At eventide the servants came and bowed before the Padishah and said: “My lord! peace be with thee! They await thee in the harem!” So he entered the harem, and there he saw before him the golden-haired youth, with a beautiful half-moon shining on his forehead, and his bride, the Peri-Queen, and his own consort, the Sultana, who had been buried in the earth, and by her side a golden-haired maiden with a star sparkling on her forehead. There stood the Padishah as if turned to stone, but his consort ran up to him and kissed the edge of his garment, and the Peri-Queen began to tell him the whole of her life and how everything had happened.
The Padishah was nigh to dying in the fulness of his joy. He could scarce believe his eyes, but he pressed his consort to his breast and embraced the two beauteous children, and the Queen of the Peris likewise. He forgave the sisters of the Sultana their offences, but the old witch was mercilessly destroyed by lingering tortures. But he and his consort and her son and the Queen of the Peris, and his daughter, and his daughter’s bridegroom sat down to a great banquet and made merry. Forty days and forty nights they feasted, and the blessing of Allah was upon them.
THE HORSE-DEVIL AND THE WITCH
There was once upon a time a Padishah who had three daughters. One day the old father made him ready for a journey, and calling to him his three daughters straightly charged them to feed and water his favourite horse, even though they neglected everything else. He loved the horse so much that he would not suffer any stranger to come near it.
So the Padishah went on his way, but when the eldest daughter brought the fodder into the stable the horse would not let her come near him. Then the middling daughter brought the forage, and he treated her likewise. Last of all the youngest daughter brought the forage, and when the horse saw her he never budged an inch, but let her feed him and then return to her sisters. The two elder sisters were content that the youngest should take care of the horse, so they troubled themselves about it no more.
The Padishah came home, and the first thing he asked was whether they had provided the horse with everything. “He wouldn’t let us come near him,” said the two elder sisters; “it was our youngest sister here who took care of him.”
No sooner had the Padishah heard this than he gave his youngest daughter to the horse to wife, but his two other daughters he gave to the sons of his Chief Mufti and his Grand Vizier, and they celebrated the three marriages at a great banquet, which lasted forty days. Then the youngest daughter turned into the stable, but the two eldest dwelt in a splendid palace. In the daytime the youngest sister had only a horse for a husband and a stable for a dwelling; but in the night-time the stable became a garden of roses, the horse-husband a handsome hero, and they lived in a world of their own. Nobody knew of it but they two. They passed the day together as best they could, but eventide was the time of their impatient desires.
One day the Padishah held a tournament in the palace. Many gallant warriors entered the lists, but none strove so valiantly as the husbands of the Sultan’s elder daughters.
“Only look now!” said the two elder daughters to their sister who dwelt in the stable, “only look now! how our husbands overthrow all the other warriors with their lances; our two lords are not so much lords as lions! Where is this horse-husband of thine, prythee?”
On hearing this from his wife, the horse-husband shivered all over, turned into a man, threw himself on horseback, told his wife not to betray him on any account, and in an instant appeared within the lists. He overthrew every one with his lance, unhorsed his two brothers-in-law, and re-appeared in the stable again as if he had never left it.