Part 3

So presently, when the kite was well up into the clouds, as Katipah’s kite had been, she cut the cord, thinking surely that the same fortune would be for her as had been for Katipah. But instead of that, all at once the kite fell headlong to earth, child and all; and when she ran to pick him up, Bimsha found that her son’s life had fallen forfeit to her own enviousness and folly.

The wicked woman went green and purple with jealousy and rage; and running to the chief magistrate, she told him that while she was flying a kite with her child fastened to its back, Katipah had come and cut the string, so that by her doing the child was now dead.

When the magistrate heard that, he sent and caused Katipah to be thrown into prison, and told her that the next day she should certainly be put to death.

Katipah went meekly, carrying her little son in one hand and her blue-and-green kite in the other, for that had become so dear to her she could not now part from it. And all the way to prison Bimsha followed, mocking her, and asking, “Tell us, Katipah, where is your fine husband now?”

In the night the West Wind came and tapped at the prison window, and called tenderly, “Katipah, Katipah, are you there?” And when Katipah got up from her bed of straw and looked out, there was Gamma-gata once more, the beautiful youth whom she loved and had been wedded to, and had heard but had not seen since.

Gamma-gata reached his hands through the bars and put them round her face. “Katipah,” he said, “you have become brave: you are fit now to become the wife of the West Wind. To-morrow you shall travel with me all over the world; you shall not stay in one land any more. Now give me our son; for a little while I must take him from you. To prove your courage you must find your own way out of this trouble which you have got into through making a fool of Bimsha.” So Katipah gave him the child through the bars of her prison window, and when he was gone lay down and slept till it became light.

In the morning the chief magistrate and Bimsha, together with the whole populace, came to Katipah’s cell to see her led out to death. And when it was found that her child had disappeared, “She is a witch!” they cried; “she has eaten it!” And the chief magistrate said that, being a witch, instead of hanging she was to be burned.

“I have not eaten my child, and I am no witch,” said Katipah, as, taking with her her blue-and-green kite she trotted out to the place of execution. When she was come to the appointed spot she said to the chief magistrate, “To every criminal it is permitted to plead in defence of himself; but because I am innocent, am I not also allowed to plead?” The magistrate told her she might speak if she had anything to say.

“All I ask,” said Katipah, “is that I may be allowed once more to fly my blue-and-green kite as I used to do in the days when I was happy; and I will show you soon that I am not guilty of what is laid to my charge. It is a very little thing that I ask.”

So the magistrate gave her leave; and there before all the people she sent up her kite till it flew high over the roofs of the town. Gently the West Wind took it and blew it away towards the sea. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she whispered softly, “hear me now, for I am not afraid.”

The wind blew hard upon the kite, and pulled as though to catch it away, so Katipah twisted the cord once or twice round her waist that she might keep the safer hold over it. Then she said to the chief magistrate and to all the people that were assembled: “I am innocent of all that is charged against me; for, first, it was that wicked Bimsha herself who killed her own child.”

“Prove it!” cried the magistrate.

“I cannot,” replied Katipah.

“Then you must die!” said the magistrate.

“In the second place,” went on Katipah, “I did not eat my own child.”

“Prove it!” cried the chief magistrate again.

“I will,” said Katipah; “O Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I ask.”

Down the string of the kite, first a mere speck against the sky, then larger till plain for all to see came the missing one, slithering and sliding, with his golden coat, and the little silver wings tied to his ankles, and handfuls of flowers which he threw into his mother’s face as he came. “Oh! cruel chief magistrate,” cried Katipah, receiving the babe in her arms, “does it seem that I have eaten him?”

“You are a witch!” said the chief magistrate, “or how do you come to have a child that disappears and comes again from nowhere! It is not possible to permit such things to be: you and your child shall both be burned together!”

Katipah drew softly upon the kite-string. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “lift me up now very high, and I will not be afraid!”

