Now Nio Kuro, a Prince and the most famous hunter in the kingdom, had
come in his boat down the river that ran through the haunted wood. With
him he had brought many servants and his pack of trained leopards, with
which he hunted, and which were swifter and had keener scent than any
dogs. Possibly Nio Kuro had never heard of this forest, or it may have
been that he became so excited when the leopards started on their wild
chase that he forgot to be afraid of goblins. At any rate, he dashed
headlong into the wood, encouraging his leopards with loud shouts, and
his servants, after a moment’s hesitation, followed him.
The fox was crashing through the underbrush just ahead of his
pursuers, now tearing his way through hanging vines and again leaping
over rocks and streams. The leopards came closer and closer behind him.
On they flew through swamps and thickets, into thorn bushes and bramble
patches and across deep ravines, and not even the wind could keep up
with them. At last the poor fox was tired out. His legs were torn and
bleeding, he had left bunches of his fur on many a bush and thorn, his
feet were bruised and lame and his breath almost gone.
Too late he found that he had slept too much and eaten too much during
the long, comfortable days he had spent in his new home, and that
he could not run as once he did when he was thin and lithe and his
legs were hard and his feet like rubber. Panting, gasping, his tongue
hanging out, foam dripping from his mouth, he went blindly on in
irregular leaps. The leopards were gaining on him every moment.
Already he could feel the hot breath of the spotted leader burn his
flanks and he knew his time had come. Never, no, never, would he be a
fox with nine golden tails! He would merely die a cruel death and his
one poor bushy tail would be carried away as a trophy, his body torn
to pieces by savage beasts. As this sad picture rose up before him he
made one last long leap for liberty, and then his trembling legs could
carry him no further. Driven to bay, he snarled angrily, and backing
up against the trunk of a great hollow tree, turned to fight his last
battle.
Then a strange thing happened.
At that very moment a huge and horrible creature he knew at once must
be the dragon rose between him and the maddened leopards. Its body was
covered with shining silver scales that crackled like burning logs as
it moved, its ears were big black wings that flapped like sails, its
great claws had nails as long and sharp as knives, its double tongue
was two red-hot flames, its glaring eyes seemed balls of fire and its
long tail curled and writhed like a mighty snake.
“There has been a mistake,” the dragon breathed, and its words came
out in smoke. “You were one hundred years old this morning, and as you
have never in all your life had to run from a dog, you should have been
given the chance to become a beautiful woman if you wished.”
“Give me the chance now,” panted the fox. “There is nothing I want so
much as to be a woman, even an ugly one will do.”
When the Prince, who could not keep up with the chase, appeared on the
scene, he found the leopards with their tails tucked between their legs
and their heads hanging down. There was no fox anywhere, but the most
beautiful girl he had ever seen stood before him. For a time Nio Kuro
could only look at her, for he was dumb with astonishment. She blushed
and drew her long black hair over her face until he could barely see
the tip of her nose and her little red mouth. Then she knelt before him.
His attendants now came running up, for he had outstripped them all,
and they too stopped speechless with their mouths open. The Prince did
not heed them. He bent down over the mysterious maiden and so far
forgot his manners that he took both her small hands in his and raised
her to her feet, for he wanted to see her face again, and the more he
looked at her the lovelier she seemed to him.
“Who are you, O fairest one?” he asked rapturously. “Who is your
illustrious father and what is your honored name?” But she gazed about
her in a puzzled way and shook her head.
“I do not know,” she answered.
The Prince frowned at her strange reply, for he could scarcely believe
his ears, and he even pinched himself under his silken tunic to be sure
he was not dreaming. But she was so pretty he could not be angry with
her, and as he looked into her soft brown eyes his frown changed into a
smile, and he said in a very gentle voice:
“Are you lost? Are there other hunters here who have brought you with
them and now you wait for them to return?”
“I am all alone,” she told him.
He was so surprised he did not know what to say. At last he stammered:
“Perhaps you are only teasing me--or it may be that you are afraid
of me because I am a stranger. But no harm shall come to you through
me--that I promise you. I am Nio Kuro, a Prince of Hi-no-moto, the Land
Where the Day Begins. Forgive my rudeness in speaking to you, but will
you not let me guard you and take you back to your friends?”
