Hči močvirskega kralja

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Hči močvirskega kralja

Storks tell their little ones a great many fairy tales, all from the swamps and marshes, and generally suited to their age and understanding. The youngest nestlings are quite content to be told, “Creepy, crawly, splish-splosh!” They think that splendid, but the older ones want a deeper meaning, or at least something about the family. Of the two oldest and longest tales preserved among the storks, we all know one: the story of Moses, whom his mother set adrift on the waters of the Nile, who was found by the king’s daughter, received a fine education, and became a great man, though afterwards no one knew where he was buried. That is quite a familiar story!

The other tale is not yet known, perhaps because it belongs so nearly to our own country. It has passed from one mother stork to another for a thousand years, and each has told it better than the last; now we shall tell it best of all.

The first pair of storks to bring the tale, and to take part in it themselves, had their summer home on the Viking’s timber house beside the Wild Marsh in Vendsyssel. That is in Hjørring county, far up towards Skagen in Jutland, if we are to speak with geographical precision. It is still an immense marsh; you can read about it in the county survey. This was once the seabed, but it has risen, so the book says. It stretches for miles in every direction, surrounded by wet meadows and quaking bogs, with peat moss, cloudberries, and stunted trees. A mist hangs over it almost always, and seventy years ago wolves were still to be found there. It certainly deserves its name, “the Wild Marsh,” and one can imagine how wild it must have been, how much swamp and open water there must have been here a thousand years ago! Yet in its details one could see then what one can still see now: the reeds were just as tall, with the same long leaves and violet-brown feathery flowers they bear today; the birch stood with white bark and delicate, loosely hanging leaves, just as it does now. As for the living creatures that came here, the fly wore its gauzy dress cut in the same fashion as today, and the stork’s livery was white and black with red stockings. Human beings, on the other hand, dressed differently in those days; but whoever ventured onto the quaking bog, thrall or hunter or anyone at all, fared a thousand years ago just as people do now: they plunged in and sank down to the Marsh King, as they called the ruler of the great marsh kingdom below. The Quagmire King would have suited him too, but we prefer to say the Marsh King, and that was what the storks called him. Very little is known about his government, but perhaps that is just as well.

Near the marsh, close to the Limfjord, stood the Viking’s timber house, with a stone-built cellar, a tower, and three storeys. High on the roof the storks had built their nest. Mother Stork was sitting on her eggs and felt sure they would hatch well.

One evening Father Stork stayed out rather late, and when he came home he looked ruffled and flustered. “I have something quite dreadful to tell you!” he said to Mother Stork.

“Then don’t!” she said. “Remember that I’m sitting on eggs. It might upset me, and then it would affect the eggs!” “You must hear it!” he said. “She has come here, the daughter of our host in Egypt! She dared to make the journey all this way—and now she’s gone!”

“She who belongs to the fairy race! Do tell me! You know I can’t bear to be kept waiting while I’m sitting!” “You see, Mother, she believed what the doctor said, what you told me about. She believed that the marsh flower up here could help her sick father, and she flew here in a feather dress with the two other feather-dress princesses, who have to come north every year to bathe and renew their youth. She came, and now she’s gone!”

“You take so long to tell it!” said Mother Stork. “The eggs may catch cold! I can’t bear the suspense!” “I’ve been keeping watch!” said Father Stork. “And this evening, while I was walking among the reeds where the floating bog will bear my weight, three swans came flying. There was something in the beat of their wings that told me: take care, those aren’t quite swans, they’re only wearing swan dresses! You know it by instinct, Mother, just as I do. You know what is genuine!”

“Of course!” she said. “But tell me about the princess! I’m tired of hearing about swan dresses!” “Here in the middle of the marsh, as you know, there is a sort of lake,” said Father Stork. “You can see a little of it if you care to raise yourself. Close to the reeds and the green floating bog lay a great alder stump. The three swans settled on it, flapped their wings, and looked about them. One of them cast off her swan dress, and I recognized our own princess from Egypt. There she sat, with no cloak about her but her long black hair. I heard her ask the other two to take good care of her swan dress while she dived beneath the water to pick the flower she thought she could see. They nodded, rose into the air, and lifted the discarded feather dress. What can they mean to do with that? I thought; and she must have asked them the very same thing. She had her answer, plain before her eyes: they flew up with her feather dress. ‘Go on, dive!’ they cried. ‘Never again will you fly in a swan dress! Never again will you see the land of Egypt! Stay here in the Wild Marsh!’ Then they tore her feather dress into a hundred pieces, so that the feathers flew all about like a snowstorm, and away flew those two wicked princesses!”

“How dreadful!” said Mother Stork. “I can’t bear to hear it! Now tell me what happened next!” “The princess wept and wailed! Her tears rolled down onto the alder stump, and then it moved, for it was the Marsh King himself, the one who lives in the marsh. I saw the stump turn, and then it was no stump at all: long muddy branches stretched out like arms. The poor child took fright and sprang away onto the quaking bog, but that cannot even bear my weight, much less hers. She sank at once, and the alder stump went down with her; he was pulling her under. Great black bubbles rose, and then there was no trace of her. Now she is buried in the Wild Marsh, and never will she bring the flower to Egypt. You could not have borne to watch it, Mother!”

“You ought not to tell me such things at a time like this! It may harm the eggs! The princess will look after herself, no doubt! She is sure to find help! If it had been you or me, one of our own kind, then it would have been all over!”

“Still, I shall go and look every day!” said Father Stork, and so he did. A long time passed. Then one day he saw a green stalk shooting up from the depths, and when it reached the surface a leaf unfolded, growing broader and broader. Beside it appeared a bud, and one morning, as the stork flew over it, the strong sunshine opened the flower. In its heart lay a lovely child, a little girl, looking as though she had just stepped out of her bath. She resembled the princess from Egypt so closely that at first the stork thought it was she, grown small again; but on reflection he found it more likely that she was the child of the princess and the Marsh King. That was why she lay in a water lily.

“She certainly cannot stay there,” thought the stork. “There are so many of us in my nest already! But I have an idea! The Viking’s wife has no children, and she has often wished for a little one. I am always given the credit for bringing babies; now, for once, I shall really do it! I’ll fly to the Viking’s wife with the child. What a delight that will be!”

So the stork picked up the little girl, flew to the timber house, pecked a hole in the bladder-skin windowpane, laid the child at the Viking’s wife’s breast, and flew back to Mother Stork to tell her. The young ones listened too; they were old enough now.

“You see, the princess is not dead! She has sent the little one up here, and now the child has a home!” “That is what I said from the very beginning!” said Mother Stork. “Now give a little thought to your own family! It is nearly time to travel. Every now and then I feel a tickling under my wings! The cuckoo and the nightingale have already left, and I hear the quails saying that we shall soon have a good following wind. Our young ones will do well at the manoeuvres, if I know them at all!”

Oh, how happy the Viking’s wife was when she awoke in the morning and found the beautiful little child at her breast! She kissed and caressed it, but it screamed terribly and kicked its arms and legs; it did not seem pleased at all. At last it cried itself to sleep, and as it lay there it was one of the loveliest sights anyone could see. The Viking’s wife was so happy, so light-hearted, so full of vigour, that she felt sure her husband and all his men would now arrive as unexpectedly as the little one had. She and the whole household busied themselves to have everything ready. The long, brightly coloured tapestries that she and her women had woven with pictures of their idols—Odin, Thor, and Freya, as they were called—were hung up. The thralls had to scour the old shields used to decorate the hall; cushions were laid on the benches, and dry wood on the hearth in the middle of the hall, so that the fire could be lit at once. The Viking’s wife worked with her own hands, until by evening she was thoroughly tired and slept soundly.

