The Steadfast Tin Soldier is a literary fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen about a tin soldier’s love for a paper ballerina. After several adventures, the tin soldier perishes in a fire with the ballerina. The tale was first publishedby C.A. Reitzel on 2 October 1838 in the first booklet of Fairy Tales Told for Children. New Collection. The story was Andersen’s first tale not based upon a folk tale or a literary model.

On his birthday, a boy receives a set of 25 toy soldiers all cast from one old tin spoon and arrays them on a table top. One soldier stands on a single leg, as having been the last one cast there was not enough metal to make him whole. Nearby, the soldier spies a paper ballerina with a spangle on her sash. She, too, is standing on one leg, and the soldier falls in love. That night, a goblin among the toys in the form of a jack-in-the-box angrily warns the soldier to take his eyes off the ballerina, but the soldier ignores him.

The next day, the soldier falls from a windowsill (presumably the work of the goblin) and lands in the street. Two boys find the soldier, place him in a paper boat, and set him sailing in the gutter. The boat and its passenger wash into a storm drain, where a rat demands the soldier pay a toll.

Sailing on, the boat is washed into a canal, where the tin soldier is swallowed by a fish. When this fish is caught and cut open, the tin soldier finds himself once again on the table top before the ballerina. Inexplicably, the boy throws the tin soldier into the fire. A wind blows the ballerina into the fire with him; she is consumed at once but her spangle remains. The tin soldier melts into the shape of a heart. – WIKIPEDIA