Isis flew above Osiris and blew life into her husband with the beating of her wings. She then laid with him and became pregnant. Osiris left to rule over Duat, the land of the dead. Isis, meanwhile, hid in a thicket of papyrus until giving birth to their son, Horus.
The young Horus was vulnerable, and Set sent many dangerous creatures to poison or hurt him. He endured everything from scorpion stings to snakebites to stomachaches. Isis, with magical healing powers of her own, repeatedly cured and saved her child and thus gave these cures to the people of Egypt.
Eventually Horus grew up and challenged Set for his kingship. To determine who should rule, the contests were judged by the Ennead, or group of Egyptian deities. The duels were long and brutal and resulted in the loss of Horus’s eye. After many years of warring, Horus finally rose victorious. Set was then banished to the desert, and Horus ruled justly as his father did before him.
Rapunzel
GERMANY, GERMAN FAIRY TALE
There once was a poor couple who dearly wanted a child. When the woman became pregnant, she was filled with an insatiable craving for the leaves of her neighbor’s rapunzel plant. Unfortunately, their neighbor was a witch, so the husband was too scared to ask for some. But his wife soon became sick and began to die for want of the plant, so her husband silently scaled the witch’s garden wall and stole some rapunzel. But before he could make his escape, the witch caught him. The witch promised to give the man all the rapunzel his wife wanted, but in exchange they would have to give the newborn to her. The terrified man agreed, and nine months later a baby girl named Rapunzel was born and reluctantly given to the witch.
Rapunzel grew to be very beautiful, with long golden hair. When she turned twelve, the witch locked her in a tower with no stairs or doors, only one room and one window. The tower was surrounded by thorns. To visit the girl, the witch stood at the base of the tower and shouted up to Rapunzel to let down her hair so that she could climb up the long tresses. One day a prince heard Rapunzel’s lovely singing and saw the witch visiting her. After the witch left, the prince ascended Rapunzel’s tower. She was shocked at first, but soon they talked, fell in love, and agreed to marry. They planned Rapunzel’s escape, and the prince left to get her a silk ladder.
When the witch returned, she instantly detected Rapunzel’s deception. Furious, she chopped off Rapunzel’s hair and banished her to the wastelands. When the prince returned, the witch pushed him from the tower, where he landed in the thorns and lost both of his eyes.
The prince wandered blind for many years until one day he heard Rapunzel’s beautiful singing. He followed her voice, and they were reunited. Rapunzel cried happy tears, some of which fell over his eyes, and his vision was restored. They returned to his kingdom and lived happily ever after.
Coyote
PACIFIC NORTHWEST, SALISH LEGEND
There are no buffalo on the western side of the Rocky Mountains, and that is Coyote’s fault. Coyote is a trickster, and while he has done many good things for the world, he has also done just as much bad.
Coyote was walking along on the plains to the east of the mountains when he found the skull of Buffalo Bull, who had been huge and terrifying to Coyote in life but weak and pathetic in death. Coyote laughed and mocked the skull, kicking and spitting on it before walking on with a delighted yip. It wasn’t long before Coyote heard a powerful rumble and looked over his shoulder to realize he was being chased down by Buffalo Bull himself, come back to life. Coyote used his magic to form three trees that he could scramble up. Buffalo Bull toppled two of the trees with his horns before Coyote managed to convince Buffalo Bull to take a break to smoke with him before tearing down the third tree.
Coyote distracted Buffalo Bull, asking him questions. He learned that Buffalo Bull had died at the hands of Young Buffalo, who had stolen Buffalo Bull’s fine herd. Coyote offered to make Buffalo Bull new horns that he could use to defeat Young Buffalo. Buffalo Bull agreed and decided not to kill Coyote. Coyote made him pitch-black horns that were heavy and sharp, and with these, Buffalo Bull returned to his herd and defeated Young Buffalo.