When she awoke towards morning she was terribly frightened, for the little child had vanished. She sprang up, lit a pine splinter, and looked about her. There at the foot of the bed lay not the little child, but a great, hideous toad. Filled with disgust, she took a heavy stick and was about to kill the creature, but it looked at her with such strange, sorrowful eyes that she could not strike. Once more she looked about her. The toad gave a faint, pitiful croak; she started and sprang from the bed to the shutter, which she flung open. At that very moment the sun rose and cast its rays straight onto the great toad in the bed. All at once the monster’s broad mouth seemed to draw together and become small and red; its limbs stretched into the loveliest shapes. There lay her own beautiful little child, and no hideous toad at all.

“Whatever can this mean?” she said. “Have I had an evil dream? Why, there lies my own darling fairy child!” And she kissed it and pressed it to her heart, but it scratched and bit like a wild kitten.

The Viking did not come that day, nor the next, though he was on his way. The wind was against him; it was blowing south for the storks. One creature’s fair wind is another’s foul.

After a few days and nights, the Viking’s wife understood what was happening to her little child. A terrible enchantment lay upon it. By day it was beautiful as an elf of light, but had a wicked, savage nature; by night, on the other hand, it was a hideous toad, quiet and whimpering, with sorrowful eyes. Here were two natures alternating, both within and without. For the little girl the stork had brought possessed by day her true mother’s outward form, but her father’s disposition; at night her kinship with him appeared in the shape of her body, while within it shone her mother’s mind and heart. Who could break this spell wrought by sorcery? The Viking’s wife was filled with fear and sorrow, yet her heart clung to the poor creature. She did not think she dared tell her husband of its condition when he came home, as he soon would, for then he would surely follow the custom of the time and leave the poor child out beside the highway for anyone who cared to take. The kind-hearted Viking’s wife could not bear that. He should see the child only in broad daylight.

One morning storks’ wings came rushing over the roof. More than a hundred pairs had rested there during the night after the great manoeuvres; now they rose to set off south.

“All ready!” came the cry. “Wives and children too!” “I feel so light!” said the young storks. “I’m tingling and tickling right down to my toes, as though I were full of live frogs! How splendid it is to be going abroad!”

“Keep with the flock!” said Father and Mother. “And don’t clatter your beaks so much; it strains the chest!” And off they flew. At that same moment a horn sounded across the heath. The Viking had landed with all his men. They were returning with rich booty from the coast of Gaul, where the people, as in Britain, sang in terror:

“Deliver us from the savage Northmen!” Oh, what life and merriment there was in the Viking’s stronghold beside the Wild Marsh! The mead vat was brought into the hall, the fire was lit, and horses were slaughtered. There was to be a proper feast. The sacrificial priest sprinkled the thralls with warm horse’s blood to consecrate them. The fire crackled, smoke drifted beneath the roof, and soot dripped from the beams, but everyone was used to that. Guests had been invited and were given fine gifts; intrigue and treachery were forgotten. They drank and threw gnawed bones in one another’s faces, which was a sign of good spirits. The skald—a sort of minstrel, but a warrior too, who had sailed with them and knew what he was singing about—gave them a song recounting all their deeds of war and adventures. At the end of every verse came the same refrain: “Wealth dies, kinsmen die, a man himself must die; but a glorious name shall never die!” Then they all beat upon their shields and hammered the tabletop with a knife or a bone, so that the sound rang out.

The Viking’s wife sat on the cross-bench in the open feasting hall, wearing a silk gown, gold bracelets, and great amber beads. She was dressed in all her finery, and the skald mentioned her too in his song, telling of the golden treasure she had brought her wealthy husband. He was indeed delighted with the beautiful child; he had seen her only by day, in all her loveliness. Her wildness pleased him. She might grow up, he said, to be a mighty shield-maiden who could strike down her opponent! She would not so much as blink if a practised hand, in sport, struck off her eyebrows with a sharp sword.

The mead vat was emptied and another wheeled in. They drank deeply indeed; these were people who could hold their liquor. There was a proverb in those days: “Cattle know when to come home from pasture, but a foolish man never knows his belly’s measure.” Yes, they knew that, but knowing is one thing and doing another! They knew, too, that “Even a welcome guest grows tiresome when he stays too long in another man’s house!” Yet they stayed all the same; meat and mead are good things! The merriment went on, and at night the thralls slept in the warm ashes, dipped their fingers in the greasy soot, and licked them. Those were fine times!

Once more that year the Viking sailed away on a raid, although the autumn storms were rising. He took his men to the coast of Britain; it was “only across the water,” he said. His wife stayed behind with her little girl, and certainly the foster mother soon grew almost fonder of the poor toad, with its gentle eyes and deep sighs, than of the beautiful creature that scratched and bit.

The raw, wet autumn mist, “the Mouthless One” that gnaws away the leaves, lay over forest and heath. “The Featherless Bird,” as they call the snow, came flying thick and fast. Winter was on its way. The sparrows took possession of the storks’ nest and discussed the absent owners in their own fashion. And the owners themselves, the pair of storks with all their young—where were they now?

-------- The storks were now in the land of Egypt, where the sun shone as warmly as it does here on a lovely summer’s day. Tamarinds and acacias blossomed all about, and Mohammed’s crescent gleamed brightly on the temple domes. Many a pair of storks sat on the slender towers, resting after the long journey. Whole flocks had their nests side by side on the mighty columns and broken arches of temples and forgotten places. The date palm raised its canopy high, as though it meant to be a sunshade. The grey-white pyramids stood outlined against the clear sky towards the desert, where the ostrich showed how well it could use its legs, and the lion sat gazing with great, wise eyes at the marble Sphinx, half buried in the sand. The waters of the Nile had receded, and the whole riverbed swarmed with frogs. To the stork family this was the most delightful sight in all the country. The young ones thought it must be an illusion, so marvellous did it all seem.

“This is what it is like here, and this is how we always live in our warm country!” said Mother Stork, and the little ones’ stomachs tingled. “Shall we see anything more?” they asked. “Are we going much, much farther into the country?”

“There is nothing else to see!” said Mother Stork. “Beyond this fertile strip there is only wild forest, where the trees grow into one another and are tangled together by thorny creepers. Only the elephant, with his clumsy legs, can force a way through. The snakes are too big for us, and the lizards too lively. If you go towards the desert, you will get sand in your eyes at best, and be caught in a sandstorm at worst. No, this is the best place! Here there are frogs and grasshoppers! Here I shall stay, and you with me!”

And stay they did. The old birds sat in their nest on the slender minaret, resting, yet busy smoothing their feathers and rubbing their beaks along their red stockings. Then they stretched their necks, exchanged solemn greetings, and lifted their heads with their lofty brows and fine, smooth feathers, while their brown eyes shone with wisdom. The young females walked solemnly among the lush reeds, casting sidelong glances at the other young storks and making acquaintances. Every third step they swallowed a frog, or they walked about dangling a little snake; they thought it looked well, and it tasted good. The young males quarrelled, beat one another with their wings, and struck with their beaks until they drew blood. Then this one became engaged, and that one became engaged, young males and young females; that, after all, was what they lived for. They built nests, and then began quarrelling again, for in hot countries they are all so hot-tempered. But it was delightful, and especially gratifying to the old birds: everything one’s own children do is charming! Every day brought sunshine, every day plenty to eat; there was nothing to think of but pleasure. Yet pleasure was not to be found inside the splendid palace of their Egyptian host, as they called him.

