“Even when it is with his own will?”
“That’s what seems to me to make it worst of all,” said Curdie.
“You are right,” answered the princess, nodding her head; “but there is this amount of excuse to make for all such, remember—that they do not know what or how horrid their coming fate is. Many a lady, so delicate and nice that she can bear nothing coarser than the finest linen to touch her body, if she had a mirror that could show her the animal she is growing to, as it lies waiting within the fair skin and the fine linen and the silk and the jewels, would receive a shock that might possibly wake her up.”
“Why then, ma’am, shouldn’t she have it?”
The princess held her peace.
“Come here, Lina,” she said after a long pause.
From somewhere behind Curdie, crept forward the same hideous animal which had fawned at his feet at the door, and which, without his knowing it, had followed him every step up the dove-tower. She ran to the princess, and lay down at her feet, looking up at her with an expression so pitiful that in Curdie’s heart it overcame all the ludicrousness of her horrible mass of incongruities. She had a very short body, and very long legs made like an elephant’s, so that in lying down she kneeled with both pairs. Her tail, which dragged on the floor behind her, was twice as long and quite as thick as her body. Her head was something between that of a polar bear and a snake. Her eyes were dark green, with a yellow light in them. Her under teeth came up like a fringe of icicles, only very white, outside of her upper lip. Her throat looked as if the hair had been plucked off. It showed a skin white and smooth.
“Give Curdie a paw, Lina,” said the princess.
The creature rose, and, lifting a long fore leg, held up a great doglike paw to Curdie. He took it gently. But what a shudder, as of terrified delight, ran through him, when, instead of the paw of a dog, such as it seemed to his eyes, he clasped in his great mining fist the soft, neat little hand of a child! He took it in both of his, and held it as if he could not let it go. The green eyes stared at him with their yellow light, and the mouth was turned up towards him with its constant half-grin; but here was the child’s hand! If he could but pull the child out of the beast! His eyes sought the princess. She was watching him with evident satisfaction.
“Ma’am, here is a child’s hand!” said Curdie.
“Your gift does more for you than it promised. It is yet better to perceive a hidden good than a hidden evil.”
“But,” began Curdie.
“I am not going to answer any more questions this evening,” interrupted the princess. “You have not half got to the bottom of the answers I have already given you. That paw in your hand now might almost teach you the whole science of natural history—the heavenly sort, I mean.”
“I will think,” said Curdie. “But oh! please! one word more: may I tell my father and mother all about it?”
“Certainly—though perhaps now it may be their turn to find it a little difficult to believe that things went just as you must tell them.”
“They shall see that I believe it all this time,” said Curdie.
“Tell them that tomorrow morning you must set out for the court—not like a great man, but just as poor as you are. They had better not speak about it. Tell them also that it will be a long time before they hear of you again, but they must not lose heart. And tell your father to lay that stone I gave him last night in a safe place—not because of the greatness of its price, although it is such an emerald as no prince has in his crown, but because it will be a news-bearer between you and him. As often as he gets at all anxious about you, he must take it and lay it in the fire, and leave it there when he goes to bed. In the morning he must find it in the ashes, and if it be as green as ever, then all goes well with you; if it have lost colour, things go ill with you; but if it be very pale indeed, then you are in great danger, and he must come to me.”
“Yes, ma’am,” said Curdie. “Please, am I to go now?”
“Yes,” answered the princess, and held out her hand to him.
Curdie took it, trembling with joy. It was a very beautiful hand—not small, very smooth, but not very soft—and just the same to his fire-taught touch that it was to his eyes. He would have stood there all night holding it if she had not gently withdrawn it.
“I will provide you a servant,” she said, “for your journey, and to wait upon you afterwards.”
“But where am I to go, ma’am, and what am I to do? You have given me no message to carry, neither have you said what I am wanted for. I go without a notion whether I am to walk this way or that, or what I am to do when I get I don’t know where.”
“Curdie!” said the princess, and there was a tone of reminder in his own name as she spoke it, “did I not tell you to tell your father and mother that you were to set out for the court? and you know that lies to the north. You must learn to use far less direct directions than that. You must not be like a dull servant that needs to be told again and again before he will understand. You have orders enough to start with, and you will find, as you go on, and as you need to know, what you have to do.
