We were well off. We had the best milking cow in the village. We had trees as full of fruit as hives are full of bees. The corn in our fields grew high. Still, my wife was sad. She said there was no luck in our house, no luck at all, because we had no children. Until...
I cannot give my husband a child, and now he has gone away. If I have a child by the time he returns, he said, he will love me “beyond measure,” but if I do not, he will part with me forever. I won’t be having a child with him away, now, will I?...
A prophet told my father the king that I would have a son who would kill him. My father would not allow that prophecy to come true, and so he locked me in a deep brass prison, sunk into the earth. No one could see me there. Only the sun could see me, passing by the...
I became pregnant, not by my husband, but by an apple that an old woman gave me. After eating it, I threw the rind out the window. It was eaten by a horse who gave birth to a foal. My son and his speaking horse have grown up together, and who knows? Together they...
As mother of all the Elements, I have made my decisions. My eldest son, with his lively imagination, will be Lord of the Fire. My second son, who is stable but rather dull, will be King of the Earth. I will put my third son beneath the seas. He is monstrously wild and...
An old woman came to me and said that I would have children if my husband could catch a little goldfish. Then she told me to cut it up into six pieces. One for me, and one for my husband. One for the dog, and one for the mare. One was to be buried to the right of the...
I belong to the queen, and I sit proudly by her side when she drives out in her fine glass coach. She tells me that I am happier than she is, because I have a kitten and she has no one to love but me. I happen to know a fairy who dwells in the forest, and I’ll...
I have had three awakenings. First, there was the crack of my husk when the kernel burst, deep in the earth. I grew and grew, stretching my neck out through the soil. Then there was the crack of the light, the first ray of the sun. Finally there was the third crack,...
