In those days, mankind was created and began to sing their quiet songs. The beasts listened in awe, and man tamed Nature to his gentler hand. But man had yet to meet the Sirin.

A morning bright and fine it was when one of the Sirin beheld a marvelous sight. A giant warrior, mounted on a giant horse, towered over the forest. His mount’s shoulder reached the crowns of the trees; its mane flashed like lightning with each shake of its head; the earth trembled with each step. The warrior scowled through a mountainous beard as he spoke aloud to himself, dispersing the hordes of ravens perching on his shoulders.

“Oh, my strength, my curse! Why do I have such power if I find none to test it, none to challenge me? Oh, if only the earth would grow a great ring from its bones, that I might grasp it and turn the earth inside out.”

He stopped. In his path lay a rough purse. Hardly giving it a thought, the giant nudged it with his spear, but it would not move. He tried to lift it, yet it was as though rooted to the ground. Intrigued, the giant dismounted, but even his tree-trunk arms could not budge the purse. Pleased by the challenge, he pulled with all his might, and buried himself to the ankles. He pulled again, and buried himself to the knees. He pulled again, and buried himself to his neck.

The Sirin, watching silently, saw a new wonder. A small creature, all softness and grace, approached the trammeled giant. It was a young man, leaning on a stick. He limped as he walked. His beauty pierced the Sirin’s heart. The youth reached the purse and lifted it off the ground, as though it weighed no more than a goose feather.

“How is it that you,” said the giant, amazed, “a crippled human, can lift what I—mighty as I am—cannot?”

The youth opened the purse and poured its contents to the ground. They were nothing but kernels of wheat.

“The wheat has a great secret, giant. The secret of all power. In order to flower, it must die. True strength is found in that most humble of acts—the death of one’s self for the sake of another.”

Years passed. The Sirin often returned to look upon the youth, but never revealed herself to him. Over the years, his crippling illness worsened. His grieving mother would carry his emaciated body to a seat near the window, where he would sit and stare with unnaturally round eyes at the world moving past him, paying him no heed. Every day, when his mother left to work in the fields, he repeated the same prayer.

“I give my legs, my life, to all those who sicken and die on this earth. May my sacrifice prove useful to them.”

And his prayer was answered. Every day sick children jumped with renewed vigor, every day the dying found life again. And every day the young man faded a little more.

One morning, the youth heard a loud voice outside his small hut.

“Rise up and greet your guest, young man!”

The young man obeyed, and his limbs knit together, and life flowed through them once again. He came outside to greet a bearded ancient in long robes. He held a bowl carved in the likeness of a mallard. The old man presented it to the youth.

“Drink this,” he said. “The bees labored over it in their clover-fields, their strawberry-meadows.”

The youth sipped thrice.

“How do you feel, young man?”

“I feel life in me again, as I have not these many years.”

“Now dip the bowl in the running waters of the river and drink.”

The youth did so.

“How do you feel now?”

“I feel the strength of ten men within me.”

Suddenly the old man was there no more. A glorious creature—half-woman, half-eagle— stood before him and sang to him. Thus were the Sirin bound forever to their beloved, and while the bond lasted, the earth gave fruit, the mountains gave pure springs, and the Heights reached down to earth in a harmony of endless song.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard such utter nonsense,” muttered the hag. “You expect to win with that story? It’s a mishmash of several battered horses. But you knew that already. And who ever heard of a Sirin who could transfigure?”

Tarin winked at her and smiled. “Poetic license.”

With a loud harrumph, the hag sat on a tree stump and began her story.

The Curious Princess

You have probably heard the horrible story of the prince and the raven. I hate that story. It ignores all the important details and never considers the Raven’s point of view. Well, I’ll tell you the true end of that story. As you probably already know, after the Raven had his fun with the prince, the Sirin caught the Raven and imprisoned him in Vasyllia.

The prince came home and—somehow getting over the grief of killing his own beloved—married and had a daughter. She must have inherited some of his restlessness, because she could not be prevailed upon to stay in any one place for more than a few minutes. There was too much to be seen! She would disappear from the palace to wander around the city, the fields, the wild forests. The prince finally had enough of his little girl’s wanderlust, and he ordered that she be confined to the palace.

