachers and preachers’ wives. She could see the congregation seated in their pews, their voices lifted in song.
Karen didn’t know if the church had come to her or if she had been taken to the church, but that’s where she was. She found herself seated in the pew with the parson’s family, and she raised her voice to join everyone else. When the psalm had finished, they turned to see Karen seated beside them, and showed absolutely no surprise (which is probably the least realistic part of this whole crazy story). Instead, they just nodded and told her that they were glad she had made it. Warm light flooded in through the windows, filling Karen’s soul. She felt lighter and freer than she ever had before, and her heart soared and swelled, so full of sunshine and peace and joy that the fragile thing couldn’t contain it all. Her heart broke, and Karen died right there in the church, her soul carried up to the heavens on the song of the congregation.
I have to say, this tale has a lot in common with the much more famous Andersen tale The Little Mermaid. Both involve young girls getting punished harshly for defying social conventions, and both have some very overt, heavy-handed religious symbolism and messaging (though this tale is a lot less subtle about it). Both end with the young girl’s ultimate reward for returning to the correct path being a virtuous death (because you definitely can’t have the female protagonist get any kind of earthly reward after her transgressive actions or girls might start to get ideas). And both have, at their core, a deeply fascinating and strangely macabre tale that strikes a broader chord in human nature and has found a place in the wider popular culture as a result. It’s not hard to see why so many dancers and choreographers have been fascinated by the darkly beautiful story and brought it to life on the stage. There’s just something fascinating about a deadly beauty.
And so, with Karen horribly punished for the sin of being a Karen, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s hero is the steadfast tin soldier.
The Steadfast Tin Soldier is another Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that has been adapted over and over in popular culture. It also has the honor of being the first story that he ever wrote without an existing literary model or folklore source to base his story on. It’s an incredible story that manages to simultaneously praise piety and self-denial while also condemning them as self-destructive. Many scholars believe that the soldier is based on Andersen himself, and reflects his internal conflict over his struggles with women, with his uncertainty with class requirements, and with his alienation as an artist.
Once upon a time, there were 25 tin soldiers, brothers who had all been cast from the same old tin spoon. Each man stood shoulder to shoulder with his fellows, his gun shouldered neatly against his splendid red and blue uniform. The first words they ever heard spoken were ‘tin soldiers!’ as a small boy laughed and clapped his hands while the lid was lifted from his birthday present. He loved those little soldiers immediately, and set them out on the table one after the other as soon as he could reach his hands in.
All of the soldiers looked exactly alike except for one. He had been the last one cast, and there hadn’t been quite enough tin left over, so he had only one leg. He managed just fine on his one leg however, and was every bit as steady as his brothers were on two.
On the table with the toy soldiers were many other toys, including a marvelous castle made from painted cardboard. It was practically a work of art, with little windows that you could peer inside through, and miniature trees planted around a smooth mirror set beside it for a lake. Little wax swans swam across its surface and were reflected in the glass. Everything about the little castle was stunning, but the most beautiful piece of all was a little paper doll maiden who stood in the open doorway. She wore a gorgeous dress of fluffy gauze and a blue ribbon around her shoulders for a scarf, bearing a glittering stone as big as her face. The little paper woman stood en pointe on one leg, arms stretched overhead in a classic ballet pose, and her other leg was stretched so far above her head that the tin soldier couldn’t see it at all – he decided that she must have only the one, just like him.
The tin soldier loved this paper girl immediately. “She would be the perfect wife for me, but maybe she’s too grand for the likes of me. She lives in a great castle, while I have only a small box that I share with 24 roommates. We’re already packed quite tightly in there, and it simply wouldn’t do for someone as exquisite as she. Even so, I have to meet her!” He lay down on the table behind a snuff box, still rigidly at attention, and admired the dainty little dancer who stood poised on the toes of that one leg without ever losing her balance. He admired her grace and her beauty.
