  It was with a light heart that Eva passed over the muddy way which lay between the hut and the cascade. As rapidly as she could, she went along. The little bird screamed and cried incessantly, and Eva feared, that hearing him, the frogs inhabiting this region might, by their croakings, give the alarm, and bring their powerful mistress on her track before she reached the grotto. But the frogs were all, or else seemed to be, asleep, and she passed them unnoticed. In a very short time, which yet seemed to Eva like hours, she reached the grotto. Here she felt comparatively safe, and she would gladly have rested, but the Toad-Woman, telling her she had no time to lose, for the Green Frog knew of her escape, and that she herself was well aware of all that had happened at the hut, bade her change her dress. Now, what Eva most wanted was to see Aster restored to his original shape. But, without a word, she obeyed the woman, and put on her own white dress again. It was so nice to get rid of that horrid, mud-colored thing she had been wearing, to shake down her long curls, instead of having them tied up in a little plain cap, and to have the ugly brown dye come off her face and hands. Eva was more than glad,—she enjoyed the change. “Now we will help Aster,” said the Toad-Woman. But the question was, how to open the cage and to get the bird out. For the cage had no door, and the bird flew round and round it, screaming and pecking at Eva’s hands, till the child was nearly ready to cry. “The Frog has still power, through her enchantments, over him,” the woman said. “Give me the cage, and let me see what I can do.” So she took up the cage and said some words which Eva did not understand, and then drew a circle in the air over it with her hand; and then, to Eva’s great amazement, a door in the cage opened and the woman put her hand in it and took out the bird, which screamed louder and pecked harder than ever. “Now,” said the Toad-Woman, “we must make all the haste we can. We must find Aster before the Frog gets here. I’ll hold the bird’s head, and you take his tail, and then pull,—pull as hard as you can.” All this was so queer to Eva, who thought they had found Aster, that she could not understand it. But the old woman saw her trouble, and, without getting angry or impatient, as some fairies would have done, she said to Eva: “Aster is sewed up in the bird’s skin. And we can only get him out by tearing it apart. Make haste, there is no time to be lost.” So the old woman at the head, and Eva at the tail, pulled, and pulled, and pulled. And the harder they pulled, the more the bird screamed and cried, till Eva pitied him so that she could scarcely bear to hurt him. But whenever she would want to stop the Toad-Woman would tell her to pull harder. “So the old woman at the head, and Eva at the tail, pulled, and pulled.” Such a tough skin as it was, to be sure! There seemed to be no such thing as tearing it, and the Toad-Woman said that Aster must have been very naughty before he fell into the Green Frog’s hands. And Eva, much as she loved Aster, could not contradict this. But at last the bird left off screaming, and hung between them as if it was dead. And then, as the two pulled, it got larger and longer, and the feathers were farther apart, and then all of a sudden the skin gave way and vanished, where, Eva did not know, and from it there dropped, just in time for Eva to save it from falling to the floor of the grotto, Aster’s tiny figure, motionless, and as it were, asleep, and just like what he had been when Eva first received him, except that his coat was in her hands; and the Toad-Woman had only time enough to tell her to put it on him, and Eva had just obeyed, and was stooping to kiss the little prince as he lay in her lap, when they heard a loud croak, and with a long leap the Green Frog was in the grotto. But as soon as she saw Eva, standing there in her spotless white robe, holding the unconscious little prince, she knew how it was that he had been taken from her, and that her power over him was nearly gone. Yet she knew that if she could once again obtain possession of him that no one could rescue him; and as Eva had once submitted to her, she had no power of herself, as she before possessed, to protect him. And without even looking at the Toad-Woman, she was going to leap upon Aster, and try and snatch him from Eva’s arms, when the Toad-Woman, taking from her pocket a curl, which even in that moment Eva recognized as part of the one which she had cut to give to the trout, and which had lain, forgotten ever since, in the pocket of her own white dress, dropped it on the ground. And as the hair touched the ground a spring of clear water came bubbling up, and in it Eva saw her friends, the six trout, whom she recognized by the golden collars they wore; and the Green Frog was so surprised that she stopped to look, and then the water covered her, and before she could move, the trout, as they had once said they could do, swam up to her and enveloped her in a net made of these golden hairs, which the Frog could not break, and then, in spite of all her efforts to escape, and her loud croakings, the floor of the grotto opened, and spring, trout, and Frog were gone in a moment. It all passed in less time than can be told, and once more Eva and the Toad-Woman were alone. “Your hardest work is over,” the woman said to her. “The three tasks are done; you have found Aster, his coat, and its piece. Here you cannot stay any longer. When the moon is full again Aster’s long-lost flower will bloom, and you will find it.” And then a sudden darkness came over everything, and when, a moment later, the light returned, nothing was as it had been. The Toad-Woman, her grotto, and the Cascade of Rocks were gone, and when Eva heard the music which heralded the coming of the moon, and saw the silver crescent rise to its place, and Aster once more woke from his sleep, she could scarcely realize that she was again in the old, familiar forest, and the past seemed like a dream. For in that moment of darkness, the Enchanted River had disappeared, and Eva knew that the search in truth was nearly over. |
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