Before the War in the Skies, before the map of Tsaretsvo was sliced in two and divided into the human Tsardom and the Republic of Birds, birds and humans lived in peace. In Stolitsa, the Cloud Palace floated over the Stone Palace, with cumulus turrets and battlements of nimbus. In the Cloud Palace, lived the Avian Counsel. In the Stone Palace, lived the Tsars and Tsarinas. Both Palaces ruled Tsaretsvo together, and birds and humans lived alongside each other. Birds, large and small, nested in the trees in the Mikhailovsky Gardens and splashed in its fountains in summer. Songbirds sang in the orchestra at the Mariinsky Theatre. Peacocks adorned the city walls.
Birds and humans shared the earth and the sky. And, if it weren’t for the Great Mapping, things might have continued in this way. But in 1817, Tsarina Pyotrovna decreed that every corner in the land be mapped to show the broad expanse of her Tsardom.
The Great Cartographers journeyed forth, and, with the exception of the Unmappable Blank, they charted every corner of the land. Krylnikov mapped the Arkhipelag Archipelago. Belugov traced the shores of the Frozen Sea. Karelin found the source of the River Dezhdy, high in the Stikhlo Mountains.
In 1822, Golovnin set out for the Infinite Steppe, where it was rumoured firebirds still nested amid the tussocks and streaked through the skies. And in 1824, he returned to the Stone Palace, carrying a firebird’s egg in his pocket…
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