"Yes, that is true," said Ellen; then she added after another silence, "And how glad that poor genie was that I had set him free at last."
[Chapter Eight]
Bluebeard's House
"Mistress, do you see that gray mist before us?" said the gander. "I think we have reached the border of the Fairy Tale Country, and beyond that mist lies the country of the Queerbodies."
Ellen drew rein, and the gander allowed himself to sink slowly to the ground. There he folded and settled his wings, and he and his mistress stood looking at the wall of mist before them. It was like the mist that hangs over streams in the early morning. They could not tell at all how high it was. Sometimes it looked quite low, and sometimes it seemed to reach up to the sky itself so that they could not tell where one ended and the other began.
"Look," cried Ellen in a whisper. "Do you suppose that is one of the Queerbodies?"
A gigantic shadow had appeared upon the wall of mist. It moved with such tremendous strides that it was out of sight in a moment. And now they saw other shadows. Some seemed to be bending over and taking up handfuls of earth and examining them as if in search of something. Others seemed to reach up as if after invisible fruit. Some were talking and nodding together, and every now and then one would turn and hurry away, as if suddenly remembering some business.
They were not all as big as the first shadow, though some of them stretched up so high that their heads and shoulders were lost in the grayness of the sky.