Story one, the tale of a bard during a Saxon conquest.
There had been a great battle, with great battles come great victory, and with great victories come great feasts.
The king of the winners held a great feast in the destitute hall that he was said to "protect". This man was a great man, one that had been the hero in many tales.
In this hall were a hundred men, all of whom were great men themselves. But there were not only men, but a couple ladies and boys were also present.
One of the women, a scotch, rested her head on the king's knee. She was sitting by the side of an immense throne that he was slouching in. the Scottish girl looked awfully small and dainty next to this bear of a man.
The king watched the slobbering, drunk, but victorious crowd with his small black eyes. He watched carefully his head erect, and strong.
There was another woman present, not a concubine like the first, but a woman that could have been 40 or even 80. She was hidden in a corner, watching the crowed, hidden in fear. The owner of the hall, who else could she be, had worried lines etching her wrinkled, stress forehead. The rabble that had presented them that night would eat all the stores that her household had gathered for the spring leaving her, her young child, and the small household with nothing at all to live on for 3 months of the starving season.
And the third was a girl, a red head like the first, but even younger, she might have not reached 15 yet, was sitting joined the crowed of the men, the men and the boys she had known for most of her life, was talking animatedly to her companions.
One could follow this scene for about an hour before the wind began to blow strongly outside, then waited in a moment of hushed, expected silence, until the tall oak doors of the hall blew open in a loud crash.
Inside walked a man all in green, with ancient eyes. No one spoke, but the woman in the corner began to sob. She had been visited before.
"King, son of the great," the green man began, walking slowly up to the bearlike figure. "I have been told wonderful, but terrifying stories about you. All of them show a man of power and a man to trust. Prove that this is true, and your sooth sayers are not speaking in vain.
"Let us make a deal, one that no man had ever fulfilled. If you cut off my head today, I shall cut off your head tomorrow."
One of the king's most trusted and brave men stepped forward, "I will do it!" he spoke confidently, but, suspecting a trap, he stepped back.
"Peace, friend," the king said to his warrior. Then turning to the green man, he spoke again. "I will accept your challenge."
He took out his sword, and raised it far above his head. Bringing it down quickly, it chopped off the head of the man. Green blood oozed from the sliced neck, and a new, but a strangely, the same head grew out of where the neck had been cut.
"I come for you tomorrow morning." Then all of the people in the hall blinked, and then the king of the leaves was gone.
All of the warriors began to drift out, and late in the night, some servants were sent to clean the stain of the green blood. No matter how hard they tried, no one could clean off that stain.
The next morning the old-man-of-the-forest arrived to the king.
He fell to his knees and cried out, "Kill me quickly as I have killed you."
The green man raised his green ax into the air and then dropped it in front of the king.
"In your innocence," the green man began, "you have forgotten who I am, and in your bravery you do not beg for life. You are loyal, you are proud, you waited for me, and you did not try to run. You are the king who will conquer, and what you conquer, shall remain."
With this blessing, or with this curse, the leaf king silently left the tent that the king warrior was still cowering in, giving the king back his life.