The Poor Girl and her Four Wishes

A poor girl and an evil spirit once made a deal.

“If you will give me your soul, powerful in its innocence, then I will grant you four wishes, no matter what they are.”

The poor girl accepted the spirit’s terms. Her first wish was thus: “Make my family prosperous.”

The spirit waved its hands and the poor girl’s family was housed in a great mansion and given the incomes of a thousand souls. The spirit had made the girl’s family great, and their name would live on in the annals of their land.

Her family, no longer in need of anything, begged her to wish her freedom from the spirit and cut the contract. But she would not do either, and went back to the evil spirit a second time.

The girl’s second wish was thus: “Tell me all your secrets.”

The spirit grudgingly told the poor girl all his secrets of all the contracts he’d made, and even the answer to immortality. She told her family all these things, and the spirit was distraught. It could have killed the girl and taken her soul then, but the spirit chose not to.

The girl’s third wish was thus: “Love me.”

And so the spirit fell in love with the girl and gave her many dresses and gifts of precious stones and promised to do anything for her, and no longer wanted her innocent soul or her death. It offered to make her immortal. Her family begged her to do away with the spirit and ask for all its power.

But the girl refused, and gave the spirit her last wish. “Kill me, and send my soul to the Underworld.”

Weeping, the spirit slew the girl it loved and did not eat her soul but sent it to the Underworld to endure torment.

The spirit wept for a thousand days and a thousand nights and could not free itself of its love for the girl. In its final throes of despair, it cast itself into the Underworld to die, and there met the girl one last time.

“Why did you ask me to kill you?” the spirit asked. “I no longer wanted your soul.”

And the girl looked at the spirit with total apathy, a total lack of emotion that hurt the spirit deeply.

“Because,” the girl said, “I have redeemed you, as nothing that can love is evil, and I have also doomed you, filling you with a sorrow that will not die as punishment for the evil you would have worked on me.”

The spirit wept at these words even as it was sent to the Feast for its good work by loving the girl. It wept and did not eat the eternal food, nor the eternal wine, and would never again know joy. And the rains from the skies are made of its tears.

AN: I really like this story. The idea for it just came to me, and I wrote it in about five minutes. I have always loved writing different kinds of fairy tales, and this is definitely one of my favorite pieces.