Then, for the first time since her wanderings had begun, Eva spoke, and her voice sounded strange in her own ears, low though it was:
“How can I cross the fire?”
A little, low, melodious laugh, like that of a merry child, answered her; and when Eva looked to see whence it came, she saw that the little knot upon the end of her cane was a real head, that the lips were laughing, and that from the queer eyes came two funny little blue flames; and as Eva looked at it, very much tempted to throw it away, the head laughed again, and then the lips parted and said:
“Flames, like these, of shadow birth,
May not harm a child of earth.”
Then the voice was silent. But a thousand rainbow-colored bubbles glowed at once all over the waters of the fountain; and on each bubble there stood and danced a tiny elf, clad in bright colors; shapes so light and airy that their frail supports never failed them; and the tiny flames grew brighter, and then, as Eva still hesitated, fearing yet to cross them, the lips of the little head spoke once more:
“’Neath thy step they will expire—
Fear not, Eva; cross the fire.”
Hearing this, Eva stepped forward. As she did so, the little stick dropped or slipped from her hand, and, rolling into the fountain, disappeared in its waters; and at every step she took she saw that the little flames died away, as the voice had said, under her feet; till, when she reached the fountain’s brink, they were all gone, and no trace of them was left. As she looked at the waters, they seemed to become solid, and shape themselves into an image carved as it were out of pure, shining gold, yet glowing with many colors; and then, slowly, slowly, with a sound like distant music, the beautiful, wonderful thing began to sink into the earth; and Eva, her tiny hands clasped, her fair cheeks flushed, her soft blue eyes sparkling, stood in silence and looked. And just as the magic fountain, which, when the child first came up to it, had been so high that its waters played far above her head, had sunk so low that Eva, had she wished, might have laid her hand upon its summit, she saw, cradled as it were, on the very crest of what had been the golden water, a tiny figure; not like one of the elves which had danced on the rainbow-bubbles, but like a sleeping child, which Eva thought, at first, was only a doll lying there, in its green-and-scarlet velvet dress; and for a moment the slow, descending motion of the fountain stopped, and Eva heard these words, in the same voice which had spoken before through the lips of the little head, though this time it came from the fountain:
“Take it, Eva, ’tis thy fate,