Crimson Fairy Book

Chapter 8 The Child Who Keeps a Secret (2)
At sunset, a large crowd gathered to watch the lad being led into the tower.After his crime was publicized, he was kept in strict confinement.But every morning the princess handed him food out of that hole.Every two days, the king sent his ministers to climb up the ladder to see through a small window whether he was dead.But the minister always came back and reported that he was fat and rosy.

"There is magic in it," said the king.

This went on for some time, until one day the sultan's messenger delivered a letter and three vines to the king. "My lord," said the messenger, stooping, "if you cannot tell which of these three vines is closest to the root, which is the middle, and which is the top, he will declare war on you. "

The king was very frightened when he heard this, so he picked up the three vines and looked at them carefully, but he couldn't see any difference between them.He looked very upset, and my daughter noticed it and asked him why.

"Ah, daughter," he answered, "how can I not be sorry? The Sultan sent three canes, and if I cannot tell which one is closest to the root, which one grows in the middle, and which one grows on top , he will wage war on me. You know his army is much stronger than mine."

"O Father, do not despair," she said, "surely we shall find out." She ran to the Tower and told the young man what had happened.

"Go to bed as usual," answered the young man, "and when you wake up, tell your father that you dreamed that you were going to put the three vines in hot water. In a little while, one of them will sink to the bottom." Go, that is the cane that grows closest to the root; if there is one that neither sinks nor floats to the surface, it is cut from the middle; and the one that floats to the surface is the one that grows on the top."

So the next morning, the princess told her father about her dream.As she suggested, the King made a notch in each of the canes when he took them out of the water, so that he could not make a mistake when returning them to the messenger.Although the Sultan did not understand how he could tell, he did not start a war.

The next year, the Sultan wanted to start a war with the King of Hungary, so he sent another messenger with three foals and asked him to tell which one was born in the morning and which one was born at noon. , which horse is born at night.If he can't answer within three days, he will immediately launch a war.The king's heart sank when he read the letter.He doesn't expect his daughter to be lucky enough to have another correct dream.At this time the plague was spreading throughout the country, and had taken the lives of many soldiers, and his army was weaker than before.

Thinking of this, his face was full of sorrow, and his daughter asked what happened when she saw it.

"The sultan has written to me again," said the king, "and he says that if I do not know which of the three foals was born in the morning, which was born at noon, and which was born at night, he will Start war now."

"Oh, don't be depressed," she said, "some things are meant to happen." She went to ask the young man again.

"Go home, idol of my heart. At night you pretend to cry out in your sleep so that your father can hear you. Then you tell him that you dreamed that he was about to be taken by the Turks because he Can't answer questions about the foals. Then the lads in the tower will come and tell them which foal was born in the morning, which one was born at noon, and which one was born at night."

The princess did exactly what the young man told her to do.As soon as she uttered this, the king ordered the tower to be pulled down, and the prisoner was brought before him.

"I did not expect you to live so long without food," he said. "You have spent many hours in repentance of your wickedness. If you will help me out of this plight, I will forgive you. Read the letter from the Sultan. Believe me, you'll see that if I don't answer the question about the foal, it will lead to a terrible war."

The young man took the letter and read it. "Well, I can help you," he answered, "but first you must give me three troughs that are exactly the same. One trough for oats, another for wheat, and the third for maggots.

The oat foal was born in the morning, the wheat foal at noon, and the barley foal in the evening. "The king marked the foals as the young man did, and sent them back to Turkey. As a result, there was no war that year.

At this time, the Sultan was very angry. His plot to occupy Hungary had completely failed, so he invited his aunt—she was a witch.He asked her for advice on what to do next.

"It was not the king who answered your question," said his aunt when he had finished his account. "He was too stupid to answer these questions. The man who solved the riddle was the son of a poor woman. If he lived, he would be king of Hungary. So, if you want to wear the crown yourself, you must put He came here and killed him."

