‘Thou knowest,’ he made answer.
Her grass-green eyes grew dim with tears, and she said to the Fisherman, ‘Ask me anything but that!’
He laughed, and held her all the more tightly.
And when she saw that she could not free herself, she whispered to him, ‘Surely I am as fair as the daughters of the sea, and as comely as those that dwell in the blue waters,’ and she fawned on him and put her face close to his.
But he thrust her back frowning, and said to her, ‘If thou keepest not the promise that thou madest to me I will slay thee for a false witch.’
She grew grey as a blossom of the Judas tree, and shuddered. ‘Be it so,’ she muttered. ‘It is thy soul and not mine. Do with it as thou wilt.’ And she took from her girdle a little knife that had a handle of green viper’s skin, and gave it to him.
‘What shall this serve me?’ he asked of her, wondering.
She was silent for a few moments, and a look of terror came over her face. Then she brushed her hair back from her forehead, and smiling strangely she said to him, ‘What men call the shadow of the body is not the shadow of the body, but is the body of the soul. Stand on the sea-shore with thy back to the moon, and cut away from around thy feet thy shadow, which is thy soul’s body, and bid thy soul leave thee, and it will do so.’
The young Fisherman trembled. ‘Is this true?’ he murmured.
‘It is true, and I would that I had not told thee of it,’ she cried, and she clung to his knees weeping.