Unfortunately for him, the palace itself was an endless labyrinth of discoveries, especially in the dungeons. There, the mountain itself bled into the palace, and some of the rooms were hardly distinguishable from caves. Most were empty, but some had fascinating treasures—ancient tapestries, old rotted chests with moldy drapery and robes woven with dulling gold, drafty armories with rusted swords and mail from the forgotten days of Lassar. The princess was nearly in constant ecstasies.

But her curiosity was insatiable. Naturally, there was a single door that would not open, no matter how hard she pushed. She could not simply ask someone to open it for her. Soon all other rooms lost their charm. She would come to this old wooden door and sit in front of it, staring.

One evening, she was caught prowling the dungeons and brought to her father. He looked grave, but not angry. He didn’t even scold her. Instead, he put her on his lap and petted her hair and spoke softly to her.

“You must not seek beyond that door, my dear. There is great evil there. It must never be let out, or many will die.”

Well, so much for the prince’s wisdom. Anyone knows that for a child as inquisitive as that, a prohibition is little more than an invitation. But the problem was still all too real: how to open the door? She decided to wait. Despite her impatient curiosity, she knew very well that if she really wanted something, there would always be a way to get it. She was a prince’s daughter, after all.

So she waited. Every day she would spend at least an hour in front of the locked door, but no idea presented itself on how to open it. Finally, her patience was rewarded. One late evening, a hunchbacked and very deaf servant carried a bucket of water right up to the forbidden door. She managed to hide before he saw her. To her delight, he pulled out a set of keys bigger than his head and opened the door. To her even greater delight, he walked in and left the door open. She sneaked in behind him.

They entered a long passage that ended in another shut door of heavy black iron, bolted in ten places with locks and mechanisms that made her head spin as the servant deftly worked them open. Another passage followed, faintly illumined by torches, smelling unpleasantly of pitch and tar. This passage ended in a huge stone. Pushing with all his might, the servant managed to budge it enough to open a small enough chink to walk through. She followed.

The room was so dark, she had no trouble hiding. Barely illumined by the torches in the hallway, the old man poured the contents of his bucket into a well in the center of the room, then wiped his forehead with his arm. To her chagrin, he immediately walked out and pushed the stone back into the doorway. Blackness fell. She was shut in.

Eventually, she noticed that there was a thin slit in the wall high above her. As her eyes adjusted to the faint light, she began to look around. It was obviously a dungeon. Old chains lay on the ground and hung from rusty rings on the wall. Then she saw him and nearly jumped out of her skin. He was a wretched old man, nary a hair on his head, a wispy white beard barely hanging from a receding chin. There was nothing but skin on his bones. She had never seen such a pathetic creature.

“Water…” he gasped. “Please, give me some of that water.”

There was a large bucket next to the well, too far for him to reach. How terrible, she thought. That horrid servant brought in the water just to torture the old man.

“You poor thing,” she said. She was, for all her curiosity, rather a soft-hearted girl. “Of course I’ll give you some water.”

And so she did. At first she was a little put off at how greedily he drank it, bucketful after bucketful. She was a little more unnerved by how his eyes kept getting redder and redder. It’s only torchlight, she said to herself. By the fifth bucketful, she was afraid. The bony old man was now a huge, beastly creature with burning eyes. He looked at her with his head cocked to one side. He’s going to eat me, she thought, unable to move for sheer terror.

Instead, he hurled himself at the stone door and pounded it to dust. He tore off the second door of iron in one blow. He shattered the third door of wood to splinters.

The Raven turned back once more and looked at the princess. He smiled. It was not a pleasant smile at all. She screamed.

Thus, the Raven escaped his unjust imprisonment and fled Vasyllia to hide and gather his strength for a final, devastating retribution.

“Well, Tarin? Didn’t expect me to have a story that good in my skirts, did you?”

“Tut, tut.” He winked at her. “Our judges have yet to make their choice.”