Back in the Good Old Days, in the woods, there was a poor woodcutter. There was nothing noteworthy or unique about this, and he died of old age a poor woodcutter.
This story isn’t about him.
His brother was also a poor woodcutter, because when you’re living in a shack in the middle of a forest there’s very little else you can do. All of his possessions in the world were an old, battered axe, a cupboard (typically bare), and a dented tin water jug. He would’ve added his little daughter and wife to the list (this WAS about six hundred years ago), but his wife would’ve objected, and very few things in his life that she objected to lasted long. It was largely because of this that he spent most of his time out in the woods, where there was lots of fresh air that was untainted by the voice of someone yelling at him. He would make up dull songs to pass the time as he chopped, sing them very badly, then become miserable each new day when he realized he’d forgotten his song and would have to compose a new one, which would take just as much time and give him the sneaking suspicion that he’d managed to copy all the worst bits of the last. It was not ideal.
Then, one day when he was mid-verse, mid-swing, and trying to think of something that rhymed with “forsooth,” the woodcutter heard a strange sound: someone crying. More specifically, someone that wasn’t him – he’d long ago developed a soft, stifled sob. Pushing through a nearby thicket, curiosity, overtaking his mopiness, he found the source of the crying: an old woman standing in her garden with her back to him, cradling something.
“Is there something wrong, old woman?” asked the woodcutter.
The woman faced him without turning around, and that was when he knew he was dealing with a witch. She didn’t look sad either, just furious, and it was then that the woodcutter noticed that she was cutting up an onion. Whoops.
“You’re trampling my garden!” she shrieked, and she was right; there the woodcutter was, up to his knees in the beans, his thighs in the peas, and his buttocks in the lettuce. Those were some mighty big lettuces.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the paralytic fear rendering him insincere. “I didn’t mean it! I’ll pay you back, I promise!”
“What does a poor woodcutter like you have besides your life?” demanded the witch, fixing him with the most evil of her eyes (the left one – it had a slightly misshapen cornea, and she squinted a lot with it).
The woodcutter’s mind raced faster than it had in his life, and as most things tend to do when this happens, it sprung a gasket. “My wife!” he said.
“Nice try. I’m doing you no favours for the ills you’ve just given me. What do you have that I’d want?”
“My axe!”
“A battered piece of junk!”
“My cupboard!”
“Made out of sticks and branches!”
“My jug!”
“Not worthy to water weeds with!”
“My home!”
The witch jerked her thumb over her back, at the rather tall, ominous, and altogether splendid tower behind her. The woodcutter’s heart sank.
“Your life or nothing is all you’ve given me. Anything else, or do I take your heart here and now?”
The woodcutter realized he had one thing he hadn’t named. “My daughter!” he said, skin shrivelling in shame at the lengths its owner would go to save it.
“Ahh, there’s a good coward. Yes, your daughter would do nicely. A girl around to fetch and mend and carry is worth more than a coward’s heart, I think. Best go fetch her now, before I grow impatient.”
The woodcutter left for home, feeling miserable and impotent. “Woe is me. And us,” he said to his wife, “for I have promised our daughter to a witch’s service in exchange for my life. Hand her over.”
His wife looked at him like he was the world’s biggest idiot. “What are you, the world’s biggest idiot?” she demanded. “We don’t have anything we can’t take with us except the cupboard, and witches are frail old ladies. Let’s just leave.”
So they did. The witch was grumpy about it, but they were younger and faster than she was and before the day was done they were far away from her tower. They’d got away scot-free and never saw that witch or any other ever again.
This story isn’t about any of them either.
The woodcutter and his wife and daughter found a nicer, less witch-inhabited chunk of forest that was within spitting distance of a cool, clear river whose brook was so pretty and pristine that the woodcutter found himself describing it as “babbling” without intending to every time he mentioned it. Also, they were near a small village full of people that rather didn’t mind having someone cut wood for them, which was a great improvement on the woodcutter’s old business model, which was doing it to get away from his wife and make the odd crude cupboard.
Anyways, the daughter grew up. And as she grew, she grew beautiful, which mystified both her parents because neither of them were exactly handsome, to put it lightly. “Must be your mother’s side of the family,” opined the woodcutter, which earned him a smack. She wasn’t just a pretty face, either – she wasn’t a stranger to hard work, and besides all the chores she did at home she also handled sewing and laundry for a few people in the village in exchange for favours, food, and the odd bit of knicknackery.
