Part 4

I noticed, in the course of time, a slight change in the manner of my customers and friends. The former transacted their business briefly, without an unnecessary word; and the latter appeared to avoid me, as if they scarcely wished to know me any longer. It was very amusing.

In less than a year after my father’s death, my mother died. It was thought by some that my father’s death had something to do with her decline, but how that could be I never could understand.

_The Merrymakers Are Suddenly Sobered_

The night of the day on which she died was the night fixed for a feast at the house of one of my friends. After looking for a moment into the room where she lay, I dressed myself carefully for the occasion, and found myself thrilled with pleasant anticipation.

A large and merry company met at table at my friend’s house; I talked in my best manner; and whatever coldness I might have observed before was dispelled in the general gayety. Toward the close of the banquet, I chanced to remark across the table that my mother had that day died. The effect of this remark was astonishing. As it passed from one to another, silence fell upon the company.

I wondered if I had made some blunder. I endeavored in vain to relieve the awkwardness of the moment by changing the subject and commencing a story with which I had never failed to provoke a laugh; but in this case it provoked not so much as a smile; I was absolutely perplexed. The party soon broke up in what appeared to be confusion, and I went home to enjoy in my own room the recollection of those lugubrious faces.

When I was twenty-one, I was married to the Princess, and thenceforth the castle was my home. I sold the business which my father had left me, and settled down to a life of unbounded bliss with my dear Hyla, whom as a wife I found even more adorable than I had dreamed.

I became the life of the castle. The faces of my new acquaintances always brightened in my company; I was the only one in that glittering society who never knew a dull or uneasy moment; my presence was like a ray of sunshine in the court.

I noticed after a while that the Princess, my wife, began to respond to my constant gayety more carelessly; at times she would sit and look at me wonderingly, I knew not why.

One day she asked me to accompany her on a little excursion in the city. She did not tell me where she meant to go, but I asked nothing; it was enough to be with her. I could not conceal my surprise, however, when she stopped our carriage at the entrance to the city’s poorest quarter; but I had no doubt she had planned some pleasant diversion, and I followed her, talking in my liveliest manner all the while. She herself was quite silent.

She led me from one hovel to another, for more than an hour. In one we saw a sick child lying on a pallet of straw on a dirt floor, and around him his mother and sisters and brothers, all weeping absurdly; I rallied the mother on it in the pleasantest way possible, but she did not take it in very good part. In another we found an old man, blind and alone, without food and without wife or child, talking to himself in a gibberish which was truly laughable; I tried, for sport, to talk to him in the same sort of gibberish, but though it was excellent sport, I saw that for some reason or other it did not amuse my wife, so I led her away. In another place we saw a man who was evidently overcome by wine, and who appeared to be in terror of certain vipers and spiders which, as I ascertained, existed nowhere but in his own imagination. This man was the prize of the whole collection; I amused myself with him for a long time; and I was altogether so greatly diverted that the Princess had some difficulty in dragging me away.

On the way home, I commented on what we had seen with a drollery which I had thought sufficient to draw a smile from a stone; but the Princess was unmoved; she sat in stony silence, and when we reached the castle she went at once to her room, and I saw her no more that day.

Not long afterward, a beautiful boy was born to us; and in course of time he grew to be the finest child of his age in the Island Kingdom; there were many who said so, even to his mother.

He was two years of age, when on a certain day in summer his mother sent him into the gardens with a nurse, while she remained with me in conversation in her room. Some half hour later, I was telling her an amusing story, which I had recently heard, when the door burst open, and a man-servant rushed into the room carrying our boy, dripping wet, in his arms, and laid him in his mother’s lap. The child was dead. The nurse had left him beside the same fountain pool from which years before I had rescued his mother’s ball, and in her absence he had fallen into the water. The Princess turned pale and screamed; she clasped the child to her breast and rocked him back and forth; she spoke to him as if he were still alive, and even tried to call him back to life.

