And Other Stories by Emma Bull Page B

case. Then she rode out
into the kingdom to look for what she wanted.
    She hadn’t been riding for an hour
before she met a young man sitting on a stone by the side of the
road. He’d covered his face with both hands, and she thought he
might be crying.
    “What is your
trouble?” the princess called to him, from high atop her white
horse.
    “Oh,” he said,
looking up at her, “my mother is wasting away with sickness. I have
a charm to cure her, but I have to use it before the sun goes down,
and she lives far away, on the edge of the sea. I can never reach
her in time.”
    “Well,” said the
princess, “I want your mother to be well and you to be happy. Take
my horse, and you’ll be there in time for dinner.”
    At that, the young man leaped up,
full of hope. The princess unstrapped the saddle case and set it on
the ground. Then she helped him mount the white horse, and watched
as they disappeared, fast as the wind, bound for the edge of the
sea.
    “That’s a start to my
journey,” said the princess, and went on down the road with her
dog, her cat, her crow, and the case that held her
cloak.
    A little farther along the way she
entered a forest, and in the forest under a tree she met a ragged,
weeping little girl.
    “Whatever is the
matter?” asked the princess.
    “I’ve lost our
sheep,” the little girl sobbed, “the ones I was driving to market
to sell. They took fright and scattered into the trees. Now I’ll
have to go home with nothing, and all my brothers and sisters will
go cold and hungry.”
    “That would be a
sorry thing,” said the princess. “I want you to stop crying, and
your family to be well. Here, I shall give you my dog, who
understands speech. Tell her to round up all your sheep and help
you drive them to market, and she’ll do just as you
say.”
    The little girl called to the dog,
which bounded up to her. As the princess set off again, she heard
the sheep maaa-ing and baaa-ing as the dog drove them out of the
woods.
    “I’ve miles to go
yet,” the princess said to herself, and went on down the road with
her cat, her crow, and her cloak.
    She was growing hungry, so when she
came to a cottage she decided to stop and ask if anyone there could
spare her a bit of bread. When she knocked on the door there was no
answer. But she thought she heard a noise inside, so she opened the
door and stepped in.
    An old woman sat on a stool there,
weeping into her apron.
    “Why do you weep so,
Grandmother?” asked the princess.
    “It’s the rats!”
wailed the old woman. “They’ve eaten my corn and my oats and my
wheat, and tonight they’ll finish my barley. And that’s all I have
to keep me from starving.”
    “Then dry your
tears,” the princess bid her. “I want you to be merry, and your
larder to be full. So you may have my cat. There’s no rat in all
the world can outrun or outsmart him. And when I return home, I’ll
send you corn and oats and wheat to replace what you’ve lost, and a
cow to milk besides.”
    The old woman leaped up with a
shout and threw her arms around the princess. Before she could say
“Farewell,” the cat had killed three rats and was hunting a
fourth.
    “One foot in front of
the other,” the princess said, and went on down the road with her
crow and her cloak.
    In a little while, she came to a
house that stood all alone. There she saw a man sitting on the
front step. Tears streamed down his face, but he never made a
sound.
    “Heavens, what’s
amiss?” asked the princess.
    He shook his head and beckoned her
closer. When she put her face down next to his, he whispered, “My
poor daughter has fallen under an enchantment. She can neither move
nor speak, and the only way to break the spell is to talk to her
for three days and three nights. I’ve talked for a day and a night
and half a day, and now I’m so hoarse I cannot talk at all. What
can I do to help my girl?”
    “I’ve just the
thing,” said the princess. “I want your daughter to go free and