The Wagner Story Book: Firelight Tales of the Great Music Dramas

by William Henry Frost

"Now, the hero, you know, never knew what could be done with that helmet. He only took it with him from the dragon's cave because the little bird told him it was good for something. Now that he has learned its use everything that he and the king want to do seems simple enough, and they set off in the little boat for the rock with the fire around it. The half-brother stays on the shore and looks after them, with his pale face and his wicked eyes. The woman far away on that rock has the magic ring. When the king brings her here as his bride he will find some way to get the ring, and then what will he care for kings or brides, for princesses or heroes? He and the wicked dwarf, his father, will rule the world.

"The fire burns up high and clear again and within its circle sits the Daughter of the God. She does not sleep now; she sits and gazes at the ring her hero gave her, thinking nothing of the curse upon it, and wonders when he will come back to her. Ah, when will her hero come back to her? Do you remember how once on this very rock the daughters of the god met to ride together to his castle, and how they came each riding on her flying horse, racing with the driving wind and the hurrying clouds? With just such a leap and a flash of a sudden flame up into the smoke I can see one of them riding now. So quickly she gallops through the sky that I can scarcely see what she is till she reaches the rock, springs from her horse, and stands before her sister. Her sister runs to meet her and to ask if their father is still angry with her.

"The war goddess has sad things to tell of their father. He sits in his castle with the gods and his heroes around him. They do not go out to fight and kill each other, and to be made alive and well again at sunset any more. The Father of the Gods only sits there and looks at his broken spear, and the rest, full of dread, look only at him. He is weary of ruling the world, weary of all the trouble that has come from the wrong that he did in not giving that treasure back to the river nymphs. He is not sorry that his spear is broken and he would gladly hasten the end of all. He has made his heroes cut down the great ash tree from which his spear was made, the tree that spread its branches over all his castle, and they have piled the wood high around the walls. When the end comes it will help the castle to burn. And now the Father of the Gods says that, if the woman who has the magic ring whose curse has been so heavy would but give it back to the river nymphs, all his great sorrows would be over.

"This his daughter, the war goddess, heard, and hastened here to tell it to his daughter, the woman. Will she give up the ring? Will she help the gods to find the rest that they long for? Ah, but a war goddess knows as little of women as she does of men. No, no, the woman loves the man who gave her the ring and she would not lose it for a moment to gain ages of peace for the gods whose homes she shares no more. She cares nothing for weary gods; she has a hero. The war goddess cannot understand her sister. She leaves her and is away again, toward the castle of the gods, riding on her flying horse, galloping against the driving wind and the hurrying clouds.

"A horn sounds down in the valley. There is only one horn in the world like that, and the woman springs joyfully up to meet her hero. He comes and walks through the fire as he did before, but oh! how different he is from what he was before! Then his face was young and fresh and noble and his form was graceful and light; now his face and his form are those of the king. Is this the promise that the Father of the Gods made to his daughter? He said that none should ever come to her or win her but the bravest of heroes. Yes, this is indeed the promise and this the hero, but how sadly for her the promise is kept! When he saw her before he gently lifted off her helmet and kissed her and learned to fear before her; now he thinks only of the princess, away there by the river, and he tells the Daughter of the God that he is the king and that she must come with him and be his bride.

"She resists him, and he seizes her to force her. She holds out her hand to him with the ring and bids him beware its power, which will protect her from him; he seizes her hand and pulls the ring from her finger. She is helpless; she faints in his grasp; he carries her through the fire and down the mountain to where the real king is. He leaves them together and goes back alone to the hall by the river and to the princess.

"Very glad is the princess, you may be sure, to see him come back so quickly and so safely, and glad too is the half-brother, but for a different reason, for he sees the ring on his finger. Now they call all the people together to greet the king and his bride as they come in their boat on the river. There are shouts and cheers, and men with waving banners and women who scatter flowers; the king smiles upon his people and thanks them for their greeting, and there is only one who is not merry and glad. And whom do you think the king's new bride sees in all this happy crowd? Only her hero, in his own form again, and, if her heart was wounded and sad before, it dies within her now, when she sees him leading the princess out to meet them and knows that he thinks no longer of her. She turns pale and faint at first and then angry and fierce. She cries out that this man was her lover, that he has betrayed her for the princess and that he has betrayed the king too.

"Of course, nobody can understand that at all—nobody but the half- brother—but you can think how everybody must be shocked and astonished, and how everybody tries to make out what she means, and fails. To be sure, she understands it herself as little as the rest. She knows nothing about the magic drink that made her lover forget her; she knows only that he swore always to love her and that now he loves the princess. The king does not know that the hero ever saw his bride till he went to her mountain to bring her for him, so he supposes that, if he ever told her that he loved her, it must have been then; that would be betraying the king, his friend, in a most cruel way, of course. The princess knows only just what the king knows, and if the king has been deceived and betrayed, she must have been deceived and betrayed a great deal more. As for the poor hero himself, he does not remember that he ever saw this woman before, he does not know how he can have done any wrong, and he is more puzzled than any of the rest. Only the half-brother knows all about it, that nobody is to blame at all except himself, and it is he whom nobody thinks of suspecting. The hero lays his hand on the half-brother's spear and swears that he has never wronged anyone here; if he has, he says, may this very spear slay him.

"Now is the time for the half-brother to work the hero's ruin and to try to get the ring that he wears. When all have gone but him and the king and his bride, he whispers to her that he will help her, and will kill the hero to revenge the wrong that he has done her. 'You kill him!' she cries. 'If he once looked at you, you would not dare come near him.'

"'Yet,' he says, 'there must be some way that I could do it; tell me what it is and you will be revenged.'