The Witch Girl
In this story, the daughter of a somewhat local family is actually a little witch girl, and she goes around terrorizing the other families in the area: "In our village Death goes about at night. Into whatsoever cottage she looks, there, next morning, one has to put all the people who lived in it into coffins, and carry them off to the graveyard." The witch girl, Death herself, is interesting, and I think she could make for the seeds of a good story—but the people taking her very look as a curse, dressing themselves in their finest and bundling themselves into coffins for the trip to the graveyard? It could make for a great horror story—an isolated little town stuck in its superstitions and the old ways—and I love the concept.
The Headless Princess
In this story, a young boy is charged with reading the psalter of a witchy princess's body for three days after she dies—but because she's a witch and wants revenge on the boy, she spends each night rising from her coffin and terrorizing him. At twelve o'clock each night, the lid of the coffin flies up, and the princess leaps out and throws everything she has at the boy. But because he's been advised by an old woman, he traces a circle around himself with a special knife and stays inside it, and he's safe. It's the little elements I liked in this: the special knife he uses to carve a safe-haven circle around himself, the way the princess was secretly a witch, the way she flies out of her coffin when midnight strikes. I might use this to explore a type of monster who only comes out for the protagonist at a certain time every night, or I might do something else with the knife/circle concept; not sure yet.
The Warlock
This one would make for the seeds of a good horror story too, I think, or an interesting character study of the warlock father-in-law. He lives a long time, and just before he dies, he requests that each of his three daughters-in-law spends a night with his body, without a cross on her, and knits a wool caftan for him. But when the first daughter-in-law comes to sit watch with his body, he actually talks to her; she's freaked out, but tries to play it cool, and after a while he rises from his coffin and strangles her. The same happens with the second daughter-in-law, though the third daughter-in-law secretly wears a cross and is able to defeat him.
For the purposes of this assignment, though, I think I'd narrow in on my favorite part of the story: when the daughter-in-law is sitting by the coffin knitting, and he asks quietly from the coffin, "Daughter-in-law, art thou there?" She replies that she is, and he asks, "Art thou sitting?" She is. "Dost thou spin?" She dost indeed. "Grey wool?" Grey. "For a caftan?" For a caftan. I love this exchange, and the idea of sitting with a loved one on his last night, when he's technically dead but isn't quite gone yet, and filling him in on what's going on—one last evening together, one long goodbye.
The Fox Physician
The fox in this story cons an old man, claiming she'll help him bring back his deceased wife. Really, she just eats the meat off the wife's bones and makes off with the tools she told the old man she'd need for the job. A con artist of some kind would clearly be my first interpretation for this one, not just because it's the obvious conclusion, but because I'm always down for a con story. But I'm not sure what kind of format or shape it would take for something this length, so we'll see.
The Fiddler in Hell
In this story, when a fiddler accidentally falls down a hole in the ground and into hell, he tries to make up an excuse to escape. But the demons (called fiends) fear he's trying to trick them and won't come back, so they send a fiend along with him to be sure he makes it back. I love the idea of a human with a fiendish bodyguard for some reason, and I think it could be fun to explore that dynamic.
The Two Friends
In this story, two friends promise each other that they'll invite each other to their weddings someday—no matter what. So when one of the friends dies and the other later prepares to marry, the groom stops by to visit his grave and invite him to the wedding. The dead friend invites his friend to share a drink with him, so the groom steps into the coffin; with each toast they make, a hundred years pass. After the third drink, the dead friend wishes the groom well and sends him on his way—but the groom emerges and finds that the graveyard and town have changed completely, and he doesn't know anybody there. Three hundred years have passed, and everyone he knew has come and gone, while he hasn't aged at all.
First off, I have to say: the idea of two friends, close as siblings, sticking together even once one of them dies—it really appeals to me. But I also love the idea of someone who gets trapped in some sort of pocket dimension in which time passes differently, only to return home and find that everything has changed. I feel like that would give the protagonist some kind of Peter Pan crisis, and I'd be curious to watch that unfold.
The Shroud
In this one, the protagonist is lazy but brave, pulling off stupid dares to her friends just to prove she can. If I were to spin this one into a story, I'd probably put an unimpressed, impossible-to-scare protagonist in a horror setting: it could be a lot of fun, and also a great chance to play with genre conventions and a genre-savvy character. Even though Halloween's over now, I'm always in the mood for a horror spoof, and this could be a golden opportunity for that.
The Coffin-Lid
In this story, a corpse rises and kills two teens, and when threatened by a witness, he reluctantly offers up a way to bring them back to life: go to the house where the kids were killed, then put live coals and part of the corpse's shroud into a pot and lock the door. The witness follows the instructions, and the teens are revived—but I have to wonder what kind of condition they'd be in. Probably pretty messed up, either emotionally or physically or both, and something like that would surely be a bonding experience. Could be interesting to play around with.
That said, I also love that corpses rising and causing trouble was apparently enough of an issue for there to be a routine solution to it: the townsfolk simply hunt down his grave, dig up his coffin, and drive an aspen stake through the corpse's heart. Like changing a car's oil or taking out the trash.
The Two Corpses
In this story, a corpse tries to catch and eat a soldier—but then another corpse comes for the man, and they end up fighting each other instead. It's a classic strategy, turning your enemies against each other to either weaken them or buy yourself a distraction, and it could make for a solid plot point in a short story. But I'm more interested in the soldier's words when he does escape: "I am saved from the wizards!" I like the idea that all these corpses wandering around used to belong to wizards, which explains why they're technically dead but can't actually stay properly dead. There could be a whole underground community of them.
The Dog and the Corpse
In this story, a man and his dog are attacked by a corpse; the dog rushes to fight the corpse off of his master, but the master ditches the dog as soon as it buys him an opening. When the dog escapes and finally catches up to his master, he's furious that the man left him behind to fend for himself, and tries to kill the man. The master's family chains the dog up for a year, but it still tries to kill its master any chance it gets—so eventually, they're forced to kill it. Initially, I was thinking this could be a good empty frame for a loosely interpreted revenge story, and I guess it still could be. But I really love the last twist with the dog: it's like a darker version of Old Yeller or something, and I think it has loads of potential. If I were to use this one for my story, I think I'd go with a protagonist dealing with an ex-best friend or someone she used to be close to, who's now undergone some type of brainwashing (a spell or some kind of sci-fi take would work) to hate and attack the protagonist. There's that internal struggle, in which the protagonist knows she needs to put her friend down, but can't bring herself to do it. In the end, I think she can't follow through and ends up letting the friend live, even though that means she herself will get infected or they'll die together or something.
The Soldier and the Vampire
In this story, a soldier returns to his home village and visits with an old friend till after nightfall. When he makes to leave, his friend warns that he'd better stay till daybreak—there's a Warlock attacking the area, and he strikes after dark. The soldier's response? “Not a bit of it! A soldier is a man who belongs to the crown, and ‘crown property cannot be drowned in water nor burnt in fire.’" While he was just making a joke, I love what this could be if interpreted literally: a group of super-soldiers, either bred and groomed or just transformed, in the service of some kind of king. They're strong and invulnerable and powerful, but they're also property, basically objects—so there are definitely some checks and balances there. I'm not sure yet what shape this story would take, just that I like the concept and think it has potential.
Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by W. R. S. Ralston. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: "The Grave of Sarah Wrench (1833-1848)"; © Copyright Neil Theasby and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License. Source: Geograph.
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