He went to the meadow and stood with Art and listened to what Art had to tell him. And as before the King’s Steward began—
“To your father’s Son in all truth be it told”—
Quick-to-Grab had said to the King of the Cats, “If ever you need the counsel of a human being, go to no one else but the Hag of the Ashes who was once called the Hag of the Wood. In the very centre of the wood four ash trees are drawn together at the tops, wattles are woven round these ash trees, and in the little house made in this way the Hag of the Ashes lives, with no one near her since her nine daughters went away, but her goat that’s her only friend.” The King of the Cats was now in the centre of the wood. He saw four ash trees drawn together at the tops and he jumped to them.
Now the Hag of the Ashes had a bad neighbor. This was a crane that had built her nest across the roof of the little house. The nest prevented the smoke from coming out at the top and the house below was filled with it. The Hag could hardly keep alive on account of the smoke and she could neither take away the nest nor banish the bird.
The crane was there when the King of the Cats sprang on the roof. She was sitting with her two legs stretched out, and when the King of the Cats came down beside her she slipped away and sailed over the trees. “Time for me to be going,” said the crane. And from that day to this she never came back to the house of the Hag of the Ashes.
“Oh, thanks to you, good creature,” said the Hag of the Ashes, coming out of the house. “Tear down her nest now and let the smoke rise up through the roof.”
The King of the Cats tore up the sticks and wool that the crane’s nest was made of, and the smoke came up through the top of the house. “Oh, thanks to you, good creature, that has destroyed the cross crane’s nest. Come down on my floor now and I’ll do everything that will serve you.”
The King of the Cats jumped down on the floor of the Hag’s house and saw the Hag of the Ashes sitting in a corner, She was a little, little woman in a gray cloak. All over the floor there were ashes in heaps, for she used to light a fire in one corner and when it was burnt out light another beside the ashes of the first. The smoke had never gone through the hole in the roof since the crane had built her nest on the top of the house. Her face was yellow with the smoke and her eyes were half closed on account of it.
“Do you know who I am, Hag of the Ashes?” said the King of the Cats when he stood on the floor.
“You are a cat, honey,” said the Hag of the Ashes. “I am the King of the Cats.”