Buffalo Bull rewarded Coyote with a young cow and told him that if he never killed her, she would supply him with meat forever. Coyote only needed to slice off the fat—not the muscle as that would hurt the cow—with a knife, then rub ashes on the wound to heal it. Coyote ate this way for many days, returning to the western side of the mountains. But eventually Coyote grew tired of eating only fat and desired bone marrow and liver. He thought Buffalo Bull wouldn’t find out. However, when he killed the cow, magpies and crows swarmed and stole every last bit of her. Ashamed, Coyote returned to Buffalo Bull and discovered the cow among his herd again. Buffalo Bull refused to give Coyote a new cow, so Coyote was forced back to the west, where no buffalo roam to this day.
Princess Kaguya
JAPAN, JAPANESE FAIRY TALE
One day, an old childless bamboo cutter came across a mysteriously glowing stalk of bamboo. He cut it open and found a lovely, tiny baby girl inside. Delighted, he took her home to his wife, and they raised her as their own, naming her Kaguya. From then on, every bamboo stalk he cut down had gold in it—gold he used to become rich and give his daughter a fine education and beautiful clothes. As Kaguya grew older, she grew more radiant, and soon word of her magnificence spread.
Five princes proposed to her, and to each she gave an impossible task. The first was told to bring her the stone begging bowl of the Buddha Shakyamuni from India; the second, a jeweled branch from the mythical island of Hōrai; the third, the legendary robe of the fire-rat of China; the fourth, a colored jewel from a dragon’s neck; and the final prince, a cowrie shell born of swallows. All five princes failed, and Kaguya remained unwed. Then the Emperor of Japan proposed to her, and she denied even him.
That summer, Kaguya grew restless and anxious, visibly conflicted about some problem. Finally, like a clear lotus blossoming from murky waters, she confessed to her adopted parents that she was actually a princess from the Moon. She had been sent to Earth to remain protected while a celestial war wracked the heavens. But the war was over, and her heavenly family was coming to collect her. She was given the choice to stay with the woodcutter or return to the Moon and forget her life on Earth. It was a difficult decision with no clear answer.
Soon the celestial entourage came for Princess Kaguya, and she chose to go with them. With tears in her eyes, she said good-bye to her foster parents. When her heavenly robes were placed on her shoulders, her tears disappeared. She forgot her parents and all her time on Earth and returned to the Moon.
The Legend of the Watermelon
VIETNAM, VIETNAMESE LEGEND
A long time ago, an orphan boy ended up in service to the king of Vietnam. The king named him Mai An Tiem, and he grew up to be so charming, intelligent, and skillful that the king offered his own daughter in marriage. The king gifted the young Mai An Tiem a large house and many servants. When the princess gave birth to three children, the king gave them even more gifts, and the young family lived happily in wealth and comfort.
But the king’s favor for Mai An Tiem made others jealous. At one banquet, a courtier commented on Mai An Tiem’s good fortune, to which Mai An Tiem responded that all his good luck must be his own reward for living a good life. The sly courtier told the king that Mai An Tiem was ungrateful and did not respect the king and his generosity for elevating Mai An Tiem.
The king grew angry and banished Mai An Tiem and his small family to a desolate island. The family struggled to survive in the sand with little fresh water. Mai An Tiem was searching for more water when he saw a strange yellow bird pecking at something on the ground. Closer inspection revealed a juicy fruit with an interior as red as blood and full of seeds. Mai An Tiem ate a small bit and loved the sweet taste; it relieved his hunger and his thirst. He shared the rest with his family, and together they tilled the land and planted the seeds.
They soon ha
d more of the fruit, which he called du’a hấu, or watermelon, than they could ever need, and Mai An Tiem began carving his name on the outside of the melons and setting them adrift in the sea. A merchant saw and ate them and came back to the family to trade for more. They started a watermelon business. It grew so large they needed a large house and many employees, and they became very wealthy once again.
By this time the king heard of Mai An Tiem’s watermelons and realized that it was Tiem’s resourcefulness and not the king’s favors that had brought his good fortune. The king begged Mai An Tiem’s forgiveness, which was granted, and the family was happily reunited with the king.
