Welcome, welcome. Please step inside a magic realm... The realm of Romanian fairy tales.

I do not know how much interest this will stir. I do however think that we can identify a small area of discussion that is still connected to the main theme of this forum - that is, fairy stories. I say this because we all know Tolkien was a defender of such kind of literature. I also consider myself one of those people: and I know that I never disliked fairy tales, nor did I grow to dislike them once I was introduced to more advanced types of literature. I even argued over this with a teacher who considered fairy tales the domain of childhood. On the contrary, there is an appeal for adults in these stories that should not be pushed back. Tolkien said it, and I will repeat it gladly, that we should like the fairy tales not as an object of study, but for their own beauty.

However I find it in the interest of the topic to tell you just a bit of the Romanian classic fairy tale. First, there was one person who did a great job in collecting and putting together many of the local legends and tales, Petre Ispirescu. There are other writers who tried their hand at writing fairy tales, the two most famous being Ion Creanga's Harap Alb (whose tale is a landmark in Romanian literature and often studied in schools), and Mihai Eminescu (considered Romania's greatest poet), with his well-known (locally) Făt-Frumos din lacrimă ('Prince Charming of the tear').

Now I'll briefly speak of the local traditions and motifs that make their appearance in this genre.

Firstly, the magical numbers, most usually three, and sometimes twelve. We see the number 3 in most any tale: there are 3 sons, 3 princesses, 3 challenges for the hero to get through, etc.

Secondly, the characters. We have Făt-Frumos (translated as 'Prince Charming' but not quite the Prince Charming from the Shrek series, which is a sad connection in my opinion). He's usually the hero of the tales, the one who saves the princess and kills the evil doers. Conversely, there is the motif of the 'youngest son', who proves better than his other (two) brothers and who usually gets their envy for that. The archenemy in the traditional Romanian fairy tale is the 'zmeu', a creature often translated as 'dragon' (to which I don't fully agree, since zmei are humanoid in appearance, and not lizard-like.)

All fairy tales are similar in one point: their happy ending. That said, one of the best-known of the traditional fairy stories in Romanian, Tinereţe fără bărtâneţe şi viaţă fără de moarte ('Youth Without Aging and Life Without Death') is a poignant and very beautiful tale that does not obey the rule of the happy ending.

There are more things to say, of course, and I'm only scratching at the surface here, but I also imagine you know virtually nothing about Romanian fairy tales so this is just introductory. I also want to show you a story I'm working on right now, and which is a fairy tale that combines some traditional elements with some of my own ideas and tastes. As I'll post it here, I'll comment on the text and let you know more on how it reflects the Romanian fairy-tale motifs and concepts. That is, if you are interested. Otherwise I won't bother you. (This is the tale I was telling Star about in her thread.)

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To answer this question, I'd have to know what you have in mind when you say 'Western fairy tales'. If we compare them to, let's say Tolkien's 'Smith of Wootton Major', we can easily see a difference in tone and style. I'd say traditional Romanian fairy tales are more rustic, having a special flavour that comes from not employing a great variety of details. Really now, other fairy tales of other countries do not readily come to mind. For instance, 'Little Red Riding Hood' is in so many ways different from Romanian fairy tales that you could hardly identify it as such in our culture. I would say each culture has its own views on what a fairy tale is, and so they will invariably differ. But as I start posting my story you'll better understand how a Romanian fairy story generally looks like.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Well, I can tell you this is not very encouraging. I don't know if I was hoping for more people to jump in, but I am afraid that now my story will go unread; that is, unless Oggie still has a mind to learn more about fairy tales with a Romanian flavour.

My story is about 75% done, I reckon, and it is long enough for me to feel confident I can finish it before posting it here entirely. That is, because I will only post fragments at a time, and depending on the interest raised, I will keep you posted until it's all here. This will give me time to work on in the meanwhile. Star also said she'd be interested, so here we go... (some comments will be done at each fragment's end):

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The Prince and His Journey

Once upon a time, there lived a wealthy king: countless were his treasures, and the eye could not encompass the vastness of his lands. And this king had a thousand servants in his palace, with its halls of marble and gold and velvet. In his youth, the king had taken for wife a princess from a distant land, and her beauty was unsurpassed in the entire kingdom: age seemed not to touch her, and keen shone her eyes in her white face. The queen had given her husband three sons, much in the likeness of their father: strong in body and in mind. They delighted in all sports, archery, hunting and bare-handed fighting.

The king would often go to the top tower of his palace and gaze into the distance. Now the palace was built on top of a great hill, thrust like a humpback in the flat plains below. The king therefore could see far away, and yet that was only a small part of his kingdom. Far below him, in the fields, he could just spot his subjects tilling the earth and working the fields. It was hard work under the burning summer sun, but the people were happy and lived in peace. They worked for their king and for the good of the kingdom. Back in the citadel, blacksmiths were craftily doing things of beauty. For a long time, there had been quiet and no wars with the other kingdoms. No that anyone dared to challenge them: the vaults were full of deadly weapons, swords, bows, spears and shields of all sorts, and the people would have gladly traded their tilling utensils for the sharp blades of the swords.

But that was not how it had always been. In days past, the king, young, brave and fearless, led his people to great victories over his rivals. Savage were his eyes in battle, and the earth groaned under his horse’s hoofs when he was in pursuit of his enemies. Wherever he went, his people felt encouraged and fought bravely. In this way the borders of his realm grew ever wider, until his enemies had made peace to him and he settled down. Yet now, the king’s eyes moved to his hands clutching the balustrade of the tower’s balcony. He saw the wrinkled fingers and knew that old age had got to him, mighty as he was. Yes, he was old, but his sons were young and took after their father, which was good.

Yet for himself the king wished to go hunting one more time, as he had often done in his youth, but not anymore in his maturity years. In that time, the woods stood thick not far from the palace, so after a short time, he rode thither with his royal escort. The villagers had told him that in those parts there lived one huge bear, which had often come to the village and taken cattle. This was the animal the king wished to hunt therefore: the largest and most powerful creature, a hunt fit for a king of great valour. For days on end his hunters looked for the elusive bear in vain; but finally finding it, they drove it towards their king, who was in waiting in a large clearing. As it came out from between the trees, its black fur glimmered in the midday sun. Terrible was its roar, and the earth trembled under its paws. Up on his horse, the king stretched his bow, and the arrow he had fit in it caught a sunray and sparkled.

But lo! The bear was a bewitched creature, and when the king was about to shoot, it rose on its hind legs, and its huge belly bulged forward; and the bear spoke with human tongue, and said:

‘O mighty king, pray stay your hand and listen to my words.’

And under his very eyes, the bear began to shrink, and where it had stood just a moment before, there now was a woman beyond count of years, with shrewd eyes and bitter heart. Quick should the arrow have been, speeding her to death: for the old woman was in fact a witch that the king had found in his youth in dark lands, and which he had declared an outlaw, casting her away from the people whose hearts she had been poisoning. Her hatred for the king and his family had been unquenchable ever since, and now the wheel of fortune was turning, and her chance for revenge had come. That day evil was at work; so changed was the witch that the king failed to recognise her: and in his pity and awe, he lowered his bow.

‘Speak swiftly,’ he said. ‘By the looks of it, you are a witch and you deserve death. But I shall spare your life if you tell me your tale.’

Being given her chance, the old woman spoke anew:

‘O great king of men, first let me tell you that though I might appear to be a witch, I am not one. Many spirits there are that can change shape, and not witches and wizards only. As for me, I am in fact the guarding spirit of this forest that you are in…’

At these words, the trees creaked and a gust of wind swept over their faces – but the king failed to understand the signs that he was being sent. The forest was rejecting her blasphemous words, and for a second panic was in her eyes. But it melted away as she saw that no one had seen what had happened, and she moved on:

‘And I know your purpose for being here. I see that, though you are still as strong as ever, age is beginning to bite at you. I have been here before your time, before people even walked these lands, and I have witnessed your ascent and your glory. In your palace you live in bliss and you begin to forget: all around you, there are allies and servants. All around you, I say; but not quite! Over the far mountains, where your kingdom ends, you went not, being so counselled by evil people in your royal House. And they said that you will find nothing there, only woe. But they are wrong. I know what is there: in truth I tell you, that beyond the jagged peaks, there lies a land of incommensurable beauty, where the waters run sweet and fragrant, and where the grass is ever green and fresh. No illness can take root there, and…’

‘Speak no more,’ snapped the king. I doubt not your words, but I have vowed in my youth not to touch that land. I have not seen it, nor have ever heard of anyone who has, and yet your words might be true. But I say to you, that there I will not go, for I trust my counsellors: evil you call them, but their counsels never proved wrong or faithless.’

‘Do as you wish, then,’ the witch said. ‘But what you have here is nothing like what you could have. You could be the greatest king the world has ever known. But when another gets there before you, don’t expect your kingdom to last long in the face of his might and splendour. Gone will you be, and all your servants, and the fields will be left bare, and your palace be brought to ruins.’

Before anyone could say anything more, the old woman turned away and vanished among the trees in the deep shadows. Shaken from this encounter, the king and his escort left the forest, heading to the palace. But the king was troubled, and the last words of the old woman brought a seed of doubt in his heart. Before he got home, however, he had decided to forget those words that troubled him. And seeing his sons and his queen greeting him, he did forget and was glad of what he had. So much, perhaps, that he did not need any more: and each of his sons could have made a kingdom of his own from the big kingdom, and still there would have been room enough for all to be happy.


And so it was that the old king led his days, and aged slowly. Still he used to go to the top tower and look down on his subjects, but he did it less often now, for the steep stairs were tiresome for him. But it so chanced that one day, getting up there, the air was so clear that he could see everything as never before. Almost, one could say, the air was magical: and gazing far over the wide plains, the king saw them in the distance, which he had only seen before in his youth’s wanderings: the Impassable Mountains, with their jagged peaks and dauntless snows, ever white and cold. With unknown force the words he had heard in the forest long before came back to him: “where the waters run sweet and fragrant, and where the grass is ever green and fresh. No illness can take root there.” He tried to push them away, but instead, an image began forming in his mind, and he could imagine the blades of grass, and the trees, of a green that hurt the eye, so deep and surreal; the waters were running slowly near to him, and there was a smell that he had never before encountered: so sweet and fresh at the same time, that he could have stood there for an eternity without feeling compelled to go away or search for anything better, because there really was nothing better. No painter could ever capture that landscape with brushes, nor would the colours have been as rich as the real ones. Then the vision passed away, and the king looked again over his own lands: now they seemed dull and grey, devoid of life.

He got down to his private chambers very shaken. He revised in memory all that he knew about the lands over the mountains. It was not much. He realised that his information was scant and there was nothing tangible that he could grab. He summoned his chief counsellor, who had been his top general in his campaigns of long ago. This one was even older than him, and was reputed to be the greatest sage in the entire kingdom. Many of the books that were now in the library of the palace had either been written by him or under his direction. It was thanks to him that the history of the lands had been gathered in one place. The king greeted him and asked him to sit down.

‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘do you remember the old days when I got my army to the feet of the Impassable Mountains?’

‘I do, my king,’ the sage answered.

‘But can you tell me,’ the king enquired, ‘for I am not able to remember, what lies beyond those mountains, and why did we not cross them?’

At these words, the old man’s face darkened. After a pause, he sighed, and spoke:
‘My king, to your first question, the answer is not so simple. What lies beyond, I do not clearly know. Once you had that land conquered, I was left behind to research the history and the customs of the place. I asked the people there about their land, and about the tall mountains and what might be on the other side. They would not say: either they did not know, or they would not reveal. I was afraid at first that maybe there were others of their kin there, and they were preparing to attack us and free their people, but I soon found out that it was not so. Now when they saw that your rule was just and allowed them more freedom than that of their former king, they became more open and I could find out more about them. They told me that they indeed had no idea what was on the other side: there had been parties of several people who tried to find a way over them, but no one had ever succeeded. Some had died in the cold and bitter blizzards, trying to force the high passes, while others had returned, declaring there was no way over them. Moreover, they said they could hear howls of animals, and that the shadows were strange, and the nights in the mountains brought with them a terror and a fear of death, that they would not go there any more. Now those people to whom I spoke were not so much afraid, but it had become deeply rooted in their beliefs that whatever was on the other side could not be good, and they had vowed not to try the Impassable Mountains ever again. You will remember, my king, that when I told you about them, counselling you to forget about their secrets, you had just finished another hard campaign, and you were ready to take a wife. You vowed then, too, not to give heed to that matter, since your kingdom was already so vast that enlarging it any more would likely have made it difficult to manage and keep in order. Now I think that answers your second question, too: and if you also want my advice, there is no reason to go there now, either.’

