Chapter I: Front Matter

A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND

This selection of fairy-tales is reprinted from the following original editions, now out of print:

_A Farm in Fairyland_ (1894)
_The House of Joy_ (1895)
_The Field of Clover_ (1898)
_The Blue Moon_ (1904)

A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND
BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN

NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE & COMPANY

ENGRAVED BY
CLEMENCE HOUSMAN
]

_Made and
Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld.,
London and Aylesbury._

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE BLUE MOON 13

THE WISHING-POT 21

THE WAY OF THE WIND 33

THE BOUND PRINCESS:

THE FIRE-EATERS 53

THE GALLOPING PLOUGH 59

THE THIRSTY WELL 66

THE PRINCESS MELILOT 74

THE BURNING ROSE 82

THE CAMPHOR-WORM 90

THE RAT-CATCHER’S DAUGHTER 97

THE TRAVELLER’S SHOES 108

THE ROOTED LOVER 133

THE WOOING OF THE MAZE 147

THE MOON-FLOWER 156

THE WHITE KING 181

THE PASSIONATE PUPPETS 192

KNOONIE IN THE SLEEPING PALACE 211

THE BLUE MOON

Nillywill and Hands-pansy were the most unimportant and happy pair of lovers the world has ever gained or lost. With them it had been a case of love at first blindness since the day when they had tumbled into each other’s arms in the same cradle. And Hands-pansy, when he first saw her, did not discover that Nillywill was a real princess hiding her birthright in the home of a poor peasant; nor did Nillywill, when she first saw Hands, see in him the baby-beginnings of the most honest and good heart that ever sprang out of poverty and humble parentage. So from her end of their little crib she kicked him with her royal rosy toes, and he from his kicked back and laughed: and thus, as you hear, at first blindness they fell head over ears in love with one another.

Nothing could undo that; for day by day earth and sun and wind came to rub it in deeper, and water could not wash it off. So when they had been seven years together there could be no doubt that they felt as if they had been made for each other in heaven. And then something very big and sad came to pass; for one day Nillywill had to leave off being a peasant child and become a princess once more. People very grand and grown-up came to the woodside where she flowered so gaily, and caught her by the golden hair of her head and pulled her up by her dear little roots, and carried her quite away from Hands-pansy to a place she had never been in before. They put her into a large palace, with woods and terraces and landscape gardens on all sides of it; and there she sat crying and pale, saying that she wanted to be taken back to Hands-pansy and grow up and marry him, though he was but the poor peasant boy he had always been.

Those that had charge of Nillywill in her high station talked wisely, telling her to forget him. “For,” said they, “such a thing as a princess marrying a peasant boy can only happen once in a blue moon!”

When she heard that, Nillywill began every night to watch the moon rise, hoping some evening to see it grow up like a blue flower against the dusk and shake down her wish to her like a bee out of its deep bosom.

But night by night, silver, or ruddy, or primrose, it lit a place for itself in the heavens; and years went by, bringing the Princess no nearer to her desire to find room for Hands-pansy amid the splendours of her throne.

She knew that he was five thousand miles away and had only wooden peasant shoes to walk in; and when she begged that she might once more have sight of him, her whole court, with the greatest utterable politeness, cried “No!”

The Princess’s memory sang to her of him in a thousand tunes, like woodland birds carolling; but it was within the cage which men call a crown that her thoughts moved, fluttering to be out of it and free.

So time went on, and Nillywill had entered gently into sweet womanhood--the comeliest princess that ever dropped a tear; and all she could do for love was to fill her garden with dark-eyes pansies, and walk among their humble upturned faces which reminded her so well of her dear Hands--Hands who was a long five thousand miles away. “And, oh!” she sighed, watching for the blue moon to rise, “when will it come and make me at one with all my wish?”

Looking up, she used to wonder what went on there. She and Hands had stolen into the woods, when children together, and watched the small earth-fairies at play, and had seen them, when the moon was full, lift up their arms to it, making, perhaps, signals of greeting to far-off moon-brothers. So she thought to herself, “What kind are the fairies up there, and who is the greatest moon-fairy of all who makes the blue moon rise and bring goodwill to the sad wishers of the human race? Is it,” thought Nillywill, “the moon-fairy who then opens its heart and brings down healing therefrom to the lovers of earth?”

And now, as happens to all those who are captives of a crown, Nillywill learned that she must wed with one of her own rank who was a stranger to her save for his name and his renown as the lord of a neighbouring country; there was no help for her, since she was a princess, but she must wed according to the claims of her station. When she heard of it, she went at nightfall to her pansies, all lying in their beds, and told them of her grief. They, awakened by her tears, lifted up their grave eyes and looked at her.

“Do you not hear?” said they.

“Hear what?” asked the Princess.

“We are low in the ground: we hear!” said the pansies. “Stoop down your head and listen!”

