The Master of Magic

N the days when any man with a stewpan to his name could be cooking wizardry, and every pebble in one's back yard might turn out to be the philosopher's stone, there lived a Princess so obstinate and vain that she was enamored of wisdom and nothing else. As far as looks were concerned, she was as fine a lassie as one could see in three good harvest years,—brown and white and ruddy, and straight as the rushes in the river; but of all that few people took any comfort, since she talked in conundrums, and ruled by riddles, and had singular powers of magic.

When one came to visit her and made a civil bow, her answer would be, "Bad for thieves and good for farmers." That was her fashion of saying, "A fair good morrow to you"; and if she was well inclined, and not too anxious to go back to her books and her diagrams, she might add to that, "Ill luck to your surgeon and your sexton." And you would see, when you were trudging on your way home, that she was hoping you were in good health. When the Prime Minister came late to the meeting of the Privy Council, and asked her what had gone on, she put her finger in the pages of her volume to keep the place, and says she, "The stew was on the fire, and the pot boiled over." And two weeks later, with the help of wise men and learned doctors, he would find that the matter of internal revenue had been the subject of a hot debate, and that the King had lost his temper. At dinner time the waiting men shook in their places, for once she asked for that on which no man could dine, but without which no man could dine well. The Lord Chamberlain and the seneschal and the chief steward and two butlers, with unnumbered cooks, waiting maids and scullions, sat with pale faces and guessed at the riddle; and at length the Lord Chamberlain and the seneschal were sent as a deputation to say that they gave it up.

"Salt, then!" says the Princess, calmly enough; but when it was brought, she opened a great book and looked at them out of her green eyes. "What geese you are!" says she, and from that moment, for three weeks and nine hours, those two unhappy men were persuaded that geese they were, and nothing could alter them from this wicked surmise.

Well, so things went on in the palace until the King complained, for he had great difficulty in being served at all, and all the great books of learning were so thumbed and tattered, from the use of them in puzzling over the Princess's orders, that the King had nothing to make his chair high enough at the table, and no thick book of wisdom to keep his feet off the floors in winter, when the draughts were cold. He consulted the sages and doctors and councillors of skill, but none of them dared think of a measure to render the Princess less masterful with her magic. At last there was nothing for it but to talk to the Princess herself; and for the King that was not so much of an adventure as it was for other people, since he was more or less skilled in the interpretation of her riddles. So off he trotted to the high tower where the Princess sat with her books, and puffed and blew till he got himself to the top of the stair, and knocked.

"Well?" says the Princess. That is a simple saying, but with her it was not simple at all, for by it she meant all manner of things, and the chief of them was that it was far from well that any one should batter at her door when she was deep in the mysteries of learning. The King knew this as well as the next, if not better, and so to soothe her he thought, and scratched his head over it, and says he:

"It is he who came before you and who will go before you."

"Ah," says the Princess, opening the door with quite a happy look, "my father, who was born before me and will die before me. A very good riddle."

"See now," says the King, mighty careful, "I have come to get your worshipful advice on a subject of importance."

"What is that?" says the Princess, direct as you please (by which you can see that even among the wise a bit of flattery has its effect, as the fox knew well enough in that little matter of the crow and the cheese-rind).

"Well," says the King, "it is this business of study and magic," says he. "I can scarce get hot water for shaving in the morning, because all the waiting men are sitting on the floor with great books spread on their knees, finding the answers to your riddles. And I must think too," says the King, "of giving a half of my kingdom to some deserving young man, as all Kings are expected to do at my time of life; in short," says he, "to cut off the peeling and get down to the fruit, what do you say to a veil and a wedding ring?"

"Waste no energy in considering that," says the Princess, stirring a beaker of boiling dragon-scales and poking the fire under it; "in a very short time I am going off to that which goes up and down and yet stands still, and I have every intention of making an alliance with the people that neither live nor die, since it is only with them that one finds the higher degrees of magic."

"I see," says the King; "you are going to live in the hills and marry a pixie-man. It is very good of you to tell me so candidly about it," says the King. " 'T is a quaint idea," says he, and he takes himself off to the Prime Minister and the three secretaries of state.

He told them everything from beginning to end, and bade them send out invitations to all the young men the countries round about who might be cherishing ambitions to rule half a kingdom, with the hopes of more at no distant date; for the King had no mind for a pixie son-in-law, pixie grandchildren with little tufted ears and whiskers like a kitten's, making magic in all the towers and cellars and ruling over the good stupid burghers in his stead.

Well, before the messengers had time to go far with their packs of letters on the subject, the Princess got wind of it, and to say that she was angry is so feeble a sentence that I wonder the letters stand upright in their places as I put them down. Two councillors became convinced that they were sheep that day; the waiting maid to the Princess was seized with a great fear of cats, and ran about the halls looking for a mouse-hole to creep into, whenever she came near one; the Prime Minister was deprived of his speech for a week, and so on throughout the household, until everybody scurried for shelter whenever the Princess appeared, with or without her books, for she was growing so powerful that she had passed the fifth degree of magic, and read her spells from the page no more. In the midst of destruction she came to the King, forgetting her riddles once more in the dismay of the moment (for as the wise man said, you cannot put words on a tongue too hot to hold them).