The king frowned, but he said:

‘I see now. But I did not look for advice, only for knowledge. I thank you. You may go.’

The counsellor left the room, closing the door behind him. In his chair, the king began thinking of what he had just heard. As he stood there, the sun started setting behind him, warming his back. Slowly he drifted into sleep, and the sun sank beyond the horizon, painting the room in red and orange hues, with shadows stretching on the walls. Slowly the light died away, and the shadows deepened. But the air inside the room was stuffy; a magical setting was being developed in the heart of the palace, and the king was part of it.

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Commentary

The title, The Prince and His Journey, is typical of a Romanian fairy tale. That is to say, it is plain; I cannot make a proper analysis of it, but generally, this sounds to me more appropriate than say, 'The Incredible Journey'. Usually since traditional fairy tales had to be collected from oral sources, the titles are a brief description of the plot, sometimes very elliptical, but not made in such a way as to create expectancy by use of fancy epithets, etc.

The introductory part is generally speaking much more elaborate than those of traditional fairy tales. There, the narrative moves much more rapidly to the main character, which usually is mentioned from the title. That is to say, in my story, if it had been traditional, the 'prince' would have been introduced by now, and probably something from 'his journey' too. However, while of folkloric inspiration, my tale bears my own mark too.

The talking bear: we Romanians are fond of talking animals. In our fairy tales, we often meet talking horses and other beasts.

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Is that really so? I can say I am really glad. As I told you before, the story was pretty much complete by the time of my first posting here, and now I think it's somewhere at around 95% done (I did not have the time to work much on it lately). So it is no problem to post the next installment, but I confess that seeing no interest for it, I had decided to finish it all, convert it to pdf format and upload it somewhere, and whoever cared could download it. But it will be much more interesting to post it like this and have some comments for each section, as originally intended. So let's see...

NOTICE: The dream section was modified so that it is easier to understand. I highlight it in blue so that anyone who read the original text can easily reference the new one.

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He opened his eyes and could see the green fields again. He was now himself walking in the beautiful lands beyond the Mountains. The waters were fragrant and their sound was relaxing beyond the softest music he had heard. But listening hard, the king thought he could hear some other sounds. He started in the direction of these new sounds, noises rather in the quietude of that place. He did not have to walk far. There was a gentle slope before him, and as he climbed to the top, a vast country opened at his feet. But what he saw there: people, many people, arrayed as for battle. They were not shouting or moving too much. He could study their bodies: each of them was healthy and fit, more so than even his best warriors.

“It has to be due to the crops that are grown here, and the animals,” he thought. “No illness can take root here.”

Just as he was thinking, something stirred in the back. Suddenly he saw a mounted man coming towards the front of the army: the leader of these people, clad in the most formidable armour, with a horse like none our king had ever seen before. He heard the mounted man shouting:

‘Ready for battle, my men? Let us now cross the mountains and descend upon the old king and his miserable kingdom. God-like will we seem to them! Fear not, for nothing can stand in our way!’

The king, hearing these words, took great fright, and turning around he began running down the hill he had came, but to what purpose, he could not say. The Mountains loomed high and he could not hope to pass them and get back to his country in time to prepare an army to face the invaders. As he was running faster down the slope, old age and weary feet did not help him much, and his knees buckled under him. With a thump, he fell to the soft ground; he saw the green blades of grass, and could smell the fresh earth from which they were growing. He began rolling downhill, faster and faster. Finally he hit a bump and was thrust through the air. As he fell, he realised in his pain that the grass had gone away, and the earth was not moist any more. Instead he stood in a brownish gravel, and the dust that his falling body had risen was slowly settling.

He was now back in his own lands, which he could recognise. He could not say how he got there, when just a moment before he had stood on the other side of the Mountains, looking upon enemy lines. He heard hoofs behind him. A rider stopped next to him, and someone dismounted. Had the enemies also crossed, then? He waited for the blow to fall: he would die thus, in disgrace, with no weapon to defend himself, beaten to the ground.

The blow did not come. Instead, he heard a worried voice:

‘Are you all right, your highness?’

Looking up, he saw a general from his own army, stretching a hand towards him. He grabbed it and was helped to his feet. Looking back, he saw his own army waiting.

‘What is happening?’ he asked, bewildered.

‘Still waiting, of course,’ said the general, misinterpreting the question, and answering in regard to the state of the battle. ‘Our scouts said the enemy has cleared the pass. Our troops were beaten down easily. Those devils could not be stopped, and pushed forward with little loss. But pardon me, your highness: if reinforcements don’t come soon, we will surely be broken in no time.’

‘Very well,’ said the king, too confused to fully grasp everything that was happening around him. ‘Find me a horse, and weapons.’

‘What do you mean, my lord?’ asked the general. ‘There is your sword attached to your belt. And the horse is just there, where you dismounted a minute ago.’ He pointed towards the vanguard of the army.

Soon the battle was raging all around them. The king saw his men fall one by one, while the enemy soldiers were laughing at them and beating them down. On his horse, he could barely face the enemy infantry. But suddenly, as he was galloping on the battle field, he saw another rider coming towards him. So fast was his horse, that the king had no chance of evading his follower. Instead, he turned to face him. At that moment, he recognised his opponent: the foreign king, which he had heard speaking to his army on the other side of the Impassable Mountains. This one looked at the old king, and so fiercely did his eyes glow, that the king could not withstand his gaze. The other laughed, saying:

‘So ends your dominion, old fool. You thought that you could live in peace, and that what you had was enough to offer you protection. But look around you: your men are scattered; you have lost. But you will have no other chance at revenge; once we finish here, we will not stop until all is razed, and your kingdom passes into history, with all it has. It is our land, the beautiful and the prosperous, that will live on. Everything else must die.’

He thrust his horse forward, lifting a sword in his right hand. The king had no time to prepare to defend himself. His hand, risen hastily, was broken down by a strong blow of his enemy. Laughing, he thundered:

‘Farewell, o cowardly king, who would not take what you could at the right time!’

His blow was aimed at the king’s head.


The king jumped. It was utterly dark. He heard a sound behind him: something fell with a crash. Strange, but… it sounded like a piece of furniture. A chair. He touched with his hands the hard table. Slowly, he could see the starry sky outside the window. All had been a dream, and he was still in his room, but night had fallen since he had his conversation with his counsellor.

“A dream,” he thought, “but more than that. It was a premonition, and if I do not act quickly on the matter, someone else will. And then disaster will befall my kingdom, just as has been revealed to me.”

He could feel cold sweat on his back. He fumbled for a candle; lighting it, he could see the dimly lit chamber, with shadows dancing on the walls. He had made up his mind.

Next day, he summoned his sons to the throne room, and spoke to them:

‘My sons, behold! I am old now, and my days are numbered. But you are young and will soon come to rule this land of mine.’

‘Pray do not speak so, father,’ the youngest of the sons said, who was also the dearest to the king. ‘You might not be the man you once were, but long years still await you.’ His voice trembled.

‘Nay, my son. But do not grief, for so it is that nature will have it. But I am not dead yet, and one thing I still have to ask of you; and if you manage to find out the answer to my question, it will benefit you greatly, and you will receive my blessings.’

‘What then is the question?’ asked the elder of the three brothers, always the hastiest and the one wishing more glory to himself.

‘The question, my sons, is: what lies beyond the Impassable Mountains?’
Hearing that, the three sons were downcast.

‘How are we to answer to that question, O father?’ the second oldest said. ‘No one knows what is there. Are you laughing at us, then?’

‘Not at all, my son. But you see, I never said my question will be easy or straightforward. And I know that the answer to this does not lie within my kingdom. Therefore one of you will have to go and cross the Mountains, and come back to tell me.’

Then the elder, stepping forward, said:

‘That, father, should be me. I am the oldest of us, and it is my right as first successor to try my luck with that attempt.’

‘So be it, then,’ said the king. ‘But you must know that this road will not be easy, and it is not for the fainthearted. Your journey lies through a deep forest that people say is haunted, and on to even greater perils.’

‘I am not afraid, father,’ said the elder son proudly.

So it was that the young man chose weapons and a horse, and taking leave of his father, departed. Not long on his journey, he came to the forest his father the king had mentioned. Now that forest was not haunted, and the king knew it; but he wanted to test the courage of his son, and so see if he was fit for the journey he was going to make. So that when his son left the palace, the king and a handful of his soldiers also started in secret towards that forest, but going on other ways and more swiftly, they got there before the elder son.

Looking at the forest, the elder brother’s heart sank a little, but frowning he entered under the trees, dismissing the story of the ghosts. All day long he walked, and as night came, and he was making ready to dismount and make camp, many voices started crying from all around him in the darkness. The horse took fright, and the son was so surprised that he was thrust from the saddle to the ground. The horse bolted in the night and was lost, while the prince trembled to the ground. He saw shapes moving at the edge of sight. One came just a bit closer to him, and with a mighty, frightening voice, cried:

‘Who dares to disturb our peace? We are the spirits of old warriors, and you now stand on our burial grounds. Retrace your steps, for you can go no further this way.’

The elder brother was so terrified that he did not wait to be told twice, and stumbling to his feet, began running back through the night.

Now the ‘spirits’ were in fact the king and his men, but the son knew nothing of this. As they had done this, they hastened back to the palace. Not long after, the elder brother came home, bruised, with tore clothes and very ashamed. Coming before the throne, he said:

‘Forgive me, my father, that I have failed you. But the ghosts were upon me, and I had no power over them. My horse dashed through the trees and I could not do anything but run to save my life. Give me sword and shield, and send me to battle. Aye, that I can do! But to face the dead is beyond me.’

He lowered his sight to the ground. Now hearing that, the middle-aged brother stepped forward, and he said:

‘O father, let me attempt that which my brother failed. I will go in his stead and will bring you the news that you seek from beyond the Mountains.’

And with that, he took sword and shield and, mounting on his horse, went on his way. The king again assembled a company of men and went to the forest. When the second son got there, as he was going on through the night, with hopes of clearing the accursed forest as soon as possible, he suddenly heard cries all about him, and out of nowhere, a dark figure stepped before him, with raised hands. The horse bolted, and the son was thrust to the ground. In his fright, it was by bitter luck that the horse did not tread the prince to death. But the shape spoke in a great voice, saying:

‘Who are you to come to our forest? This is the land of the dead, where spirits of mighty warriors dwell. Turn back! No roads lead any further!’

And with that, he raced towards the son. But seeing the shape upon him, the young prince stumbled to his feet as best he could, and dropping his shield and his sword in his fright, he ran his feet away. Now again the king hastened home, and was there before his son, which he greeted at his coming home:

‘Back so fast, my son? What news from beyond the Mountains? Did you give your weapon in token to the locals?’

‘Do not scorn me, father,’ the middle-aged brother answered in shame. ‘I was just about to cross the forest, and out came the ghosts that assailed my older brother, and I could not do anything against them, so many and fierce they were.’

Then the youngest of the sons came forward, and spoke:

‘O dear father, will you let me try my luck at the journey?’

At this request, the king had no immediate answer. In his heart he was torn: the youngest son was his favourite, and he would have suffered to see him fail also. And also, he was afraid of what his failing would have meant: that there was no one he could trust to send and explore the lands beyond the Impassable Mountains, and then his dream might come true. Long did the young brother have to beg his father to allow him to attempt the road, and long did his father refuse him, saying that he was too young, and that he would clearly have no chance of success where his brothers before him had failed. But finally, seeing the true desire of his youngest son, the king agreed.


The young brother therefore set his gear in order, thinking of all that he might need for that journey. He took his sword but no shield; instead he decided to take a bow and a quiver with the best arrows, as he was very skilled with the bow and felt that it might come in handy at times. He also took his horse, that he loved dearly, and that he knew he could trust at any moment. Taking leave from his father and mother and from his two brothers, he went down the winding road from the palace.

