The Orange Fairy Book (25 page)

Then a pink and grey parrot hopped up to the giant, who by this time
was stretching himself and giving yawns which shook the castle. The
parrot waited a little, until he was really awake, and then she said
boldly that she had been sent to take away the crown, which was not his
any longer, now his daughter the queen was dead.

On hearing these words the giant leapt out of bed with an angry roar,
and sprang at the parrot in order to wring her neck with his great
hands. But the bird was too quick for him, and, flying behind his
back, begged the giant to have patience, as her death would be of no
use to him.

'That is true,' answered the giant; 'but I am not so foolish as to give
you that crown for nothing. Let me think what I will have in
exchange!' And he scratched his huge head for several minutes, for
giants' minds always move slowly.

'Ah, yes, that will do!' exclaimed the giant at last, his face
brightening. 'You shall have the crown if you will bring me a collar
of blue stones from the Arch of St. Martin, in the Great City.'

Now when the parrot had been a girl she had often heard of this
wonderful arch and the precious stones and marbles that had been let
into it. It sounded as if it would be a very hard thing to get them
away from the building of which they formed a part, but all had gone
well with her so far, and at any rate she could but try. So she bowed
to the giant, and made her way back to the window where the giant could
not see her. Then she called quickly:

'Eagle, come to me!'

Before she had even reached the tree she felt herself borne up on
strong wings ready to carry her to the clouds if she wished to go
there, and seeming a mere speck in the sky, she was swept along till
she beheld the Arch of St. Martin far below, with the rays of the sun
shining on it. Then she swooped down, and, hiding herself behind a
buttress so that she could not be detected from below, she set herself
to dig out the nearest blue stones with her beak. It was even harder
work than she had expected; but at last it was done, and hope arose in
her heart. She next drew out a piece of string that she had found
hanging from a tree, and sitting down to rest strung the stones
together. When the necklace was finished she hung it round her neck,
and called: 'Parrot, come to me!' And a little later the pink and grey
parrot stood before the giant.

'Here is the necklace you asked for,' said the parrot. And the eyes of
the giant glistened as he took the heap of blue stones in his hand.
But for all that he was not minded to give up the crown.

'They are hardly as blue as I expected,' he grumbled, though the parrot
knew as well as he did that he was not speaking the truth; 'so you must
bring me something else in exchange for the crown you covet so much.
If you fail it will cost you not only the crown but you life also.'

'What is it you want now?' asked the parrot; and the giant answered:

'If I give you my crown I must have another still more beautiful; and
this time you shall bring me a crown of stars.'

The parrot turned away, and as soon as she was outside she murmured:

'Toad, come to me!' And sure enough a toad she was, and off she set in
search of the starry crown.

She had not gone far before she came to a clear pool, in which the
stars were reflected so brightly that they looked quite real to touch
and handle. Stooping down she filled a bag she was carrying with the
shining water and, returning to the castle, wove a crown out of the
reflected stars. Then she cried as before:

'Parrot, come to me!' And in the shape of a parrot she entered the
presence of the giant.

'Here is the crown you asked for,' she said; and this time the giant
could not help crying out with admiration. He knew he was beaten, and
still holding the chaplet of stars, he turned to the girl.

'Your power is greater than mine: take the crown; you have won it
fairly!'

The parrot did not need to be told twice. Seizing the crown, she
sprang on to the window, crying: 'Monkey, come to me!' And to a
monkey, the climb down the tree into the courtyard did not take half a
minute. When she had reached the ground she said again: 'Ant, come to
me!' And a little ant at once began to crawl over the high wall. How
glad the ant was to be out of the giant's castle, holding fast the
crown which had shrunk into almost nothing, as she herself had done,
but grew quite big again when the ant exclaimed:

'Deer, come to me!'

Surely no deer ever ran so swiftly as that one! On and on she went,
bounding over rivers and crashing through tangles till she reached the
sea. Here she cried for the last time:

'Fish, come to me!' And, plunging in, she swam along the bottom as far
as the palace, where the queen and all the fishes gathered together
awaiting her.

The hours since she had left had gone very slowly—as they always do to
people that are waiting—and many of them had quite given up hope.

'I am tired of staying here,' grumbled a beautiful little creature,
whose colours changed with every movement of her body, 'I want to see
what is going on in the upper world. It must be months since that fish
went away.'

'It was a very difficult task, and the giant must certainly have killed
her or she would have been back long ago,' remarked another.

'The young flies will be coming out now,' murmured a third, 'and they
will all be eaten up by the river fish! It is really too bad!' When,
suddenly, a voice was heard from behind: 'Look! look! what is that
bright thing that is moving so swiftly towards us?' And the queen
started up, and stood on her tail, so excited was she.

A silence fell on all the crowd, and even the grumblers held their
peace and gazed like the rest. On and on came the fish, holding the
crown tightly in her mouth, and the others moved back to let her pass.
On she went right up to the queen, who bent and, taking the crown,
placed it on her own head. Then a wonderful thing happened. Her tail
dropped away or, rather, it divided and grew into two legs and a pair
of the prettiest feet in the world, while her maidens, who were grouped
around her, shed their scales and became girls again. They all turned
and looked at each other first, and next at the little fish who had
regained her own shape and was more beautiful than any of them.

'It is you who have given us back our life; you, you!' they cried; and
fell to weeping from very joy.

So they all went back to earth and the queen's palace, and quite forgot
the one that lay under the sea. But they had been so long away that
they found many changes. The prince, the queen's husband, had died
some years since, and in his place was her son, who had grown up and
was king! Even in his joy at seeing his mother again an air of sadness
clung to him, and at last the queen could bear it no longer, and begged
him to walk with her in the garden. Seated together in a bower of
jessamine—where she had passed long hours as a bride—she took her
son's hand and entreated him to tell her the cause of his sorrow.
'For,' said she, 'if I can give you happiness you shall have it.'