"What is this?" says she. "Why are you filling the house with men that can only guide horses and occupy armor? Let you know this," says she, with her green eyes blazing; "I will have a master of magic or none at all,—a man that shall know all that I know and be able to pass me far; and I have taken good care that it shall be nowise but so." And out she went, and away she went, and behold you, she disappeared like yesterday, or indeed the day before that, leaving no trace behind her but runes on her tower door, which translated, read thus:

The King was in a mighty flutter of spirits, for what was he to say to the young men who would presently be coming in? He might say that he had changed his mind since he had sent out the messages, or he might say that the Princess was already betrothed; as far as mending the real matter went, there was not much difference between the two, and neither one did him much good, as the man said about his glass eyes. So he made up his mind that he would make a proclamation of the Princess's curious behavior, and offer her hand and the kingdom to the wise man who should find her.

Well, presently the suitors came riding in,—tall ones, short ones, mighty ones and meagre ones, ready to enter tournaments and undertake quests and perform all sorts of prodigies for the sake of adventure and the kingdom's half. But of all these we need scarce take account, except for the three chief heroes, who were known far and wide for their feats of arms. The first was Boriendel, who had sailed the northern seas and clung to many a drifting spar; the second was Melinax, who had gone on crusades among the deserts of the south; and the third was Sirinim, who had encountered giants and dragons on the mountain tops where the fog lies thick and cold. Of these the King had great hopes, because they were the sons of his neighbors, and he had heard good things of their prowess heretofore.

They sat in counsel together, considering the runes of the Princess's message, and as they sat, the gardener's boy waited upon them, since he was the only waiting man left with his wits from the day of the Princess's departure. He smiled easily, the gardener's boy, for he was a good-natured lad.

"Now then," says Boriendel, "the Princess saith, 'in a transparent castle.' That is a kenning for the air, methinks; in all likelihood she dwelleth on a windy heath among the northern moors."

"By your leave," says Melinax, "though I scout not the reading of the riddle's self, meseemeth the air to be that dazzling clearness of the desert days."

"To my mind," says Sirinim, " 't is neither one nor the other, but a palace of ice on the side of some glassy precipice. Credit my experience and let us seek her there."

Well, they talked back and forth, but in the end they were not beyond the point where they had started; and so, like princely gentlemen, they gave each other fair good days and parted, each to seek the Princess after his own fashion. Boriendel went to the seas of the North, Melinax went to the sands of the South, and Sirinim climbed the mountains, as was his wont.

But after they had gone, the gardener's boy brushed away the crumbs, and wiped the cups, and stood the tray on edge against the wall. And all the time he thought, and as he thought he smiled. Up comes the King to him, with his crown over one eye from the excitement of the visiting.

"I suppose," says he, "that you will be wanting to go off on the quest with the rest of them? For I never read a tale yet," says the King, "in which the potboys and the princes did not go off together, when it was a matter of a lady."

"As to that," says the lad, "I am pleased that your Majesty should consider my feelings; but I am all for thinking on the matter for a bit, and as my brains are in one place all the time, I might as well stay where they are," says he. "Besides, there are suitors still coming, and no man to be serving them but me."

So he ran about all day waiting on the noblemen, and about sun-down he went out into the garden with the great snipping shears, as he had been used to do, and trimmed the rose trees in the Princess's garden, and the ivy on the Princess's tower. He thought about the transparent castle, but he thought too of the Princess in green and white, remembering her green eyes, and it made his heart beat so that it was like to make his jacket thin on the left side of him.

By and by he went down to the end of the garden where there was a pond of water, and there was a new white pond lily floating upon it. The lad sat down by the water's edge, and looked at the lily, and thought, until the moon went down and the sun came up, and it was a new day. And all of a sudden he laughed, and rose and went away to the castle.

All day long the palace hummed with suitors, and the courtyard rang under the horses' hoofs; the gardener's-boy was diligent in the service of the gentlemen and knights at arms, going off to the ends of the earth in search of the flighty Princess. But at sun-down his duty was done, and he was free to do as he chose. He went down to the garden and sat beside the pond where the water lily was, thinking all time of the Princess in green and white, and remembering her green eyes. When the sun came up on the new day again, the water lily stirred among its dark leaves, and the white petals opened to show the golden heart of it. And again the lad laughed and went away to his serving.

That day he had less to do in the court, since the suitors were almost all gone by this time. At noonday he saw the last of them passing out through the great gates, and without more words to anybody, he went straight down to the garden's end, and sat down beside the pond, with his arms around his knees. He sat and stared at the pond lily, and thought of the Princess in green and white, until the sun began to drop, and then, as he had done on the two days before, he laughed and turned away.

