Eva's Adventures in Shadow-Land

by Mary D. Nauman; Clara F. Guernsey

In a very short time, which yet seemed to Eva like hours, she reached the grotto. Here she felt comparatively safe, and she would gladly have rested, but the Toad-Woman, telling her she had no time to lose, for the Green Frog knew of her escape, and that she herself was well aware of all that had happened at the hut, bade her change her dress.

Now, what Eva most wanted was to see Aster restored to his original shape. But, without a word, she obeyed the woman, and put on her own white dress again. It was so nice to get rid of that horrid, mud-colored thing she had been wearing, to shake down her long curls, instead of having them tied up in a little plain cap, and to have the ugly brown dye come off her face and hands. Eva was more than glad,—she enjoyed the change.

“Now we will help Aster,” said the Toad-Woman. But the question was, how to open the cage and to get the bird out. For the cage had no door, and the bird flew round and round it, screaming and pecking at Eva’s hands, till the child was nearly ready to cry. “The Frog has still power, through her enchantments, over him,” the woman said. “Give me the cage, and let me see what I can do.”

“So the old woman at the head, and Eva at the tail, pulled, and pulled.” [Page 147.]

So she took up the cage and said some words which Eva did not understand, and then drew a circle in the air over it with her hand; and then, to Eva’s great amazement, a door in the cage opened and the woman put her hand in it and took out the bird, which screamed louder and pecked harder than ever.

“Now,” said the Toad-Woman, “we must make all the haste we can. We must find Aster before the Frog gets here. I’ll hold the bird’s head, and you take his tail, and then pull,—pull as hard as you can.”

All this was so queer to Eva, who thought they had found Aster, that she could not understand it. But the old woman saw her trouble, and, without getting angry or impatient, as some fairies would have done, she said to Eva:

“Aster is sewed up in the bird’s skin. And we can only get him out by tearing it apart. Make haste, there is no time to be lost.”

So the old woman at the head, and Eva at the tail, pulled, and pulled, and pulled. And the harder they pulled, the more the bird screamed and cried, till Eva pitied him so that she could scarcely bear to hurt him. But whenever she would want to stop the Toad-Woman would tell her to pull harder.