Ririro.com - Short Stories

"The Pot of Rue" opens with the youngest daughter of a merchant making her father promise to bring her a single, peculiar gift: a pot of rue. When he forgets it, the ship cannot move until he turns back — and fulfilling the promise costs him a terrifying audience with a king who punishes the request with death. But the real danger begins at home, when jealous sisters destroy the pot and sever the daughter's secret bond with a prince. Alone and resourceful, she disguises herself, slays ogres, and saves the man she loves — on her own terms.

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"The Munificence of Prince Borghese" opens in Rome, where a proud servant is dismissed from the most generous household in the city — and finds that reputation has shut every other door against him. As months pass, his family loses furniture, clothing, and finally food itself. Driven to a breaking point no decent man reaches lightly, he steps out of the shadows with a knife. What he takes, and what Prince Borghese does in response, sets in motion an act of extraordinary generosity that carries a sting of irony in its final terms.

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"Giacinta Marescotti" tells the story of a proud, hot-tempered noblewoman who rails against being sent to a convent while her quieter sister is married off — exactly the opposite of what both had wanted. Giacinta transplants her aristocratic lifestyle behind convent walls, treating the other sisters with barely disguised contempt. When a bishop pauses outside her lavish cell and utters just two words — "a smell" — something in Giacinta cracks open, setting her on a slow, genuine path toward humility, sacrifice, and eventually sainthood.

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"The Beautiful Englishwoman" opens in Rome, where a wealthy, accomplished woman has vowed to marry only the man who matches her ideal portrait exactly. When a sharp-witted suitor turns her fastidiousness back on her with equal wit, an unexpected love blooms — and quickly becomes a secret marriage. For thirteen years the couple live devotedly in a hidden villa, until a titled father's ruthless interference sets in motion a chain of violence that leaves no one untouched.

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"The Princess and the Satyr" tells the story of a young princess who, after becoming lost in the forest during a hunt, is taken by a selvaggio—a half-man, half-goat creature from the deep woods—who loves her fiercely though she can never love him in return. Ten years pass. When she finally sees a ship and her chance at escape, the selvaggio confronts her with devastating choices across the water. The story builds to a crescendo of loss and will, leaving its darkest moments unspoken.

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"The Foolish Woman" is a wry folk tale in which a husband, exasperated by his wife's absurd blunders, sets off to find three people in the world more foolish than she is — or return alone. What he discovers along the road is a princess baffled by a hat brim, a man who has knotted a rope into uselessness, and a widow swindled out of her firewood by a charming stranger. Each encounter is funnier and more unsettling than the last, and the husband's certainty slowly turns into something more complicated.

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"The King of Portugal" opens on a frail monarch whose vulnerability invites a scheming prince to seize power through calculated cruelty — imprisoning the old king on bread and water, waiting for nature to do his work. What baffles the prince is that the king grows stronger each visit from his daughter, not weaker. Guards watch, searches are made, and still no explanation comes — until it does. At the story's heart is a young woman's desperate, extraordinary act of devotion, and the unexpected grace that follows.

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"The Old Miser" delivers a sharp, darkly comic portrait of greed meeting its match. A clever young woman targets a notorious miser, convincing him she lives on air alone — thin enough to be believed, shrewd enough to exploit his obsession with cost. Each visit to his home, she walks away richer, with coins stuck to pitch-coated soles. The scheme unfolds with deadpan precision until a single gleaming coin, dangling mid-step during Carnival, forces her hand — and the truth tumbles out with devastating consequences for the miser.

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Doctor Grillo is a biting fable about a resentful servant who steals his master's identity—his gown, his name, and his reputation—and sets himself up as a celebrated physician in a distant land. When two lucky cures cement the impostor's fame, the real Doctor Grillo arrives to reclaim his name, only to find that truth is no match for a crowd that has already made up its mind. The story builds toward a darkly ironic trial in a dying girl's sickroom, where chaos and delay seal one man's fate entirely.

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"The Happy Couple" is a sharp fable about a devoted husband and wife whose unshakeable love draws the devil's envy. He enlists a witch to drive a wedge between them — planting a dark rumour in the husband's ear, and tricking the wife into standing over her sleeping husband with a razor. When he wakes to find her there, blade in hand, the moment teeters on the edge of disaster. Everything depends on whether two people will speak honestly in the dark.

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