Knjigice
Fairy tale · Classic fairy tales
Bluebeard
The tale of a little key and a forbidden room
Also in: Sinjebradec (Slovenian) · Modrofúz (Slovak)
Once upon a time there lived a rich lord with a castle and silver and gold beyond counting. But his beard was blue as the evening sky, so everyone called him Bluebeard, and the girls were afraid of him. One summer he gave splendid feasts with music and dancing. The youngest daughter of a neighbouring lady saw that he could be kind too, and agreed to become his wife.
1
After the wedding the young wife came to the castle. What halls! Mirrors from floor to ceiling, chests full of silk, tables bending under good things. Her sister Anne came to visit, and together they walked the long corridors, counting doors. "There are more of them than days in a year," laughed Anne. In the evening they sat watching lights come on across the valley.
2
One morning Bluebeard said: "I must go away on business. Here are the keys to every room — open whichever you like." Then he held up a tiny key. "This one opens the little room at the end of the lower corridor. That room you must not enter. Ever." Then he rode away, and his wife was left with a fistful of keys. The little key was feather-light, yet in her hand it weighed like a stone.
3
Her friends came to see the castle. They opened wardrobes, admired pearls and twirled before the mirrors. But the young wife hardly heard them. The tiny key burned in her pocket, and one single question hummed in her head: what is in the little room? At last she could bear it no longer. She slipped quietly out and ran down the stairs.
4
At the little door she paused for a moment. "I'll only peek," she told herself. The key creaked in the lock, and the door swung slowly open. What she saw in there was so terrible that the key fell to the floor. She snatched it up, locked the door and fled back up the stairs. Her heart pounded all the way to the top.
5
Upstairs she saw a dark stain on the little key. She scrubbed it with water, with soap, with sand — but the stain came back every time, for the key was enchanted. "What shall I tell him?" she whispered to her sister Anne. That night she did not sleep a wink. In the morning a horn sang in the courtyard: Bluebeard was home early.
6
"The keys, please," said Bluebeard. When he saw the stain on the little key, his voice turned cold as ice. "You have been in the little room. Now you shall stay there too." — "Please," said his wife, "give me at least a moment to say my prayers." — "A few minutes," he growled, "and no more." The wife ran up the stairs as fast as her feet would carry her.
7
She ran to her sister. "Anne, please, climb the tower and look — are our brothers coming? They promised to visit today!" Anne hurried up the steps and gazed out over the fields. "Do you see anything?" called the wife. "Only the sun shining and the grass growing green," Anne replied. "Look again, Anne, please, look again!"
8
"Come down!" thundered Bluebeard from below. "One more moment!" begged the wife, and called again: "Anne, sister Anne, do you see anything?" — "A great cloud of dust is coming up the road!" — "Is it our brothers?" — "Ah, no… only a flock of sheep." The wife's heart sank. The minutes crawled like hours, and the horn at the door sang again.
9
"Come down, or I shall come up!" shouted Bluebeard. "Anne, do you see anything?" the wife called one more time. "I see two riders!" cried Anne. "They are galloping this way — it is our brothers!" She waved her scarf at them: "Hurry, hurry!" Already hooves were drumming before the castle. "Now I go," said the wife, and took a deep breath.
10
Slowly the wife came down the stairs. Bluebeard had already seized her hand — when the great doors burst open and her brothers rushed into the hall, swords in hand. Bluebeard ran for the stairs, but the brothers caught him, and that was the end of him. Trembling all over, the wife clung to her sister Anne.
11
As Bluebeard had no heirs, the whole castle and all its riches went to the young wife. She gave her sister Anne a lovely wedding, bought her brothers horses and gear, and in time she herself married a good, cheerful man. Beside him she soon forgot the bad days. And the little room stayed locked for ever.
12The End