Condor’s Wife
PERU, AYMARA FOLKTALE
One day near the beginning of the world, Condor was flying near Lake Titicaca when he spotted a beautiful young girl tending to her family’s llamas and picking berries. He landed next to her and began conversing with her, helping her pick berries. She was so sweet he began to fall in love, and he invited her to come live with him. The girl was flattered, but she said that she couldn’t leave her poor mother alone, and someone had to tend the llamas. Condor was saddened but said he understood. He asked if she could just do one small favor for him and scratch his shoulder in a very hard-to-reach spot. So the girl leaned over to do just that and, before she knew what was happening, was whisked up into the air on Condor’s back.
He flew her far away to his home high up in the sky. There he introduced her to his extended family. All his family members were very nice to the girl, and his mother especially took pains to make sure the girl was cared for. But though they were kind, they fed her vulture food, which is rotting meat. The girl cried and cried, distressing Condor, who only wanted his bride to be happy. Her cries were heard by Hummingbird, who realized what had happened.
The clever Hummingbird approached Condor and told him that his young bride only wanted to eat cooked meat, and he had seen a delicious roasted alpaca in a village on the other side of the mountain. Condor leapt at the opportunity and flew off to retrieve some food his wife would enjoy. Hummingbird took this opportunity to help the girl climb down from Condor’s nest and escape back home, where her worried mother was relieved to see her again.
Condor, for his part, was frustrated when he returned and realized the girl had escaped. He quickly found Hummingbird and tore him into a thousand pieces. But instead of dying, each piece turned into a new hummingbird, and that is why there are so many kinds of hummingbirds in the world.
Oedipus and the Oracle at Delphi
GREECE, GREEK MYTHOLOGY
King Laius and Queen Jocasta ruled over Thebes but had long been childless. Finally, Jocasta became pregnant, and the royals consulted the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi about their child. Devastatingly, the oracle prophesied that the son of Laius would kill him. In an attempt to avoid this, Laius commanded the baby be abandoned to die on a mountaintop with his ankles tethered so he could not crawl away. The servant tasked with abandoning the child took pity on him and gave him to a shepherd, who passed him to the childless King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth, who named him Oedipus.
Oedipus grew up as a prince, and once he was an adult, he consulted the Oracle at Delphi. The oracle told him he was destined to murder his father and wed his mother. A mortified Oedipus, who never knew he had been adopted, opted to avoid his fate by never returning home to Corinth. Instead he chose to travel to Thebes and make his fortune there. Along the way, he came to a crossroads and got into an argument with a belligerent man. Oedipus killed the man, not knowing that this man was King Laius nor that he was his father.
Before reaching Thebes, Oedipus encountered a deadly Sphinx who demanded an answer to her riddle. Oedipus was able to solve it, and she allowed him to pass. Word of this confrontation traveled fast, and Queen Jocasta’s brother, Creon, announced that any man who could defeat the Sphinx was worthy to marry the newly widowed Jocasta and to become the new king of Thebes. So Oedipus and Jocasta married and had four children together. Many years later a plague struck Thebes, and they learned from the Oracle at Delphi that the only way to cure the plague was to have King Laius’s murderer brought to justice.
Oedipus promised swift and brutal vengeance, but as he sought the murderer, he realized that he was the one who killed Laius. And Jocasta and he both realized that she was his mother. In anguish, Oedipus stabbed his own eyes out and exiled himself to wander as a blind man forever.
Aladdin
PERSIA, ARABIC FOLKTALE
There once was a young man named Aladdin who was very poor and very lazy. While shirking work one day, he met a mysterious-looking sorcerer who claimed to be Aladdin’s dead father’s long-lost brother. Aladdin didn’t believe him, but when the man gave Aladdin money as a sign of goodwill, Aladdin was willing to believe anything. So Aladdin agreed to follow his “uncle” on a trip out of town. When they reached a certain spot, the sorcerer said some magic words, and a pit in the ground opened up. The sorcerer gave Aladdin a magic ring to guide him and told him to retrieve a lamp from the pit but to not touch anything else or he would die. Aladdin reluctantly agreed to this after the sorcerer beat him; when he found the lamp, drawn to it by the ring, Aladdin refused to hand it over.