The rich and powerful lord lay on a couch, rigid in every limb, stretched out like a mummy in the middle of the great hall with its brightly painted walls. It was as though he lay inside a tulip. Relatives and servants stood about him. He was not dead, yet one could hardly say that he lived. The healing marsh flower from the northern lands, which must be sought and gathered by the person who loved him best, would never be brought. His young and lovely daughter, who had flown in swan dress over seas and lands, far into the north, would never return. “She is dead and gone!” the two returning swan maidens had declared. They had made up a whole story about it, which they told:

“All three of us were flying high in the air when a hunter saw us and loosed his arrow. It struck our young friend, and slowly singing her farewell, she sank like a dying swan into the middle of the forest lake. There on the shore, beneath a fragrant weeping birch, we buried her! But we took our revenge. We tied fire beneath the wing of the swallow that nested under the hunter’s thatched roof. The thatch caught, the house burst into flames, and he was burned alive. The blaze shone across the lake to the drooping birch, where she is now dust in the earth. Never will she return to Egypt!”

Then both of them wept, and when Father Stork heard it he clattered his beak so loudly that the sound echoed. “Lies and inventions!” he said. “I should like to drive my beak straight into their breasts!”

“And break it off!” said Mother Stork. “Then you would look fine! Think first of yourself, and then of your family; everything else is no concern of yours!”

“Still, tomorrow I shall sit on the rim of the open dome, when all the learned and wise men gather to discuss the sick man. Perhaps they will come a little nearer the truth!”

And the learned and wise men gathered and talked at great length, far and wide, in a way the stork could make nothing of. Nor did anything come of it for the sick man, or for his daughter in the Wild Marsh. Still, we may as well listen to a little of it; one has to listen to so much.

But now it would be best to hear and learn what had happened before all this, so that we may follow the story better—at least as well as Father Stork.

“Love begets life! The highest love begets the highest life! Only through love can his life be saved!” So it had been said, and the learned men declared this exceedingly wise and well expressed.

“That is a beautiful thought!” said Father Stork at once. “I don’t quite understand it!” said Mother Stork. “And that is not my fault, but the thought’s. Still, it makes no difference; I have other things to think about!”

Then the learned men had spoken of the love between this and that, and the differences between them: the love felt by sweethearts, the love between parents and children, between light and plants; how the sunbeam kissed the mud and brought forth the seedling. All this was expounded at such scholarly length that Father Stork found it impossible to follow, let alone repeat. It made him quite thoughtful; he half closed his eyes and stood on one leg for a whole day afterwards. The weight of learning was so heavy upon him.

But this much Father Stork understood, for he had heard both humble folk and the highest in the land say it from the depths of their hearts: it was a great misfortune for many thousands, and for the country itself, that this man lay ill and could not recover. It would bring joy and blessing if he regained his health. “But where does the flower grow that can restore him?” They had all asked that question: asked it of learned writings, of the twinkling stars, of wind and weather; sought an answer by every roundabout path they could discover. At last, as we have said, the learned and wise men had arrived at this: “Love begets life—life for the father.” And in saying so they said more than they understood themselves. They repeated it and wrote it down as a prescription: “Love begets life.” But how the remedy was to be prepared from that prescription—there they were at a loss. At last they agreed that help must come through the princess, who loved her father with all her heart and soul. In time they also discovered how it could be done, and that was now more than a year and a day ago. At night, when the newly kindled moon had set, she must go out to the marble Sphinx beside the desert, clear the sand from the doorway in its pedestal, and pass through the long passage leading into the heart of one of the great pyramids. There one of the mighty kings of antiquity lay in his mummy wrappings, surrounded by splendour and magnificence. She must lay her head against the dead king, and then it would be revealed to her where life and deliverance for her father could be found.

All this she had done, and in a dream she had learned that she must bring home from the deep marsh in the Danish land—the place had been described quite precisely—the lotus flower that would touch her breast in the depths of the water. Then he would be saved.

And so she had flown in swan dress from Egypt to the Wild Marsh. Now, Father Stork and Mother Stork knew all this, and we know it more clearly than we did before. We know that the Marsh King drew her down to him; we know that to those at home she is dead and gone. Only the wisest of them all still said, like Mother Stork, “She will look after herself, no doubt!” And so they would wait, for they knew of nothing better to do.

“I think I shall steal the swan dresses from those two wicked princesses!” said Father Stork. “Then at least they cannot go to the Wild Marsh and do mischief. I shall hide the dresses up there until they are needed!”

“Where up there will you hide them?” asked Mother Stork. “In our nest beside the Wild Marsh!” he said. “Our youngest and I can help one another carry them, and if they become too troublesome, there are plenty of places along the way where we can hide them until the next migration. One swan dress would be enough for her, I suppose, but two are better. It is good to have plenty of travelling clothes in a northern country!”

"You will get no thanks for it!" said Mother Stork. "But you are the master, of course! I have no say except when I am sitting on the eggs!" -------- In the Viking stronghold by the Wild Marsh, where the storks flew in spring, the little girl had been given a name. They had called her Helga, but that name was far too gentle for the nature housed in so lovely a form. Month by month it showed itself more plainly, and as the years passed, while the storks made the same journey, south to the Nile in autumn and north to the Wild Marsh in spring, the little child grew into a tall girl. Almost before anyone knew it, she was the loveliest maiden, in her sixteenth year: lovely in the shell, but hard and * bitter at the core, wilder than most in that harsh, dark age.

It delighted her to sprinkle the steaming blood of the slaughtered sacrificial horse with her white hands. In a frenzy she bit through the neck of the black cock that the sacrificial priest was to kill, and to her foster-father she said in all earnestness:

"If your enemy came and wound ropes round the ends of the roof-beams and lifted the roof from over your chamber while you slept, I would not wake you if I could! I would hear nothing, for the blood still sings in the ear you boxed years ago—you! I remember!"

But the Viking did not believe her words. Like everyone else, he was bewitched by her beauty; nor did he know how little Helga changed in both body and soul. Bareback she rode, as though she had grown fast to the horse as it raced at full gallop, and she would not dismount even when it fought with the other vicious horses. Often she flung herself, fully clothed, from the steep bank into the strong current of the fjord and swam out to meet the Viking as his boat made for land. She cut the longest lock from her beautiful flowing hair and plaited it into a string for her bow.

"What you make yourself is well made!" she said. The Viking's wife was strong in will and spirit, as befitted the times and their customs, but beside her daughter she seemed a gentle, frightened woman. She knew, too, that a spell lay upon this terrible child.

It seemed that, out of sheer malicious pleasure, Helga all too often chose a moment when her mother stood on the gallery or came out into the courtyard to seat herself on the edge of the well, fling out her arms and legs, and then drop with a splash into the narrow, deep shaft. There, with her frog's nature, she plunged under and rose again, then climbed out as nimbly as a cat and came dripping into the great hall, so that the green leaves strewn over the floor swirled in the stream of water.

