I sit on the dresser in the dark room of a spellbound princess. When she picks me up, I reflect her beauty as it is in truth. She weeps when she sees her face. She is reminded of everything she knows to be true. Yet to others she appears as a decrepit old woman....
My parents were peasants, and though we lived roughly, they were good people. We never went without. When I was old enough to understand where I came from, my parents told me that I was the son of a king. My peasant parents had given their daughter to the king in...
I watch my sheep in the meadow. I try not to remember the old days when I was blissfully married to the best of all men. I try not to remember the siren’s grip on him and the flood that divided us. Tonight, another shepherd has taken out his flute. He is playing...
Now that I have come into the forbidden room, I see what the wizard Fitcher has done with my sisters. They are lying in a basin, cruelly murdered and cut into pieces. I will not to succumb to the horror. I will see them whole, not in pieces. Start somewhere. Anywhere....
I killed my brother! I didn’t mean to. He was sitting at the door, looking quite white, and holding an apple. He wouldn’t give it to me so I went to my mother and I told her that my brother was sitting at the window, looking quite white, and he...
People constantly ask me why I have a wing for an arm, so I am obliged to tell them the story of how my brothers and I were turned into swans, and how our sister saved us by knitting seven sweaters. My brothers have gone on with their lives, but I am the one who must...
We only have one eye between the three of us, and we’re passing it back and forth. “Sister, what do you see? Do you see the old times long back?” I grope for the eye in her hand. “No sister,” she says. “Well, come on, then, give me...
In the evening, I walk alone by the sea. When I come to the brass chest, I sit and remember how I came to this country. When I was an infant, the brass chest carried my mother and me over the sea. We came ashore at this very place. I will never forget the song she...
We had been turned into swans, and we relied on our sister to break the spell. To do so, she had to make shirts for the six of us. She had to weave them from asters, then sew them, and speak not a single word. She hid in the woods for some time, but then the king...
Last night, a woman came to my door. She sat outside and told her story. I crept to the door and listened. She said she had fallen in love fell with a prince who was a wolf by day and a man by night. Then a servant threw his wolf-skin into the fire, and he disappeared...
