His wife had passed away while giving birth to his boy, and ever since the Woodsman had treasured his son as the light of his life. Each morning he would tend to the babe and then carry him into the woods with him so that as he worked and chopped down trees he could keep his boy close by and safe. As the years passed his son grew, and many were the days that the Woodsman chopped while his boy played and laughed in the long dark grass, chasing black butterflies and marveling at the ancient trees. Each night they would return home, several large trees stripped and bound to an axle which their two horses would pull along a rutted track until their cottage came into view. Each night the Woodsman would entertain his son with stories of the woods, of the monsters that lived there and the adventures that young princes had had beneath the great canopy. He would set a fire burning within the fireplace, cook a pot of stew, and sharpen his ax as his boy sat close by, listening with his little chin in his hands of talking foxes and white ravens, of witches and wizards and gnomes and wolves.
