The Golden Spinning-Wheel: The Story of King Dobromil and the Good Dobrunka

Then Zloboha put on Dobrunka’s clothes and she and her mother rode back to town in the carriage and nobody could tell that she wasn’t Dobrunka. In the palace the attendants soon whispered to each other that their mistress was kinder to them at first, but they suspected nothing.

In the meantime poor Dobrunka, who was not quite dead, had been found by a hermit and carried by him to a cave. She awoke to feel a kind hand soothing her wounds and putting some reviving drops between her lips. Of course, she could not see who it was, for she had no eyes. As she regained consciousness she remembered what had happened and began bitterly to upbraid her unnatural mother and her cruel sister.

“Be quiet. Do not complain,” a low voice said. “All will yet be well.”

“How can all be well,” wept poor Dobrunka, “when I have no eyes and no feet and no hands? I shall never again see the bright sun and the green woods. I shall never again hold in my arms my beloved Dobromil. Nor shall I be able to spin fine flax for his shirts! Oh, what did I ever do to you, wicked mother, or to you, cruel sister, that you have done this to me?”

The hermit went to the entrance of the cave and called three times. Soon a boy came running in answer to the call.

“Wait here till I come back,” the hermit said.

He returned in a short time with a golden spinning wheel in his arms. He said to the boy:

“My son, take this spinning wheel to town to the king’s palace. Sit down in the courtyard near the gate and if any one asks you for how much you will sell the wheel, say: ‘For two eyes.’ Unless you are offered two eyes for it bring it back.”

The boy took the spinning wheel and carried it to town as the hermit directed. He went to the palace and sat down in the courtyard near the gate, just as Zloboha and her mother were returning from a walk.

“Look, mother!” Zloboha cried. “What a gorgeous spinning wheel! I could spin on that myself! Wait. I’ll ask whether it’s for sale.”

She went over to the boy and asked him would he sell the spinning wheel.