by Alex Flinn
• “The Six Swans”: A man’s children are enchanted to become swans. Their sister eventually finds them and turns them into humans by remaining silent for a year and making shirts out of flowers.
• “The Golden Bird”: Three sons try to find a bird that has been eating their father’s apples. The first two fail. The third listens to the directions of a fox (or wolf) who tells him to stay at a poor inn, steal the bird but not its golden cage, and to perform several other tasks. The son eventually gets the bird, a horse, and the hand of a princess, but the fox asks a final favor: that the son kill him. When the son does, the fox transforms into a man.
This story is originally from Russia, where it is called “The Firebird and the Gray Wolf.” It was adapted by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky for a ballet, The Firebird.
• “The Valiant Tailor”: A tailor kills seven flies and makes a jacket bragging about this achievement. People believe he has killed seven men and ask him to kill two giants. He tricks them into killing each other.
This was actually made into a short film, The Brave Little Tailor, starring Mickey Mouse as the tailor. However, I loved the story and believed the movie to be obscure enough that most teens would still be unfamiliar with it.
• “The Salad”: In exchange for a kindness, an old woman gives a huntsman a magical cloak that takes him where he wishes and a bird’s heart that produces gold. A lady and her daughter trick him out of them, so he changes them to donkeys with the help of a magical salad. He eventually relents and marries the daughter.
• “The Fisherman and His Wife”: A man catches a magic fish and does not kill it but asks it to grant his wishes. His wife asks for more and more extravagant items until the fish takes everything away.
May you enjoy discovering these and other tales. A good first place to look is on the web at www.surlalunefairytales.com, which includes most of the fairy tales I’ve mentioned here, and many others.
Copyright
Cloaked
Copyright © 2011 by Alex Flinn
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Flinn, Alex.
Cloaked / Alex Flinn. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Seventeen-year-old Johnny is approached at his family’s struggling shoe repair shop in a Miami, Florida, hotel by Alorian Princess Victoriana, who asks him to find her brother, who was turned into a frog.
ISBN 978-0-06-087422-3
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062069610
[1. Missing persons—Fiction. 2. Magic—Fiction. 3. Animals—Fiction. 4. Characters in literature—Fiction. 5. Shoes—Fiction. 6. Princesses—Fiction. 7. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. 8. Key Largo (Fla.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.F6395Clo 2011
2009053387
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
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11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDB 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
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