“No! I thought she was at first but she isn’t! She is ugly and evil and you shall pay the penalty for having deceived me!”
Thereupon he ordered that Osmo be shut up in a place filled with serpents.
“If you are innocent,” the King’s Son said, “the serpents will not harm you. If you are guilty they will devour you!”
Meanwhile poor Ilona when she jumped into the water sank down, down, down, until she reached the Sea King’s palace. They received her kindly there and comforted her and the Sea King’s Son, touched by her grief and beauty, offered to marry her. But Ilona was homesick for the upper world and would not listen to him.
“I want to see my brother again!” she wept.
They told her that the King’s Son had thrown her brother to the serpents and had married Suyettar in her stead, but Ilona still begged so pitifully to be allowed to return to earth that at last the Sea King said:
“Very well, then! For three successive nights I will allow you to return to the upper world. But after that never again!”
So they decked Ilona in the lovely jewels of the sea with great strands of pearls about her neck and to each of her ankles they attached long silver chains. As she rose in the water the sound of the chains was like the chiming of silver bells and could be heard for five miles.
Ilona came to the surface of the water just where Osmo had landed. The first thing she saw was his boat at the water’s edge and curled up asleep in the bottom of the boat her own little dog, Pilka.
“Pilka!” Ilona cried, and the little dog woke with a bark of joy and licked Ilona’s hand and yelped and frisked.