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  As soon as Morty got used to the disjointed horse, he waited for another flash of lightning. This time he finally saw a rider. The man sat high above him, partly because the black horse was so big and partly because the rider was so tall. Morty was surprised to see that he was dressed in an old-fashioned hunting coat, the kind his great-grandfather might have worn. Oddly enough, a couple of its shiny buttons were floating a full yard behind.

  Every time lightning flashed, Morty looked up quickly, but he couldn’t see the man’s head. He finally told his mare, “He has no head at all.”

  “Look again, Morty,” said a raspy voice that seemed to be coming from about the level of the man’s waist. Lightning flashed and Morty looked. There, under the rider’s right arm, was a head unlike any head Morty had ever seen. It was ashy pale, with skin pulled tight against the skull, huge black eyes, and a mouth that reached from ear to ear.

  The gigantic horse’s head kept moving along, followed by its body. And the hideous rider’s head? It kept moving, too, back and forth, as the motion of the horse made the rider’s arm move to and fro. One moment it was hidden by the rider’s coat, and the next moment it was in full ghastly view.

  Morty rode up the hill quietly for a spell, not wanting to do anything that might upset his strange companion. But when nothing bad happened, Morty decided to strike up a conversation. “Your honor rides mighty well.”

  “Humph,” growled the horrible head.

  Morty tried again. “That’s a brave horse your honor rides.”

  “Humph.” This time the head’s answer was muffled by the man’s coat.

  “He looks like a fine racer.”

  The ghastly head swung forward, leering from ear to ear. “Will you race me, Morty?”

  “Gladly—if the night weren’t so dark. I don’t want to lame my old mare.”

  “Will you take my word for your mare’s safety?” asked the head, peering out from under the man’s arm.

  What could Morty do? He had never turned down a race or shied from a jump in his entire life. And if that headless horseman could ride a headless horse, his strange powers could surely protect an old mare.

  Morty nudged her with his heels and she shot ahead. She galloped so gallantly that the horses stayed neck and neck at first. But what mortal horse could match the stride of such a monstrous competitor?

  When the black horse passed the mare, the man’s grisly head turned to look back at Morty, almost slipping out from under the arm that held it.

  “You have a stout heart, Morty,” he shouted. “I have been looking for the likes of you for a hundred years, ever since my horse and I broke our necks at the bottom of Kilcummer Hill. You’re the first who dared to ride with me.”

  Morty urged his mare forward, and she thundered all the way to the top of the hill. When the black horse veered to the right, the mare followed. But suddenly there was nothing under her hooves. Both horses had raced off the edge of the cliff. Morty realized he and his mare were about to crash on the rocks below, but the black horse was floating through the air.

  Morty cried out, “You gave your word for my mare’s safety!”

  “Ha!” came the ghostly reply. “You should know better than to trust a headless horseman.”

  The Knife

  GERMANY

  Long ago, a woman died without telling her son where she had hidden his inheritance. He searched her house day and night, but he couldn’t find it anywhere.

  He threw open every closet and cupboard. Nothing. He dumped out every drawer. Nothing. He looked between the pages of every book. Nothing. He dug up the yard. Nothing. Finally he tore up the floors. Still nothing.

  In desperation, he went to see a witch for help. She was famous throughout the land for her amazing powers. She was shrewd, too.

  “Yes, yes, I’ll help you,” she said, “for half the inheritance.”

  “Well, half is better than none,” the man replied. And he agreed to share whatever he found.

  “Go home,” she said, “so I can work my magic.” The

  man left, and the witch looked around until she found her very best knife. She ground its edge against a whetstone until it was sharp as a razor. Then she waited until nightfall. When she was ready for bed, she said a spell over the knife and tucked it beneath her pillow.

  As soon as she fell asleep, she began to dream—and she dreamed about a demon. The demon was frantic. “Take the knife out of my heart!” he cried.

  “Not until you bring me the woman who hid her son’s inheritance. She must tell me where she hid it, or that knife stays exactly where it is.” Then the witch woke up, and when she felt beneath her pillow, the knife was gone.

  The next night, the witch went to sleep as soon as the sun set. She was eager to see if the demon would return in her dreams. He did, with the knife still in his heart. This time, the demon brought along the woman who had hidden her son’s inheritance.

  “Take the knife out of my heart,” cried the demon. “I can’t stand it.”

  “Not until the woman tells me where she hid her fortune.”

  “Why would I do that?” asked the woman. “If I had wanted my ungrateful son to know where the money was, I would have told him. Let him search for it himself.”

  With that the dream ended and the witch awoke. And when she put her hand under the pillow, the knife was still gone.

  On the third night the witch dreamed again. By now the demon was so weak that he could barely talk. He brought his son to speak for him, and he brought the woman, too. The son said, “Please, please, take the knife out of my father’s heart!”

  “Not until the woman tells,” said the witch. Then the demon’s son dropped to his knees in front of the woman and begged her to have mercy on his father.

  Finally she relented. “All right, I will reveal this much, and this much only—the money is hidden in a box.” With that the dream ended.

