‘Here, in the middle of the moor, you know,’ said father-stork, ‘is a kind of lake; you can see a part of it if you stand up. There, by the reeds and the green quagmire, lies a great elder-stump. The three swans lighted on it, flapped their wings, and looked round them. Then one of them threw off her swan’s plumage, and I saw it was our own princess, of our house in Egypt. Then she sat down, and she had no other covering than her own long, black hair. I heard her ask the two others to take great care of her swan-skin while she plunged under the water to gather a flower which she thought she saw. They nodded, and lifted up the loose feather-dress. “I wonder what they mean to do with it,” said I to myself; and no doubt she asked them the same. And she got an answer, something she could see for herself. They flew aloft with her feather-dress! “Sink down,” they cried; “you shall never fly in the swan-skin again; never see Egypt again! Stay in the moss!” And so they tore her feather-dress into a hundred pieces, till the feathers flew about as if it was snowing, and off flew the two good-for-nothing princesses.’
‘Oh, how dreadful!’ said mother-stork. ‘I can’t bear to hear it. But, tell me, what else happened?’
‘Our princess moaned and wept. Her tears fell on the elder-stump, and it was quite moved, for it was the Marsh King himself, who lives in the quagmire. I saw the stump turn itself, so it wasn’t only a trunk, for it put out long, muddy boughs like arms. Then the unhappy girl was frightened, and sprang aside into the quivering marsh, which will not bear me, much less her. In at once she sank, and down with her went the elder-stump—it was he who pulled her down. Then a few big black bubbles, and no trace of her left. She is engulfed in the marsh, and will never return to Egypt with her flower. You couldn’t have borne to see it, mother!’
‘You shouldn’t have told me anything of the sort just now; it may affect the eggs. The princess can take good care of herself. She’ll get help easily enough. Had it been you or I, there would have been an end of us.’
‘However, I’ll go day by day to see about it,’ said father-stork; and so he did.
The days and months went by. He saw at last one day that right from the bottom of the marsh a green stalk pushed up till it reached the surface of the water. Out of it grew a leaf, that grew wider and wider, and close to it a bud put out. Then one morning, as the stork was flying over it, it opened, with the sun’s warmth, into a full-blown flower, in the middle of which lay a beautiful child, a little girl, as if she were fresh from the bath. So like was the child to the princess from Egypt, that at first the stork believed it to be herself turned a child again. But when he thought it over, he decided that it was more likely to be the child of the princess and the Marsh King, and that was why she was lying in a water lily.
‘She mustn’t be left lying there,’ thought father-stork, ‘and there are too many already in my nest. But I have it! The Viking’s wife has no children, and she has often wished for a little one. Yes, I get the name for bringing the babies; I will do it in sober truth for once! I’ll fly to the Viking’s wife with the child. They’ll be delighted!’
So the stork took the little girl, flew to the log-house, made a hole with his beak in the window, with panes made of bladder, laid the child on the bosom of the Viking’s wife, and flew away
IT WAS HE WHO PULLED HER DOWN