I smiled at her delusion. I put my hand on her shoulder and shook her gently. She looked up at me with streaming eyes, and saw the bright and smiling look on my own face.

“Come, my dear,” I said kindly, laughing quietly as I spoke, “there is no use talking to him like that, you know. You must be reasonable. The dear little fellow is dead, that is all. Surely there is nothing in that to disturb you? Look at me. I’m not disturbed. I can’t understand what you find in this to bother you. Come, let the good man take him away to another room, and I will go on with the story I was telling when we were interrupted.”

She rose slowly, never taking her eyes from me, and hugging the child closer backed away from me, and suddenly turned and fled from the room. I smiled to myself at the whimsical nature of women.

It was a long time before she would speak to me; and although I did not permit this to ruffle me, I waited with some impatience for her explanation. I was of course reluctant to blame her too much without giving her an opportunity of explaining her conduct. I was accordingly pleased when she took me aside one day and asked to speak with me in private. She sat down before me in her room and looked me steadily in the eyes.

_The Princess Finds Her Husband Bewitched_

“Alb,” said she, “this can go on no longer. You are bewitched.”

I smiled indulgently. “I am not aware of it,” I said.

“Tell me,” she said, earnestly, “what are those three black hairs in your head?”

“Oh, those! They are nothing. I found them there after the old beggar had pretended to grant me a wish, long ago.”

“What old beggar? Now I am learning something! Tell me about the old beggar and the wish!”

“What does it matter? He was a ragged old fellow, with shaggy eyebrows, carrying a yardstick and tailor’s shears, and I sold him a fine gold chain for a wish, and right angry my father was, too. But I was only twelve years old, you know.”

“Why have you never told me this before? What was the wish?”

“The wish? Oh, I wished--I wished I might be perfectly happy, always;--always happy;--a pretty good wish, I think.”

“A terrible wish! A frightful wish! Tell me--tell me--have you ever wept since you were twelve years old?”

“Of course not. How absurd. There has never been anything for me to weep about.”

“That’s it! That’s it! That’s the curse! You can’t weep! You’ve got to be cured of happiness! Cured of happiness!”

This idea was so preposterous that I laughed loud and long; but while I was still laughing she took me by the hand and led me into a distant part of the castle, where I had never been before, until we came to the foot of a narrow, winding stair in a tall tower.

We climbed the stairs, and stopped at last, panting, on a little landing before a door. The Princess knocked, and without waiting for an answer opened the door and drew me in after her. We were in a small, circular room, evidently at the very top of the tower, from the windows of which I could see far across the city and beyond the distant mountains to the Great Sea.

_Alb and the Princess Visit the One-Armed Sorcerer_

In the center of this room was a spinning wheel, and before this spinning wheel was the One-Armed Sorcerer whom I had met in the adventure which had gained me the Princess for my wife; a spare old man, with bright blue eyes in a rosy face and long white hair and beard, and clothed in a blue gown spangled with silver stars. He rose, smiling at us kindly, and motioning us with his only hand (his left) to sit down; and when we were seated, the Princess told him the story of the old vagabond who had granted me a wish.

He nodded understandingly, and the Princess said: “We have come to you for help. Will you help him get rid of his curse?”

I laughed merrily. “I’m pretty well satisfied as I am,” I said. “I don’t wish to be cured of anything.”

“And yet,” said the One-Armed Sorcerer, “you ought to want to be cured. Your trouble is, that you can’t weep. Let me tell you something. When people can weep, it’s because there’s some good in them. When they can’t weep, it’s because all the good in them is frozen up hard. Nobody can weep all the time, any more than anybody can be happy all the time, unless it’s a bewitched creature like yourself. I’m not sure which would be worse, to weep all the time or to be happy all the time; but one thing I’m sure of, and that is that it’s best for us all to have a little weeping and a little happiness, sometimes the one and sometimes the other, woven together in all shades of light and dark; and if you want to come out in a beautiful pattern at last, there’s no other way to do it. Laugh and weep; weep and laugh; that’s the whole story, and a fine story it is too, and well worth having a part in.”