‘I trust that you will be back sooner than you expect,’ the older brother cried after him, who had still not got over the shame he had suffered. The king now secretly took some men, and just as he had done with the two other sons, he hastened to the forest, to cut the path of his son. Now so fast was the horse of the youngest son that they barely managed to get there ahead of him. Yet as he rode fearlessly through the forest in the deeps of the night, suddenly the silence was broken by terrible and frightening cries. The prince felt the horse ready to bold, and mastered him:

‘Easy, easy now. There is nothing to fear.’

The voice of his master calmed the horse, which continued to move at a steady pace. But suddenly out of dark thickets jumped a figure, all clad in robes that fluttered in the wind. He shouted:

‘Where to, young man? Do you not know that this land is ours, and that you cannot come here and expect to live?’

At these words, the young brother jumped down from his horse, and in a blink of an eye, drew his sword:

‘What was it that you said, o miserable spirit? These lands belong to my father the rightful king, and I shall teach you a lesson for your insolence. No one, dead or alive, will speak so in my presence.’

And with that, he sprang forward, sword in hand, ready to strike at his opponent. Now so mad with fury was the young prince, that the shape barely had time to respond. Raising its hands, the dark figure spoke swiftly:

‘Stay your blow, my son! It is me, your father.’

Coming closer, the king took off his cloak, and the bewildered son could see the pale face of his father. He thrust his sword to the ground and embraced the king. The other shapes came from behind the trees, and the prince saw they were soldiers of the royal escort. He laughed when he perceived the trick that had deterred his brothers.

‘That is an outstanding demonstration of loyalty and courage, my son. But beware of your rashness: for if we had been real ghosts, your sword would have availed little.’

‘It may be so, my father,’ the prince answered. ‘But neither do ghosts have any power against me save fear; and there is no fear that I feel at the sight of spirits.’

Then the whole party spent the night there, and in the early morning the king said to his son:

‘Now I will have to leave you, and go back where my royal duty calls me. You are ready for this journey, I deem, beyond my expectations. But be aware that there might be greater perils that I cannot foresee; therefore do not rashly put your life in danger, as you seek to find the answer to my question. Go now, my son, with my blessings. I will wait at home, but do not forget to come back as soon as you can, for I am old and my waiting may not be long.’

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Commentary

In this part I introduced the dream of the king. I'll make it a bit clearer: at first, he was on the farther side of the Mountains, in the place that the witch had told him about, yet after he fell, he got up on his kingdom's side, where his army was prepared to face the enemies he had just seen before falling down the slope.

The dream is not an important motif in Romanian fairy tales, as far as I can remember, but it is always the ideal way of increasing the narrative tension, and I took the liberty to use it.

I also introduced here another important element in our fairy tales, namely the trial of the three sons, where traditionally the first two (the elder two) fail, leaving the way open for the youngest. The dialogue between the king and the ashamed second son is to be expected. In real life, of course, we could hardly be blamed to fear ghosts, but in stories this is not so, and the distinction between the the coward brothers and the valiant one is important to define the youngest as the hero of the story to come, the character expected to accomplish great deeds.

Now I've left you at the true beginning of the story. Up to now I've posted here around 25% of the whole story, so it's still a long and wondrous (at least I hope) way to the end.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Thank you for the comment, Alavaro. I do not doubt that Mexican fairy tales resemble Romanian ones, because basically this is what a fairy tale is all about: a clear hero who really deserves to win the hand of the princess and the kingdom - it happens in Romanian stories, too, often in the form of the king declaring to the young warriors that whoever will succeed to accomplish a task will get his daughter's hand and half of the kingdom (never the whole kingdom, as far as I can remember...)

I think I will rewrite the dream part; after all it will not be a great deal and I also felt upon reading it that it is unclear, and if I had not been the creator of it, I might not have understood, either. Now let's move on.

The fact that the sons fail in front of a hoax and not real ghosts is inspired by the fairy tale Harap Alb by Ion Creanga (see first post here), where the king scares the brothers by dressing with a skin of a bear, which seems even less plausible. But if there is one thing I learned from these stories, it is that we should not look for rational explanations and just go with the flow. Also another important reason is that the king offers his blessing to the son once he sees that he is ready for the quest. If we would have real ghosts and the king was in his castle, this scene would not have been possible.

Now, on a more general note, this is a fairy tale only with inspiration from the folklore, and of course I also brought my own contribution with things and devices you don't really get in Romanian traditional fairy tales.

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With tears in his eyes, the prince took his leave and, mounting his horse, rode away on the path among the trees. For many days he travelled, league upon league, and passed many towns and villages. But whoever he asked could not tell him what was beyond the mountains. Yet as he drew closer to them, people looked at him with more suspicion as he asked this question, and some turned their backs at him, frowning and refusing to answer. Yet others said:

‘Do you not know, young traveller, that nothing good ever came of such inquiries? Forget about what lies beyond, so long as you have a place to love in this country.’

Undeterred, the prince pursued his quest, coming ever closer to the jagged peaks. One day at dawn, he could see the white tops of the mountains. Slowly the lands began to ascend in gentle hills. As he was crossing a river, the prince suddenly saw an old woman standing at the pier of the bridge across it. When he got close to her, the woman spoke, saying:

‘O young traveller, have mercy of a poor old beggar. Do you have something to eat? I would gladly feel the taste of some food, for I have not had anything for days.’

The prince had little food left for himself, but he had a good heart and felt pity for the poor woman. Opening his bag, he looked inside and saw some stale bread and a piece of ham. It took him little time to think which to give to the beggar: taking out the ham, he handed it to her, saying:

‘O old mother, a long journey lies still ahead of me, and people here are strange and do not share much. I would give you my bread too, but for fear that I will die of hunger on the way; and I cannot turn back. But take this piece of ham: it is all I have to offer.’

At these kind words, the old woman spoke again, saying:

‘Young and noble prince, you are generous and good of heart. Know then that I am Saint Friday, and your help will not go unpaid. But for your good deed, I will give you a piece of my cloth, that you may use in time of need.’

And saying this, she tore a small part of her rags, and put it in the hand of the prince, saying:

‘When need is upon you, burn this cloth and I will come to you. But use it wisely, because I can only be summoned once. Now go, my prince, and may you fare well on your errand. The way is long and your fate is not revealed to me. But accept my blessings.’

The young man kissed her hand, and taking leave of her, departed on his way towards the Mountains. Not long after, he was on their slopes, and he saw great black forests looming ahead. He got to a small, remote village: the same where the king’s counsellor had asked his questions long ago. Waking down the dusty road, people came out to their gates, looking at him passing.

‘Where to, young warrior?’ some asked.

When he told them of his errand, they shut the gates and went back to their houses, shaking their heads. Yet others tried to dissuade him, telling him that there were no ways over those mountains, and that none of those who had tried to find a path ever came back. But the prince could not be put off, and he answered back:

‘Thank you for your concern, my fellow people. But go on I must, for it is the bidding of my father the King that I do so, and I will not suffer the shame of going home and saying that I did not even try.’

At his bold words, the people did not answer, but turned their heads and muttered that the king had gone mad, to send one of his sons to certain death on the icy paths at the end of his kingdom. But there were some who took pity at him, and offered him some food, saying that if he could not be prevented from going where no one should, at least they could help him.

So it was that our prince left the village, and with his horse began climbing the ever steeper slopes of the Impassable Mountains. He got to the tangled forests, and his horse was hard put to it to find ways among the tree roots and thorny bushes. For days he marched on, hearing at times the cries of animals, such as he had never heard before in his homelands. The forest was looming menacingly all around him, with thick tree trunks with odd shapes, dark from the years that had passed over them; there was a constant shadow inside that forest, as the trees were tall and their tops were so close together that the sun could hardly come inside. The air smelled heavily of mould and wet soil. Slowly, the prince left the great oak woods behind and came to even darker and more closely knitted fir woods. The air was chilly during the day and outright cold during the nights.

One day, after a long and wearisome journey, the prince finally saw the woods growing less, and the pale sun shining through the bows. Then, suddenly, the fir wood was over completely, and he found himself on a slope with short mountain grass. There was not much for his horse to eat, and the animal was clearly suffering. Looking ahead, the prince saw that there was still a long way to go, and it was not going to be any easier, either. The grass was slowly giving way to bare rock, and this, in turn, was being covered by snow in the upper regions. The tops of the mountains could not even be seen, being lost in the clouds. Sighing, the prince tried to find a way between the peaks, but he could not: the mountains were so compact as to show no sign of any pass. Mounting again, he made his horse walk on, caressing his mane:

‘Do not fear, my good steed; we will get on the other side. Just hold on a bit more.’

The horse neighed, and slowly started climbing again. However, after some time, the prince had to dismount again and walk next to his horse, because the slope was too steep and there was no path to walk on. The rocks were not firmly fixed and kept slipping under their feet. It was a hard road with little chance of success, but still our traveller went on, thinking only about the glory he would bring his father by being the first to see with his own eyes the lands on the next side of the Impassable Mountains. But his joy was slowly being quenched, as he climbed higher up, into the realm of everlasting snow, where the cold was biting and his clothes were no longer enough to keep him warm. The food was again running low, and the horse was even in a poorer state, with nothing for it to eat any more. Still the prince led his animal on, but now the road was so hard and the snow reached almost to his hips, that they could not keep on for much longer. Despairing, the prince always looked for other paths, but there weren’t any: he had already chosen the easiest of them and it was proving too hard to follow.

As he reached in his empty pack for some food, he stumbled across the piece of cloth that Saint Friday had given him. He though hard at her words, that he should use this small rag wisely, as he could only use it once. He thought of all the perils he might face on the other side of the mountains, where he might need help, and decided this was not the moment to waste it. He hardened his heart against the toughness of the road, and talking to his horse, pushed on. But not long after, his horse stumbled and fell on one side in the snow: tired and without any food, it just could not go on. The prince tried to comfort the poor beast and to put it back on its feet, but the horse could not summon its strength any more, and was lying there waiting for the certain death. To make things worse, clouds gathered out of nowhere and a terrible snow blizzard started. The wind was raging all about them, and the snow was covering the horse and its master. Bewildered, the prince took out the small cloth.

"What is the use of my keeping it for perils on the other side, when there is no perspective of ever getting on the other side at all?" he thought. Trying to find a position so that the wind could not get to him, he attempted to light the piece of cloth. It proved impossible in the bad weather, because of the rag being wet and the wind blowing from all over. The prince was ready to despair and throw the cloth in fury, when finally a spark from his flint caught in the cloth. Shielding it with his hands, he waited for the fire to catch all of the material: he held it as long as he could, dropping it in the snow only when he could no longer stand the fire in his hand. The piece of cloth made a soft sound, and then hissed as the snow was melting under its heat. Suddenly, the wind and the blizzard put out the fire, leaving a small black patch on the ground, quickly to be covered in fresh snow.

Looking around him, the prince could see no further than a few feet. The storm was shouting with a thousand voices all around; the horse was half dead, lying under the snow, with only its head sticking out, breathing unevenly. The prince himself could no longer feel the cold. On the contrary, he felt as if a pleasant warmth was touching his limbs. He relaxed in this new feeling; something was telling him that it was not true, and that his body was failing, and that what he felt was the hand of death upon him, but he did not care any more. He had no power left to fight, and the warmth he felt was much better than the biting cold all around him. He closed his eyes, smiling vaguely.

Just then, a figure appeared from the storm. Shaking the prince, the figure breathed over his face. He felt the cold again, but this time he had the strength to fight it back. Opening his eyes, he saw who the figure was: Saint Friday.

‘You have called me,’ she said in a soft voice. ‘You chose the moment well: any longer and you would have been too far away for me to call back. But now, quickly! Let me see to your horse.’

She went to the poor beast, and breathed over it. The horse stirred, opening its eyes, but then closed them again. Saint Friday, putting forth all her power, breathed over the horse’s head again. This time the horse shook his body, and the snow was thrust aside. With a great effort it stood up, looking at the old woman. She reached inside one of her many pockets and took out a handful of straws.

‘Eat this,’ she said to the horse.

