Croatian Tales of Long Ago

by Ivana Brlic-Mazuranic

Plunk could scarcely await the next day for wondering how his good fortune would show itself. But nothing happened that day except that Plunk took his hook and went out fishing, and the Woman went up the hill to gather wild spinach. Plunk came home at night, and so did the Woman, and they supped upon fish and wild spinach. “Eh, if that is all the good luck there is to it, I could just as well have done without,” thought Plunk.

As the evening wore on, the Woman sat down beside Plunk to tell him stories, to wile away the time for him. She told him about nabobs and kings’ castles, about dragons that watch treasure-hoards, and kings’ daughters who sow their gardens with pearls and reap gems. Plunk listened, and his heart within him began to sing for joy. Plunk forgot that he was poor; he could have sat and listened to her for three years together. But Plunk was still better pleased when he considered: “She is a fairy wife. She can show me the way to the dragons’ hoards or the kings’ gardens. I need only be patient and not make her angry.”

So Plunk waited; and day after day went by, a year went by, two years passed. A little son was born to them; they called him little Winpeace. Yet all went on as usual. Plunk caught fish, and his wife gathered wild spinach in the mountains. In the evening she cooked the supper, and after supper she rocked the baby and told Plunk stories. Her stories grew prettier and prettier, and Plunk found it harder and harder to wait, till at last, one evening, he had had enough of it; and just as his wife was telling him about the immense treasures of the Sea King, Plunk jumped up in a rage, shook her by the arm and cried:

“I tell you I’ll wait no longer. To-morrow in the morning you shall take me down to the Sea King’s Castle!”

The Woman was quite frightened when Plunk jumped up like that. She told him that she did not know where the Sea King had his Castle; but Plunk began to beat his poor wife most unmercifully, and threatened to kill her unless she told him her fairy secret.

Then the poor girl understood that Plunk had taken her for a fairy. She burst into tears and cried:

“Truly I am no fairy, but a poor orphan girl who knows no spells nor magic. And for the tales I have told you, I had them from my own heart to beguile your weariness.”

Now this only put Plunk all the more in a rage, because he had lived in a fool’s paradise for over two years; and he angrily bade the Woman go away next morning ere dawn with the child, along the sea-shore to the right-hand side, and he, Plunk, would go to the left, and she was not to come back again till she had found the way to the Sea King’s Castle.

When the dawn came, the Woman wept and begged Plunk not to send her away. “Who knows where one of us may be destroyed on this desolate sea-shore?” said she. But Plunk fell upon her again, so that she took up her child and went away crying whither her husband had bidden her. And Plunk went off in the opposite direction.

So the Woman went on with her baby, little Winpeace. She went on for a week; she went on for a fortnight, and nowhere did she find the way to the Sea King. She grew so terribly tired that one day she fell asleep on a stone beside the sea. When she woke up, her baby was gone—her little Winpeace.