“You may have the price of the foxling, but you may not have his life, poor baby,” said the little princess. “Here,” she pulled her purse from her kimono sleeve—“here is a gold piece for the flesh, and one for the liver, one for the fur, and still another for the life of this poor little bundle of fur. And pray the gods to give you kinder hearts in your breasts, for neither the gods nor men like cruel souls.”
The boys quickly took the gold which she offered them, lest she should change her mind and take back the coins, but she had no thought of doing that. Gold was nothing to her, because of it she had plenty; but the life of the fox baby seemed very precious.
“Fox Baby,” she said as she untied a string from his neck. “Where are your father and mother?” The fox gave a sad little whine, and its eyes seemed full of tears. From a bamboo thicket nearby came some short, sharp barks. The fox baby barked in return, and the princess saw peering from between the bamboo branches two old foxes who looked anxiously at the baby.
“Really I believe these are your parents, foxling,” she said. “I shall let you go to them. I would like to keep you for my playmate, you are so soft and pretty; but you would be lonely, no matter how much I loved you, and I never could be as your father and mother. So run along and be happy.”
She stroked him gently and set him down, and with great leaps he was off to the bamboo thicket. Then the princess watched with pleasure, for the old foxes received him with joy; they licked him over and over, and then, one on either side the baby fox, they trotted happily away. The princess smiled ’neath the cherry blooms and was glad.
Summer bloomed and the lotus lay golden hearted on the waters’ brim. It passed and the maples were scarlet and gold upon the hillsides. The sun was a glory of burnished gold in the heavens, but within the palace all was dark.
The little princess walked no more in the garden. She lay parched with fever upon her slumber mat and her mother and father watched beside her day and night. All the wise doctors in the land had been called to her side.
“She can not live,” they said, “since sleep does not visit her eyelids.” They tried by every means to make her sleep, but though her eyelids were heavy and she longed for slumber, it came not, and every day she grew weaker.
At last came the emperor’s magician and he gazed upon her long and carefully. At last he said, “She is cast under a spell. Unless the spell is broken she must die. One must sit beside her from the going down of the sun until it rises again in golden splendor from behind the mountains. That one will break the charm.”
“That is easy,” cried the princess’s maids. “We will watch to-night and save her;” for the little princess was so sweet and good that every one loved her. But lo! when the midnight came, the maidens felt a strange charm steal over them, and a strange scent was wafted to them, and strange music filled their ears, and they slept.