  When the witch awoke, she pronounced another spell. She felt under her pillow, and the knife was back. It was no longer in the demon’s heart.

  She hurried to the man’s home to tell him the clue she had wrenched from his mother’s spirit. The man shouted, “What! Don’t you think I searched through every box?”

  “Well, look again,” said the witch, “and when you find it, I want my share.”

  Now, as soon as she left, he tore every box apart, and much to his amazement, he found one with a false bottom. Hidden there was his mother’s entire fortune.

  But did the man keep his promise to share it with the witch? Not at all. He took the money and raced out of town so she wouldn’t find him.

  When the witch discovered he was gone, she didn’t worry. That night, she cast another spell and slipped the knife under her pillow.

  The Werewolf in the Forest

  EASTERN EUROPE

  One morning a poor man was walking in the forest when a weasel scooted across the path. The man was so startled that he jumped and yelled. The weasel was so startled that it dropped what it was carrying and raced into the underbrush. And what did the weasel drop? A ring. A shiny golden ring.

  The man was dumbfounded. Where in the world did the weasel find it? he wondered. He picked up the ring and wiped weasel spit off on his ragged sleeve. He could see that the ring was made of gold and was covered with intricate carving. On the inside, strange letters were engraved.

  The man was puzzled. He turned the ring around and around in his hand. Never had he seen anything quite so valuable or quite so mysterious. Then he remembered a tale his grandmother had told him long ago. It had to do with rings granting wishes. But what were the magic words? As he slipped the ring onto his finger, he suddenly remembered. He could almost hear his grandmother’s voice saying:

  “Ring of gold, ring of old, do my bidding as you’re told.”

  He repeated her words out loud and tested them. “Bring me a bag of gold coins,” he said. Out of nowhere, a small leather bag appeared and landed at his feet.

  He reached f
or it with trembling hands. Could his wish really have come true? He tugged it open and was astonished to see gold coins inside.

  He slipped the ring and the coins into his pocket, and ran out of the forest, across the fields, into the village, and to the marketplace. There he bought a new coat for himself, a new shawl for his wife, and enough food to last them for weeks.

  Did this make his wife happy? Not at all. “Where did the money come from?” she demanded. All he would say was, “It’s a miracle.”

  Well, his wife was determined to solve the mystery. She nagged him about it every day, and when he refused to tell her, she pretended to weep. “You must have stolen it,” she cried. She knew very well that he was not a thief—but she also knew that he would be horrified to be called one.

  “A weasel gave me a magic ring,” he said.

  “A likely story,” she scoffed. “You expect me to believe that?”

  He reluctantly led her to the chest where he had hidden the ring. The moment he opened the lid, she grabbed the ring and made a wish: “I want a huge house,” she said. Nothing happened. She tried again. Still nothing happened.

  “You fool,” she said. “When you stole the coins, you must have stolen the ring, too.”

  The poor man couldn’t stand having his wife think such terrible thoughts about him. So he told her the magic words.

  “Is this the way you do it?” she asked. “‘Ring of gold, ring of old, do my bidding as you’re told.’”

  “That’s right,” he said, never expecting that she would turn a wish against him. But she wanted that ring for herself.

  She repeated the magic words and added something horrible. “Turn my husband into a werewolf and send him to the forest, where he can howl night and day.”

  Zap! The man vanished and a werewolf materialized in front of her. It immediately began to howl and leaped out the window, pulled into the forest by the magic wish.

  The villagers were terrified when they saw the werewolf. No one dared set foot on the street after sundown.

  At night they barred their doors and shivered every time they heard the anguished howling.

  Meanwhile the poor man’s wife was living in luxury. She now had a large house, elegant clothes, servants, jewels, and food fit for a queen. No one could imagine how she had suddenly become so rich.

  Of course her husband knew. Even though he was in that werewolf’s body, he could still think like a man. He hated being a werewolf and realized that nothing could help him return to his former life—except for magic. So one night, when the moon was full, he left the forest to look for the gold ring.

  When he saw his wife’s magnificent new home, he didn’t know which room was which. He paused by each window until he heard her snoring. Now he knew that he had found her bedroom. It was all he could do to keep from howling, but he didn’t want to awaken her, so he clamped his mouth shut and leaped through her window.

  In the moonlight, he could see the very chest in which he had first hidden the ring. It stood by the foot of the bed, close to his sleeping wife. He took the handle in his mouth and slowly pulled the lid open. To his horror, the hinges creaked. His wife tossed and turned in her sleep, but soon she was snoring as loudly as before. He rooted around in the chest with his nose, and when he uncovered the ring, he grabbed it with his teeth and leaped out the window.

  The magic words that rang through the forest that night sounded more like barks and howls, but at last the ring understood. The werewolf disappeared. Zap! And the poor man stood in its place.

  He picked up the ring and thought hard for a moment. “‘Ring of gold, ring of old, do my bidding as you’re told.’” He made his wish, then tossed the ring as far as he could into a tangle of bushes.

  As the man walked out of the forest, a donkey started to bray in the distance. When he reached home, a donkey ran to meet him, braying furiously.

  “I thought you would rather be a donkey than a werewolf,” he said to his wife. And he entered his house, smiling.

