“A little deer on the hill-top;
If it die, I also dead drop,”
answered she.
The next day the palace dame came thither in the utmost misery, heard all about it from the mud-scraper, and hastened home with great joy. She told her daughter that on the top of the neighbouring hill was a little deer which she should ask her husband to get for her. That very same day the Sultana told her husband of the little deer on the top of the hill, and begged and implored him to get her its heart to eat. And after not many days the Prince’s men caught the little deer and killed it, and took out its heart and gave it to the Sultana. At the same instant when they killed the little fawn fair Rosa died. The mud-raker sorrowed over her till he could sorrow no more, and then took and buried her.
Now in the heart of the little fawn there was a little red coral eye which nobody took any notice of. When the Sultana ate the heart, the little red coral eye fell out and rolled down the steps as if it wanted to hide itself.
Time went on, and in not more than nine months and ten days the Prince’s consort was brought to bed of a little daughter, who wept pearls when she cried, dropt roses when she smiled, and sweet green herbs sprang up in her footsteps.
When the Prince saw it he mused and mused over it, the little girl was the very image of fair Rosa, and not a bit like the mother who had borne her. So his sleep was no repose to him, till one night fair Rosa appeared to him in his dreams and spoke these words to him: “Oh, my prince! oh, my betrothed! my soul is beneath thy palace steps, my body is in the tomb, thy little girl is my little girl, my talisman is the little coral eye.”
The Prince had no sooner awakened than he went to the staircase and searched about, and lo! there was the little coral eye. He picked it up, took it into his chamber, and laid it on the table. Meanwhile, the little girl entered the room, saw the red coral, and scarcely had she laid hold of it than she vanished as if she had never been. The three Peris had carried off the child and taken her to her mother’s tomb, and scarcely had she placed the coral eye in the dead woman’s mouth than she awoke up to a new life.
But the King’s son was not easy in his mind. He went to the cemetery, had the tomb opened, and there in her coffin lay the Rose-beauty of his dreams, with her little girl in her arms and the coral talisman in her mouth. They arose from the tomb and embraced him, and pearls fell from the eyes of both of them as they wept, and roses from their mouths as they smiled, and sweet green herbs grew up in their footsteps.
The palace dame and her daughter paid for their crimes, but beautiful Rosa and her father and her mother, the Sultan’s daughter, were all re-united, and for forty days and forty nights they held high revel amidst the beating of drums and the tinkling of cymbals.