Tales of Folk and Fairies

by Katharine Pyle

The old Ranee and the nurse and the servants came to the well and searched under every step, but no one was there, so went away again.

All might now have been well, but the workman’s mischievous little daughter chanced to come by that way again. At once she espied the banyan trees and the rose-bush. “It is a curious thing that I never saw these trees before,” she thought. “I will gather a bunch of roses.”

She ran past the banyan trees without giving them a thought and began to break the flowers from the rose-tree. At once a shiver ran through the tree, and it cried to her in a pitiful voice: “Oh! oh! you are hurting me. Do not break my branches, I pray of you. I am a little girl, too, and can suffer just as you might.”

The child ran back to her father and caught him by the hand. “Oh, I am frightened!” she cried. “I went to gather some roses from the rose-tree, and it spoke to me;” and she told him what the rose-tree had said.

At once the workman went off and repeated to the Ranee what his little daughter had told him, and the Queen gave him a piece of gold and sent him away, bidding him keep what he had heard a secret.

Then she called the wicked nurse to her and repeated the workman’s story. “What had we better do now?” she asked.

“My advice is that you give orders to have all the trees cut down and burned,” said the nurse. “In this way you will rid yourself of the children altogether.”

This advice seemed good to the Ranee. She sent men and had the trees cut down and thrown in a heap to burn.

But heaven had pity on the children, and just as the men were about to set fire to the heap a heavy rain storm arose and put out the fire. Then the river rose over its banks, and swept the little trees down on its flood, far, far away to a jungle where no one lived. Here they were washed ashore and at once took on their real shapes again.

The children lived there in the jungle safely for twelve years, and the brothers grew up tall and straight and handsome, and the sister was like the new moon in her beauty, so slim and white and shining was she.