I'm afraid it might be bad form to jump in on this, but what you guys are saying is so interesting to me that I'm... doing it anyway? Forgive me if it's rude! Anyway, Turlough, I find that the original story always makes me cry too, and since I lifted the plot pretty much wholesale from it, my own guess is that yeah, you'd probably find my version just as sad. Or ambivalent at best. In fact that happens to me with a lot of Lindgren's stories, so much of the magical/fantasy stuff is happy in itself, but if I try to figure out what that would translate to in the "real" world, as more of a psychological symbol, then it can start looking pretty bleak.

So I'm kind of perversely psyched that it sounds like I managed to keep some of the same ambivalence in what I borrowed, because it's part of what I love best about the original. And I totally understand if you're not feeling like the mood or the time is right for taking that on.

♥