Rewrite of Norwegian fairytale

The “hulder” in Norwegian folk tales is a beautiful woman clad in green, with long blonde hair and a cow’s tail. She represents nature, and disappears easily between the trees. She is known for luring people (usually men) into the forest with her singing, where they sometimes disappear forever, or return with stories of their travels.

THE HULDER

Once there was a young man that lived in a house at the edge of a forest. He knew the world outside his house held many trials. Daily he heard about other people’s perils, so he stayed by the hearth making sure his house was comfortable and safe. He locked the door, and shut the shutters to the road. After a while the young man spoke to no one, and started sitting by the window facing the forest. One evening, at twilight, he heard a beautiful voice singing. He didn’t dare open the window, and after a while, the voice faded and was gone. The same happened the evening after, at dusk, and this time he opened the window a fraction and listened to the song. When it stopped, his heart was unrestful.

When dusk came the third evening, the young man had thought about the beautiful voice the whole day, and sat by the open window waiting for it. But when dusk came and passed without the song, his unrestful heart was filled with sorrow. It was hurting him so much that he knew he could never mend without hearing the song again. So he climbed out of his window, and went to look for it.

He walked and walked, until he came to a clearing. In the middle of it stood a fair woman, with golden hair and a green dress. She smiled to him as if he knew him.
“Was it your voice I heard?”, asked the young man.
“Possibly”, she said and laughed the sound of a stream, and snowdrops tinkling with dew. “Come with me, and I will sing more for you.” When the woman turned to walk he saw a cow’s tail coming out beneath her dress, and the man realised it was a hulder he had met, and he was again filled with dread.
“Come,” the hulder enticed, “I’ll show you the waterfalls, the open sky and all the animals. I’ll show you mountain tops, trickling streams and the conversations of the birds nesting. I’ll take you to depths of caves, to narrow steps in the mountainside, to sunrises and sunsets.”

The young man was reluctant at first, he knew forests, waterfalls and mountains were perilous. He knew streams had treacherous depths that could pull you down. He knew things could fall from the open sky and crush him. But the young man was enthralled by the voice and followed her.

He had adventures. He fell and got up again. He walked with the rain and the wind on his face, he got ill, he got blisters and bites, and twigs scratched his arms. The hulder was sometimes in front of him, sometimes she wasn’t there at all, and sometimes he only saw her tail. After a while he noticed the soft moss he trod on, the the smell of the woods, birds calling their mates, and how good the water from the streams tasted compared to the stale water in his house. And he started feeling the hulder’s song within him. He pushed on through thickets with thorns and nettles. He stumbled down narrow paths, and woke up under trees with sunlight playing hide and seek between the leaves. It had been days since he had seen the hulder, but the song was inside him still. One day he recognised the path he was on, it was the clearing he had first come to, and in the middle of it grew a birch.

The young man listened to the wind rustling its sun dressed leaves. He went over to it. He kissed it lightly and thanked it. Then he walked on, past his old home, curious to see what lay on the other side.

Text as jpg underneath.