Poor Prince Eigenwillig: it was lucky for you that that same process of drawing you through the keyhole, which, so to speak, had elongated you into a coil of living catgut, had also transformed your bones into gristle. Had there been any brittle material left in your fabric, it must have been fractured; but you were more mercifully dealt with than, considering your conduct to little Witikind, you deserved. The Fairy had no malevolent intentions towards you, though she did not choose that your audacious misbehaviour should go unpunished. She made a foot-ball of you, and kicked you before her, which was very much the kind of treatment you had bestowed upon all your attendants; but she had no wish to do you a mischief in life or limb; she only desired to administer some wholesome discipline.
Down the broad terrace bounded the involuntary traveller, and over the parapet in which it terminated. Fifty feet and more did the contorted Hope of the Katzekopfs traverse in the air before a bed of nettles received him. Over and over did he turn, to escape the stinging torment, but in vain: even the most elastic of balls cannot raise itself out of the bottom of a ditch.
Another kick from the Fairy was necessary; and as she kicked him, she exclaimed, “This is your punishment for having endeavoured to turn me into a toad: you may thank your lucky stars, and my good-nature, that this ditch is filled with nothing worse than nettles: it would have served you right had it been full of vipers.”
The Prince was smarting all over, so, perhaps, he did not feel as grateful as the Lady Abracadabra seemed to expect. But however that might be, there was no time for talking. Up the bank he flew, and pursued his painful way, “through bush, and through briar,” now over a wide expanse of gorse, now over thistly wastes, till there was not a quarter of an inch on the whole surface of the ball which had not received its share of castigation.
“Stop!” cried the Lady Abracadabra at length; and the Prince was but too glad to obey. “Come hither!” she continued. The Prince rolled towards her. As soon as he was within reach, she slipped off her girdle, and passing it through two or three of the living coils, lifted the ball from the ground, and threw it over her shoulder with a jerk, much in the same manner that a porter raises a sack on his back. Then she whistled three times; her cockatrice appeared at the sound; she sprung on her embroidered saddle,—her burden still suspended from her shoulder:—she gave the word; the monster spread forth his wings, and rose in the air; and in a few seconds the Hope of the Katzekopfs was far away from the scene of his errors, and from the influence of those whose weak indulgence had contributed to confirm him in them.
Darkness was now coming on apace, and the Prince was too much entangled in his own circumvolutions to be able to see very accurately whither he was wending, even had he known the country; but he was conscious that he was mounting higher and higher, and that he was being borne along with such increasing rapidity, that he thought within himself that they would certainly reach the world’s end by sunrise. On, and on, and on. The moon rose and set. The night air grew colder and colder: the clouds among which they travelled seemed denser and denser. Shivering at once and smarting; exhausted and hungry; terrified and indignant, the unhappy son of Queen Ninnilinda at length sunk into a state of apathy or unconsciousness.
How far, therefore, or in what direction he had been conveyed he knew not, but when he came to himself, morning had dawned, and he was aware that the Fairy was hovering at no great distance above the summit of a grassy hill, in the midst of a wooded country.
“Stop!” cried the Lady Abracadabra to her steed. The cockatrice poised in mid air. “Now, Eigenwillig,” said she, “you are going into Fairy-land. Take care how you behave there, for my countrymen are not to be trifled with.”
As she spoke she slipped one end of her girdle, and at the same moment the Prince became conscious that he was falling as rapidly as he had risen. But this was not all, for still, as he fell, he was conscious that he was no longer a compact ball, but that he was unrolling—yard after yard—with the greatest velocity; and not only so, but that his elongated form was shrinking back again to its original dimensions.
No sooner was he aware of this than a fresh terror seized him. “I am being restored to my natural shape,” thought he, “only to be dashed to pieces when I reach the summit of the hill beneath me.”