Then suddenly, before all eyes, Katipah was lifted up by the cord of the kite which she had wound about her waist; right up from the earth she was lifted till her feet rested above the heads of the people.

Katipah, with her babe in her arms, swung softly through the air, out of reach of the hands stretched up to catch her, and addressed the populace in these words:

“Oh, cruel people, who will not believe innocence when it speaks, you must believe me now! I am the wife of the West Wind--of Gamma-gata, the beautiful, the bearer of fine weather, who also brings back the wings that fly till the winter is over. Is it well, do you think, to be at war with the West Wind?

“Ah, foolish ones, I go now, for Gamma-gata calls me, and I am no longer afraid: I go to travel in many lands, whither he carries me, and it will be long before I return here. Many dark days are coming to you, when you shall not feel the west wind, the bearer of fine weather, blowing over you from land to sea; nor shall you see the blossoms open white over the hills, nor feel the earth grow warm as the summer comes in, because the bringer of fair weather is angry with you for the foolishness which you have done. But when at last the west wind returns to you, remember that Katipah the poor and unprofitable one, is Gamma-gata’s wife, and that she has remembered, and has prayed for you.”

And so saying, Katipah threw open her arms and let go the cord of the kite which held her safe. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “I do not see your eyes, but I am not afraid!” And at that, even while she seemed upon the point of falling to destruction, there flashed into sight a fair youth with dark hair and garments full of a storm of flying petals, who, catching up Katipah and her child in his arms, laughed scorn upon those below, and roaring over the roofs of the town, vanished away seawards.

When a chief magistrate and his people, after flagrant wrong-doing, become thoroughly cowed and frightened, they are apt also to be cruel. Poor Bimsha!

THE BOUND PRINCESS

I

THE FIRE-EATERS

A long time ago there lived a man who had the biggest head in the world. Into it he had crammed all the knowledge that might be gathered from the four corners of the earth. Everyone said he was the wisest man living. “If I could only find a wife,” said the sage, “as wise for a woman as I am for a man, what a race of headpieces we could bring into the world!”

He waited many years before any such mate could be found for him: yet, at last, found she was--one into whose head was bestowed all the wisdom that might be gathered from the four quarters of heaven.

They were both old, but kings came from all sides to their wedding, and offered themselves as god-parents to the first-born of the new race that was to be. But, to the grief of his parents, the child, when he arrived, proved to be a simpleton; and no second child ever came to repair the mistake of the first.

That he was a simpleton was evident; his head was small and his limbs were large, and he could run long before he could talk or do arithmetic. In the bitterness of their hearts his father and mother named him Noodle, without the aid of any royal god-parents; and from that moment, for any care they took in his bringing-up, they washed their wise hands of him.

Noodle grew and prospered, and enjoyed life in his own foolish way. When his father and mother died within a short time of each other, they left him alone without any friend in the world.

For a good while Noodle lived on just what he could find in the house, in a hand-to-mouth sort of way, till at last only the furniture and the four bare walls were left to him.

One cold winter’s night he sat brooding over the fire, wondering where he should get food for the morrow, when he heard feet coming up to the door, and a knock striking low down upon the panel. Outside there was a faint chirping and crackling sound, and a whispering as of fire licking against the woodwork without.

He opened the door and peered forth into the night. There, just before him, stood seven little men huddled up together; three feet high they were, with bright yellow faces all shrivelled and sharp, and eyes whose light leaped and sank like candle flame before a gust.

When they saw him, they shut their eyes and opened famished mouths at him, pointing inwards with flickering finger-tips, and shivering from head to foot with cold, although it seemed to the youth as if the warmth of a slow fire came from them. “Alas!” said Noodle, in reply to these signs of hunger, “I have not left even a crust of bread in the house to give you! But at least come in and make yourselves warm!” He touched the foremost, making signs for them all to enter. “Ah,” he cried, “what is this, and what are you, that the mere touch of you burns my finger?”

