The Juniper Tree and Other Tales Read Free Page A

flames and settled them around it to get warm. But there they sat, never moving, until the fire set their clothes alight. “Mind what you’re doing, or I shall hang you up again,” said the boy. However, the dead men couldn’t hear him. They gave no answer and let their rags go on burning. So the boy grew angry with them and said, “If you can’t take better care of yourselves there’s nothing I can do for you. I don’t want to burn too.” And he hung them all up on the gallows again one by one. Then he lay down by his fire and went to sleep.
    Next morning the man came back hoping for the fifty talers. “Well,” he asked, “have you learnt to shudder with fear now?”
    “No, how could I?” said the boy. “Those fellows up there never opened their mouths, and they were stupid enough to let the few old rags they’re wearing catch fire.”
    The man saw that he wasn’t going to get the fifty talers today, so off he went, saying to himself: I never met such an oddity before.
    The boy went on his way too, and once again he began saying to himself, “Oh, if only I could shudder with fear! If only I knew what fear is.”
    A carter coming up the road behind him overheard what he was saying and asked, “Who are you?”
    “I don’t know,” said the boy.
    “Well, where do you come from?” asked the carter.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Who’s your father, then?”
    “I mustn’t say.”
    “And what’s that you keep muttering to yourself?”
    “Oh,” said the boy, “I want to learn to shudder with fear, but no one can teach me how.”
    “Don’t talk such nonsense,” said the carter. “Come along with me, and I’ll find you a place to sleep.”
    The boy went with the carter, and in the evening they reached an inn and decided to spend the night there. As they went in the boy said again, “Oh, if only I could shudder with fear! If only I knew what fear is.”
    Hearing him, the landlord laughed and said, “If that’s what you want, then this is your big chance.”
    “Oh, do be quiet,” said the landlord’s wife. “So many rash folk have already lost their lives. It would be a shame for a fine young man like this never to see the light of day again.”
    But the boy said, “However hard it is to shudder with fear, I really want to learn. That’s why I’m on my travels.”
    And he would give the landlord no peace, but pestered him to say what he meant. Not far from there, the landlord told him, there was a haunted castle, and anyone who spent three nights in it was bound to learn what fear is. The King had promised his daughter’s hand in marriage to anyone who dared to do it, and the Princess was the loveliest girl in the world. This castle, said the landlord, was full of treasures, enough to make a poor man rich, but they were guarded by evil spirits. Many men had already gone into the castle, but none of them ever came out again.
    Next morning the boy went to see the King and said, “I’d like to spend three nights in the haunted castle, Your Majesty.”
    The King looked at the boy and liked him, so he said, “You may ask for three gifts to take into the castle with you, but they mustn’t be living things.”
    “In that case,” said the boy, “I’ll have a fire, a lathe and a woodworker’s bench with a clamp and knife.”
    The King had all these things brought to the castle by daylight. As darkness began to fall, the boy went in, lit a bright fire in one of the rooms of the castle, put the woodworker’s bench and the knife beside the fire, and sat down at the lathe. “Oh, if only I knew what fear is!” he said. “But I don’t suppose I shall learn here either.”
    Around midnight, as he was about to stir up the fire and was blowing on it, he heard a sudden yowling from a corner. “Meow, meow! Oh, we’re so cold!”
    “Then why are you making such a noise about it, you fools?” called the boy. “If you’re cold, come and sit down by my fire and get warm.”
    When he had said that,