“Are you sure you know the way, little man?” she said, “for I have been asleep so long that I have quite forgotten it.”
“O yes!” I answered eagerly, though really I was far from sure—but I knew that I had friends in the wood on whom I could rely, if by chance I took the wrong turning. So, “O yes!” I answered, “I have in my wanderings passed by your castle many a time. It stands high among the rocks in the middle of the wood, so high among the summer clouds that it makes one dizzy to look up at it, with its donjons and keeps and draw-bridges and battlements, glittering with men-at-arms, and here and there, blowing loose among the stone towers, the bright hair of some beautiful waiting-woman, watching the dark avenues of the woods for the returning huntsmen, and one loved face among the merry horns. All around the castle grow the oldest trees of the wood, very close and dark, and seeming to touch the sky; and thereabout are grim rocks, and hollow caves haunted by dragons and many another evil thing. In one of these a giant lives, so terrible that the bravest knights have gone up against him—only to leave their bones to whiten at the mouth of his cave. And by the castle walls runs an enchanted river, in which live beautiful water-witches, that sing in the moonlight, and draw the lonely home-returning knight down into their watery bowers. In the castle itself is one tower loftier than all the rest, with windows on every side, through which you can see, as in a magic glass, the whole wide earth, with its cities and its roads and all its hidden places. And there, all day long, sits an aged wizard listening to the world, and weaving his spells——”
“Yes!” said the Princess, perhaps a little impatient at my long description. “That is my castle. But are you quite sure that you know the way?”
At that moment there came and perched upon a bough close by one of those friends, on whom, as I said, I was relying to help me out if I should lose my way. It was a Blue-Bird, with which I had become well-acquainted in my rambles in the wood.
“Wait a moment, Princess,” I said. “To make quite sure, I will consult this friend of mine here.”
Now I must explain that the Blue-Bird, being himself a singer, it is necessary to address him in song. Plain prose he is quite unable to understand. So, if I had said: “Blue-Bird, please tell me the way to the Castle of Princess Once-Upon-a-Time,” he would have shaken his head like a deaf man. Therefore, I spoke to him in this fashion instead; or, rather, I should say that this is the grown-up meaning of what I sang—for the actual song I have forgotten:
O Blue-Bird, sing the hidden way
To Once-Upon-a-Time;
We know you cannot speak in prose,
So answer us in rhyme.
Blue-Bird of Dreams, alone you know
The way the dream-folk take,
O tell us the right way to go,
Before, Blue-Bird, we wake.
Dreamers, we seek the way of dreams—
O you that know so well
Each twist and turning of the way,
Blue-Bird, will you not tell?
Blue-Bird, if aught that we possess
Has any worth to you,
O take it, Blue-Bird, here it is,
But tell us what to do.