The face of the king grew dark and troubled. Elisa noticed it, though she did not know its cause; and this new sorrow was added to her fear for her brothers’ fate. On her royal velvet dress fell salt tears, and they looked like diamonds on the purple material, making it even more splendid. And all the women of the court wished that they were queens and could wear such magnificent clothes.
Soon Elisa’s work would be over. She had to knit only one more shirt; but she had no more nettles from which to twine thread. Once more, for the last time, she would have to go to the churchyard. She shook with fear when she thought of walking alone past the horrible lamias, but she gathered courage when she thought of her brothers and her own faith in God.
Elisa went; and secretly the king and the archbishop followed her. They saw her disappear through the gates of the churchyard. The same terrifying lamias were there, and they were sitting near the place where the nettles grew. The king saw her walk toward them, and he turned away as his heart filled with repulsion, for he thought that Elisa, his queen—who that very night had rested in his arms—had come to seek the company of these monsters.
“Let the people judge her,” said he. And the people judged her guilty and condemned her to the stake.
She was taken from the great halls of the castle and thrown into a dungeon, where the wind whistled through the grating that barred the window. Instead of a bed with silken sheets and velvet pillows, they gave her the nettles she had picked as a pillow and the shirts she had knitted as a cover. They could have given her no greater gift. She prayed to God and started work on the last of the shirts. Outside in the streets, the urchins sang songs that mocked and scorned her, while no one said a word of comfort to her.
Just before sunset, she heard the sound of swan’s wings beating before her window. It was her youngest brother who had found her. She wept for happiness, even though she knew that this might be the last night of her life. Her work was almost done and her brothers were near her.
The archbishop had promised the king that he would be with Elisa during the last hours of her life. But when he came, she shook her head and pointed toward the door, to tell him to go. Her work must be finished that night or all her suffering, all her tears, all her pain would be in vain. The archbishop spoke some unkind words to her and left.
Poor Elisa, who knew that she was innocent but could not say a word to prove it, set to work knitting the last shirt. Mice ran across the floor and fetched the nettles for her; they wanted to help. And the thrush sang outside the iron bars of the window, as gaily as it could, so that she would not lose her courage.
One hour before sunrise, her brothers came to the castle and demanded to see the king. But they were refused, for it was still night and the guards did not dare wake the king. Elisa’s brothers begged and threatened; they made so much noise that the captain of the guard came and, finally, the king himself. But at that moment the sun rose; the brothers were gone but high above the royal castle flew eleven white swans.
A stream of people rushed through the gates of the city. Everyone wanted to see the witch being burned. An old worn-out mare drew the cart in which Elisa sat. She was clad in sackcloth; her hair hung loose and framed her beautiful face, which was deadly pale. Her lips moved; she was mumbling a prayer while she knitted the last shirt. The other ten lay at her feet. Even on the way to her death she did not cease working. The mob that lined the road jeered and mocked her.
“Look at the witch, she is mumbling her spells!” they screamed. “See what she has in her hands! It is no hymnbook; it is witchcraft! Get it away from her and tear it into a thousand pieces!”
And the rabble tried to stop the cart and tear Elisa’s knitting out of her hands. But at that moment eleven white swans flew down and perched on the railing of the cart; they beat the air with their strong wings. The people drew back in fear.
“It is a sign from heaven that she is innocent,” some of them whispered; but not one of them dared say it aloud.
The executioner took her hand to lead her to the stake, but she freed herself from him, grabbed the eleven shirts, and cast them over the swans. There stood eleven princes, handsome and fair. But the youngest of them had a swan’s wing instead of an arm, for Elisa had not been able to finish one of the sleeves of the last shirt.
“Now I dare speak!” she cried. “I am innocent!”
The people, knowing that a miracle had taken place, kneeled down before her as they would have for a saint. But Elisa, worn out by fear, worry, and pain, fainted lifelessly into the arms of one of her brothers.
“Yes, she is innocent!” cried the oldest brother; and he addressed himself to the king and told of all that had happened to himself, his brothers, and their sister Elisa. While he spoke a fragrance of millions of roses spread from the wood that had been piled high around the stake. Every stick, every log had taken root and set forth vines. They were a hedge of the loveliest red roses, and on the very top bloomed a single white rose. It shone like a star. The king plucked it and placed it on Elisa’s breast. She woke; happiness and peace were within her.
The church bells in the city started to peal, though no bell ringers pulled their ropes, and great flocks of birds flew in the sky. No one has ever seen a gayer procession than the one that now made its way to the royal castle.
14
The Garden of Eden
Once there lived a prince who had a library far greater than anyone else has ever had, either before him or since. All his books were very beautiful; and in them he could read about and see portrayed in pictures, everything that had ever happened in the whole world. There was no country, no people whom he could not learn about; but where the garden of Eden lay was not mentioned in any of his books. This made the prince very sad, for it was paradise that interested him most.
