Then the wizard made a partition in the tent, three yards long and two yards wide. There he imprisoned Lindagull, and gave her half a reindeer cheese and a dipper of melted snow-water every day for food.
Thus day and night passed by in darkness, for winter came quickly; and the Northern Lights shone in through the cracks of the tent.
Poor, innocent little Lindagull! Her eyes had flashed lightning once; but as in thunder-storms it is not long between lightning gleams and showers of rain, so the tears of Princess Lindagull soon began to fall. Yes, she cried as one only can cry when one is twelve years old and has been a princess in Persia and lived in rose-gardens and marble castles, guarded by the friendliest attendants, and then suddenly finds herself hungry and freezing, alone, in a dark Lapland winter. Yes, she wept as one weeps over lost youth, health and beauty;—over a lost life; as the dew weeps over a beautiful extinguished day in Ispahan's pleasure garden.
When she had done weeping she slept. But lo! while she slept, there stood by her side the friendly old fellow whom the Finns call Nukku Matti, whom the Swedes call Jon Blund, and whom the Danes and Norwegians call Ole Luköje,[4]—(I don't know what they call him in Persia;) and he took her in his arms, bore her to Feather Islands and laid her on a bed of fragrant roses in a lovely grotto. There all was peaceful and good. The soft moon shone over date-palms and myrtle forests, just as in Persia's fairest springtime. Small airy Dreams danced forth to her with silken shoes over velvet rugs, and led her back to her home; to her father the old Shah Nadir, to her friendly attendants and to all the places dear to her from birth. And so passed the long winter nights.
And so passed weeks and months in the Kingdom of Dreams; because it was now night altogether. But Lindagull was patient and wept no more. The Dreams had said to her, "Wait; thy deliverer will come——"
Who would deliver her? Who should discover a path where no path lay, far away in the snow?
The Lapp woman would willingly have set her free, but dared not on account of her husband. And Pimpepanturi also had thoughts of it, but was too lazy.
At length the winter was ended. The sun dared to shine, the snow melted and the gnats danced about. Then the wizard thought, "Now she is tamed!" Whereupon he went to Lindagull and asked if she wished to travel back to Persia. If so, she need only to accept the grandly courageous and highly admired knight, Morus Pandorus von Pikkuluk'ulikuck'ulu for her bridegroom, and the reindeer would immediately stand harnessed at the door ready to travel southward.
Lindagull did not shoot glances of lightning this time. But she thought of the young Prince Abderraman who had once bled for her on Ispahan's sand; and remembering his face she could not possibly accept Pimpepanturi. She answered nothing.
At this the wizard became very angry. He shut the Princess Lindagull in a deep, dark grotto on a mountainside, and said to her (dropping the grandiloquent style he had heretofore used): "Soon the cloudberries will be ripe. You shall keep account of the days as they pass, in this way. The first day you shall have thirty cloudberries to eat and thirty dewdrops to drink; the next day twenty-nine cloudberries to eat and twenty-nine dewdrops to drink; and so on, for each day one berry and one drop less. On the last day you shall tell me what you have decided."