Fidel goes up to her, and says to her that he cannot let her go—that the master has not given him any other work to do (than to take care of the horses), and that he certainly will not do any such thing. The mare said to him,
“Go and fetch a saucepan, and when I shall have filled it with water, you will wash your hands and your head.”
Fidel does as the mare told him, and is quite astonished at seeing his hands shine, and he says to her that he does not wish to have them like that, but that, as to his head, he could hide it.[38] The mare told him to wash his hands in the water, and that they would become again as they were before.
The time goes on, and the time returns. A long time had passed, and the master had never returned. And one day the mare said to him,
“Fidel, do you know how long you have been here?”
He says to her, “I don’t know at all—six months, perhaps?”
The mare says to him, “Six years have passed, and if the master arrives when seven years shall have passed, you will be enchanted—you, too, as we all are here—and the master is a devil.”
After that he heard that, Fidel is frightened, and he says to himself that it would be better to do what the white mare had said—to get on her back, and both to escape from there. They go off then, both of them. When they had gone some little distance, the mare asks him if he sees anything behind him.
He says, “Yes,” that he sees something terrible, but in the clouds; but that it is something terrific.[39] The mare gives the earth a kick with her foot, and says to it,
“Earth, with thy power form a dense, terrible fog where he is.”