Reading Notes: Czech Folktales, Part A

Sleepy John

This story is centered around John, a kid who's constantly falling asleep, no matter where he is. At the beginning of the story, he crawls onto an empty cart in a barn and goes to sleep. But when the cart's owners take their vehicle and get back on the road, they don't realize for a while that John is in the back. When they do, they decide, "We'll put him in [this beer cask] and leave him in the forest." That's just what they do, ditching him in the forest, and the story goes on to say, "John went on sleeping in the cask for a long time. Suddenly he woke up and found himself in the cask, but he did not know how he had got into it, neither did he know where he was."

I like the idea of someone—either superhuman in nature or some kind of creature—being forced into some kind of enchanted sleep for a long period of time, either by someone else or by circumstance. And when the character does wake up, they're obviously kind of disoriented; maybe they even woke up from some kind of "death." Someone else is right there when they wake, either the person who woke them or someone sent to guard them or kill them in their sleep—but that choice will depend on what kind of dynamic I want them to have. But I think it could be fun, this story of a lost, outdated guy from another world and the unimpressed, unflappable girl trying to move him from Point A to Point B.

That said, the queen's story is pretty interesting too: I'd be curious to do something with a character like her, find out why she visits "the green meadows of Hell" to feast and dance with demons every night. Maybe that's where she was raised, like a demon-human changeling, or maybe she's formed some kind of special alliance with them. Someday, I might be interested in writing something to find out.


Silly Jura

In this story, the destitute Jura wanders into a forest, where he finds the ruins of a once-grand castle. There's nobody inside but a cat, who says he can stay there if he'll act as her servant; he does, and finds that the castle is apparently enchanted to provide food and other necessities. All he ever has to do is gather firewood, and he and the cat have a good time there. But once the year is up, the cat announces that he has to build a big bonfire, then burn her alive—he can't let her escape the flames, no matter how much she struggles. He insists that he couldn't, since she's been so good to him, but she warns pretty ominously that he has to. So he does, and keeps the cat from escaping, and eventually passes out from the effort or the smoke or whatever. When he wakes, the castle is grand again, and filled with loads of servants, and he's approached by a beautiful woman. It turns out she was the cat all along, under a curse from a witch. Jura broke the spell by burning her.

The entire story was pretty enjoyable: it took all the interesting elements of Beauty and the Beast, but replaced the love theme with the much more interesting death threat to break the curse. I'd love to do something with this in the future, but it might be better-suited for a longer work than this assignment would allow for.


The Bear, the Eagle, and the Fish

In this story, a man bargains his daughters away to a bear, an eagle, and a fish, respectively. Later, they find out that all three animals are actually brothers, human princes cursed into these shapes by an evil magician; the girls' little brother works with their husbands to break the magician's curse and set the princes free. It's an entertaining story, and I was intrigued by the little brother's dedication to the sisters he's barely met—but what really interested me were the cursed princes.

I'd be interested in doing a story about two brothers, cursed princes themselves, and their dysfunctional relationship with each other and their cutthroat family and their kingdom. I'm not sure yet what sorts of curses they'd be under, only that they're probably either complementary or opposed in some way, and that they're probably not animal curses. Again, though, this might be more of a novel than flash fiction.


Kojata

At the beginning of this story, a king winds up accidentally promising his newborn son "to the thing in the well." If that doesn't sound like the seeds of an amazing story, I don't know what would.

This story ends up following the same plot as one I read earlier in the semester, though, in which the thing in the well turns out to be a wizard, and he sets a series of impossible tasks for the prince to solve. The wizard's youngest daughter hates her life and sees her opportunity, so she proposes that she and the prince escape together: she'll help him with the tasks, and he'll take her with her when he leaves. It doesn't quite go according to plan, though. She can't help him with the final task, so they decide to run away together instead, and the wizard quickly pursues them. But the daughter has her father's magic, and she shifts her own shape and the princes several times to evade her father.

The first time around, I loved this premise and wanted to put it in a more modern setting, but keep that fantasy element. The idea of a couple of young, shape-shifting runaways is great, and I think it could be a ton of fun to explore both their dynamic and the concept of a couple of young people constantly forced to be anyone but themselves if they want to survive. Plus, combining her street smarts with his princely, sheltered self could be pretty entertaining.


The Three Roses

This story is essentially Beauty and the Beast, but the Beast is a basilisk instead, and Belle is a girl named Mary. Rather than just coming to live at the castle, Mary has to stay there and take the basilisk in her lap every day and feed it. On the third day, he brings a sword with him, and tells Mary she has to lop off his head. She protests that she can't, but after some threats, she comes around. The decapitation ends up turning the basilisk into a beautiful young man, and he and Mary are married.

I'm not sure what elements of this I'd keep, but I like the idea of a girl and a cursed basilisk-boy winding up becoming friends or frenemies, and the girl killing him to save him in the end. So I'd probably play around with those ingredients and see what I could make with them.


The Twin Brothers

In this story, twin brothers own a couple of enchanted swords that guarantee them victory over everything, so they decide to part ways to conquer both halves of the world. They promise to check their swords, which will begin to rust if the other brother is in trouble, every day. That much is enough setup to get my interest: I'd be down to do a story that follows what happens when the two brothers do meet up again. As much as I'd just like to follow a couple of brothers working together against the world, the "victory over everything else" swords kind of require that the brothers end up fighting each other, and there could be some good drama there. I'd be curious to see how the fight pans out, when these two can wreck everything (including themselves—maybe even especially themselves) but each other.


The Twin Brothers (Part II)

In this installment, one of the brothers visits an enchanted black castle, where people are rumored to have entered but never returned home. He quickly learns what's up with that: all the people who have gone there have been turned to stone by the old hag inside, and she wastes no time in turning him to stone.

Of course, the real story here is the prince's twin brother coming to save him. But it's the setup that interests me. Swap out the kingdom for a forgotten stretch of road in the middle of nowhere—the castle for a desolate, Bates Motel-like tourist trap off an abandoned highway—and the non-statues for non-wax figures, and I'm officially sold.


The Waternick

In this story, a brother and sister are kidnapped by and forced to live with an old couple who collect human souls. That's fine and dandy and all, but after reading it, I really just want to take the souls concept and do a story about a noir-like antihero who happens to be a soul-broker, and the kinds of trouble he manages to get into because of it. I feel like a setup like that calls for some sort of complication surrounding his own soul, or lack thereof, but we'll see.




Bibliography: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "Fun with Dry Ice (7 of 9)" by Shawn Henning. Source: Flickr.