The Boy With 9 lives

Once, a long time ago, a baby boy was born with the number 9 upon his back and, at first, his mother was mystified by the strange birthmark but then she accidentally left his cot near the windowsill and it fell out.
Fortunately, when the mother rushed down her steps and out of her house in a panic, she saw that the baby boy was perfectly alright but now, instead of a 9, he had the number 8 upon his back.
“My goodness”, she said, amazed, but then, after seeing his new number, concluded, “I must be more careful with him for I do not want him to lose the other 8 of his lives”.
And, fortunately, the boy managed to hold onto his other lives until he grew into a young man but then, when he was 18 years old, he saw a witch flying past the moon on the back of a big black crow and asked his mother,

 

“Mother, who is that?”.

 

Her hand trembling with fear, his mother wrote out a long name, in chalk, upon the wall of their kitchen, MAGDEMONICA.

 

“We do not say her name”, said her mother, “For if you say her name she can hear it and might cast an evil spell upon you. She is a powerful, evil witch you see, who lives at the top of the crooked mountain beyond the forest”.

 

Then she told her son that the witch had kidnapped the king’s daughter and was keeping her a    prisoner.

 

“The king says that whatever man can rescue the princess shall have her hand in marriage”, said his mother.

 

And, hearing this, the boy decided that he would go to the crooked mountain and rescue the       princess.

 

He didn’t tell his mother where he was going of course because, if he had she would have locked him in his room; he told her that he was going to the market but, instead, he set off to the crooked mountain and up the steep winding path which led to the top.

 

Now, when Magdemonica heard the sound of someone climbing her mountain, she went out and, with her enormous strength, rolled a gigantic boulder over the edge of the mountain which, landing upon the boy squashed him flat.

 

But then, not long afterwards, when the witch, assuming he was dead, went back inside her house, the boy got up again, not harmed or injured but perfectly in one piece; the number 7 now upon his back.

 

Then, undeterred, the boy walked the rest of the way up the mountain.

 

But then, as he was approaching the witch’s house, suddenly she looked out of her window and,   seeing the boy, picked up a bow and a quiver of arrows, firing six of them into his heart.

 

But then, after she had again left him for dead, the boy plucked the arrows, one by one, from his heart, the number 6 now upon his back.

 

Then, unphased, he walked up to the door of the witch’s house and knocked upon it.

 

The witch, seizing hold of a sword, flew down stairs and, opening the door, drove the blade of her sword so deep into the boys heart that it came out of his back.

 

Then she saw the boy fall dead and, certain that he must finally be truly dead, she went back inside her house and slammed the door.

 

But the boy got up again, pulling the sword from his heart, the wound upon his back healing up as well and the number 6 upon it turning to number 5 before, taking hold of the sword as a weapon, he knocked again upon the witch’s door.

 

The door flew open, the witch standing in the doorway holding an axe and then, with a scream of frustration, she chopped off his head then kicked it, like a football, back down the winding mountain path to the bottom before burying the rest of his body 10 feet underground.

 

However, in spite of all her efforts, not long after the witch went back inside, the boy emerged from the hole in which the witch had buried him, his head, somehow, firmly reattached to his shoulders and very much alive only with a number 4 upon his back.

 

Now, he decided, instead of knocking on the witch’s door, he would climb up to the room where the Princess was being held.

 

When the witch, who was in the same room as the Princess, saw him again, she couldn’t believe her eyes but this time, rather than using arrows, sword or axe, she picked up her magic wand and,     aiming it towards him, cast a spell upon him, turning him to stone before, for good measure, she picked up a sledgehammer and, swinging it with all her might, broke the stone boy into little pieces.

 

All was still for a moment but then she heard a rattle of stone and then, from underneath the
Rubble, she saw the boy emerge, totally unscathed and unchanged apart from the number 3 upon his back.

 

But then the witch transformed herself into a gigantic dragon, her enormous scaly head bursting through the roof of her house before, roaring like thunder, she roasted the boy with her fiery dragon breath before swallowing him whole.

 

“Finally”, the dragon sighed in the witch’s voice, “That must be the end of him”.

 

But just then, however, the long blade of a sword poked outwards through the belly of the dragon and started to cut the dragon open from the inside; then, the dragon falling dead, the boy crawled out of it, only the number 1 now upon his back.

 

“I only have one life left”, he said to the Princess, freeing her from her bonds before, getting down on one knee, he kissed her hand, “But I would be honoured to spend all of it with you”.

 

And that is just what happened for, only a few days afterwards, the boy and the princess were     married and lived happily ever after.