Furious with his refusal, the sorcerer sealed Aladdin inside the pit, leaving him to die.
Aladdin then discovered that both the ring and the lamp held unlimited-wish-granting genies, and he used them to return home and set himself up lavishly. He purchased expensive gifts and used them to ask for the Sultan’s daughter’s hand in marriage. The Sultan was impressed with these gifts and eventually overrode his Grand Vizier’s reluctance of Aladdin. The princess was then free to marry Aladdin.
The two were wed, and Aladdin used magic to construct a beautiful palace where he and his princess lived happily. But all this magic alerted the sorcerer, who by this time realized Aladdin had escaped the pit. So the sorcerer used his wiles to trick the princess into throwing out the lamp, which he retrieved and then used to make the palace, the princess, and himself vanish. Aladdin, finding his home gone, used his ring genie to transport himself to his missing palace. There, he convinced his wife to seduce the sorcerer in order to steal back the lamp. She did so, and together they killed the sorcerer and returned everything to its rightful place.
Fenrir
NORWAY, NORSE MYTHOLOGY
In Asgard, the shapeshifter and trickster Loki, who was an Æsir, or Norse god, had three children by Angrboda, a female jötunn, or troll. These children were the gigantic snake Jormungandr, the ghoulish-looking woman Hel, and the terrifying wolf Fenrir. The ruling gods of Asgard soon discovered these children and feared them not only for their own terrible power but also for their troll mother and, worse still, their trickster father. The gods prophesied that they would cause much mischief and destruction.
Odin, the leader of the gods, brought the three children before him. He cast Jormungandr into the sea and sent Hel to rule the cold wasteland called Niflheim. But Odin knew Fenrir would need to be dealt with differently. The prophecies had foretold that Fenrir would overthrow Odin and cause Ragnarok, or the end of the world. The gods kept Fenrir close, but each day he ate more and grew bigger and bigger until they worried they could no longer constrain him. The gods devised a plan to trap the wolf. They approached him with a fetter, saying they wished to test his strength. Fenrir had no fear, and as soon as the fetter was on him, he snapped it off with a mighty kick.
Hiding their fear, the gods brought forth a second, even stronger fetter. Fenrir agreed to test it and himself, wanting the fame of his strength to spread. He fought and strained against the second fetter until it, too, broke.
With this the gods asked the dwarfs to make a magical fetter, which they called Gleipnir. Gleipnir was as thin as a ribbon, so Fenrir was dubious. He said he would try it on only if he was promised release and if a god placed a hand in his mouth. Only the god Tyr was brave enough. When Gleipnir wa
s wrapped around him, Fenrir kicked and struggled but was unable to free himself. In his rage, he bit off Tyr’s hand, and the gods, in revenge, stuck a sword in his mouth to keep it pried open. They then tied him to a giant rock, and to this day he waits to be freed and cause Ragnarok.
The Snow Queen
DENMARK, DANISH FAIRY TALE
Once upon a time, there were two children, Greta and Kai, who were the very best of friends. They lived next to each other and grew roses and vegetables in the window boxes between their houses. They shared everything.
One day the Devil’s mirror shattered, and tiny pieces flew across the earth. One piece landed in Kai’s eye, and everything he saw became vile. One piece landed in his heart, and he became cruel. He smashed the flower boxes he shared with Greta. When the Snow Queen arrived that winter, she was attracted by his beauty and his cruelty, and he left with her. The Queen kissed him twice, once to make him immune to the cold and once to cause him to forget Greta.
When Greta realized Kai was gone, she went on a journey to find him. She asked an old woman for directions but was trapped in her garden until the roses helped set her free. Next, she met a crow who thought he had seen Kai, but it was just a clever prince who had married a very wise princess. Greta was then captured by a band of robbers but was set free by their violent female leader, who took a liking to her. Finally, she rode on the back of a reindeer all the way to the north, where a Sami woman told her that her own purity of heart was all she needed to defeat the Snow Queen.
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