“What is your errand?” asked the wizard in a harsh voice.
“I seek the elixir of death,” replied Sorrel fearlessly.
“Many desire the elixir of life,” said the wizard, “the other is sought but seldom. Here they are, both together. Choose.” So saying he handed Sorrel two tall crystal vases, each filled with a clear colourless fluid.
Then Sorrel dipped his bulrush pipe into one of the vases, and it blossomed, but when he dipped it into the other it withered and died. So he took the elixir of death with him, and left the castle, and scaled the steep cliff by the help of the ladder. His friend the moon was still high in the heavens, and lighted him back across the trackless heath.
With all possible speed Sorrel hastened onwards, but when he reached the forest in which his home lay, he became very thirsty, and wandered to and fro among the thickets seeking for a brook or a spring. At last, faint and weary with his fruitless search, he lay down under a spreading tree, but the crystal vase he placed beyond his reach, lest in his great thirst he should be tempted to drink the deadly elixir. Soon there came by a fair young pixie, gathering mosses and ferns for her grotto, and Sorrel begged her for some water.
“Water is close at hand,” said she, “for we pixies may not stray far from our springs,” and she went and fetched some water in a shell and gave it to him.
“But tell me now,” she said, “is there not water in yonder vase?”
“That is the elixir of death,” replied Sorrel, and he told her of his quest, and as they sat together under the tree, they loved one another and plighted their troth.
“Only first I must go back to my mother,” said Sorrel, “and after that I will return to you.”
So she brought him to a mossgrown path which led him at last to the pool, and when the pixie saw him she rejoiced. “O Sorrel, you were rightly named,” said she, “for does not wood-sorrel betoken mother’s joy?”