“I could not help it.”
“It is true, and only what we feared,” one of them said,—the same one who had spoken to Eva through the door. “We knew how it would be before we left you. You could not help it, for it was Fate, and no promise can bar the power, no wishes change the will, of Fate.”
Then Eva began to tell them her story. And they all listened, and when she told them how the green toad had pulled her dress, another of the children spoke and told Eva that the green toad was Aster’s friend, and would do all it could to help him. That, just before she came to the valley, it had been there and told them she was coming. And then Eva finished her story, and begged them to let her go.
“We cannot keep you,” they said to her, “even if we wished it. We would like to keep you with us; but the green toad has commanded us to help you, so far as lies in our power. But we cannot save you from the dangers of the way. They, who are more powerful than our Queen, have forbidden it, and will not allow us to tell you what these dangers are, or how you can avoid them or escape them. That you will learn on the Enchanted River, down which you will have to go, and we must, if you ask us, furnish you with the means of reaching it. You cannot go there unless we help you, and we cannot keep you here if we would.”
“Will I find Aster?” Eva asked.
“That will depend upon yourself,” one of the children said, exactly as if she was telling a story she had heard. “If Aster had obeyed you, as he should have done, and as he was expected to do, your journey would have ended here, in this Valley of Rest, and we, who are the Dawn Fairies, would have been able to take his flower from the Night and Shadow Elves; but the loss of part of his coat gave them power over him, because Darkness always swallows up Light whenever it can; and so, just at the entrance of this place, on the verge between Shadow and Dawn, they succeeded in luring him away from you.”
Then they told Eva that for a certain time, which had now expired, Aster’s enemies had been able to prevent her seeking for him. “During that time,” they went on, “we were permitted to receive you; but then since Aster’s friends have been able to speak to you by means of the brook, though they can do nothing to rescue or to help him, for you are the only person who can release him from the power of the Elves of Shadow-Land; and since you have heard the voice, and are willing to follow it, we can only, much as we would like to keep you with us, help you, and let you go.”
“Has she no choice?” another asked. “Could she not, if she chose, remain with us, instead of exposing herself to the dangers through which she must pass?”
“I would rather go,” Eva began, “if I may choose.”
“You are right,” the first one who had spoken went on. “It is your fate, and,” using, as Eva remembered, words that Aster had spoken long before, and which seemed to be a proverb among the elves and fairies, “it will be, because it must be.”