“That’s why I’ve come hither. Keep that promise, and you shall see my house, if you can really get there.”
With that he fastened the skis on his feet and vanished in the mist on the fen.
“The enemy stands on the shore,” he said to his imaginary soldiers on the island, “but they have neither axe nor knife for making skis. We may feel secure, if only we always remain upright and good.”
But late in the evening when he was about to lay fresh juniper on the hearth, he saw the goat-girl coming on the fen with the help of twigs and dry branches.
“The enemy thinks to take us by storm,” he continued, “but there is a secret which I have long suspected. I shall make the whole Wander Isle sail to sea like a boat.”
He pressed a pole against the outermost tussocks of the fen, and the floating island swam swaying further out on the water.
Then he laid himself calmly to sleep by the crackling embers, but when after a while he suddenly opened his eyes, the goat-girl stood straight before him and peeped in under the low roof on which fox-skins lay spread inside out to dry.
She asked him nothing about the high fireplace or the hangings or the slippery floor, but merely said, “A fresh breeze has blown up, so that the island has driven to land on the other shore. But why do you let the dry fox-skins lie on the roof instead of spreading them in here on the ground? And we ought to stick in juniper around the island so that people can’t see either us or the hut.”
He thought she spoke sensibly and went ashore at once to collect the juniper. When it was already long after midnight, they still worked at the strengthening and beautifying of his island. They even made of birch-bark and pegs a door which they could set before the entrance, and when they finally shoved the island off from the land again, they anchored it out in the water with two piles.
“Now the drawbridge is raised,” said Johannes, “and we must see to providing the new guests with entertainment such as is right.”