His grandmother had told him, when he was still a little boy just starting school, that in the garden of Eden all the flowers were cakes. On each of them was written, in the finest of sugar: history, geography, addition, subtraction, or the multiplication tables; and all children had to do was to eat the right cakes and they knew their lessons at once. The more cakes they ate, the better educated they became. Then, he had believed his grandmother’s story; but as he grew up and became wiser, he understood that the beauty of paradise was far greater and more difficult to conceive.
“Oh, why did Eve pluck the apple and why did Adam eat the forbidden fruit? If I had been Adam, man would never have fallen and sin would not have conquered the world.” This he had said to his grandmother when he was a little boy. Now, at seventeen, he felt no differently; and thoughts about the garden of Eden still filled his mind.
His favorite diversion was to take solitary walks in the woods. One day when he had ventured farther than usual a storm overtook him. Though it was not yet evening, the day grew as dark as night and the rain came down in torrents. Soon he lost his way. He slipped in the wet grass and stumbled over the rocks. The poor prince was wet to the skin. Exhausted, he climbed up the side of the cliff, pressing his body against the water-drenched moss. He was about to give up when he heard a strange whistling noise near him; then he came upon a cavern in the cliff wall. Inside the cave was a fire so great that a whole deer could be roasted over it; and that was exactly what was being done. A woman who was so big and strong that she looked like a man, who had put on skirts, was turning a spit on which was a buck, antlers and all.
She put another log on the fire; then she turned and called to the prince, “Come in! Sit down by the fire and dry your clothes.”
“It’s drafty in here,” the prince said. He was shivering as he sat down on the floor near the fire.
“It’s going to be a lot draftier when my sons come home,” said the woman. “You are in the cave of the winds. The four winds of the world are my sons, do you understand?”
“Where are they now?” asked the prince, who had understood her well enough.
“If a question is stupid, how can one give a clever answer?” gr
umbled the woman. “My sons are out on their own, playing ball with the clouds, somewhere up there.” She pointed upward and toward the entrance to the cave.
“I see,” nodded the prince. “You speak more roughly than the women I am used to talking to.”
“Well, they are not mothers of sons like mine.” The woman grinned. “I have to be tough to keep my sons in tow. But I can take care of them, however stiff-necked they are. See those four leather bags hanging on the wall? They are just as afraid of them as you were of the switch in the corner. I am stronger than they are, and if they don’t behave, then I pick any one of them up and put him in a bag, and there he can stay until I let him out again. There is one of them coming now.”
It was the north wind. He was clad in bearskin with a sealskin cap pulled down over his ears. He brought hail and snow in with him; and icicles were hanging from his beard.
“You’d better not go near the fire just yet,” said the prince, “or you will get frostbite on your hands and your face.”
“Frostbite!” laughed the north wind as loud as he could. “Why, frost and coldness are what I love. How has such a little weakling as you found your way to the cave of the winds?”
“He is my guest,” said the old woman, “and if you are not satisfied with that explanation, then I will put you in your bag. You know that I mean what I say.”
That quieted the north wind down, and he began to tell about where he had been and what he had seen during the month that he had been away.
“I have just come from the Arctic Ocean,” he began. “I have been visiting the Barents Sea with Russian whalers. I sat sleeping on their tiller when they rounded the North Cape. Fulmars flew around my legs. They are strange birds. They flap their wings once or twice and then hold them out straight, gliding along at a good speed.”
“Don’t be so long-winded,” interrupted his mother. “What was it like on the Barents Sea?”
“Oh, it was beautiful. Flat as a dance floor. The snow was melting and the moss was green. Skeletons of walrus and polar bears lay among the sharp stones. They looked like the limbs of giants and were covered with green mold. One would think that the sun had never shone on them. I blew the fog away so that I could see a little better. Someone had built a shed from the wreckage of stranded ships, with walrus skin stretched over it; it had turned strange green and red colors. A polar bear sat on the roof and growled. I went down to the beach and had a look at the birds’ nests there. They were filled with little naked offspring who were screaming with their bills open. I blew down into them; that taught them to keep their mouths shut. Down at the water’s edge lay the walruses, looking like giant maggots with pigs’ heads and teeth more than a yard long.”
“You describe it well,” admitted his mother. “My mouth waters, hearing about it.”
“The Russians began to hunt the walruses. They thrust their harpoons into the animals, and the blood spouted like geysers high up in the air and spattered the white ice red. It made me think of playing a little game myself. I blew, and brought my own ships, the great icebergs, down to squeeze their boats. You should have heard them whimper and whine; but I whistled higher than they did. I held their ships in my vise of ice; they got so frightened that they started to unload the dead walruses and everything else they had aboard onto the ice. Then I sent them a snowstorm and let them drift south, for a taste of salt water. They will never return to the Barents Sea.”
“Then you have done evil,” said his mother.
“What good I do, I will let others tell about,” said the north wind and grinned. “But there is my brother, the west wind. I like him better than the others, there is a smell of the salt sea about him and he brings some blessed coldness with him.”
“Is that the gentle zephyr?” asked the prince.
“It is the zephyr, all right,” said the old woman, “but he is not so gentle any more. When he was young he was a sweet-looking boy, but that is all gone now.”
The west wind looked like a savage. He wore a helmet on his head. In his hand he held a big club that he had cut from a tree in one of the great mahogany forests of America.
“Where are you coming from?” asked his mother.
“From the great primeval forest,” he answered, “where thorny liana stretches itself from tree to tree, where the water snake lives and man has never set foot.”
“And what did you do there?”
“I looked at the deep river that fell from the cliffs down into the valley, sounding like thunder, and made a spray great enough to bear a rainbow. I saw a buffalo swim in the river; the currents caught it and carried it, among a flock of ducks, down toward the waterfall. When they came to the rapids, the ducks flew up; but the buffalo couldn’t fly, it had to follow the water down the turbulent falls. Oh, I liked that sight so much that I blew a storm great enough to fell trees that have stood a thousand years and break them into kindling.”
“Is that all you have done?” asked the old woman.
“I have turned somersaults on the savannah, patted wild horses, and blown down a coconut or two. I have a couple of stories I could tell; but it is best not to tell everything one knows. That you know well enough, old thing.” He kissed his mother so that she almost fell over backward. Oh, he was a wild boy!
The south wind arrived; he wore a turban and a Bedouin’s cape. “It’s cold in here,” he said, and threw more wood on the fire. “You can tell that the north wind came home first.”
“It is so hot in here that you could fry polar bears,” grumbled the north wind.
“You are a polar bear yourself,” retorted the south wind angrily.
“Do you want to be put in the bag?” asked the old woman, and sounded as if she meant it. “Sit down, and tell us about the places you have been.”
“In Africa, Mother,” began the south wind, crestfallen. “I have been hunting lions with the Hottentots in the land of the Kaffirs; the great plains were olive green; here the antelopes danced, and I ran races with the ostriches, and won every time. I visited the desert, its yellow sand looked like the ocean’s floor. There I met a caravan; they had just slaughtered the last of their camels, to get a little to drink. The sun burned down upon them from above, and the hot sand fried them. The great borderless desert stretched all around them. Then I played with the fine dry sand, I whirled it up in pillars, toward the sky. Oh, that was a dance. You should have seen the face of the merchant; he pulled his caftan up over his head to protect himself and then threw himself down in front of me, as if I were Allah, his God. I buried them all in a pyramid of sand. Next time I come I shall blow it away and let their bones be bleached by the sun, so that other travelers can see that which is hard to believe in the loneliness of the desert: the fact that other men have been there before them.”
“You have only been evil,” scolded his mother; “into the bag you go.” She grabbed the south wind around his waist, bent him in half, and stuffed him into one of the leather bags. But the south wind wouldn’t keep still and the bag jumped all over the floor; then his mother took it and, using it as a pillow, she sat down upon the bag and he had to lie quietly.
“You have got lively sons,” said the prince.
“They are plucky enough; but I can manage them,” answered the mother. “Here comes my fourth son.”
It was the east wind; he was dressed as a Chinese.
“Oh, that is where you have been,” said the mother, and nodded. “I thought you had been in the garden of Eden.”
“No, that is where I fly tomorrow,” replied the east wind. “Tomorrow it is exactly a hundred years since I was there last. Now I am coming from China. I have danced around the porcelain tower so swiftly that all the little bells rang. Down in the streets the state officials were getting a beating. I didn’t count how many bamboo canes were worn out on their backs. All the officers from the first to the ninth grades were being punished. Every time they were hit, they screamed: ‘Thank you, thank you, our father protector!’ But they didn’t
mean a word of it, and I rang the bells of the tower, and sang: ‘Tsing, tsang, tsu!’ ”
“You are getting a little too frisky,” laughed his mother. “I am glad you are visiting paradise tomorrow; it always improves your manners. Remember to drink from the spring of wisdom, and to bring a bottle full of the water back to your mother.”
“I certainly will,” said the east wind, “but why have you put my brother from the south in his bag? Let him out. I want him to tell me all about the bird phoenix. The princess in the garden of Eden asks to hear about that bird whenever I visit her. Please let him out, and I shall give you two pocketfuls of tea. I picked it myself and it is fresh and green.”
“In appreciation of the tea and because you are my favorite, I will let him out.” The old woman untied the bag and the south wind climbed out; he looked embarrassed because the prince had seen his punishment.
“I have a palm leaf.” The south wind carefully avoided looking at the prince while he spoke. “You can give it to the princess. On it, the bird phoenix has carefully written, with his bill, his whole life story, all that happened to him during the hundred years he lived. She can read it herself. I saw the bird phoenix set fire to its own nest, as if it were the wife of a Hindu. The dry branches crackled and the smoke had a strange fragrance. At last the bird itself burned with a clear flame and became ashes; and the egg lay red hot among the embers. The shell cracked with a bang like a cannon shot, and the young bird flew up. Now he is king of all the other birds; and the only phoenix in the whole world. He has bitten a mark in the palm leaf; that is his way of sending a greeting to the princess.”
“No more talk, let us eat,” said the mother of the winds, and started to carve the deer. The prince sat down next to the east wind and they were soon fast friends.