"Why do you say that?" asked the princess.
"Because if I had not seen you weeping in the forest I would not have broken the fairy laws, teaching you to mend your cloak with magic such as fairies alone should use. It is for this that sorrow has come upon me and I have been banished from the fairy court. Now I must journey out in the huge rough world like an outcast, until I have accomplished the task set me by the fairy queen for a punishment."
When Goldenhair heard this she was greatly troubled, for she felt that she was indeed the cause of it all.
"What is this task they have set you?" she asked in a trembling voice.
"It is to weave a net of magic gold; the net in whose meshes alone can be caught a wicked enchantress who has been haunting this forest. For a long time she has been darkening it with her wicked spells and now upon me has fallen the heavy task of ridding the forest of her."
"But is this magic gold so hard to find? You are a fairy and surely you should know where to seek it."
"Though I am as old as the oldest tree
Such gold I never yet did see.
Only this much I know for this the queen told me; it is gold—
That lives and yet is not alive;
That comes neither from earth nor water;
Softer than silk and harder to weld than steel."