Through the Water Curtain and Other Tales From Around the World by Funke Cornelia

Author:Funke, Cornelia [Funke, Cornelia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Anthologies, Childrens, Classics, Young Adult
ISBN: 9781782692010
Amazon: B07J24NJKW
Goodreads: 42757924
Publisher: Pushkin Children's Books
Published: 2018-11-01T07:00:00+00:00

Once upon a time, a king was hunting in a great wood, and he pursued a wild animal so eagerly that none of his people could follow him. When evening came, he stood still, and looking around him, he found that he had lost his way, and seeking a path, he found none. Then all at once he saw an old woman with a wagging head coming up to him, and it was a witch.

“Good woman,” he said to her, “can you show me the way through this wood?”

“Oh yes, king,” she answered, “certainly I can, but I must make a condition, and if you do not fulfil it, you will never get out of the wood again, and will die of hunger here.”

“What is the condition?” asked the king.

“I have a daughter,” said the old woman, “who is as fair as any in the world, and if you will take her for your bride, and make her queen, I will show you the way out of the wood.”

The king consented, because of the difficulty he was in, and the old woman led him into her little house, where her daughter was sitting by the fire.

She received the king as if she had been expecting him, and though he saw that she was very beautiful, she did not please him, and he could not look at her without an inward shudder. After he had lifted the maiden up on to his horse, the old woman showed him the way, and he reached his royal castle, where the wedding was held.

The king had been married before, and had seven children from his first wife, six boys and one girl, whom he loved more than anything in the world. As he was afraid the stepmother might not treat them well, and perhaps would do them harm, he took them to a lonely castle in the middle of a wood. It was so well hidden, and the road to it was so hard to find, that the king himself could not have found it had it not been for a ball of yarn with wondrous properties that a wise woman had given him. Whenever he threw it down before him, it unrolled itself and showed him the way.

And the king went so often to see his dear children that the queen noticed his absences. She became curious and wanted to know what he did alone out in the wood so often. She bribed his servants with much money, and they told her the secret, and told her of the ball of yarn which alone could show the way. And she did not find rest until she had discovered where the king kept the yarn, and then she made little shirts of white silk, and as she had learnt witchcraft from her mother, she sewed a spell into them.

And once, when the king had ridden to the hunt, she took the little shirts and went into the wood, and the ball of yarn showed her the way.

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