Fitcher’s Bird

Long ago in a village surrounded by dense forests and rolling hills, there lived three sisters renowned for their beauty and spirit. The eldest was thoughtful and wise, the middle sister was passionate and bold, and the youngest possessed a keen mind and remarkable resourcefulness.

One day, a stranger came to their door—a man dressed in fine clothes with a pleasant face and charming manner. He carried a basket filled with trinkets and curiosities.

“Good day, fair maiden,” he said to the eldest sister who had answered his knock. “Might I interest you in my exotic wares? I have traveled from distant lands to bring these treasures to your village.”

The eldest sister, intrigued by his foreign goods, leaned forward to examine the contents of his basket. In that moment, the peddler revealed his true nature. He was no ordinary merchant but a sorcerer who used dark magic to capture young women. As soon as she touched the basket, a spell fell over her, and she found herself compelled to step inside. Once she was within, the sorcerer, known by some as Fitcher, closed the lid and carried her away to his grand house deep in the forest.

At his mansion, Fitcher released the eldest sister from the basket and the enchantment that had bound her. He showed her through rooms filled with unimaginable riches—gold and silver, jewels and fine fabrics, artworks and curiosities from every corner of the world.

“All this I give to you,” he said, placing a ring upon her finger. “You shall be the mistress of this house and want for nothing. I must leave on a journey, but I entrust to you these keys. You may open any door in the house save this small one.” He handed her a bundle of keys, pointing to the smallest among them. “This key is forbidden to you. Should you use it, your disobedience will bring terrible consequences.”

After Fitcher departed, the eldest sister explored the magnificent house, opening door after door to discover new wonders. Yet all the while, the small key seemed to grow heavier in her hand, her curiosity mounting with each passing hour. Finally, unable to resist any longer, she approached the forbidden door in the lowest part of the house.

With trembling hands, she inserted the small key into the lock. The door swung open to reveal a chamber of horrors—a room whose floor was slick with blood, where the bodies of young women lay dismembered, victims of the sorcerer’s cruelty.

The eldest sister screamed and dropped the key into the pool of blood. Though she retrieved it quickly and tried to clean it, the blood remained, magically staining the key as evidence of her disobedience.

When Fitcher returned and demanded the keys, he saw immediately that she had entered the forbidden chamber. “You have disobeyed me,” he said coldly, “and now you must join the others.” Despite her pleas for mercy, he dragged her to the bloody chamber, killed her, and added her to his collection of victims.

The sorcerer then returned to the village, disguised once more as a peddler. This time, he captured the middle sister in the same manner. At his house, he repeated his instructions about the keys and the forbidden door. Despite hearing her sister’s screams in her dreams, warning her away from the door, the middle sister’s curiosity eventually overcame her caution. She too opened the forbidden door, discovered the gruesome scene along with her sister’s remains, and met the same fate upon Fitcher’s return.

When the sorcerer returned to the village a third time, the youngest sister was waiting. Though she had grown suspicious about her sisters’ disappearances, she had no proof of foul play. When the peddler approached with his basket of curiosities, she too fell under his spell and was carried away to his forest mansion.

Like her sisters, she received the keys and the warning. But the youngest sister was exceedingly clever. After Fitcher departed, she took the small key and carefully placed it in a cabinet, turning her attention instead to exploring the permitted areas of the house.

During her exploration, she discovered a window that overlooked a garden where an old woman was gathering herbs. The youngest sister called down to her.

“Good woman, what herbs do you collect?”

“Remedies and protections, child,” replied the old woman, looking up with knowing eyes. “For those who have the wisdom to use them.”

Sensing an ally, the youngest sister asked, “And do you have a remedy for curiosity? Or protection against those who would punish it?”

The old woman smiled knowingly. “I have something better—knowledge. The master of this house is a sorcerer who has already claimed your sisters. He will test you with the bloody key. When blood stains it, as it inevitably will, no amount of washing will remove it. But there are ways to restore what seems permanently marred.”