Yet there was one restraint upon little Helga: the evening twilight. Then she grew quiet and seemed thoughtful, allowing herself to be called and led. Some inward feeling seemed to draw her to her mother, and when the sun sank and the transformation came over her, within and without, she sat there silent and sorrowful, shrivelled into her toad's shape. Her body was now much larger than that creature's, but this only made her more dreadful. She looked like a wretched dwarf with a frog's head and webbing between her fingers. There was something so sorrowful in her eyes. She had no voice, only a hollow croak, like a child sobbing in its sleep. Then the Viking's wife could take her on her lap, forgetting the hideous shape, seeing only the sorrowful eyes, and more than once she said:

"I could almost wish you were always my mute frog-child. You are more terrible to look upon when your beauty is on the outside!" And she wrote runes against sorcery and sickness and cast them over the unhappy creature, but no improvement came.

"You would never think she had once been so small that she could lie in a water lily!" said Father Stork. "Now she is fully grown, and her Egyptian mother is growing old. We have never seen her since! She did not save herself, as you and the learned stork believed. Year in, year out, I have flown this way and that over the Wild Marsh, but she has never given a sign! Indeed, I can tell you that in those years when I came up here a few days before you, to mend the nest and put things in order, I flew for a whole night over the open water, like an owl or a bat, but all to no purpose! And we have had no use, either, from the two swan-skins that the young ones and I dragged all the way here from the land of the Nile. It was troublesome enough; we brought them in three journeys. Now they have lain at the bottom of the nest for many years, and if ever there is a fire and the timber house burns down, they will be gone!"

"And our good nest will be gone!" said Mother Stork. "You think less of that than of those feather things and your marsh princess! You ought to go down to her and stay in the mud! You are a poor father to your own family; I have said so ever since I first sat on eggs. Let us only hope that neither we nor our young get an arrow in the wing from that mad Viking girl! She has no idea what she is doing. We have lived here rather longer than she has; she ought to bear that in mind. We never forget our obligations; every year we pay our dues—a feather, an egg, and a young bird—as is right. Do you imagine that when she is outside I care to go down there, as I did in the old days, and as I do in Egypt, where I am almost one of the family, though I never forget my place, and peep into pots and pans? No, I sit up here and fret over her—the hussy!—and I fret over you as well! You should have left her lying in the water lily, and then we would have been rid of her!"

"You are much better than your words!" said Father Stork. "I know you better than you know yourself!" And then he gave a hop, two heavy beats of his wings, stretched his legs behind him, and flew, sailing away without moving his wings. He was a good way off before he gave another mighty stroke. The sun shone on his white feathers, his neck and head stretched forward. What speed and sweep there was!

"He is still the finest of them all!" said Mother Stork. "But I shall not tell him so." -------- Early that autumn the Viking came home with booty and prisoners. Among them was a young Christian priest, one of those men who opposed the gods of the northern lands. Lately there had often been talk in the hall and the women's chamber of the new faith spreading far and wide through all the countries to the south, which, through Saint Ansgarius, had even reached Hedeby on the Schlei. Little Helga herself had heard of the faith in the White Christ, who, out of love for mankind, had given himself up to save them. It had, as the saying goes, gone in at one ear and out at the other. She seemed to have any feeling for the word love only when she crouched in her pitiful frog-shape in the shut-away chamber. But the Viking's wife had listened and felt herself strangely moved by the tales and sagas told of the Son of the one true God.

The men returning from their raids had told of the magnificent temples, built of costly hewn stone, raised to him whose commandment was love. They had brought home a pair of heavy golden vessels, skilfully wrought and made entirely of pure gold, each with a peculiar spicy fragrance clinging to it. These were censers, which the Christian priests swung before the altar, where no blood was ever shed, but the wine and consecrated bread were changed into the blood of him who had given himself up for generations yet unborn.

The captive young Christian priest had been taken down into the deep, stone-lined cellar of the timber house, his hands and feet bound with strips of bast. He was beautiful, "like Baldur to look upon!" said the Viking's wife, and his distress moved her. But young Helga wished to have a rope drawn through his hamstrings and have him tied to the tails of the wild oxen.

"Then I would let the dogs loose. Hurrah! Away over marsh and fen, out across the heath! It would be merry to watch, and merrier still to follow him on his journey!"

But the Viking would not have him die that death. As one who denied and persecuted the high gods, he was to be sacrificed the very next day upon the blood-stone in the grove. It was the first time a human being had been offered there.

Young Helga asked to be allowed to sprinkle the images of the gods and the people with his blood. She sharpened her bright knife, and when one of the great savage dogs, of which there were plenty about the stronghold, ran across her feet, she stabbed it in the side. "That is to try it!" she said. The Viking's wife looked sorrowfully at the wild, malicious girl, and when night came and her daughter's beauty changed places in body and soul, she spoke to her with the heartfelt words of grief, out of a sorrowing soul.

The ugly toad with the troll's body stood before her, fixing her sad brown eyes upon her, listening and seeming to understand with a human mind.

"Never, even to my husband, have I spoken of the double suffering you bring me!" said the Viking's wife. "There is more pity for you in my heart than I knew myself! Great is a mother's love! But love has never entered your soul. Your heart is like a cold lump of mud! How did you ever come into my house?"

Then the pitiful creature trembled strangely, as though those words had touched an invisible bond between body and soul, and great tears welled in her eyes.

"Your hour of suffering will come one day!" said the Viking's wife. "And terrible it will be for me as well! Better if you had been left by the highway as a child, and the cold of night had lulled you to death!" And the Viking's wife wept bitter tears and went away, angry and sorrowful, behind the loose curtain of hide that hung over a beam and divided the room.

Alone in the corner sat the shrivelled toad. All was silent, but at short intervals a half-stifled sigh rose within her. It was as though, in pain, a life were being born in the depths of her heart. She took a step forward, listened, took another step, and now grasped with her clumsy hands the heavy bar drawn across the door. Gently she lifted it away, silently pulled out the peg set above the latch, and took the lighted lamp that stood in the outer chamber. It was as though a strong will gave her strength. She drew the iron pin from the barred trapdoor and crept down to the prisoner. He was asleep. She touched him with her cold, clammy hand, and when he awoke and saw the hideous figure, he shuddered as though at an evil apparition. She drew her knife, cut his bonds, and beckoned him to follow her.

He uttered holy names and made the sign of the cross, and when the figure remained unchanged, he spoke the words of Scripture: "Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble! Who are you? Why this outward form of a beast, and yet such deeds of mercy?"

The toad-shaped creature beckoned and led him behind concealing curtains, along a deserted passage and out to the stable. She pointed to a horse, and he swung himself onto it; but she too seated herself in front of him and clung to the animal's mane. The prisoner understood her, and at a swift trot they followed a path he could never have found, out onto the open heath.

He forgot her hideous shape; he felt the grace and mercy of the Lord working through this monstrous creature. He offered devout prayers and sang holy songs, and then she trembled. Was it the power of prayer and song working upon her, or the chill shudder of the morning soon to come? What was it she felt? She rose high in her seat, trying to stop the horse and leap down, but the Christian priest held her fast with all his strength and sang a psalm aloud, as though it could break the spell that held her in the hideous frog-shape. The horse raced on more wildly. The sky grew red, the first sunbeam pierced the cloud, and with that clear flood of light the change came over her. She was the young beauty with the demonic, evil soul. He held the loveliest young woman in his arms and was horrified. He sprang from the horse and stopped it, believing that he faced some new and deadly sorcery. But in the same instant young Helga was on the ground as well. Her short child's dress reached only to her knees. She tore the sharp knife from her belt and rushed at the astonished man.