The Princess let her head go to the ground; and “click, click,” she heard wooden shoes coming along the road. She ran to the gate, and there was Hands, tall and lean, dressed as a poor peasant, with a bundle tied up in a blue cotton handkerchief across his shoulder, and five thousand miles trodden to nothing by the faithful tramping of his old wooden shoes.

“Oh, the blue moon, the blue moon!” cried the Princess; and running down the road, she threw herself into his arms.

How happy and proud they were of each other! He, because she remembered him and knew him so well by the sight of his face and the sound of his feet after all these years; and she, because he had come all that way in a pair of wooden shoes, just as he was, and had not been afraid that she would be ashamed to know him again.

“I am so hungry!” said Hands, when he and Nillywill had done kissing each other. And when Nillywill heard that, she brought him into the palace through the pansies by her own private way; then with her own hands she set food before him, and made him eat. Hands, looking at her, said, “You are quite as beautiful as I thought you would be!”

“And you--so are you!” she answered, laughing and clapping her hands. And “Oh, the blue moon,” she cried--“surely the blue moon must rise to-night!”

Low down in the west the new moon, leaning on its side, rocked and turned softly in its sleep; and there, facing the earth through the cleared night, the blue moon hung like a burning grape against the sky. Like the heart of a sapphire laid open, the air flushed and purpled to a deeper shade. The wind drew in its breath close and hushed, till not a leaf quaked in the boughs; and the sea that lay out west gathered its waves together softly to its heart, and let the heave of its tide fall wholly to slumber. Round-eyed, the stars looked at themselves in the charmed water, while in a luminous azure flood the light of the blue moon flowed abroad.

Under the light of many tapers within drawn curtains of tapestry, and feasting her eyes upon the happiness of Hands, the Princess felt the change that had entranced the outer world. “I feel,” she said, “I do not know how--as if the palace were standing siege. Come out where we can breathe the fresh air!”

The light of the tapers grew ghostly and dim, as, parting the thick hangings of the window, they stepped into the night.

“The blue moon!” cried Nillywill to her heart; “oh, Hands, it is the blue moon!”

All the world seemed carved out of blue stone; trees with stems dark-veined as marble rose up to give rest to boughs which drooped the altered hues of their foliage like the feathers of peacocks at roost. Jewel within jewel they burned through every shade from beryl to onyx. The white blossoms of a cherry-tree had become changed into turquoise, and the tossing spray of a fountain as it drifted and swung was like a column of blue fire. Where a long inlet of sea reached in and touched the feet of the hanging gardens the stars showed like glow-worms, emerald in a floor of amethyst.

There was no motion abroad, nor sound: even the voice of the nightingale was stilled, because the passion of his desire had become visible before his eyes.

“Once in a blue moon!” said Nillywill, waiting for her dream to become altogether true. “Let us go now,” she said, “where I can put away my crown! To-night has brought you to me, and the blue moon has come for us: let us go!”

“Where shall we go?” asked Hands.

“As far as we can,” cried Nillywill. “Suppose to the blue moon! To-night it seems as if one might tread on water or air. Yonder across the sea, with the stars for stepping-stones, we might get to the blue moon as it sets into the waves.”

But as they went through the deep alleys of the garden that led down to the shore they came to a sight more wonderful than anything they had yet seen.

Before them, facing toward the sea, stood two great reindeer, their high horns reaching to the overhead boughs; and behind them lay a sledge, long and with deep sides like the sides of a ship. All blue they seemed in that strange light.

There, too, but nearer to hand, was the moon-fay himself waiting--a great figure of lofty stature, clad in furs of blue fox-skin, and with heron’s wings fastened above the flaps of his hood; and these lifted themselves and clapped as Hands and the Princess drew near.

“Are you coming to the blue moon?” called the fay, and his voice whistled and shrilled to them like the voice of a wind.

Hands-pansy gave back answer stoutly: “Yes, yes, we are coming!” And indeed what better could he say?

“But,” cried Nillywill, holding back for a moment, “what will the blue moon do for us?”

“Once you are there,” answered the moon-fay, “you can have your wish and your heart’s desire; but only once in a blue moon can you have it. Are you coming?”

“We are coming!” cried Nillywill. “Oh, let us make haste!”

“Tread softly,” whispered the moon-fay, “and stoop well under these boughs, for if anything awakes to behold the blue moon, the memory of it can never die. On earth only the nightingale of all living things has beheld a blue moon; and the triumph and pain of that memory wakens him ever since to sing all night long. Tread softly, lest others waken and learn to cry after us; for we in the blue moon have our sleep troubled by those who cry for a blue moon to return.” He looked towards Nillywill, and smiled with friendly eyes. “Come!” he said again, and all at once they had leapt upon the sledge, and the reindeer were running fast down towards the sea.

The blue moon was resting with its lower rim upon the waters. At that sight, before they were clear of the avenues of the garden, one of the reindeer tossed up his great branching horns and snorted aloud for joy. With a soft stir in the thick boughs overhead, a bird with a great trail of feathers moved upon its perch.

