I walk the ocean floor,thin as a bone knife,slice throughthe sun’s fractured radiancetoward a narrow crevasse,glimpse a split second ofblue. Climbing out is easy Unweightedmy body is only a memory. Nimble as a crazy needleI weave in and outof piles of ice. The...
He can’t take her from me! I don’t care if he’s Koschei the Deathless! He can cut me to pieces, I don’t care. I will come back for Marya Morevna. I can’t live without her! As it happened, he did chop me to pieces. He put the pieces of me...
The Emperor buried me when he was young, and forgot all about me. But his old nurse didn’t. When the Emperor’s third son Petru went looking for a truly good horse, she told him to go and fetch a scrap from my old reins. She sprinkled them with incense, and...
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...
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...
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...
I live in a tent, on an island, in a pond in the middle of a magnificent garden. My skin is as green as grass, and I wear a rose leaf on my head instead of a crown. I may look like a frog, but I know who I am, and I am not a frog. I am a princess, and the lion who...
We were consulted when the boy was born, and then everybody knew that the prince’s life would come to an end at the age of sixteen. On his sixteenth birthday, the lad disappeared while hunting in the forest. The men searched the woods, but soon gave up,...
I found a huge, coiled snake in the most remote room of an enchanted castle. The snake spoke and said, “Have you come, oh, my deliverer?” She was a maiden, rejoicing to see me. “I have waited twelve years for you,” she said. “My kingdom...
I was born as a bull calf and I was very much loved by the peasant and his wife. They believed that I was wise, and that I understood everything they said to me. I was gentle and playful, and they grew so fond of me that they named me Peter Bull and sent me to the...
