Hello, it's me, Lily, a frog, who lives in a pond and loves to tell stories.

This is an original folk tale by Marlene Werfel called The Fuzzy Castle.

Once, upon a time, there was a girl who lived next to an old mill beside a dark forest.

The forest was full of wolves and brambles and blackbirds that screamed curses at all who walked down its twisted paths.

You'll never amount to anything, screamed Blackbird.

You'll never be loved, screamed another.

You're not worthy, screamed a third.

Stay out of the forest, said the girl's father, except to go to school.

When you're done school, you won't have to walk through the forest anymore. I will find you a nice

farmer husband and you can bake him cakes and clean his house and take care of the many, many

children you'll have together.

The girl wasn't sure she wanted to get married, but she knew she did not like going to school at all.

The teacher made her wear a dunce hat because she never finished her work on time.

The girl's name was Morella, but nobody called her

that. They called her dunce or dummy or duncerella and sometimes Dummerella, which is not very

clever, but often the meanest children are not the cleverest ones.

And when Morella went to eat her lunch,

what she always packed in a little willow basket with an M woven into it

and kept covered with a red checkered scrap of cloth,

the lunch was always missing.

When she told her teacher that her lunch had disappeared before she could eat it,

her teacher said,

...