The sledge, gliding from land, passed out over the smoothed waters, running swiftly as upon ice; and the reflection of the stars shone up like glow-worms as Nillywill and Hands-pansy, in the moon-fay’s company, sped away along its bright surface.

The still air whistled through the reindeers’ horns; so fast they went that the trees and the hanging gardens and the palace walls melted away from view like wreaths of smoke. Sky and sea became one magic sapphire drawing them in towards the centre of its life, to the heart of the blue moon itself.

When the blue moon had set below the sea, then far behind them upon the land they had left the leaves rustled and drew sharply together, shuddering to get rid of the stony stillness, and the magic hues in which they had been dyed; and again the nightingale broke out into passionate triumph and complaint.

Then also, from the bough which the reindeer had brushed with its horns, a peacock threw back its head and cried in harsh lamentation, having no sweet voice wherewith to acclaim its prize. And so ever since it cries, as it goes up into the boughs to roost, because it shares with the nightingale its grief for the memory of departed beauty which never returns to earth save once in a blue moon.

But Nillywill and Hands-pansy, living together in the blue moon, look back upon the world, if now and then they choose to remember, without any longing for it or sorrow.

THE WISHING-POT

Tulip was the son of a poor but prudent mother; from the moment of his birth she had trained him to count ten before ever he wanted or asked for anything. An otherwise reckless youth, he acquired an intrinsic value through the practice of this habit. Only once, just as he was reaching, but had not quite reached, years of discretion, did his habit of precaution fail him; and this same failure became in the end the opening of his fortunes.

Bathing one day in the river, to whose banks the woods ran down in steep terraces, he heard a voice come singing along one of the upper slopes; and looking up under the boughs of cedar and sycamore, he saw a pair of green feet go dancing by, up and down like grasshoppers on the prance.

There was such rhythm in them, and such sweetness in the voice, that his heart was out of him before he could harness it to the number ten, and he came out of the water the most natural and forlorn of lovers.

Before he was dressed the green feet and the voice were gone, and before he got home his health and his appetite seemed to have gone also. He pined industriously from day to day, and spent all his hours in searching among the woods by the river side for his lady of the dear green feet. He did not know so much as the size or colour of her face; the sound of her voice alone, and the running up and down of her feet, had, as he told his mother, “decimated his affections.”

In his trouble he could think of only one possible remedy, and that he counted well over, knowing its risk. Away in the loneliest part of the forest there lived a wise woman, to whom, now and then, folk went for help when everything else had failed them. So he had heard tell of a certain Wishing-Pot that was hers in which people might see the thing they desired most, and into which for a fee she allowed lovers and other poor fools of fortune to look. One thing, however, was told against the virtues of this Wishing-Pot, that though many had had a sight of it, and their wishes revealed to them therein, others had gone and had never again returned to their homes, but had vanished altogether from men’s sight, nor had any news ever been heard of them after. There were some wise folk who held that they had only gone elsewhere to seek the fortune that the Wishing-Pot had shown to them. Nevertheless, for the most part, the wise woman and her Wishing-Pot had an ill name in that neighbourhood.

To a lover’s heart risk gives value; so one fine morning Tulip kissed his mother, counted ten, and set out for the woods.

Towards evening he came to the house of the witch and knocked at the door. “Good mother,” said he, when she opened to him, “I have brought you the fee to buy myself a wish over the Wishing-Pot.” “Ay, surely,” answered the crone, and drew him in.

In one corner of the room stood a great crystal bowl. Nearly round it was, and had a small opening at the top, to which a man might place his eye and look in. To Tulip, as he looked at it, it seemed all coloured fires and falling stars, and a soft crackling sound came from it, as though heat burned in its veins. It threw long shapes and lustres upon the walls, and within innumerable things writhed, and ran, and whiffed in the floating of its vapours.

“You may have two wishes,” said the old witch, “a one and a two.” And she said the spell that undid the secret of the Pot to the wisher.

Then Tulip bent down his head and looked in, counting softly to himself, and at ten, he let the wish go to his lady of the dear green feet.

The colours changed and sprang, as though stirred and fed with fresh fuel; and down in the depths of the Wishing-Pot he saw the feet of his Beloved go by in twinkling green slippers.

As soon as he saw that he began counting ten in great haste for the second wish. “O to be inside the Wishing-Pot with her!” was his thought now. He had got to nine, and the wish was almost on his tongue, when he caught sight of the old woman’s eye looking at him. And the eye had become like a large green spider, with great long limbs that kept clutching up and out again!

His heart queegled to a jelly at the sight; but the green feet lured him so, that he still thought how to get to them and yet be safe. Surely, to be in the Wishing-Pot and out by the sound of the next Angelus became the shape of his wish. He shut his eyes, cried ten upon the venture, and was in the Wishing-Pot!

The little green feet were trebling over the glass with a sound like running water; and he himself began running at full speed, shot off into the Wishing-Pot like a pellet from a pop-gun. Nothing could he see of his dear but her wee green feet. But above them as they ran he heard showery laughter, and he knew that his lady was there before him, though invisible to the eye.