When evening came, the other soldiers were put away in their box, and the people of the house went to bed. Just like in the Pixar film Toy Story, when the humans are away, the toys will play. They visited each other, and danced together, and even fought battles amongst one another. The tin soldiers, who felt quite left out, rattled in their confining box but couldn’t get enough leverage to open the lid. No one paid them any mind. The nutcracker turned somersaults, and the chalk scribbled jokes and nonsense on the slate. Altogether, the toys made so much noise that they woke up the canary bird, who’d been sleeping in its cage. Sleepy and grumpy, the bird gave an extemporaneous speech to the noisy toys, all in verse (which is honestly pretty impressive). In fact, the only ones who stayed still and quiet were the paper ballerina and the tin soldier. Without swaying from the tip of her toes, she held her arms outstretched, and the soldier matched her poise with his own steadfast determination to remain rock-steady on his single leg. Not for a single moment did he take his eyes off of her.
Somewhere in the distance, the clock struck midnight and with a loud CLACK, the lid popped off of the snuffbox. Inside, instead of the expected snuff, there was a little black goblin who bounced out like a jack-in-the-box. He grinned at the little tin soldier staring at the dancer. “Fuck, dude, put your eyes back in your head! It’s not polite to stare like that. Can’t you keep your eyes to yourself?” The tin soldier ignored him, pretending not to hear. “Fine, whatever asshole. Just you wait until tomorrow.”
The soldier ignored the goblin and maintained his vigil the whole night through. When morning came, and the toys went back to being inanimate, the children took the one-legged soldier and set him on a window ledge, a sentry over the room. Maybe the goblin made good on his threat, or maybe the soldier was just unlucky, but whatever the reason, a gust of wind knocked the soldier off his balance and he tipped out of the open window to dive headfirst into the paving stones from the third-floor window.
Being made of tin, he fell hard. The bayonet of his rifle drove deep into the earth between two paving stones, and he stuck fast, gun buried so deep that his head touched the earth, his one leg pointing rigidly to the sky. The little boy was heartbroken over the loss of the soldier, and he and a maid rushed down immediately to look for him, but even though they missed stepping on the tin man by only inches, they didn’t see him and walked right past. The little soldier could have said something. He could have called out ‘here I am!’ and they would have found him for sure, but the soldier believed deeply in decorum and regimental honor, and it simply wouldn’t be proper to make a fuss while in uniform. It would be a disgrace! And so the tin soldier lay alone and abandoned in the dust.
Soon enough, it began to rain. The spattering drops grew quickly into a downpour, flooding the gutters. The rain, though intense, didn’t last long. Soon after it stopped, the soldier heard two young troublemakers coming his way. “Hey look! Someone lost a tin soldier. Think he wants to go for a sail?” The two boys snickered at their petty mischief.
They quickly folded an old newspaper into a paper boat, set the tin soldier in the center, and dropped him down into the swiftly flowing water of the gutter. They raced down the road alongside the speeding boat, laughing and clapping. The paper boat pitched and rolled with the relatively massive waves, and it spun so fast that the tiny soldier became dizzy but nonetheless he stood steady and unflinching on his single leg. Eyes front, gun shouldered proudly, he weathered the storm. The day had been growing brighter as the rain clouds scattered, but the world suddenly dropped into darkness as the little boat ran into a part of the gutter that had been boarded over.
“Where the devil am I going? This must be that awful goblin’s revenge. If only my beloved dancer could be with me, I wouldn’t care if it were twice as black!” The rushing water next to the boat suddenly exploded into spray as a massive rat surfaced. “Show me your passport, mate!” The soldier gripped his rifle tighter but spoke not a word. He would be stoic and fearless in the face of danger. The boat rushed on, carried along by the current, and the rat churned after it, teeth gnashing. He screamed in frustration that the soldier was staying out of reach, and called out to the sticks and weeds. “Stop that asshole! He hasn’t paid the toll and he hasn’t shown me his passport!”
