Part 7

Suddenly the Star Princess heard all around her a gentle rustling, as if the softest of the breezes were touching lightly the tiniest leaves of the forest. In a moment she found that it was made by thousands upon thousands of little sand fleas hopping toward her. “Our friend, the sculpin, has asked us to help you,” they said, “and we have been counting as fast as ever we could. Lie down and rest, and in one hour longer, the task will be done.”

When the third day had come, the sea-monster took the maiden back to the mermaid.

“How many grains of sand are on the beach?” the mermaid demanded.

The Star Princess told her, and she had to admit that it was the right number. She was very angry to find that the task had been done, and she actually shrieked with rage. Then she cried, “Will you marry my son, you wretch, or will you go on another journey? You need not think that you will get off from this one so easily. Will you marry him?”

“No, I will not,” declared the Star Princess; and she would not yield even when the mermaid gnashed her teeth in a fury and screamed, “You shall have a task to-morrow that is a task. This is only child’s play.”

When morning had come, the mermaid said:--

“The sharks once rebelled against my son, and he has never punished their leader as he deserved. Go you to the Waters of the Sharks, take their king prisoner, and bring him to me to pay the penalty of his rebellion. One of my people will show you the way.” And she pointed out a sea-monster more dreadful than both the others put together.

The monster led the way, and the Star Princess followed. “Oh, if I could only see my father and my mother once more,” she thought. “How could I think the voice of the mermaid was sweet! I should be so happy if I were only the lowest servant in my father’s house. And the Prince--I wonder--”

“Here you are,” said the monster; “that is, you are as near as I intend to go. I’m not going to risk my head and fins in the Waters of the Sharks. I’ll wait here till the third day, but I rather think the sharks will save me the trouble of carrying you home.”

* * * * *

Now while all this was going on in the Water World, there was the deepest amazement and sorrow in the Island Kingdom, for the Star Princess had disappeared. In the morning of the second day of her nineteenth year, her maids waited and waited for her call. At last they went to her door. It stood ajar, and they could see that she was not in the room. “She is so happy in being free,” they said, “that she has slipped out into the palace gardens to see the world in the early morning.” So they searched the gardens through and through. They ran hither and yon, and looked into every corner of the palace; but no Star Princess was to be seen. Then they went to the King, weeping and wailing and wringing their hands, and cried:--

“O your Majesty, the Star Princess has disappeared! Oh, oh, what shall we do! what shall we do!”

The royal guests were still at the palace, and in three minutes every one of them had heard the distressing news. Then began a search that was a search. Every corner, every crack of the great palace was looked into, not only once but over and over, for each one thought that he might perhaps see something that the others had passed by. Then the gardens were searched and the forests and the fields. All the subjects of the kingdom gave up their work and joined in the hunt. Every inch of the seashore was gone over and over, until it seemed as if some one had looked under every blade of grass and into every mouse-hole. They went to the cliff, of course, but the light steps of the Princess had left no trace, and they could not even guess what had become of her.

The King was heartbroken, and the Queen lay on her bed, moaning her life away; but the young Prince was even more wretched than they. “Her father and mother have had her all those eighteen years,” he said to himself, “but I have found her only to lose her again.”

After the Island Kingdom had been searched through and through, the King sent out every ship in the navy to look for his child, and all the stranger kings and princes whose ships lay at the royal wharves put out to sea to try to find the Star Princess. They sailed north and south and east and west, but they all came back with lowered flags and the same report, “We cannot find her.”

The days passed. The royal guests bade farewell to the sorrowing King and Queen and sailed away to their own kingdoms, all but one, the faithful young Prince. “I cannot leave the place where I first met her,” he said to her parents. “Will you let me stay with you for a time?” Of course they were only too glad to have him; but one morning the young Prince, too, was missing. He had vanished from the Island Kingdom as suddenly as the Star Princess. It was known that he had left his rooms in the palace late in the evening; but this was a thing that he often did, especially on such moonlight nights as the one on which the Princess had vanished. So many times he had been seen pacing to and fro on the sand that no one thought of watching him or of noticing when he returned to the palace.

After he, too, disappeared, the beach was searched as closely as it had been for the Star Princess. The print of his footsteps was seen and they were traced up and down the sand, then to one side toward a high hill. On the path up the hill, little twigs had been broken, and here and there a leaf had been bruised and crushed; and so it was known that he had climbed to the top of the hill. He was traced still farther, to the very edge of a cliff that overhung sharp rocks and a wild commotion of breakers. The people looked upon them sadly and shook their heads. “Poor Prince,” they said, “his love for the Star Princess has made him mad and he has flung himself over the cliff.” But one sage old man, who had seen many strange things in his long life, shook his head and muttered, “Not madness but magic.”