It all was going so well when the dragon showed up. The first thing the daughter knew of it was when her father came back from the village tavern in a frightful tizzy. “It burned down all the crops and its breath blighted the soil,” he wailed. “It ate up four of Cooper’s oxen and one of Smith’s horses, and it’s napping on the road out of town right now! Our only hope is to keep it happy until someone can make it to the king and tell him to send help.”
“How do you do that?” asked the daughter, who was interested in all this.
“Virgin sacrifices,” the woodcutter explained, moodiness wandering over his face as though it had lost the map.
“Why?”
“It works, don’t ask me why. We drew lots and Fletcher’s sending his daughter out tonight. I just hope the messenger’s fast – we aren’t exactly rolling in young womenfolk around here.”
“What about boys?” asked the daughter.
“They don’t count,” explained the woodcutter, lamely, and he took up his axe and left as soon as possible. Although the daughter felt vaguely pleased at seeing the opposite gender dismissed entirely for once, she somehow felt that in this case it wasn’t as convenient as it could’ve been.
Fletcher’s daughter, it transpired, had sharper ears than her father had known, and by the time he’d gone to find her she was secluded in a barn with Tanner’s eldest son, busily removing her qualifications. There was a good deal of shouting and shaming all around when they were discovered, but as she pointed out (rather smugly), there was just nothing to be done of it. By the time the men of the village had got around to drawing lots again (this time it was old Miller’s youngest), the dragon had woken up, eaten Smith’s other horse and all of Shepherd’s sheep, and passed out again on the road.
Fletcher’s daughter wasn’t shy about spreading the word, and by next evening old Miller’s youngest was also disqualified and rather smug about it. The men of the village cursed her and youth today in general, drew lots, and cursed again the next eve, when Tanner’s daughter followed suit.
And so it went, day by day. A (female) virgin was chosen, a (female) virgin abused the rather obvious loophole, the men of the village cursed their daughters and lack of pattern recognition jointly, the dragon ate more livestock, and the lots were drawn again. By the tenth day and night there were no more candidates of either sex readily available, except for one. The woodcutter’s daughter’s lot was chosen, and this time the men of the village didn’t tell her until the evening had come. Or rather, the woodcutter didn’t, and it was less because of sadistic cunning and more a matter of working up the nerve to inform her in front of her mother.
“I’m awfully sorry, sweet-pea,” he explained as he was menaced with his own axe, “but it’s you or nice Mr. Shepherd’s last sheep, and he would be very upset about that.”
At this the woodcutter’s wife moved to inconvenience him, but she was stopped by her daughter. “Don’t worry, mum,” she said. “I’ll be fine.”
The woodcutter’s wife examined her daughter carefully, face expressionless. “You sure about this, pumpkin?” she asked, dead serious.
“Yes.”
A forthright nod. “Good girl then. You go do what you can.”
So the woodcutter’s daughter did. She took her father’s dented tin jug and his battered old axe, and she stopped at the home of the woman who was interested in herbs, and she took herself and her jug over to Mr. Shepherd’s house and strongarmed him into giving her his last sheep in exchange for three years of owed payment for doing his filthy laundry. There was much gnashing of teeth as she left on her way down to the road out of town.
The dragon was still sleeping, burping gently now and then, and the area was foul-smelling from its breath and feces. Resolutely ignoring this, the woodcutter’s daughter killed the sheep with the axe, clumsily hacked its gut open (cursing her father’s reluctance to replace the old implement), dumped the contents of the tin can inside, and walked away to hide behind a nearby thicket.
The noises the dragon made over the next half hour weren’t pretty, but few things are in the initial onset of the ingestion of several pounds of concentrated wolfsbane. It wheezed and gurgled and moaned, and when the woodcutter’s daughter wandered out to check it was lying on its side, spewing inflammatory toxins from both ends and filling the ditches with foul-smelling embers.
It was about then that the prince rode up on his horse, lance in hand, shield ready, and found them both. He was quite confused when the dragon didn’t fight back as he speared its heart, but sorted it all out quickly by deciding that he’d done everything. He’d even rescued a beautiful damsel, who protested a bit when he scooped her up onto the horse, but not too much after he agreed to meet her parents first before talking over the marriage question.
