″‘I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider’s web. I saved the victim’s life.’
‘The firefly’s?’ said the minstrel.
‘The spider’s. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire.‘”
“When I was young I told a tale of buried gold, and men from leagues around dug in the woods. I dug myself. But why? I thought the tale of treasure might be true.”
“Even the hands of his watch and the hands of all the thirteen clocks were frozen. They had all frozen at the same time, on a snowy night, seven years before, and after that it was always ten minutes to five in the castle.”
“Once upon a time, in a gloomy castle on a lonely hill, where there were thirteen clocks that wouldn’t go, there lived a cold, aggressive Duke, and his niece, the Princess Saralinda. She was warm in every wind and weather, but he was always cold.”