I was dashing down the road with my booty one night when I heard the word, “Stop.” I turned around and saw a little man who said, “I am Stan Bolovan, who eats rocks all night and feeds on flowers all day. If you meddle with those sheep, I will carve a cross on your...
How did he do it? That nothing of a boy must have found the princess I shut into The Castle of the Golden Sun. How did he get there? It wasn’t on any map. And why would he listen to the princess? She wasn’t attractive. I had turned her into a withered old...
I’m sorry to say, things didn’t go tickety-boo in the graveyard last night. I’d come to take the soul of a hard-hearted farmer who never did any good with his money. When I came whistling in (like the evil wind I am), who did I find at the grave but...
When I was only two years old, my mother took me with her into the woods to gather branches for the fire. It was spring-time and I can still remember the delight I took in the flowers that carpeted the forest. Then all of sudden, two men sprang out of the thicket, and...
I wanted my wife to do what the other women do: spin, but she wouldn’t. Whatever I gave her to spin, she never finished, and whatever she spun, she didn’t wind, but left it tangled on the bobbin. One day when I had gone into the forest to chop some wood to make her a...
Taking the chance that I might be able to cure my father’s blindness, I gathered a crew and we set sail. The physician gave us a hundred days to catch the Golden-Headed Fish, and for a hundred days we caught nothing. On the eleventh hour of the hundredth day, I...
Oh, that pair! How furious they made me! I couldn’t grab them. They ran from me. They tangled me up in a forest. Then they threw a lake between us. They slowed me down, sure, but they didn’t stop me! I reached the castle, climbed up over the garden wall,...
I’ve been in service long enough. I’m tired of doing menial work for little men who are trying to kill me. I’ll take my gold and silver back to my father the smith. And then I’ll say farewell to mortal men and return to my mother in the sea....
No one dares to fish in Devilmoss Lake! It’s my lake! I’ll soon be rid of this impertinent human! That’s what I thought when I rose up and grabbed him from behind. I dragged him to the bottom, and I was about to stamp him to death when he said,...
I caught the Tanuki and hung the beast from the rafters. Then I told my wife that when I got home from work, we would kill him and cook him for dinner. I was feeling pretty good about myself when I returned to the forest. When I got home, I was ravenous, and my wife...
