time, coming softly up from behind, pushed the waiting-woman off the bank
into the deep water of the pond. Then she snatched away the silk bandage,
and before the Princess had time to think or close her eyes, she had lost
her heart to a great heron, that was standing half-way up to his feathers
fishing among the reeds.
The Princess, with her eyes set free, laughed for joy at the sight of
him. She stretched out her arms from the bank and cried most musically
for the bird to come to her; and he came in grave stately fashion, with
trailing legs, and slow sobbing creak of his wings, and settled down on
the bank beside her. She drew his slender neck against her white throat,
and laughed and cried with her arms round him, loving him so that she
forgot all in the world beside. And the heron looked gravely at her with
kind eyes, and, bird-like, gave her all the love he could, but not more;
and so, presently, casting his grey wings abroad, lifted himself and
sailed slowly back to his fishing among the reeds.
The waiting-woman had got herself out of the water, and stood wringing
her clothes and her hands beside the Princess. “O, sweet mistress,” she
cried, with lamentation, “now is all the evil come about which it was our
whole aim to avoid! And what, and what will the Queen your mother say?”
But the Princess answered, smiling, “Foolish girl, I had no thought of
what happiness meant till now! See you where my love is gone? and did
you notice the bend of his neck, and the exceeding length of his legs,
and the stretch of his grey wings as he flew? This pond is his hall of
mirrors, wherein he sees the reflection of all his world. Surely I, from
my hall of mirrors, am the true mate for him!”
Her maid, seeing how far the evil had gone, and that no worse could now
happen, ran back to the palace and curdled all the court’s blood with
her news. The King and the Queen and all their nobility rushed down,
and there they found the Princess with the heron once more in her arms,
kissing and fondling it with all the marks of a sweet and maidenly
passion. “Dear mother,” she said, as soon as she saw the Queen, “the
happiness, which you feared would be sorrow, has come; and it is such
happiness I have no name for it! And the evil that you so dreaded, see
how sweet it is! And how sweet it is to see all the world with my own
eyes and you also at last!” And for the first time in her life she kissed
her mother’s face in the full light of day.
But her mother hung sobbing upon her neck, “O, my darling, my beautiful,”
she wept, “does your heart belong for ever to this grey bird?”
Her daughter answered, “He is more than all the world to me! Is he not
goodly to look upon? Have you considered the bend of his neck, the length
of his legs, and the waving of his wings; his skill also when he fishes:
what imagination, what presence of mind!”
“Alas, alas,” sorrowed the Queen, “dear daughter, is this all true to
you?”
“Mother,” cried the Princess, clinging to her with entreaty, “is all the
world blind but me?”
The heron had become quite fond of the Princess; wherever she went it
followed her, and, indeed, without it nowhere would she go. Whenever it
was near her, the Princess laughed and sang, and when it was out of her
sight she became sad as night. All the courtiers wept to see her in such
bondage. “Ah,” said she, “your eyes have been worn out with looking at
things so long; mine have been kept for me in a mirror.”
When the good family Fairy came (for she was at once sent for by the
Queen, and told of all that had happened), she said, “Dear Madam, there
are but two things you can do: either you can wring the heron’s neck, and
leave the Princess to die of grief; or you can make the Princess happy in
her own way, by——” Her voice dropped, and she looked from the King to the
Queen before she went on. “At her birth I gave your daughter love for my
gift; now it is hers, will you let her keep it?”
The King and the Queen looked softly at each other. “Do not take love
from her,” said they, “let her keep it!”
“There is but one way,” answered the Fairy.
“Do not tell me the way,” said the Queen weeping, “only let the way be!”
So they went with the Fairy down to the great pond, and there sat the
Princess, with the grey heron against her heart. She smiled as she saw
them come. “I see good in your hearts toward me!” she cried. “Dear
godmother, give me the thing that I want, that my love may be happy!”
Then the Fairy stroked her but once with her wand, and two grey herons
suddenly rose up from the bank, and sailed away to a hiding-place in the
reeds.
The Fairy said to the Queen, “You have made your daughter happy; and
still she will have her voice and her human heart, and will remember you
with love and gratitude; but her greatest love will be to the grey heron,
and her home among the reeds.”
