Origins

“The Nine Peahens and the Golden Apples” is a South-Slavic wonder tale most widely known in its Serbian form. It blends two old European story-patterns: the “stolen fruit from the royal garden” and the “bird-maiden bride” (sometimes called the Swan-Maiden motif, though here the maidens wear peahen plumage). In the nineteenth century it was preserved from oral tradition and has since travelled through many retellings across Europe. What follows keeps close to the classic Serbian structure and cast of characters while telling the story in an engaging, continuous prose.

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The Tale

There was once a king whose pride was a tree that grew in the middle of his gardens—a tree so rare it bore apples of purest gold. At dusk each day the fruit ripened, and at dawn the king would count them gleaming like coins in the dew. Yet when the gardeners came to gather them, they found the branches light as air. Night after night the golden apples were stolen, and no one could tell how.

The king had three sons. The two elder were hearty and bold; the youngest was quiet, keen-eyed, and patient. “One of you will keep watch,” said the king, “and if you catch the thief, half my kingdom is your reward.” The eldest volunteered first. He feasted grandly, boasted that he would seize a dragon by the tail if it dared to climb the wall, then set himself beneath the tree—only to snore until the moon slid past the tower. In the morning the apples were gone.

On the second night the middle son kept watch. He, too, dined, bragged, and snored; and again the apples vanished as if the night itself had eaten them.

The youngest said nothing. He took no feast, only a crust of bread, and hid himself in the shadow of the tree. Midnight tolled; the garden grew silver; and then he heard the faintest flurry of wings, like silk drawn across stone. Down from the star-washed sky swept nine peahens, their tails a cataract of moonlit eyes. As their feet touched the grass, each shed her plumage as one might cast aside a shawl, and before the prince stood nine maidens, bright as morning, each lovelier than the last. The ninth—youngest of them all—was so beautiful the prince forgot his name.

They played beneath the tree, laughing low, and reached up to pluck the apples of gold. Then the prince stepped from the shade. The maidens started; the peahen-garments lay at their feet like pools of coloured fire. The youngest maiden met his gaze and laid a hand upon her heart.

“Do not be afraid,” said the prince. “I have watched you come night after night. Take the apples if you must, but tell me your names.”

The eight drew back. The ninth smiled. “We are the Nine Peahens,” she said, “daughters of a king beyond the winds. Each night we fly where our hearts are drawn.”

“Stay, then,” whispered the prince, “for my heart is drawn to you.”

She looked upon him a long while, and her look was kind. “I will come again,” she said, “and not for apples. But you must tell no one of me.” She plucked a single thread from her peahen robe—no thicker than a sun-beam, yet strong as fate—and pressed it into his palm. “If ever you have need, burn but this thread, and I will come—swifter than thought.”

With that she took up her plumage; in a breath they were birds again; in another breath they rose like a flung scarf and were gone. At dawn the apples still hung on the bough; the prince gathered them and set them before his father. The elder brothers frowned; the king rejoiced; and in the hush of midnight the peahen-maiden came once more, this time not to steal but to speak.

Night after night they met in the garden, and soon in the prince’s chamber, their words twined like vines. “When the time is right,” she told him, “I will bring you to my father’s court, and we shall wed.” Yet always she warned him: “Tell no one. Trust no one. Keep my secret as I keep yours.”

But palaces are full of eyes. In the kitchens and servants’ halls the whispers began: The prince thrives on moonlight… he speaks to the wind… One day there came into the palace a wizened gipsy woman with a bundle of trinkets and a tongue as quick as a needle. She guessed more than was safe, and by flattery and feigned kindness wheedled from a foolish chamberlain the prince’s habit of sitting up at night. “Ah,” said she, “then he must be in love! I will find the girl.”

She slipped into the prince’s room with the dusk and crouched by the stove, mumbling that her bones were cold. When midnight chimed and the peahen-maiden stepped through the window’s pale square, the old woman made herself small, as cats do when they mean harm. The maiden and the prince spoke softly, and at last he said, “Tell me, beloved—by what charm do you come and by what charm would you be kept safe?”

She touched the thread he wore at his breast. “My power is woven in my robe and in this filamental feather. So long as it remains to me, I am free to fly and free to return.”

The gipsy woman’s eyes glittered. At the prince’s next yawn she rose like a shadow, seized the thread from the cushion where it lay, and flung it into the stove’s heart. The feather flashed, curled, and was ash.

The maiden leapt to her feet, white as the moon. “Alas!” she cried. “Treachery! The bond is broken. I must go.”

“Do not leave me,” begged the prince.

“I am bound now to my father’s realm. If you love me, follow—seek the Mother of the Sun, then the Mother of the Moon, and at last the Old Father Wind. Only the Wind knows every road.” She pressed a tear to his hand; it hardened into a clear bead like crystal. “Show this where truth is doubted.” Then, with a rustle like rain, she was a peahen once more and was gone.

When the king heard that the mysterious visitor had vanished, he called for guards, for explanations, for the old woman—who, having done her harm, had already slipped away. The youngest prince asked leave to travel, and the king, seeing his face, did not refuse. He hung a traveller’s cloak about his son’s shoulders and put a staff in his hand.

“Go, then,” said the king. “But return with your life.”

The prince went as far as his feet would carry him, through green valleys and over frost-bruise mountains, until the soles of his boots were worn to lace. At length he came to a house at the very edge of the world where the air had a strange brightness, as if dawn had decided to linger. There sat the Mother of the Sun, spinning threads of fire.

“Good day, grandmother,” said the prince, for it is wise to be courteous to those whose age cannot be counted. “Have you seen nine peahens pass this way?”