The animal greedily gobbled the food in her hand. As soon as it did so, it shook its mane again; but this time, there was no longer any sign of weariness in its limbs, and its eyes shone like two crystals. Saint Friday smiled. The prince had looked at this and was puzzled.

‘What have you done?’ he asked her. ‘I see my horse is now refreshed and stronger than ever.’

‘Indeed,’ she answered. ‘These straws that I gave your horse are magical. You will see what I have done. The beast now has the power to speak and to understand human speech, too. But this is not all: it can now fly high up in the skies. For know this, my prince: there is indeed no other way over these mountains. But you have learned hardship and will henceforward be able to face perils even greater than this. Once you cross over, you are out of my power. Again I bless your journey, and may you find what you seek.’

At these last words, however, Saint Friday sighed as if she had known more than she was telling. The prince saw this, and asked her:

‘Pray, O old mother, what is it that you fear?’

‘My dear boy,’ she said, ‘it is not in my authority to reveal your fate. Whatever it holds for you, you must find out for yourself, be it good or bad. But this much I can tell you: be good and do not rash on your way. Your good heart may save you again when in need, just as it did today. Now I will have to leave you. Fare well.’

She turned about and she was lost in the blizzard. The prince stood where he was, thinking of what had just happened. Suddenly, the storm ended just as it had begun. The clouds were rising, and the prince could see in the distance. It had not been long, and he expected to be able to see the small shape of Saint Friday moving away; but he could not. Not even her footsteps were visible any longer. Standing like that, he heard a voice speaking to him. He jumped to his feet and turned around. All he could see was his horse. But then he remembered what the old woman had told him. The horse spoke again:

‘Well, master? Shall we leave this place of dread, where we almost met our end? We will both be able to think better with the mountains behind us.’

The prince did not wait any more: he took his pack, and behold: it was again full of food. Happily, he jumped back on the horse.

‘Let us go, my swift steed!’ the prince said in an uplifted voice.

‘Hold on tight, master,’ the horse replied. ‘You will not want to be thrown off the saddle.’

With a bolt, the horse started running through the thick snow. But now the prince saw that it was in fact not through it, but on top of it. Then again with a bolt, the horse jumped in the air and the land was rapidly being left behind. The prince shouted happily at the new feeling of freedom that flight was giving him. The horse shook its mane and increased its speed. The air was blown in the prince’s face; it was very cold up here, but he could still bear it. They got inside the clouds and the prince felt their wetness. The horse was still moving on undeterred.

‘Hold on, master,’ it spoke. ‘We’re getting close to the peaks.’

As it was speaking, they thrust out of the clouds and could see the sun glittering on the jagged peaks. The prince saw just how tall these were, and how menacing. Looking down their slopes, he understood that he could never have gotten over them on foot. The horse said:

‘This is about as high up as I can go. I fear it is not enough!’

They saw the white wall getting closer to them, but the top was still some way above their position. In an instant they were on the near vertical slope. With a last effort, the horse touched the snow and thrust his body upwards, running on the sheer mountain. The top was still looming high up. A feeling of drowsiness came over the prince; he felt he could hardly breathe in the very cold and thin air. But summoning his power, he cried:

‘Go now, my swift steed! We’re over! We’ve defeated the Mountains!’

Hearing his voice, the horse found his last strengths and bolted again, its hoofs moving like mist on the pure snow. They were on the top. From up there, they caught a sight of the wide lands below them: forests, hills, wide lakes, green meadows. In the far distance, at the very edge of sight, something was glittering. It only took a second, though: they could not stop. The next moment, the horse began descending the steep, almost vertical slope, at an ever increasing speed. The prince could barely hold the reins.

Then, as they got lower, the horse once again thrust its hoofs in the snow, and jumped in the air. They were now flying once more, slowly gliding downwards. The air was again breathable and was getting warmer. Down below them there was a huge green forest, larger than any the prince had thought could exist. Slowly the horse hovered over it, getting ever closer to the tree tops. Finally they saw a clearing and stopped there. The sun was now setting, and the slopes of the mountains were golden. On the other side, where they had been coming from, evening was already getting on. Here, however, the air was sweet and pleasant. It was neither hot nor cold: it reminded the prince of a beautiful day of spring, which he loved to spend outdoors, riding with his brothers. This thought brought them back to his mind. What were they doing now? How was his father? This last thought especially gave him a sense of urgency; he did not know what exactly he was supposed to see here, but he remembered that glitter that he had seen from the mountain top, and thought that perhaps he should get there and see what it was, and then turn back home. He figured out that he could not take so long to reach that place: on horseback, flying over all the regions, he could see much and travel fast. But just as he was nurturing these thoughts, his horse, which had been grazing the soft grass, spoke again, saying:

‘Now, master, you have to know this: that in this realm I will not venture with you. I also urge you that you now come back with me. You have seen enough from up there, but to tread in this country is folly.’

The prince, not believing his ears, looked at the horse in dismay:

‘What do you mean? We barely saw a thing. How are we to return now to my father, after all that we have endured to be here?’

‘Nonetheless I will go back,’ the horse replied. ‘I will wait till daybreak for you to make up your mind. Then, with or without you, I will depart. This land is not for the likes of us.’

The prince was downcast that night and could barely sleep. When he got up next day, the sky was just beginning to light above the mighty mountains. The sun was not yet over them. He heard birds singing in the trees around him, and saw his horse a few feet away. When it saw the prince getting up, the horse spoke:

‘Have you made up your mind, then? Will you come?’

The prince had not really thought about the matter. In fact, he was hoping that what the horse had said the evening before was nothing more than meaningless words. He now saw that it was not so.

‘What is it that you are not telling me?’ he asked. ‘I see there is something, but I can’t see what.’

‘It is not in my authority to reveal this unto you. After all, if I had been a plain beast, such as I was indeed not a day ago, you could not have had this discussion with me. I can only beg you to turn back. There is little for the likes of us here.’

To this the prince had no answer, but he felt a heavy burden on his heart.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but I cannot turn back. There is more than just the bidding of my father. Now my heart yearns to see this land, also.’

‘Then our ways part here,’ the horse said. ‘Farewell, my good master, and may you find what you are looking for. Though I doubt you’ll find happiness.’

The prince caressed the horse’s mane one last time, and put his hands round its neck.

‘Farewell, my valiant steed,’ he said with tears in his eyes. ‘May it be that fate will once again bring us together one day.’



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Commentary

In this part I introduced another motif sometimes found in Romanian fairy tales, namely the good deed and its repaying. Saint Friday (and sometimes Saint Sunday) are always good spirits in the shape of old women, sometimes in the guise of beggars who ask for some mercy. They offer their help to the hero in times of need, such as here, when the Prince could not cross the Mountains. Of course, the scene in the mountains is much more elaborate than we would normally find in a traditional fairy tale, but it helps building the suspense.

The talking horse - I have already explained how we Romanians are fond of talking beasts. Now for the flying part, again it is something traditional, that was borrowed by several authors of fairy tales; it is convenient to have a flying horse that you can talk to, but I wanted to make my story more compelling and "got rid" of the horse pretty soon. In traditional fairy tales this hardly ever happens, and the horse stays until the end.

I am aware the scene looks a bit like the one in LotR, with the company trying the Redhorn Pass, but I can assure you it is unintentional and I only realised it upon rereading.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Well, I could perhaps lengthen it one day and make it less childish, of course, but for now I'll stick to this, because it is in the tone of a fairy tale. Anyhow, I've already told you it is much longer than any traditional fairy story I've seen. At 23000 words, it's classified as a novella by most standards of length.

Anyhow, as I near the end, the story gets a bit darker in tone, but perhaps not by so much. You'll have to see for yourself and judge.

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With that, the horse jumped in the air and soon was above the treetops, heading back to the mountains and to the kingdom they had come from. The prince was left alone in the forest clearing, thinking mainly at the strange behaviour and words of the horse and also wondering how he was going to come back over the mountains once his journey was done.

Nevertheless, he also thought that all will be done in due time, and that the journey back was still many long days ahead; he put on his pack and started journeying through the forest, in the direction he guessed the glitter to have come from. The road was clear among the trees, as if someone had made it and was keeping it open and free of bushes or fallen trees. For that matter, the prince realised that this forest, though not young, was by no means old, and all trees were straight. He could see no dead wood on the forest floor other than small branches that had been broken by animals in the trees. There was a frenzy of life all around him: from little beetles in the soil at his feet, to squirrels and a wide variety of birds singing in the trees, and butterflies over the flowers that grew in abundance in the shadow of the trees. The flowers themselves were mostly unknown to the prince, but their vivid colours were pleasing to the eye. From time to time, he saw elusive deer bouncing through the trees.

He went on like that for some days, but finally he could not go on any more: his pack was getting empty again, and he had to hunt to replenish it. Trying to find the best spot, he got to a small lake. He hid behind a bush and waited for an animal to appear in the clearing to drink. He did not have to wait too long, when out of the forest on the other side of the lake came a beautiful stag, and unwary of any peril, it went to the water. As it lowered its muzzle in the refreshing, sweet water, the prince tensed his bow. His aim was always true, and he knew he could not miss, though the distance to the animal was over a hundred feet. But as he was ready to shoot, he heard a mighty voice somewhere behind him:

‘Put that down, if you care for your life.’

So intense was the prince’s concentration on the animal that he almost jumped at the voice. He involuntarily shot the arrow, which went about half of the way to the stag and pierced the still water, disturbing it and disappearing from sight, before re-emerging at the surface. The stag bolted and was lost in the forest behind. In an instant, the prince turned around, drawing his sword. But it was too late: the one who had spoken was already aiming at him with a great bow. The prince saw that he stood before a massive man, with untamed eyes and longish hair. He grew no beard or moustache, however. He wore a brown tunic, pants and leather boots with soft soles. His huge arms were bare of any clothes, and the prince could see bulging muscles that he could not hope to match in combat. He put his sword back in its sheath.

‘Who are you?’ the prince asked.

The large man laughed:

‘I’m called the Hunter,’ he answered, lowering his bow. ‘But who are you?’

The prince quickly told the Hunter about his mission.

‘Know then,’ said the Hunter, that you cannot kill any animals in this forest without my permission. Wherever you may be, I will know it when you want to kill a creature, and I will be there to stop you.’

‘I can see that,’ the prince said, ‘yet it is not for sport that I was hunting, but because the journey is long before me and I have to eat. I do not know the herbs in these parts and cannot tell which are poisonous and which not. It is for this reason I tried to shoot a deer.’

‘Aye, that might be so. But know that now, being in my forest, you only have two choices: either to turn back, or to do my bidding. And,’ the Hunter noticed with an unpleasant grin, ‘I think you cannot turn back without dieing of hunger first.’

‘I see that you have me trapped, then,’ the prince said defiantly, but seeing his danger. ‘What is your bidding?’

To this, the Hunter was silent for a moment. He then spoke:

‘Know that you are the first who comes hither out of free will, and this shows either bravery or foolishness; but of this matter I am no judge. I can allow you to go on hunting, but under the following condition: that you will slay for me a terrible zmeu [see commentary] that looms inside my forest and that feasts on my animals. I could go on and slay it myself, but I am under command not to do so. I am allowed however to send any such as you. For ages and ages, I thought this moment would never come, but now you walk under my very nose. Also you must know that I will only allow you to move on with your quest if you succeed in this attempt. You will find that all roads lead to dead ends, and you will not be able to get out of this forest without my approval. But I will only allow you out if you slay this beast for me, or die trying. Will you take this task upon yourself?’

The prince frowned, seeing the mischief.

‘It is a tight spot I find myself in,’ he said. ‘If I refuse, I will die of hunger, or of your bow. And yet if I accept, I may die in the combat. But yea, I will accept, because I will not turn back with my journey unfinished.’

The Hunter smiled broadly at these words.

‘Young prince, I can see your courage, and I admire it. Here is the task I set upon you: in the middle of the forest, where it is so thick and tangled that no light creeps in, dwells this zmeu. On his forehead he has a precious stone the likes of which you have never seen before or will again. Like a sun it shines, piercing the darkness. You will bring that stone to me as proof of your success.’

