When he said that the Slight Red Steed twitched its ears and galloped towards the West. It went through woods and across streams, and when the crows were flying home and the kites were flying abroad it brought the King’s Son to a stone house standing in the middle of a bog. “It may be the Enchanter is in this house,” said the King’s Son. He jumped off the Slight Red Steed, pushed the door of the house open, and there, seated on a chair in the middle of the floor with a woman sitting beside him, was the Enchanter of the Black Back-Lands. “So,” said the Enchanter, “my Slight Red Steed has brought you to me.”
“So,” said the King’s Son, “I have found you, my crafty old Enchanter.”
“And now that you have found me, what do you want of me?” said the Enchanter.
“Your head,” said the King’s Son, drawing the tarnished Sword of Light.
“Will nothing less than my head content you?” said the Enchanter.
“Nothing less—unless it be what went before, and what comes after the Unique Tale.”
“The Unique Tale,” said the Enchanter. “I will tell you what I know of it.” Thereupon he began
I was a Druid and the Son of a Druid, and I had learned the language of the birds. And one morning, as I walked abroad, I heard a blackbird and a robin talking, and when I heard what they said I smiled to myself.
“Now the woman I had just married noticed that I kept smiling, and she questioned me. ‘Why do you keep smiling to yourself?’ I would not tell her. ‘Is that not the truth? ‘” said the Enchanter to a woman who sat beside him. “It is the truth,” said she.
“On the third day I was still smiling to myself, and my wife questioned me, and when I did not answer threw dish-water into my face. ‘May blindness come upon you if you do not tell me why you are smiling,’ said she. Then I told her why I smiled to myself. I had heard what the birds said. The blackbird said to the robin, ‘Do you know that just under where we are sitting are three rods of enchantment, and if one were to take one of them and strike a man with it, he would be changed to any creature one named?’ That is what I had heard the birds say and I smiled because I was the only creature who knew about the rods of enchantment.