“Who are you?” asked Fluff.
“I am daughter of the Lord Hurrydole, and my name is Adlena,” replied the girl, which was not altogether a falsehood, because one of her ancestors had borne the name Hurrydole, and Adlena was one of her own names.
“Then, Adlena,” said Fluff, brightly, “you shall certainly be one of my maids; for there is plenty of room in the palace, and the more girls I have around me the happier I shall be.”
So Queen Zixi, under the name of Adlena, became an inmate of the king’s palace; and it was not many days before she learned where the magic cloak was kept. For the princess gave her a key to a drawer and told her to get from it a blue silk scarf she wished to wear, and directly under the scarf lay the fairy garment.
Adlena would have seized it at that moment had she dared; but Fluff was in the same room, so she only said: “Please, princess, may I look at that pretty cloak?”
“Of course,” answered Fluff; “but handle it carefully, for it was given me by the fairies.”
So Adlena unfolded the cloak and looked at it very carefully, noting exactly the manner in which it was woven. Then she folded it again, arranged it in the drawer, and turned the key, which the princess immediately attached to a chain which she always wore around her neck.
That night, when the witch-queen was safely locked in her own room and could not be disturbed, she called about her a great many of those invisible imps that serve the most skilful witches, commanding them to weave for her a cloak in the exact likeness of the one given Princess Fluff by the fairies.
Of course the imps had never seen the magic cloak; but Zixi described it to them accurately, and before morning they had woven a garment so closely resembling the original that the imitation was likely to deceive any one.
Only one thing was missing, and that was the golden thread woven by Queen Lulea herself, and which gave the cloak its magic powers.