"Let me get at you!" she cried. "Let me get at you, and I will drive the knife into you! You are as pale as hay! Thrall! Beardless wretch!" She pressed upon him; they struggled fiercely, but it was as though an invisible power gave strength to the Christian man. He held her fast, and the old oak close by came to his aid, seeming to bind her feet with its half-exposed roots, beneath which they had slipped. A spring bubbled nearby. He sprinkled her breast and face with its fresh water, commanded the unclean spirit to depart, and blessed her in the Christian manner. But the water of baptism has no power where the wellspring of faith does not also flow within.

And yet in this too he was the stronger. Indeed, there was more than a man's strength against the struggling evil power in what he did. It seemed to subdue her. She let her arms fall and gazed with astonished eyes and paling cheeks at this man, who seemed a mighty sorcerer, powerful in spells and secret arts. He was reciting dark runes, tracing mysterious signs in the air! She would not have blinked at a flashing axe or a sharp knife had he swung it before her eyes, but she did so when he traced the sign of the cross upon her forehead and breast. Now she sat like a tame bird, her head bowed upon her breast.

Then he spoke gently to her of the loving deed she had done for him that night, when she had come in the frog's hideous shape, loosed his bonds, and led him out to light and life. She too was bound, he said, bound more tightly than he had been; but she too should come to light and life, and through him. He would take her to Hedeby, to Saint Ansgarius; there, in the Christian town, the enchantment would be lifted. But he dared not carry her in front of him on the horse, even if she sat there willingly.

"You must sit behind me on the horse, not in front! Your enchanted beauty has a power that comes from evil. I fear it—and yet victory is mine in Christ!"

He knelt and prayed so devoutly, so fervently! It was as though the silent woodland were consecrated by his prayer into a holy church. The birds began to sing as though they belonged to the new congregation; the wild mint gave out its fragrance as though to take the place of ambergris and incense. Aloud he proclaimed the words of Scripture: "The dayspring from on high hath visited us, to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace!"

And he spoke of the longing of all creation. While he spoke, the horse that had carried them at such a headlong pace stood quietly tugging at the great blackberry brambles, so that the ripe, juicy berries fell upon little Helga's hand, offering themselves for her refreshment.

She patiently allowed herself to be lifted onto the horse's back and sat there like a sleepwalker, neither waking nor walking. The Christian man bound two branches together with a strip of bast to form a cross. He held it high in his hand, and so they rode through the forest, which grew denser, while the path sank deeper or vanished altogether. Blackthorn stood like a barrier across their way; they had to ride around it. The spring became not a running brook but a stagnant marsh; they had to ride around that too. There was strength and refreshment in the fresh forest air, and no less power in the gentle words that rang with faith and Christian love, with the heartfelt desire to lead the bewitched girl to light and life.

The raindrop, as they say, hollows the hardest stone; in time the waves of the sea round the jagged rocks torn from the cliffs. The dew of grace that had fallen upon little Helga hollowed what was hard and rounded what was sharp. It could not yet be seen, and she did not know it herself. What does the seed in the earth, refreshed by moisture and the warm sunbeam, know of the growth and blossom hidden within it?

As a mother's song steals imperceptibly into her child's mind, and the child babbles single words after her without understanding them, though later they come together in its thoughts and in time grow clearer, so here too the Word was at work, the Word that has the power to create.

They rode out of the forest, across the heath, and again through pathless woods, until towards evening they met robbers. "Where did you steal that lovely girl?" the men shouted. They stopped the horse and dragged both riders down, for they were many. The priest had no weapon but the knife he had taken from little Helga, and with it he struck about him. One of the robbers swung his axe, but the young Christian man sprang luckily aside, or he would have been struck. Instead the axe-blade sank deep into the horse's neck, the blood streamed out, and the animal fell to the ground. Then little Helga, as though awakened from her long, deep reverie, rushed over and threw herself upon the gasping beast. The Christian priest stood before her to shield and defend her, but one of the robbers swung his heavy iron hammer against his forehead, crushing it so that blood and brains spattered all around. He fell dead to the ground.

The robbers seized little Helga by her white arm. At that very moment the sun went down, the last sunbeam died, and she changed into a hideous toad. The whitish-green mouth spread over half her face, her arms grew thin and slimy, and a broad webbed hand opened like a fan. In horror the robbers let her go. She stood among them like a hideous beast, and with a frog's instinct she leapt higher than her own height and vanished into the thicket. Then the robbers understood that this was some evil trick of Loki's, or secret sorcery, and in terror they hurried away.

-------- The full moon had already risen, and soon it shed its bright light. Out of the bushes crept little Helga in the frog's pitiful shape. She stopped beside the body of the Christian priest and her slain horse and looked at them with eyes that seemed to weep. From the frog's head came a croak like a child bursting into tears. She flung herself first upon one, then upon the other, scooped water into her hand, made broader and more hollow by its webbing, and poured it over them. They were dead, and dead they would remain! She understood that. Soon wild beasts might come and devour their bodies. No, that must not happen! So she dug into the earth as deeply as she could. She would open a grave for them, but she had nothing to dig with except a hard branch and her two hands. The webbing stretched between her fingers tore, and the blood flowed. She realized that she could not accomplish the task. Then she took water and washed the dead man's face, covered it with fresh green leaves, and carried great branches over to lay upon him, shaking leaves into the gaps. Next she took the heaviest stones she could lift, laid them over the dead bodies, and stopped the openings with moss. Now she believed the burial mound was strong and secure. But during this heavy labour the night had passed. The sun broke forth—and little Helga stood in all her beauty, with bleeding hands and, for the first time, tears upon her blushing maiden cheeks.

In that transformation it was as though two natures struggled within her. She trembled and looked about as though waking from a frightening dream, then hurried to the slender beech and clung to it for support. Suddenly, in an instant, she climbed like a cat to the top of the tree and held fast. There she sat like a frightened squirrel, all that long day in the deep solitude of the forest, where everything is silent and dead, as people say! Dead—yes, a pair of butterflies fluttered round each other in play or combat; nearby stood several anthills, each with hundreds of busy little creatures swarming to and fro; countless gnats danced in the air, swarm upon swarm; hosts of buzzing flies, ladybirds, dragonflies, and other small winged creatures darted past; the earthworm crept out of the damp soil, and the moles thrust up their mounds. Otherwise all around was silent and dead—dead, as people say and understand it. No one noticed little Helga except the jays, which flew shrieking about the treetop where she sat. They hopped along the branches towards her with bold curiosity. A flash of her eye sent them flying away again, but they learned no more about her, nor she about herself.

As evening drew near and the sun began to sink, the transformation roused her to move again. She let herself slide down the tree, and as the last sunbeam died she stood there in the frog's shrunken shape, with the torn webbing on her hands. But her eyes now shone with a beauty they had scarcely possessed before, even in her lovely human form. The gentlest, most innocent maiden's eyes looked out from behind the frog's mask, bearing witness to a deep soul, a human heart. And those beautiful eyes broke into tears, the heavy tears that bring relief to the heart.

