Today I'm going to write about the strangest story I read this week in the Indian Fairy Tales, which I liked because it reminded me of Rumplestisken in our own fairy tales. This story was called The Prince and the Fakir.
This story starts out with a king who has no children and is very sad about it, so he goes to lay down in an intersection (was he trying to die?). A Fakir comes along and asks what he is doing so the king explains that he is very depressed because he has no children. The Fakir asks what the king would give to have children and the king says anything. The Fakir says he will let the king have two sons, but that he must later give one of his sons back to the Fakir. The king agrees, but when it comes time to give his son back he is heartbroken by the idea because he loves both of his sons. So instead he tries to trick the Fakir by giving him a slave's son, but the Fakir knows the difference because he hears ants talking about how the king's sons are eating in the cellar and then he is very angry. He demands that the sons show themselves. Then the sons go with the Fakir and I think one of them dies in a vat of oil because it says he's turned into roasted meat. The other one escapes and sets all of the Fakir's prisoners free and takes the Fakir's clothes. While pretending to be the Fakir in another kingdom, he ends up marrying the princess there and eventually reveals his true identity to her father, who is happy that she married a prince and not a Fakir.
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