The Pot, now he was in it, seemed bigger than the biggest dome in the world; to run all round it took him two or three minutes. Away in the centre of its base stood a great opal knob, like the axle to a wheel round which he and the green feet kept circling.

However much he wished and wished, the green feet still kept their distance, for now he was _in_ the Wishing-Pot wishes availed him nothing. The green feet flew faster than his; the light laugh rang further and further away; right across to the other side of the hall his lady had passed from him now.

The magic fires of the crystal leaped and crackled under his tread; now it seemed as if his feet ran on a green lawn, out of which broke crocuses and daffodils, and now roses reddened in the track, and now the purple of grapes spurted across the path like spilled wine. The sound of the green feet and the running of overhead laughter, as they distanced him in front, came nearer and nearer behind him from across the hall. He felt that he must follow and not turn, however beaten he might be.

Presently a voice, that he knew was his Beloved’s, cried,--

“Heart that would have me must hatch me!
Feet that would find me must catch me!
Man that would mate me must match me!”

Oh, how? wondered spent feet, and failing heart, and reeling brain. He stumbled slower and slower in the race, till presently with quick innumerable patterings the green feet grew closer, and were overtaking him from the rear.

Warm breath was in his hair,--lips and a hand; he turned, open armed, to snatch the mischievous morsel, but all that he clasped was a gust of air; and he saw the green feet scudding out and away on a fresh start before him.

Again, with laughter, the voice cried,--

“Lap for lap you must wind me:
Equal, before you can find me!
You are a lap behind me!”

Where they raced the surface of the glass sloped slightly to the upward rise of its walls; Tulip shifted his ground, and ran where the footing was leveller towards the centre, and the circle began to go smaller. So he began to gain, till the green slippers, seeing how the advantage had come about, shifted also in their turn.

Thus they ran on; there were no inner posts to mark the course, only the great opal standing in the centre of all formed the pivot of the race, and round and round it, a great way off, they ran.

All at once a big thought came into Tulip’s head; he waited not to count ten, but, before Green Slippers knew what he was after, he had reached the opal centre, and was circling it. Then quickly all the laughter stopped; the green feet came twinkling sixteen to the dozen, so as to get round the post before him and away.

One lap, he was before her; two laps, he turned again to her coming, and found her falling into his arms. She blossomed into sight at his touch: from top to toe she was there! All rosy and alive he had her in his clasp, laughing, crying, clinging, yet struggling to be free. She made a most endless handful, till Tulip had caught her by the hair and kissed her between the eyes.

All round and overhead the magic crystal reared up arches of fire, to a roof that dropped like rain, while Tulip and his prize sank down exhausted on the great hub of opal to rest. As he touched it all the secret wonders of the Wishing-Pot were opened and revealed to his gaze.

Crowds and crowds of faces were what he most saw; everywhere that he turned he saw old friends and neighbours who, he thought, had been dead and gone, looking sadly, and shaking long sorrowful faces at him. “You here too, Tulip?” they seemed for ever to be saying. “Always another, and another; and now you here too!”

There was the dairyman’s wife, who had waited seven years to have a child, holding a little will-o’-the-wisp of a thing in her arms. Now and then for a while it would lie still, and then suddenly it would leap up and dart away; and she, poor soul, must up and after it, though the chase were ever so long!

There also was Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, counting over a rich pile of gold, which, ever and anon, spun up into the air, and went strewing itself like dead leaves before the wind. Then he too must needs up and after it, till it was all caught again, and added together, and made right.

There were small playmates of Tulip’s childhood, each with its little conceit of treasure: one had a toy, and another a lamb, another a bird; and all of them hunted and caught the thing they loved, and kissed it and again let go. So it went on, over and over again, more sad than the sight of a quaker as he twiddles his thumbs.

Whenever they were at peace for a moment, they turned their eyes his way. “What, you here too, Tulip?” was always the thing they seemed to be saying.

While Tulip sat looking at them, and thinking of it all, suddenly his lady disappeared, and only her green feet darted from his side and began running round and round in a circle. Then was he just about to set off running after them, when he felt himself caught up to the coloured fires of the roof and sent spinning ungovernably through space. Suddenly he was dumped to the ground, and just as his feet were gathering themselves up under him he heard the Angelus bell ringing from the village below the slopes of the wood.

He was standing again by the side of the Wishing-Pot, and the old woman sat cowering, and blinking her spider eye at him, too much astonished to speak or move.

Tulip looked at her with a pleasant and engaging air. “Oh, good mother, what a treat you have given me!” he said. “How I wish I had money for another wish! what a pity it was ever to have wished myself back again!”

When the old witch heard that she thought still to entrap him, and answered joyfully, “Why, kind Sir, surely, kind Sir, if you like it you shall look again! Take another wish, and never mind about the money.” So she said the spell once more which opened to him the wonders of the Wishing-Pot.

