Online stories: StoryNights on Zoom

Fitcher’s Bird, a Grimm tale related to Bluebeard, follows a familiar fairy-tale pattern: three sisters, with the youngest destined to do what the other sisters could not. In this story, that youngest sister is Hope.

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Hope is given a tiny key and a prohibition: “Do not open the door this key unlocks, on pain of death.” A chamber guarded so fiercely seems certain to hold some extraordinary treasure. Does it not?

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In the English fairy tale Mr. Fox, another Bluebeard tale, a warning above the chamber door reads: “Be bold, be bold, but not too bold, lest that your heart’s blood run cold.”

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Hope opens the door, of course. One opens locked doors in fairy tales.

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Now the story begins.