The Weaver's Two Wishes

Betaal began again, telling of a poor weaver who, after years of quiet devotion at a forest shrine, was granted two wishes by a pleased spirit — a rare and extraordinary gift he raced home to share with his wife, the two of them immediately falling into excited but unfocused disagreement about how best to use such fortune: a grand house, a fortune in gold, servants, land, each suggestion sparking a new argument about priorities.

The argument grew heated and personal, old resentments surfacing alongside the excitement, until the wife, in a flash of pure irritation at her husband's indecision, snapped without thinking that she wished his head were a donkey's if he couldn't make up his mind faster. The wish, spoken in careless anger rather than genuine desire, took hold instantly — and the weaver's head transformed into a donkey's on the spot, braying in shock and horror.

Their fortune, so carefully imagined moments before, was reduced entirely to using their second and final wish simply undoing the damage of the first, restoring him to his human form and leaving them exactly where they had started, no richer than before. "Tell me, Vikram," Betaal demanded, "were the two wishes wasted entirely, or did something of value survive the whole ordeal?" Vikramaditya answered: "Something did survive — the lesson that a wish, or any power, spoken in a moment of unchecked anger will always cost you dearly, regardless of how much good it might have done in calmer hands. They ended with no fortune, but they kept a marriage that a careless word very nearly destroyed for nothing, and that lesson, learned this cheaply, may be worth more than the fortune they never got." His answer complete, the king's silence broke once more, and Betaal flew, laughing, back to his tree.