“Which is mine?” she finally asked, in a startled voice.
“This, of course,” answered Adlena, folding up the imitation cloak which the imps had made, and putting it away in the drawer.
Fluff never suspected the trick, so Zixi carried away the magic cloak she had thus cleverly stolen; and she was so delighted with the success of her stratagem that she could have screamed aloud for pure joy.
As soon as she was alone and unobserved, the witch-queen slipped out of the palace, and, carrying the magic cloak in a bundle under her arm, ran down the streets of Nole and out through the gate in the wall and away toward the mountain where the lilac-grove lay.
“At last!” she kept saying to herself. “At last I shall see my own beautiful reflection in a mirror, instead of that horrid old hag!”
When she was safe in the grove she succeeded, by means of her witchcraft, in transforming the girl Adlena back into the beautiful woman known throughout the kingdom of Ix as Queen Zixi. And then she lost no time in throwing the magic cloak over her shoulders.
“I wish,” she cried in a loud voice, “that my reflection in every mirror will hereafter show the same face and form as that in which I appear to exist in the sight of all mortals!”
Then she threw off the cloak and ran to the crystal spring, saying: “Now, indeed, I shall at last see the lovely Queen Zixi!”
But as she bent over the spring, she gave a sudden shriek of disappointed rage; for glaring up at her from the glassy surface of the water was the same fearful hag she had always seen as the reflection of her likeness!
The magic cloak would grant no wish to a person who had stolen it.