'It is no use,' answered the prince; 'nobody can help me. I must bear
it alone.'

'But at least let me share your grief,' urged the queen.

'No one can do that,' said he. 'I have fallen in love with what I can
never marry, and I must get on as best I can.'

'It may not be as impossible as you think,' answered the queen. 'At
any rate, tell me.'

There was silence between them for a moment, then, turning away his
head, the prince answered gently:

'I have fallen in love with a beautiful deer!'

'Ah, if that is all,' exclaimed the queen joyfully. And she told him
in broken words that, as he had guessed, it was no deer but an
enchanted maiden who had won back the crown and brought her home to her
own people.

'She is here, in my palace,' added the queen. 'I will take you to her.'

But when the prince stood before the girl, who was so much more
beautiful than anything he had ever dreamed of, he lost all his
courage, and stood with bent head before her.

Then the maiden drew near, and her eyes, as she looked at him, were the
eyes of the deer that day in the forest. She whispered softly:

'By your favour let me go, and do not kill me.'

And the prince remembered her words, and his heart was filled with
happiness. And the queen, his mother, watched them and smiled.

(From Cuentos Populars Catalans, por lo Dr. D. Francisco de S.
Maspons y Labros.)

Once upon a time, in a savage country where the snow lies deep for many
months in the year, there lived an owl and an eagle. Though they were
so different in many ways they became great friends, and at length set
up house together, one passing the day in hunting and the other the
night. In this manner they did not see very much of each other—and
perhaps agreed all the better for that; but at any rate they were
perfectly happy, and only wanted one thing, or, rather, two things, and
that was a wife for each.

'I really am too tired when I come home in the evening to clean up the
house,' said the eagle.

'And I am much too sleepy at dawn after a long night's hunting to begin
to sweep and dust,' answered the owl. And they both made up their
minds that wives they must have.

They flew about in their spare moments to the young ladies of their
acquaintance, but the girls all declared they preferred one husband to
two. The poor birds began to despair, when, one evening, after they
had been for a wonder hunting together, they found two sisters fast
asleep on their two beds. The eagle looked at the owl and the owl
looked at the eagle.

'They will make capital wives if they will only stay with us,' said
they. And they flew off to give themselves a wash, and to make
themselves smart before the girls awoke.

For many hours the sisters slept on, for they had come a long way, from
a town where there was scarcely anything to eat, and felt weak and
tired. But by-and-by they opened their eyes and saw the two birds
watching them.

'I hope you are rested?' asked the owl politely.

'Oh, yes, thank you,' answered the girls. 'Only we are so very hungry.
Do you think we could have something to eat?'

'Certainly!' replied the eagle. And he flew away to a farmhouse a mile
or two off, and brought back a nest of eggs in his strong beak; while
the owl, catching up a tin pot, went to a cottage where lived an old
woman and her cow, and entering the shed by the window dipped the pot
into the pail of new milk that stood there.

The girls were so much delighted with the kindness and cleverness of
their hosts that, when the birds inquired if they would marry them and
stay there for ever, they accepted without so much as giving it a
second thought. So the eagle took the younger sister to wife, and the
owl the elder, and never was a home more peaceful than theirs!

All went well for several months, and then the eagle's wife had a son,
while, on the same day, the owl's wife gave birth to a frog, which she
placed directly on the banks of a stream near by, as he did not seem to
like the house. The children both grew quickly, and were never tired
of playing together, or wanted any other companions.

One night in the spring, when the ice had melted, and the snow was
gone, the sisters sat spinning in the house, awaiting their husbands'
return. But long though they watched, neither the owl nor the eagle
ever came; neither that day nor the next, nor the next, nor the next.
At last the wives gave up all hope of their return; but, being sensible
women, they did not sit down and cry, but called their children, and
set out, determined to seek the whole world over till the missing
husbands were found.

Now the women had no idea in which direction the lost birds had gone,
but they knew that some distance off was a thick forest, where good
hunting was to be found. It seemed a likely place to find them, or, at
any rate, they might hear something of them, and they walked quickly
on, cheered by the thought that they were doing something. Suddenly
the younger sister, who was a little in front, gave a cry of surprise.

'Oh! look at that lake!' she said, 'we shall never get across it.'

'Yes we shall,' answered the elder; 'I know what to do.' And taking a
long piece of string from her pocket, fastened it into the frog's
mouth, like a bit.

'You must swim across the lake,' she said, stooping to put him in, 'and
we will walk across on the line behind you.' And so they did, till
they got to about the middle of the lake, when the frog boy stopped.

'I don't like it, and I won't go any further,' cried he sulkily. And
his mother had to promise him all sorts of nice things before he would
go on again.

When at last they reached the other side, the owl's wife untied the
line from the frog's mouth and told him he might rest and play by the
lake till they got back from the forest. Then she and her sister and
the boy walked on, with the great forest looming before them. But they
had by this time come far and were very tired, and felt glad enough to
see some smoke curling up from a little hut in front of them.

'Let us go in and ask for some water,' said the eagle's wife; and in
they went.

The inside of the hut was so dark that at first they could see nothing
at all; but presently they heard a feeble croak from one corner. But
sisters turned to look, and there, tied by wings and feet, and their
eyes sunken, were the husbands that they sought. Quick as lightning
the wives cut the deer- thongs which bound them; but the poor birds
were too weak from pain and starvation to do more than utter soft
sounds of joy. Hardly, however, were they set free, than a voice of
thunder made the two sisters jump, while the little boy clung tightly
round his mother's neck.