Why did my father have to take a wife? He didn’t want one. But here she is, with her nasty daughter. They torment me constantly. Now in the middle of winter, when the snow has piled high as the windows, my stepmother is ordering me to wear a paper dress and go...
I’m thinner than my wife, and not as strong, and she used to beat me black and blue. But the day came when I could no longer endure the abuse. On that day, I was out in the fields, and I caught a crane in my net. The crane spoke and said, “If you let me go free,...
On my tenth birthday, my nurse showed me a little basket that was hidden between the sheets of my cradle. It had egg shells in it. She said that my mother wanted me to know a secret. I didn’t remember my mother. She died when I was only two. The old nurse told me a...
An old man with a beard longer than himself made me. He put clay into a mold and made a doll as large as life. When he was finished, he bored a hole into my breast and put a piece of bread inside, followed by a poisonous snake. Then he took the blood of a girl named...
My mother told me and my sister that the river brought us to her when we were babies. We were lying in a crystal cradle. Father took us home and brought us up with eight other children. Our foster parents love us, but our brothers and sisters don’t. The boys are...
I had gone through many trials through the winter. I had suffered loneliness and the frigid cold, but nothing and no one was crueler to me than my own kind. It was very difficult for me to forget the old mother duck who said, “Have you ever seen anything quite...
He was a sweet boy who had been terribly abused. He wanted to die, and who could blame him? He reached for me, thinking that I contained poison. But I did not. I was full of honey. He ate the honey and said to himself, “Folks say death is bitter, but it tastes...
No, that’s not right. You don’t do it that way! Are you going to tell me those stitches are EVEN? Oh, and I suppose the cow flies over the moon. Did you measure that heel? No, you didn’t. Look, it’s higher than the other. And the shoe’s...
I’m hungry! Gimme some of that food. Now, gimme more. More, I say. More more more. Shameless? Why, you…. Ow! Stop beating me with that club, you man. Stop it, I say! Stop it! Okay, okay! I’ll go back to my hole. He’s gone now. Aakk. I’m...
Enough is enough! I adopted the shepherd’s son after his parents died. I thought it would be nice to have someone around the house, especially after my bad illness. Not that I needed a child. I have always enjoyed my own company. I have never felt the least bit...