Beside the raised grave still lay the cross of branches bound together with bast, the last work of the man who was now dead and gone. Little Helga took it, and the thought came of itself: she planted it among the stones above him and the slain horse. Tears broke forth at the sorrow of remembrance, and in this tenderness of heart she traced the same sign in the earth all around the grave, making a graceful boundary about it. As she traced the sign of the cross with both hands, the webbing fell away like a torn glove. Then she washed herself in the spring, and as she gazed in wonder at her slender white hands, she made the sign of the cross once more in the air between herself and the dead man. Her lips trembled, her tongue moved, and the name she had heard most often spoken and sung during the ride through the forest sounded clearly from her mouth. She said it: "Jesus Christ!"

Then the toad-skin fell away, and she was the young beauty. But her head drooped wearily, her limbs needed rest, and she slept. Her sleep was brief. At midnight she was awakened. Before her stood the dead horse, radiant and full of life, light streaming from its eyes and its wounded neck. Beside it appeared the slain Christian priest, "more beautiful than Baldur!" the Viking's wife would have said, and yet he came as though amid flames.

There was a solemnity in his great, gentle eyes, a judgment of righteousness, a gaze so piercing that it seemed to shine into the hidden corners of the heart of the one being tried. Little Helga trembled beneath it, and her memory awoke with a power like that of Judgment Day. Every kindness done to her, every loving word spoken to her, seemed to come alive. She understood that love had sustained her through these days of trial, in which the offspring of soul and mire seethes and struggles. She recognized that she had only followed the promptings of her moods and had done nothing for herself. Everything had been given to her; everything seemed to have been guided. Lowly, humble, and ashamed, she bowed before him who must be able to read every fold of her heart. And in that moment she felt, like a flash of lightning, the purifying flame, the fire of the Holy Spirit.

"Daughter of the mire!" said the Christian priest. "From mire, from earth you have come; from earth you shall rise again! The sunbeam within you returns, conscious of its embodiment, to its source—the beam not from the orb of the sun, but the beam from God! No soul shall be lost, but long is the life of time, which is life's flight through eternity. I come from the land of the dead. You too shall one day journey through the deep valleys into the shining mountain country where grace and perfection dwell. I shall not take you to Hedeby for Christian baptism. First you must break the shield of water above the deep marsh-bed and draw up the living root of your life and your cradle. You must do your work before the consecration may come."

And he lifted her onto the horse and handed her a golden censer like the one she had seen before in the Viking stronghold. A fragrance rose from it, so sweet and strong. The open wound in the dead man's forehead shone like a radiant diadem. He took the cross from the grave and raised it high in the air, and now they sped away through the sky, over the murmuring forest, over the mounds where warriors lay buried, seated upon their slain steeds. The mighty figures rose, rode out, and halted on the summits of the mounds. In the moonlight the broad golden circlets with their golden bosses shone upon their brows, and their cloaks streamed in the wind. The lindworm brooding over its treasure raised its head and watched them pass. The dwarf-folk peeped out from mounds and ploughed furrows, swarming with red, blue, and green lights, a throng like the sparks in the ashes of burnt paper.

Over forest and heath, rivers and marshes they flew, up towards the Wild Moor; above it they hovered in great circles. The Christian priest raised the cross on high; it shone like gold, and from his lips came the chant of the Mass. Little Helga sang with him, as a child sings along with its mother; she swung the censer, and a fragrance as of the altar rose from it, so strong, so miraculous in its power, that the rushes and reeds of the moor burst into flower. Every shoot sprang up from the depths; all that had life rose towards them, and a profusion of water lilies spread out like a carpet woven with flowers. Upon it lay a sleeping woman, young and beautiful. Little Helga thought she saw herself, her own reflection in the still water; but it was her mother she saw, the Marsh King's wife, the princess from the waters of the Nile.

The dead Christian priest bade them lift the sleeper onto the horse, but it sank beneath the burden, as though its body were no more than a winding sheet blowing in the wind. The sign of the cross, however, gave strength to the airy phantom, and all three rode to firm ground.

Then the cock crowed in the Viking's castle, and the visions dissolved into mist that swept away upon the wind; but mother and daughter stood face to face. "Is it myself I see in the deep water?" said the mother. "Is it myself I see in the polished shield?" cried the daughter, and they drew close, breast to breast, clasped in each other's arms. The mother's heart beat hardest, and she understood.

"My child! Flower of my own heart! My lotus from the deep waters!" And she embraced her child and wept; her tears were a new baptism of life and love for little Helga.

"I came here in swan plumage and cast it off!" said her mother. "I sank through the heaving waters, deep into the mire of the moor, which closed like a wall around me; but soon I felt a fresher current. A power drew me deeper, ever deeper; I felt sleep weigh upon my eyelids. I fell asleep, I dreamed—I seemed to be lying once more in the pyramid in Egypt, yet before me still stood the swaying alder stump that had frightened me on the surface of the moor. I studied the cracks in its bark, and they shone out in colours and became hieroglyphs. It was a mummy's casing I was looking at; it split open, and out stepped the thousand-year-old king, the mummy figure, black as pitch, glossy black as a forest slug or the rich black mire. Whether he was the Marsh King or the mummy of the pyramid, I did not know. He flung his arms about me, and I felt as though I must die. I knew life again only when a warmth came upon my breast, and there a little bird beat its wings, twittered and sang. It flew from my breast high towards the dark, heavy roof, but a long green ribbon still bound it to me. I heard and understood its yearning notes: Freedom! Sunshine! To my father! Then I thought of my father in the sunlit land of home, my life, my love! And I loosened the ribbon and let it flutter away—home to its father. Since that moment I have not dreamed; I slept a sleep so deep and long, until, this very hour, music and fragrance lifted and freed me!"

The green ribbon from the mother's heart to the bird's wing—where was it fluttering now, where had it been cast aside? Only the stork had seen it; the ribbon was the green stem, the bow the shining flower, cradle of the child who had now grown so beautiful and rested once more upon her mother's heart.

And while they stood clasped in each other's arms, Father Stork flew in circles around them, then sped to his nest, fetched the feather cloaks hidden there for so many years, and threw one to each of them. The plumage closed about them, and they rose from the earth as two white swans.

"Now let us talk!" said Father Stork. "Now we understand each other's language, though one bird's beak may be cut differently from another's! It is as fortunate as anything could be that you should come tonight; tomorrow we should have been off, Mother, the young ones and I! We are flying south! Yes, just look at me! I am an old friend from the land of the Nile, and so is Mother; she has it more in her heart than in her bill. She always believed the princess would come to no harm; the young ones and I brought the swan plumage up here! Oh, how glad I am! And what luck that I am still here; at daybreak we set off! A great company of storks! We shall fly ahead; just follow us, and you cannot lose your way. The young ones and I will keep an eye on you too!"

"And the lotus flower I was to bring!" said the Egyptian princess. "It is flying beside me in swan plumage! I have brought the flower of my heart; so it has all come to pass. Home, home!"

But Helga said she could not leave the land of Denmark before seeing her foster mother once more, the loving Viking's wife. Every lovely memory, every loving word, every tear her foster mother had shed rose in Helga's mind, and at that moment it almost seemed that she loved this mother best.

"Yes, we must go to the Viking's home!" said Father Stork. "Mother and the young ones are waiting there! How they will roll their eyes and set their bills a-clattering! Mother does not say so much, though! Short and to the point she is, and means even more kindly than she says! I shall give a clatter at once, so they can hear us coming!"