Then cried Tulip, clapping his hands, “What better can I wish than to have you in the Wishing-Pot, in the place of all those poor folk whom you have imprisoned with their wishes!”

Hardly was the thing said than done; all the children who had been Tulip’s playmates, and Miller Dick with his broad thumbs, and the dairyman’s wife, were every one of them out, and the old witch woman was nowhere to be seen.

But Tulip put his eye to the mouth of the Wishing-Pot; and there down below he saw the old witch, running round and round as hard as she could go, pursued by a herd of green spiders. And there without doubt she remains.

And now everybody was happy except Tulip himself; for the children had all of them their toys, and the old miller his gold, and as for the dairyman’s wife, she found that she had become the mother of a large and promising infant. But Tulip had altogether lost his lady of the dear green feet, for in thinking of others he had forgotten to think of himself. All the gratitude of the poor people he had saved was nothing to him in that great loss which had left him desolate. For his part he only took the Wishing-Pot up under his arm, and went sadly away home.

But before long the noise of what he had done reached to the king’s ears; and he sent for Tulip to appear before him and his Court. Tulip came, carrying the Wishing-Pot under his arm, very downcast and sad for love of the lady of the dear green feet.

At that time all the Court was in half mourning; for the Princess Royal, who was the king’s only child, and the most beautiful and accomplished of her sex, had gone perfectly distraught with grief, of which nothing could cure her. All day long she sat with her eyes shut, and tears running down, and folded hands and quiet little feet. And all this came, it was said, from a dream which she could not tell or explain to anybody.

The king had promised that whoever could rouse her from her grief, should have the princess for his wife, and become heir to the throne; and when he heard that there was such a thing in the world as a Wishing-Pot, he thought that something might be done with it.

From Tulip he learned, however, that no one knew the spell which opened the resources of the Wishing-Pot save the old witch woman who was shut up fast for ever in its inside. So it seemed to the king that the Pot could be of no use for curing the princess.

But it was so beautiful, with its shooting stars and coloured fires, that, when Tulip brought it, they carried it in to show to her.

After three hours the princess was prevailed upon to open her eyes; and directly they fell upon the great opal bowl, all at once she started to her feet and began laughing and dancing and singing.

These are the words that they heard her sing,--

“Lap for lap I must wind you;
Equal, before I can find you;
I am a lap behind you!”

Tulip, as soon as he heard the sweetness of that voice, and the words, pushed his way past the king and all his court, to where the princess was. And there over the heads of the crowd he saw his lady of the dear green feet laughing and opening her white arms to him.

As she set eyes on his face the dream of the princess came true, and all her unhappiness passed from her. So they loved and were married, to the astonishment and edification of the whole court; and lived to be greatly loved and admired by all their grandchildren.

THE WAY OF THE WIND

Where the world breaks up into islands among the blue waves of an eastern sea, in a little house by the seashore, lived Katipah, the only child of poor parents. When they died she was left quite alone and could not find a heart in the world to care for her. She was so poor that no man thought of marrying her, and so delicate and small that as a drudge she was worth nothing to anybody.

Once a month she would go and stand at the temple gate, and say to the people as they went in to pray, “Will nobody love me?” And the people would turn their heads away quickly and make haste to get past, and in their hearts would wonder to themselves: “Foolish little Katipah! Does she think that we can spare time to love anyone so poor and unprofitable as she?”

On the other days Katipah would go down to the beach, where everybody went who had a kite to fly--for all the men in that country flew kites, and all the children,--and there she would fly a kite of her own up into the blue air; and watching the wind carrying it farther and farther away, would grow quite happy thinking how a day might come at last when she would really be loved, though her queer little outside made her seem so poor and unprofitable.

Katipah’s kite was green, with blue eyes in its square face; and in one corner it had a very small pursed-up red mouth holding a spray of peach-blossom. She had made it herself; and to her it meant the green world, with the blue sky over it when the spring begins to be sweet; and there, tucked away in one corner of it, her own little warm mouth waiting and wishing to be kissed: and out of all that wishing and waiting the blossom of hope was springing, never to be let go.

All round her were hundreds of others flying their kites, and all had some wish or prayer to Fortune. But Katipah’s wish and prayer were only that she might be loved.

The silver sandhills lay in loops and chains round the curve of the blue bay, and all along them flocks of gaily coloured kites hovered and fluttered and sprang. And, as they went up into the clear air, the wind sighing in the strings was like the crying of a young child. “Wahoo! wahoo!” every kite seemed to cradle the wailings of an invisible infant as it went mounting aloft, spreading its thin apron to the wind.

“Wahoo! wahoo!” sang Katipah’s blue-and-green kite, “shall I ever be loved by anybody?” And Katipah, keeping fast hold of the string, would watch where it mounted and looked so small, and think that surely some day her kite would bring her the only thing she much cared about.