So the changed life of the Princess began; every day her mother went down
to the pool and called, and the Princess came rising up out of the reeds,
and folded her grey wings over her mother’s heart. Every day her mother
said, “Daughter of mine, are you happy?”
And the Princess answered her, “Yes, for I love and am loved.”
Yet each time the mother heard more and more of a note of sadness come
into her daughter’s voice; and at last one day she said, “Answer me
truly, as the mother who brought you into the world, whether you be happy
in your heart of hearts or no?”
Then the heron-Princess laid her head on the Queen’s heart, and said,
“Mother, my heart is breaking with love!”
“For whom, then?” asked the Queen astonished.
“For my grey heron, whom I love, and who loves me so much. And yet it is
love that divides us, for I am still troubled with a human heart, and
often it aches with sorrow because all the love in it can never be fully
understood or shared by my heron; and I have my human voice left, and
that gives me a hundred things to say all day, for which there is no word
in herons’ language, and so he cannot understand them. Therefore these
things only make a gulf between him and me. For all the other grey herons
in the pools there is happiness, but not for me who have too big a heart
between my wings.”
Her mother said softly, “Wait, wait, little heron-daughter, and it shall
be well with you!” Then she went to the Fairy and said, “My daughter’s
heart is lonely among the reeds, for the grey heron’s love covers but
half of it. Give her some companions of her own kind that her hours may
become merry again!”
So the Fairy took and turned five of the Princess’s lady’s-maids into
herons, and sent them down to the pool.
The five herons stood each on one leg in the shallows of the pool,
and cried all day long; and their tears fell down into the water and
frightened away the fish that came their way. For they had human hearts
that cried out to be let go. “O, cruel, cruel,” they wept, whenever the
heron-Princess approached, “see what we suffer because of you, and what
they have made of us for your sake!”
The Princess came to her mother and said, “Dear mother, take them away,
for their cry wearies me, and the pool is bitter with their tears! They
only awake the human part of my heart that wants to sleep; presently, may
be, if it is let alone, it will forget itself.”
Her mother said, “It is my coming every day also that keeps it awake.”
The Princess answered, “This sorrow belongs to my birthright; you must
still come; but for the others, let the Fairy take them away.”
So the Fairy came and released the five lady’s-maids whom she had changed
into herons. And they came up out of the water, stripping themselves of
their grey feather-skins and throwing them back into the pool. The Fairy
said, “You foolish maids, you have thrown away a gift that you should
have valued; these skins you could have kept and held as heirlooms in
your family.”
The five maids answered, “We want to forget that there are such things as
herons in the world!”
After much thought the Queen said to the Fairy, “You have changed a
Princess into a heron, and five maids into herons and back again; cannot
you change one heron into a Prince?” But the Fairy answered sadly, “Our
power has limits; we can bring down, but we cannot bring up, if there be
no heart to answer our call. The five maids only followed their hearts,
that were human, when I called them back; but a heron has only a heron’s
heart, and unless his heart become too great for a bird and he earn a
human one, I cannot change him to a higher form.” “How can he earn a
human one?” asked the Queen. “Only if he love the Princess so well that
his love for her becomes stronger than his life,” answered the Fairy.
“Then he will have earned a human body, and then I can give him the form
that his heart suits best. There may be a chance, if we wait for it and
are patient, for the Princess’s love is great and may work miracles.”
A little while after this, the Queen watching, saw that the two herons
were making a nest among the reeds. “What have you there?” said
the mother to her daughter. “A little hollow place,” answered the
heron-Princess, “and in it the moon lies.” A little while after she said
again, “What have you there, now, little daughter?” And her daughter
answered, “Only a small hollow space; but in it two moons lie.”
The Queen told the family Fairy how in a hollow of the reeds lay two
moons. “Now,” said the Fairy, “we will wait no longer. If your daughter’s
love has touched the heron’s heart and made it grow larger than a bird’s,
I can help them both to happiness; but if not, then birds they must
still remain.”