If the breakers that beat on the base of the cliff had chosen to speak, they, too, would have said, “Not madness but magic.” The Prince had gone out on the shore, as he so often went, and that night he heard the same sweet voice that had called the Star Princess into the sea. “Come to me, come to me,” it cried, now low and sweet, now loud and strong, but ever so powerful that even the Prince could hardly resist it. Suddenly, in the midst of the strength and the sweetness, there came a wail that tore his very heart. “My Prince, my Prince,” it said, “save me, save me!” And without a glance behind him he sprang straight off the cliff and into the raging sea.

“Aha, now I have two of you!” shrieked the mermaid with fiendish delight. Then, when she looked upon him more closely and saw how tall and noble and beautiful he was, she hesitated. “I will not tear you limb from limb,” she said. “I have a daughter who will soon take a husband, and if she chooses you, you may live.”

“I will have no false mermaid for a wife,” declared the young Prince, as boldly as if he had still been in the palace of the Island Kingdom.

“You will not?” shrieked the mermaid. “How dare you insult my daughter, you earthborn creature!” She waved her hands to and fro before his face. His eyes closed, and for a moment he was in a deep slumber. When he awoke, the mermaid had gone. He was alone, but he was no longer a handsome young prince; she had put upon him the form of a sculpin.

Prince or sculpin, he had but one thought, to find the Star Princess; and he swam as rapidly as he could, first in one direction, then in another, until he came in sight of the Waterworld den where the mermaid and her monsters dwelt. It was just at the moment when the mermaid was sending out the Star Princess and the sea-monster to find the ten thousand pearls.

“I cannot rescue her yet,” said the Prince to himself, “but at least I can save her from the torments of the mermaid.” So he kept out of sight until the mermaid had gone back into her den. Then he hastened after the Star Princess, and it was he who had kept between her and the monster and who had persuaded the pearl oysters to give her of their pearls. It was he, too, who had induced the sand fleas to count the grains of sand for her. She did not know this, and she had seen no more of him after her first journey. Now she stood in terror, gazing into the Waters of the Sharks. The horrible creatures swam about and dived and rolled over and showed their sharp, white teeth. The Star Princess was in an agony of terror. She could not run away, for the sea-monster was behind her, and he was almost as dreadful as the sharks.

“Go on,” he cried mockingly. “Tell them you want their king. The earth-girl who will not marry our merking is only fit for sharks’ food.”

The Star Princess looked so pitiful and so beautiful that even the sea-monster was as nearly touched as a monster could be. He muttered, “It _is_ rather a pity to have her eaten up.”

Then he called to her:--

“Girl, earth-girl, if you will agree to marry our king, I will take you back without the shark, and if she is angry, I think I know a way to save you.”

“Oh, no, no,” she replied, shuddering. “I can never marry the merking.”

“Then go on and be devoured by the sharks,” growled the monster, “but you may as well be about it. If you keep me waiting much longer, I will eat you myself.”

The Star Princess turned toward the Waters of the Sharks. As she gazed in terror, she saw the ugly little sculpin coming toward her, and behind him swam the whole company of sharks.

“Don’t be afraid,” the sculpin called as they swept by. “Only wait. You are safe.”

The Star Princess waited. She was all alone in the vast ocean, for at the coming of the sharks, the sea-monster had fled for his life. She covered her eyes with her hands for fear she should see something dreadful; but it was not long before she felt a soft touch. It was the friendly sculpin. “Come quick,” he said. “There is not a moment to lose. The sharks are fighting the merking and his monsters. Follow me. Do not be afraid, I can find the way, for the second gift of my troll jailer was that I should never fail to find the place that I sought.”

The little sculpin swam to the land faster than ever sculpin had swum before, and the Princess ran after him faster than ever princess had run before. She dared not glance behind her for fear of seeing some of the horrible creatures. At last they were so far away that the sculpin knew there was no more danger of pursuit. They had come to the shore. There he stopped and said:--

“Star Princess, now you are safe. Rest for a little and then you shall go home to the palace of the Island Kingdom.”

