A Brother and His Three Sisters

My sister and I never got along when we were little. We fought over anything and everything. The chores, TV remote, who would sit at the front seat when going out with her parents, who would get allowance first. Everything you could think of.

Unsurprisingly, we got into a huge fight one day and we were throwing insults toward each other, and we obviously didn’t mean it but at that moment the aim was to win the argument. We continued in such a fashion and I told her this. I will never forget this sentence because it still bugs me today.

“I hate you so much. Call me a fool if I ever listen to anything you say. I wish you were never my sister.”

Keep in mind that this was in the past. I love my sister with every fibre of my being. We would be nothing without each other.

She was surprised. Her eyes widened and I took that as my victory and smiled a little before leaving the room. I was satisfied with that much as a victory.

A few hours later my mum came in with an angry face and scolded me and I only got angrier thinking about how my sister reported me to my mother.

My mother could see that I wasn’t listening and spanked me. I was now more focused, fearing another spanking but my face was scrunched. Then she sighed and told me. “Let me tell you something. You shouldn’t have said that. There is no way that you wouldn’t need your sister’s advice one day. It matters not who is older or younger. You should advise yourselves.”

I nodded but knew that what she said would go in one ear and come out the other.

My mother knew me in and out so she sighed again and told me a story. There was no once upon a time, no, on a sunny day, she got right into it.

Coincidentally, it was nighttime, which was highly convenient. I was quite mischievous when I was younger. I was going to sleep off and if she asked me why, I would tell her “It was a bedtime story, no?”

SO, she got into it.

A story of a brother and his three sisters. I cringed imagining I had three sisters with her character, I almost shivered, but she continued.

One of his sisters, a beautiful lady was getting married and everyone was happy, all except her brother. He expressed his disagreement with the arrangement and she didn’t listen and said he was dirty.

The sisters didn’t like the brother. He wasn’t as attractive as they were, so they shunned him.

He had a reason. He knew the man killed off his wives and buried their bones. He tried to tell the sisters exactly that, but they paid him no attention, and so the day had come for the marriage. He lived far away, so they had to use a boat to get there.

The family agreed that one sister would stay behind with the mother and one would accompany the sister and so they set off.

Before that, as a gift for his beloved, he picked up a beautiful comb on the seashore and gave it to her. She was happy and kept it gently.

The sisters and the groom had then gotten to his home and then the comb transformed into her brother, which made the sister angry, but she couldn’t send him back. They travelled by sea after all.

When nighttime came, they all prepared to sleep together but the brother had asked him to follow him to the man’s smithy claiming that to test his masculinity, his mother had him sleep at the smithy. The man agreed and followed because he still had pride as a man.

Both men were now lying in the smithy and the groom had plans to kill him off first before the sisters. Just as he was about to, the brother deceived him into thinking that his snoring didn’t think he was asleep him not snoring meant he was asleep and the groom smiled thinking how foolish the brother was for telling him.

Both men went to sleep but the groom kept an eye out for him and then he stopped hearing the brother snore, so he went to kill him but the brother once again demanded that to sleep fully, he needed some corn.

The man was getting impatient so she gave him whatever he needed and once again was about to go in for the kill when the brother demanded that to sleep better than that he should be given gold. The man looked astonishingly at him and gave it to him thinking to kill him immediately.

Then he asked to go get water from the river with a sieve. That was the final request and when the man went to get the water, he rushed to his sisters and showed them the evidence. They were both frightened and wanted to get out of there immediately.

The brother told them not to worry and escaped. There was a rooster whose job was to make a sound when the sun was rising but the brother fed it some corn and the rooster didn’t make a sound.

They all escaped on the man's boat and reunited with their family. The brother told them everything that happened and they were all thankful and happy. The brother then went out to release the boat since he no longer needed it.

The man, on the other hand, came back to an empty hut, his gold and boat went and his rooster picking on corn.

My mother was done with the story and I was still awake. It was an interesting story and it didn’t scare me because I knew what kind of country I was in. Of course, that didn’t make things better right away I waited till the next morning and apologized to my sister. We still had our occasional fights, but I never made the same mistake again.