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“...in the earliest recorded Chinese rendering of the “Cinderella” motif, the heroine has a tame fish which grows from two inches to ten feet under her devoted care. The evil stepmother discovers the importance of the fish, and cunningly kills and eats it. The heroine is desolate until a wise man tells her where the fish’s bones are buried and advises her to collect and keep them in her room. He tells her that if she prays to these bones, she will obtain whatever she wishes. In many European and Eastern variations it is a calf, cow, goat, or some other animal into which the dead mother is transformed to become the heroine’s magic helper.”

--- Bruno Bettelheim. “The Uses of Enchantment.”

It's hard to live without a magic helper.