Zelinda and the Monster

Zelinda and the Monster

Once, in Italy, not far from a large city, a man of modest means lived with his three daughters. The older two were Rosina and Marietta; the youngest was Zelinda.

The sisters had different tastes. Rosina loved fine dresses, and Marietta bright scarves. Zelinda found her greatest pleasure in simple things: morning sunshine, the smell of bread, birdsong, and flowers by the window.

One January morning, her father was going to the fair.

“I’ll buy what we need for the house,” he said. “If there’s money left, I’ll bring each of you a little gift. What would you like?”

“A new dress!” Rosina immediately asked.

“And a scarf for me,” said Marietta.

Zelinda thought and smiled:

“If you find one, bring me a rose.”

“A rose? In January?”

“Don’t spend too long searching. It will be enough to know you thought of me.”

At the fair, her father quickly found a dress and scarf, but there were no roses anywhere. On his way home, he noticed a garden behind a high wall. Its gate stood ajar.

The man looked inside and froze. In the middle of a winter day, the trees were green, the birds were singing, and the flowers were blooming. And by the path stood a bush covered with roses.

“Just one,” he whispered. “For Zelinda.”

He called to the owner, but no one answered. Then he carefully plucked one flower.

At that moment, the earth seemed to hum. A huge creature emerged from behind the trees. It looked like a dragon: heavy paws, a scaly back, sharp ears, and eyes that glowed in the semi-darkness.

“Who gave you permission to pick my roses?” the monster roared.

The father was so frightened that the rose almost fell from his hands.

“Excuse me. I called the owner, but no one answered. This is for my daughter. I am ready to pay.”

The monster was silent for a long time.

“The roses in this garden are not for sale,” he said at last. “But you may go. Come back tomorrow with the daughter you picked it for. I want to hear from her whether she truly needed this rose.”

The father did not like this demand, but the monster had already gone into the shade of the trees. The man returned home sad.

The sisters immediately noticed his face.

“What happened?”

He told everything as it happened.

“It’s because of the rose!” Rosina was indignant.

“I told you that flowers are useless in winter,” added Marietta.

Zelinda took her father’s hand.

“Don’t argue. I’ll go with you. If the owner of the garden is angry because of the flower, I’ll return it myself and ask for forgiveness.”

The next day they came to the garden together.

This time, behind the gate stood a lighted palace. The doors opened by themselves. A table was set in the great hall, and four marble statues with lamps in their hands seemed to point the way.

“What a strange place,” her father whispered.

“But it has been polite so far,” Zelinda replied.

After dinner, separate rooms were prepared for them. And in the morning the monster was waiting by the rose bush.

Zelinda handed him the flower.

“I didn’t ask my father to take it without permission. Here it is. Forgive him.”

The monster looked at the rose, then at the girl.

“Keep the flower. I wanted to meet the person who asked for it. Your father may go home.”

“And me?”

“I ask you to stay here for a few days. No one has spoken to me without fear in this garden for a long time.”

The father wanted to object, but Zelinda said:

“I will stay for a short time. But only if I can leave when I want.”

The monster nodded slowly.

“I promise.”

Thus began Zelinda’s strange life in the enchanted palace.

During the day she walked in the garden, read in the library, and listened to the music that sometimes sounded of its own accord in the empty hall. Invisible hands served dinner, lit the lamps, and brought fresh water.

Every evening the monster came to her.

At first, Zelinda tensed when she heard his heavy footsteps. Gradually, though, she noticed that he never entered without asking, never touched her belongings, and always asked if she needed anything.

One evening the monster asked:

“Are you still afraid of me?”

Zelinda thought.

“Your appearance still frightens me a little. But you yourself frighten me less now.”

The monster laughed sadly.

“That is probably the best answer I have ever heard.”

He often asked:

“Could you stay here forever?”

And Zelinda always answered:

“I cannot promise something that I do not feel.”

At first the monster was sad. In time, he stopped asking and simply said:

“Okay. Then just stay as long as you want.”

Several weeks passed.

One day the monster brought a small mirror with a silver frame.

“This is no ordinary mirror. It can show you the person you miss.”

Zelinda immediately thought of her father.

A familiar room appeared in the mirror. Her father was lying in bed, and Rosina and Marietta were sitting next to him. He was unwell and kept looking at the door.

“He misses me,” Zelinda whispered. “I have to go back.”

The monster lowered his head.

“You have given me more happy days than I could have hoped for. Go.”

“Aren’t you angry?”

“If you keep someone by force, that’s not friendship anymore.”

Zelinda looked at him carefully.

“Then I will come back.”

“Don’t promise out of pity.”

“I promise because I want to.”

At that moment, one of the statues handed her a small golden rose.

“When you want to return, place it beside a real rose and think of the garden,” the monster explained.

Seeing his daughter helped her father recover more quickly. Zelinda told him about the palace, the garden, and its unusual master.

The sisters could not believe it.

“Do you really want to go back to him?” asked Marietta.

“He is only scary on the outside,” Zelinda answered. “And he has learned one important thing: not to demand what you can only get voluntarily.”

A few days later, the father got out of bed. Zelinda went out into the garden, placed the golden rose near the bush, and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, the tall gates of the enchanted garden were before her again.

But the palace stood dark.

“Where are you?” Zelinda called.

She found the monster beside the same rose bush, sitting on the ground as though all his strength had left him.

“I thought you weren’t coming back,” he said softly.

“I promised.”

“People sometimes change their minds.”

“And they have the right to. But I haven’t changed mine.”

Zelinda sat beside him.

“I didn’t come back because of a promise. I came back because you became my friend. And I want to decide for myself what our story will be from now on.”

As soon as she said these words, a warm wind swept through the garden. The roses rustled, the statues in the palace raised their lamps, and a soft golden light flared up around the monster.

Zelinda closed her eyes.

When the glow faded, a young man stood before her.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said in a familiar voice. “It’s still me.”

He explained that he was a king’s son, enchanted many years before. The spell would last until someone looked beyond his frightening appearance and grand palace, saw him as a person, and chose freely to stay beside him.

“For a long time, I thought I had to persuade someone to love me,” he said. “But the spell only began to weaken when I learned to respect another person’s ‘no’.”

Zelinda smiled.

“It seems that this was the most difficult test.”

When her father and sisters came to the palace, they could hardly recognise the magic garden she had described. It no longer seemed gloomy and mysterious. The gates stood wide open, and voices sounded beyond them.

The rose bush remained in its place.

And every time Zelinda passed by it, she remembered the one January rose that had started the whole story.

Not every gift has to be expensive. Not every scary look means a bad heart. And no true affection is born of coercion.

Sometimes the strongest spells are broken by a very simple thing: the right of a person to say “yes” themselves.

May this story leave a little light in your heart ✨