“Youth Without Age and Life Without Death” (Romanian: Tinereţe fără bătrâneţe şi viaţă fără de moarte) is among the most treasured Romanian wonder tales. Fixed in literary form in the nineteenth century from an older oral tradition, it is notable for its philosophical bent: the hero’s quest is not for a kingdom or a bride alone but for the impossible itself. Where many tales promise a happily-ever-after, this one asks what “ever after” means—and makes the answer both marvellous and devastating.
The tale
There was once an emperor and an empress who had everything except a child. At last a son was born to them, but the babe would not be soothed. Nurses sang, minstrels played, jesters capered—nothing helped. He howled night and day until his father, desperate, leaned over the cradle and asked, “What in God’s world will quiet you, child?”
Then the infant opened his eyes, grave as a little judge, and spoke—as if he had always known words:
“I will not be comforted unless you give me youth without age and life without death.”
The court trembled. Yet from that hour the child grew serene and strong, as if his strange demand, once uttered, had set his fate on rails.
He learned letters, arms, and courtesy. He learned also that the world is brief. As the down darkened on his cheek he remembered his first request and said to his parents, gently but with unbending will, “Father, Mother, you promised me youth without age and life without death. Since no man can gift it at home, I must ride out and seek it.”
The emperor argued: “You are our only son. Ask half my kingdom; ask all! But do not go hunting a dream.” The empress wept and clutched his hands. The prince bowed to them both, kissed their robes, and answered:
“A promise is a road. I will follow it.”
The fire-horse
Before he set out, a bent old crone—Saint Sunday in humble guise—appeared by the palace stables and tugged at his sleeve. “Choose not the proudest mount,” she whispered. “Choose the sorriest nag in the darkest stall, and feed it hot coals three days running.”
The grooms laughed when the prince pointed to a sway-backed, moth-eaten mare. But he did as he had been told. On the third day the nag stamped, shivered, and shook off its shabby hide as a falcon sheds rain. A steed of living fire stood there, eyes bright as embers, mane crackling.
“Master,” the horse neighed, “I know the road you seek. Sit tight and hold fast.”
He armed himself and rode to the gate. His parents, grey with grief, blessed him. “Only be careful, my son,” the empress pleaded.
“Mother,” he said, smiling faintly, “caution is a poor shield against destiny.” And he was gone.
The iron lands and the mercies of the road
They rode through iron forests where trees clanged in the wind and birds had beaks of steel. At the edge of the first forest, a thunder-voiced ogress—Gheonoaia, mother of storms—sprang out. They fought from dawn to dusk, sparks flying from hoof and claw. At last the prince had her under his blade.
“Spare me,” she hissed, “and I shall be your godmother. Kill me, and you will wander blind.”
The prince remembered the old counsel—be merciful on the road, and the road will be merciful—and stayed his hand. Gheonoaia drew a circle in the dust and taught him how to bend distances like wicker. She gave him a copper staff that opened ways where no ways were.
In the second wilderness an older horror—Scorpia, whose hair was adders—blocked the pass. Again he conquered; again he spared; and Scorpia, grinning with a thousand teeth, gave him a silver whistle. “Blow this if the world grows too heavy,” she said, “and help will find you.”
In the third waste—a plain of ash under a sun like a brass shield—he met the Stag with the golden antlers, whose shadow fell like a net. They struggled till the fire-horse reared and struck, and the stag fell. From its breast the prince drew a key of gold. “For a door you will not see,” the horse murmured.
The empire beyond time
At length they came to a gate without walls, hanging in the clear air. A lock glinted in the lintel. The prince held up the golden key.
“Here,” said the horse, “the world you know ends, and another begins. If you cross, you must obey two laws: do not look back; and never stray into the Valley of Lamentation, where memory grows like briars. If you enter it, homesickness will sap your marrow.”
The prince turned his face forward and passed through.
Beyond the gate the seasons were young for ever. Meadows were silk, waters were crystal, and the sky had the colour of first mornings. In a palace whose columns were trees and whose roof was cloud stood three sisters, fairies ancient and ever fresh. The youngest, the Fairy of Youth Without Age and Life Without Death, came smiling like dawn.
“You have ridden far,” she said, and her voice was a harp. “Few find this place; fewer still are fit to dwell in it. Did you seek a marvel, Prince? Then take it: youth that does not fade, life that does not end—so long as you keep the laws of this realm.”