I have no idea if the rat actually had some sort of bizarre alliance with the detritus of the gutter or if he was just being coocoo pants bananas, but the swiftly rushing current carried the boat away from the rat before anything could happen. Up ahead, he could see a bright light in the darkness where the boards finally ended, which was good, but he could also hear a growing roar where the water poured off a sharp edge to the great canal below, which was bad. To the tiny soldier, the drop was as massive and dangerous as Niagra Falls would be to you or me.
The paper boat didn’t exactly come with brakes, so the tin soldier had no way to stop himself from plummeting off the cliff. Standing stiffly at attention, his heart swollen with unyielding bravery, the tin soldier hurtled over the waterfall in his paper boat. Down they plunged into the maelstrom. The little boat and its steadfast passenger were hurled around and around the whirlpool at the bottom. The boat had not been made to withstand such abuse, and it was taking on water fast. The paper was growing soft and weak, and sinking deeper and deeper and deeper. The water was up to his knee, his chest, his chin. The tin soldier thought longingly of his pretty little dancer, who he would never see again, and then the waves washed over his head.
The water-logged paper at last gave way entirely, and the tin soldier plunged through the wreckage and into the depths. As he fell, wondering just how far he would sink, a massive fish flashed out of the darkness and swallowed the tin soldier whole. The steadfast tin soldier had only thought it was dark before; here inside the fish, he knew what true darkness was. It was cramped and hot and awful, but the little soldier would not give way, even under such duress. He lay there ramrod straight, rifle shouldered properly.
He didn’t know how much time passed in his fishy prison, but at some point something changed. The fish flopped and thrashed in a way it never had before, and then it grew terribly still. The soldier and the fish lay there, unmoving together, until something struck through him like a bolt of lightning. The world grew blindingly bright and he heard a voice exclaim at his discovery. The soldier realized that the fish must have been caught and taken to market, and had now been cut open by a cook in someone’s kitchen. She plucked him out of the fish’s guts and carried him upstairs where, lo and behold, it was the same playroom he had left in the first place! Everyone crowded around to see this remarkable traveler who had vanished out a window and returned home in the belly of a fish, but the tin soldier took no pride or happiness in his journey or his incredible fortune at coming home again.
He looked around and saw that he stood on the same table with the same children and the same toys and, over there, the same painted castle with the same balanced ballerina, one leg stretched high. She too had been steadfast, and that touched the tin soldier so deeply that he would have cried tin tears, only it wouldn’t be proper for a soldier to cry. He looked at her, she looked at him, and neither said a word. They didn’t need words.
Everything was going so very well, but then one of the boys snatched the steadfast tin soldier off the table and threw him into the stove. The wood was already burning high and hot, and the tin soldier stood there in the heart of the flames, rigid and resolute to the end. He felt a terrible heat, but he didn’t know whether it was the fire he felt or the burning passion of his love. He’d lost his splendid colors, whether from his hard journey or from his grief, no one can say, but he still stood as stiffly as he could as the heat burned him away and he felt himself begin to melt.
He stared at his beloved dancer, and she gazed back at him, and he stood steadfast, his rifle on his shoulder in proper form. A door swung open and a gust of wind caught the little paper doll. She leapt gracefully from her place in the castle and danced on the wind across the room and straight into the fire next to the tin soldier. She danced to him, but she was paper, and she caught fire and flashed into ashes before she ever reached his side. The tin soldier melted away with his dancer gone, and the next day, when a servant took the ashes away from the stove, she found him melted down into a single lump in the shape of a heart. Of the beautiful paper ballerina, nothing was left but her bright stone, now burned as black as coal.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on Stitcher, on TuneIn, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Twitter as @HardcoreMyth and on Instagram as Myths Your Teacher Hated Pod. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff, whom you can find on fiverr.com.
Next time, you’ll learn the ancient inspiration for some modern literary classics. You’ll see why you should never be an ass to a friend in mourning, why fishing for sea monsters is a bad idea, and why you should be afraid of Trogdor the Burninator. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you’ll meet the ancient creature that might be a snake, a crocodile, or a motherfucking dragon. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.