Katipah’s next-door neighbour had everything that her own lonely heart most wished for: not only had she a husband, but a fine baby as well. Yet she was such a jealous, cross-grained body that she seemed to get no happiness out of the fortune Heaven had sent her. Husband and child seemed both to have caught the infection of her bitter temper; all day and night beating and brawling went on; there seemed no peace in that house.

But for all that the woman, whose name was Bimsha, was quite proud of being a wife and a mother: and in the daytime, when her man was away, she would look over the fence and laugh at Katipah, crying boastfully, “Don’t think you will ever have a husband, Katipah: you are too poor and unprofitable! Look at me, and be envious!”

Then Katipah would go softly away, and send up her kite by the seashore till she heard a far-off, sweet, babe-like cry as the wind blew through the strings high in air.

“Shall I ever be loved by anybody?” thought she, as she jerked at the cord; and away the kite flew higher than ever, and the sound of its call grew fainter.

One morning, in the beginning of the year, Katipah went up on to the hill under plum-boughs white with bloom, meaning to gather field-sorrel for her midday meal; and as she stooped with all her hair blowing over her face, and her skirts knotting and billowing round her pretty brown ankles, she felt as if someone had kissed her from behind.

“That cannot be,” thought Katipah, with her fingers fast upon a stalk of field-sorrel; “it is too soon for anything so good to happen.” So she picked the sorrel quietly, and put it into her basket. But now, not to be mistaken, arms came round her, and she _was_ kissed.

She stood up and put her hands into her breast, quite afraid lest her little heart, which had grown so light, should be caught by a puff of wind and blown right away out of her bosom, and over the hill and into the sea, and be drowned.

And now her eyes would not let her doubt; there by her side stood a handsome youth, with quick-fluttering, posy-embroidered raiment. His long dark hair was full of white plum-blossoms, as though he had just pushed his head through the branches above. His hands also were loaded with the same, and they kept sifting out of his long sleeves whenever he moved his arms. Under the hem of his robe Katipah could see that he had heron’s wings bound about his ankles.

“He must be very good,” thought Katipah, “to be so beautiful! and indeed he must be very good to kiss poor me!”

“Katipah,” said the wonderful youth, “though you do not know me, I know you. It is I who so often helped you to fly your green kite by the shore. I have been up there, and have looked into its blue eyes, and kissed its little red mouth which held the peach-blossom. It was I who made songs in its strings for your heart to hear. I am the West Wind, Katipah--the wind that brings fine weather. ‘Gamma-gata’ you must call me, for it is I who bring back the wings that fly till the winter is over. And now I have come down to earth, to fetch you away and make you my wife. Will you come, Katipah?”

“I will come, Gamma-gata!” said Katipah, and she crouched and kissed the heron-wings that bound his feet; then she stood up and let herself go into his arms.

“Have you enough courage?” asked the West Wind.

“I do not know,” answered Katipah, “for I have never tried.”

“To come with me,” said the Wind, “you need to have much courage; if you have not, you must wait till you learn it. But none the less for that shall you be the wife of Gamma-gata, for I am the gate of the wild geese, as my name says, and my heart is foolish with love of you.” Gamma-gata took her up in his arms, and swung with her this way and that, tossing his way through blossom and leaf; and the sunlight became an eddy of gold round her, and wind and laughter seemed to become part of her being, so that she was all giddy and dazed and glad when at last Gamma-gata set her down.

“Stand still, my little one!” he cried--“stand still while I put on your bridal veil for you; then your blushes shall look like a rose-bush in snow!” So Katipah stood with her feet in the green sorrel, and Gamma-Gata went up into the plum-tree and shook, till from head to foot she was showered with white blossom.

“How beautiful you seem to me!” cried Gamma-gata when he returned to ground.

Then he lifted her once more and set her in the top of a plum-tree, and going below, cried up to her, “Leap, little Wind-wife, and let me see that you have courage!”

Katipah looked long over the deep space that lay between them, and trembled. Then she fixed her eyes fast upon those of her lover, and leapt, for in the laughter of his eyes she had lost all her fear.

He caught her half-way in air as she fell. “You are not really brave,” said he; “if I had shut my eyes you would not have jumped.”

“If you had shut your eyes just then,” cried Katipah, “I would have died for fear.”

He set her once more in the tree-top, and disappeared from her sight. “Come down to me, Katipah!” she heard his voice calling all round her.

Clinging fast to the topmost bough, “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she cried, “let me see your eyes, and I will come.”

Then with darkened brow he appeared to her again out of his blasts, and took her in his arms and lifted her down a little sadly till her feet touched safe earth. And he blew away the beautiful veil of blossoms with which he had showered her, while Katipah stood like a shamed child and watched it go, shredding itself to pieces in the spring sunshine.

And Gamma-gata, kissing her tenderly, said: “Go home, Katipah, and learn to have courage! and when you have learned it I will be faithful and will return to you again. Only remember, however long we may be parted, and whatever winds blow ill-fortune up to your door, Gamma-gata will watch over you. For in deed and truth you are the wife of the West Wind now, and truly he loves you, Katipah!”

