“I will help thee, if a girl that loveth thee would bring thee with her to the sabbath of the Spirits of the Springtide, which is the Easter of the Sap.”
“I will bring him,” said Nele.
Katheline poured into a crystal goblet a grayish coloured mixture of which she gave them both to drink; with this mixture she rubbed their temples, their nostrils, palms of the hand and wrists, made them swallow a pinch of a white powder, and bade them look at the other, that their two souls might become as but one.
Ulenspiegel looked at Nele, and the kind soft eyes of the girl lit up a great fire within him; then by reason of the mixture he felt as it might have been a thousand crabs tearing at him.
Then they took off their clothes, and they were beautiful thus in the lamplight, he in his proud strength, she in her delicious grace; but they could not see one another, for already they were as though in sleep. Then Katheline laid Nele’s neck upon Ulenspiegel’s arm, and taking his hand put it upon the maiden’s heart.
And they remained thus naked and lying one beside the other.
It seemed to them twain that their bodies touching each other were of fire soft as the sun in the month of roses.
They rose up, as they told later, mounted upon the window sill, launched themselves thence into void space, and felt the air bear them up as the water bears the ships.
Then they perceived nothing any more, neither the earth where poor men were sleeping, nor the heavens where but now the clouds were rolling beneath their feet. And they set their feet on Sirius, the Cold Star. Then from there they were cast upon the pole.
There they saw, not without fear, a naked giant, the Giant Winter, with tawny hair, seated upon ice mounds and against a wall of ice. In shallow pools bears and seals were moving hither and thither, a bellowing flock, all about him. In a hoarse voice, he called up hail and snow and cold floods and gray clouds and red and foul-smelling fogs, and the winds, among which the bitter north wind hath the strongest blast. And all raged together at once in this deadly place.