Shepherd Paul

Shepherd Paul

In a green land where meadows stretched to the horizon, an old shepherd lived alone. One morning he heard a baby crying in the tall grass and found an infant wrapped in plain cloth.

The shepherd took the child home and named him Paul. He raised him among sheep, hills, and wind. One gentle ewe gave the boy milk for so long that Paul grew astonishingly strong.

When other children needed two hands to lift a stone, Paul could roll it with his foot. When several shepherds tried to pull a cart from the mud, Paul would take hold of the shaft and help as though the cart were empty.

But the old shepherd always told him, “Strength is a good thing only when you know what to use it for.”

Paul remembered those words.

When he was grown, he said one day, “I want to see the world. Here I know every path and every sheep, but beyond the hills there must be much I do not yet understand.”

The old shepherd gave him a bag of bread and wished him a fortunate road.

On the very first day, Paul met a strange man standing beside an enormous tree. With his hands, the man was combing through its branches as if they were flax.

“Who are you?” Paul asked in surprise.

“My name is Tree-Comber. And are you, by chance, the famous shepherd Paul?”

“Paul, yes. Famous, I do not know.”

“Then let us test your strength!”

They wrestled on the soft grass. The ground thudded beneath their feet. First one gave a step, then the other. At last Paul held Tree-Comber fast.

“Enough!” Tree-Comber laughed. “You are truly strong. Let us travel together.”

Before long they met Stone-Crusher, who squeezed lumps of rock until they crumbled in his palms. He too wished to match himself against Paul. After a long, friendly contest, he said, “It seems better to be your companion than your rival.”

The third was Iron-Kneader, who bent iron as easily as if he were kneading dough.

So there were four of them.

One day the friends stopped in a forest. Tree-Comber stayed behind to cook supper while the others went to gather mushrooms, berries, and dry branches.

When the sauerkraut was almost ready, a small man with a very long, pointed beard stepped out from the bushes.

“That smells good,” he said. “Will you give me some?”

Instead of answering politely, Tree-Comber sniffed. “Go farther along the road.”

The bearded man narrowed his eyes. While Tree-Comber turned away, he snatched up the pot, ate almost all the cabbage, and disappeared.

Tree-Comber felt ashamed. He began cooking a fresh pot, but he could not finish before his friends returned.

The next day the same thing happened to Stone-Crusher, and the day after to Iron-Kneader. None of them wanted to admit that he had been outwitted.

On the fourth day, Paul said, “Something is wrong. Today I will stay and cook.”

The bearded man came again.

“Will you give me some food?”

“I will give you a bowl if you ask without tricks,” Paul answered.

But the little man was already reaching for the pot.

Paul caught him by the belt and tied him to a sturdy tree with a long strap.

“Sit here until my friends return. We will speak together.”

But when the friends came back, the tree was gone. A wide trail marked the ground as though someone had dragged a whole trunk through the forest.

They followed the trail and came to a deep pit.

“He vanished down there,” said Paul.

The friends lowered him in a strong basket on a rope.

Beneath the earth, Paul found not a dark cellar but a strange, spacious land with roads of stone and castles that shone as if sunlight were stored inside them.

In the first castle he met a young woman.

“Run away,” she said. “A six-headed dragon guards this castle. He will not let me return home.”

“If you wish to leave, no one has the right to keep you,” Paul told her.

Soon the doors thundered open, and the dragon came in. He saw the stranger.

“Who is sitting in my castle?”

“Shepherd Paul. I have come to take the woman who does not wish to stay here.”

“Then prove that you are stronger than my gate!”

The dragon pointed to a great stone block that he used each night to brace the doors.

Paul lifted it, carried it across the hall, and set it by another wall.

The dragon tried to do the same, but the stone would not yield.

“Very well,” he grumbled. “Go. But my brothers live farther on, and they are not so ready to give way.”

The young woman took a golden wand, touched the castle, and it became a golden apple.

“It is a magic castle,” she explained. “This makes it easier to carry to the upper world.”