“I have no friends and nowhere to go,” she sighed.
“But whence do you come, O sweetest creature in all the kingdom?” cried
the bewildered Prince. Again she shook her head.
“I belong to the forest,” she said simply.
“Henceforth you shall belong to me,” the Prince declared, and so he
took her back to his Bamboo Castle as his bride. There every one
wondered at this fair maid of the forest, but no one could find out who
were her parents or where her home had been or anything about her, and
the Prince was so charmed with her grace and beauty he never bothered
his head about these questions that so worried other people. She loved
him and he loved her and that was all he cared to know about her, for
the Prince was a very clever man.
He bought her the loveliest gowns of purple and yellow satin, all
embroidered in roses and green leaves and jeweled butterflies, and
she had servants to wait upon her and fan her and a red and gold
jinricksha to ride in. He called her a queer Japanese word which means
Wild Flower, for he said she grew and blossomed in the forest and he
transplanted her and made her a Princess. But that was just his own pet
name for her, and he ordered that throughout the Land Where the Day
Begins she should be known as the Princess Hoshi, or the Star Princess.
And he gave a great supper and invited all the people of his kingdom to
it, and in the center of the table was a cake so big it looked like a
snow-covered mountain, and around it were blooming all the joyous and
lucky flowers, while out in the court was a maple tree covered with
what every one thought at first was autumn leaves, but these leaves
turned out to be little cakes of every color under the sun, and each
guest was given a red paper bag filled with them to carry home. No
wonder they were all glad the Prince had found a Princess Hoshi, and
wished him and his Star Princess long life and much joy. It is true
there were some who, as soon as they got away, nodded their heads
knowingly as they munched their cakes, and said the Princess was an odd
person and perhaps the Prince would one day wish he had left her in the
forest.
Now, a Bamboo Castle is a charming place to live. There were wind
bells hung all along the eaves and they tinkled with the whisper of
every passing breeze, and the windows were of paper, so that when the
Princess wanted to look out of doors all she had to do was to poke a
hole in one of them with her finger and by putting one eye there she
could see everything that was passing and no one could catch a glimpse
of her, and there were hundreds of mats on the floor of every room,
and these were soft and cool to walk upon even in Doyo, or the Period
of Greatest Heat, and the Prince went all the way to the town of
Hirosaki to get her a bronze mirror that she might see how pretty she
was, and she often looked in it. He also brought her a long-haired,
fluffy little dog, but she screamed and would have nothing to do with
it, so in its place he gave her a red cat without any tail that purred
pleasantly whenever she touched it.
At night she slept on a pillow of shining black wood, and on it were
sprawling, straggling letters of gold that spelled the name of the
Baku, for the Baku in Japan has the body of a horse, the face of a
lion, the trunk and tusks of an elephant, the tail of a cow and the
feet of a tiger, and it eats up evil dreams. In fact, it never eats
anything else, and yet it is always fat. So not only did the Princess
have everything comfortable and agreeable while she was awake, but even
in her sleep only sweet dreams could come to her.
And on summer evenings when there wasn’t any moon the Prince would
have many bright-colored paper lanterns lit and hung in the garden,
and lamps that looked like flowers would be swung in the trees, and
then he would have his servants, who had been busy all day catching
them in nets, turn out thousands of fireflies with their little golden
lights all glowing, and the garden would be changed into fairyland.
The Princess would sit in an arbor fringed with wistaria blossoms and
sip her tea, while some of her maidens would sing for her and others
with much bowing and waving of fans would dance in a slow and solemn
fashion.
And again when the moon was a big, soft, bright ball and the clouds
were very blue, she and the Prince and her maidens would go to the
pavilion in the center of the garden and climb the many steps to the
top, where there was a room called the moon-viewing Place of Peace. And
the Prince would tell his flower-wife in the lovely language of the
land that the sun was a golden crow and the moon a jeweled hare, and of
how Princess Splendor, the dear daughter of the moon, once ran away,
and when her mother called her she climbed home on a moonbeam crying
silver tears, and all her tears took wings and flew down to earth and
turned into fireflies.
But the Princess would have thoughts they could not understand and ask
questions that would make even Nio Kuro smile. Once she said to him
quite seriously:
“Did you ever see a dragon?”