“I have seen many things,” said the Sun’s mother, “but not that. Still, you have come far, and you have the look of one who keeps his word. Rest here a night; my son will be home by evening, and he sees everything the day sees.”

At sunset the Sun strode in, shining and weary. “Mother,” he said, “why is there a mortal in our house?”

“He seeks nine peahens.”

The Sun shook his burnished head. “By day I have not seen them. Ask my sister who walks by night.”

So in the morning the prince set out again and reached, after a day and a half and another day besides, a house built out of pearl and shadow. There the Mother of the Moon sat carding mist. “Good day, grandmother,” said the prince. “Have you seen nine peahens fly by?”

“I have not,” said the Moon’s mother, “but my daughter will know what the night knows. Rest; she will be home at moonrise.”

When the Moon came pearling over the hills, she looked long upon the prince. “I have not seen nine peahens,” she said gently, “but ask our old neighbour—the Father of the Winds. He prowls through all corners.”

So on he went until everything grew restless and whistling, and he came to a house walled with weather. An old man sat at the threshold, his beard blown over one shoulder and then the other by a breeze that never slept.

“Good day, grandfather,” said the prince. “Do your sons know where the Nine Peahens dwell?”

The old man put a horn to his mouth and blew, and in they came—North Wind, South Wind, East Wind, West Wind—shouldering through the door in a roar of gust and grit.

“My sons,” cried the old man, “has any of you seen nine peahens?”

East Wind rattled the shutters. “I have not.”

South Wind smelled of salt and figs. “I have not.”

West Wind brought rain-smell in his cloak. “I have not.”

Then North Wind came stomping, frost on his boots and icicles on his cap. “Aye,” he boomed. “I have chased them for sport beyond the last blue hills to a kingdom of crystal fountains. The youngest of them wears sorrow in her eyes.”

“That is she!” cried the prince.

North Wind clapped him on the back so hard his teeth chimed. “Then up with you! But you will need strong feet. Put on these iron shoes, take this iron staff, and when they wear to nothing, you shall be at her gates.”

The prince thanked them, laced on the iron shoes, took up the iron staff, and walked. He walked until the iron rang hollow, until it thinned to ribbons, until it snapped like biscuit. When at last he cast the last scrap away, he looked up and saw a city white as swans and bright with banners. In its heart a marble palace spilled the sound of fountains as if water were speaking.

There he learned what chilled his bones: the youngest peahen-maiden, princess of that realm, was to be wed in three nights’ time to a lord she could not refuse. The prince’s heart hammered. He went to the market and sold the signet from his finger and the cloak from his shoulders and bought, from an old goldsmith who understood lovers, three wonders: a golden apple that tinkled with music when turned; a golden distaff that spun by itself; and a golden spindle that danced in the air like a tame star.

With the first wonder he went to the palace gates. The princess’s waiting-woman saw the apple and gasped. “What will you take for that?”

“Only one hour—nay, one night—at the threshold of my lady’s chamber, to talk and not to touch.”

Such was the magic of the apple that the waiting-woman’s greed outran her caution. The bargain was made. But the false bridegroom, uneasy and sly, gave the princess a cup of drugged wine. She drank and slept without dreams. All night the prince sat by the threshold and told his story to the perfumed darkness:

“Do you not remember,” he whispered, “the garden with the golden apples? Do you not remember, my love, the thread you gave me, the nights of quiet speech?”

No answer. Only the drip of the fountain and the echo of his own voice.

On the second night he gave the golden distaff and won a second vigil. Again a sleeping draught was pressed upon the princess. Again he spoke to a silence that would not stir.

On the third day he stood at the gate with the last treasure, the golden spindle that danced as though it had heard the music of the spheres. The waiting-woman’s eyes burned. She snatched it and hurried the prince to the threshold. But as the cup was brought the princess lifted it—and the prince, remembering the counsel of every grandmother he had met on the road, knocked the cup aside. The wine splashed the carpet and bit holes in it where it fell.

The princess’s eyes cleared; she lifted her head as if waking from a winter. “Who is it that calls me?”

“It is I,” said the prince, and the word shook. “It is I who waited three nights by your door. It is I who walked to the end of the world and asked the Sun, the Moon, and the Winds for you.”

She looked at him a long time, and the sorrow melted from her face. “I knew you would come,” she said. “But we must be swift.”

They fled as lovers flee in the oldest stories, by postern and alley, while the Winds—who favour those who keep faith—laid their hands upon their backs. North Wind shouldered the gates; West Wind blurred their footprints with rain; South Wind warmed the night so they would not falter; East Wind sang to the horses. By dawn they had come to the house of the Father of Winds, and by noon to the house of the Moon’s mother, and by sunset to the house of the Sun’s. Each gave them shelter and speed, and when at last they reached the prince’s own country, the gardens were heavy with the same golden fruit with which all had begun.

The king, seeing them come, set aside all questions and ordered bells rung in every tower. The wedding lasted so long that the old tales say even the shadows danced. As for the wicked gipsy, some tell that she was banished beyond the border with a warning never to darken honest doors; others, sterner of heart, say she met the punishment of traitors. But this much is certain: the prince and the peahen-maiden were faithful, and the peahens themselves never again came stealing apples in the night—for what they desired they had won honourably in the day.

And if you ask whether the golden apples still grow, the gardeners will tell you that they do, and that when the wind moves through the leaves you can sometimes hear a sound like a feathered sleeve or a whisper on a windowsill:

“Burn but a single thread, and I will come—swifter than thought.”