In the second castle waited her sister. A twelve-headed dragon stood there.

He offered Paul a trial: they would see who could hold an iron beam above his head the longest.

The sister gave Paul a magic silk shirt that lent him endurance. Paul stood for a long time. At first the dragon boasted with all twelve voices; then with nine; then with three. At last every head cried together, “Enough! Be gone!”

The second castle became a golden apple as well.

In the third castle lived the youngest sister. Its master was an eighteen-headed dragon who could change, when he visited the upper world, into the very bearded man from the forest.

“So it was you who ate our sauerkraut,” Paul said.

“And you were the one who tied me to a tree,” the dragon replied in several voices at once.

They looked at one another.

“We shall not fight,” said Paul. “I came for the girl. She wants to go home.”

“Then defeat me in three matters,” said the dragon. “Strength, skill, and wisdom.”

First they rolled a huge stone wheel. Paul won.

Then they had to cross a narrow bridge holding full cups of water without spilling a drop. Paul walked slowly and won again.

The third task was a riddle.

“What grows larger when it is shared?”

Paul thought. He remembered the old shepherd sharing bread, advice, and care.

“Kindness,” he said. “And trust, if it is not betrayed.”

All eighteen heads fell silent.

“Go,” said the dragon at last. “Today you have won fairly.”

The third castle also became a golden apple.

Paul and the three sisters returned to the pit. The basket was too small, so he said, “You must go up first. Then my friends will pull me up.”

One by one, the sisters rose to the surface.

But when Paul’s companions saw the three golden apples and heard of the castles, envy stirred in them.

“If Paul comes up, everyone will praise him alone,” said Stone-Crusher.

“And no one will remember us,” added Iron-Kneader.

They took the rope and went away, leaving Paul beneath the earth.

The sisters protested, but the three strong men said, “We will return later.”

They did not return.

Paul wandered for a long time in the underworld. He was strong, but for the first time he understood that there are places from which strength alone cannot lift a person.

Then a fiery rain began to fall. In the rocks, Paul saw a griffin’s nest. The great bird was gone, and the chicks shivered beneath the open sky.

Paul covered the nest with his cloak and sat there until the fiery rain had passed.

Soon an enormous griffin returned.

“You saved my children,” it said. “What do you wish?”

“To return to the upper world.”

“Climb onto my back.”

The flight lasted three days and three nights. Paul fed the griffin on the way and offered it water whenever it turned its head.

On the fourth morning, they rose into the sunny world.

Paul found his former companions. When Tree-Comber, Stone-Crusher, and Iron-Kneader saw him, they went pale.

“We… thought you would somehow get out,” Tree-Comber began.

“But you took the rope,” Paul replied.

No one could find an excuse.

Then Paul said, “I could carry resentment all my life. But it is heavier than any stone. You are no longer my companions. Go your own way, and remember: strength without loyalty is worth very little.”

The three men went away with their heads bowed.

The sisters kept the golden apples. They chose a beautiful place, touched the apples with the golden wand, and before them stood the three castles once more.

Now they were no prisons. Their doors stood open, flowers grew in their gardens, and each sister chose for herself where she would live and what she would do.

The youngest sister often talked with Paul. They remembered the underworld, laughed about the eighteen-headed dragon arguing with himself, and debated which was harder: lifting a stone block or admitting a mistake in time.

In time they became the dearest of friends, and later they chose to be together.

But Paul did not forget the old shepherd. He returned to the green meadows, embraced the man who had raised him, and told him everything he had seen.

The old shepherd listened and asked, “So what proved strongest in the world?”

Paul smiled.

“Not my hands. Not Tree-Comber. Not the dragons, and not even the griffin. The strongest thing is what makes the powerful help the weak, and keeps the hurt from becoming cruel in return.”

The old shepherd nodded.

“Now you have truly seen the world.”

And if Paul ever lifted trees after that, it was only when they had fallen across a road and kept people from passing. For at last he knew what such great strength was for.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