Next day the daughter of the Emperor was afraid she would be found out, as the Sun said he smelt a creature from another world. But his mother soothed him with soft words, and told him that it was pears that he smelt. The daughter of the Emperor took courage when she saw how well she was treated, and said:
“Tell me now, how can the Sun be ever vexed, seeing that he is so beauteous, and doeth so much good to mortals?”
“I’ll tell thee,” replied the mother of the Sun. “In the morning he stands in the gate of Heaven, and then he is merry, so merry, and smiles upon the whole world. But at mid-day he is full of disgust, inasmuch as he sees all the follies of men, and so his wrath burns and he gets hotter and hotter; while in the evening he is vexed and sorrowful because he stands in the gate of Hades, for that is the usual way by which he comes home.”
She told her besides that she had asked about her husband, and her son had replied that he knew not anything about him, as he was living in the midst of a vast and dense forest, so that his beams could not pierce through the thick foliage; the only thing to do was to go and ask the Wind about it. Then she also gave her a roast fowl, and told her to take great care of the bones.
So the daughter of the Emperor pitched away the second pair of iron sandals that she had worn out, tied up the bones, took her child on her arm and a third staff in her hand, and went after the Wind.
On this journey she met with hardships greater than any before, for she came upon mountains of flintstones, one after another, through which darted flames of fire, forests untrodden by man, and fields of ice dark with snow-storms. More than once the poor creature was on the point of falling, but with perseverance and the help of God she overcame even these great hardships, and at last she reached a ravine between two mountains, large enough to hold seven cities.
This was the abode of the Wind.
There was a gate in the wall which surrounded it. She knocked and implored them to let her in. The mother of the Wind had compassion on her, and let her in and invited her to rest. “If she had hidden from the Sun,” she said, “surely the Wind would not find her out.”
The next day the mother of the Wind told her that her husband was living in a huge dense wood, which the axe of man had never yet reached, and there he had made him a sort of house by piling up the trunks of trees one on the top of another, and plaiting them together with withy bands, where he lived all alone for fear of wicked men. Then, after she had given her a roast fowl and told her to take good care of the bones, the mother of the Wind counselled her to follow the road that led straight to the sky, and let the stars of heaven be her guides. She said she would, and after thanking her with tears of joy for her hospitality and for her glad tidings, she went on her way.
The poor woman turned night into day. She stopped neither to eat nor to rest, so fiercely did the desire to find her husband burn within her. She went on and on till she quite wore out the third pair of sandals. She threw them away, and began to walk with bare feet. She cared not for the hard clumps of earth, she took no heed of the thorns that entered into her feet, nor of the pain she suffered when she stumbled over the hard stones. At last she came to a green and beauteous meadow on the margin of a forest, and her heart rejoiced within her when she felt the soft grass and saw the sweet flowers. She stopped and rested a little. But when she saw the birds in couples and couples on the branches of the trees, a burning desire for her own husband came upon her, and she began to weep bitterly, and with her child on her arm, and her bundle of bones in her girdle, she went on her way. She entered the forest. She did not once look at the soft green turf which soothed her feet, she listened not to the birds that chirped enough to deafen her, she regarded not the flowers that peeped out from among the bushes, but groped her way step by step into the depths of the forest. For from the tokens given her by the mother of the Wind she perceived that this must be the forest in which her husband was staying.