Now, a Bamboo Castle is a charming place to live. There were wind bells hung all along the eaves and they tinkled with the whisper of every passing breeze, and the windows were of paper, so that when the Princess wanted to look out of doors all she had to do was to poke a hole in one of them with her finger and by putting one eye there she could see everything that was passing and no one could catch a glimpse of her, and there were hundreds of mats on the floor of every room, and these were soft and cool to walk upon even in Doyo, or the Period of Greatest Heat, and the Prince went all the way to the town of Hirosaki to get her a bronze mirror that she might see how pretty she was, and she often looked in it. He also brought her a long-haired, fluffy little dog, but she screamed and would have nothing to do with it, so in its place he gave her a red cat without any tail that purred pleasantly whenever she touched it.
At night she slept on a pillow of shining black wood, and on it were sprawling, straggling letters of gold that spelled the name of the Baku, for the Baku in Japan has the body of a horse, the face of a lion, the trunk and tusks of an elephant, the tail of a cow and the feet of a tiger, and it eats up evil dreams. In fact, it never eats anything else, and yet it is always fat. So not only did the Princess have everything comfortable and agreeable while she was awake, but even in her sleep only sweet dreams could come to her.
And on summer evenings when there wasn’t any moon the Prince would have many bright-colored paper lanterns lit and hung in the garden, and lamps that looked like flowers would be swung in the trees, and then he would have his servants, who had been busy all day catching them in nets, turn out thousands of fireflies with their little golden lights all glowing, and the garden would be changed into fairyland. The Princess would sit in an arbor fringed with wistaria blossoms and sip her tea, while some of her maidens would sing for her and others with much bowing and waving of fans would dance in a slow and solemn fashion.
And again when the moon was a big, soft, bright ball and the clouds were very blue, she and the Prince and her maidens would go to the pavilion in the center of the garden and climb the many steps to the top, where there was a room called the moon-viewing Place of Peace. And the Prince would tell his flower-wife in the lovely language of the land that the sun was a golden crow and the moon a jeweled hare, and of how Princess Splendor, the dear daughter of the moon, once ran away, and when her mother called her she climbed home on a moonbeam crying silver tears, and all her tears took wings and flew down to earth and turned into fireflies.
But the Princess would have thoughts they could not understand and ask questions that would make even Nio Kuro smile. Once she said to him quite seriously:
“Did you ever see a dragon?”
“Certainly,” he answered. “There were many of these wriggling creatures made of red and yellow and pink and green paper, with lanterns for eyes, carried in the festival procession last year. They were very amusing.”
“Paper dragons,” she cried scornfully. “I mean live ones.”
“I have read of them and seen many pictures of them,” he told her. “There was one called Riu Gu, the Dragon King of the World Under the Sea, and when he sneezed the waters would jump up and tumble over each other in mighty waves, and every time the dragon caught cold many a fishing boat went down. But that was years and years ago, and now all the dragons are dead.”
And she only laughed and said no more, but she knew better. Perhaps the trouble was she knew too much to be a Princess, and that was why she at last got dreadfully bored.