The Yellow Fairy Book | Page 6

Andrew Lang
will show you the way out of the wood.'
The King in his anguish of mind consented, and the old woman led him
to her little house where her daughter was sitting by the fire. She
received the King as if she were expecting him, and he saw that she
was certainly very beautiful; but she did not please him, and he could
not look at her without a secret feeling of horror. As soon as he had
lifted the maiden on to his horse the old woman showed him the way,
and the King reached his palace, where the wedding was celebrated.
The King had already been married once, and had by his first wife
seven children, six boys and one girl, whom he loved more than
anything in the world. And now, because he was afraid that their
stepmother might not treat them well and might do them harm, he put
them in a lonely castle that stood in the middle of a wood. It lay so
hidden, and the way to it was so hard to find, that he himself could not
have found it out had not a wise-woman given him a reel of thread
which possessed a marvellous property: when he threw it before him it
unwound itself and showed him the way. But the King went so often to
his dear children that the Queen was offended at his absence. She grew
curious, and wanted to know what he had to do quite alone in the wood.
She gave his servants a great deal of money, and they betrayed the
secret to her, and also told her of the reel which alone could point out
the way. She had no rest now till she had found out where the King
guarded the reel, and then she made some little white shirts, and, as she

had learnt from her witch-mother, sewed an enchantment in each of
them.
And when the King had ridden off she took the little shirts and went
into the wood, and the reel showed her the way. The children, who saw
someone coming in the distance, thought it was their dear father
coming to them, and sprang to meet him very joyfully. Then she threw
over each one a little shirt, which when it had touched their bodies
changed them into swans, and they flew away over the forest. The
Queen went home quite satisfied, and thought she had got rid of her
step-children; but the girl had not run to meet her with her brothers, and
she knew nothing of her.
The next day the King came to visit his children, but he found no one
but the girl.
'Where are your brothers?' asked the King.
'Alas! dear father,' she answered, 'they have gone away and left me all
alone.' And she told him that looking out of her little window she had
seen her brothers flying over the wood in the shape of swans, and she
showed him the feathers which they had let fall in the yard, and which
she had collected. The King mourned, but he did not think that the
Queen had done the wicked deed, and as he was afraid the maiden
would also be taken from him, he wanted to take her with him. But she
was afraid of the stepmother, and begged the King to let her stay just
one night more in the castle in the wood. The poor maiden thought, 'My
home is no longer here; I will go and seek my brothers.' And when
night came she fled away into the forest. She ran all through the night
and the next day, till she could go no farther for weariness. Then she
saw a little hut, went in, and found a room with six little beds. She was
afraid to lie down on one, so she crept under one of them, lay on the
hard floor, and was going to spend the night there. But when the sun
had set she heard a noise, and saw six swans flying in at the window.
They stood on the floor and blew at one another, and blew all their
feathers off, and their swan-skin came off like a shirt. Then the maiden
recognised her brothers, and overjoyed she crept out from under the
bed. Her brothers were not less delighted than she to see their little

sister again, but their joy did not last long.
'You cannot stay here,' they said to her. 'This is a den of robbers; if they
were to come here and find you they would kill you.'
'Could you not protect me?' asked the little sister.
'No,' they answered, 'for we can only lay aside our swan skins for a
quarter of an hour every evening. For this time
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