Once upon a time, there was a princess who lived in
a castle at the foot of the Sass-leng Mountain. One sunny morning, as she
strolled the beautiful gardens of the valley, she saw a hawk circling over a
nest. “Oh, no. There is probably a little bird there.” She rushed to the nest making
a noise. The scared hawk turned away. In the nest, there was a tiny trembling
nightingale.
The princess stroked the scared bird with the tips
of her fingers until he stopped shivering. When she was about to leave, the
bird spoke in a human voice. “You have saved my life and in return I will grant
you a power of turning into a nightingale whenever you wish. You can lose this
power only through someone’s death.”
The princess didn’t understand the last part, but it
was too late to ask, the bird already flew away. Enchanted by the beauty and
the singing of the nightingale birds, she wanted to try her powers. When the
dark shadows of the evening covered the bed gardens, the princess sneaked into
the garden and said, “I wish I were a nightingale.”
The wish was granted. She admired her tiny wings and
colorful feathers. She sang a song and beamed at the sound of her voice. From
now on, the princess spent most of her days turning herself into a nightingale
and exploring the valleys below her.
One early morning, she flew above a castle in the
Gardena Valley. “I’ve never seen this castle before.” She flew down and perched
herself on a tree nearest to the castle. As she looked at the castle, she saw a
knight coming into the courtyard with his hunting knife. She sang a song sweet
and enchanting. The charmed prince moved closer to the tree, but the bird had
hidden.
A few days later, she came back singing her sweet
song. The prince appeared swiftly in one of the castle towers. He spread his
left arm with his palm up as waiting for the bird to fly over. But she laughed
at the serious face of the knight and left.
Soon, the knight lost his interest in hunting. The
only thing that made him happy was the song of a nightingale. While the knight
was getting sadder and sadder, the nightingale flew over the other parts of the
high mountains and low valleys. She didn’t think much how her singing could
distress somebody.
One day as she was chirping her way over a mountain,
a falcon pursued her. She quickly flew down to the valley and hid under a
lamb’s belly. “Well, well who are you running away from?”
“The cruel falcon almost killed me.”
“You’re not so innocent yourself. You too have
killed someone,” replied the lamb.
“Me! What do you mean?”
“Why don’t you fly back to the Gardena Valley, where
you used to sing to a knight.”
The worried princess flew as fast as she could to
the knight’s castle. She landed on a thick brick wall of a window from which
she saw the knight last time. As she peeped in, she saw him laying motionless
on his bed, with white face and his dogs whimpering around.
Full of remorse, she flew back to her castle and
wished to change back to her human form as quickly as possible. But nothing
happened. She was still a bird and in that moment she understood the last words
of the nightingale she rescued.
So she remained a bird and some people insist that
from time to time, they can hear her singing in her Valley of Sass-leng.
Source: The Pale Mountains by Carl Felix Wolff.
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