In a forest, there lived three lazy pigs. They needed shelter, so they decided to quickly build a hut of mud and straw. It was horribly ugly, but you have to remember that these were pigs, so they didn’t particularly mind.
One evening, a Knight was passing through the forrest. When he saw the hovel in the dimming light, it looked incredibly eerie. Based on his instincts, he assumed there was a witch inside, drew his sword, and slowly approached the pigs’ abode. Meanwhile, the pigs were resting in their home, boiling a pot of tea. When they saw the Knight approaching with his sharp blade held high, the pigs began to panic. The ungodly noise of the squealing pigs combined with the bubbling and hissing of the teapot painted a clear image in the mind of the Knight — there was *definitely* a witch in that hovel.
He roared as he charged forward, “Horrid witch, I have come to slay thee and free the forrest from thine evil grasp!”
Hastily, the pigs closed the door, and the Knight’s sword became jammed in the bits of mud, stone, and tangled twigs that comprised it. When he heard the Knight’s cry, the cleverest of the pigs had an idea. He quickly told his brothers to let him climb on their shoulders. They let him do this, then he draped a large black rug over all three of them. When the Knight finally freed his sword from the muck with a reverberant slorp, the pigs appeared to him a bonafide hunchbacked witch, cloak and all.
“I curse thee, fool Knight, to turn into a salamander!”
Then the knight felt glass breaking against his armor, and a stinging hot liquid crashed across his flesh. As the liquid seeped through the armor, he could feel the metal getting very hot, as if he were melting and turning into a lizard. Horrified, he ran away as quickly as he could, to dive in the nearest river and wash off the potion he must surely have been doused with.
Of course, the pigs knew it had just been tea. But to a man who thought a hovel like their’s must house a witch, burning liquids from robed figures must be terrible potions. The pigs laughed about it afterwards, and the knight, now drenched and freezing from his dive into a river, trekked through the night to reach the nearest town.
He was a sorry figure the next morning, his armor still leaking and the feather on his helmet bent and broken. The villagers felt bad for him, and tended to him as he rested in their town. After all, there weren’t many folks who went through their neck of the woods. And, as they did with all travelers, they asked him to regale them with news from the broader world.
The knight told them that the news was terrible: a witch had taken residence in their humble forrest! Most of the villagers were initially skeptical, but the man took of his helmet and showed them where his flesh had been cut and burnt by the pig’s tea. It really did look rather scaly. So, coming from a noble and well-spoken figure like the knight, the villagers were convinced, and began avoiding the part of the woods where the Pigs’ hovel lay.
This turn of events was of great benefit to the pigs. For several months, they did not have to worry about people. They bathed in the sun, frolicked through the mud, ate mushrooms, and did all the other things happy pigs do. Because there were no natural predators there (man had long since slain all the wolves), the only real worry they had in life was predation from humans.
Or, at least the turn of events had been of great benefit to them, up till a point. Eventually, news of the witch spread from that village to other nearby townships. The people grew antsy, and soon there was a mob ready to strike out against the witch. Men baring pitchforks and torches descended upon the forest, looking to destroy the hovel and its inhabitants. A group of men, buff as butchers, and with an equal amount of sharp pointy metal found the right place with the help of the knight. Slowly they closed upon the hut in a big circle. They opened the door. The pigs didn’t wake up. Silence.
The leading man was dumbfounded to look inside and see not a haggard witch, but three happy and well fed pigs. He called the others over to look inside too.
“Maybe it’s a trick.”
“Yeah, I reckon a witch could turn ‘erself in to a pig!”
“But three pigs? How could a witch turn ‘erself into three pigs?”
“Darn, that’s a good point. One witch could ‘ardly be three pigs.”
The other villagers quietly mumbled their assent at this sagely bit of algebra, then muddled about in confusion trying to determine what to do. By this point, the Knight (who had previously kept a healthy distance from the hut, to save from being turned into a Salamander) reached the front of the crowd and was able to see the situation inside the hut. He said, “Why, it’s clear what happened. The witch was far bigger than any of these three pigs. At least twice their size. So she must have captured three children and turned them into pigs!”
This made sense to the villagers, who began to weep at the horrible fate of those children. They took the pigs up gently in their arms, careful not to disturb their sleep, and carried them back to the village.
From that day on, the pigs were raised like humans, and — quite to the their delight — given ample food to eat. They went on to live long and happy lives together in the village. Funnily enough, the whole thing turned out to be useful to the villagers too. When real children misbehaved, their parents would point to the pigs and explain that’s what witches did to bad kids. Really helped with discipline. And the Knight, of course, was hailed as a hero who rescued those three cursed waifs.
So, in the end, things turned out well for all. Well, all except the hovel, which was declared a den of evil and burned to the ground. But, it was a horribly ugly hovel, after all, so that’s probably for the best.
Two Brothers Write 