Section 1
The queen said to the princes, “You must go out into the world and earn your own living. You must fly away like great birds that cannot speak.” However, the queen could not make the princes as ugly as she wanted them to be. Instead, they turned into eleven charming wild swans. The princes, who were now swans, made a strange sound and flew out of the palace windows, across the park, and into the forest beyond. Early in the morning, as they were flying, the swan princes flew past the cottage where their sister Eliza was sleeping in her room. The swans stopped above the roof of the cottage, twisted their long necks, and flapped their wings to get attention, but no one noticed them. They had to fly away into the clouds and continue their journey over the wide world until they arrived at a thick, dark forest that extended all the way to the seashore. Little Eliza was alone in her room with no toys to play with except for a green leaf. She poked a hole through the leaf and looked at the sun through it. It felt like she was looking into her brothers’ clear eyes. When the warm sun touched her cheeks, she remembered all the kisses her brothers had given her. Every day was the same for Eliza, and she would spend her time playing with the green leaf. Sometimes the wind would blow through the leaves of the rosebush, and the wind would whisper to the roses, “Who can be more beautiful than you?” But the roses would shake their heads and reply, “Eliza is more beautiful than us.” On Sundays, an old woman would sit at the cottage door and read her hymnbook. The wind would blow and flutter the leaves of the book and ask, “Who can be more pious than you?” And the hymnbook would answer, “Eliza is more pious than me.” The roses and the hymnbook were telling the truth about Eliza. When Eliza was fifteen years old, she came back home. However, the queen, who saw how beautiful she had become, felt angry and hateful towards her. She wanted to turn Eliza into a swan, like her brothers, but she couldn’t do it yet because the king wanted to see his daughter. One morning, the queen went into the bathroom. The bathroom was made of a special rock called marble, and it had soft pillows with very beautiful cloth on them. The queen took three toads and brought them to the bath with her. She kissed all of them and said, “When Eliza comes to take a bath, sit on her head and make her as silly as you are.” Then she turned to another toad and said, “Sit on her forehead, so she will look as ugly as you are, and her father won’t recognize her.” Lastly, she told the third toad to rest on her heart, so Eliza would have bad thoughts and feel pain because of it. The queen put the toads in the water, and they changed color to green right away. The queen then asked Eliza to come to the bath and helped her to take off her clothes and get into the water. When Eliza went into the bath, the toads that the queen put there with her sat on her hair, forehead, and breast, but Eliza didn’t seem to notice. When she finished bathing, three red poppies were floating on the water. If the creatures that sat on Eliza’s head, forehead, and heart were not harmful or touched by the witch’s magic kiss, they would have transformed into red roses. Although the creatures sitting on Eliza’s body were not roses, they turned into flowers anyway because they had touched Eliza. Eliza was a very kind and pure-hearted girl. Witchcraft didn’t have any power over her because she was too good and innocent. The queen, who was very wicked, saw the red poppies and was angry that her plan didn’t work. So, she rubbed her face with walnut juice to make it brown, tangled her hair, and put some stinky ointment in it, so Eliza wouldn’t look beautiful anymore. She became so unrecognizable that no one would know it was her.
