How could I marry the monstrous lindworm? He had already eaten his first two brides on their wedding nights! But the king had given his orders. I ran into the woods, tearing myself apart on the thorns, desperate to avoid my fate. Why was I chosen? For my kindness and...
After a hard day’s work chopping wood in the forest with my father, we got home, and then my father said, “Oh, no, I left my axe in the forest!” He asked my stepmother if she would send her daughter out. She hadn’t worked all day in the cold...
My two sisters and I sat around a table in our underwater palace and raised our shell cups to make a toast. One of my sisters drank to the health of a youth who wasn’t the least perturbed when she, in the form of a corpse, had tried to grab him from the grave....
When all was said and done, I found my courage and I met my enemy head on. But do not commend me—were it not for a brave princess who showed me how to meet my fears, I would still be in a dark cellar cowering behind earthenware grain pots! Samba in Samba the Coward,...
My mother called me to come to her room and look in the mirror that would show us the whereabouts of King Lino. There he was, chained in the prison tower of a powerful magician. Still, he was alive—and in every way as noble a man as I had imagined him to be. Then we...
I did not want to marry the lindworm! He had eaten his two other brides! I did nothing to deserve being wed to such a monster. I ran to my mother’s grave and I prayed earnestly for her help. Then I became very peaceful and fell asleep. When the sun woke me in...
The stone floor is heaving. The giant is coming up from below, shaking the house and raging like a thunderstorm. I run to my maids. “Come with your cauldron of pitch! Make haste!” The earth splits and we pour the pitch into the widening crack. I can see...
Martin, my son, well, he can do just about anythin’, except when it comes to woo-in’. He wanted his old mother to go an’ do it fer him. So I went to the king, oh yes I did. I marched right up them steps, and ain’t nobody could stop me, though I...
The cat has caught the king of mice, and he isn’t going to let him go until we find the magic ring. I’m the tiniest mouse in the castle but I stepped forward and I said, “I know where the ring is because I live in the room of the princess. Every...
The lord of the castle permits me to stay overnight in the old tower, but he warns me that it is full of wild dogs. They bark without stopping, and will devour a man in the wee hours. I have no fear of dogs because I know their language. I ask the lord of the castle...
