The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter

atherer's Daughter W

not belong to me until I was a girl grown. Before that I had no name. In the city

was gathering another bundle on another day, I would go through the town selling the brambles and thorns for stuff for the people's fires. My mother I never knew. I grew up wit

that I should go from the city grew in me from that time. My father would miss me, but he would flourish the bett

ned to the wilderness also. I took a direction that would bring me far from where my father had gone. I had dressed myself as a boy, and my thought was that I would come upon a merchant who would le

g

e me and that pillar had writing upon it. I read what was written there. The words were: They who take the road to the right will come to their fo

or the night. At last I saw a hut and I went toward it. When I came before the broken door I knew the place I had been brought to. It was my father's hut-the hut I had left that morning. And as I stood before it I saw my father

of a boy. He laid the bundle of brambles and thorns down on the floor while I went to prepare the meal for both o

bundle and went to sleep. I awakened feeling some warmth near where my head lay. I looked to see if perchance fire had come upon the brambles and th

size. I looked at it, and my father said, "Take it to the merchant to-[Pg 7

t had the strange markings upon it, and I asked him if he would give me something for it. And when the merchant had tak

rs came and they took my father and me to the palace and before the King. And the King said, "It is known that of all creatures in the world the Bird of Gold is best worth possessing. For her claws can be made into an amulet that will bring

d of Gold around the place where the egg had been laid. And in the very place where before he had lain

made a nest for herself there. Small she was and all golden except for the blue that was under her throat, and the blue that was upon her

amulet of thy feet that he may have wealth, and he would eat thy heart that his enemies[Pg 77

. Why should her claws be made into an amulet for the King, and why should her heart be eaten by him? I sat there thinking while my father slept, holding the bird very gently to my b

will not come now. Perhaps we will find her on another day. The King s

had searched. Then the King would have sent us away without doing any evil to us only that one who was near him cried out: "Behold, O King, and decree a punishment for these two de

the hands and brought before the King. And he cried out, "Have you the bird hidden?" I said: "No, O King. I let the bird fly out of my hands." T

ne who was commanded by the King to take me and throw me into[Pg 79] the depths of the sea was a man with a great hook

words that the King gave him, and those whom the King would slay he would save, and those whom the King would save he would have slain. When we came into the open sea, so that he might obey the King's word and at the same time make a mock of it, he had me thrown into the water, but with a rope arou