Chapter 12: The Disenchanted Evening

ONCE UPON A TIME, there was a maiden who sat by her well sighing. Monette, which was her name, had followed all the advice of the village wise woman. She had bathed in the running waters of a stream. It was so cold that she thought she would never be able to get out of the water once she got in, but she did what she was told. She dressed in a linen gown that had never been worn before. She tied sprigs of pink lilacs in her hair with a blue ribbon. She had gathered daisies from the hillsides and dropped them one at a time into the well, and now, she sat sadly and waited.

She sighed again. All she wanted was a husband, and not that crude sheep farmer down the road. She wanted a handsome husband who was wealthy and lived in a beautiful house in the city. She wanted him to ride up to her on a white charger with the sun glinting from his armor. She wanted him to sweep her up into his arms and carry her away from the dull, dreary life she led in the tiny village where her destiny was naught but to cook, tend a home, and raise her children. She didn’t want much.

That was what she thought of domestic life. In her eyes, the women of the village were old fools who never dreamed. They married their neighbors, bore their children, and cooked, cleaned, wove, and sewed their precious lives away. There must, she thought, be a higher purpose in life.

Whenever she thought of the sheep farmer who lived near her home and who had come to court her just that morning, her flesh crawled. Oh, he was polite and had never given her cause to be offended. He bathed before he came to call, so there was no smell of sheep about him. But he was so ... common. He was a gangling youth whom she had known since birth. His shocking red hair stuck up from his head in so many directions that it appeared his head was on fire. And freckles. One could hardly tell if the red splotches or the white splotches were his actual skin color, for it was divided equally between the two. His trousers were too big for him, and when tying twine around his waist failed to keep them up properly, he tied the cord over his shoulder, suspending them like a sack held open and his long legs unceremoniously dumped into them.

But worst of all was the sheepskin. It was one thing to wear the sheep’s rough wool woven into cloth and sewed together. It was quite another to wear the sheep’s skin, cut in pieces and sewed together. And the farmer did just that. He wore boots made from sheepskin. He wore a hat made from sheepskin. He wore mittens made from sheepskin. And he wore a sheepskin vest so big that from a distance, one might mistake the boy for an oversized member of his own flock.

He was courteous enough when he came to call, and was totally undeserving of the rough rebuke she gave him when he asked for her hand.

“Soren Markladen,” she said to him, “I cannot imagine a life in which I marry a freckle-faced sheep, eat mutton for every meal, wear woolskins for clothing, and raise a flock of little sheep for children. I cannot marry you. I will not marry you. Go back to your sheep and do not try to woo me further.”

Soren Markladen, you might think, would be highly offended by the vain girl’s rebuke, but in truth, he had grown to love her over the years they had known each other. They had often had adventures with each other and when she’d had difficulty with a fox snatching her hens, Soren had hunted the fox and presented the skin to her as a token of his devotion. She thought the fox skin was disgusting.

He willingly overlooked what others saw as her flaws. Most of these had to do with her temperament, but by the standards of his village, she was considered too short, too thin in some places and too thick in others, pale in complexion, and frail in physique. He, however, saw her as petite, pleasingly proportioned, fair, and delicate. Her temper he was willing to overlook.

So, instead of being upset by Monette’s rejection, Soren was amused, nodded, and said, “My, she is spirited.” He resolved to come and press his suit again the next day.

That was when Monette went to see the wise woman. She asked for the old woman’s advice. She said she wanted to attract a handsome, rich, and caring husband who would carry her away from her life of drudgery and show her the excitement of life in the city. The old woman laughed to herself, and prescribed the ritual that Monette had just completed.

She sighed again.

“What is it that makes you sigh as though the world were ending?” a voice near her ear asked quietly.

Monette was surprised by the man’s voice, but her heart leapt to her throat. The spell, she thought, must have worked! Here at her shoulder must be the man she would love. She turned to look, but saw no man. She looked further turning around next to the well, but still saw no person to have spoken to her.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“Why, right in front of you,” said the voice. Monette looked in the direction of the voice and saw only a duck.

“You are a duck!” she exclaimed.

“You are a girl!” the duck spoke back. “I won’t hold it against you.”

“How is it that you can speak?” she asked.

“There is a powerful enchantment upon me,” said the duck. “How is it that you can hear me? I have spoken to every maiden that has come to this well in these ten years. You are the first to hear my voice.”

“An enchanted prince!” the silly girl exclaimed. “You must be the one to show me true love.”

“I can do that,” answered the duck.

“Shall I kiss you?” she asked.

“Ick!” said the duck. “Why would you want to do that?”