Some one was shaking him. Was it the cat? The Little Emperor opened his eyes and saw the frightened face of Princess Autumn Cloud bending over him, as yellow as a lemon, for she had jumped up out of bed when she heard him cry out in his sleep, and there hadn’t been time to put on the honey and the powder, to paint on the surprised black eyebrows or the round red mouth.
“Wake up, wake up, Little Old Ancestor!” she was crying as she shook him. “You’re having a bad dream!”
“Aren’t you the cat?” asked the Little Emperor, who wasn’t really awake yet.
“Certainly not, Little Old Ancestor!” replied his aunt, rather offended.
The Little Emperor climbed out of his bed. The room was full of the still white light that comes from snow, and looking out of the window he saw that the plum trees and the cherry trees looked as if they had blossomed in the night, the snow lay so white and light on every twig. Softly the snow fell, deep, deep it lay, and the people who passed by his windows went as silently as though they were shod in white velvet.
The Little Emperor thought of his dream, and decided that his little bird might suffer and die if he let it go free before winter was over. But he explained to the bird, and tried to make it happier.
“When summer comes, you shall fly away into the sky,” he told it. He brought it fruit and green leaves to peck at, talking to it gently. And the little bird seemed to understand. The dull eyes grew brighter; and though it never sang it sometimes chirped as if it were trying to say: “Thank you.”
On the first night of summer when the moon lay like a great round pearl in the deep blue sea of the sky, the Little Emperor slept, and dreamed again that the cage door opened for him and let him go free. But oh, what happiness now, happiness almost too great for a little boy to bear.
Peonies were in bloom, each petal like a big seashell, and blue butterflies floated over them in the warm sunshine. Half hidden in the grass the Little Emperor found a great purple fruit—a mulberry. How good it was!
The dewy spider webs glistened like the great tinsel Bridge to Heaven they built for him on every birthday. How happy he was! How happy! Free and safe! With the sun to warm him and the breeze to cool him; with food tumbling down from Heaven or the mulberry trees, he wasn’t sure which, with a crystal clear dewdrop to drink on every blade of grass. How happy he was!