The gods in the Hall of High Heaven gave me to the Young Prince, among with many other arrows feathered by heavenly birds. They sent him over the Floating Bridge, to bring peace to the land of the Reed Plains. When his feet touched the tops of the high hills, he...
She wrote upon me in great sorrow. How I felt for the daughter of the Dragon King of Dungting Lake! Her father had married her to a faithless, philandering Dragon who had sent her out to pasture to look after his sheep. I am to be taken to her father, and my contents...
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...
My two older brothers think I’m a fool and a simpleton. But our father has become very anxious because some beast has been getting into his deer-park and killing animals every night. Nobody knows who’s doing it but my father suspects the Norka. If it is...
Everyone was terrified for me because I had been promised to a snake. But I couldn’t wait to meet my destiny. The snake slithered into the garden and as soon as I saw him, I loved him. He wound around me and kissed me, and then I followed him to a room in the...
A young man came to speak to my father, the emperor. He asked for my hand, and said that he would only marry a girl with royal blood running in her veins. I watched him from behind the curtain and I thought I had never seen any man more handsome. My father gave him a...
I had set off to get water to heal my father’s eyes. He had one laughing eye and one weeping eye, and the only way to the weeping eye laugh was to bathe it in water from the spring of the Fairy of the Dawn. My two older brothers had gone on the adventure, but...
My mother told me and my sister that the river brought us to her when we were babies. We were lying in a crystal cradle. Father took us home and brought us up with eight other children. Our foster parents love us, but our brothers and sisters don’t. The boys are...
Perhaps I tried too hard to please my neighbors. I was too kind. I created false expectations, rivalries and the jealousies. The long and the short is, I was always at war. Shortly after I married, I lost a hard battle and we had to retreat behind the walls of my...
When I was just a foolish girl, I caught a fish. It spoke and said that if I didn’t throw it back into the river, something dreadful would happen to me. I didn’t listen. I brought it home. My mother told me to throw it back in the river because a speaking...
