Caravantina or The Girl Who Never Grew Up

Once upon a time there were three little peasant girls named Moelle, Andrietta and Caravantina and they always used to steal apples and pears from the garden of an old woman who everyone said was a wicked witch, a woman called Magdilla.

Their mother had often warned them, “Stay away from Magdilla’s garden because if she catches you then she’ll put a curse on you” but the girls never listened.

One day, however, as they were in her Garden stealing apples from her apple tree. Magdilla came out of her house.

“Aha!”, she shouted angrilly, raising a big walking stick towards them, “I’ve caught you now you little thieves”.

Terrified, the three girls dropped the apples they had picked and started to run and Moelle and Andrietta, the two eldest girls, because they were fast runners, managed to escape the witches
garden but Caravantina, because she was slower, was caught by the witch.

“Help! Help! Moelle! Andrietta!”, she cried as the old woman grabbed hold of her with a grip like iron, “The witch has got me”.

The witch cackled coldly because she really was a wicked woman, “Ha!”, she said, “I HAVE got you Caravantina and I shall put a curse on you too, you little rat. On your thirteenth birthday you shall drop dead”.

Then, having put her wicked curse on the child, the evil old woman let her go and she and her sisters ran back crying to their mother, telling her all that had happened.

When their mother heard about the curse she was horrified and then, grabbing hold of Caravantina by the scruff of her neck she dragged the little girl back to the garden of the witch to beg the old woman to lift the curse she had put upon her daughter.

“Please Madam Magdilla”, she pleaded on her knees outside the old witches door, “Have mercy. Caravantina is only a little girl, barely six years old. She didn’t know what she was doing. Beat her if you wish but do not curse her to die or, if your heart cannot be softened, take my life in exchange for hers”.

Madam Magdilla had a wicked heart but a wily head and knew the wisdom in being magnanimous.

“Very well”, she said, grinning at the sight of the grovelling and weeping mother, “I shall be merciful but I cannot lift a curse once it has been spoken; I can only cast another curse against it and so your daughter will not die when she is Thirteen because she will never become Thirteen; she will live alright but she will remain a six year old girl for the rest of her life”.

Then the old Witch yelled at the mother to go and be grateful for her mercy and the mother took Caravantina home and smacked her two older sisters for getting their younger sister into trouble.

But, sadly, just as the old Witch had said in her curse, Caravantina did not get any older.
While her two sisters grew up to be beautiful young women and get married and have children;
Caravantina stayed a six year old girl.
“When will I grow older, Mother?”, she would ask her mother, sobbing, “I do not want to stay a child all my life. I want to be a woman”.

Then her mother would cry too and say, “Never, my poor little Caravantina. You may never grow up.
You will always be six years old until the day you die”.

And Caravantina would go off in private and cry and hold the little doll whose hair she had cut and whose clothes she had altered to make it look like a boy and not a girl; the handsome husband she dreamed of marrying.

Then one day Caravantina got so depressed that she thought there was no more point in living and she ran off to the deep river to throw herself off of a bridge but, just as she was standing on the edge of the bridge ready to jump, she heard the sound of drumming coming closer and, looking to see what was making the noise, she saw a smartly dressed platoon of soldiers who were marching
her way and they were being led by a little drummer boy who looked, like she, about six years old.

“Where are you going in your smart uniforms?”, she asked the boy.

“We are going off to fight in a war but I do not want to go. I am only going because I have no mother or father and nowhere else to go”, he said, sadly.

Then Caravantina had a bright idea. She told the boy to give her his clothes, his pack and his drum.
“I will go to war in your place”, she said, “For I have nothing in life worth living for. You will go and live with my mother and help her tend her farm. She is getting old and will be happy to have a boy to help her”.

And the boy, overjoyed at the chance to avoid being killed in a war he did not care about, agreed.

Then, behind a bush, he took off his uniform and she put it on and then, banging his drum, she joined his platoon of soldiers while the boy, whose name was Potchko, went to live with her mother.

Now, among the platoon of soldiers, there was a very nice captain called Errico who, though he thought Caravantina was the boy Potchko, was very kind to her and shared his rations with her
and carried her high upon his shoulders whenever Caravantina was tired of marching and she
started to feel very attached to the young captain.

“He is the kind of young man I would like to marry”, she thought, “If only I was not cursed to remain a child”.

But then, before they had even reached the battlefield they were marching to, they were ambushed by enemy soldiers; peasants just like Caravantina and all of the platoon were shot dead except for Captain Errico who, though shot badly in the shoulder, picked up Caravantina and carried her off
finding a hiding place in an old abandoned farm house.

As the Captain lay down to rest inside the farmhouse, Caravantina fretted over him.

“You are so badly injured that you might die if I do not get some help”, she said to him, “I will go and get some supplies and medicine for you”.

The captain thought her a brave little drummer boy and a good friend but cautioned her, “It is much too dangerous for you. If anyone sees you in your uniform you will be killed”.
But Caravantina assured the Captain that she would not be killed and, because he was too weak to argue with her or stop her, he let her go.

Then, secretly, she took her ragged peasant dress out of her pack and changed into it. Then, running to a nearby peasant farmers cottage, told the man who lived in that cottage that her father had had a terrible accident and needed bandages and a splint and medicine or he would die and, because she was a little girl and looked so desperate, the man took pity on her and gave her what he could and then she ran back with the supplies to her wounded captain and, while he lay delirious upon the ground, nursed him and tended to him and fed him on apples and wild berries she had gotten from nearby trees.

Then, later, when he felt stronger, he said to her, “I owe you my life, little drummer boy and anything you wish I would do. I promise you that”.

She told him she would hold him to that promise and then they walked together back to the home of her mother.

When her mother saw the soldier, at first, she didn’t like him. Caravantina’s father, you see, had been a soldier and a bad sort according to her mother.

“You cannot trust a soldier”, she told Caravantina, “They seem handsome and charming but they run off, leaving you pregnant, penniless and alone”.

Caravantina assured her mother that Captain Errico was a kind and good person and that she intended to reveal her true identity to him.

“He says that he owes me for saving his life”, she told her mother, “I will tell him my story, that I am not really a child but the victim of a terrible curse and I will ask him to marry me”.

But her mother did not believe that the Captain would agree to such an arrangement or that they would find a priest willing to marry them.

When Caravantina revealed her identity to the captain, at first he was totally shocked and didn’t believe her story about the curse or about being a woman. He merely told her that she was a silly little girl and that what she wanted was impossible.

But then Caravantina’s mother and her sisters vouched that her story was true and the Captain’s heart softened towards her. Then, after much thought on the matter, he agreed to marry her but said that he could never live with her as a husband.

The mere fact that she would have a wedding like her two sisters was enough to satisfy Caravantina however and she started to work out a plan how they could get a priest to marry them.

She had her mother make her a dress with a long skirt, big enough to hide a barrel under, then she found a village priest who was old; rather near sighted and senile, not to mention a terrible drunkard.

Then, putting on the long dress, she stood on a barrel so that she looked just as tall as the captain and, outside her mother’s little shack, the priest, who had been plied with lots of homebrewed licquor conducted the ceremony.

When the ceremony was finished and the priest had nodded off in a drunken daze, Caravantina seized the captain and tried to kiss him on the lips.

The captain was reluctant but he said he would allow her one kiss.

In that one kiss, however, was the magic needed to break Magdilla’s foul curse and, suddenly, standing in front of the Captain was not a six year old girl but a beautiful eighteen year old woman.

After that, Captain Errico was happy to be Caravantina’s husband and, because he came from a wealthy family, she and her mother and her sisters and the little boy, Potchko, lived both comfortably and happily ever after.