“You’re babbling!” exclaimed the mother stork. “The eggs will get cold, stop keeping me in suspense.”
“I was keeping watch,” said the father stork, “and tonight when I went into the reeds I saw three swans. But there was something strange about them – they weren’t real swans, they were just swan’s feathers!”
“Enough about feathers! What about the princess?”
“Well, you know the lake in the middle of the moor?” continued the father stork. “The three swans were sitting on the tree stump near the reeds. Suddenly, one of them threw off her feathers and I saw that it was the princess from the house we nest on in Egypt. I heard her tell the others to look after the feathers while she dived under the water to find the flower. The others picked up the feathers, but then they flew off with them! As they flew away they cried, ‘Dive down into the water! You’ll never see Egypt again!’ and they tore the feathers into a thousand pieces and let them flutter to the ground like snow. Then the two cruel princesses were gone.”
“That’s terrible!” said the mother stork. “I can’t bear to listen! What happened next?”
“The princess wept and her tears fell onto the tree stump. But it wasn’t a tree stump after all – it started to move. It was the Marsh King who rules under the moor. He rose from the ground and I saw that his arms were like long, thin branches. The poor princess was terrified. She tried to run away across the slimy ground, but it wouldn’t take her weight and she sank down and down until big black bubbles rose from the slime. As the bubbles burst, both the princess and the Marsh King disappeared. Now the princess is buried deep in the wild moor and she’ll never return to Egypt with the flower!”
“Stop telling me such terrible things!” cried the mother stork, “I’m sure the princess will escape, or someone will come to find her.”
“But I’ll go every day to see if anything happens,” said the father stork. And he did.
A long time passed. One day, the father stork saw a green stalk shooting up from the moor ground. After a little while, a leaf unfolded and grew bigger and bigger until a bud appeared. As he flew overhead one morning, the bud burst open and in the centre there was a beautiful little girl. She looked just like the Egyptian princess, and the father stork realised that it must be the Marsh King’s daughter.
“I can’t leave her lying there,” he thought, “but my nest is full already. The Viking’s wife would love to have a child, though ... I know! People always say that storks bring children, so that’s what I’ll do. She’ll be so happy!”
So the father stork picked up the child and flew to the castle. He placed the baby gently next to the Viking woman as she slept, and then he hurried home to tell his family what had happened.
“...So, the princess isn’t dead because she must have given birth to the child,” he said.
“Okay, that’s wonderful. Now think about your own family,” said the mother stork, “we need to start preparing for our flight to Egypt – the cuckoos and nightingales have already set off. The young ones have been practising their flying and I think they’re ready.”
When the Viking’s wife woke up she was overjoyed to find a baby girl beside her. She cuddled it but the baby cried violently and struggled until she had cried herself to sleep. When the baby was sleeping she looked beautiful and tranquil, and the Viking’s wife was happy.
The Viking’s wife knew that her husband would be returning home soon, so she started to prepare the house. The maids hung up the tapestries, polished the shields and arranged the cushions. They built a fire in the hearth, ready to be lit when the Viking returned. By nightfall, the Viking’s wife was very tired and she quickly fell asleep.
When she awoke, the baby had vanished. She searched the room for the child, but all she found was a great big ugly frog. She was so horrified that she grabbed a heavy stick and was just about to hit it when she noticed that it was looking at her with large, mournful eyes. She could not bring herself to harm it, so she opened the window to let it out. But at that moment a golden ray of sunshine fell on the frog, and, before the woman’s eyes, its ugly great mouth shrunk to a small red one and its limbs stretched to become beautifully symmetrical. It was no longer an ugly frog, but the beautiful baby girl.
“Am I dreaming?” asked the woman.
She kissed and hugged the baby, but it struggled and fought like a wild cat.
Meanwhile, the Viking was on his way home. But the wind was blowing against him and so his journey was long and slow.
After a few nights, the Viking’s wife decided that a terrible spell must have been cast upon the child. In the day, she was as beautiful as an angel of light, but her temper was savage and wild. But at night she became an ugly frog with large sorrowful eyes. You see, by day the girl had the body of the Egyptian princess but the Marsh King’s temper, and by night she had the body of the Marsh King but the kind heart of the Egyptian princess.
“THEY WERE RETURNING HOME, RICHLY LADEN WITH SPOIL, FROM THE GALLIC COAST”
The Viking’s wife longed to find someone who could break the spell. She spent her days weeping with sorrow, and yet she still cared for the child. She feared that her husband might find out the terrible secret and leave the baby out on the road to die, and she knew in her heart that she could not allow it. She decided that the Viking must only ever see the child in daylight.
One morning, the Viking woman heard a rushing noise overhead. She saw above her that the storks had started their journey south. The young storks had practised hard and they flew as lightly as the wind.
At that very moment the sound of trumpets rolled across the moor; the Viking and his warriors had landed and were returning home. They brought with them hoards of treasure from the French coast, where the villagers sang, “Save us from the wild Northmen!”