The prince took out his sword, and pointing it towards the Hunter’s feet, he swore to try and do so. Then the Hunter spoke again, saying:

‘From this moment forward, you are free to hunt any animal in my forest that is as large as you can eat; but you can only do it to nourish yourself. Remember that I will know if you want to do it for sport, and I will be there, and my anger you cannot hope to face.’

The Hunter turned around and with quick feet was lost in the forest. Night was already gathering, so the prince camped close to the lake that night. When the morning came, he took his pack, summoned his will and judging from the sun’s position, he decided on the way he was to take. Long he walked, and many days went by as he got deeper into the forest, but the path kept on, well tended and easy to follow.

One day as he was travelling, the prince could hear water trickling. He headed towards it to drink and refresh his body from the long march. The water was not too cold, but enough so that he shivered when washing. However, after doing so, he felt stronger than ever, and his courage was renewed, for the water was, like everything else in this forest, magically under the protection of the Hunter, who was in truth a mighty and good spirit. Yet as the prince moved on, he saw a small pool of water, which had been part of the river some days before, when there had been a heavy rain that had swollen it. However now that the river had gone back to its bed, the pool stood some twenty feet away. In it, the prince saw a trapped fish, that had lost hope of survival and was no longer moving, but stood on one side. The prince never even thought of catching the fish, and not only because he was not hungry, but because he thought that getting food in this way, without giving his prey the chance to escape, was not right and not worthy of praise. Instead, he went to the pool and, taking out the fish, put it back in the river. No sooner had he done that that the fish, instead of swimming away, turned to him and spoke with human voice:

‘O noble prince, may your journey be blessed. In order to thank you for your generous deed, I will give you one of my scales. When in need, blow it in the air and I will come to your aid.’

Then the prince took one scale and, putting it safe, thanked the fish and saw to his journey. He walked for many days, and now the path became more untamed, with the tree roots often crossing it. Finally, the path was lost completely, but the prince moved on, more wary than before. Now he could see no more animals, and he somehow knew that he was leaving the safe lands and getting closer to his doom. How he was going to fight the terrible beast that had so perverted this part of the woods, he did not know. What he did know was that soon he would either be victorious or die with his task left undone and his father the king still waiting; waiting in vain. As he was walking so with his thoughts, he heard a distinctive buzz, and in the silence of the place, it struck him as the only sign of life in many days.

He turned around and saw broken trees in the gloom. Apparently a path had been forced and the trees had been uprooted. Many looked scraped by claws. One of them, a great pine, had its bark cut in several places, and resin had dripped out of them. The buzz could be heard from there, so there it was that the prince went. As he inspected the tree in the small light, he noticed a bee struggling vainly to break loose from the resin. He took a small twig and scraped around the bee, setting it free. Now instead of flying away as soon as it was free, the bee stopped at the prince’s ear and in a tiny voice spoke, saying:

‘O young warrior, I am glad that fate brought you this way, for else I would surely have perished here. But I see you downcast and sad.’

‘How could I not be,’ the prince answered, ‘seeing that I likely go to my death at the hands of a creature I can’t even imagine how to face?’

Then the bee, seemingly in a happy state, flew round the prince’s head a couple of times, and then spoke again.

‘We both are in luck, then,’ it said, ‘because I now see how I can help you and repay your good heart.’

And it began telling the prince all it knew about the terrible zmeu that lurked in that part of the forest.

‘Know that now the way has run towards the mountains, and the land is beginning to climb steadily. The zmeu lives in a great cave in the side of the mountains, where the forest is densest. He feeds on the animals that live in the forest, but because of the lack of life, most of them are small and bony around here. Lately, his greed was so great that there were no more left near his cave, and now he has to walk ever further to find them and please his stomach. These scars you see on the trees are from his passing. But the zmeu is not hunting for one meal only. He often goes abroad, causing terror, to refill his cave with the bodies of slain beasts. All you have to do is walk cautiously to his cave, without him noticing your presence. If he does, he will be upon you and so great is the terror that he brings that you likely could not face him.’

Then the bee instructed the prince further, telling him what he had to do if he wanted to kill the creature. Thanking the bee with all his heart, and blessing the moment he had heard its buzzing, the prince now went on. He was not far from the cave, but he took a long time to get there, because he choose winding paths among the trees, so that he would not be felt by the zmeu. Finally, he was in sight of the cave, and there was light coming out of it; but apart from that, the wood was so thick in these parts that the prince could not say whether it was day or night, as he had lost the notion of time. The light he saw there chilled his blood, because it meant that the zmeu was inside his cave. He quickly started to make a hiding place for himself next to one of the largest trees, so that the creature could not see him, but he could see the cave. As he did that, the prince began waiting for the zmeu to leave the cave and go hunting again before carrying on his plan, as instructed by the bee.

Then finally the zmeu left, and the darkness around him was the greater as the stone upon his brow shone unnaturally, with a beauty that took the prince’s breath away. Suddenly he felt the lust of having that stone for himself. He would kill the beast and become master over the stone. What did it matter that he could not finish his quest, now that he could have that jewel that the sun itself was jealous at? The zmeu, shrouded in sheer terror, moved out of sight. The prince waited for a bit more, and then made his move, knowing that the creature would be away for some time. The bee had told him that the zmeu travelled very fast, and that the distances the prince needed days to cover only took him a few hours, therefore the prince would have to be quick. He went to the cave, and the stench of it filled his lungs and his mind with nameless horrors. Still he held fast, and finding the bodies of the dead animals, he took out his knife and began chopping them, and spilling their blood all over the place. He soiled the walls with the dead beasts’ blood. In this way, the bee had told him, the zmeu would be unable to smell him.

‘As he comes back,’ it had said, ‘you will have to be in the cave too. Now that will be the most difficult moment: as he approaches, all living things feel the cold of death upon them and cannot move any more. But you have to master yourself, and have your bow ready. As he comes in, he’ll see the blood and smell it. He will for a moment be taken at unawares and will not be able to tell what happened; nor will he be able to smell you. And then you have to make your move, but you have to be lightning fast, otherwise you miss your only chance and he’ll be upon you.’

Hardly had the prince finished this task that he thought he heard a terrible bellow outside. He hid behind a tumbled boulder inside the cave and drew out his bow, putting two arrows in it at once. He tensed, waiting.

Soon, a terrible light appeared in the dark cave: the zmeu was back. For a second, he looked at the grotesque sight of the chopped animals, with their guts and blood all over the cave walls. He gave such a horrific cry that the stones shook and the air trembled. The prince felt his hand grow numb, and almost let the bow fall. The zmeu said, in a terrible voice:

‘Come out, whoever you are, and meet your death! I know you are here!’

He then turned towards the boulder where the prince lay hid. Suddenly, before he managed to make a move, two arrows smote him, one taking out one of his eyes, and another piercing his throat. He screamed in pain, but was not killed. Pulling out the arrows, he started towards the place where the prince stood. This one, in his turn, did not wait to see how his shooting went; he jumped from behind the rock, sword in hand, and dashed toward the zmeu, shouting in a mighty voice.

He landed a blow on the right of the zmeu, but this one barred the blow with his heavy scaled skin. He then attacked back, hitting the prince with his huge hand, and his sharp claws pierced the prince’s clothes and skin easily, throwing him on the wet floor, with his breath blown out. In his agony, the prince could see his enemy. He was almost as large as the Hunter, but not as massive. Instead, his hands were rather thin, but strong as iron. Though in shape more like a man, he was naked and covered in scales, looking like some terrible lizard. The zmeu had a crest at the back oh his head, but the prince could see little more than that, because he was blinded by the unearthly light of the jewel on the head of the monster.

The prince barely had time to get up, while the zmeu ran to the back of the cave, there taking out his own sword. The prince quickly got out of the cave, with the zmeu close in pursuit.

‘Running away will not help you, prince,’ the creature said, ‘for I am much faster than you. Now that you dared enter my place, I will kill you. Stay and fight like a man.’

The prince did not want to run, but only to fight in the open. The two crossed swords. The prince had been a master swordsman in his country, but he was no match to the zmeu. Slowly, he was giving way to the devastating blows of his enemy. Just as he was thinking that he could go on no more, he heard a familiar voice in his ear: it was the bee.

‘Fear not, my prince,’ it said, ‘for I will not let you fail. On my wings I have brought you magic pollen that will give you strength. Just open your mouth.’

The prince did, and the bee flung its wings over his lips. As soon as he tasted the pollen, the prince felt as if wings had grown in his arms, and his strength was renewed. Suddenly the zmeu was pushed back, and his face was terrible to behold in his fury. Three times power deserted the prince, and three times the bee came to him. The battle raged for three days and three nights in the darkness, lit only by the stone on the zmeu’s brow. Now both were tired, and they hit their swords one more time, so hard that both broke from the middle. They threw them aside. The prince caught the zmeu by the middle and heaving him, thrust him in the ground to his ankles. The zmeu, freeing himself, heaved the prince, thrusting him in the ground to his belt. Now the prince, getting out of the earth, grabbed the zmeu once more, and putting forth all his remaining strength, thrust him in the ground all the way to his neck. Then, seeing his enemy there, he took the remaining piece of his sword and severed his head from the body.

The head rolled away, with the jewel shining more brightly than before, if that could be. In that dark place, its shape could not be seen, only its light.

‘All mine,’ the prince said, starting towards the monstrous head. Then something happened inside his mind: he could not explain it, but suddenly he felt afraid of that jewel. He felt that if he saw or touched that precious stone with his hand, he would be lost forever; reality now seemed thin around him, and he could see and hear more than it was usual: the darkness did not seem so dark anymore, and the noises were sharper. His quest and his father came to his mind with great force. Instead of going to the dead zmeu’s head, he walked towards his hiding place and took from there his pack and his knife. He moved again towards the head, but this time without looking at it. He tore a piece of his clothes and put it over the jewel. Feeling rather than seeing, he started cutting the stone from the monster’s forehead. When this was done, he wrapped the jewel several times in the cloth, until its shining could hardly be seen any more. The jewel was no larger than a chicken egg, but it felt tremendously heavy. The prince cautiously put it in his pack, and turning his back to the cave of dread, he left that place. He did not bother to take his broken sword.

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Commentary

There are three elements specific to the Romanian fairy story that I incorporated in this part: the zmeu, the helping animals and the fight between the prince and the zmeu.

The 'zmeu' is a typical Romanian fairy tale creature, thus the name is not translated. Usually it acts as the main villain whom the hero has to slay. The zmeu is the one who steals the princesses and keeps them away in his castle of gold in the 'other world'. In aspect, it is difficult to define. Sometimes said to be like a dragon (and so translated into English as 'dragon'), it seems to me that this is incorrect, and the zmeu is humanoid in appearance, only that it is very terrible to look upon, and downright ugly and menacing. Sometimes zmei (the plural) have wings, but not always. Also, sometimes they are said to wear a precious stone on their forehead, which outshines the sun. I also chose mine to wear this stone. However I set this creature to live in a cave instead of a castle.

The helping animals are a common motif, and act the same way as Saint Friday/Sunday, only of course they are not human and are used to show the main character's good heart towards animals as well as towards people.

The fight between the prince and the zmeu is probably the most absurd, but also it is deeply rooted in the traditional tales. Most battles of this kind end with the fighters thrusting each other in the ground, with the hero thrusting the enemy to his neck and cutting his head. It always looked to me weird, because in Romanian folkloric tales, the zmeu asks the hero how they should fight: either with sword, mace or bare hand, and the hero always answers to choose the bare hands because this is the fairest fight. However after thrusting the zmeu to his neck in the ground, the hero 'forgets' his own words and, grabbing his sword, decapitates his enemy. At least I made away with the dialogue, so the head cutting seems justified under the circumstances.

Now, for the Hunter: that is not a traditional element, and I choose it purely for my own liking. I would even say it is this image of a 'Hunter' in a forest that made me start this fairy tale. The Hunter is a good spirit, as I said in the story itself. I also noticed, upon reading the demand of the Hunter to the prince, that it very much resembled the scene between Thingol and Beren in 'The Silmarillion', where the elf king asks for a Silmaril. However, as before, this is a mere coincidence, not an intentional resemblance.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Well, I had not thought about the stone like that, but now that you mention it, the resemblance of Perseus and Medusa is apparent. This proves that motifs and themes are not new, but merely repeated. In the section I now present, you'll see what the stone was all about.

