The Book of Dragons
little child who reads fairy tales--you will want to know how it is that
since the sealskin dwarfs have all been killed, and the fires all been
let out, the Aurora Borealis shines, on cold nights, as brightly as
ever.
My dear, I do not know! I am not too proud to own that there are some
things I know nothing about--and this is one of them. But I do know that
whoever has lighted those fires again, it is certainly not the sealskin
dwarfs. They were all eaten by moths--and motheaten things are of no
use, even to light fires!
V. The Island of the Nine Whirlpools
The dark arch that led to the witch's cave was hung with a
black-and-yellow fringe of live snakes. As the Queen went in, keeping
carefully in the middle of the arch, all the snakes lifted their wicked,
flat heads and stared at her with their wicked, yellow eyes. You know it
is not good manners to stare, even at Royalty, except of course for
cats. And the snakes had been so badly brought up that they even put
their tongues out at the poor lady. Nasty, thin, sharp tongues they were
too.
Now, the Queen's husband was, of course, the King. And besides being a
King he was an enchanter, and considered to be quite at the top of his
profession, so he was very wise, and he knew that when Kings and Queens
want children, the Queen always goes to see a witch. So he gave the
Queen the witch's address, and the Queen called on her, though she was
very frightened and did not like it at all. The witch was sitting by a
fire of sticks, stirring something bubbly in a shiny copper cauldron.
"What do you want, my dear?" she said to the Queen.
"Oh, if you please," said the Queen, "I want a baby--a very nice one. We
don't want any expense spared. My husband said--"
"Oh, yes," said the witch. "I know all about him. And so you want a
child? Do you know it will bring you sorrow?"
"It will bring me joy first," said the Queen.
"Great sorrow," said the witch.
"Greater joy," said the Queen.
Then the witch said, "Well, have your own way. I suppose it's as much as
your place is worth to go back without it?"
"The King would be very much annoyed," said the poor Queen.
"Well, well," said the witch. "What will you give me for the child?"
"Anything you ask for, and all I have," said the Queen.
"Then give me your gold crown."
The Queen took it off quickly.
"And your necklace of blue sapphires."
The Queen unfastened it.
"And your pearl bracelets."
The Queen unclasped them.
"And your ruby clasps."
And the Queen undid the clasps.
"Now the lilies from your breast."
The Queen gathered together the lilies.
"And the diamonds of your little bright shoe buckles."
The Queen pulled off her shoes.
Then the witch stirred the stuff that was in the cauldron, and, one by
one, she threw in the gold crown and the sapphire necklace and the pearl
bracelets and the ruby clasps and the diamonds of the little bright shoe
buckles, and last of all she threw in the lilies.
The stuff in the cauldron boiled up in foaming flashes of yellow and
blue and red and white and silver, and sent out a sweet scent, and
presently the witch poured it out into a pot and set it to cool in the
doorway among the snakes.
Then she said to the Queen: "Your child will have hair as golden as your
crown, eyes as blue as your sapphires. The red of your rubies will lie
on its lips, and its skin will be clear and pale as your pearls. Its
soul will be white and sweet as your lilies, and your diamonds will be
no clearer than its wits."
"Oh, thank you, thank you," said the Queen, "and when will it come?"
"You will find it when you get home."
"And won't you have something for yourself?" asked the Queen. "Any
little thing you fancy--would you like a country, or a sack of jewels?"
"Nothing, thank you," said the witch. "I could make more diamonds in a
day than I should wear in a year."
"Well, but do let me do some little thing for you," the Queen went on.
"Aren't you tired of being a witch? Wouldn't you like to be a Duchess or
a Princess, or something like that?"
"There is one thing I should rather like," said the witch, "but it's
hard to get in my trade."
"Oh, tell me what," said the Queen.
"I should like some one to love me," said the witch.
Then the Queen threw her arms around the witch's neck and kissed her
half a hundred times. "Why," she said, "I love you better than my life!
You've given me the baby--and the baby shall love you too."
"Perhaps it will," said the witch, "and when the sorrow comes, send for
me. Each of your fifty kisses will be a spell to bring me to you. Now,
drink up your medicine, there's a dear, and run along home."
So the Queen drank the stuff in the pot, which was quite cool by this
time, and she went out under the fringe of snakes, and they all behaved
like good Sunday-school children. Some of them even tried to drop a
curtsy to her as she went by, though that is not easy when you are
hanging wrong way up by your tail. But the snakes knew the Queen was
friends with their mistress; so, of course, they had to do their best to
be civil.
When the Queen got home, sure enough there was the baby lying in the
cradle with the Royal arms blazoned on it, crying as naturally as
possible. It had pink ribbons to tie up its sleeves, so the Queen saw at
once it was a girl. When the King knew this he tore his black hair with
fury.
"Oh, you silly, silly Queen!" he said. "Why didn't I marry a clever
lady? Did you think I went to all the trouble and expense of sending you
to a witch to get a girl? You knew well enough it was a boy I wanted--a
boy, an heir, a Prince--to learn all my magic and my enchantments, and
to rule the kingdom after me. I'll bet a crown--my crown," he said, "you
never even thought to tell the witch what kind you wanted! Did you now?"
