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1 chapter one The Golden Key One winter day, when the ground outside my cottage was covered in snow, I went into the forest to bring back some wood. I loaded the wood onto a sled. I was so cold, I thought I would make a fire and sit beside it a while before I went home. No one waited for me in the cottage, apart from the dear spiders and mice. I cleared a space in the snow by scraping at it with a stick, intending to sit down and warm my bones. Soon I uncovered a golden key. “Where there’s a key,” I thought, “there is surely some magic.” You might expect that I desired to dig more, and discover a locked iron box. You might expect me to have wished that this iron box were full of glittering things. You might expect me to have fit the key perfectly into the lock of the box, and that I would have turned it and turned it with hope. You might even wonder what terrible marvels I found in there, what sadness or evil they brought into the world. Yet I had no such desire to discover the sadness or evil. Sure as the forest is made up of trees and dirt and needles and worms, these are now and can always be lucky trees and dirt and needles and worms. It’s a trick of the mind, this desire for peace. Yet just the 2 same, I can assure you no story has ever waited for me. Only the darkened night with death by three. All happiness once was taken from me. Please solve the riddle; I can no longer speak. ...

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