Among the reeds the heron said in bird language to his wife, “Go and
stretch your wings for a little while over the water; it is weary work
to wait here so long in the reeds.” The heron-Princess looked at him
with her bird’s eyes, and all the human love in her heart strove, like a
fountain that could not get free, to make itself known through them; also
her tongue was full of the longing to utter sweet words, but she kept
them back, knowing they were beyond the heron’s power to understand. So
she answered merely in heron’s language, “Come with me, and I will come!”
They rose, wing beating beside wing; and the reflection of their grey
breasts slid out under them over the mirror of the pool.
Higher they went and higher, passing over the tree tops, and keeping time
together as they flew. All at once the wings of the grey heron flagged,
then took a deep beat; he cried to the heron-Princess, “Turn, and come
home, yonder there is danger flying to meet us!” Before them hung a
brown blot in the air, that winged and grew large. The two herons turned
and flew back. “Rise,” cried the grey heron, “we must rise!” and the
Princess knew what was behind, and struggled with the whole strength of
her wings for escape.
The grey heron was bearing ahead on stronger wing. “With me, with me!” he
cried. “If it gets above us, one of us is dead!” But the falcon had fixed
his eye on the Princess for his quarry, and flew she fast, or flew she
slow, there was little chance for her now. Up and up she strained, but
still she was behind her mate, and still the falcon gained.
The heron swung back to her side; she saw the anguish and fear of his
downward glance as his head ranged by hers. Past her the falcon went,
towering for the final swoop.
The Princess cried in heron’s language, “Farewell, dear mate, and
farewell, two little moons among the reeds!” But the grey heron only kept
closer to her side.
Overhead the falcon closed in its wings and fell like a dead weight out
of the clouds. “Drop!” cried the grey heron to his mate.
At his word she dropped; but he stayed, stretching up his wings, and,
passing between the descending falcon and its prey, caught in his own
body the death-blow from its beak. Drops of his blood fell upon the
heron-Princess.
He stricken in body, she in soul, together they fell down to the margin
of the pool. The falcon still clung fleshing its beak in the neck of its
prey. The heron-Princess threw back her head, and, darting furiously,
struck her own sharp bill deep into the falcon’s breast. The bird threw
out its wings with a hoarse cry and fell back dead, with a little tuft of
the grey heron’s feathers still upon its beak.
The heron-Princess crouched down, and covered with her wings the dying
form of her mate; in her sorrow she spoke to him in her own tongue,
forgetting her bird’s language. The grey heron lifted his head, and,
gazing tenderly, answered her with a human voice:
“Dear wife,” he said, “at last I have the happiness so long denied to
me of giving utterance in the speech that is your own to the love that
you have put into my heart. Often I have heard you speak and have not
understood; now something has touched my heart, and changed it, so that I
can both speak and understand.”
“O, beloved!” She laid her head down by his. “The ends of the world
belong to us now. Lie down, and die gently by my side, and I will die
with you, breaking my heart with happiness.”
“No,” said the grey heron, “do not die yet! Remember the two little moons
that lie in the hollow among the reeds.” Then he laid his head down by
hers, being too weak to say more.
They folded their wings over each other, and closed their eyes; nor did
they know that the Fairy was standing by them, till she stroked them both
softly with her wand, saying to each of them the same words:
“Human heart, and human form, come out of the grey heron!”
And out of the grey heron-skins came two human forms; the one was the
Princess restored again to her own shape, but the other was a beautiful
youth, with a bird-like look about the eyes, and long slender limbs. The
Princess, as she gazed on him, found hardly any change, for love remained
the same, binding him close to her heart; and, grey heron or beautiful
youth, he was all one to her now.
Then came the Queen, weeping for joy, and embracing them both, and after
them, the Fairy. “O, how good an ending,” she cried, “has come to that
terrible dream! Let it never be remembered or mentioned between us more!”
And she began to lead the way back to the palace.
But the youth, to whom the Fairy gave the name of Prince Heron, turned
and took up the two heron-skins which he and his wife had let fall, and
followed, carrying them upon his arm. And as they came past the bed of
reeds, the Princess went aside, and, stooping down in a certain place
drew out from thence something which she came carrying, softly wrapped in
the folds of her gown.