“Oh, Gamma-gata!” cried Katipah, “tell the other winds, when they come, to blow courage into me, and to blow me back to you: and do not let that be long!”

“I will tell them,” said Gamma-gata; and suddenly he was gone. Katipah saw a drift of white petals borne over the tree-tops and away to sea, and she knew that there went Gamma-gata, the beautiful windy youth who, loving her so well, had made her his wife between the showers of the plum-blossom and the sunshine, and had promised to return to her as soon as she was fit to receive him.

So Katipah gathered up her field-sorrel, and went away home and ate her solitary midday meal with a mixture of pride and sorrow in her timid little breast. “Some day, when I am grown brave,” she thought, “Gamma-gata will come back to me; but he will not come yet.”

In the evening Bimsha looked over the fence and jeered at her. “Do not think, Katipah,” she cried, “that you will ever get a husband, for all your soft looks! You are too poor and unprofitable.”

Katipah folded her meek little body together like a concertina when it shuts, and squatted to earth in great contentment of spirit. “Silly Bimsha,” said she, “I already have a husband, a fine one! Ever so much finer than yours!”

Bimsha turned pale and cold with envy to hear her say that, for she feared that Katipah was too good and simple to tell her an untruth, even in mockery. But she put a brave face upon the matter, saying only, “I will believe in that fine husband of yours when I see him!”

“Oh, you will see him,” answered Katipah, “if you look high enough! But he is far away over _your_ head, Bimsha; and you will not hear him beating me at night, for that is not his way!”

At this soft answer Bimsha went back into her house in a fury, and Katipah laughed to herself. Then she sighed, and said, “Oh, Gamma-gata, return to me quickly, lest my word shall seem false to Bimsha, who hates me!”

Every day after this Bimsha thrust her face over the fence to say: “Katipah, where is this fine husband of yours? He does not seem to come home often.”

Katipah answered slyly: “He comes home late, when it is dark, and he goes away very early, almost before it is light. It is not necessary for his happiness that he should see _you_.”

“Certainly there is a change in Katipah,” thought Bimsha: “she has become saucy with her tongue.” But her envious heart would not allow her to let matters be. Night and morning she cried to Katipah, “Katipah, where is your fine husband?” And Katipah laughed at her, thinking to herself: “To begin with, I will not be afraid of anything Bimsha may say. Let Gamma-gata know that!”

And now every day she looked up into the sky to see what wind was blowing; but east, or north, or south, it was never the one wind that she looked for.

The east wind came from the sea, bringing rain, and beat upon Katipah’s door at night. Then Katipah would rise and open, and standing in the downpour, would cry, “East wind, east wind, go and tell your brother Gamma-gata that I am not afraid of you any more than I am of Bimsha!”

One night the east wind, when she said that, pulled a tile off Bimsha’s house, and threw it at her; and Katipah ran in and hid behind the door in a great hurry. After that she had less to say when the east wind came and blew under her gable and rattled at her door. “Oh, Gamma-gata,” she sighed, “if I might only set eyes on you, I would fear nothing at all!”

When the weather grew fine again Katipah returned to the shore and flew her kite as she had always done before the love of Gamma-gata had entered her heart. Now and then, as she did so, the wind would change softly, and begin blowing from the west. Then little Katipah would pull lovingly at the string, and cry, “Oh, Gamma-gata, have you got fast hold of it up there?”

One day after dusk, when she, the last of all the flyers, hauled down her kite to earth, there she found a heron’s feather fastened among the strings. Katipah knew who had sent that, and kissed it a thousand times over; nor did she mind for many days afterwards what Bimsha might say, because the heron’s feather lay so close to her heart, warming it with the hope of Gamma-gata’s return.

But as weeks and months passed on, and Bimsha still did not fail to say each morning, “Katipah, where is your fine husband to-day?” the timid heart grew faint with waiting. “Alas!” thought Katipah, “if Heaven would only send me a child, I would show it to her; she would believe me easily then! However tiny, it would be big enough to convince her. Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I ask!”

And now every day and all day long she sent up her kite from the seashore, praying that a child might be born to her and convince Bimsha of the truth. Everyone said: “Katipah is mad about kite-flying! See how early she goes and how late she stays: hardly any weather keeps her indoors.”

One day the west wind came full-breathed over land and sea, and Katipah was among the first on the beach to send up her messenger with word to Gamma-gata of the thing for which she prayed. “Gamma-gata,” she sighed, “the voice of Bimsha afflicts me daily; my heart is bruised by the mockery she casts at me. Did I not love thee under the plum-tree, Gamma-gata? Ask of Heaven, therefore, that a child may be born to me--ever so small let it be--and Bimsha will become dumb. Gamma-gata, it is a very little thing that I am asking!”

All day long she let her kite go farther up into the sky than all the other kites. Overhead the wind sang in their strings like bees, or like the thin cry of very small children; but Katipah’s was so far away she could scarcely see it against the blue. “Gamma-gata,” she cried; till the twilight drew sea and land together, and she was left alone.

