The Wish And The Curse

Once a poor man died and on his death bed, he gave his son, Marcozi the only two things he said he possessed which were a pocket knife and a single wish.
"A fairy once gave the wish to me but I never used it and so I pass it onto you now my son. Its only one wish so do not waste it on anything small; use it wisely", he said.
And so the son, though he did not believe in fairies or wishes, accepted both the pocket knife and the wish gratefully because he had loved his father.
Not long after his father was dead and buried however, his landlord came to the man and said,
"If you can't pay your rent you have to leave".
The young man was sorely tempted to use his wish to wish for rent money but then he remembered his fathers advice, not to waste the wish on anything small and so, instead, he left his fathers house and became a vagabond.
But then , as he was wandering on the road, hailstones started to pour down and he was tempted to wish for shelter but he remembered his fathers advice and, instead, just carried on through the hail.
But then, after days without food, he started to get hungry and was tempted to wish for something to eat but, again he remembered his fathers advice and saved his wish and, fortunately, he managed to find some wild fruit in the forest to sustain him.
Eventually however, the man came to a kingdom where people told him that their princess was cursed.
"Her name is Persilla", he was told, "No man wants to marry her, because any man who is engaged to her is killed by a jealous monster".
And so the man went to the castle of the princess and offered to marry her.
And even though he was a peasant, because the princess was desperate to find a husband, she agreed to his offer.
"But you do know that you may be killed if you become my fiance?", she said.
The young man said he did but that he was not afraid.
Then the young man became engaged to the princess and stayed in the castle.
Each day he was there however, the princess's uncle, Count Menstro warned the man, "Leave please and save yourself. If you try to marry my neice, the creature will kill you as he has all the other men who tried to marry her".

But the young man was not discouraged. Each time he would reply to the uncle, "I know the danger but I am not afraid".
Three days passed and then on the third night, a secret door opening in the wall of his room, a hairy, long clawed monster entered and tried to kill him.
But the man still had the wish he had been saving and he wished that the monster be gone.
Unfortunately the wish did not work. The mans father had only been delirious when he had told him about the fairy who had granted it.
Fortunately, the man also had the pocket knife his father had given him under his pillow and stabbed it into the heart of the monster.
And when he did, the monster fell over onto his back and died.
But then the man, examining the monster realised that it was a man in a costume with long steel claws and, unmasking the monster, he saw that it was the princess's uncle.
The uncle, you see, had long been infatuated with his neice and had invented a fake curse to stop her being married, killing any man who wasn't frightened by the curse.
Once the truth was discovered, however, the young man married the princess and they lived happily ever after.