This story probably isn’t about them either.
Some years passed, and the woodcutter’s daughter was technically a queen and the prince a king. They had three sons, one after another, and they were pretty good on the whole. None of them that good-looking, which puzzled the parents a little since they were both considered such.
“Must be your side of the family,” said the prince, who got swatted for it.
Anyways, that didn’t matter. The boys were healthy, happy, strong, and exceedingly boisterous and loud. Their ages were twenty, nineteen, and eighteen when the trouble came. One late summer day the king was out on horseback, inspecting the countryside, when a crow landed on his shoulder. The king nearly shot out of the saddle in surprise, the horse bucked, and he went flying, waking up with a babbling mouth and addled mind. This irked and alarmed the woodcutter’s daughter greatly, because she knew something that was more than bad luck when she saw it. She called for the palace magician, and with a lot of talking and thinking they worked it out between them where to look for a cure.
“Boys,” she said, addressing her three sons, “you’re going to go cure your father. Try to make it back before winter sets in. And head south-south-east.”
They promised they’d be back as soon as they could, took the best horses from the stable, some armour, a sword apiece, and plenty of supplies, and were off down the road by noon.
“Let’s split up,” suggested the youngest. “We can cover more ground that way.” They all agreed on this, and the eldest brother headed down the first fork in the road they came across with a fare-thee-well. His trip was very uneventful for the most part (the king had been pretty good at his job, and the lands were quiet), and sadly found himself unable to locate anything more than a few women who were interested in herbs, all of whom told him that scrambled brains needed something a bit stronger than herbs. He did get to enjoy some excellent cups of tea, though.
At the next fork in the road the middle brother turned away with a wave. His path took him right up to the edge of the kingdom, and after venturing a bit farther he was accosted by a large band of knights and unceremoniously booted out of the domain by a king with an ill temper and a long memory, who distinctly recalled who had hidden frogs in his privy when he was on a diplomatic visit twelve years ago.
The youngest brother had a bit of a shorter trip than his siblings – the road ended in a very small and very dull village not far from the fork where his elder brother had left him alone. The only thing that was interesting about it was that it had a very large and cracked dragon skull above the door to the tavern (missing most of its teeth), which he inquired about.
“The king did that,” said the woodcutter, who had never seen any of his grandchildren before and was welcoming the opportunity to have a pint or two on someone else’s expense. “Back in the day. Nice of him to let us keep the skull.” His voice grew conspiratorial and quiet. “And I think it’s still got a mite of magic in it. Old Smith rubbed it for luck one day and the very next day he bought himself a new horse on the cheap. Bit of a windfall, that. And I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve had a close call with my axe that could’ve turned nasty if it weren’t for the tooth I’ve got.”
The youngest son examined the tooth, which the woodcutter wore as a sort of crude necklace, and conceded that it was very impressive. “Can I borrow it?” he asked.
“What for?” asked the woodcutter, and he listened to the story. “Ill tidings,” he said when the tale was done, secretly relishing the opportunity to say the words in context. “Anything to give my daughter’s husband a hand.” The woodcutter thought for a moment. “Ten golden coins.”
The youngest son had to pawn his horse (Old Smith was happy to have a full team again, even if one was fourteen years older than the other) and walk all the way home on foot, but he was proud. His brothers had come home before he did, and together they walked in to speak with the woodcutter’s daughter.
“I have failed,” said the eldest son, remorsefully.
“I have also failed,” said the middle son, bitterly.
“I’ve got this,” said the youngest son, helpfully, and gave his mother the dragon-tooth pendant.
The woodcutter’s daughter examined it closely. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve all succeeded.”
The sons were slightly nonplussed, and then the woodcutter’s daughter explained that the king had been under a lot of stress for a while now, and a bit of a break with someone else running the kingdom and no loud children underfoot had done him a world of good. In fact, he’d agreed to take ruling duty in shifts with her, and was currently out back playing a happy game of lawn bowls with several of the more energetic dukes. The princes were a little annoyed, but consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least they’d gotten some fresh air and their father might have a bit more time to spend with them.
There wasn’t a story about any of them. But they were well-off enough without it.