The genie stooped, and gathered me under his right arm and my sister under his left; and giving a stamp upon the ground which shook the earth he mounted into the air....
Far out over the Great Sea, as the sun was setting, the genie drew downward toward an island; and on a bluff of this island, overlooking a cove in which fishing boats lay moored, he alighted and set us on our feet. Over my sister’s head and back he passed his hand, speaking strange words in his throat. She shriveled before my eyes; her face became old and wrinkled and her body bent; and before I could speak she was the hideous creature I had seen in the Fool’s glass, with a forefinger like the poker of a ragpicker.
“Paravaine!” I cried; but the genie turned her away toward a village which showed itself at the back of the cove, and sent her off in that direction; and when she had gone, he picked me up in his mighty hands, and carrying me to the further edge of the bluff where it looked down on the rolling surf, he swung me back and forth three or four times and tossed me out to sea.
I sank into the depths; I rose to the surface; and as my head came up I looked for the genie. Far up in the evening sky flew what seemed a tiny, black arrow. I cried aloud; and instead of a shriek there came from my throat a bark. It was the bark of a seal.
THE SIXTH NIGHT
THE ENCHANTED HIGHWAYMAN
MORTIMER the Executioner, very grand and uncomfortable in his new suit, placed a chair for the Queen before Solario’s worktable, and the old tailor having seated himself cross-legged on the table, the entire company sat down in a row, facing him.
There were first the Executioner, with the tiny Encourager on his shoulder; then Bodkin; then Bojohn; then his mother, the Princess Dorobel, and his father, Prince Bilbo; and last, his grandmother, the Queen.