The Story of Undine: Traditional Mermaid Folk Stories Collection E-Book

Treehouse Books

• Herausgeber: Treehouse Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A changeling water spirit gains a soul, when she falls in love with a human being... But if a human rejects the love of one of her kind, she will disappear... And if he betrays her, he will die... A romantic, tragic, supernatural story, based on a very famous european legend. This story may only be suitable for higher middle grade age kids, young adults and anyone else. This is book 12 in our Traditional Mermaid Folk Stories Collection.

Leseprobe

Copyright © 2023 by Melanie Voland and Treehouse Books

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without full legal permission from the authors.

Once upon a time, there was a fisherman and his wife, and their three year old daughter, who lived in a beautiful valley, in Germany, in a small, pretty, old-fashioned cottage.

There were lovely streams and waterfalls all around them in the valley, right near the cottage was a sparkling river, and there was a large, peaceful lake, just a short distance away, where the fisherman went to work every day in his boat. They had a quiet life, and despite the beauty of their surroundings, it was quite rare for them to get visitors, because separating their cottage from the city, where most other people lived, was a huge, dense, formidable forest.

The family needed both the lake and the forest for their livelihood; they got fruit and herbs and wood from the forest, and fish and water from the lake, but the lake and the forest were also the homes of strange, supernatural creatures and spirits.

The water-spirits, that lived in the lake, streams and river, were wild, mischievious and unpredictable, but they were still creatures of the light, and most people believed them to be relatively harmless. In contrast, the forest was a gloomy, haunted place, and the fisherman and his wife, and everyone who lived nearby, was afraid of the goblins and spirits that lived there.

So, as much as possible, the fisherman and his wife, and others, tried to stay on the outskirts of the forest, whilst foraging and cutting wood, and they avoided travelling through it; instead, taking the long way around it, whenever they went to the city.

But sometimes there was no time to waste, especially in the winter months when the days were shorter, and the fisherman still had to go to the market. He would brave the forest route, but he was always afraid.

Although he had heard many stories about other people's bad experiences, he had never encountered any ghosts or goblins himself, but there were always strange noises, and voices, and shadowy figures. He conquered his fear, and perhaps also warded them off, by reciting bible verses, and singing hymns, as loudly as he could, and this had always seemed to work.

For the most part, the fisherman and his wife had a comfortable life, and they both adored their little girl. But then one day, a terrible thing happened. When the fisherman was chopping wood, his wife ran to him, crying desperately. She said that their daughter had wandered away from her while she was near the lake, and she must have fallen in. His wife had tried hard to find her in the water, but she seemed to be lost.

They ran to the lake and got in the water, and waded and swam, and scrambled around in desperation, looking for her, ducking under, calling out her name, and shouting to each other, until they were both exhausted and freezing, and weeping with heartbreak and despair, when the fisherman sadly came across the child's pale blue cap, lying in some grasses in the water, and at once, they realised that their beautiful daughter must have drowned.

The fisherman and his wife were grief-stricken for some time afterwards, they could not stop thinking about their child, they felt that their lives were ruined, they struggled to get on with their daily work, and although there were seldom any visitors to the cottage anyway, they avoided everyone they had known, and kept entirely to themselves.

Then, not long afterwards, yet another mysterious thing happened. The fisherman's wife thought one day, that she heard her child, crying, in her old bedroom, and she went to look. There, in her small carved wooden bed, was the sweetest little girl, of about the same age. Except this child had blonde hair, whereas their daughter's hair had been dark.

The little girl was wearing clothes that looked the same as the ones that ther daughter had been wearing too, when she drowned, and her hair and clothes were soaking wet. There was a trail of water, where she must have wandered in, from outside, through the back door, into the bedroom and climbed onto the bed.

The child was very distresssed and crying, so they comforted her, and warmed her, and fed her. When they asked her where she had come from, she made no sense, but what they could understand, was that, she had lost her mother, and had fallen into the lake.

They asked everyone they knew nything and if they could help, but after a while, since no one had any idea where she had come from or who her parents were, they decided to keep the lovely godsend, and raise her as their own child, and they lived an ordinary, family life together, from that day onwards.

But then one day, many years later, when the girl was almost grown, a handsome knight, called Huldbrand, arrived at the cottage. He introduced himself, and he said that he had been riding through the forest, when his horse had taken fright and stumbled, and he had fallen off and injured his leg.