“It is called ‘The Magic Rose,’” said she; “but it is a story of those that live in the sea. Down, deep down below the waves, all is calm and still, and there is the country of the mermen. Strange things have happened before now down there among the sea-folk. Some who have been thought drowned have been cared for there, and lived their lives long after those who had known them up above were past and gone. For the mer-folk are long-lived; what men count age is to them but youth; their days follow each other in a calm that human beings could scarce imagine. They live now in these stirring times as their forbears lived when men and women had their homes in the forests, long before there were houses or towns, or roads, or any of the things which you now think the commonest necessities.
“But the sea-folk have their troubles too, sometimes; and my story has to do with trouble. The Queen—the beautiful Queen of the sea-country—was ill, and the King was in despair. Now I must tell you that the Queen was not quite one of the sea race—so at least it was believed. Her grandmother—or her great-grandmother, maybe—was a maiden of the land, who had fallen into the sea as a little baby, and had been brought back to life and cared for by the mer-folk; and when she grew up, a great lord among them loved her for her beauty and made her his bride. She had no memory of her native land, of course; but still there were strange things about her and her children, and their children again, which told whence they had come.
“And now that the young Queen was so ill, one of these old feelings had awakened.”
“I shall die,” she said. “I shall surely die unless I can smell the scent of a rose—a deep-red rose, such as the land maidens love. It has come to me in my dreams. Though I have never seen one, I know what it must be like, and I feel that life would return—life and strength that are fast fading away—if I could breathe its exquisite fragrance and bury my face among its soft petals.”
They were amazed to hear her speak thus. The great court physicians at first said she was wandering in her mind, and no attention should be paid to her. But she kept on ever the same entreaty; and the King, who loved her devotedly, at last could bear it no longer.
“It all comes of her ancestor having been so foolish as to wed a human bride,” said one of the doctors, feeling in a very bad temper, as they all were.
The sea-doctors are not very wise, I fear, because they have so very little experience. It happens so rarely that any of the mer-folk fall ill. And so, as they had nothing to propose, the most sensible thing to do was to get angry. But the King was not to be so put off.
“Whatever it comes from,” he said, “I am determined that the Queen’s wish shall be complied with if it is in any way possible. What is this thing she is longing for?—what is a rose?”
The doctors did not know; but seeing that the King was so much in earnest they agreed that they would try to find out. And after a great deal of consultation together, and looking up in their learned books, they did find out something. The Queen, meanwhile, soothed by her husband’s promise that all was being done to carry out her entreaty, grew a shade better; at least for some days she did not get any worse, which was always something. And on the fourth day the wise men asked for an audience of the King in order to tell him what they had discovered.
The King awaited them eagerly.