After this conversation, a letter came to the Hungarian palace, saying that unless the young man (who was at the palace at the time) was not sent to Turkey within three days, a large army would be marched across the frontier.When the king read the letter, his heart suddenly became sad, because he was grateful to the young man who had helped him so much, and was reluctant to hand him over.But the young man only smiled, and told the king not to be afraid of anything, but to immediately find two young men in the town who looked like each other, and to paint a mask like them himself.At this time, the sword beside him made a loud clang.

After a long search, finally found a pair of twin brothers.The two brothers look so alike that even their mother can't tell them apart.The young man drew a mask exactly like theirs, and he put it on, so that no one could tell the three of them apart.They set off at once to the Sultan's palace, where they were taken directly to the king.The Sultan motioned for them to come closer.They bowed together.The sultan asked about their itinerary, and they answered together in the same words.If one person sits down to eat, the other two sit down and eat immediately; when one gets up, the other two also get up, as if they were just one body.Sultan sees no difference between them.He told his aunt that he couldn't be too cruel and kill all three.

"Well, tomorrow you will see the difference," said the witch, "because there is a man with a cut in his sleeve, and that is the young man you must kill." An hour before midnight, the witch disappeared, and she slipped away. Go into the room where the three lads sleep.They share a bed.She took out a pair of scissors, snipped a small piece of the sleeve of the young man's dress hanging on the wall, and slipped quietly out of the room.In the morning the young man saw the crack in the sleeve, and he marked the sleeves of his two companions in the same way.All three went to have breakfast with the Sultan.The old witch stood by the window and pretended not to see them, but all the witches had eyes in the back of their heads, and she immediately knew that not one had their sleeves cut off, but all three of them had been cut off. exactly alike.

After breakfast, the Sultan was so exhausted by the whole affair that he wanted to think of other options alone, so he let them go home.They bowed together and left.

The princess welcomed the young man back with great joy, but the poor young man did not rest long.One day the king received another letter from the sultan, saying that he found the young man a very dangerous person, and asked the king to send him immediately to Turkey alone.The king ordered his daughter to bring the letter to the young man, and the young man told the princess what the letter contained, and the princess shed tears. "Don't cry, dear," said the boy, "everything will be all right. I'll start at sunrise tomorrow."

The young man set out at sunrise the next morning, and in a few days he arrived at the Sultan's palace.The old hag was waiting for him at the gate, and as he passed the old hag said in a low voice, "This is the last time you will enter the palace." The young man's sword clanged so loudly that he did not even look at her.As he crossed the threshold, fifteen armed Turks blocked the way, the Sultan at the forefront.Suddenly the sword shot out, and all the heads were cut off except the Sultan.Then the sword flew back into its scabbard silently.The old witch, who stood watching, knew that all her plans would be in vain as long as the young man had the sword.At night she tried to steal the sword, but it jumped out of the scabbard and cut off her iron nose.In the morning the Sultan came with a great army to seize the young man, and to take his sword, and they were all chopped into pieces, but he was spared.

Meanwhile, the princess fell into despair, for the days passed and the young man had not returned.

She was not at ease until her father asked her to lead the army to attack the Sudan.Dressed in military uniform, she rode proudly ahead of the troops.But they hadn't been a mile from town before they met the lad and his little sword.

When he told them what he had done, they all cried out with joy, and carried him home triumphantly.The king declared that the young man had proved himself to be his son-in-law, and that he should at once marry the princess and inherit the throne, while the king himself was growing old and unable to govern the country.The young man said he was going to see his mother first.The king sent him off with a state gift and asked him to take the army as a guard.

The old lady was terrified and surprised when she saw a line of troops parked in front of the hut.A handsome young man whom she did not know dismounted, kissed her hand and said, "Dear mother, you can hear my secret at last! I dreamed that I would be king of Hungary, and my dream has come true. I When I was a child you asked me to tell you that I had to keep a secret, otherwise the King of Hungary would kill me. If you hadn’t hit me, what is happening now wouldn’t have happened, and I wouldn’t be the King of Hungary.”

(End of this chapter)