Halloween is a big holiday with my family and when we realized it was on Saturday this year, my mom and I started thinking of fun things to do with the kids. She ran across some black jewels while she was in St. George and out of that came this story...she printed in on some parchment, burned the edges, and rolled it up as a scroll...she told the kids she found it in her parents' basement and it was a very very old story. Dad made a "forest floor" by the old corkscrew willow for the kids to search for the enchanted jewels.
THE GREEDY WITCH - by Lorelie Andrus and Kat Fuller
A very long time ago… before your great-grandparents were born, in a village just beyond the forest at the base of Mount Timpanogos, lived a very wicked, ornery and greedy witch who loved nothing more than her jewels. She used her magic to cast spells on the rich men and women of her village making them give her all their treasures of silver, gold and jewels. Because she was so greedy, it didn’t matter how much treasure she had, she always wanted more.
One day, admiring her treasure and wishing for more, she came up with a plan. Her plan would give her jewels unlike anything anyone had ever seen. She put her plan into action by training her loyal, but nasty black cat to allow all the mice in the field to come into her home and feast on cheese and other delicacies that she provided. It wasn’t easy for the cat to sit back and watch the yummy mice eating to their heart’s content in the witch’s house. But, as the mice enjoyed the food the witch had used as bait, she caught them and put them in a little cage. When she had trapped a good number of them, she completed her plan by casting a spell on all the mice…
Igga Bigga
Hunka Bunka
Dinka Danka Doo
And POOF! They turned into big, beautiful, perfect, shimmering, black diamonds.
The witch had never seen such exquisite jewels. No one had black diamonds like hers because they were a product of her special, greedy magic. She feared that someone would steal them from her, so she always kept them with her in a fancy satin bag.
The way the spell worked was to make the mice into black diamonds by day, so the witch could show them off and brag about her spectacular possession, but at night, they turned back into mice. To make sure the mice couldn’t escape in the night, she locked them in the cage.
The witch loved to take her jewels to town and showed them to anyone who would admire them, She so enjoyed making other people envious of her unusual black diamonds, and she would never tell that they were merely enchanted mice. One day, as she was making a particularly lavish show of her wealth, she suddenly realized that it was dusk. The sun had set and the sky was dark lavender. Soon it would be night and her precious diamonds would turn back into mice. She needed to be home before that happened. She climbed onto her broom while tightly clutching her bag of black diamonds. Suddenly something went wrong… her broom started to go down… It went down, down, down and spun around making it impossible for her to hold onto the broom and her bag of jewels. She said some magic words, tried to steady her broom, but the broom was out of control. The bag of jewels fell from her hand and plummeted to the forest floor. The broom seemed to have a mind of its own and continued to spin and fly, very close to the ground, toward her cottage. By the time she could climb off her broom and gather her composure, it was night.
It was a clear, cold, starry night. The moon was full, which provided perfect hunting conditions for the owl that lived in a large corkscrew willow by the witch’s cottage.
The witch was extremely upset, not because of her wild ride, but because she had dropped her bag of jewels. She needed to return to the spot her bag had dropped, but her broom refused to fly. She quickly put on her pointy-toed witch hiking boots and went into the forest to find her unusual jewels.
She made her way through the trees and stickery bushes that pulled at her and grabbed at the hem of her dress. When she was very near exhaustion, she spotted the black bag on the forest floor. She let out a cackle of delight and ran to it. When she picked it up… it was empty.
It was night and the jewels had turned back into mice. Now mice are the favorite meal of owls, so the mice had become a feast for the owl that lived in the willow tree. The witch heard his satisfied, “Whoo-Whoo-Whoo” in the distance and she realized what had happened.
The greedy witch was so upset that she ran all the way home, missed her house and disappeared into the night… never to be seen again.
The owl was very satisfied with his meal, but when morning came, the mice turned back into diamonds and gave the owl quite a case of indigestion. The owl’s tummy rumbled. He gagged a big gag and continued to gag until the diamonds tumbled out of his beak and onto the forest floor. One by one, he coughed up all the black diamonds. He was very confused and went back to his tree to recuperate.
According to the story, the jewels still turn into diamonds every day, and back into mice at night. The only thing that will break the spell is if the diamonds have a new owner, a regular, kind, generous person… not a wicked, greedy witch.
Look closely and see if you can find one of the greedy witch’s black diamonds. But beware… there are many creepy crawly things that dwell on the forest floor….