Following the old woman’s instructions, the youngest sister prepared a mixture of ashes, herbs, and wax. Then, her heart pounding with dread and determination, she took the small key and opened the forbidden door.

The horror that greeted her was beyond imagination. There lay her sisters, dismembered alongside other unfortunate women who had fallen victim to Fitcher’s evil. Instead of screaming or fainting, the youngest sister steeled herself against the terrible sight.

“I will avenge you,” she whispered to her sisters’ remains. “And if there is a way to restore you, I shall find it.”

When the key became stained with blood, she applied the mixture the old woman had taught her to make. To her relief, the blood disappeared, leaving the key as bright and clean as when it had first been given to her.

Returning to the chamber of horrors, she gathered her sisters’ dismembered parts, carefully arranging them in their proper order. As the old woman had suggested might be possible, life returned to their bodies once they were made whole again. The eldest and middle sisters embraced their savior, marveling at their resurrection.

“We must escape this place,” said the youngest sister, “but not before ensuring that Fitcher can never harm another woman.”

Together, the three sisters concealed themselves in different parts of the house to await the sorcerer’s return. When Fitcher arrived and found the key unstained, he was both surprised and pleased.

“You have passed my test,” he told the youngest sister. “Unlike your sisters and those before them, you have proven yourself worthy. You shall be my bride, and I shall invite all my friends and associates to our wedding feast.”

The youngest sister feigned delight at this proposal. “Nothing would please me more,” she said. “But allow me to make preparations worthy of such an occasion.”

Fitcher, believing he had finally found a woman who would not defy him, agreed to her request and left to invite his fellow sorcerers to the celebration.

Once he was gone, the youngest sister turned to her siblings. “Now we implement our plan.”

While her sisters gathered their strength, the youngest sister took a skull from the chamber of horrors and placed it in the upper window of the house, its hollow eyes gazing out at the path Fitcher would take upon his return. Then she prepared a large vat of honey and another of feathers gathered from pillows throughout the house.

When her preparations were complete, she immersed herself in the honey until she was completely coated, then rolled in the feathers until she resembled a strange bird-like creature, unrecognizable as human.

“Go now,” she instructed her sisters, handing them a golden egg that Fitcher had prized. “Take this and make your way home. I will follow once I have ensured that Fitcher and his kind can never harm another woman.”

The eldest and middle sisters escaped with the golden egg, making their way carefully through the forest toward their village.

Meanwhile, the disguised youngest sister waited until Fitcher’s guests—all sorcerers and practitioners of dark magic—had assembled in the great hall for the wedding feast. While they drank and made merry, she quietly sealed all exits from the mansion and set fire to it from multiple points.

As flames began to consume the structure, the wedding guests realized their peril, but found every escape route blocked. From outside, watching the mansion burn, the bizarre bird-creature that was the youngest sister called out:

“Look up, look up, Fitcher’s bird calls from above! The murderer’s den now becomes his funeral pyre. None of your kind shall survive this fire!”

When nothing remained of the mansion but ashes, and no sorcerer had escaped the inferno, the youngest sister shed her feathered disguise in a nearby stream and followed her sisters’ path home.

The three were joyfully reunited with their parents, who had feared them lost forever. The golden egg, when opened, contained jewels of such value that the family never again wanted for anything.

As for the strange tale of Fitcher’s demise, it spread throughout the region. Some said they had seen a magnificent bird rising from the flames of the burning mansion, carrying away the souls of the sorcerer’s victims to their final peace. Others claimed to have heard a woman’s voice on the wind, warning that those who prey upon the innocent will ultimately face justice.

But the three sisters, when asked about their time away from home, would only smile mysteriously and say, “Curiosity may indeed lead to perilous places, but cleverness and courage can transform even the darkest fate into deliverance.”

From that day forward, no peddler with a basket of curiosities ever again appeared in their village, and young women walked the forest paths without fear, for the youngest sister had ensured that Fitcher’s evil had been permanently extinguished from the world.