This is a story that I heard in elementary school, when we had a section on story telling. It's one of my favorite short stories. I added a few more details than when I usually tell the story, because I'm writing it, not telling it, and there is no benefit of body language in this variation. I also added a scene or two, again as more description.
The Puzzle of The Three Dolls
There once was a wise, much loved, old king, he had a silver beard, which was over 20 feet long. It was because of his beard that you could tell he was coming, for when he went around to check up on his subjects, he had twenty or so servants following behind him, to help keep his beard off of the ground. Now, this king loved riddles. He loved all of them, from the simple to the harder ones. But, the king had heard so many riddles, that he thought he had heard just about all of the riddles in the world, and became bored. So, he, as a rich and powerful king, declared that anyone who could give him a riddle, or puzzle, that he could not complete in 3 weeks time, would receive 3 million gold pieces and a small section of the kingdom.
People came in from all over the kingdom, and from neighboring lands as well. But the king was not satisfied. All the riddles that were brought to him he had already solved, or were not hard enough to fill the needed time gap before the prize was awarded.
Disheartened by so few good riddles and puzzles, the king was about to show up, when a shy villager knocked on the doors to the throne room. He was dressed in simple peasants garbs, and carried with him a potato sack. The king did not notice him come in, for he was wrapped in thought.
"Your Excellency?" The peasant said nervously. The king looked up at the man, and quietly beckoned him forward.
"You have come with a riddle I presume. It is not the day for requests from village representatives." The king said with a warm smile. The peasant bowed, and took out three dolls, and gave them to the king, who took them and started examining them. All three were blond girls, with painted faces, dresses, and a parasol. All three were identical. It seemed impossible to take them apart.
"The puzzle is in those dolls." The man started, gesturing to the three. "While the three may look similar, they are actually quite different. The puzzle is to figure out how and why they are different." He finished, and waited to be dismissed. And waited. And waited. The king had become so wrapped up in examining the dolls, he had forgotten to dismiss the peasant. Suddenly looking up, remembering the man, he beckoned to a guard, who to the man to a room for the three weeks.
Three weeks passed, and the king still hadn't solved the puzzle of the three dolls. He summoned the man in, and on a small table next to the king's throne sat the dolls.
"You have stumped us. You may have your prize, but We would like to keep the dolls." here the King paused, and continued after a nod from the peasant.
Before he was given the bags of gold, he gathered up his courage and looked at the king. "I do not want the prize." The man said, in slightly more than a squeak. To refuse an offer from the king was considered an insult.
"Do not want the prize??" The king said, and then laughed, making the man relax slightly, for his king would not laugh if he was about to harm the man. "Then what would you like?"
"I would like," here the man paused, he could ask for anything! But, he had come for a reason, and he continued. "I would like for you to allow my village to have a slightly lower tithe this year. Most our crops have died, and there's barely enough to feed ourselves, with the current tithe."
The king smiled, and beckoned to his scribe and whispered in his ear. The scribe quickly wrote on a piece of parchment, and the king read, and signed it at the bottom, and stamped it with his ring. The king rolled up the parchment, and handed it to the man. "When one of the tithe collectors come around for all this year, and for 5 years following, and he will know that you are allowed to give him a lower tithe." The king said with a warm smile, and dismissed the ecstatic and stunned peasant.
Days passed. And with days, weeks. A month would follow before the king would concede and ask for help with the puzzle.
The first man the King sent for was an elderly wise man. When the man arrived, the king presented the dolls to the man. The man looked over the dolls, one by one, and then stroked his chin in thought.
"Well?" said the king, "Can you figure out what the difference is?"
"Let me think on it for a while." The man said, still stroking his chin.
A few weeks passed. The man was sent for again.
"Well? Have you an answer?" The king asked the elderly man again.
"I still require time to think." The man said.
Another week passed. The man was sent for yet again. The king was in a less than pleasant mood.
"Have you thought of an answer yet?" The king said, annoyed.
"I still require time to think." The man said.
" You have had weeks and We still don't have an answer. We no longer need your help." Sighing after the wise man had left the king's presence, he slumped in his throne. He thought on who to ask for help next. A few days later, he sent for the Court Jester.
"Jester, you are good at puzzles right?" The king said.
"HEY! DOLLS!" The jester appeared to not have heard his king. He had picked up the dolls, and started juggling them.
"Jester! Put them down. They are alike except for that - What are you doing?" The king asked, confused, because the jester had started to pile the dolls precariously on his nose.
"Balancing. Obviously." The jester replied simply.
The king sighed. "The dolls are different in some way and - Would you stop and listen?" He snapped at the jester, who had again, began juggling the dolls. The king, very angry, snatched the dolls from the jester, to rouse an applause from the jester. "Out! You have been more annoyance than help!" Saddened and annoyed, the king tried to control his emotions which were almost dangerously out of control when he heard a slight tap on the throne room door. "What?" He snapped, to his own surprise.
A guard started in, a man in the simple robe of a storyteller with his lute over his back following. "This man desires an audience with his King." The guard said.
"Go, leave Us alone with the man." The king said, dismissing the guard with a wave of his hand. "What is it you want?"
"I have heard of your puzzle. Might I try my hand at it?" The storyteller asked. When the King gestured he could, he looked at the dolls. He raised his eyebrows, and let out a slight hmm after he tapped the dolls' heads slightly. "I believe I can solve this." The man said. The king instantly gave the storyteller his full attention. "But, I require something from you."
"What ever it is, I will give it to you." The king said, eager to see the puzzle solved.
The storyteller hesitated, then spoke. "I need a hair from your beard." The king looked at the man in front of him with almost disdain. He had to be from a different country, otherwise he would have know how much the king prized his beard. But, he valued a good puzzle more, and a solution to this one was worth a hair from his beard. So, the king went through the process of removing one of his hairs. It took him a while, for it was a long hair. The story teller draped it across his neck, and broke off some of it, making the king flinch slightly, and fed the shorter section through one of the ears of the doll.
And nothing happened.
They waited. And waited. And waited, till the king got impatient and was about to ask why they were waiting, when the storyteller spoke. "This doll represents a wise man. What they hear takes a long while to come out in any sort of sense." The king nodded. He had just recently experienced that first hand. The storyteller put the doll down away from the other two, and picked up another doll. He repeated the process of feeding the remaining hair through the doll's ear. This time, the hair came out the other ear. When the hair had fallen to the floor in a neat pile at his feet. While picking up the hair, the storyteller spoke. "This doll represents a jester. They do hear what you say, but they don't listen. In other words, what goes in one ear comes out the other." The story teller put that doll down by the first. He picked up the last doll, and fed the hair through it again.
Now, the hair was silver, thin, and very straight when the story teller started to put it in the ear of the doll. But, when the hair came out, it was brown, thick, and curly. The king asked how was that possible?
The storyteller with a twinkle in his eyes replied, "Because this doll is a storyteller. Stories we hear, we repeat, only, they are never exactly the same as how we heard them"
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