I lived with an old couple who had no children of their own. They doted on me and I never left their sides. One hot summer day when the old man was working in the garden, I caught the scent of something a little way off. I sniffled and scratched at the spot. Then I...
The wonderful gazelle killed a seven-headed snake and freed the slaves imprisoned in this house. Even my master the sultan owes his riches to the gazelle. Because of the gazelle, he married the sultan’s daughter. But when he became a rich sultan, he forgot the...
My master is a good man, but a poor man, a beggar. He bought me for a single silver coin and tried to feed me on a few meagre grains of corn. One night I spoke to him, which surprised him. He had never heard a gazelle speak. I asked him to let me find my own food...
When I was flying over the forest I saw a freshly killed ox lying in the clearing. What good fortune! I swooped down, landed on the carcass, and began to peck at the flesh. Just then a fox caught me in his mouth and ran with me to a lion who was sitting at the...
The relationship that my two brothers and I have with the animals started one day when we went out hunting. We had gone some way through a thick wood when we came upon a grey wolf and her three cubs. Just as we went to shoot, the wolf said, “Don’t shoot me, and...
I was walking with my attendants in the rose garden when a gold ring fell at my feet. “Why, here is a ring!” I cried. “Where could it have come from?” I picked it up and put it on my finger. It fit me as though it had been made for me. Just at that moment my father...
My eyes never close. My wings never tire. To some I am a bearer of ill-news and a bad omen. To others I am a simply a friend. When Covan the Brown-Haired sat down to eat his little cake in the forest, I appeared beside him cawing, “A bit for me! A bit for...
I loved my husband but I couldn’t conceive a child. We never talked about it, but when we watched other people play with their children, we couldn’t hide our sadness. Then one day I went into the park near the castle, and sat alone by a waterfall. I...
I watched him journey over the hills. I watched him ford the rivers and cross a wide plain. He couldn’t find the blue falcon. The sky grew dark, and all the birds sought their nests, but Ian Direach had none of his own. He lay down under some bushes until sleep...
I hadn’t learned a trade, so when I got discharged, I wandered. Begged alms. Kept the rain off my back with an old coat, and sloshed through the muck in a pair of buffalo-leather riding boots. I met up with a huntsman one day who seemed to have gotten himself...