Without answer they huddled tremblingly across the threshold; but so soon as they saw the fire burning on the hearth, they yelped all together like a pack of hounds, and, throwing themselves face forwards into the hot embers, began ravenously to lap up the flames. They lapped and lapped, and the more they lapped the more the fire sank away and died. Then with their flickering finger-tips they stirred the hot logs and coals, burrowing after the thin tapes and swirls of vanishing flame, and fetching them out like small blue eels still wriggling for escape.

After each blue wisp had been gulped down, they sipped and sucked at their fingers for any least tricklet of flavour that might be left; and at the last seemed more famished than when they began.

“More, more, O wise Noodle, give us more!” they cried; and Noodle threw the last of his fuel on the embers.

They breathed round it, fanning it into a great blaze that leaped and danced up to the rafters; then they fell on, till not a fleck or a flake of it was left. Noodle, seeing them still famished, broke up a stool and threw that on the hearth. And again they flared it with their breath and gobbled off the flame. When the stool was finished he threw in the table, then the dresser, and after that the oak-chest and the window-seat.

Still they feasted and were not fed. Noodle fetched an axe, and broke down the door; then he wrenched up the boards from the floor, and pulled the beams and rafters out of the ceiling; yet, even so, his guests were not to be satisfied.

“I have nothing left,” he said, “but the house itself; but since you are still hungry you shall be welcome to it!”

He scattered the fire that remained upon the hearth, and threw it out and about the room; and as he ran forth to escape, up against all the walls and right through the roof rose a great crackling sheaf of flame. In the midst of the fire, Noodle could see his seven guests lying along on their bellies, slopping their hands in the heat, and lapping up the flames with their tongues. “Surely,” he thought, “I have given them enough to eat at last!”

After a while all the fire was eaten away, and only the black and smouldering ruins were left. Day came coldly to light, and there sat Noodle, without a home in the world, watching with considerate eye his seven guests finishing their inordinate repast.

They all rose to their feet together, and came towards him bowing; as they approached he felt the heat of their bodies as it had been seven furnaces.

“Enough, O wise Noodle!” said they, “we have had enough!” “That,” answered Noodle, “is the least thing left me to wonder at. Go your ways in peace; but first tell me, who are you?” They replied, “We are the Fire-eaters: far from our own land, and strangers, you have done us this service; what, now, can we do to serve you?” “Put me in the way of a living,” said Noodle, “and you will do me the greatest service of all.”

Then the one of them who seemed to be chief took from his finger a ring having for its centre a great firestone, and threw it into the snow, saying, “Wait for three hours till the ring shall have had time to cool, then take it, and wear it; and whatever fortune you deserve it shall bring you. For this ring is the sweetener of everything that it touches: bread it turns into rich meats, water into strong wine, grief into virtue, and labour into strength. Also, if you ever need our help, you have but to brandish the ring, and the gleam of it will reach us, and we will be with you wherever you may be.”

With that they bowed their top-knots to the ground and departed, inverting themselves swiftly till only the shining print of seven pairs of feet remained, red-hot, over the place where they had been standing.

Noodle waited for three hours; then he took up the firestone ring, and putting it on his finger set out into the world.

At the first door he came to, he begged a crust of bread, and touching it with the ring found it tasted like rich meats, well cooked and delicately flavoured. Also, the water which he drew in the hollow of his hand from a brook by the roadside tasted to him like strong wine.

II

THE GALLOPING PLOUGH

Noodle went on many miles till he came near to a rich man’s farm. Though it was the middle of winter, all the fields showed crops of corn in progress; here it was in thin blade, and here green, but in full ear; and here it was ripe and ready for harvest. “How is this,” he said to the first man he met, “that you have corn here in the middle of winter?” “Ah!” said the man, “you have not heard of the Galloping Plough; you too have to fall under bondage to my master.” “What is your master?” inquired Noodle, “and in what bondage does he bind men?” “My master, and your master that shall soon be,” answered the old man, “is the owner of all this land and the farmer of it. He is rich and sleek and fat like his own furrows, for he has the Galloping Plough as his possession. Ah, that! ’tis a very miracle, a wonder, a thing to catch at the heartstrings of all beholders; it shines like a moonbeam, and is better than an Arab mare for swiftness; it warms the very ground that it enters, so that seeds take root and spring, though it be the middle of winter. No man sees it but what he loses his heart to it, and sells his freedom for the possession of it. All here are men like myself who have become slaves because of that desire. You also, when you see it, will become slave to it.”