And Father Stork clattered his bill, and he and the swans flew to the Viking's castle. Everyone within still lay fast asleep; it had been late in the night before the Viking's wife had found any rest. She had lain in dread for little Helga, who had now been missing with the Christian priest for three whole days and nights. She must have helped him escape; it was her horse that was missing from the stable. By what power had all this been brought about? The Viking's wife thought of the miracles said to have been worked by the White Christ and by those who believed in him and followed him. Her shifting thoughts took shape in the life of dreams. It seemed to her that she was still sitting awake and thoughtful upon her bed, while darkness brooded outside. The storm came; she heard the roar of the sea in the west and east, from the North Sea and the waters of the Kattegat. The monstrous serpent that encircled the earth in the ocean's depths shook in convulsions. The night of the gods was approaching—Ragnarok, as the heathens called the final hour, when everything must perish, even the mighty gods. The Gjallarhorn sounded, and across the rainbow rode the gods, clad in steel, to fight the last battle. Before them flew the winged shield-maidens, and the figures of the dead warriors brought up the rear. All the air about them shone with flashes of the northern lights, but darkness prevailed. It was a dreadful hour.

And on the floor beside the frightened Viking's wife sat little Helga in the hideous shape of a frog. She too trembled and pressed close to her foster mother, who took her on her lap and held her fast in love, however loathsome her toad's skin might seem. The air rang with blows of swords and clubs and the hiss of arrows, as though a raging hailstorm were sweeping over them. The hour had come when earth and heaven would burst apart, the stars fall, and everything perish in Surtur's fire; but a new earth and heaven, she knew, would come, corn would wave where the sea now rolled over the barren sand, the unnameable God would reign, and to him would ascend Baldur, gentle and loving, freed from the realm of the dead. He came—the Viking's wife saw him, she knew his face—it was the captive Christian priest. "White Christ!" she cried aloud, and as she spoke the name she pressed a kiss upon the forehead of her hideous frog-child. Then the toad's skin fell away, and little Helga stood there in all her beauty, gentler than ever before, her eyes radiant. She kissed her foster mother's hands and blessed her for all the care and love she had bestowed upon her in the days of hardship and trial. She thanked her for the thoughts she had planted and awakened within her, thanked her for speaking the name, which she repeated: White Christ! And little Helga rose like a mighty swan; her wings spread wide, with a rushing sound like a flock of migrating birds taking flight.

The Viking's wife awoke at this, and outside the same strong beating of wings could still be heard. It was the time, she knew, for the storks to leave; it was they she heard. She would see them once more before they went and bid them farewell! She rose and went out onto the gallery, and there she saw stork after stork upon the ridge of the outbuilding. All around the courtyard, above the tall trees, flocks wheeled in great circles; but directly before her, on the rim of the well where little Helga had so often sat and frightened her with her wildness, two swans now sat looking at her with wise eyes. She remembered her dream; it still filled her whole being, as vividly as reality. She thought of little Helga in the shape of a swan, thought of the Christian priest, and all at once felt a wondrous gladness in her heart.

The swans beat their wings and bent their necks, as though they too wished to offer their greeting; and the Viking's wife stretched out her arms towards them as if she understood, smiling through her tears and many thoughts.

Then, with a clamour of wings and clattering bills, all the storks rose for their journey south. "We shall not wait for the swans!" said Mother Stork. "If they wish to come, they must follow! We cannot stay here until the plovers leave! There is something lovely about travelling as a family like this, not like the chaffinches and ruffs, with the males flying by themselves and the females by themselves. It is not really decent! And what sort of wingbeat is that the swans have?"

"Everyone flies in their own fashion!" said Father Stork. "The swans in a slanting line, the cranes in a triangle, and the plovers in a snaking line!" "Do not mention snakes while we are flying up here!" said Mother Stork. "It only gives the young ones cravings that cannot be satisfied!"

-------- "Are those the high mountains down there that I have heard about?" asked Helga in her swan plumage. "Those are thunderclouds drifting beneath us!" said her mother. "Then what are those white clouds rising so high?" asked Helga.

"Those are the mountains of everlasting snow you see!" said her mother, and they flew over the Alps, down towards the blue Mediterranean. -------- "The land of Africa! The shores of Egypt!" cried the daughter of the Nile joyfully in her swan's shape, as from high in the air she caught sight of her homeland, a pale yellow-white, undulating strip.

The birds saw it too and hastened their flight. "I can smell Nile mud and wet frogs!" said Mother Stork. "It makes me tingle all over! Yes, now you shall have a taste, and you shall see marabous, ibises and cranes! They all belong to the family, but they are nowhere near as handsome as we are. They put on airs, especially the ibis; he has been quite spoiled by the Egyptians. They make a mummy of him and stuff him with spices. I would rather be stuffed with live frogs, and so would you, and so you shall be! Better something in your belly while you are alive than to be an ornament when you are dead! That is my opinion, and it is always the right one!"

"The storks have come!" they said in the wealthy house beside the Nile, where, in the open hall, upon soft * cushions covered with leopard skins, the royal lord lay stretched out, neither living nor dead, hoping for the lotus flower from the deep moor in the north. Kinsfolk and servants stood around him.

And into the hall flew two magnificent white swans; they had come with the storks. They cast off their dazzling plumage, and there stood two beautiful women, as alike as two dewdrops. They bent over the pale, withered old man and tossed back their long hair; and as little Helga leaned over her grandfather, his cheeks flushed, his eyes shone, and life returned to his stiffened limbs. The old man rose, hale and young again; his daughter and granddaughter held him in their arms, as though greeting him joyfully in the morning after a long, troubled dream.

-------- And there was joy throughout the household, and in the storks' nest too, though there it was chiefly over the good food, the swarming multitude of frogs. While the learned men hastily jotted down a rough account of the two princesses and the flower of healing—a great event and blessing for the house and the land—the parent storks told it in their own way to their family, but only after they had all eaten their fill; otherwise they would have had better things to do than listen to stories.

"Now you will surely become somebody!" whispered Mother Stork. "Nothing else would be reasonable!" "Oh, what should I become?" said Father Stork. "And what have I done? Nothing!"

"You have done more than all the others! Without you and the young ones, the two princesses would never have seen Egypt again or made the old man well. You will become somebody! You are sure to be given a doctor's degree, and afterwards our young ones will be born with it, and their young ones too, for generations to come! You already look like an Egyptian doctor—in my eyes!"

The learned men and sages expounded the underlying idea, as they called it, that ran through the whole event: "Love brings forth life!" They explained this in various ways: "The warm sunbeam was the princess of Egypt; she descended to the Marsh King, and from their meeting the flower sprang forth—"

"I cannot quite repeat the words!" said Father Stork, who had listened from the roof and was to tell them about it in the nest. "What they said was so involved, so clever, that they were given rank and presents at once. Even the chief cook received a great decoration—that was probably for the soup!"

"And what did you receive?" asked Mother Stork. "Surely they must not forget the most important one, and that is you! The learned men have only clattered their bills over the whole affair! But your turn will come, I suppose!"

Late at night, when the peace of sleep rested over the * wealthy, happy house, one person was still awake. It was not Father Stork, though he stood on one leg in the nest, sleeping on sentry duty; no, little Helga was awake, leaning over the balcony and looking into the clear sky at the great shining stars, larger and purer in their brilliance than she had seen them in the north, and yet the same stars. She thought of the Viking's wife beside the Wild Moor, of her foster mother's gentle eyes and the tears she had shed over the poor frog-child who now stood amid splendour and starlight beside the waters of the Nile, in the lovely spring air. She thought of the love in that heathen woman's breast, the love she had shown a pitiful creature who in human shape was a wicked beast, and in an animal's shape was loathsome to see and touch. She looked at the shining stars and remembered the radiance upon the dead man's brow as they flew over forest and moor. Music sounded in her memory, words she had heard spoken as they rode along and she sat spellbound, words of the great source of love, the highest love, embracing every generation.