“Oh!” cried the Princess, who was now weeping softly, “will you help him to have a part in it like the rest of us?”

“I’m very comfortable as I am,” said I, smiling.

“Do you know,” said the Princess, “how to cure him?”

“I can tell him how to cure himself,” said the sorcerer.

“Then please tell us at once!” said the Princess.

“There is danger in it,” said the sorcerer.

“Danger doesn’t bother me,” said I, beginning to take an interest.

“Good,” said the sorcerer. “Then I will tell you. Have you ever heard of the half-moon pasture of Korbi, by the river Tarn?”

Neither of us had ever heard of it.

“It lies far beyond the Great Sea. Would you like to make a journey there?”

“That would be jolly!” I cried.

“The half-moon pasture of Korbi is the end of your journey, where you will get rid of the third black hair, and be cured.”

“What?” I cried in astonishment.

“Yes, the third of the three black hairs in your head.”

I had forgotten all about them. Certainly this was a knowing old sorcerer.

_The Old Man of Ice, the Laughing Nymph, and the Great Horned Owl_

“I will tell you,” he went on, “what those three black hairs are. The one on the left side of your head is the Old Man of Ice, who lives in the Great Cave near the top of Thunder Mountain, in this very island. The one on the right side of your head is the Laughing Nymph who lives in the Three-Spire Rock on the farther shore of the Great Sea. The one in the middle of your head is the Great Horned Owl, whose feathers are scales so hard that no spear can pierce them, and who lives at the top of the cliff at the far side of the half-moon pasture of Korbi. You must not touch the Old Man of Ice. You must not laugh with the Laughing Nymph. And you must not speak when you see the Great Horned Owl.”

“I don’t like this very much,” said the Princess.

“Nonsense, my dear,” said I. “It sounds very exciting.”

“Do you know what a burning glass is?” went on the sorcerer.

“Yes,” said I.

He went to a chest beside the wall, and took from it a small, round, thick piece of glass, and placed it in my left hand.

“There is only one thing that can destroy the Old Man of Ice, and that is a hot beam from the sun. Before you go into his cave, hold this burning glass with your left hand up to the sun. The rays it catches will remain in it for seven minutes, and no longer; and if you can then within those seven minutes, holding the glass in your left hand, fix those rays on the Old Man of Ice, he will be destroyed, and you will get rid of the black hair on the left side of your head.”

He went to his chest again, and returning put into my left hand a sharp brass pin, some three inches in length.

“With this pin,” he said, “you must make the Laughing Nymph weep. You must plunge it, with your left hand, deep into her left arm, and while she is weeping you must flee away; and thus you will get rid of the black hair on the right side of your head. But if you laugh with her, or remain until she stops weeping, you will never return.”

He took from his spinning wheel a thread some yard and a half long, and holding it in his teeth made fast a large loop at one end. He then placed the thread in my left hand.

“This loop,” he said, “you must throw over the head of the Great Horned Owl with your left hand. When you have done so, he will follow you; you must lead him into the river Tarn, and hold him there until he drowns; and thus you will get rid of the black hair in the middle of your head, and be cured forever. But the owl, though he is blind by day, has very sharp ears. You must not let him hear your voice.”

_The Burning Glass, the Brass Pin, and the Loop of Thread_

He then gave me the most minute directions how to reach the Great Cave, the Three-Spire Rock, and the half-moon pasture of Korbi; and I thereupon placed in my pocket the burning glass, the pin, and the thread, and drew the Princess after me to the door and down to my room, where I immediately began my preparations for departure.

That night I left. The Princess wept on my shoulder, but I laughed gayly, and ridiculed her fears.

“Don’t you feel sorry,” she said, “to leave me?”