Noodle went on through the summer and the spring corn, till he came to bare fields. Ahead of him on a hill-top he saw the farmer himself, sleek and rosy, and of full paunch, lolling like a lord at his ease; yet with a working eye in the midst of his leisure.

To and fro, up to him and back, shot a silver gleam over the purple brown of the fields; and Noodle’s heart gave a thump at the sight, for the spell of the Galloping Plough was on him.

Now and then he heard a clear sound that startled him with its note. It was like the sweet whistling cry of a bird many times multiplied. Ever when the silver gleam of the Plough had run its farthest from the farmer, the cry sounded; and at the sound the gleam wavered and stayed and flew back dartingly to the farmer’s side. So Noodle understood how this was the farmer’s signal for the Plough to return; and the Plough knew it as a horse its master’s voice, and came so fast that the wind whistled against its silver side.

As he watched, Noodle’s heart went down into the valley and up the hillside, following in the track of the Galloping Plough. “I can never be happy again,” thought he; “either I must possess it, or must die.”

He came to the farmer where he sat calling his Plough to him and letting it go; and the farmer smiled, the wide indulgent smile of a man who knows that a bargain is about to fall his way.

“What is the price,” asked Noodle, “of yonder Galloping Plough, that runs like an Arab mare, and returns to you at your call?”

Said the farmer, “A year’s service; and if the Plough will follow you, it is yours; if not, then you must be my bondman until you die!”

Noodle looked once the way of the Galloping Plough, and his heart flapped at his side like a sail which the wind drops and lets go; and he had no thought or will left in him but to be where the Galloping Plough was. So he closed hands on the bargain, to be the farmer’s servant either for a year, or for his whole life.

For a year he worked upon the farm, and all the while plotted how he might win the Galloping Plough to himself. The farmer kept no watch upon it, nor put it under lock and key, for the Plough recognised no voice but his own, nor went nor came save at his bidding. In the night Noodle would go down to the shed or field where it lay, and whistle to it, trying to put forth notes of the same magical power as those which came through the farmer’s lips.

But no sound that came from his lips ever stroked life into its silver sides. The year was nearly run out, and Noodle was in despair.

Then he remembered the firestone ring, the Sweetener. “Maybe,” said he, “since it changes to sweetness whatever I eat and drink, it will sweeten my voice also, so that the Plough will obey.” So he put the ring between his lips and whistled; and at the sound his heart turned a somersault for joy, for he felt that out of his mouth the farmer’s magic had been over-topped and conquered.

The Galloping Plough stirred faintly from the furrow where it lay, breaking the ground and marring its smooth course. Then it shook its head slowly, and returned impassively to rest.

In the morning the farmer came and saw the broken earth close under the Plough’s nose. Noodle, hiding among the corn hard by, heard him say, “What hast thou heard in the night, O my moonbeam, my miracle, that thy lily-foot has trodden up the ground? Hast thou forgotten whose hand feeds thee, whose corn it is thou lovest, whose heart’s care also cherishes thee?”

The farmer went away, and presently came back bearing a bowl of corn; and Noodle saw the Plough lift its head to its master’s palm, and feed like a horse on the grain.

Then Noodle, gay of heart, waited till it was night, and surely his time was short, for on the morrow his wages were to be paid, and the Plough was to be his, or else he was to be the farmer’s bond-servant for the rest of his life. He took with him three handfuls of corn, and went down to where the Plough stood waiting by the furrow. Shaping his lips to the ring, he whistled gently like a lover, and immediately the Plough stirred, and lifted up its head as if to look at him.

