TBR's Grimm Tales#7: The Two Brothers

Hidden with Team Blue Rubicon’s Bubbaraye. Some twisted tales for your enjoyment!

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The Two Brothers

· Buckle up, this one's long.

· The first pair of two brothers are adults: one's rich (and a jerk) and one's poor (he's humble and not such a bad guy).

· The poor man finds a golden bird in the forest, and ends up with one of its feathers, one of its eggs, and finally the bird itself. He sells each of these things to his brother.

· The wicked, rich brother plans to eat the golden bird, but the poor man's two sons happen to run in and eat two small pieces that fall from the roasting bird. It turns out that they ate the heart and liver, which magically bestow upon the eater the ability to wake up with a gold piece every morning.

· Realizing this, the rich bro gets more than a little angry, and lies to his brother about the gold pieces being from the devil, which means Mr. Nice Guy is gonna have to cast out his sons.

· The two sons wander, and a kind huntsman raises them as his own. When they've become competent huntsmen, they wander the world.

· They spare the lives of a bunch of animals, and in return get two of their young to raise as their own: two hares, two foxes, two wolves, two bears, and two lions. So now they have cool sidekicks, one each.

· Eventually, the brothers separate, and the younger brother reaches a city in mourning because the king's daughter will be given to a dragon the following day.

· The younger brother slays the dragon with the help of his animals, much to the princess's delight, who divides up her necklace among the animals.

· Dragon-slaying is hard work, though, so the brother lays down for a nap. The king's marshal, who's watched the whole thing, beheads him and makes the princess swear to say that he was the one who slew the dragon.

· Luckily, his animal sidekicks manage to find a root that restores the brother to life. He returns to the city, and this time finds the mood festive because the princess is going to marry her supposed rescuer.

· He settles in an inn and sends each of his animals to the palace one-by-one, so that the princess recognizes them and knows he's there. When he finally gets to the castle, he whips out the dragon's seven tongues, which he'd taken when he killed it, thus proving that he's the rightful groom.

· Take that, marshal. The scheming dude is killed for his treachery, and the younger brother and princess finally wed.

· Things are happy until the brother yearns to go hunting in a creepy forest. Who is he to resist a hankering?

· While he's making camp overnight, he meets an old woman who says she's afraid of his animals, and asks him to tap each one with a branch. This turns all of them to stone, and then the old woman, who's really a witch (surprise, surprise) turns the brother to stone as well.

· The older brother, meanwhile, is wondering how his sibling's doing, so he looks at the tree where they'd left a knife stuck in the wood, and his brother's side of the knife is rusted, so he knows something's up.

· When he goes to look for his bro, he winds up in the city where his brother has been ruling as king. The brothers look uncannily alike, so everyone mistakes him for the missing king.

· He rolls with it, and pretends to be king in order to find out what happened to his younger brother. He fills his shoes in every way, except he places a sword in bed between himself and the queen to prevent anything from happening between them.

· No answers arrive, so he goes into the same creepy forest, but is clever enough to fight the witch rather than succumbing to her branch. He beats her and makes her disenchant everyone.

· The younger brother is happy to see his brother. That is, until he hears that he slept in the same bed as the queen.

· In fury, he beheads the older brother, but is immediately filled with regret, which seems about right, considering he just decapitated his own kin.

· Fortunately the animals still have some of that resurrection root, so they bring the older brother back to life. And when the queen remarks on how odd the sword in bed was, the younger brother realizes that his brother had kept faith. Maybe that whole beheading thing was a bit premature?

· And everyone lives together happily.