“Come, dearest,” I said, “you mustn’t begrudge me a little adventure. Don’t be selfish.”

She straightened herself up. “Yes,” she said, “I think you had better go.”

I did not understand this sudden change, but I kissed her and said:

“Did you pack my white leather suit?”

“Yes, it is in the saddlebag, and extra shoes. Be sure to change if you get your feet wet.”

I kissed my hand to her from the saddle and gave my horse the rein. I was off upon my adventure.

At the end of two days I came to the village which lies at the foot of Thunder Mountain. It was a bright day, and the sun was hot. As I trotted briskly through the village street, a child of three or four years ran from the door of a house directly to the front of my horse and under its feet; and in an instant the horse had knocked him down and trampled over his body. I looked round, and heard the child cry out in pain; but I was intent on what lay before me, and too happy in my new career to be bothered with trifles, and I sped on rapidly, and was soon well up the mountainside.

I came to a place among the rocks and bushes where there was no longer any trail, and there I tied my horse and left him. I kept in view, as I climbed higher and higher, a great, gray rock, shaped like a dome and as big as a house, which projected from the very top of the mountain. Under this rock, as I knew, lay the cave of the Man of Ice.

The higher I climbed, the steeper grew the ascent; trees became fewer and at length there were none; I looked abroad and saw, beyond the intervening mountains, the Great Sea afar off, wrinkling in the sunshine. I came at last to a point so high that I was quite dizzy when I looked down. Around me were only bowlders; there were not even any bushes, nor birds nor squirrels; nothing but rocks and sunshine.

_He Hears Thunder in a Clear Sky_

I stopped suddenly and listened. A distant rumble of thunder came from the top of the mountain. I was, as I may say, thunderstruck; for there was not a cloud in the sky. As I mounted higher, the rolling of thunder became louder and louder; and when I reached, as I did at last after hours of toil, the dome-shaped rock at the top, thunder crashed all about me with a deafening roar, although the sky remained as clear as before.

I halted at the foot of the great rock, and commenced the task of finding the entrance to the cave. The surface of the rock seemed quite unbroken; but I found at length, near the ground, a single crack, about an inch in width. I inserted my fingers, but I could not budge it; and remembering the directions given me by the sorcerer, I cried out, “In the name of the sun! I command you, open!”

The rock beneath the crack began to move, and before my astonished eyes it fell slowly inward, leaving a gaping hole, just wide enough to admit my body.

I did not delay. I took the burning glass from my pocket and held it up in my left hand to the sun, and when I thought it well filled with the sun’s rays I crawled in through the hole. When I was inside, the opening closed behind me, and I was in utter darkness. It was very cold, and the noise of thunder was louder than before. I was surprised to see at a little distance a single spot of light, which flickered here and there as I crept on; but I soon observed that it came from the burning glass which I was still holding in my left hand.

_He Goes Down into the Cave in Thunder Mountain_

I was aware that I was going downward. The farther I went, the louder became the thunder. I must have descended thus for a minute or two, when a gust of cold air swept my face, and, finding the floor level, I stood up. The sound of thunder was now deafening, beyond anything I had yet heard.

As I stood there, a great mass of what appeared to be ice, larger than my body, rolled past me and disappeared in the darkness. I jumped aside, and walked on. In another moment a mass of ice like the first fell at my side and rolled away; a rush of the bitterest cold air accompanied it; and as it struck the ground a crash of thunder shook the place, and its sound, as it rolled away into the dark, was the sound of thunder rumbling afar off among the mountains.