“Certainly,” he answered. “There were many of these wriggling creatures
made of red and yellow and pink and green paper, with lanterns for
eyes, carried in the festival procession last year. They were very
amusing.”
“Paper dragons,” she cried scornfully. “I mean live ones.”
“I have read of them and seen many pictures of them,” he told her.
“There was one called Riu Gu, the Dragon King of the World Under the
Sea, and when he sneezed the waters would jump up and tumble over each
other in mighty waves, and every time the dragon caught cold many a
fishing boat went down. But that was years and years ago, and now all
the dragons are dead.”
And she only laughed and said no more, but she knew better. Perhaps the
trouble was she knew too much to be a Princess, and that was why she at
last got dreadfully bored.
But for many months everything went on beautifully at Bamboo Castle
and the Prince and Wild Flower were deliciously happy. It was very
nice to have a magnificent home, and a lake full of gold fish, and
a shady garden where fountains trickled drops of music, and little
crystal streams rushed over the rocks and sang to the lilies on their
banks. And it was pleasant to wear lovely clothes, and eat sharks’
fins and birds’ nest soup and bamboo shoots and lotus bulbs and other
delicacies that only very rich people can have in Japan. And she was
glad to think she wasn’t a fox, hiding out in brier patches, always
listening for dogs and sometimes hungry. Surely it was much better to
be a Princess than a fox.
Then gradually a change came over her, and although she had everything
she wanted, she was no longer happy. Sometimes in the day when she
lingered by the lake and watched the little gold fish dart about like
flames in the clear water and jump up on the bank to get the lard cakes
and rice balls she had brought them, she sighed, and for no reason at
all scolded the mincing, bias-eyed lady who carried a gorgeous parasol
over her.
And again in the starlit night, when she walked in the perfumed garden
and listened to the musical drip, drip of the fountain, and heard the
frogs calling to each other from the lotus pools, there came to her the
memory of an enchanted land, where bats circled and shrieked, and great
owls squatted solemnly on the knotty branches of the trees, winking and
blinking and never sleeping, and a mighty dragon with glaring eyes and
shining scales lived in a hollow tree. And strange to say, when she
remembered this dark and lonely forest her own garden seemed to her but
a stupid place.
After a while she grew tired of living in a house, even if it was a
Bamboo Castle, and whenever she went out having men carry her about in
a stuffy chair, and she longed for the shade of the far-away wood, the
sound of the hoarsely gurgling streams, for a run in the early morning
through the dew-laden grass, for the hum of the bees, the smell of the
dead leaves and a nap on a mossy bank.
So she fretted and grew so discontented that ugly lines crept in
between her brows, the rose all went out of her cheeks, and she was
so cross the Prince was once heard to say he had married a nettle
in place of a wild flower. She slapped her servants, quarreled with
her mother-in-law (which in Japan is an awful thing to do), and was
altogether as disagreeable as a woman could be. The Prince was patient.
He stood it for a long time without saying a word and tried in every
way to please his royal lady. One day he asked:
“Is there nothing, Fair One, would make you kind and sweet again? If
anything will make you happy, only say what it is and I will go even to
the ends of the earth for it.”
After thinking a moment the Princess answered:
“Take me back to the forest where you found me. If I could only see
that dear place again I would be content ever after. But leave the
cruel leopards behind,” she added quickly.
“There is much game there,” he said regretfully. But she frowned and
stamped her little foot angrily.
“You shall not kill anything,” she declared. “If you do you will break
my heart.”
“Perhaps it were best not to hunt there,” he acknowledged, thinking of
the evil spirits that were said to roam this forest. “It is the Land
of Roots and the Home of Darkness. Why do you want to go there? Now
that you are out of it I should think you would want to stay away.”
But she began to cry and got in such a temper that he was willing she
should have her way, so he had his boat brought out and made ready. The
next morning he and the Princess, with only the rowers to keep them
company, started on their long journey. The Princess was silent, and
whenever he spoke to her she answered him so angrily that he ceased to
try to talk to her. So they sat on the deck, never saying a word, until
the fifth morning, when they stopped at the very spot he had moored his
boat the day he had found her and brought her away with him.