Fairy Tales from the German Forests

by Margaret Arndt

"You are clever, now I can't do that," he said. "You must stay with me always, and live with me in the woods, and be my own little sweetheart."

"O no," said Käthe, "I should never be allowed to do that; I must go to school every day, and then I have my exercises to do, and to help mother with the housework; the baby to mind; and—O I am always so busy."

"I will come and help you," said Green Ears.

"But you can't, you are not real, you know," said Käthe and began to cry again.

"Käthchen," said Green Ears, and he looked quite serious and thinky all at once. "Listen to me. I will go to the Old King; he is the ruler of all the fairies here, and I will beg him to teach me how to become human. It may be years before we meet again, for the way into your world is very hard for me to find. Yes it is easier for you to find the way into our world, than for us to enter yours; but cheer up, I will dare it and do it for your sake! but O sweetheart wait for me; O wait for me!"

"Wait for me, my little sweetheart,

Till I come to you again,

Win the world for you, my sweetheart,

With its joy and with its pain.

Wait for me, my little sweetheart,

For when falling on the ground

I beheld those curious dewdrops

To your heart my heart was bound.

All my fairy life is nothing,

All my fairy joy I give,

Just to hold your hands, my sweetheart,

In your world with you to live.

Wait for me, my little sweetheart:

I will find the way to you,

As a grown man I will seek you,

Seek and find you ever true."

So singing they walked arm in arm through the long winding valley, till the dawn approached like a golden bird opening its great wings to fly.

Käthchen reached her cottage door. All was silent within. "Good-bye," she said, and their eyes met in one last farewell.

"Auf Wiedersehen!" said Green Ears (that pretty German farewell greeting which means so much more than good-bye), and then he stole back down the stony street, kissing his hands again and again to the little girl.

In some strange way Käthchen passed through the door of her little cottage; she had become for the time incorporeal; through the touch of a fairy her body and soul had become loose, that is to say, and she was able to enter the house as silently as a person in a dream. She went through the kitchen and up the steep wooden stairs. It seemed to her as if her feet did not touch the ground, she floated rather than walked. She reached her own little attic, and saw the room as if it were a picture, the square window-frame, the branches of the trees outside, the old pictures on the walls that she was so fond of.