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The Tale of the Woodcutter

The Woodcutter’s Heiress

The woodcutter was close to despair, but he had one more child, his daughter. The kindest of his three children. Though surely she, soft-hearted as she was, could not succeed where his sons had failed.

Nonetheless, on the third day, his daughter took the ring and her father’s second-best ax and headed into the woods. Soon she crossed paths with the weeping woodsman. He told her his sad fate. The daughter looked at the ax in her hands, and without hesitation, she gave it to the desperate woodsman. After all, her family had not wanted for anything her whole life. His need was far greater than hers. And then she continued on her way.

Before long, she, too, came across the Lindwurm wrapped around the clearing. Like her brothers, she was afraid. But she had made a promise to her father, and she could not stop here. The daughter climbed a tree as close to the sleeping Lindwurm as she dared, and from there, she leaped over the beast without disturbing it.

In the clearing, she found her father’s ax. It was as her father had said, tangled in the branches of the tree. The daughter had no ax of her own to cut her father’s prized ax free, for she had given it to the weeping woodsman. But as she looked at the branches, she realized they looked like one of the puzzle boxes her father carved on idle days by the hearth. Slowly, she got a grip on the ax and carefully began to thread it through the branches, choosing her path carefully, dodging dead ends and snares until, after many hours and several wrong turns, the ax was free in her hands.

And finally, the honorable woodcutter’s daughter returned home, holding her father’s ax. She presented it to him, apologizing for not having the ax she had left with, telling him she had given it to someone in greater need than them. And when the woodcutter held the ax in his hands, he knew that this one was truly his.

His daughter had triumphed because where her elder brother had proven he was clever, he had not shown himself to be anything more than that. Her younger brother, too, had only proven he was honest. The woodcutter’s daughter had been clever like her brother, in solving the puzzle of the tree. And honest too, in admitting that she had given away the first ax. She had also been patient, spending hours getting it free. And brave, daring to pass the Lindwurm when neither of her brothers would. And she had been selfless, helping the woodsman in need.

And because of all these virtues, she was worthiest to inherit. And so the woodcutter’s daughter became his heiress, while her unworthy brothers got nothing.

So ended the first of what would come to be known as the Veritaz Trials.