“O my moonbeam, my miracle,” whispered Noodle, “wilt thou not come to the one that feeds thee?” and he held out a handful of corn. But the Plough gave no regard to him or his grain: slowly it moved away from him back into the furrow.

Then Noodle laughed softly and dropped his ring, the Sweetener, into the hand that held the grain; and barely had he offered the corn before he felt the silver Plough nozzling at his palm, and eating as a horse eats from the hand of its master.

Then he whistled again, placing the Sweetener back between his lips; and the Galloping Plough sprang after him, and followed at his heels like a dog.

So, finding himself its master, he bid it stay for the night; and in the morning he said to the farmer, “Give me my wages, and let me go!” And the farmer laughed, saying, “Take your wages, and go!”

Then Noodle took off his ring, the Sweetener, and laid it between his lips and blew through it; and up like a moonbeam, and like an Arab mare, sprang the Galloping Plough at his call. So he leaped upon its back, crying, “Carry me away out of this land, O thou moonbeam, and miracle of beauty, and never slacken nor stay except I bid thee!”

Vainly the farmer, borne down on a torrent of rage and amazement, whistled his best, and threw corn and rice from the rear; for the whistling of Noodle was sweeter to the ear, and his corn sweeter to the taste, and he nearer to the heart of the Galloping Plough than was the old master whom it left behind.

III

THE THIRSTY WELL

So they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed. The furrow they two made in the world that day, as they went shooting over the round of it, was called in after times the Equator, and men still know it by the heat of it, though it has since been covered over by the dust of ages.

To Noodle, as he went careering round it, the whole world’s circuit ran in a line across his brain, entering his vision and passing through it as a thread through the needle’s eye. Nor would he of his own will ever have stopped his galloping, but that at the completion of the first round a mighty thirst took hold of him. “O my moonbeam,” he said, choking behind parched lips, and sick at heart, “check me, or I faint!” And the Galloping Plough stopped at once, and set him to earth in a green space under the shadow of overhanging boughs.

He found himself in a richly grown garden, a cool paradise for a traveller to rest in. Close at hand and inviting to the eye was a well with a bucket slung ready to be let down. Noodle had little thought of seeking for the owner of the garden to beg for a drink, since water is an equal gift to all and the right of any man; but as he drew near he found the means to it withheld from him, the lid being fast locked. He went on in search of the owner, till at length he came upon the same lying half asleep under a thorn-bush with the key in her hand. She was an old woman, so withered and dry, she looked as if no water could have ever passed her lips.

When Noodle asked for a drink from the well, she looked at him bright and sharp, and said: “Before any man drinks of my water he must make a bargain with me.” “What is the bargain?” asked Noodle; and she led him down to the well.

Then she unlocked the lid and bade him look in; and at the sight Noodle knew for a second time that his heart had been stolen from him, and that to be happy he must taste that water or die.

Again he asked, with his eyes intent upon the blue wrimpling of the water in the well’s depth, “What is the bargain?” And the old woman answered, “If you fail to draw water out of the well you must fling yourself into it.” For answer Noodle swung down the bucket, lowering it as fast as it would go; then he set both hands to the windlass and wound.

He heard the water splashing off the sides of the bucket all the way up, as the shortening rope brought it near; but when he drew it over the well’s brink wonder and grief held him fast, for the bucket was as empty as vanity. From behind him came a noise of laughter, and there was the old witch running round and round in a circle; and everywhere a hedge of thorns came shooting up to enclose him and keep him fast for her.

“What a trap I am in!” thought Noodle; but once more he lowered the bucket, and once more it returned to him empty.

The old woman climbed up into the thorn-hedge, and sat on its top, singing:

“Overground, underground, round-about spell; The Thirsty has come to the Thirsty Well!”