  The Secret

  ITALY

  For centuries, a secret had been kept high in a tower of an Italian castle. The whole family knew something was there. But only the grandfather knew what it was—and he wouldn’t tell. Each morning he unlocked the door and entered the tower room, staying there for hours.

  His granddaughter, the lady Sophia, was burning with curiosity. She figured she had as much right to know the secret as anyone else.

  So one morning she tiptoed up the tower stairs behind her grandfather. She was hoping to slip into the room. But he quickly shut the door and relocked it from inside. She pressed her ear against the door. What was he doing in there?

  What the lady really wanted to hear was the clink of coins or the clatter of jewels. Her greed made her imagine all sorts of wondrous things. What if there were boxes of diamond tiaras and necklaces, just waiting for her to wear them at the next grand ball? But the only sound she heard was the occasional scratch of a fingernail. Or was it a pen on paper?

  She knew, however, exactly what she smelled. Whiffs of candle smoke were seeping through cracks around the door. Why would her grandfather burn candles long before dark? She went down the stairs before the smoke made her sneeze, and hurried to the stable.

  There the lady found one of the stable boys and snapped out an order. “Saddle my horse,” she said, “and be quick about it.” She rode into the forest looking for the hut of an old fortune-teller. It wasn’t easy to find, half hidden by bushes and overgrown with vines. But the lady finally spotted it. She dismounted and threw open the door. She didn’t even knock.

  “What is my family’s secret?” she demanded, startling the shrunken old woman.

  The fortune-teller peered up at her. “Why would I look into the past? I only foretell the future.”

  The lady tried to contain her anger. “Then tell me my fortune!”

  “Much depends . . .” the fortune-teller began. Then she paused. She was listening to an owl hooting in a tree nearby.

  “A bad sign,” she said. “A great disaster may await you. Let us see.” She led Lady Sophia to a nearby meadow and pulled a ruby-colored goblet from her pocket. She called to a swallow—a bird of good fortune—and she called to an owl—which foretells evil. “Whichever bird alights on the rim of the goblet first will determine your success or failure.”

  The owl was first.

  The fortune-teller shuddered. “Be careful,” she said. “Do not invite trouble.”

  “Ha!” snorted Lady Sophia, gripping the fortune-teller’s shoulder. “You’ll be the one in trouble. Not me.” Without so much as a thank-you, she rode back to the castle to confront her grandfather.

  “Why won’t you tell me?” she stormed. “I have asked you a thousand times!”

  “Patience, my dear,” said the old man. “You will know someday.”

  “Soon?” she asked.

  “No. Only the oldest member of the family is permitted to know the secret. When I am gone your father will know, and when he dies, your mother will know, and when they are both gone, your older sister will know. When she dies, it will be your turn.”

  The lady could hardly believe what her grandfather had said. What enraged her most was that her sister would learn the secret first.

  She turned on her heel and left the castle. By the time she reached the forest, she was stamping her feet. She was so angry that she almost didn’t see a small spring or the scraggly herbs growing beside it. But something clicked in her mind as she went past. She looked back and saw the oval leaves and pale pink berries. They matched a drawing she had seen in a strange old book. She had read about the herbs, too.

  Suddenly she knew how to learn the family secret. She pulled the herbs out by the handful, hid them under her skirt, and hurried back to the castle. When no one was looking, she grabbed a kettle of water from the kitchen and hung it over the fire in her room. As soon as the water boiled, she tossed in the herbs and watched the murky brew turn poisonous. Fury had overcome
all thoughts of love and respect for her family—and greed had twisted her mind.

  At breakfast, she stirred the evil mixture into her sister’s porridge. At lunch, she poisoned her parents’ soup. At dinner, she slipped poison into her grandfather’s pudding. One by one they lay down to die. Her grandfather was last. When he was gasping for breath, he called her to his bedside. “We never harmed you, yet you killed us, thinking you would gain a treasure. But you will be sorely disappointed. Your punishment will begin when you learn what has been hidden for so long.”

  Lady Sophia didn’t look the least bit remorseful. “What is it?” she demanded.

  “It is the skull of our oldest ancestor, which must be cared for by the oldest living descendant. This is your responsibility now, and only death will free you from its power. At seven each morning, you must enter the room and close all the windows. Then light four candles in front of the skull and open the great book that lies before it. It is the history of our family. You must learn that history and add to it each day. Just think what you must write, now that you have murdered those who loved you most.” His voice grew weaker. “You will find the key,” he whispered, “under my pillow.”

  With barely a glance at her dying grandfather, Lady Sophia shoved her hand under the pillow, found the key, and raced to the tower room.

  “Surely he’s lying,” she raged. “No one would spend each day tending a skull!”

  When she unlocked the door to the tower room, she was aghast. All she saw there was a table, a chair, a large book, four candles—and the skull. Its hollow eyes were staring at her.

  Lady Sophia wasn’t afraid of old bones, so she grabbed the skull and flung it out the window. It bounced on the ground a time or two . . . and flew right back into the tower room. It grinned at her, just inches from her nose. Again she threw it as hard as she could, and again it sailed