“Neither the one nor the other,” replied the monster. “One way only canst thou escape thy just punishment—thou must fetch me the daughter of the Green Emperor!”
Aleodor would very much have liked to have got out of the difficulty some other way, as affairs of State would not allow him to take so long a journey, a journey on which he could find no guide to direct him; but what did the monster know of all that? Aleodor felt that if he would avoid the shame of being thought a robber and a trampler on the rights of others, he must indeed find the daughter of the Green Emperor. Besides, he wanted to escape with a whole skin if he could; so at last he promised that he would do the service required of him.
Now the Half-man-riding-on-the-worse-half-of-a-lame-horse knew very well that, as a man of honour, Aleodor would never depart from his plighted word, so he said to him: “Go now, in God’s name, and may good luck attend thee!”
So Aleodor departed. He went on and on, thinking over and over again how he was to accomplish his task, and so keep his word, when he came to the margin of a pond, and there he saw a pike dashing its life out on the shore. He immediately went up to it to satisfy his hunger with it, when the pike said to him: “Slay me not, Boy-Beautiful![18] but cast me rather back into the water again, and then I will do thee good whenever thou dost think of me.”
Aleodor listened to the pike, and threw it back into the water again. Then the pike said to him again: “Take this scale, and whenever thou dost look at it and think of me I will be with thee.”
Then the youth went on further and marvelled greatly at such a strange encounter.
Presently he fell in with a crow that had one wing broken. He would have killed the crow and eaten it, but the crow said to him: “Boy-Beautiful, Boy-Beautiful! why wilt thou burden thy soul on my account? Far better were it if thou didst bind up my wing, and much good will I requite thee with for thy kindness.”
Aleodor listened, for his heart was as kind as his hand was cunning; and he bound up the crow’s wing. When he made ready to go on again, the crow said to him: “Take this feather, thou gallant youth! and whenever thou dost look at it and think of me, I will be with thee.”
Then Aleodor took the feather and went on his way. He hadn’t gone a hundred paces further when he stumbled upon an ant. He would have trodden upon it, when the ant said to him: “Spare my life, O Emperor Aleodor, and I’ll deliver thee also from death! Take this little bit of membrane from my wing, and whenever thou dost think of me, I’ll be with thee.”
When Aleodor heard these words, and how the ant called him by his name, he raised his foot again and let the ant go where it would. He also went on his way, and after journeying for I know not how many days he came at last to the palace of the Green Emperor. There he knocked at the door, and stood waiting for some one to come out and ask him what he wanted.