He set his face towards the castle towers, but as he went, he heard a quick patter of feet behind him, and when he turned about,—lo! there was the Princess, running after him. She came up to him, breathing fast as if the air were icy cold, and her eyes were narrow as a snake's. She wasted no time on riddles and runes, but spoke as flat as a bargain in shillings and pence:

"Why do you laugh at me?" says she. Now the lad was not one of those to open his mind and let you take your choice of everything in it.

"Come now," says he, "you go too fast, as the cat said to the sparrow that flew away from him. How could I be laughing at you, and you away all these days?"

"I have not been away," says the Princess, "as you know very well, scoffer! I have been in the transparent castle of the pond waters, in white smock and green mantle of a pond lily. It is a transformation performed after seven nights of study and seven days of magic, and here you stand and laugh at me!"

"That is sure enough good cause for laughter," says the lad, as cool as custard, "that you should spend long years study only for that,—to tell a silly riddle and sit for days with your feet in cold water! You will hold me excused that I cannot credit your saying."

"Vain man," says the Princess, "you shall believe me" (for she had no mind to have her arts pooh-poohed by anyone, high or low). "See now," says she, "look closely!" And she lifted a veil that she had in her hand, and wrapped it around her face. Tut! In less time than it takes to close your eyes and open them, there was no sign of the Princess about, and only a green and white water lily lying on the grass. And then, in the turn of a hand, there she was again, with the veil fluttering from her fingers.

"And so you manage all this mighty pother with that bit of a rag," says the lad.

"I do," says the Princess, very proud of her powers. "It is white magic of the third degree, and more than is known to any one else in this land," says she.

With that the gardener's lad began to laugh; he laughed until the castle walls answered him with laughter and all the roses nodded, and the King and all the court came marching down to the end of the garden to see what madness had taken root there. For up to this time there had been no such laughing in that house.

The Princess turned to the King, as pitiful as an ordinary lassie with a broken pitcher. "Father," says she, "this is the gardener's lad, who has somehow found out my riddle, and he treats it with mirth and folly. It is the best of my arts," says she; "I do but wind this veil about my face, and there is no trace of me to be seen, but only a white water lily with green leaves, that should be living in the transparent waters of the pond. Look now," says she, and she made to take up the veil. But it was much shorter than before, and she turned it this way and that to find the reason of it.

The King looked at the gardener's boy with a twinkle struggling into his eyes, and as the two laughed again, the veil grew shorter still. Presently the Lord Chamberlain smiled behind his hand, the seneschal followed after, and as the whole court from Prime Minister to scullion held their sides and roared at the thought of the Princess using her magic to so little purpose, the veil grew less and less; and by the time they wiped their merry eyes and saw the last gust of their laughter, the veil dwindled to nothing in the Princess's hands, and disappeared like smoke.

"See now," says the gardener's lad, "the Princess was jesting, after all."

"I do not know how to jest," says the Princess.

"Ah, that is where I am wiser than you," says the lad. "I do. And it is a thing that you should have known before this," says he; "that there is no magic, white or black, which cannot be melted by laughter. Come to me, my dear," says the lad, "and learn to jest and be merry, for after all that is the wisest art in the world."

"It is possible you may be right," says the Princess, for she was a scholar, and the scent of a new learning was fresh life in her nostrils. "But I think you should explain with diagrams and the use of mathematical figures just what steps in calculation you performed in order to discern my presence in the pond," says she.

"As to that," says the gardener's lad, without a glimmer of a smile, "I managed the matter through my knowledge of the abstruse science closely connected with the art of laughter, which is called Common Sense. For where the others went out to India and the Kaffir country and searched the highlands of Thibet, I stayed at home and looked in the garden which you used to care for, when you had time from your books. It is a matter of common report," says the lad, "that women always wish to see the outcome of any to-do they have roused up, and I thought you would be near the house, after all."

The Princess cast down her eyes for the first time in her life, and her cheeks were red as sunset. "You have an excellent grasp of these strange sciences of yours," says she, nice enough; "you know more than I know, and you can pass me far. I pray you, Father, sign the deed of gift for the kingdom's half, and buy me a wedding gown; for I can waste no more time on arts that pass so easily away." And there she spoke the truest wisdom that ever she had in all her days.

And so the wedding was celebrated in the merriest fashion imaginable, and many of the suitors came back for the feasting. But there was no word of Boriendel or Melinax or Sirinim, and that was just as well for the Princess's feelings. For Boriendel had forgotten about the transparent castle, and he had become a fur merchant in the cold seas of the North; and Melinax had ceased to think about the Princess, and he was leading a last crusade in the deserts of the South; and as for Sirinim,—he had found an ice castle, with a pretty lass inside of it, and what though she was the wrong one? She suited him well enough. That is the way of these adventuring men.