Bjorno

There was once a boy called Bjorno who, at the age of 5 was made an orphan when his mother and father were eaten by a lioness and he was forced to go and live with his Aunt Alvinea and her two ugly daughters Paulella and Leslina in their old dark house  but his Aunt hated boys.
She hated boys so much that she cruelly neglected Bjorno, making him sleep in a dark cupboard under the house stairs and dress in rags and sleep on the floor and live off the scraps and bones of what the others ate and, as you would expect, Bjorno was quite miserable living with them.
But then, one night, as the boy was trying to sleep he heard a loud roaring coming from somewhere in the house and then he heard his Aunt get up and go to the cellar and, unlocking it, go down below to where the roaring was coming from.
Then he heard his aunt shouting angrilly and some other noise like a loud crack.
"Stop that! Stop that!", she was shouting, "You're waking everyone in the house with your roaring".
And this went on for sometime until, finally the roaring stopped and his Aunt came out again, locking the cellar door and going gracefully and swiftly upstairs.
As she was going upstairs, Bjorno bravely looked out and asked,
"What was that noise Aunt Alvinea?".
"Thunder and lightning", she said.
"In the cellar?", he asked.
But then she told him never to speak of it again or else she would come down one night and do something to him so that he would never be able to speak again.
However, the same thing happened the next night and almost every night afterwards but then, one evening, while his two horrible neices, Paulella and Leslina were sleeping and his Aunt was having a bath, Bjorno noticed she had forgotten to lock the bathroom door and the bathroom was full of a fog of thick curling steam and then, peering in he saw, hanging from a clothes hook on the bathroom wall by a chain, the cellar key.
"If only I could get hold of that key, I could see what was in the cellar", he thought to himself.
And so, bravelely taking a chance, he entered the bathroom and because the mist of steam rising from his Aunts bath tub was so thick  she didn't see his little, quietly creeping figure cross the bathroom and snatch the key down from the hook.
Then, creeping back out as quietly as he could, Bjorno went quickly down stairs and unlocked the cellar door and inside the cellar he found a cage with a gigantic lion inside and a whip hanging upon a wall.
Now, Bjorno had been afraid of lions ever since he'd been told that his mother and father had been eaten by a lioness but the lion in the cage seemed gentle and tame, even slightly sorrowful and pathetic and it had scars in the fur upon its back where it had been whipped by his evil Aunt and so he looked for a lock to open the cage and let out the beast but there was no lock and yet, all the same, the cage opened easily.
And when the cage was opened the lion leapt out; it pounced upon him.
Not to eat him however, just to hug him. It gave him a big warm lion hug and licked his face then it turned into a man.
"What are you?", asked Bjorno.
"I am Alvineas husband Seanathon", said the man, "She turned me into a lion and locked me in a cage when she married me and inherited my house, wealth and power and I have been there ever since but your kindness broke the spell that kept the cage locked and now I am free".
"But why would she lock you in a cage. Why is Aunt Alvinea so cruel?", asked Bjorno.
"Because Aunt Alvinea and her daughters aren't human", he said.
At first Bjorno wasn't sure wether to trust the man but then he touched the scars that were still upon his back, each one like a streak of lightning and when he did, he saw all the mans memories and knew that he was speaking the truth
But then suddenly, from upstairs, Bjorno heard the sound of a loud, cat like screech and then he heard his Aunt call to her daughters,
"Wake up my daughters! Your father is out of his cage".
Then coming up from out of the cellar, horrified, Bjorno and his Uncle saw a large lioness and two smaller ones come down stairs, licking their lips, growling and snarling and seeing them, Bjorno realised that it wasn't an ordinary lioness who had killed his parents but whatever his Aunt Alvinea was.
"Are you hungry my children?", the large lioness asked the two smaller ones.
"Yes", they replied, "Whats for dinner mother?".
"A man who should have stayed in his cage and a little boy who should have minded his own business", she said.
Bjorno hid behind his uncle, trembling but his uncle didn't tremble, he knew just what to do because, suddenly, he went back into the cellar and got the  whip and, cracking it, he drove the lioness and her two daughters into the cage where he had been kept, locking it behind them.
Turning back into their human forms, Aunt Alvinea and her daughters pleaded with Bjorno to let them out but his uncle warned him,
"Don't have any pity upon them. They may have cut fingernails now but they'll have claws if you let them out".
Then his uncle locked the cellar door and took him upstairs and Bjorno spent his first night, for a very long time, in a soft warm bed.
But then his Uncle became like a father to him, raising him and teaching him everything he knew and he also gave him a magic gift, a knife that over time  would grow into a sword, then one day, after his uncle had passed away leaving him the house Bjorno met and married a beautiful girl named Landia but he forbid her to ever look in the cellar of his house.
And for a long time she obeyed her husband even when she heard sounds coming from the cellar at night like growling and screeching.
But one night curiosity got the better of her and, slipping the cellar key and its chain from around her sleeping husbands neck she went down to the cellar and unlocked it.
And when she looked inside she saw Aunt Alvinea and her two daughters in the cage.
"Please", they begged her, "Have mercy. Bjorno kidnapped us and locked us in this cage".
Decieved by their human faces and their false tears, Landia thought the worst of her husband and opened the cage.
The moment she did however, Alvinea and her daughters turned back into lionesses and leapt out of the cage and they would have devoured Bjorno's wife if she had not screamed so loudly that she woke him up then, seizing the magic knife that had grown over time into a sword, he ran down stairs and fighting bravely against them, he slew the three lionesses, stabbing each one through the heart and, when they turned back into women, buried their bodies with his uncle so that their souls might go and live with his in heaven.
Then Bjorno and his wife lived happily ever after.