As once before, a voice replied "I know! I know!"
The Queen-mother looked over the garden wall. Hobbling along the road was the old woman who had bade her go to Westroyal. "You who helped me before, help me again!" cried the Queen-mother. "I have obeyed you. How now shall I get a magic mirror for my son?"
The old woman looked up at her. "Go to the Deeps," she said, and she hobbled off.
Now this was a dreadful command to the Queen-mother, for the Deeps was a horrible black pool in the roughest and most dangerous part of the country. It was said to be formed of the country's tears and to be also bottomless, and to be haunted by beings of strange shape. There were stories of their mysterious power and evil ways. Yet go she must, if going meant the gaining of a magic mirror for her son. And she must go alone, for only so could any seeker find the pathway to the pool, so it was said.
"I will go at once, before my courage fails," she said, and she left her sheltered garden and set off across the land.
She had many weary miles to travel, past villages and towns and fields, and she was footsore and faint when at last she reached the winding track that led between the darkening hills. Yet on she went, following the murmur of a tiny stream that dropped through thick-set bushes into a shadowed valley. On she went still, and now the darkness came, and she had lost her way. She stumbled over fallen logs, pushed with bleeding hands and torn clothes through bramble wildernesses, and found at last her way again to the narrow track beside the little stream that murmured in the dark.
On she went, and down. The stream suddenly widened into a round blackness open to the sky, but walled in by jagged rocks. It was the pool. Utterly spent through weariness and fear, she sank down among the rocks to rest, and waited there for what might come to her.
Strange rustlings sounded round the rocks, strange forms loomed close beside her, strange voices asked her: "What are you? Why come you to our haunts?" Though her heart was sick with dread she answered boldly in a firm clear voice. "Give me a magic mirror for my son, that he may learn to rule."
There was a flash, and the pool and all the rocks were lit by a light brighter and softer than that of moon or stars. All round her stood the beings who had loomed so strangely in the darkness. They were fairies, exquisite in shape and fineness, robed in flowing gossamer of many colours. They smiled at her, and touched her with their gentle hands, and immediately she was well. "Your love has brought you nobly through much fear and hurt," they said. "You shall have your due reward. Look into the Deeps."