Once upon a time, a hunter lived in a forest with his little daughter Lina. One day, while hunting, he heard a child crying. To his surprise, he found a little boy crying, in a nest, on a tree. A big bird had taken the boy to its nest as its prey.
The hunter saved the boy and took him home. He brought him up as his own son and named him Fundevogel. Fundevogel and Lina became good friends.
The hunter had a cook who was actually a witch. She adored Lina but disliked Fundevogel.
One day, while playing, Lina saw the cook boiling a pail of water. On asking, the cook said, “This is for Fundevogel.”
Lina understood that the cook planned to kill Fundevogel. She went to Fundevogel and said to him, “Promise me that you will never leave me. And I promise that I will be by your side always.” After that, Lina told him about the cook’s plan of killing him. They both ran away from home to save Fundevogel.
The moment the cook found the children missing, she sent her servants to search for them. However, when the children saw the servants coming, they decided to disguise themselves with the help of magic. Fundevogel became a rose bush and Lina became a rose on it.
When the servants looked around, all they saw was a rose bush. Disappointed, they went back home and informed the cook. The cook realised that the children were using magic to hide themselves.
She screamed, “You fools! That rose bush was Fundevogel and the flower was Lina. You should have cut the bush and brought home the rose. Now, I will go and look for them myself.”
Lina was scared to see the cook coming. But brave Fundevogel said, “Don’t worry, Lina. We will turn into a pond and a swan respectively, and the cook will not recognise us.”
Now, there was a pond with a single swan floating in it. But the cook recognised them. She started drinking the water of the pond, since she was a witch who could do things that normal people could not. But the swan came near her and caught hold of her neck with its beak and dragged her into the water. The cook got drowned in the pond. The children changed back into their normal forms and returned home.