With what rejoicing the Princess and her husband were welcomed by the
King and all the Court needs not to be told. For a whole month the
festivities continued; and whenever she showed herself, there was the
Princess sitting with two eggs in her lap, and her hands over them to
keep them warm. The King was impatient. “Why cannot you send them down to
the poultry yard to be hatched?” he said.
But the Princess replied smiling, “My moons are my own, and I will keep
them to myself.”
“Do you hear?” she said one day, at last; and everybody who listened
could hear something going “tap, tap,” inside the shells. Presently the
eggs cracked, and out of each, at the same moment, came a little grey
heron.
When she saw that they were herons, the Queen wrung her hands. “O,
Fairy,” she cried, “what a disappointment is this! I had hoped two
beautiful babies would have come out of those shells.”
But the Fairy said, “It is no matter. Half of their hearts are human
already; birds’ hearts do not beat so. If you wish it, I can change
them.” So she stroked them softly with her wand, saying to each, “Human
heart, and human form, come out of the grey heron!”
Yet she had to stroke them three times before they would turn; and she
said to the Princess, “My dear, you were too satisfied with your lot when
you laid these eggs. I doubt if more than a quarter of them is human.”
“I was very satisfied,” said the Princess, and she laughed across to her
husband.
At last, however, on the third stroke of the wand, the heron’s skins
dropped off, and they changed into a pair of very small babies, a boy
and a girl. But the difference between them and other children was, that
instead of hair, their heads were covered with a fluff of downy grey
feathers; also they had queer, round, bird-like eyes, and were able to
sleep standing.
Now, after this the happiness of the Princess was great; but the Fairy
said to her, “Do not let your husband see the heron-skins again for some
while, lest with the memory a longing for his old life should return to
him and take him away from you. Only by exchange with another can he ever
get back his human form again, if he surrenders it of his own free will.
And who is there so poor that he would willingly give up his human form
to become a bird?”
So the Princess took the four coats of feather—her own and her husband’s
and her two children’s—and hid them away in a closet of which she alone
kept the key. It was a little gold key, and to make it safe she hung it
about her neck, and wore it night and day.
The Prince said to her, “What is that little key that you wear always
hung round your neck?”
She answered him, “It is the key to your happiness and mine. Do not ask
more than that!” At that there was a look in his face that made her say,
“You _are_ happy, are you not?”
He kissed her, saying, “Happy indeed! Have I not you to make me so?” Yet
though, indeed, he told no untruth, and was happy whenever she was with
him, there were times when a restlessness and a longing for wings took
hold of him; for, as yet, the life of a man was new and half strange to
him, and a taint of his old life still mixed itself with his blood. But
to her he was ashamed to say what might seem a complaint against his
great fortune; so when she said “happiness,” he thought, “Is it just the
turning of that key that I want before my happiness can be perfect?”
Therefore, one night when the early season of spring made his longing
strong in him, he took the key from the Princess while she slept, and
opened the little closet in which hung the four feather coats. And when
he saw his own, all at once he remembered the great pools of water,
and how they lay in the shine and shadow of the moonlight, while the
fish rose in rings upon their surface. And at that so great a longing
came into him to revisit his old haunts that he reached out his hand and
took down the heron-skin from its nail and put it over himself; so that
immediately his old life took hold of him, and he flew out of the window
in the form of a grey heron.
In the morning the Princess found the key gone from her neck, and her
husband’s place empty. She went in haste to the closet, and there stood
the door wide with the key in it, and only three heron-skins hanging
where four had used to be.
Then she came crying to the family Fairy, “My husband has taken his
heron-skin and is gone! Tell me what I can do!”
The Fairy pitied her with all her heart, but could do nothing. “Only by
exchange,” said she, “can he get back his human shape; and who is there
so poor that he would willingly lose his own form to become a bird? Only
your children, who are but half human, can put their heron-skins on and
off as they like and when they like.”
In deep grief the Princess went to look for her husband down by the pools
in the wood. But now his shame and sorrow at having deceived her were so
great that as soon as he heard her voice he hid himself among the reeds,
for he knew now that, having put on his heron-skin again, he could not
take it off unless some one gave him a human form in exchange.
