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 But this time Golden Antlers was far away and didn’t hear him. So no one came to help Smolicheck and the wood maidens carried him off to their cave.

There, instead of playing with him, they tormented him and teased him and made faces at him. But they did give him all he wanted to eat. In fact they stuffed him with food, especially sweets. Then every day they would pinch him and say to each other:

“Sister, do you think he’s fat enough yet to roast?”

Imagine poor Smolicheck’s feelings when he found they were fattening him on sweets because they expected to roast him and eat him!

Finally one day after they had been stuffing him for a long time they cut his little finger with a knife to see how fat it was.

“Yum, yum!” the wicked little wood maidens cried. “He’s fat enough! Today we can roast him!”

So they took off his clothes and laid him in a kneading trough and prepared him for the oven.

Smolicheck was so frightened that he just screamed and screamed, but the louder he screamed the more the little wood maidens laughed and clapped their hands.

Just as they were pushing him into the oven, Smolicheck roared out: