THE MOON FLOWER

THE MOON FLOWER

TO

EVA AND KATIE

THE MOON-FLOWER

Princess Berenice sat by a window of her father’s palace, looking out of the Moon. In her hand she held a great white pearl, and smiled, for it was her mother’s birthday gift. The chamber in which she sat was of pure silver, and in the floor was a small window by which she could see out of the Moon and right down on to the Earth, where the moonbeams were going. There it lay like a great green emerald; and wherever the clouds parted to let the moonbeams go through, she could see the tops of the trees, and broad fields with streams running by.

“Yonder is the land of the coloured stones,” she said to herself, “that the merchants go down the moonbeams and bring home and sell.” And as she bent lower and lower and gazed with curious eyes, the great pearl rolled from her hand and fell out of the Moon, and went slipping and sliding down a moonbeam, never stopping till it got to the Earth.

“My mother’s pearl!” cried the Princess, “the most beautiful of all her pearls that she gave me. I must run down and bring it back; for if I wait it will be lost. And as to-night is the full-moon down there upon Earth, I can return before anyone finds out that I am gone.”

The Earth was sparkling a brighter green under the approach of night. “Oh, land of the coloured stones!” cried the Princess; and, slipping through the window, she stepped out of the Moon, and went running down the same moonbeam by which the pearl had fallen.

Night came; and the Earth and the Moon lay looking at each other in the midst of heaven, like an emerald and a pearl; but through the palace, and within, over all its gardens and terraces there began to be callings on the Princess Berenice; and presently there were heart-searchings and fear, for they found the empty room with its open window: and the Princess Berenice was not there.

Now, not long before this, upon our own Earth there had lived and died a King who had four sons, but only three kingdoms. So when he came to die he gave to each of his three eldest sons a kingdom apiece; but to the youngest, having nothing else left to give, he gave only a pair of travelling shoes, and said: “Wear these, and some day they will take you to fortune!”

So, when the King was dead, the young Prince wore the shoes night and day, hoping that some time or another they would take him to fortune. His brothers laughed at him, and said: “Our father was wise to play those old shoes off upon you! If it had been either of us we would have gone and bought ourselves an army and fought for a just share in the inheritance. But you seem pleased, so we ought to be.”

Now one day the Prince went out hunting in the forest, and there, having become separated from all his friends, he thoroughly lost his way. Wherever he turned the wood seemed to grow denser, the thickets higher, and the solitude more than he ever remembered before. Night came on, and, there being nothing else that he could do, he lay down and wrapped himself in his cloak and slept.

When he awoke it was day, but the woods were as still as death; no bird sang, and not a cricket chirped among the grass. As he sat up he noticed that the shoe was gone from his left foot, nor could he see it anywhere near. “Tis the half of my inheritance gone!” he said to himself, and got up to search about him. But still no shoe could he find. At last he gave up the search as useless, and set off walking without it. Then as it seemed to him so ridiculous to go limping along with only one shoe on, he took off the remaining one, and threw it away, saying: “Go, stupid, and find your fellow!”

To the Prince’s great astonishment, it set off at a rapid pace through the wood, all of its own accord. The Prince, barefoot except for his stockings, began to run after it.

Presently he found that he was losing his breath. “Hie, hie!” he called out, “not quite so fast, little leather-skins!” But the shoe paid him no heed and went on as before. It skipped through the grass and brushwood, as if a young girl’s foot were dancing inside it; and whenever it came to a fallen tree, or a boulder of rock, it was up and over with a jump like a grasshopper.

Before long the Prince’s stockings were in nothing but holes and tatters; as he ran they fluttered from his legs like ribbons. He had lost his hat, and his cloak was torn into patterns, and he felt from head to foot like a house all doors and windows. He was almost on his last gasp when he saw that the shoe was making straight for a strange little house of green bronze, shut in by a high wall, and showing no windows; and in the middle of the wall was a bronze door shut fast. As he came near he found that outside, on the doorstep, stood his other shoe as if waiting to be let in. “So it was worth running for!” thought he; and then, putting on both shoes again, he began knocking at the door.

As he knocked the door opened. It opened in such a curious way, flat down like a swing-bridge or like the lid of a box. For some time he was half afraid to walk in on the top of it. Presently, however, he summoned up his courage and stepped across it.

The door closed behind him like a trap, and he found himself in a beautiful house; all its walls were hung with gold and precious stones, but everywhere was the emptiness and the silence of death.

He went from room to room seeking for any that lived there, but could see no one. In one place he found thrown down a fan of white feathers and pearl; and in another flowers, fresh plucked, lying close by a cushion dinted and hollowed, as though the weight of a head or arm had rested there. But beyond these there was no sign of a living thing to be found.

Through the windows he saw deep bowery gardens hemmed in by high walls, within which grew flowers of the loveliest kinds. All the paths were of smooth grass, and everywhere were the traces of gentle handiwork; but still not a soul was to be seen.

It seemed to the Prince now and then that there was something in the garden which moved, distinct from the flowers, and shifting with a will of its own. Though the sun shone full down, casting clear shadows across the lawns, this that he saw was altogether misty and faint. Now it seemed like a feather blown to and fro in the wind, and now like broken gossamer threads, or like filmy edges of clouds melting away in the heat. Where it went the flowers moved as though to make way for it, swaying apart and falling together again as it passed.

The Prince watched and watched. He tired his eyes with watching, yet he could see no more; and no way could he find to the garden, for all the doors leading to it were locked fast and barred.

There was another strange thing he noticed which seemed to him to have no meaning. All over the garden, between the trees and the sky, was stretched a silver net, so fine that it showed only as a faint film against the blue; but a net for all that. Here and there, the light of the sun catching it, hung sparkling in its silver meshes. It was like the net that a gardener throws over strawberry beds or currant bushes to keep off the birds from the fruit. So was it with this net; through it no bird could enter the garden, and no bird that was in the garden could leave it.

All day the Prince had these two things before his eyes to wonder about, till the sun went down and it began to get dusk.

At the moment when the sun sank below the earth there was a sound of opening doors all over the house. The Prince ran and found one of the doors leading into the garden wide open, and through it he could see the stir of leaves, and the deep colours of the flowers growing deeper in the dusk; only the evening primroses were lighting their soft lamps.

From a distant part of the garden came the sound of falling water, and a voice singing. As he approached he saw something shining against the dark leaves higher than the heads of the flowers; and before he well knew what he saw, he found before his eyes the most lovely woman that the mind of man could believe in.

In her hand hung a watering-can, with the water falling from it in sprays on to the flower beds beneath. Her head was bent far down, yet how she looked slender and tall! She was very pale, yet a soft light seemed to grow from her, the light of a new moon upon a twilight sky. And now the Prince heard clearly the sweet voice, and the words that she was singing:

“Listen, listen, listen,

O heart of the sea!

I am the Pearl of pearls,

I am the Mother of pearls,

And the Mother of thee.

Glisten, glisten, glisten,

O bed of the sea!

Lost is the Pearl of pearls,

And all the divers for pearls

Are drowning for me.”

He stood enchanted to hear her; but the words of the song ended suddenly in a deep sigh. The singer lifted her head; her eyes moved like grey moths in the dusk, amid the whiteness of her face. At sight of him they grew still and large, widening with a quiet wonder. Then the beautiful face broke into smiles, and the Princess stretched out her hands to him and laughed.

“Have you come,” she said, “to set me free?”

“To set you free?” asked the Prince.

“I am a prisoner,” she told him.

“Alas, then!” answered the Prince, “I am a prisoner also, and can free no one; but were I now free to go wherever I would, I should be a prisoner still, for I have seen the face of the loveliest heart on earth!”

“O,” she sighed, “and can you not set me free?”

“Tell me,” he said, “what makes you a prisoner here?”

She pointed to the net over their heads, to the walls that stood on all sides of them, and to the ground beneath their feet. “That,” she said, “and that, and this.”

“Who are you?” he asked, “and where do you come from? and whose power is it that now holds you captive?”

She led him on to a terrace, from which they could see out towards the west; and there lay the new Moon, low down in the sky. “Yonder,” she said, pointing to it, “is my home!” She wept. “Shall I ever return to it?”

The Prince, gazing at her in wonder, cried, “Are you one of a Fairy race?”

“No, oh, no!” she sighed, “I am but mortal like yourself; only my home is there, while yours is here. We, who dwell in the Moon, are as you are, but the sun has greater power over us; the light of it falling on us makes us pale and unsubstantial, so that we weigh not so much as a gossamer and become transparent as thin fleeces of cloud. Then we can go where you cannot go, treading the light as it flies; but at sunset we regain our strength, and our bodies come to us again; and we are as you see me now—no different from yourselves, the inhabitants of the Earth.”

“Tell me,” said the Prince, “of yourself, and the dwellers in the Moon! Is it not cold there, and barren?”

She answered smiling, for the memory of her home was sweet to her, “Outside, the Moon is cold and barren; but within it is very warm and rich and fertile; more beautiful than any place I have seen on Earth. It is there we live; and we have flocks, and herds, and woods, and rivers, and harbours, and seas. Also we have great cities built inside the Moon’s crust, for the Moon is a great hollow shell, and we walk upon its inner surface and are warm. The sunlight comes to us through craters and clefts in the ground; and the beams of it are like solid pillars of gold that quiver and sway as they shoot upwards into the opal twilight of our world; and the shine and the warmth of it come to us, and colour the air above our heads; but we are safe from its full light falling on us, for the ground is between us and it. Only when we pass through to the outer side do we become pale and faint, a mere whisper of our former selves. And then we are so light that if we step upon a moonbeam it will bear our weight; and the moonbeam carries us swiftly as its own light travels, till it reaches the Earth: so we come. But to return there is another way.”

And when the Prince asked her, she told him of the other way back into the Moon.

“When we wish to return,” she went on “(for the falling light of a moonbeam cannot carry us back), we must go where there is a pool of still water, and wait for the reflection of the Moon to fall on it; and when the Moon is full, and throws its image into the water, then we dive down, and with our lips touch the reflection of its face, crying, ‘Open, open to me, for I am a Moon-child!’ And the Moon will open her face like a door of pearl, and let us pass in; and when she draws her reflection out of the pool, we find ourselves once again among our own people and in our own land. Many of us have so come and so returned,” she sighed deeply, “but I fear that I shall never again return.”

Then the Prince asked her further whose power it was that held her captive; and she told him how she had dropped the pearl that her mother had given her, and had come down seeking it. Then she said, “In the Moon we have many jewels, for we have opals and onyxes, and pearls and moonstones, but we have no rubies, or emeralds, or sapphires, or stones of a single colour, such as you have. Therefore, we have a passion for these things, and our merchants come down and bring them back to us at a great price.

“Now it chanced that in my search I came upon a gnome who had dealings with our merchants and had many jewels to sell, and he, seeming to be kind, helped me until my pearl was found. Then he took me to see his own treasures, and, alas, while my eyes were feasting on the colours of the stones he showed to me, my poor beauty inflamed the avarice of his evil heart, and the desire to have me for his wife became great. So when I asked him the price of his jewels, he vowed that the only price at which he would let them go was that of my own hand in marriage. Alas, I am young and innocent, and without subtlety, nor did I know how great was his power and wickedness. As I laughed at his request his face grew dark with rage, and I saw that I had incurred the undying enmity of his cruel heart. And now for a whole year he has held me in his enchantment, striving to break me to his will by the length and weariness of my captivity; and lest search or any help should come for me from my father’s people, he has covered me in with a net, and surrounded me with walls; and here there is no pool into which the full Moon may fall, and at the mere touch of my lips upon its face, open and draw me free from my enchantment, and back into the heart of my own land. Only yonder, in the corner of the garden is a deep well, where the Moon never shines; so there is no way here left for me by which I may get free.”

“Does not the gnome ever come to see you in your captivity?” asked the Prince. “If so, I may by some means be able to entrap him, and force him to let you go.”

“Twice in the year he has visited me,” answered the Princess. “He comes up out of the ground in the form of a Red Mole; but he looks at me wickedly and cunningly with the eyes of a man, seeming to say, ‘Will you have me yet?’ And when I shake my head he burrows under again, and is gone till another six months shall be past.”

The Prince thought for a while and said, “I do not know whether I have the power or the wit to make you free; if love only were needed for the work, to-morrow would see you as free as a bird.”

The Princess, between smiles and sighs, said, “I have been most lonely here; already you make my imprisonment seem less.” Then she led him within doors, from room to room, showing him the splendours of her prison. Wherever they went, out of the floor before them rose burning jewels that hung hovering over their heads to light them as they passed; and when she struck her hands together, up from the ground rose a table covered with fruit and dainties of all sorts; and when she and the Prince had eaten, she clapped her hands again, and they disappeared by the same way that they had come.

The Prince was struck with admiration at the delicacy of these marvels. “When I think of the Red Mole, they sicken me!” said the Moon-Princess. The good youth used all his arts to cheer her, promising to devote himself, and if need be his life, to the task of setting her free. And now and then she laughed and was almost merry again, forgetting the walls that still held her spell-bound from her own people and her own land.

She showed the Prince a chamber where he might sleep; and so soft and warm was the couch after his last hard night on the ground, that it was full day before he awoke. The Princess Berenice appeared before him misty and faint, for the sunlight threw a veil upon her beauty; but still as he looked at her he did not love her less, and it still seemed to him that hers was the face of the loveliest heart on earth.

All day he watched her drifting about the garden, seeming to feed herself on the scent of the flowers. In the evening, when the sun set, her body grew strong and her face shone out to him like the new Moon upon a twilight sky.

Then he drew water for her from the well, and watched her as she watered the flowers which were her only delight. Presently he said, “There is much water in the well, for the rope goes down into it many fathoms; and yet I find no bottom.”

“Yes,” answered the Princess, “I doubt not that the well is deep.”

“Before many days are over,” said the Prince, “the well shall become a pool.”

The Princess wondered to hear him. “Is there,” he went on, “no such thing as a spade for me to dig with?” Then she led him to a shed, where lay all the needed implements for gardening. So his eyes brightened, while he cried, “O, beautiful Princess Berenice, as I love you, before many weeks are over you shall be free!”

The next morning he arose very early, and in the centre of the garden, where the ground hollowed somewhat, he marked out a space and set to work to dig.

All day the Princess went to and fro, faint and pale as a mist, watching him at his work. At dusk her beauty shone full upon him, and she said, “What is this that you are doing?” He answered, “What I am making shall presently become a pool; then when the pool is full, and the full Moon comes and shines on it, you shall go down into the water, and shall kiss the face of its reflection with your lips, and be free from your enchantment.”

Princess Berenice looked long at him, and her eyes clung to his like soft moths in the gloom. “But you?” she said, “You are no Moon-child, and this will never set you free.”

“Ever since I saw you,” said the Prince, “I have not thought of freedom; my dearest wish is but to set you free.”

The Princess gave him her hand. “And mine,” she said, “my dearest wish henceforth is to set you free also. Yet I know but one way, and I cannot name it.” She smiled tenderly on him, and bowed her face into the shadow of her hair.

The Prince caught her in his arms, “One way is my way!” he cried. “Your way,” she said, “is my way.” Then, when he had finished kissing her, she said, “Look, on my finger is a ring; this ring is for him to whom I give myself in marriage. Surely, it opens to him the heart of my own people, and he becomes one of us, a child of the Moon.” She showed him an opal ring, full of fires. “If your way is my way,” she said, “draw this off my finger, and put it upon your own, and take me to be your wife!”

So the Prince drew off the ring from her finger, and set it upon his own; and as he did so he felt indeed the heart of the Moon-people become his own, and the love of the Moon strike root in him. Yet did the love of the Earth remain his as well, making it seem as if all the love in his heart had but doubled itself.

So he and the most beautiful Berenice were married there by the light of the new Moon, and all thought of sorrow or danger from the encirclement that bound them was lost in their great joy.

During the whole of the next day the Prince went on with his digging, making a broad shallow in the ground. “Before the full Moon comes,” he said, “I will make it deep.” And he worked on, refusing to take any rest.

The Princess loved him more and more as she watched him; and his love for her daily increased, for every day, while the Moon grew full, her beauty shone in greater perfection and splendour. “Here,” she said to him, “the coming of the full Moon is like the coming of Spring to me: I feel it in my blood. After the full Moon my beauty will wane and grow paler. But in my own land I do not feel these changes, for there it is always the full Moon.” The Prince answered her, “To me your beauty, though it grows more, will not ever grow less.”

At last, on the day before that of the full Moon, the pit which he had dug was broad and deep; then he began to fill it with water from the well. “To-morrow,” he said to his wife, when the pool was nearly full, as she came and stood by his side at sunset in the full blaze of her beauty, “to-morrow we shall be free; and you will carry me away with you into your own land.”

“I do not know,” said the Princess, “I begin to be afraid!” and she sighed heavily. “Any day the Red Mole may come: one day is not too soon for him to be here.”

“But why need you fear him now?” asked the Prince. “Since you are married to me, you cannot be married to him.”

“As to that,” said she, “I fear that to have outwitted him will but make his malice all the greater against us!” Then she walked softly among the moonbeams, bathing her hands in them, and letting them fall upon the loveliness of her face; and as she stood in their light, tears rained down out of her eyes.

In the morning it seemed as if her happiness had returned. The Prince, as he toiled under the blazing sun, carrying water from the well to the pool, felt her moving by his side, and heard her light shadowy laughter when, just before sunset, the water flowed level to the pool’s brink. And when dusk rose out of the grass, there she stood glowing with the full Moon of her beauty, and leaning in all the light of her loveliness towards him.

The happy night drew round them; out of the East came the glow of the full Moon as it rose; soon, soon it would cross the tops of the trees and rest its face upon the quiet waters of the pool. They clung in each other’s arms, entranced. “My beautiful,” said the Prince, “shall we not take to your mother some of those jewels she loves—the green, and the red, and the blue, and the pearl which was hers, the quest of which has cost you so much?” He ran into one of the jewelled chambers where lay the pearl, and caught from the walls the largest stones he could find. Quickly he went and returned, for the Moon was now fast cresting the avenues of the garden. He came bearing the jewels in his hands.

Princess Berenice stood no longer by the brink of the pool, though therein lay the image of the Moon’s face, a circle of pale gold upon the water. “Berenice,” called the Prince, and ran through the garden, searching for her. “Berenice!” he cried by the well; but she was not there. “Berenice!” His voice grew trembling and weak, and quick fear took hold of him. “O, my beautiful, my beloved, where are you?”

Only the silence stood up to answer him. Under his feet ran a Red Mole.

It scampered across the grass, and disappeared through a burrow in the ground. Then the Prince knew that the worst had surely come, and that his Princess had been taken away from him. Where she was he could not know; within her former prison she was nowhere to be seen.

All night the Prince lay weeping by the brink of the pool, where she had last stood before his sight; the print of her dear feet still lay on the lawn where she had stayed waiting with him so long. “O, miserable wretch that I am!” he cried, kissing the trodden grass. “Now never again may I hope to behold you, or hear your dear voice!”

All the day following he wandered like a ghost from place to place, filling the empty garden with memories of her presence, and sighing over and over again the music of her name. All the flowers glowed round him in their accustomed beauty; new buds came into life, and full blooms broke and fell; not a thing seemed to sorrow for her loss except himself. As for the flowers, he paid them little heed.

In his sleep that night a dream came to him, a dream as of something that whispered and laughed in his ear. Over and over again it seemed to be saying, “The Red Mole came, and the full Moon came, and the Princess jumped down into the water!” Then his heart knocked so loud for joy that he started awake, and saw the Red Mole scuffling away to its burrow in the ground.

Then he feared that the dream was but a thing devised to cheat his fancy, and get rid of him by making him go away and search for his Princess in the land of the Moon, by the way that she had told him. But he thought to himself, “If the Red Mole wants so much to get me away, it means that my beloved is somewhere near at hand. Is she in the well?” he began wondering; and as soon as it was light he went to where lay the well in its corner under the shadow of the wall. But though he searched long and diligently, there was no trace of her that he could find.

Yet every time he came near to the well sorrow seemed to take hold of him, and, mixed with it, a kind of joy, as though indeed the heart of his beloved beat in this place. Near to the well stood a tall flower with bowed head. It seemed to him the only one in the whole garden that had any share in his sorrow: he wondered if the flower had grown up to mark the sad place of her burial.

“O, my beloved Berenice, art thou near me now?” he murmured, heart-broken, one day as he passed by: then it seemed to him that all at once the flower stirred. He turned to look at it; it was like a sunflower, but white even to its centre, and its head kept drooping as if for pure grief. “Berenice, Berenice!” he wept, passing it.

At dusk he returned again; and now the flower’s head was lifted up, and shone with a strange lustre. The Prince, as he went by on his way to the well, saw the flower turn its head, bending its face ever towards where he was. Then grief and joy stirred in his heart. “The flower knows where she is!” he said.

So he bent, whispering, “Where, then, is Berenice?” and the flower lifted its head, and hung quite still, looking at him.

Then the Prince whispered again, “The Red Mole came, and the full Moon came, and the Princess jumped down into the water?”

But the flower swayed its head from side to side, and the Prince found that it had answered “No.”

Then he had it in his mind to ask of it further things; but, as he was about to speak, he beheld its face all brimming over with tears, that suddenly broke and fell down in a shower over its leaves.

At that his heart leaped, and his voice choked as he cried, “Art thou my beloved, my Berenice?” And all at once the flower swayed down, and leaned, and fell weeping against his breast.

So at last he knew! And joy and grief struggled together in him for mastery.

All that night he knelt with the flower’s head upon his heart, stroking its soft leaves, and letting it rest between his hands; till, towards dawn, it seemed to him that peace was upon it and sleep.

All through the day it hung faint upon its stem; but when evening came it lifted its head and shone in moon-like beauty; and so deep for it was the Prince’s love and compassion that he could hardly bear to be absent from its side one moment of the day or night.

And, when he was very weary, he lay down under its shadow to sleep; and the Moon-flower bent down and rested its head upon his face.

All night long in dreams Berenice came back to him. He seemed to hear how the Red Mole had come, and changed her to a rooted shape, lest the full Moon in the water should carry her away from him back into her own land. Yet it was only a dream, and the Prince could learn nothing there of the way by which he might set her free.

A month went by, and he said to his Flower, “To-night is the night of the full Moon: now, if I drew you from the ground, and carried you down, and called for the Moon’s face to open to us, would you not be free from the enchantment, when you were come again to your own people?” But the Moon-flower shook its head, as if to bid him still wait and watch patiently.

Now, as the Prince came and went day by day, he began to notice that the Moon-flower had its roots in a small green mound, no bigger than a mole-hill; and he thought to himself, “surely that mound was not there at first: the Red Mole must be down below at work!” So he watched it from day to day; and at last he knew for certain that, as time went on, the mound grew larger.

Month by month the mound upon which the Moon-flower had root increased in size; yet the Flower thrived, and its beauty shone brighter as each full Moon approached, so that at last the Prince’s fear lest the Red Mole were working mischief against its life, passed away.

Once, on the night of a full Moon, as the Prince lay with his head upon Earth, and the Moon-flower bowed over his face, he heard under the mound a peal of silvery laughter; and at the sound of it the Moon-flower started, and stood erect, and a stir of delight seemed to take hold of its leaves. Again the laughter came, and the soft earth moved at the sound of it.

The Prince started up, and ran and fetched a spade, and struck it down under the loose soil of the mound. When he lifted up the earth, out sprang a tiny child like a lobe of quicksilver, laughing merrily with its first leap into the light. But even then its laughter changed into a cry; for out after it darted the Red Mole, with fury in its whiskers, and wrath flashing out of its eyes.

The quicksilver child sprang away, and went shrilling over the grass toward the margin of the pool. There lay the full Moon’s image upon the clear stillness of the water; and the child leapt down the bank, and laughed as it sprang safely away. Then there followed a tiny splash; and the Prince, amid the rings upon the water’s surface, saw, like a door of pearl, the Moon’s face open and close again. And the Red Mole went down into the earth gnashing its teeth for rage.

The Prince ran back to the Moon-flower, and found it bent forwards and trembling with fear. Then he drew its head towards his heart, and whispered “The Red Mole came, and the full Moon came, and the silver child jumped down into the water!” And at that the Flower lifted its head and began clapping its leaves for joy.

A month went by, and the green mound had disappeared from beneath the Moon-flower’s roots; and still every night the Prince lay down under the shadow of its leaves; and the Flower bent over him, and laid its head against his face.

As he lay so, one night, and watched the full Moon travelling high overhead, he saw a shadow begin to cross over it; and he knew that it was the eclipse, which is the shadow of the Earth passing over the face of the Moon; then he rose softly, leaving the Moon-flower asleep, and went and stood by the brink of the pool.

Up in the Moon the silver child felt the shadow of the Earth fall upon the face of the Moon; and he came and touched the Earth’s shadow with his lips, crying, “Open, open to me, for I am an Earth-child!” Then the Earth’s shadow that was upon the Moon opened, and the silver child sprang through.

The Prince, watching the veiled image of the Moon’s face in the water, saw the Earth’s shadow open like a door, so that for an instant the brightness of the Moon shone through, and out sprang the quicksilver child, up to the surface of the pool.

He leapt laughing up the bank, and went running over the grass to where the Moon-flower was standing. He reached up his arms, and caught the Flower by the head:

“O mother, mother, mother!” he cried as he kissed it.

And at the touch of his lips the Moon-flower opened and changed, growing wondrously tall and fair; and the flower turned into a face, and the leaves disappeared, till it was the beautiful Princess Berenice herself, who stooped down and took the quicksilver child up into her arms.

She cried, fondling him, “Did they give you your name?”

And the child laughed. “They call me Gammelyn,” he said.

The Prince caught them both together in his arms. “Come, come!” he shouted and laughed, “for yonder is the full Moon waiting for us!” And, lifting them up, he ran with them to the borders of the pool.

And the Red Mole came, and the full Moon came; and the Prince, and the Princess, and the silver child jumped down into the water.

Then the Prince laid his lips against the reflection of the Earth’s shadow, crying, “Open, open to me, for I am a child of the Earth!” And the shadow opened like a door to let them pass through. Then they pressed their lips against the reflection of the Moon’s face crying, “Open, open to us, for we are Moon-children!” And the Moon opened her face like a door of pearl, so that they sprang through together, and were safe.

And when the Moon drew its reflection out of the pool, they found themselves in the land of the Moon, in the silver chamber with the round window, in the palace of Princess Berenice’s father.

Looking out through the window, down at the end of a long moonbeam they saw the Red Mole gnashing his whiskers for rage. Then the Prince took off his shoes, and threw them with all his might down the moonbeam at the Mole.

As the shoes fell, they went faster, and faster, and faster, till they came to earth; and they struck the Mole so hard upon the head that he died.

Now as for Gammelyn and the shoes we may hear of them again elsewhere; but as for the Prince and his beautiful Princess Berenice, the happiness in which they lived for the rest of their days is too great even to be told of.