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After many days’ journeying, he finally saw a great clearing, and there, in its middle, stood a large house. He knew somehow that it was the place he had to get to, and he had done no effort to find it. The power of the Hunter was running so strong in the veins of this forest that he had no doubt his steps had been guided that way. He got through the gate surrounding the house at some distance, and proceeded towards the house itself. It was made of wood, but not very large. It had at most three chambers. The house had windows looking in every direction. As he got closer, the front door opened, and out came the huge figure of the Hunter, a big smile on his face.

The prince knelt, took off his pack and out of it took the bundle with the precious stone. In the light of day, so well packed, its light was no longer visible; however the stone still felt exceedingly heavy. He handed it to the Hunter, saying:

‘My mission is done. Here is the proof you asked.’

Taking it from the prince’s hand, the Hunter answered:

‘You did well; better than I hoped. For you see, what I did not tell you was that this stone was cursed. If you laid eyes on it, or touched it, you would have been enslaved by it.’

Now the Hunter took the stone out of the bundle and held it in his large palm. It still shone, but without that mysterious glow it had at first. The Hunter went on:

‘This was a large diamond once, which people found buried deep in the ground, on the other side of the Impassable Mountains, as you call them. But the man who got it was murdered by another, who lusted for the precious stone. That one was himself killed, and this went on. But you see, this stone is enchanted. It rejoices in blood spilling, and it dominates its possessor. The spirits of those slain over it are bound forever to it, so that whenever someone is killed, his spirit passes into the stone, and the jewel becomes more beautiful and more irresistible, shining with the light of those spirits from within. For many an age this stone was in the hands of men, but never could one hold it for long. But finally, the last one who possessed it, in fear of losing his life too, and driven by the power in the jewel, found a way over these mountains, settling in the woods. I was aware of him, but the Emperor forbade me to slay him. In time, he was transformed by the malice of the stone into a terrible creature, the one you killed. But you, on the other hand, did not claim it for yourself, but of free will brought it to me. Doing that was right. Behold!’

As he said it, the Hunter squeezed the large diamond between his palms. At once, a mist began to emerge from it, taking the shape of a human figure. As it formed, it rushed through the air and vanished. Another form began to appear, and so on, until the prince lost count of them. Finally the stone was left bare of any radiance, shining only with what light it caught from the sun’s rays.

‘Do you see now,’ said the Hunter, ‘how many victims this simple stone did? Do not think these were all simple men; among the spirits you saw were kings and great learners, all overcome by temptation to have it. Your not succumbing shows a great determination and a true heart. You passed the test that none before you could. This stone now has to be destroyed.’

Saying this, he took a great hammer from his house and, putting the diamond on a large rock, gave it a mighty blow. The rock below was cracked, but the diamond was also splintered.

‘So this is done,’ he said. ‘After all these ages, an evil has been forever wiped out.’

The prince looked up at the Hunter’s face, and saw him in all his glory, his spirit shining through the body. He felt a shiver down his spine.

‘Who are you, in fact?’ he asked, ‘and what is this place we’re in?’

The Hunter pondered the questions before speaking.

‘My prince, I have already told you that I am the guardian of this forest, and that none can go further without my leave. I have been here from the beginning of time. What this place is, I am not allowed to tell you. You will have to seek the Emperor, now that you have accomplished your task, and ask him the question you are here to ask. I am but his servant, and will do as I am told.’

‘Then,’ said the prince, ‘where does this Emperor live? My father sent me to find out what I could about this land, but everything is odd here, and I have as yet seen no men, nor any villages, as if I am in a world forbidden to mortals.’

‘There will be men, once you get to the city of the Emperor,’ said the Hunter. Everyone dwells there, while here stands only the forest.’

‘Aye, but is it far to go?’ asked the prince. ‘My father is waiting at home, and he is old. Already my journey lasted a long time. I should soon turn back to my home, if ever I hope to find him alive and tell him what he asked of me.’

‘Your journey may have already lasted longer than you know,’ the Hunter said mysteriously. ‘But this need not disturb you. If you would listen to my advice, you’d better renounce the search and turn back home. But I am not here to stop you, not anymore; and if you still wish, I grant you permission to go on; and you will find that this road, starting at the back of my house, will take you out of the forest. You can spend the night at my house, and leave in the morning.’

Then the prince thanked the Hunter for his offer and rested in one of the chambers of his house. Next morning, when he got up, he looked around him to see that instead of the bed he had gone to sleep in, he was now sitting on the grass, in the same clearing as the day before. But there was no house there, nor the signs that there ever had been one. The Hunter was nowhere to be seen. The path he had spoken about was there, however. He whistled once in surprise, then packed everything and left that calm place, with green fragrant grass and small yellow and blue flowers growing in patches. He entered the forest again, but the trees were here further apart, not closing in on him any longer but making way, as it seemed, for him to pass easily.


He walked and walked; slowly but surely, the forest was growing ever thinner and the trees were younger in these parts, with slender trunks and branches. The grass, however, was taller than before; not by much, and not on the path, where it was short and of a paler green, but on the forest floor. It hardly seemed like a forest at all, for that matter, because the green, healthy grass was growing all around the trees, and patches of clear soil were hardly to be seen. The prince saw many animals, but mostly rabbits, small deer and the like. It was too low in the plains here for bears or wolves. Come to think about it, he could not remember ever seeing any of those at all. But then again, the forest was so huge that for all his long walks, he could easily have missed them. He rejoiced in the fresh air and the warm days. He had lost count of time since he had come, but he could remember that the weather had almost always been like that. It had rained from time to time, but those were only brief showers. Also, he could not feel any changes in temperature, which for all the time he had been there stayed mostly the same, with cool, pleasant nights and warm days when the sun shone brightly (and now he could see it much better since the trees were rather scattered around); brightly, but not burning. In other words, everything seemed very still, as if this place had been forgotten in time and no change ever came over it.

Now came a day when the forest ended completely. As far ahead as the prince could see, there was only the green plain. At night, he could see the stars so clear overhead that he almost felt he could touch them. In the light breeze that caressed the tall grass, making it rustle gently, he heard the crickets and was at ease. He slept and woke up refreshed.

One day later, the prince got to a huge river that crossed the plain: it was so wide that at first the prince took it for a lake and wanted to go round it. But as he walked, for hours on end, he realised that in fact it was not a lake, and that he would have to cross it. From the point he had reached, up on a flat, low hill, he could see the other bank and some of the plain on the other side. But he was surprised to discover that he could not see much of it: there was a mist over the place, and while mists had been a normal sight at home, here that one seemed strange. As he pondered how he should get over to the other bank, he saw from the top of the mound, on his side of the river, a small bunch of trees, perhaps no more than ten, all clustered on the bank. He headed that way and reached them shortly.

He tried the water, and saw that it was cold and, a few paces from the shore, already very deep. He could not swim all the distance, mainly because of it being so chilly. Looking up at the trees, he decided he would try to make a small raft. The task was lengthy and difficult, because he did not have the right tools. With the help of his knife, it took him several days to chop down a slender tree and make a raft out of it.

When he put it on the water, however, the raft sank as if it had been made of iron, not wood. The prince stood there, looking but not understanding. He took a piece of the wood he had been working with, weighed it in his hands, and found it very light, enough so that it should have been able to stay afloat and carry a large burden. He thrust it in the water; no sooner had he done it that the log sank and never came back up. There was nothing to do, then, the prince thought. He tried to swim over. He had done less than a hundred feet when suddenly he felt his powers leaving him. He was so tired he felt he would be able to go no further. With the fear of drowning strong in his mind, he turned back to shore. When he reached it, he was so exhausted that he fell on the ground and slept for a full day.

When he got up, he despaired. He did not know what he could do to cross that river. He began searching his pack for some food, when he discovered the scale from the fish he had saved in the small pool deep in the forest. He had completely forgotten about that, but now he took it out and blew it in the air, wishing for the fish. As soon as he did that, he heard a splash in the water and, looking down, he saw the fish there.

‘You have called me, and I came to your help,’ it said. ‘What is your need, brave prince?’

‘My dear fish, how glad I am to see you,’ said the prince. ‘I need to cross this river, but cannot do so.’

‘If in truth this is your wish, I must tell you that the river is enchanted, so that no one may cross it. Nor would you want to cross it,’ the fish added. ‘On the other side, things may not be to your liking.’

‘Yet go on I must,’ said the prince, ‘whether I like it or not.’ He remembered the words of the Hunter, who had also advised him to turn back.

‘Well then,’ said the fish, ‘I can help you. You just have to wait here for me to find some of my brethren, and together we will carry you over.’

As it finished speaking, the fish disappeared in the deeps. The prince did not have to wait long, and the fish came back with many others, and it talked again:

‘Now, valiant prince, get into the water and lay on your belly, just like when you are swimming. We will go under you and keep you afloat as we pass you over.’

The prince did what he was asked and he felt his body being uplifted by the multitude of fish. Then the one he had saved talked again, saying:

‘Be careful: the crossing will not take long, but to you it may seem like an eternity. You will feel your power draining from your body, and will want to let go. But hold on. You cannot sink while we are with you, but if you drop unconscious, you may drown if you swallow the water. Are you now ready to go?’

The prince said he was, and the fish started swimming vigorously. At first he found the speed to be very good, and figured out that they would be on the other side in a matter of minutes. But as they advanced, he started to feel weary, on the verge of sleep, and all of a sudden, it seemed to him that the fish were either going very slowly or the shore was moving away. He made efforts to stay awake, but it was not long that he found he was so tired that he could hardly keep his eyes open. He closed them and his mind slowly drifted away. Then he felt that even breathing was too hard, and that he could not do it, and he greeted death as a liberation from that state. But once he stopped breathing, he felt a strong shock going through his body, and opening his eyes, saw that he was on the shore, dripping wet and trembling, but alive. The fish were all there, looking at him. He thanked them all with great effort. The fish he had saved from the pool wished him luck, and then they were gone. The prince however was fast asleep long before the waves of their tails had reached the shore.



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Commentary

In relation to traditional Romanian fairy tales, I believe (though I can't guarantee) my conception of the diamond being cursed and filled with the spirits of the dead to be original. Of course, if we look closer, we have no difficulty in comparing this to the One Ring of Sauron, which as I said in the beginning of this post, shows how themes are reused. However, the idea only came to me as I was writing about the prince's return to the Hunter. Initially I had thought of the stone simply in terms of a payment to the Hunter to grant the prince passage.

There is nothing special with the hut of the Hunter disappearing over the night; it just seemed good this way, in order to further emphasise the magic of the land, so specific to fairy tales.

The river clearly looks like the Styx in the Greek underworld, but again, it was never intended to be a river from the start, but a lake (that is why I made the prince think that it was a lake!), and the fact that the prince cannot swim it over or make a raft stay afloat is a device used simply so that the fish he had helped could come to the scene and play its part. The story will begin to rush to the end in the following sections, and there you will see some unconventional motifs.

All in due time, however.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Well, not really. I only envisioned the Hunter as a powerful spirit that is embodied - you could rather say I took Beorn from 'The Hobbit' as a model, if at all. Again, to me the Hunter is what Tom Bombadil was for Tolkien: a mystery that is partially explained. I did not even think where he had come from or why he was guarding that forest (such as I explained in the case of the zmeu). Of course the comparison to Charon is more or less correct. As an anecdote, I remember a few years ago I was debating a similar matter with my Romanian teacher (that it, she was teaching Romanian grammar and literature), in the case of a poem. We tried to find hidden meanings in most every verse and I asked her why that is, when clearly the poet only intended what he had written, with no side meanings. She told me that the poet often does not know what he means and it is our 'duty' to discover. Now you're discovering things I did not know I was writing about!

Let's move to the next part now.

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For three days and three nights the prince slept, and he wavered from dream to dream, while his powers slowly built up. When he got up, on the third morning, he saw that he lay where the fish had put him, but the soil on this side of the river was not so green any more. The grass was short and rather dry, and the ground was dustier; he felt as if he had gotten back in his father’s kingdom, and thought that everything had been only a dream. But when he looked around, he could still see the wide river. He was not at home, but in the strange realm over the Mountains, after all. However, the lands on this part of the great river were altogether different from those he had come from. There was little grass, and the air was cool even during the day, and there was a mist over the plain.