Yes, what had not been given, gained, attained! By night and day little Helga's thoughts encompassed the sum of all her happiness, and before it she stood like a child who turns hastily from the giver to the gifts, all the lovely gifts. She seemed absorbed in the ever-growing bliss that might come, that would come; had she not been borne through miracles to ever greater joy and happiness? One day she lost herself so utterly in these thoughts that she no longer thought of the Giver. It was the boldness of youthful spirits making its daring leap! Her eyes shone at the thought, but in an instant she was roused from it by a loud commotion in the courtyard below. There she saw two enormous ostriches running swiftly round in narrow circles. Never before had she seen this creature, so great a bird, so clumsy and heavy. Its wings looked as though they had been clipped, and the bird itself as though some injury had been done to it. She asked what had happened to it, and for the first time heard the legend the Egyptians tell of the ostrich.

Once its kind had been beautiful, its wings great and strong. Then one evening the mighty birds of the forest said to it, "Brother! Shall we fly to the river tomorrow and drink, God willing?" And the ostrich answered, "I am willing!" At daybreak they flew off, first high up towards the sun, the eye of God, higher and higher, the ostrich far ahead of all the rest. It flew in pride towards the light; it trusted in its own strength and not in the Giver; it did not say, "God willing!" Then the angel of punishment drew the veil from the blazing orb, and in that instant the bird's wings were burned, and it sank wretchedly to earth. Neither it nor its kind can ever rise again; it flees in terror, rushing in circles within a narrow space. It is a reminder to us human beings, in all our thoughts and in every deed, to say, "God willing!"

And Helga bowed her head thoughtfully and watched the rushing ostrich, saw its terror, saw its foolish delight at the sight of its own great shadow on the white, sunlit wall. And solemn reflection took deep root in her heart and mind. A life so rich, advancing into happiness, had been given, had been gained—what would happen, what was still to come? The best: "God willing!"

-------- In the early spring, when the storks were setting off north again, little Helga took her gold bracelet, scratched her name upon it, beckoned to Father Stork, and placed the golden ring about his neck. She asked him to take it to the Viking's wife, who would understand from it that her foster daughter was alive and happy, and remembered her.

"It is heavy to carry!" thought the stork when it was put about his neck. "But gold and honour are not to be thrown away on the highway! They will find up there that the stork brings good fortune!"

"You lay gold, and I lay eggs!" said Mother Stork. "But you lay only once, while I do it every year! And neither of us gets any appreciation! It is hurtful!"

"We have the satisfaction of knowing, Mother!" said Father Stork. "You cannot hang that on the outside!" said Mother Stork. "It gives us neither a fair wind nor a meal!"

And so they flew away. The little nightingale singing in the tamarind bush would soon be travelling north as well; up there beside the Wild Moor, little Helga had often heard it. She wished to send a message with it too. She had known the language of birds since she flew in swan plumage, and had often spoken it since with storks and swallows; the nightingale would understand her. She asked it to fly to the beech forest on the Jutland peninsula, where the grave had been raised of stones and branches, and begged it to ask all the little birds there to watch over the grave and sing a song, and then another.

And the nightingale flew—and time flew by! -------- The eagle stood upon the pyramid and in the autumn saw a splendid procession of richly laden camels and armed men in sumptuous clothes upon snorting Arabian horses, gleaming white as silver, with red, quivering nostrils and long, thick manes hanging down about their slender legs. Rich guests, a royal prince from the land of Arabia, handsome as a prince ought to be, entered the stately house where the storks' nest now stood empty. Its inhabitants were in a northern land, but would soon return. And they came on the very day when joy and merriment were at their height. There were wedding festivities, and little Helga was the bride, dressed in silk and jewels; the bridegroom was the young prince from the land of Arabia. They sat at the head of the table between her mother and grandfather.

But she did not look at the bridegroom's brown, manly cheek, where his black beard curled; she did not look at his ardent dark eyes fixed upon her. She looked out and up at the twinkling, sparkling star that shone down from heaven.

Then the air outside rustled with powerful wingbeats; the storks had returned. And the old stork pair, tired as they were from the journey and much as they needed rest, flew down at once to the railing of the veranda; they knew what feast was being held. Already at the border of the country they had heard that little Helga had had them painted on the wall, for they too belonged to her story.

"That was a very pretty thought!" said Father Stork. "It is precious little!" said Mother Stork. "She could hardly have done less!" And when Helga saw them, she rose and went out onto the veranda to stroke their backs. The old stork pair bowed their necks, and the youngest storks watched and felt honoured.

And Helga looked up at the shining star, which glowed ever more brightly; and between it and her a figure moved, purer even than the air and thus made visible. It floated very close to her; it was the dead Christian priest, come too to her celebration, come from the kingdom of heaven. "The radiance and glory there surpass all that earth knows!" he said.

And little Helga begged, so gently, so fervently as she had never begged before, that she might be allowed, for just one minute, to look within, to cast a single glance into the kingdom of heaven, to the Father.

And he lifted her into radiance and glory, into a stream of music and thought; it was not only around her that light shone and music sounded, but within her too. Words cannot tell it.

"Now we must return; you are missed!" he said. "Only one more glimpse!" she begged. "Just one brief minute!" "We must go back to earth; all the guests are leaving!"

"Only one glimpse! The last—!" And little Helga stood once more upon the veranda—but all the torches outside had been extinguished, all the lights in the wedding hall were gone, the storks gone, no guests to be seen, no bridegroom; everything seemed to have blown away in three brief minutes.

Then Helga felt afraid. She went through the great empty hall into the next chamber, where unfamiliar soldiers lay asleep. She opened the side door that led to her room, and where she thought she would find herself within it, she stood outside in the garden. It had not been like this before; the sky shone reddish, dawn was approaching.

Only three minutes in heaven, and a whole night on earth had passed! Then she saw the storks; she called to them, speaking their language, and Father Stork turned his head, listened, and came towards her.

"You speak our language!" he said. "What do you want? Why have you come here, you strange woman?" "But it is I! It is Helga! Do you not know me? Three minutes ago we were talking together over there on the veranda."

"You are mistaken!" said the stork. "You have dreamed it all!" "No, no!" she said, and reminded him of the Viking's castle and the Wild Moor, of the journey here!

Then Father Stork blinked his eyes. "Why, that is an old story I have heard from my great-great-grandmother's time! Yes, there certainly was such a princess here in Egypt, from the land of Denmark, but she vanished on her wedding night many hundreds of years ago and never returned! You can read it for yourself here on the monument in the garden; swans and storks are carved upon it, and at the top you yourself stand in white marble."

So it was. Little Helga saw it, understood it, and sank to her knees. The sun shone forth, and just as in former days its rays had made the frog's skin fall away and the beautiful figure appear, so now, in the baptism of light, a form of beauty rose, clearer, purer than the air, a ray of light—to the Father.

Her body crumbled to dust: where she had stood lay a withered lotus flower. -------- "Well, that is a new ending to the story!" said Father Stork. "I certainly had not expected that! But I liked it very well!"

"I wonder what the young ones will say to it?" asked Mother Stork. "Yes, that is certainly the most important thing!" said Father Stork.