The men came home in high spirits. The fire was lit and a great feast began. Many guests were invited and each received a gift. The minstrel sang a song, which praised the men’s warlike deeds and bravery. Every line of the song ended with these words:
“Goods and gold, friends and foes will die;
Every man must one day die.
But a famous name will never die!”
And with that the men would hit their shields and hammer the table.
The Viking’s wife wore a silk dress and beautiful golden bracelets, covered in amber beads. The minstrel sang that she had brought the richest treasure of all to her husband in the form of a beautiful daughter. The Viking was delighted with the girl, especially with her savage ways. He declared that she might grow up to be a heroine of the land, as strong and determined as any man that ever lived. She would be so brave that she would not even flinch if her eyebrows were cut off with a sword.
The feast was magnificent and continued through the night.
Later that year, the Viking set sail again. His wife stayed at home with the girl, and soon she began to love the frog with its gentle eyes and sorrowful sighs more than she loved the pretty child that bit her and beat her all day.
The thick autumn mists that covered and devoured the leaves of the forest had descended on the moor. Winter was fast approaching. Snow flew down and covered the land in its thick blanket, and the sparrows took up home in the empty storks’ nest.
The storks were now in Egypt, where the sun shone every day and the flowers bloomed all year round. Stork-pairs sat resting on the slender towers of the many Egyptian temples. They built their nests in the fallen pillars and temple arches of long-forgotten cities. Palm trees lifted their leaves like sunshades and the great pyramids cast their mighty shadows over the vast desert, where the ostrich ran and the great marble sphinx lay half buried in the sand. The water of the Nile had receded and the muddy river bed was covered in frogs. It was such as glorious sight that the young storks thought they must be dreaming.
“Yes, it’s wonderful. It’s always like this in Egypt,” said the mother stork.
The young storks were so excited that they wanted to explore
.
“There’s nothing else to see,” said the stork mother. “Beyond here there is lush green forest, but the branches are so intertwined that only an elephant can force its way through. The snakes there are too big and fast for us. If you go into the desert you’ll get sand in your eyes and you might get caught in a storm. It’s best to stay here with me where there are frogs and locusts to eat.”
So they stayed. The parents rested in their nests and cleaned their feathers. The young female storks pranced around in the reeds, peeking at the other storks and making friends. Meanwhile, the young male storks fought in the mud. The days were hot and sunny and full of fun. But inside the Egyptian’s palace life was not as happy.
The rich lord of the palace was lying on his divan in the luxurious great hall. The walls were so brightly coloured that he looked as if he was lying in the centre of a tulip. His limbs were so stiff and weak that he looked like a mummy. He was on the verge of death. All his friends and family had gathered, and they were worried that his beautiful young daughter, who had flown off in the swan’s feathers, had not arrived home with the moor flower to heal him. “She’s dead!” the two cruel princesses had cried when they returned home without her. They had made up a long story about what had happened:
“We flew high up in the air, but a hunter spotted us and shot an arrow at us. It struck her and she sank to the ground, singing her farewell song as she went. She sank down, a dying swan, into the woodland lake. We laid her under a weeping birch tree by the shore of the lake. Then we had our revenge: we lit a fire in the swallow’s nest that sat under the hunter’s thatched roof. The house burned to the ground and the hunter was taken by the flames. The glare of the fire shone across the sea near the weeping birch under which she sleeps.”
Then the two girls wept. When the father stork heard their story he clapped his beak with anger.
“Lies!” he cried, “I’d like to peck them with my beak!”
“But then they would hurt you,” said the mother stork. “Think of yourself and of your family, and forget everything else.”
“Tomorrow I’ll sit and listen when the wise men gather to discuss the Egyptian’s health. Maybe they’ll uncover the truth.”
The wise men gathered and talked for hours about the Egyptian man. But the father stork could barely understand a word they said.
But there was one thing the father stork could understand: everyone in the land, wealthy or poor, thought that it was a great tragedy that the man was dying, and everyone hoped that he would recover. The people had searched and searched for the flower that would cure him, but none of them had found it. They had read books, consulted the twinkling stars in the night sky, and they had read the weather and the wind for signs. All that the wise men could say was, “Love creates life and will restore a father’s life,” which even they did not understand. They said it again and again, until it became simply, “Love creates life.” They tried to turn it into a recipe, but they did not know how. Finally, they decided that only the princess could have helped her dying father, because it was her that loved him most. It was her that a year ago had entered one of the great pyramids and visited the tomb of a great pharaoh. It was there that she had had a vision that she must restore her father’s health by bringing home a lotus flower from the bottom of the deep lake in the north. Eventually, they decided that, as the princess would not return, all they could do was wait to see what happened.
“I’d like to take those two feather cloaks away from the cruel princesses,” said the father stork that night, “so that they can’t fly to the moor and cause any more trouble. I’ll hide the cloaks so that the princesses can’t find them and I’ll wait until there’s a good time to use them.”
“Where will you hide them?” asked the mother stork.