He felt sad, somehow, as he started walking through that inhospitable region. The mists would not clear around him, and he felt a mild desire to go back to the clear woods whence he had come. The air about him was wet and cold, ever colder and darker as the sun began to lower, somewhere unseen to the prince’s eyes. As he moved on, he could see little vegetation, in the form of sickly yellowish patches of grass, which looked as if it had been killed by too much water. But there was no river, no lake or anything to break the monotony; the prince could see only at around two hundred feet ahead, but as he walked, there came no change in the landscape.

By the end of the day, he was rather guessing at his direction, and when it became too dark to move on, he stopped, made a sign on the ground with his boot, and then walked further on for about twenty feet, where he piled some of the earth in a small heap. He then went back to the sign he had drawn and set his camp there. He hoped in this way that if the mists would not clear by the next day and he lost his orientation when sleeping, he would wake up to see the mound and so regain direction. There was no shelter for him and the cold was biting, with his clothes being damp and the earth below moist; he turned and turned, but sleep would not come easily that night. It did come, however, and the prince was lost in a dream that he could not remember clearly next morning. All he could recall of it was that he was in that misty plain, and that silent shapes were passing him by, some glancing at him as they went, always faster than him, and always disappearing in the thick mist ahead.

When he woke up, the prince looked around: the fog was just as it had been on the previous day. He should have been able to see the pile of dirt easily, but he could not: it had vanished without a trace. He looked behind him, and guessed the crisscrossing sign he had drawn the night before. So he was at the same place, after all, but now he had no idea where he should be heading. Leaving his pack in place, he went in ever growing circles around it, hoping to discover the mould; this proved to be useless, and the prince returned to his camp really downcast. He found no better solution than to choose a direction and follow it, to whatever end. He imagined that he could thus be going back to the river, or simply moving along it and so reach no further into that country, but he did not have any alternative than to trust his luck.

He marched on, and now he was feeling a stronger desire to turn back; he tried to ignore it, but didn’t quite manage to. For many days, he walked in this way, always building up a mould in the evening, and always finding it gone the next day. The weather grew no better, and he started to have a feeling that he was a prisoner here, and was in fact going up in circles, doomed never to find his way out again. As his journey dragged on, he began to feel an urge to turn back home. It was piercing his mind like a knife, and every step forward that he took was causing him physical pain. At one point, he collapsed on the earth, and breathing hard, closed his eyes and started crying. He was in the grips of this unquenchable idea of turning back from that land, that he could no longer move, no longer think, no longer care. He stood there, with the fog everywhere around him, waiting for everything to end.

Standing there, he was lost in a dream where he saw himself in the royal palace of his father, promising to explore the lands over the Impassable Mountains and come back to report. He had gotten over the Mountains in the end, but Saint Friday had told him that there was no other way except flying. Then he had seen the immense forest and its guardian, the Hunter, and found out that he could not hunt there without his permission. He wondered why he had lingered, and why he had pushed on, when it had been clear from the start that his father the king had no way of getting here with an army at all. But deep in his heart, he had the answer to this. Up on the mountain top, he had seen a glimmer in the distance. That glimmer had entered his mind and his heart, and he purposed to get to it. Then, just as he was thinking this, he thought he could hear low moaning and faint cries of an unfathomable sadness. The prince stood up from the ground, the dream losing shape suddenly. He was sweating despite of the cold. His heart had almost stood still in that dream when he had heard the cries. He looked around him, but in the blackness of the night, he could not see even his outstretched hand. He lay down on the ground instead. As he did so, it appeared to him that there were low rumblings underground; they were not directly under him, but coming from far away. The prince sprang up again, his heart thumping. He took his pack, and started in the direction of those rumbles, going slowly in the complete darkness.

He moved on, now only vaguely aware of the longing to be back in the forest, where he had parted with his horse. Instead, another feeling was getting hold of him, and that was one of restlessness, driving him forward through the night. The sun began rising somewhere, and the darkness turned to grey. As it did, the prince was again aware of the mist that was engulfing him. He realised, for the first time, how silent everything was. For all his journey in this land, he had not heard a single bird singing, or a single animal. The silence had been complete, as if he had entered a world where everything had died, everything but the fog, which was always there, never vanquished by the sun. He pressed on, ever faster; his pack was empty, but now he did not care any more about food or about water. If he could have seen himself, he would have shuddered at the sight. He was thin, and his skin was stretched on his skull, his eyes bulging grotesquely in his head. His clothes had begun looking like rags, and his hands were almost like claws. But the prince was oblivious to all this, as his mind was set on just one thing: to move on, to follow the rumbling from underground.

How long he went like that, he did not know; nor did it matter to him. Every day, he looked worse. He would stop sometimes, dropping off like a dead animal and laying on the ground, but he always got up, a haunted look in his eyes, and kept on going. The fog, ominous, stood firm around him.

Then one day, the mist gave way. The prince walked right out of it, leaving the milky wall of it behind him. He blinked in the sun, and shunning it, covered his eyes. He dropped to the ground, trembling like a beast that has been caught by a fierce predator. In the bright day, he was an appalling sight: he was little more than a skeleton, and his skin was white, the purple-blue veins running clearly just under it. His hair had fallen in many places, and the clothes had rotten in the damp air, giving him the look of a cadaver. Eventually, the prince got up and withstood the light. He looked in amazement at the scene that was revealed before him. Some miles ahead, there was a huge city with enormous towers, all of them surpassing easily the tall tower in his father’s castle. The walls of this city were so massive that he could see them clearly, in spite of the large distance. But the most impressive building was an enormous dome that rose mightily behind all the rest of the buildings in that city. He suddenly felt his heart leap in him, realising that he was looking at the very place that he had seen shining from that mountain, in a time that seemed lost in the past, but was now so vividly recalled to him.

He almost sprang forward, moving as fast as his feet would carry him. As he got closer, another feeling began to take hold of him: it was as if something was telling him to slow down, turn around and run as fast as his legs would carry him. The two feelings raged in his head, giving battle. The prince did slow down, but before he could stop, he was already at the black gate of that city, which was towering well above him. He found a rope, and pulled it; there was a loud, low sound, and then the gate moved with a noise like thunder. It stood ajar. The prince entered, fearfully. As he got inside the city, he could see the buildings: each was like a large castle; from inside came noises and crying. What was left of the prince’s hair stood up on his head. He wanted to turn back, but it was too late. Silently, the gate had closed behind him. He did not try it: he knew that even a strong battering ram could not have broken it; he was trapped inside, and though he could see no man on the large cobbled streets, he could feel their presence and their suffering behind the walls of those castles. He could do nothing, though, so he moved on. For the rest of the day, he passed through the deserted streets, hearing sounds and faint voices everywhere around him. Nobody crossed his path as he headed towards the enormous dome in the centre of the city. As he drew close, its size dwarfed everything else. He got to it, eventually, and found there a door. A man was guarding it. As the prince approached, he spoke:

‘Where are you going, pale shadow?’

‘Stand back,’ the prince put in, ‘for I am come to seek the master of this land, the Emperor.’

‘If so,’ the man spoke, ‘then go in. You are expected.’

As the prince moved past him, he could see that the man was not in fact human. His eyes were totally white, and he looked like some sort of a spirit that had just taken the shape of a man. He shuddered, but moved through the door. Inside it was quite dark, but as he walked the endless corridor, the prince’s eyes got used to it. He moved form room to room, some large and some very large, but he could not see the end of it. In some of these rooms stood shapes, moaning. They looked like men and women suffering torture, while others, similar to the one at the door, were carrying it out. But it looked to him that if they were torturing the persons in those rooms, they were doing it mentally, because there was no one causing any physical pain. The prince thought of the grotesque scene, as some of these shapes looked up to him, as if asking for help. Those that had the courage to do so seemed to suffer even more, as if their torturers were bending their dark thoughts more strongly over them.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the prince got to a room that was so large he could not comprehend it. The roof was almost lost in the distance above him, and the surrounding walls were so far that he reckoned he would take many hours to walk from end to end of this hall. He did move through it, though. As he approached the centre of it, he was aware that there was a large chair there, and someone was standing in it. He moved closer, and soon the prince was standing in front of a shape so terrible that his eyes fell to the floor and he dared not raise them again. The shape looked like a mighty king of old, carved in stone, but so alive it hurt the mind of the prince. It was as if eons of time were standing there in one place, in one single creature. Then the figure spoke, and his voice came from everywhere: from the person on the chair, from the air and even from the prince himself:

‘So you have come, young fool. Over all of my lands you have trodden, unstoppable, and now you are here. But it cost you dearly.’

As he was standing numb, not daring to look up, the prince saw the floor before him turning to water. He looked in it and could see himself. He shrieked and fell back at the image of his dead body. The figure on the chair spoke again:

‘Know then, O prince, that I am the Emperor, and that you are now in the Land of Death. This is my country, all the way from the feet of the mountains where your horse left you, to this mighty city you are in. Those alive are not permitted to be here, yet you chose to come freely. But even you were finally defeated by the Country of Sorrow, where mists never lift and the mind is driven mad by the desire to return. You have conquered this desire, but you gave up your life in the process.’

The prince then looked up, and finding the courage, spoke:

‘Mighty Emperor, out of free will I came, and to bring my father the information that he asked of me. I did not know, and was not told, that I trod in a land that was not meant for one like me.’

As he spoke, he thought however of all the difficulties he had had on the way, and of how he never gave up, and he remembered the words of his father, in the forest long ago: “do not rashly put your life in danger, as you seek to find the answer to my question”, he had said. But the prince had forgotten them, too eager to win the love of his father. The Emperor read his mind and said:

‘Do you not remember the words of your horse, telling you that you will not find happiness in these parts? Do you not remember the words of the Hunter, who advised you to turn back? Or the mighty river which you could not have crossed on your own, or even the desolate plains, where your heart urged you to return and forsake this futile quest? All the way I sent hints to you, so that you would not come here; and still you held on to your quest, blind to every sign.’

To the prince’s astonishment, the Emperor sighed. Then he spoke like this:

‘Young and rash prince, you have come here and though you renounced your life, you were already in the Land of the Dead when you did so. Therefore you have to be punished, just like all those here are punished for the wrongs of their lives: some are left here for eternity, and some move on to a better place. For know that not even I, the Emperor, am the highest in order. One is above me, and holds the rule of the world, and I am merely His servant. But in this land, I am in command, and I will not let you move on, good of heart and faultless as you may be.’

‘But what am I guilty of,’ the prince asked, ‘that I am to be punished for, and how will it be done?’

‘Your guilt,’ said the Emperor, ‘is, as I have told you already, that you ignored my signs and did not turn back while you still could. Your penitence will begin now.’

No sooner had he finished his words than one of those white-eyed figures came to the prince, out of nowhere, and bowed to the Emperor, as if he had been summoned. The prince looked at the scene and thought it very likely that the creature had indeed been called, albeit not with spoken words. Then the figure turned to the prince, saying:

‘You shall now follow me.’

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Commentary

As I have said, I introduced here some motifs that are not to be found in Romanian fairy-tales. First of all, the desolate field of mist, where the prince died: it is a weird death, really, where he did not realise it had happened until the Emperor had told him. In the dream he has (3rd paragraph), where he sees 'silent shapes', he in fact sees the souls of dead people passing him by and going towards the Emperor's city. In Romanian fairy tales, the hero does not die (except in one notable case, which I will discuss in a later post.)

Secondly, the city the prince gets to. This is like a Purgatory - and here I did have some inspiration from Dante Alighieri's 'Purgatory', but only in the concept, not in the setting of it (Dante describes Purgatory as being on a mountain, but mine is just in a gargantuan city.) In fact, it is at the same time an Inferno, which is made clear in the Emperor's statement that some spirits never leave this land.

Now some things are made clear: you may remember that the horse told the prince that this land was not for the 'likes of them' - by which he meant those alive, being a reference which of course the prince (and the reader) could not at that point understand. Also the words of all the other characters are clear now, and it is seen that all tried to dissuade the prince to go on, though they did not succeed.