And the Queen hung her head and had to confess that she had only asked
for a child.
"Very well, madam," said the King, "very well--have your own way. And
make the most of your daughter, while she is a child."
The Queen did. All the years of her life had never held half so much
happiness as now lived in each of the moments when she held her little
baby in her arms. And the years went on, and the King grew more and more
clever at magic, and more and more disagreeable at home, and the
Princess grew more beautiful and more dear every day she lived.
The Queen and the Princess were feeding the goldfish in the courtyard
fountains with crumbs of the Princess's eighteenth birthday cake, when
the King came into the courtyard, looking as black as thunder, with his
black raven hopping after him. He shook his fist at his family, as
indeed he generally did whenever he met them, for he was not a King with
pretty home manners. The raven sat down on the edge of the marble basin
and tried to peck the goldfish. It was all he could do to show that he
was in the same temper as his master.
"A girl indeed!" said the King angrily. "I wonder you can dare to look
me in the face, when you remember how your silliness has spoiled
everything."
"You oughtn't to speak to my mother like that," said the Princess. She
was eighteen, and it came to her suddenly and all in a moment that she
was a grown-up, so she spoke out.
The King could not utter a word for several minutes. He was too angry.
But the Queen said, "My dear child, don't interfere," quite crossly, for
she was frightened.
And to her husband she said, "My dear, why do you go on worrying about
it? Our daughter is not a boy, it is true--but she may marry a clever
man who could rule your kingdom after you, and learn as much magic as
ever you cared to teach him."
Then the King found his tongue.
"If she does marry," he said, slowly, "her husband will have to be a
very clever man--oh, yes, very clever indeed! And he will have to know a
very great deal more magic than I shall ever care to teach him."
The Queen knew at once by the King's tone that he was going to be
disagreeable.
"Ah," she said, "don't punish the child because she loves her mother."
"I'm not going to punish her for that," said he. "I'm only going to
teach her to respect her father."
And without another word he went off to his laboratory and worked all
night, boiling different-colored things in crucibles, and copying charms
in curious twisted letters from old brown books with mold stains on
their yellowy pages.
The next day his plan was all arranged. He took the poor Princess to the
Lone Tower, which stands on an island in the sea, a thousand miles from
everywhere. He gave her a dowry, and settled a handsome income on her.
He engaged a competent dragon to look after her, and also a respectable
griffin whose birth and upbringing he knew all about. And he said: "Here
you shall stay, my dear, respectful daughter, till the clever man comes
to marry you. He'll have to be clever enough to sail a ship through the
Nine Whirlpools that spin around the island, and to kill the dragon and
the griffin. Till he comes you'll never get any older or any wiser. No
doubt he will soon come. You can employ yourself in embroidering your
wedding gown. I wish you joy, my dutiful child."
And his carriage, drawn by live thunderbolts (thunder travels very
fast), rose in the air and disappeared, and the poor Princess was left,
with the dragon and the griffin, on the Island of the Nine Whirlpools.
The Queen, left at home, cried for a day and a night, and then she
remembered the witch and called to her. And the witch came, and the
Queen told her all.
"For the sake of the twice twenty-five kisses you gave me," said the
witch, "I will help you. But it is the last thing I can do, and it is
not much. Your daughter is under a spell, and I can take you to her.
But, if I do, you will have to be turned to stone, and to stay so till
the spell is taken off the child."
"I would be a stone for a thousand years," said the poor Queen, "if at
the end of them I could see my dear again."
So the witch took the Queen in a carriage drawn by live sunbeams (which
travel more quickly than anything else in the world, and much quicker
than thunder), and so away and away to the Lone Tower on the Island of
the Nine Whirlpools. And there was the Princess sitting on the floor in
the best room of the Lone Tower, crying as if her heart would break, and
the dragon and the griffin were sitting primly on each side of her.
"Oh, Mother, Mother, Mother," she cried, and hung around the Queen's
neck as if she would never let go.
"Now," said the witch, when they had all cried as much as was good for
them, "I can do one or two other little things for you. Time shall not
make the Princess sad. All days will be like one day till her deliverer
comes. And you and I, dear Queen, will sit in stone at the gate of the
tower. In doing this for you I lose all my witch's powers, and when I
say the spell that changes you to stone, I shall change with you, and if
ever we come out of the stone, I shall be a witch no more, but only a
happy old woman."
Then the three kissed one another again and again, and the witch said
the spell, and on each side of the door there was now a stone lady. One
of them had a stone crown on its head and a stone scepter in its hand;
but the other held a stone tablet with words on it, which the griffin
and the dragon could not read, though they had both had a very good
education.
And now all days seemed like one day to the Princess, and the next day
always seemed the day when her mother would come out of the stone and
kiss her again. And the years went slowly by. The wicked King died, and
some one else took his kingdom, and many things were changed in the
world; but the island did not change, nor the Nine Whirlpools, nor the