Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version by Philip Pullman

men were inside, looking through the window, but she didn’t see them, and she opened the door and went straight in.
    ‘Move out the way,’ she said. ‘I want to sit next to the fire.’
    The three little men sat on their bench and watched as she took out her chicken-liver pâté sandwiches.
    ‘What’s that?’ they said.
    ‘My lunch,’ she said with her mouth full.
    ‘Can we have some?’
    ‘Certainly not.’
    ‘What about that cake? It’s a big piece. Do you want all of it?’
    ‘There’s hardly enough for me. Get your own cake.’
    When she’d finished eating they said, ‘You can sweep the path now.’
    ‘I’m not sweeping any path,’ she said. ‘D’you think I’m your servant? What a nerve.’
    They just smoked their pipes and looked at her, and since they obviously weren’t going to give her anything, she left and looked around for strawberries.
    ‘What a rude girl!’ said the first little man.
    ‘Selfish, too,’ said the second.
    ‘Not as good as the last one, by a long way,’ said the third. ‘What shall we give her?’
    ‘I’ll make sure that she gets uglier every day.’
    ‘I’ll make sure that every time she speaks, a toad jumps out of her mouth.’
    ‘I’ll make sure she dies an uncomfortable death.’
    The girl couldn’t find any strawberries, so she went home to complain. Every time she opened her mouth a toad jumped out, and soon the floor was covered in the crawling, squatting, flopping things, and even her mother found her repellent.
    After that the stepmother became obsessed. It was as if she had a worm gnawing in her brain. The only thing she thought about was how to make her stepdaughter’s life a misery, and to add to her torment, the girl was growing more and more beautiful each day.
    Finally the woman boiled a skein of yarn and hung it over the girl’s shoulder.
    ‘Here,’ she said, ‘take the axe and go and chop a hole in the ice on the river. Rinse this yarn, and don’t take all day about it.’
    She hoped the girl would fall in and drown, of course.
    Her stepdaughter did what she was told. She took the axe and the yarn to the river, and she was just about to step on to the ice when a passing carriage drew to a halt. In the carriage there happened to be a king.
    ‘Stop! What are you doing?’ he called. ‘That ice isn’t safe!’
    ‘I’ve got to rinse this yarn,’ the girl explained.
    The king saw how beautiful she was, and opened the carriage door.
    ‘Would you like to come with me?’ he said.
    ‘Yes, I would,’ she said, ‘gladly,’ because she was happy to get away from the woman and her daughter.
    So she got in and the carriage drove away.
    ‘Now I happen to be looking for a wife,’ the king said. ‘My advisers have told me it’s time I got married. You’re not married, are you?’
    ‘No,’ said the girl, and neatly dropped the gold piece into her pocket.
    The king was fascinated.
    ‘What a clever trick!’ he said. ‘Will you marry me?’
    She agreed, and their wedding was celebrated as soon as possible. So it all came about as the little men had promised.
    A year later the young queen gave birth to a baby boy. The whole country rejoiced, and it was reported in all the newspapers. The stepmother heard about it, and she and her daughter went to the palace, pretending to pay the queen a friendly visit. The king happened to be out, and when no one else was around, the woman and her daughter got hold of the queen and threw her out of the window into the stream running below, where she drowned at once. Her body sank to the bottom and was hidden by the water-weeds.
    ‘Now you lie down in her bed,’ the woman said to her daughter. ‘Don’t say anything, whatever you do.’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Toads,’ said the woman, picking up the one that had just jumped out, and throwing it out of the window after the queen. ‘Now just lie there. Do as I say.’
    The woman covered her daughter’s head, because quite apart from the toads she had