Then she called down her kite sadly; hand over hand she drew it by the cord, till she saw it fluttering over her head like a great moth searching for a flower in the gloom. “Wahoo! wahoo!” she could hear the wind crying through its strings like the wailing of a very small child.

It had become so dark that Katipah hardly knew what the kite had brought her till she touched the tiny warm limbs that lay cradled among the strings that netted the frame to its cord. Full of wonder and delight, she lifted the windling out of its nest, and laid it in her bosom. Then she slung her kite across her shoulder, and ran home, laughing and crying for joy and triumph to think that all Bimsha’s mockery must now be at an end.

So, quite early the next morning, Katipah sat herself down very demurely in the doorway, with her child hidden in the folds of her gown, and waited for Bimsha’s evil eye to look out upon her happiness.

She had not long to wait. Bimsha came out of her door, and looking across to Katipah, cried, “Well, Katipah, and where is your fine husband to-day?”

“My husband is gone out,” said Katipah, “but if you care to look you can see my baby. It is ever so much more beautiful than yours.”

Bimsha, when she heard that, turned green and yellow with envy; and there, plain to see, was Katipah holding up to view the most beautiful babe that ever gave the sunlight a good excuse for visiting this wicked earth. The mere sight of so much innocent beauty and happiness gave Bimsha a shock from which it took her three weeks to recover. After that she would sit at her window and for pure envy keep watch to see Katipah and the child playing together--the child which was so much more beautiful and well-behaved than her own.

As for Katipah, she was so happy now that the sorrow of waiting for her husband’s return grew small. Day by day the west wind blew softly, and she knew that Gamma-gata was there, keeping watch over her and her child.

Every day she would say to the little one, “Come, my plum-petal, my wind-flower, I will send thee up to thy father that he may see how fat thou art getting, and be proud of thee!” And going down to the shore, she would lay the child among the strings of her kite and send it up to where Gamma-gata blew a wide breath over sea and land. As it went she would hear the child crow with joy at being so uplifted from earth, and laughing to herself, she would think, “When he sees his child so patterned after his own heart, Gamma-gata will be too proud to remain long away from me.”

When she drew the child back to her out of the sky, she covered it with caresses, crying, “Oh, my wind-blown one, my cloudlet, my sky-blossom, my little piece out of heaven, hast thou seen thy father, and has he told thee that he loves me?” And the child would crow with mysterious delight, being too young to tell anything it knew in words.

Bimsha, out of her window, watched and saw all this, not comprehending it: and in her evil heart a wish grew up that she might by some means put an end to all Katipah’s happiness. So one day towards evening, when Katipah, alone upon the shore, had let her kite and her little one go up to the fleecy edges of a cloud through which the golden sunlight was streaming, Bimsha came softly behind and with a sharp knife cut the string by which alone the kite was held from falling.

“Oh, silly Bimsha!” cried Katipah, “what have you done that for?”

Up in air the kite made a far plunge forward, fluttered and stumbled in its course, and came shooting headlong to earth. “Oh dear!” cried Katipah, “if my beautiful little kite gets torn, Bimsha, that will be your fault!”

When the kite fell, it lay unhurt on one of the soft sandhills that ringed the bay; but no sign of the child was to be seen. Katipah was laughing when she picked up her kite and ran home. And Bimsha thought, “Is it witchcraft, or did the child fall into the sea?”

In the night the West Wind came and tapped at Katipah’s window; and rising from her bed, she heard Gamma-gata’s voice calling tenderly to her. When she opened the window to the blindness of the black night, he kissed her, and putting the little one in her arms, said, “Wait only a little while longer, Katipah, and I will come again to you. Already you are learning to be brave.”

In the morning Bimsha looked out, and there sat Katipah in her own doorway, with the child safe and sound in her arms. And, plain to see, he had on a beautiful golden coat and little silver wings were fastened to his feet, and his head was garnished with a wreath of flowers the like of which were never seen on earth. He was like a child of noble birth and fortune, and the small motherly face of Katipah shone with pride and happiness as she nursed him.

“Where did you steal those things?” asked Bimsha, “and how did that child come back? I thought he had fallen into the sea and been drowned.”

“Ah!” answered Katipah slyly, “he was up in the clouds when the kite left him, and he came down with the rain last night. It is nothing wonderful. You were foolish, Bimsha, if you thought that to fall into the clouds would do the child any harm. Up there you can have no idea how beautiful it is--such fields of gold, such wonderful gardens, such flowers and fruits: it is from there that all the beauty and wealth of the world must come. See all that he has brought with him! and it is all your doing, because you cut the cord of my kite. Oh, clever Bimsha!”

As soon as Bimsha heard that, she ran and got a big kite, and fastening her own child into the strings, started it to fly. “Do not think,” cried the envious woman, “that you are the only one whose child is to be clothed in gold! My child is as good as yours any day; wait, and you shall see!”

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