Gudgekin the Thistle Girl (5 page)

“What's this?” cried the emperor. “Good heavens, this is murder! Guards! Guards!”

The guards came running, and the emperor said, “Put this man in the dungeon. Tomorrow he hangs!”

The woodchopper looked in the sack and now he noticed it too. He said, “Then I don't get my vacation?”

The emperor rubbed his chin. “Hmm,” he said. After a long period of reflection he said, “You can go visit Brussels, but you have to wear handcuffs, and I'm sending along guards. After you get back, you hang. Do you solemnly swear you won't escape?”

“I swear,” said the woodchopper.

The people all nodded and agreed it was fair.

So the poor old woodchopper traveled off to Brussels. When he'd been there three days, he suddenly bolted down an alley and escaped, and he changed his name to Zobrowski and dropped out of sight.

The Sea Gulls

A
king was walking in the forest one day when a huge ogre saw him and picked him up in his hand. “What a tasty morsel,” said the ogre, and prepared to eat him.

“Wait,” said the king. “Let me offer you a bargain. We will play a game of chance. If you win you may eat me right now, and if
I
win, you may eat me and all my children in seven years.” In seven years the king thought he could raise an army against the ogre and kill him and thus get out of his bargain.

“Fair enough,” said the ogre. And they played a game of dice. The king, who was a cheater, won, and the ogre left the country for seven years.

The king was so pleased at having won that he promptly forgot all about his terrible bargain. But when the seven years were nearly up, he suddenly remembered the ogre and began to feel alarmed. He tried to raise an army to fight the ogre, but no one would have any part of it. Then, while the king was running around in his garden, not knowing which way to turn, he saw a woman up in a tree. She was a wicked witch.

“I will save you,” said the witch, “if you will give me your three fat sons to feed my geese.”

“I have a better idea,” said the king. “Let us play a game of chance. If you win you may eat my sons, but if
I
win, then in seven years you may eat my three sons and myself and my daughter.”

“They're not for
me
, they're for my geese,” said the witch.

“Yes, that's what I meant to say,” said the king.

The king smiled slyly, for in seven years he thought he could find a way to murder the wicked witch and get out of his bargain.

They rolled the dice and, cheating as usual, the king won, and immediately the wicked witch turned into an owl so large that her head was hidden in the clouds. When the ogre came, dressed in his finest, she ate him like a dumpling. Then the wicked witch vanished.

The king was so pleased with his good luck that he again forgot all about his bargain, and seven years passed as quickly as a day. Then the king happened to remember the wicked witch. He asked all his kingdom for advice, and this time there was no one at all who could help him.

Seeing that their father was at his wit's end, the king's three sons and daughter ran and hid in the woods. They met an old hermit with a tangled beard and a solid iron eye, and when they had told him their troubles the hermit said, “If you really wish to escape the wicked witch, the thing to do is turn into sea gulls and fly away.”

“How do we do it?” cried the king's sons.

The hermit said, “You simply say:

Wind, wind, whither do you blow?
Make me a gull for evermore
.

There's just one catch,” said the hermit. “Not all the magic in Lapland can turn you back to children.”

Just then they heard a horrible laugh: The wicked witch was coming. As fast as they could get the words out, the three brothers said,

Wind, wind, whither do you blow?
Make me a gull for evermore
.

And they changed into sea gulls and flew away.

But the king's daughter would not change. “I would rather be eaten by a goose than turn into a sea gull forever,” she said. “It might be all right for a little while, but forever is too long.”

Suddenly the trees all around the king's daughter turned to gold, and where the old hermit had been standing there stood a handsome prince.

“Well I never!” cried the princess.

The prince explained that once, long since, the wicked witch had turned him into an old hermit, and the bargain was that he must remain a hermit until somewhere on earth he found someone with a proper sense of values—for instance, someone who knew that, whatever one might think at first glance, people are better than sea gulls. That had been years and years ago, and he'd begun to despair—until the princess came along.

Then the prince and the princess were married and moved to the prince's palace on a high cliff overlooking the ocean. All day and all night the princess's brothers, who were still sea gulls, flew high above the water, crying in an irritable voice, “Lost! Lost!” The princess visited them every day and made their lives as pleasant as she could by throwing them old bread crumbs. No one ever saw the king again. Most likely the wicked witch got him for gambling and scheming and weaseling out of his debts.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

copyright © 1976 by Boskydell Artists Ltd.

illustrations copyright © 1976 by Michael Sporn

cover design by ORIM

ISBN: 978-1-4532-0322-4

This edition published in 2010 by Open Road Integrated Media
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