The Golden Boy

There was once a boy called Lee who who lived in a little run down cottage in the woods with his poor mother.
And one day an old woman who, passing his cottage saw the boy, gave him a sack and told him that if he gathered up lots of leaves from the forest and put them in the sack, she would buy the leaves for a gold coin.
And so Lee went about picking up leaves from the forest floor and putting them in the sack and when the sack was full he brought it to the old woman and, taking the sack from him, she paid him a gold coin.
But Lee was curious as to why anyone would pay a gold coin for a sack of old leaves and so, after the old woman had gone back inside her house, he crept up close to her door and peered through its keyhole.
And when he did, to his astonishment, the boy saw the old woman tip up the sack and pour the leaves into a cauldron before saying the words,
"Magic cauldron, do as your told. Turn these Autumn leaves to gold".
Then, even more remarkably, he saw the leaves within the cauldron start to glow with a bright golden light and, when the light dimmed, instead of leaves the cauldron was full of gold coins.
"She must be witch", he thought to himself, "And that cauldron must be magic".
But then the witch, pricking up her pointy old ears, seemed to hear him and came hobbling slowly towards the door and so the boy ran away as fast as he could before she could catch him.
But then, the next day, the boy had an idea.
"If I could get hold of that cauldron then I could make gold and make my mother rich", he thought.
And so, going to the house of the witch, he hid behind a bush and waited for her to leave and when she did, the boy crept into the house and he tried to steal the cauldron.
But the cauldron was far too big and heavy for him to move and whats worse, then the boy heard the witch coming back to the house and so he climbed into the cauldron to hide.
Fortunately the witch didn't look inside the cauldron otherwise she would have caught him but then suddenly, she tipped up a big sack full of leaves ontop of him and she said the magic spell that she had said before,
"Magic cauldron, do as your told. Turn these Autumn leaves to gold".
Only this time it wasn't just the leaves that were turned to gold; the boy was made golden coloured from head to foot and, much to the witch's surprise, suddenly a golden boy leapt out of her cauldron and ran from her house.
But the boy was afraid to go home, worrying what his mother would say if she saw that he had become golden coloured and so he ran into the forest.
While he was in the forest however, he saw a cave in which there was a fairy in a cage.
"Please free me", the fairy begged him, "I am the prisoner of an evil ogre who forces me to grant his wishes".
But though he looked around the ogres cave the boy couldn't find the key to the cage anywhere and so he couldn't set the fairy free.
Just then, however, the ogre came home and so, standing still, the golden boy pretended to be a statue made of gold.
Seeing the boy, the ogre was surprised because he couldn't remember owning a golden statue but, shrugging his shoulders, he thought no more about it, hanging up his ogres spiky club upon the boys right hand and the keys to the fairies cage on his left.
And so, when the ogres back was turned, gripping hold of its spiky club, the boy hit the ogre hard over its head.
Infact the boy had to hit the ogre three times because its head was as hard as a tortoise shell but, the third time, the ogre fell down unconcious.
Then, using the ogres keys, the boy unlocked the fairies cage, setting it free and, out of gratitude, it granted the boy three wishes before flying away.
The first of the wishes, the boy used to remove his golden colour and the second he used to wish for a pot of endless gold and the third he used to wish for a magic ring that could make him invisible.
But then as he was leaving the ogres cave, suddenly the witch came walking through the forest towards him.
"Aha!", she said, "I've got you and now I'll punish you for entering my house and trying to steal my cauldron".
Just then, however, the ogre that the boy had knocked out earlier woke up and so, quickly, the boy put on the ring that made him invisible and the ogre, only seeing the witch, presumed that it was she who had hit him and so, picking up his spiky club, he chased her away into the forest.
Then the boy took his pot of never ending gold back home to his mother and, becoming rich, they both lived happily ever after.