The Star Princess burst into tears of joy. “You have saved me,” she cried. “What shall I do for you? My father is a king and he will give you whatever you ask. He will build a wall around an ocean for you if you wish and drive away from it every creature that would trouble you. He will--” and there she stopped, for, try her best, she could not think of anything else that would be at all likely to please a sculpin.

The ugly little fish replied:--

“Star Princess, my rightful home is not in the sea, but on the land. I was born in a palace larger and more beautiful than that of your father. I fell into the hands of the wicked mermaid, and she threw over me the sculpin form that I now wear.”

“My father has wizards and magicians at his court,” cried the Star Princess eagerly, “and surely some one among them can free you from the mermaid’s power.”

“I am under a power that you alone can free me from,” declared the sculpin. “I am the sovereign of a kingdom larger and richer than your father’s. I am but a little older than yourself. They tell me I am handsome. You can free me if you will stroke my head three times and say--”

“And say what?” cried the Star Princess.

“And say, ‘I promise to marry you as soon as we have come to my father’s palace,’” the sculpin answered.

“Oh, no, no,” cried the Star Princess. “I will do anything but that. I will give you everything I have, and when the kingdom is mine, you shall have that, too, and I will go out into the world and beg my bread, but I cannot marry any one except my own Prince.”

“And are you so sure that he will care to take a portionless bride?” asked the sculpin.

The maiden looked down upon the sand, then out upon the water, then she answered softly:--

“Even if he refused me, I could never marry any one else; but,” she added, “I am sure that he will want me.”

“So am I,” said a manly voice behind her, and, behold, there stood the Prince himself, for the third gift of the troll was that no magic should have power to change his form against his will. He had kept the form of a sculpin for a while because he knew he could be of more service to the Princess in that shape. They sat down on the yellow sand, and he told her the long, long story of his love and his sorrow, of his remaining in her father’s kingdom that he might at least be near the place where he had first seen her, of his pacing up and down the shore and thinking of her, and at last of his springing from the cliff because he was sure that he heard her voice crying, “My Prince, save me, save me!”

“But look about you, my Star Princess,” he said. “Do you not know this shore and this cliff towering over our heads? These waves beat upon the coast of your father’s kingdom. Come, let us go to the palace.”

He took hold of her hand and led her across the sandy shore, up the little hill, over a grassy meadow where flowers sprang up wherever they stepped. Then they went through the woods, where the pathway was soft with pine needles and the air was rich with fragrance, and so on to the palace of the King.

At one of the upper windows stood the Queen, gazing sadly over the water. The King was by her side. His arm was thrown around her, and he seemed to be trying to comfort her. The Prince and the Star Princess waved their hands to them; but they were looking far out to the horizon, and the wanderers were up the hill and into the palace and close beside them before they had any idea that their loneliness was at an end.

Such a welcoming as there was! The Queen wept for the suffering that they had all been through, and she laughed for joy that they were together again. Everybody in the kingdom had a whole year of holidays. The prisoners were set free. There were feasts upon feasts for all who chose to partake of them. The grass was greener, the flowers were brighter. There were such blue skies and such soft little clouds as had never been seen over the land before. The birds no longer stayed in the forest, but came freely into the city. They perched upon windows and fences and balconies and sang more sweetly than ever birds sang before.

After a year and a day of this rejoicing came the wedding of the Prince and the Star Princess. Just as the wedding procession was setting off for the church, some one noticed a great sea-turtle toiling up the hill to the palace.

“I want to see the King,” he called, waving a flipper to call his attention.

The procession waited till the turtle had come up the hill. Then the King went forward cordially, and said:--

“You are welcome, Friend Turtle. Have you come to the wedding?”

“Yes,” the turtle gasped, for he was not used to climbing such high hills, and he had not yet fully caught his breath; “but I have something to say to you. I have just come from the Waterworld, and I have brought you some news.”

“And what is that?” cried the King anxiously, for even now he was afraid of the power of the cruel mermaid.

“The war is ended,” said the turtle. “The merking, the mermaid, and all their monsters are killed and devoured. Neither you nor your Queen nor the Prince nor the Star Princess has an enemy on the land or in the sea.”

Then the bells throughout the whole kingdom rang for joy, the drums beat, the trumpets blew, and the banners waved, all of their own accord.

“Bring another chariot,” ordered the King. Another chariot was brought, and the turtle was helped into it. It took its place just behind the bridal party, and they all rode away to the wedding.

THE END

The Riverside Press CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . S . A

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.