people saw how beautiful she was and they begged her to come live with them in their world, and so she did. They gave her a beautiful castle to live in, and she was very happy. But the people were very poor, and each night, while she was asleep, they would sneak into her castle and steal a strand of her ruby hair and a piece of her emerald eyes to sell for food. “It’s only a piece,” they would say, “She’ll never notice.” And then one day they saw that she was no longer beautiful. Her hair was gone and her eyes were empty, her soul lost, and they threw her out of the castle and onto the streets, and she starved to death without any way to survive. Weeks later the people were hungry again, so they tiptoed into the castle looking for a strand of her ruby hair and a piece of her emerald eyes, but the girl was gone. |