I now understood the origin of the thunder I had heard in the clear sunlight outside. I pointed my burning glass upward, and I was able to make out dimly, in the ceiling, great numbers of these bodies of ice, hanging there like stalactites, but rounded at the bottom and very slender at the top, so that they appeared to hang by little more than a thread. As I stumbled on, one after another of these fell to the ground with a crash and rolled away with a decreasing rumble. There was no telling when one of them might fall on me, and I could only trust to luck. There was nothing to do but to get forward as quickly as possible; time was flying, and even if I should escape these thunder stones, I had only three or four minutes of my seven left. I darted blindly on, and the ice came crashing about me faster and faster, until I thought my head would split with the noise. Once or twice I was nearly struck. How I escaped I do not know, for it became certain that the thunder stones were dropping closer and closer around me, as if they were trying to halt me. And all the time the cold was becoming so bitter that my feet and legs were already numb.

I suddenly found myself walking on a slippery film of ice, and at that moment I knew that I had cleared the chamber of thunder, and had left that danger behind me; the noise abated to a distant rumbling.

The ice on which I walked was very thin, and at every step it crackled under me; and I could just make out the sound of the rushing beneath it of a torrent of water. I stepped lightly and quickly, seeing nothing but the blackness of night before me. I ran. The ice swayed and crackled and ripped; and just as it gave way under me and my foot plunged in the freezing water, I found myself again on the solid floor of the cavern, and ran with all my might. I could see nothing of walls or ceiling. I was lost in the dark.

In another moment I was aware of a kind of vague paleness afar off before me, and I ran in that direction. As I did so, the paleness, whatever it was, moved swiftly to the right, and I changed my course accordingly. It then moved to the left, and as fast as I changed my course it moved also; evidently it was trying to avoid me. I gained on it, and it seemed then to try to pass me on one side and get in my rear; but I was too quick for it, and came up with it before it had quite passed me. I came within ten feet of it, and saw what it was.

_He Pursues the Man of Ice with the Burning Glass_

It was the Man of Ice. He was running about like a cornered rat: a perfectly formed old man, his face and head hairless, and his whole body of solid ice. He ran jerkily; I could hear his joints crackle as he ran; and he was almost transparent, and of a pale, greenish brightness. His fingers were stiff and pointed, like icicles; and his eyes were like little white marbles.

When he found that he could not pass me, he ran back into the cave; but we were evidently near its rear wall, and in a moment he was darting back and forth against this wall, for all the world like a cornered rat. I kept after him, and flashing the burning glass constantly in his direction forced him at last into a corner. He turned upon me there, and stretched out his long stiff fingers and made as if to spring upon me. I knew that if he should touch me I should be lost; it must be now or never; I turned the burning glass full upon him, and before he could spring its little spot of light flickered upon the center of his breast.

The change which came over him nearly caused me to drop the glass. The top of his head melted away before my eyes and dripped down over his ears; his eyes, his nose, his cheeks, his chin, turned one after another to water and flowed down over his shoulders, and as I moved the beam of sunlight lower and lower he slowly melted away from shoulder to foot, and was no more than a wet spot on the floor.

_He Commences to Make His Escape from the Cave_

I turned swiftly to make my way out of the cave. As I did so the light from my burning glass went out, and the cave was suddenly flooded with pure sunlight, from what source I could not make out. I was in a vast, vaulted chamber, which I did not remain to examine. I sped to a wide opening which I saw before me, and passing through it came to the side of a little brook bordered with golden-yellow flowers. I waded across the brook; its water was as warm as milk. On the other side I entered the thunder chamber, now well lit with sunshine, and there I paused in amazement. It was in perfect silence. The air was mild and balmy. In place of the terrible stones of ice, thick green vines clung to the ceiling. I gave a shout of joy, and ran to a little opening which I saw on the farther side. Through this I crawled, and on my hands and knees ascended the passage down which I had first come, and arrived at the entrance to the cave, now closed. “Open!” I shouted. “In the name of the sun, I command you, open!” The rock fell outward, and I crawled through into the light of day.

I had gone quite a mile down the mountainside before I realized that there was no sound of thunder; I looked up at the top of the mountain and paused to listen; all was silent, sunny, and peaceful. I had accomplished my first adventure with complete success.