第19章

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 flat 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 foreleg, 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 toward 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 at 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 afterward.'

'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.But I warn you that perhaps it will not look the least like what you may have been fancying I should require of you.I have one idea of you and your work, and you have another.I do not blame you for that - you cannot help it yet; but you must be ready to let my idea, which sets you working, set your idea right.Be true and honest and fearless, and all shall go well with you and your work, and all with whom your work lies, and so with your parents - and me too, Curdie,' she added after a little pause.

The young miner bowed his head low, patted the strange head that lay at the princess's feet, and turned away.As soon as he passed the spinning wheel, which looked, in the midst of the glorious room, just like any wheel you might find in a country cottage - old and worn and dingy and dusty - the splendour of the place vanished, and he saw but the big bare room he seemed at first to have entered, with the moon - the princess's moon no doubt - shining in at one of the windows upon the spinning wheel.