Random Story To Tell

“Thank you, Antipka,” she said sweetly. “I heard everything. I don’t know how to thank you.”

Before Antipka could reply, the merchant and his wife rushed in and first hugged their daughter and then hugged Antipka. Then the merchant beamed and his wife burst into tears again.

“You shall name your reward, my friend,” said the merchant. “Go away and think it over. And then come back and ask for whatever you want and you shall have Continue reading

The merchant’s daughter, who was very beautiful, lay quietly hiccoughing and sneezing between silken sheets. The shutters were closed and it was quite dim in the room, but Antipka could see what he wanted to see – the stove. Bending down on hands and knees, he peered under it and called, “Come out. I know you’re there. I can see you.”

“No fear,” came the hobgoblin’s voice. “You might try to catch me, and I’ve never been so Continue reading

Antipka felt that he knew the answer. It must be the hobgoblin who was making the rich merchant’s daughter ill. Now was Antipka’s chance to catch the nasty little creature and to do the merchant and his daughter a service at the same time.

“My daughter is ill, my wife has taken to her bed with grief, and I am absolutely wretched with worry,” moaned the merchant. “If only I knew the man who could cure my beautiful girl, I would make him very rich Continue reading

Antipka was too confused to think properly, and wandered back home in silence. As he stood by the stove, cooking a saucepan full of beetroot and cream soup, he tried to sort out his problems.

“Things seem to have gone wrong,” he murmured to himself. “First of all, my wife obviously hasn’t lost her bad temper during the night, and now I’ve let a hobgoblin escape into town. Who knows what harm he might do?” And he sighed and stirred his Continue reading

The next morning Antipka quickly gathered up all the odd pieces of rope he could find, and knotted them together until he had made one very very long rope out of them. He wasn’t an unkind man at heart and he didn’t want to leave his wife in the mud at the bottom of the pit for too long.

With his rope coiled over his shoulder and under his arm he bounced along the road, whistling to himself.

“Hee hawwww”, brayed Sasha’s donkey.
“Be Continue reading

“With any luck, she’ll have a sore throat by the time I collect her in the morning,” said Antipka to himself, and he dropped a hunk of black bread and a piece of pork sausage down the hole after her.

That evening Antipka felt free for the first time since his marriage. He wandered about the one room that was their home, and from time to time sat down wherever he wanted to. He opened one window and closed the other. And when suppertime came he stood on tiptoe and Continue reading

Feeling please with his morning’s work, he took up his basket and hummed to himself as he made his way back home. “I wouldn’t want to hurt her,” he thought, “but it would do her good to sit at the bottom of a cold, dark pit for just one night.”

The sound of the latch woke up his wife, who had been asleep all the morning in front of the stove.

“What time do you call this?” she demanded. “And look at the basket: it’s not Continue reading

She was such a big woman and Antipka was such a small, mild young man that he always got the worst of their arguments. And so to calm her down he said quietly, “If you would like to go picking cranberries, my dear, I’ll go indoors and do the washing-up and the housework.”

“That’s right,” shrieked his wife. “That’s you all over. Trust a man to choose the light work and send his poor wife off to break her back and catch her death of cold Continue reading

Early one morning Antipka was sitting sadly on the steps of his little wooden house, sunk in thought. He had plenty to be happy  about: a cosy home which he had built himself, a nice plot of ground and a good crop of cabbages and sunflowers. And yet one thing made him miserable; he had married a bad-tempered woman. When he first knew her she seemed such a sweet young girl and then, immediately after the wedding, she became spiteful and irritable, and now Antipka’s life was absolute Continue reading