“In our nest in the moor,” he answered. “We’ll take turns carrying them on our journey home. One of the feather cloaks should be enough for the princess, but it’s better to have two iust in case.”
“You won’t get any reward,” said the mother stork. “But, you’re in charge, so we’ll do what you say.”
In the Viking’s castle on the moor, the little girl had been named Helga. With every year that passed the wickedness in her grew. The storks continued to make their autumn journey to Egypt and back again, and before long Helga was a beautiful girl of sixteen. She looked beautiful on the outside, but inside she was harsh and cruel. She enjoyed sacrificing animals just to see the blood flow from them.
But the Viking was so bewitched by her beauty that he did not see the wickedness inside her, and he did not know how she changed with the daylight.
Helga rode her horse without a saddle as it galloped around the land, and she would take off her clothes and leap from the cliff into the sea and swim to meet the Viking’s boat when it neared home. She even cut her longest lock of hair and twisted it into string to use on her bow.
The Viking’s wife was strong and brave, but compared to her daughter she looked feeble and timid.
Out of malice, Helga would sit on the edge of the well and dive into it, just to scare her mother. She would emerge again as a frog, dripping with water from the dark, murky depths.
But there was one thing that Helga could not control: the evening twilight. When twilight came she became quiet and thoughtful, and she listened to people’s advice. Then she longed to be with her mother. When the sun went down, the transformation happened and she turned into a large, ugly frog. Her sad eyes returned and all she could do was utter a hollow croaking noise that sounded like the muffled cry of a dreaming child. Then the Viking’s wife would cuddle her and look into her eyes, so that she forgot how ugly she was and loved her.
“I almost wish you were always a frog,” the woman would say, “because when you are a girl you are so wicked.”
The Viking’s wife wrote many charms to try to break the evil spell, but none of them worked.
“I can hardly believe that she was once small enough to fit in the centre of a water-lily,” said the father stork, one day. “She looks just like her poor Egyptian mother, who we will never see again. Year after year I have flown to and from Egypt, but the princess has never once given me a sign that she is still alive. Every year, when I arrive here before you to repair the nest for your return, I spend a whole night flying over the lake searching for her. But she is never there and so those two feather cloaks that we brought with us from Egypt have never been used. It took us three journeys to get them here and now they just line the nest. If the Viking’s house were to burn down, the feathers would go with them.”
“And our lovely nest would be destroyed too!” said the mother stork. “But you think more about those feathers and the princess than about us! I just hope that none of our children will be shot down by that wild girl’s arrow. Helga doesn’t know the consequences of her actions. She should remember that we have lived here longer than she has, and that every year we have been good and given the Viking an egg, a young stork and a feather as we are supposed to. I’m angry with Helga and with you. You should have left her lying in the water-lily to die.”
“You don’t mean that,” said the father stork, “you’re kinder than you make out.”
With that he flew away, with his head stretched forward proudly. The sun glistened on his feathers.
“He’s the handsomest stork there is,” said the mother stork to herself, “but I won’t let him know that!”
Early in the autumn, the Viking came home with masses of treasure and some prisoners. Among the prisoners there was a young Christian priest who preached against the gods of the north.
There had been much talk in the castle about the Christian faith spreading across the land. Even Helga had heard of the man who had sacrificed his own life for mankind, though she had ignored it along with most things she heard. She only understood the word “love” when she was crouched in the corner of her room in the form of a frog. But the Viking’s wife had heard the story too, and she felt moved by it.
After their last voyage, the men had told everyone in the castle all about the incredible stone temples that had been built to worship the Christian God. Among the treasure that the Vikings brought home there were some gold bottles filled with unusual fragrance; these were the incense vessels that the Christian priests swung as they stood at the altar.
The young Christian priest had been tied up and locked in the castle cellars. The Viking’s wife thought that he was as beautiful as Balder – the most beautiful of Viking gods – and she felt sorry for him. Helga, on the other hand, believed that he should be tied to the tail of a bull, which should be let out to run round the fields.
“Then I would let the dogs out – over the moor and across the swamp! That would be a sight for the gods!” she cried.
But even the Viking would not condemn the priest to such a horrible death.
He decided that the priest would be killed on the sacrificial stone, for being an enemy of the northern gods. This would be the first time that a man had been sacrificed there.
Helga begged her father to let her sprinkle the priest’s blood at the sacrifice, and she began sharpening her glittering knife. Suddenly, one of the castle’s savage dogs ran past and she thrust her knife into its side, just to test the knife’s sharpness. The Viking’s wife looked sadly at the cruel, wild girl. When night came, and Helga had exchanged her beauty for a gentle soul, the woman spoke of the sorrow that was deep in her heart.
The ugly frog stood there with its big brown eyes and listened so carefully that it seemed as if it understood the woman’s words.
“I’ve never told my husband what I’ve had to go through,” said the Viking’s wife. “My heart is full of sorrow; for the love of a mother is more powerful than I had ever imagined. But you have never felt love – your heart is wet and cold like the plants on the moor.”
Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales: Twenty Tales Illustrated by Harry Clarke Page 13