When the Emperor says that One is still above him in authority, he refers to God, of course. This reference may be a cross-cultural upsetter, in the case of those who do not take God as a supreme being, but I think the story still reflects its author's preferences, so I kept it like that. Also this is an element that is not made clear in Romanian fairy stories.

My story will be over in just two more posts, seeing that a post stands at around 2500-3000 words so that it is still readable without becoming tiresome. There is another unusual motif that will emerge later on.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

All right, this I will do, and with this post we are only one step away from the end! I took a short break not because I did not have the story ready, but because I wanted to give you the time you were talking about, Star.

Also, please notice that I edited the second post of this story, so that you could read the corrected version of the king's dream, which Alavaro said was unclear.

Here we go...

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They left the throne of the Emperor and began walking across the endless room. They made a long journey through countless corridors and past innumerable closed doors behind which there were all sort of appalling sounds. Travelling through that city, the prince could feel the mind of the creature reaching toward his own, trying to fill it with doubts and despair. Once he asked out loud what was happening and why the figure was torturing him like this, but instead of an answer, he felt the grip of the other’s mind strengthen over his own, and he moaned in pain. He fell silent for the rest of the way. Suddenly, they stopped in front of a door, and the creature spoke:

‘We have arrived. Go inside while I wait for you here.’

The prince opened the door, glad to be rid of his terrible companion even for a short while. There had been torch light on the corridor, but the room he stepped in was only dimly lit and at first, the prince could see nothing. As his eyes got used to the darkness, he noticed that the room was very small, with bare walls made of large stones, looking like the cells in his father’s castle. He then noticed the shape of a man standing close to him. He turned to it, and had the first great shock since he had left home: the shape he was seeing was none other than his own father!

The prince staggered backward, and hit the wall behind him. The shape spoke:

‘Can… can it be? Are you… my lost son?’

‘Father?’ asked the prince. ‘What are you doing here?’

As he said this, he rushed to the standing king and hugged him tightly. After all this time, in the far Land of the Death, father and son were reunited. The king looked at the prince, and said:

‘What happened to you? Why do you look like this, thin like a shadow and all dressed in rags?’

Then the prince told his father of the journey he had made, and the king sighed deeply. He told his son:

‘For countless years I have been here, though their passing is not clear in this place. For a long time I waited for you to come back, ever gazing from my tall tower, until my vision grew dim and I could not see any more. Then I lay down and still waited, until I was deaf and could no longer hear. Then I put my head down one day and was gone from the world. My journey was over the same lands as you trod, but to me it seemed like a dream, at first beautiful, and then dreadful. I woke up in this room, and have been here ever since, serving my sentence.’

‘But what have you done wrong, father?’ the prince asked, puzzled.

‘Remember, my son, that in my youth I was a great warrior and leader of troops. Many have fallen by my sword. They were our enemies, but in the larger scheme of things, they were creatures of the Ruling One, and my killing them is a sin, though back then it might have seemed right. But it is not that which kept me here for so long. I committed a deadly sin in my old age, one that shames me even in death: I brought you here, you who were never guilty of anything, and whose heart was always true. And now you must, because of me, also pay dearly.’

Then the king wept, and the prince said:

‘Do not cry, father. If this is the fate that was written for me, I will take it. But tell me something, what are these dreadful creatures who enter our minds?’

‘They are guardians,’ the king said. ‘They torture the dead souls, so to speak. In fact, what they do is remind them of all the wrongs of their life, so that they never forget and never escape the feeling of guilt. In my case… in my case it was not knowing what had happened to you. And now, as I look at you, my heart is the bitterer, seeing how my madness in old age turned you to a wraith almost.’

‘As for me,’ the prince said, ‘I suffer to see you here, father. It may be that this is my torture, though the Emperor said that not all souls are to be kept prisoners in this unspeakable land forever; and I deem your sentence will be swift, for you were a good king and a loving father. Do not weep over my fate, for everything happens as it was written and for reasons we do not see.’

The prince had not been long in the dark chamber with his father, when the door opened and his guardian bade him come out. Father and son said their goodbyes quickly, and then the prince obeyed the command of the other, who had already entered his mind and was punishing him for having lingered. When he came on the corridor, the creature spoke:

‘You are now to receive your punishment, as decreed by the Emperor. You shall leave the City of the Dead and return to your own lands, where full life will come back to you. You are now free to go.’

Saying this, the guardian led the puzzled prince to the gates of the city, which opened before him, letting him out in the plain.


He turned to look back, but the gates had already closed. He began crossing the misty lands the way he had come, and at first he felt no weariness. He marched day and night, heeding little the cold and the sadness of the land, which he had felt so strongly at the first passing.

To the prince time had no meaning almost, and so he was surprised one day to see the great river ahead of him and the mists behind. Yet now, as he got to the shore, he thought he could feel a difference in the air, and was glad that the fogs had been left behind at last. He looked over his shoulder and shuddered at the thought that he had walked through them without feeling anything, just like a dead person. Then, pondering this, he realised that he was, in fact, dead; but now some life seemed to be returning to him at last.

He dared the river and found that he could swim without getting tired. At first, he barely touched the water, feeling light as a feather upon it; yet as he approached the further shore, the prince became aware of his own weight, and he had to swim harder to stay afloat. Finally he reached the bank, and rested for a moment on the green grass. As he smelled and touched it, he was flooded with the memories of long ago, and began to weep. He started to understand now the true suffering of the souls in the Emperor’s city, sufferings that he had also felt briefly. He understood that the real torture was the long lost memory of beauty, removed from the prisoners’ minds by their passing through the Land of Sorrow, but retained in their subconscious. He got up and started walking again, but this time he found he was getting tired from the march: not as easily as before, in his forgotten life, but still relatively fast as compared to the days in the lands of fog.

Not long after, he was back in the great forest of the Hunter, walking in that blissful country at the edge of the Land of Death. Now he had to rest every day, but he did not feel either hunger or thirst. He kept going for a long time, without thinking of the direction or of how he was going to cross the Impassable Mountains, almost as if his steps were guided by an external force, which he thought might be true.

Then, one day, the prince had a new sensation: his mouth was dry, and he felt thoroughly uncomfortable. He wondered what that might be, and then sudden remembrance struck him: he was thirsty, but for so long he had not needed water that he had forgotten thirst entirely. He went on, listening closely for any sound of running water. Finally he found a small spring, and drinking he felt refreshed; yet again, at the taste of sweet, cold water, he saddened at the thought of the damned souls who were no longer being able to drink it, who had already forgotten it existed.

With each passing day, the prince was feeling better, and he walked more gladly, listening to the birds singing, and to the wind in the trees. The fragrance and the magnificent colours of the flowers enchanted him, and he did not even notice when the road began climbing towards the Mountains. Nevertheless, one day he started wondering what he was going to do once he got out of the forest and onto the slopes of the snowy peaks, which he knew he could not pass over unless he would have been able to fly like before.

Eventually, the prince reached some parts of the forest where trees were smaller and grew further apart, and he knew then that his greatest challenge was now ahead of him, and he despaired when he glimpsed the peaks through the trees, because he knew he could not hope to climb them. Then, as he trod ahead slowly, he saw someone moving towards him from the trees on his left. He stopped to meet the stranger, tensing his body in defence, because he did not have any of his weapons any longer. However, when the shape was in the open, the prince saw that it was none other than the Hunter. He was very glad to see him: again, it was a feeling he hadn’t had for ages, and it was pleasantly overwhelming, as if he had just drunk a happiness potion which was warming his entrails. The Hunter also smiled when he saw the prince, but his smile had some undefined sadness in it. He talked first:

‘So we meet again, brave prince. Your journey was long, and is now drawing to an end. The Emperor sent me to meet you, so that I can help you get on the other side of the Mountains. Follow me and I’ll show you the way back to your own country.’

The prince and the Hunter went side by side in the forest, and finally they reached a sheer wall of rock, above which rose the high, daunting peaks. In one side of the wall, hidden to sight from most positions, was the entrance to a cave, dark and ominous. They stopped in front of it, and the Hunter spoke again:

‘Here we are, at last. The only way to the other side is through this cave, and this is the way you will take. Be careful: inside there is no light, and you will only be able to feel your way through. You will have to follow the road with the uneven walls. You will also feel walls that are more regular and softer to the touch, but take not those paths, as they lead to certain death, being so tangled no man can ever hope to remember the way back. You have almost regained full life, so it is very important that you manage to follow the correct way and get out again.’

The prince thanked the Hunter for his advice and was eager to go on, and see his home country once again.

‘There is one last thing,’ the Hunter said. ‘Take this pack. Inside you will find some useful things. Do not open it now, but wait until you get to light on the other side. Now go on and finish your quest, for better or for worse.’

The prince took the pack and, saying goodbye to the Hunter, entered the cave. Inside, it was cool and damp, and the light coming from the entrance was soon lost when he turned a few corners. As he walked on, always feeling the walls, he passed many corridors, but he never turned on either of them. The journey was long and depressing in that everlasting dark. After walking for what seemed like a very long time, the prince finally rested on the cold floor. When he woke up, he realised that the memory of all the lands he had visited and that now were behind him had somehow grown dim, and he could hardly envisage the forest, or the dreary fields of mist. Much as he tried, he could not bring back the scents of the flowers, or the singing of birds, despite the fact that he could vaguely remember them. His recollections of the people he met there, the Emperor, his father and the Hunter, were still sharp, though. He kept on moving through the dark passage, and again he travelled for long, without stopping. The air was cold enough for him not to feel thirsty for many hours, but when he did, there always was water available: not running water, most of the time, but water dripping from the ceiling, or down the walls of the cave; it was cold and tasty, and gave the prince the energy to keep going.

Once again, the prince felt tired and slept. When he woke up, he could not remember anything from his journey, other than a long time spent in a foreign land, as if in a dream, and some people he had met there. He had a feeling that he had known someone, but could not remember who that person was. On the other hand, he could remember a large man, giving him the pack he was carrying on his back, and telling him to follow the rough walls of the cave to reach the other side. The prince tried hard, but no more would come back to him. He let it go and moved on.

For the third time, after a long march through the never ending cave, the prince, weary of feeling around for the way, sat down and fell asleep. Upon waking up, he felt refreshed, and ready to go on. He could no longer remember anything of the Land of the Dead; but neither was that portion of his mind a total blank. Instead, false memories had been planted there: he remembered his father sending him to explore the Mountains, but though he had spent many days there, he could not find much to report, except for the high, impassable peaks and this long cave. However, this recollection did not seem right to him – and he wondered what had been the purpose of this journey and why it had never crossed his mind that it was useless, such as it now plainly looked, and why he had spent so much time exploring some mountains. At the edge of his memory, there was something very vague about a different and much more compelling adventure, but the thing was just out of reach, and hard as he might try, he could not remember what it was. Finally he gave up thinking and continued walking. Feeling the walls, the prince slowly advanced through the passage. At last, he could see light ahead, and he quickened his step. A few minutes later, he was again breathing fresh air and enjoying the sun. He looked back and saw the exceedingly high mountains, and shrugged. He now wanted to speed home as fast as possible and tell his father of his whereabouts.



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Commentary

The meeting between the prince and the father, which I had intended from very early on, finally happened in this part. Usually such meetings in the other world do not take place (except only when the hero goes to rescue the princess and take her back to the world of the living.)

Also, I introduced a peculiar motif, that of the prince getting back to life, slowly as he retraced his steps.

The motif of the cave, which the prince needs three days to get through, is reminiscent of Tolkien's Moria, but mine is a magical cave, where the traveller progressively forgets his long journey, which is in his mind replaced by a false memory of him exploring the Mountains. Thus the equilibrium is restored in the Land of the Dead, where no living person was allowed - because eventually the prince does not remember where he had been at all. That is why, while the reader now knows that the prince saw his father's soul in the Emperor's City, he now thinks of going back to him and recounting his 'adventure' - i.e. the exploration of the Mountains.

In the next post you will get the ending of the tale.

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Tolkien maniac collection! - Amazon (a list that I made for people much interested in Tolkien works and studies)

Much has been added to this post I see. I will read this all later for I am too busy right now reading my books for my Dutch, English and German classes.