Chapter 112 111. Forest King

A king had three daughters: two of them were neither beautiful nor ugly, but the youngest was very beautiful.Whenever someone comes to propose to the eldest daughter, it falls in love with the youngest daughter.In this way, none of the three daughters was able to marry.The two sisters hatched a plot against the younger sister: they told their father that they both dreamed that the younger sister was going to elope with a common soldier.The King was afraid that the dream might be a prophecy, and that the youngest daughter would bring a bad reputation to his family.He called for a general, and bade him take the little girl for a walk in the Forest King's forest, and kill her with the sword.

In this way, the general and the girl took a walk in the forest king's forest. After a while, the girl said, "Okay, let's go home now." The general said, "No, Your Royal Highness, I'm sorry, but I was ordered to kill you here." "Why would you kill an innocent man like me?" "This is the order of the king," said the general, drawing his sword.But when he saw the poor girl in front of him turn pale with fright, he suddenly felt pity.So he took the girl's clothes, dipped them in the blood of a sheep, and brought them back to the king.

The girl stayed alone in the forest and wept. She was terrified, because the Forest King lived in this forest and he ate everyone he could.She cried for a long time, wiped away her tears, and fell asleep in a tree hole. Early in the morning the old forest king came out to hunt for food, and was chasing a wounded stag.He missed the deer, but found a sleeping little girl.Seeing that the girl was very beautiful, he woke her up: "Will you come with me? Don't be afraid," he said to her.The girl agreed, and followed the forest king back to his home deep in the forest, where he lived a melancholy and lonely life.All day long he hunts, and there is nothing alive in his sight.The girl stayed to take care of the housework for him, and the old forest king treated her like his own daughter.

One morning, the girl had just gotten up and was standing at the window braiding her hair when a parrot flew up and landed on the window sill and said to her: "You braid your beautiful hair for nothing, The forest king still wants to eat you. " Hearing these words, the girl burst into tears.When the forest king came back from hunting, he saw her so sad and asked, "What's the matter with you?" The girl told him what the parrot had just said. "Do you know how to answer it?" said the Forest King. "Parrot, parrot, I made a fan out of your feathers,

I cook with your meat, I will be your master's bride. " The next day, when she said these words, the parrot was so angry that it shook its feathers desperately, and half of its feathers fell off when it flew away.The parrot belonged to a neighboring king. When the king saw that it came back with only half its feathers, he asked his servant, "Who plucked my parrot's feathers?" The servant replied, "Every morning it flies to the forest king's house and comes back bald like this." The king said, "I'm going to follow it tomorrow and see what happens."

Sure enough, the next morning, the king rode through the forest, and followed the parrot in the air to a window where a beautiful girl, whom he had never seen before, was combing her hair.The parrot sat on the windowsill and sang: "You braid your beautiful hair for nothing, The forest king still wants to eat you. " And the girl replied: "Parrot, parrot, I made a fan out of your feathers, I cook with your meat, I will be your master's bride. " The parrot shook off all its feathers. So the king went to the king of the forest and asked to marry the girl.Although the forest king was reluctant to let the girl leave him, he finally agreed.The girl thanked the Forest King and bid him farewell.The Forest King lived alone deep in the forest again.

The bride's father also came to the wedding feast, and he begged his daughter to forgive him for the mistake he had made at the instigation of his two wicked daughters. What about the parrot?It flew away and no one knows its whereabouts. (Abruzzo region)