Now if Veit forgot, Katrine never did; and her anger against the interlopers grew hotter and more cruel as her own pain and heartache grew deeper. She sat at home and brooded over thoughts of revenge, and she spoke with all the wise elders of the village who could tell her anything of the traditions concerning the Nixies. They dreaded being surprised by the sunlight—that was plain. But why? No one had ever yet had the courage to gainsay them, or try to hold them back and find out the truth. Love, however, gives courage, and Karl, the third partner whom the fairy sisters sought out, had sworn he loved Katrine, and only went with the Nix-maidens because Katrine slighted him. True, Katrine had given her heart to Veit, but the longing for revenge, and the desire to win back her lost love at any cost, had grown so strong in her that there was nothing she would not do to gain her end. So it was Karl now who talked with Katrine on the mill-bridge, and promised, if her love was to be his reward, to carry out the plot they made together. Then the cunning Karl set about fanning the flame that was already raging in Veit’s veins, and consuming the life of poor, foolish Heinrich. How often, Karl insinuated, had they not been on the point of winning the love of the wayward Nix-maidens, when the first rays of dawn had interrupted them! Were they always to be cheated thus? What mystery was there about these Nixies, that they would not let themselves be followed, or persuaded to outstay the rising of the sun? Nay, they had not managed wisely! At the next dance, let them lead the fairy sisters away, while the night was yet dark, to the deepest part of the forest, where no light of dawn could penetrate, and try if thus the spell might not be broken, and the love of these evasive maidens won.
He spoke to willing ears. Had not Veit said long ago that he would be master of his fairy partner at last? The plan was a good one. Why had it never been thought of before? It must be, Veit concluded, the spell that the wilful creature had laid upon him that had so dulled his mind! Heinrich, too, needed no pressing; he was clean daft for love, and hardly knew what he did any longer. So the plan was laid, and woe betide the Nixies when the time for the next dance arrived. Katrine watched for it now with anxious eyes, and her heart throbbed with bitter satisfaction when at last she saw those rainbow draperies glisten once more in the moonlight beneath the trees. But they were not long to be seen. The Nixies had suffered their fancy to ensnare them too far, and when the eager lovers spoke of a quiet space amid distant forest trees where they could dance and dally undisturbed, they consented only too easily to follow them thither. No one knew how the hours sped by in that quiet and dusky spot. Once, as they lay resting upon the grass, Karl contrived with cunning hand to unfasten the lilies from the crystal chains, and the flowers that might have warned the Nixies from their fate withered unheeded upon the moss. They were missed too late. Too late the fairy sisters grasped at their chains and sought with anxious eyes for their guardian lilies. When they espied them, they were already faded and dying. At that sight a moan, the only sound that mortal ears had ever heard from the Nixies’ lips, escaped the ill-fated sisters. They fled, as the spray of the fountain flies before the wind, through the forest-glades; but even as they reached the river-meadow, a ray of sunlight greeted them upon its verge—sunlight, that gladdens the heart of man, but to them was the shaft of death. No friendly mist spread forth a sheltering veil over the meadow; and as they felt the warmth of those piercing rays, they melted as wax before the fire, as foam upon the water. In a moment the fairy sisters were gone, and in their stead three slender rivulets, whose foamy whiteness was stained with a faint streak of red, wound their way with a complaining murmur through the green meadow, towards the river and the great rock. They disappeared among its hollows, and he who doubts the tale need but seek out the river-bank by Dietenhain, and he will find the three streamlets, and the spot that is still called the “Nixies’ cleft.”
But the spell that the fairy sisters had laid upon two human hearts was not to be broken thus. From that time Heinrich could find no rest from his remorse and sorrow, so that they drove him at last to seek his death in the fatal river. Veit, too, flying in horror from the village, was drowned in crossing the Elbe, by the great rock at Strehla, where it is said that the Nixies yearly require the sacrifice of one human life. Only the reckless Karl and the bold Katrine seem to have gone scot-free. They married after a while, and lived on beside the mill-stream without fear of the Nixies; nor can I learn that the water-folk ever succeeded in doing them any harm.
[XII]
THE FLYING CASTLE
Beside the stream of Gerlach, and at the foot of the Glockenberg, in the Hartz Mountains, there is a deep pit, and here—so the country-folk tell—there once stood a mighty castle, that was inhabited, not by knights or earls, but by a wicked woman, who was known only as the “Lady of the Castle.” She was learned in all manner of evil lore, and cast spells upon many of the country-people and their belongings, so that she was feared and hated throughout the district. But her favourite pastime was to capture the village maidens as they passed along the road below, and shut them up in the castle, where she made them work for her, nor ever let them out again as long as they lived. All about the woods and hedges her spies and serving-men were hidden, ready to pounce on any luckless girl whose business obliged her to cross that dangerous valley.