She set a wreath on his brow and led him in. They were wed in the manner of that country, with music light as rain on leaves. The prince hunted in gardens where the trees blossomed and fruited together; he trained with heroes whose names had long since slipped from mortal memory; he talked with sages whose thoughts were bright fish in clear pools. He did not tire; he did not age. He would wake with the Fairy’s hand in his and think, “This is what I desired.”
Centuries passed like afternoons.
The forbidden valley
One day, hunting a white hart whose hooves made no sound, the prince went farther than before. The fire-horse, normally eager, balked.
“Do not ride there, master,” it warned. “That hollow is the Valley of Lamentation. Every breeze here carries whispers from the world you left. If you breathe them, you will remember, and remembering, you will long—and longing will undo you.”
But desire is an old counsellor. “Just across the ridge,” the prince said, “and we turn back.”
They entered. The air trembled with murmurs—his mother’s lullaby; his father’s laugh; the crackle of hearth-fires in winter; the thud of practice blades in the yard; the city bells at noon. The prince drew a single breath and felt something unclench and something tear.
“My parents,” he said, and the words struck him like an arrow. “Are they…? What became of them? Have I been a faithless son?”
The horse trembled. “You have taken the scent. We must leave at once.”
He returned to the palace white and shaken. The Fairy saw his face and knew. She said softly:
“Beloved, I warned you. In this realm there is no ‘before’ and no ‘after.’ But the Valley has given you back the thread of time. If you follow it, it will lead you out of here—and you will not find your way back.”
He seized her hands. “Only let me look on them once more—only once. I will return.”
Her eyes were tender and very sad. “No one who goes returns. Yet I will not bind you. Take this little casket. Do not open it unless hope deserts you utterly. If you must, open it—and accept what comes.”
He swore to come back. He kissed her and the two elder sisters, mounted, and rode away with the fire-horse, who shook its mane as if to throw off a doom.
The world grown old
The gate in the air admitted them, but the world beyond was not the one he remembered. Hills had shifted; rivers had braided new channels; the city of his father had sunk like a ship. In its place rose a forest knotty with time.
They found a hamlet of strangers whose speech was kin to his own but worn thin in other places, like an old cloak turned. “What emperor?” the folk asked when he spoke his father’s name. “We know of him from tales told by our grandfathers’ grandfathers’ grandsires—if there ever was such a one.”
He found a white-bearded hermit in a hut of twigs. The old man peered at him, then at the horse, and crossed himself.
“There was once,” the hermit murmured, “a prince who sought youth without age and life without death. He left, and never returned. The city crumbled; the line failed. You have his face. But that was a thousand years ago.”
At those words the prince’s heart turned over. He drew out the casket. The horse stamped.
“Master—no.”
“I can go no farther,” the prince whispered. “I have broken faith with all loves—past and present. If there is any bridge between, let it be in here.”
He opened the little box.
Time and the last door
From the casket leapt a small, dry man, quick as a spider—Time himself, or Death—brown as a leaf, light as a sigh. He touched the prince’s forehead with a finger like a thorn.
In a breath the prince’s hair went hoar; his skin pleated; his back bent; his hands shook. The centuries he had slipped now fell on him like a house from the sky. The fire-horse reared and cried out as if a spear had pierced it.
The old man—Time or Death—inclined his head. “I have pursued you a long while,” he said without malice. “You fled me where men cannot go. But you looked back; you remembered. And who remembers must return.”
The prince slid from the saddle. “Only—” he said, and his voice was a whisper of leaves, “only to see her—once more.”
He tried to mount again, but his strength had become a story. He took three steps and sank down by a stone. The hermit made the sign again; the horse lowered its head and breathed softly, as if to warm him.
The prince smiled. “Father… Mother… Beloved…” His head bowed; his breath thinned; the last door opened.
Some say that in that moment the Fairy of Youth stood at his side, invisible to the mortal eye, and took his hand. Others say the fire-horse struck the earth and vanished in a shower of sparks, as if returning to its first forge. But all agree on the tale’s final certainty: none may hold both memory and immortality together. One must choose—and pay.
Echoes and sayings
The tale is remembered for its stark, shining sentences, spoken at the margins between worlds:
- The infant’s demand: “I will not be comforted unless you give me youth without age and life without death.”
- The horse’s warning: “Do not set hoof in the Valley of Lamentation; breathe it once, and longing will master you.”
- The Fairy’s gentle law: “You may dwell here for ever, so long as you do not look back.”
- Time’s claim at the end: “I have chased you a long while. You remembered—and who remembers must return.”
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