"Fair little nixies, that dwell near the water,
Give me the winged one to be my own daughter."
The dance ceased. The nixies, bewildered, looked north and south, and
knew not which way to flee; but the winged fairy, attracted by the
human love in the lady's eyes, glided slowly forward. Then the nixies
stormed in fierce wrath, their willowy figures swaying to and fro as
if blown by the wind.
"They shall not harm you, little one. Come with me, be my own
daughter, and I will carry you home."
"Home!" echoed the lovely child; "my home is in the Summer-land. Oh,
will you indeed carry me there?"
Then she folded her white wings, and nestled in the lady's bosom like
a gentle dove, and was borne to a beautiful castle that overlooked the
sea. The water-nixies soon forgot her, for they could not hold her
memory in their little humming-bird hearts.
She was not of their race. Her wings were soft and transparent, like
those of a white butterfly; and she ever declared that she had once
alighted from a cloud, and been caught in a nixie's net spread upon
the grass.
But, in time, her wings dwindled and disappeared; and then the lord,
who was now her father, could not remember that she had ever been
other than an earthly child.
"You fancy you were once a sylphid," said he; "but there are no
sylphids, my sweet one, and there is no Summer-land."
The child became as dear to the lord and lady as their very heart's
blood; and they forgot her foreign birth, and almost believed, as all
the world did, that she was their own little daughter. But the child
did not forget. She longed for the true home she had left; but whither
should she go to seek it?
"Dear papa," said she, one day, "I beg you will not say again there
are no sylphids; for I remember so well how I spread my wings and
flew. It was glorious to see the clouds float under my feet!"
"Very well," said the lord; "if you like, I will say there are
sylphids in the air, and trolls inside the earth; and, once on a time,
I was myself a great white butterfly: do you remember chasing me over
a bed of roses?"
"O papa, now you laugh! I love the twinkle in your eye; and I am so
glad it is you, and no one else, who is my papa; but just the same,
and forevermore, I shall keep saying, _I was a sylphid_!"
Sometimes, when she set her white teeth into some delicious fruit, she
said with dreamy eyes,--
"These grapes of Samarcand came across the seas; but they are not so
sweet as the fruit in my own garden, mamma."
"And where is your garden, my child?"
"Oh, in the Summer-land. I always forget that you have never seen it.
When I go there again, mamma, I will certainly take you too; for I
love you with all my heart. I can never go without you."
When she heard the evening-bells from the minster, she said, "Oh, they
are like the joy-bells at home, only not so sweet. Nothing, here, is
so sweet. Even my dear mamma is not so lovely as the lady who comes
when I am asleep."
Little One--they called her Little One for the want of a name--loved
to prattle about the wonders of that mysterious fairy-land, which no
one but herself had ever seen. Her mother would not check her, but let
her tell her pretty visions of remembered rainbows, and palaces, and
precious gems. She said,--
"The child has such a vivid fancy! It is not all of us who can see
pictures when our eyes are shut."
But the lord was not so well pleased; and once, when his daughter
looked at a frozen stream and murmured, "_We_ have the _happiest_
rivers at home; they sing all day long, all the year, without
freezing! Can I find that Summer-land again! Oh, I would creep all
over the world to seek it," he replied,--
"Little One, it is some cloud-city you are thinking of, some
dream-land, or isle of Long Ago, which you will never see again. I beg
you to forget these wild fancies."
But still the child dreamed on. Once she heard the glad song of the
Hyperboreans:--
"I come from a land in the sun-bright deep,
Where golden gardens glow;
Where the winds of the North, becalmed in sleep,
Their conch-shells never blow."