The Three-Breasted Princess

A king's newborn daughter carried a rare mark that the customs of the land considered a grave misfortune. His counselor advised consulting scholars rather than acting rashly, and they in turn ruled that she must be married off to whoever would have her — and both would then be exiled from the kingdom.

A drum was sounded announcing gold and a bride to anyone willing to marry her and leave. Eventually a blind man, guided everywhere by a hunchbacked companion, accepted the offer for the sake of the gold, reasoning that even hardship was better than the grinding poverty they already knew.

The three of them settled in a distant town. Over time, resentment grew between the hunchback and the princess against the blind man who depended so heavily on them, and the two of them began plotting to be rid of him for good.

Their scheme, meant to end in tragedy, unraveled instead in confusion: in the middle of carrying it out, the blind man's sight was accidentally restored by fumes he had not expected, and in the chaos and struggle that followed, the impact that was meant to harm him instead straightened the hunchback's back and smoothed away the very mark the princess had carried since birth.

What was set in motion as betrayal ended, by chance or by unseen justice, correcting every one of the misfortunes that had brought the three of them together in the first place — a reminder that outcomes rarely unfold exactly as those who plot them expect.