At last, however, so pitiful was the cry of the Princess for him, that he
could bear to hear it no more; but rising up from the reeds came trailing
to her sadly over the water. “Ah, dear love!” she said when he was come
to her, “if I had not distrusted you, you would not have deceived me:
thus, for my fault we are punished.” So she sorrowed, and he answered her:
“Nay, dear love, for if I had not deceived you, you would not have
distrusted me. I thought I was not happy, yet I feared to tell it you.”
Thus they sorrowed together, both laying on themselves the blame and the
burden.
Then she said to him: “Be here for me to-night, for now I must go; but
then I shall return.”
She went back to the palace, and told her mother of all that had
happened. “And now,” she said, “you who know where my happiness lies will
not forbid me from following it; for my heart is again with the grey
heron.” And the Queen wept, but would not say her no.
So that night the Princess went and kissed her children as they slept
standing up in their beds, with their funny feather-pates to one side;
and then she took down her skin of feathers and put it on, and became
changed once more into a grey heron. And again she went up to the two in
their cots, and kissed their birdish heads saying: “They who can change
at will, being but half human, they will come and visit us in the great
pool by the wood, and bring back word of us here.”
In the morning the Princess was gone, and the two children when they woke
looked at each other and said: “Did we dream last night?”
They both answered each other “Yes, first we dreamed that our mother
came and kissed us; and we liked that. And then we dreamed that a grey
heron came and kissed us, and we liked that better still!” They waved
their arms up and down. “Why have we not wings?” they kept asking. All
day long they did this, playing that they were birds. If a window were
opened, it was with the greatest difficulty that they were kept from
trying to fly through.
In the Court they were known as the “Feather-pates”; nothing could they
be taught at all. When they were rebuked they would stand on one leg and
sigh with their heads on one side; but no one ever saw tears come out of
their birdish eyes.
Now at night they would dream that two grey herons came and stood by
their bedsides, kissing them; “And where in the world,” they said when
they woke, “_are_ our wings?”
One day, wandering about in the palace, they came upon the closet in
which hung the two little feather coats. “O!!!” they cried, and opened
hard bright eyes at each other, nodding, for now they knew what they
would do. “If we told, they would be taken off us,” they said; and they
waited till it was night. Then they crept back and took the two little
coats from their pegs, and, putting them on, were turned into two young
herons.
Through the window they flew, away down to the great fish-pond in the
wood. Their father and mother saw them coming, and clapped their wings
for joy. “See,” they said, “our children come to visit us, and our hearts
are left to us to love with. What further happiness can we want?” But
when they were not looking at each other they sighed.
All night long the two young herons stayed with their parents; they
bathed, and fished, and flew, till they were weary. Then the Princess
showed them the nest among the reeds, and told them all the story of
their lives.
“But it is much nicer to be herons than to be real people,” said the
young ones, sadly, and became very sorrowful when dawn drew on, and their
mother told them to go back to the palace and hang up the feather coats
again, and be as they had been the day before.
Long, long the day now seemed to them; they hardly waited till it was
night before they took down their feather-skins, and, putting them on,
flew out and away to the fish-pond in the wood.
So every night they went, when all in the palace were asleep; and in the
morning came back before anyone was astir, and were found by their nurses
lying demurely between the sheets, just as they had been left the night
before.
One day the Queen when she went to see her daughter said to her, “My
child, your two children are growing less like human beings and more
like birds every day. Nothing will they learn or do, but stand all day
flapping their arms up and down, and saying, ‘Where are our wings, where
are our wings?’ The idea of one of them ever coming to the throne makes
your father’s hair stand on end under his crown.”
“Oh, mother,” said the heron-Princess, “I have made a sad bed for you and
my father to lie on!”
One day the two children said to each other, “Our father and mother
are sad, because they want to be real persons again, instead of having
wings and catching fish the way we like to do. Let us give up being real
persons, which is all so much trouble, and such a want of exercise, and
make them exchange with us!” But when the two young herons went down to
the pond and proposed it to them, their parents said, “You are young;
you do not know what you would be giving up.” Nor would they consent to
it at all.