‘Kiss me once,’ it said, ‘where my fur is soft. That is all I wish, and enough to live and die for.’
[p124]
She stooped her head and kissed it on its forehead where the fur is soft, just where the prickles begin.
And instantly she was standing with her hands on a young man’s shoulders and her lips on a young man’s face just where the hair begins and the forehead leaves off. And all round his feet lay a pile of fallen arrows.
She drew back and looked at him.
‘Erinaceus,’ she said, ‘you’re different—from the baker’s boy I mean.’
‘When I was an invisible hedge-pig,’ he said, ‘I knew everything. Now I have forgotten all that wisdom save only two things. One is that I am a king’s son. I was stolen away in infancy by an unprincipled baker, and I am really the son of that usurping King whose face I rolled on in the night. It is a painful thing to roll on your father’s face when you are all spiky, but I did it, Princess, for your sake, and for my father’s too. And now I will go to him and tell him all, and ask his forgiveness.’
‘You won’t go away?’ said the Princess. ‘Ah! don’t go away. What shall I do without my hedge-pig?’
Erinaceus stood still, looking very handsome and like a prince.
‘What is the other thing that you remember [p125 of your hedge-pig wisdom?’ asked the Queen curiously. And Erinaceus answered, not to her but to the Princess:
‘The other thing, Princess, is that I love you.’