Week 9 Storytelling: The Hope of a Warrior's Mother

There once was a mother with an extremely small son. The mother was worried about her son’s future; she knew that he could never grow up to be a successful warrior unless he became taller and stronger. They lived in a village where the only way for a man to be successful was for him to become a warrior. The mother had heard about a powerful magician who lived in the village next to hers, so she decided to pay the magician a visit.

When the mother told the magician of her small son, the magician said that she had just the thing that would cure this boy of his tiny size forever. “Oh thank you so much! I will do anything you say as long as it will help my son to be a successful warrior one day!” exclaimed the mother.

The magician said, “Tomorrow, send your son to my house. I will be on a trip, so he will need to care for my garden and ensure that everything runs smoothly in my absence. But just be sure that he stays away from the hall closet.”

The mother ran home. She immediately told her son that he should take care of the magician’s plants the next day and to be sure to avoid the hall closet. He agreed, and the next day he arrived at the magician’s home.

There was a note left out that said that the magician would return the following week with detailed instructions for the boy. The boy followed the instructions carefully but with each passing day, he became more and more curious about the hall closet. He listened at the door, peeked underneath, and finally he was so curious that he convinced himself that there was no way that the magician could possibly know whether or not he opened the door.

Closet Door

On the final day of his time within the magician’s home, he pulled the door open and to his surprise, the closet was empty. The boy walked inside, and immediately his entire body started to grow. He felt very strange, and he decided that he should go home immediately and show his mother the evidence of his growth spurt.

As soon as he arrived home, his mother shouted with joy, “Oh, my son! You have finally grown, and now you can be a successful warrior!”

In response to his questioning gaze, his mother explained how she had only sent him to the magician in the hopes that he might grow. The boy was very excited because he had always wanted to become a warrior as well. The boy became one of his village’s most respected warriors, and his story was told for generations. He gave small boys everywhere hope that they might grow one day, but of course, no one knew his secret of how the magician had helped him.

When he had his own small boys, he sent them to the magician with a warning about not opening the hall closet. And one by one, each of his sons became so curious that they too opened the hall closet and grew into a large and powerful warrior.

Bibliography: This story is based on The Legend of the Head of Gold from Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine Judson (1913).

Author’s note: The original story featured a father with a lazy son who visited an old woman because he was worried about his lazy son's future. The woman said that she could help. The lazy boy watched over a house and some horses, but he was instructed to stay away from a pot of gold. One of the horses he was watching told him to dip his head in the gold, and then the boy became extremely well respected. 

I wanted to keep some of the same details, especially that the son was ultimately rewarded for going against the instructions he was given. I decided to make it about a boy in a warrior village because I thought that his mother would be equally as worried as the father with the lazy son. Both parents would have no hope for their sons because of the lack of career prospects the sons faced. I also wanted to have a happy ending since sometimes stories with magicians end in trickery that leaves many people unhappy. I had the boy take care of plants instead of horses because I wanted to have the boy break the rules because of his own desires, not because he was following a horse's instructions.