IRENE'S CLUE
THAT same morning, early, the princess woke in a terrible fright. There
was a hideous noise in her room--of creatures snarling and hissing and
racketing about as if they were fighting. The moment she came to
herself, she remembered something she had never thought of again--what
her grandmother told her to do when she was frightened. She immediately
took off her ring and put it under her pillow. As she did so, she
fancied she felt a finger and thumb take it gently from under her palm.
"It must be my grandmother!" she said to herself, and the thought gave
her such courage that she stopped to put on her dainty little slippers
before running from the room. While doing this, she caught sight of a
long cloak of sky-blue, thrown over the back of a chair by her bedside.
She had never seen it before, but it was evidently waiting for her. She
put it on, and then, feeling with the forefinger of her right hand, soon
found her grandmother's thread, which she proceeded at once to follow,
expecting it would lead her straight up the old stair. When she reached
the door, she found it went down and ran along the floor, so that she
had almost to crawl in order to keep a hold of it. Then, to her
surprise, and somewhat to her dismay, she found that instead of leading
her toward the stair it turned in quite the opposite direction. It led
her through certain narrow passages toward the kitchen, turning aside
ere she reached it, and guiding her to a door which communicated with a
small back yard. Some of the maids were already up, and this door was
standing open. Across the yard the thread still ran along the ground,
until it brought her to a door in the wall which opened upon the
mountain side. When she had passed through, the thread rose to about
half her height, and she could hold it with ease as she walked. It led
her straight up the mountain.
The cause of her alarm was less frightful than she supposed. The cook's
great black cat, pursued by the housekeeper's terrier, had bounced
against her bedroom door, which had not been properly fastened, and the
two had burst into her room together and commenced a battle royal. How
the nurse came to sleep through it, was a mystery, but I suspect the old
lady had something to do with it.
It was a clear warm morning. The wind blew deliciously over the
mountain-side. Here and there she saw a late primrose, but she did not
stop to call on them. The sky was mottled with small clouds. The sun was
not yet up, but some of their fluffy edges had caught his light and hung
out orange and gold-colored fringes upon the air. The dew lay in round
drops upon the leaves, and hung like tiny diamonds from the blades of
grass about her path.
"How lovely that bit of gossamer is!" thought the princess, looking at a
long undulating line that shone at some distance from her up the hill.
It was not the time for gossamers though; and Irene soon discovered that
it was her own thread she saw shining on before her in the light of the
morning. It was leading her she knew not whither; but she had never in
her life been out before sunrise, and everything was so fresh and cool
and lively and full of something coming, that she felt too happy to be
afraid of anything.
After leading her up a good distance, the thread turned to the left, and
down the path upon which she and Lootie had met Curdie. But she never
thought of that, for now in the morning light, with its far outlook over
the country, no path could have been more open and airy and cheerful.
She could see the road almost to the horizon, along which she had so
often watched her king-papa and his troop come shining, with the
bugle-blast cleaving the air before them; and it was like a companion to
her. Down and down the path went, then up, and then down, and then up
again, getting rugged and more rugged as it went; still along the path
went the silvery thread, and still along the thread went Irene's little
rosy-tipped forefinger. By and by she came to a little stream that
jabbered and prattled down the hill, and up the side of the stream went
both path and thread. And still the path grew rougher and steeper, and
the mountain grew wilder, till Irene began to think she was going a very
long way from home; and when she turned to look back, she saw that the
level country had vanished and the rough bare mountain had closed in
about her. But still on went the thread, and on went the princess.
Everything around her was getting brighter and brighter as the sun came
nearer; till at length his first rays all at once alighted on the top of
a rock before her, like some golden creature fresh from the sky. Then
she saw that the little stream ran out of a hole in that rock, that the
path did not go past the rock, and that the thread was leading her
straight up to it. A shudder ran through her from head to foot when she
found that the thread was actually taking her into the hole out of which
the stream ran. It ran out babbling joyously, but she had to go in.
She did not hesitate. Right into the hole she went, which was high
enough to let her walk without stooping. For a little way there was a
brown glimmer, but at the first turn it all but ceased, and before she
had gone many paces she was in total darkness. Then she began to be
frightened indeed. Every moment she kept feeling the thread backward,
and as she went farther and farther into the darkness of the great
hollow mountain, she kept thinking more and more about her grandmother,
and all that she had said to her, and how kind she had been, and how
beautiful she was, and all about her lovely room, and the fire of roses,
and the great lamp that sent its light through stone walls. And she
became more and more sure that the thread could not have gone there of
itself, and that her grandmother must have sent it. But it tried her
dreadfully when the path went down very steep, and especially when she
came to places where she had to go down rough stairs, and even sometimes
a ladder. Through one narrow passage after another, over lumps of rock
and sand and clay, the thread guided her, until she came to a small hole
through which she had to creep. Finding no change on the other
side--"Shall I ever get back?" she thought, over and over again,
wondering at herself that she was not ten times more frightened, and
often feeling as if she were only walking in the story of a dream.
Sometimes she heard the noise of water, a dull gurgling inside the rock.
By and by she heard the sounds of blows, which came nearer and nearer;
but again they grew duller and almost died away. In a hundred directions
she turned, obedient to the guiding thread.
At last she spied a dull red shine, and came up to the mica-window, and
thence away and round about, and right into a cavern, where glowed the
red embers of a fire. Here the thread began to rise. It rose as high as
her head, and higher still. What _should_ she do if she lost her hold?
She was pulling it down! She might break it! She could see it far up,
glowing as red as her fire-opal in the light of the embers.
But presently she came to a huge heap of stones, piled in a slope
against the wall of the cavern. On these she climbed, and soon recovered
the level of the thread--only however to find, the next moment, that it
vanished through the heap of stones, and left her standing on it, with
her face to the solid rock. For one terrible moment, she felt as if her
grandmother had forsaken her. The thread which the spiders had spun far
over the seas, which her grandmother had sat in the moonlight and spun
again for her, which she had tempered in the rose-fire, and tied to her
opal ring, had left her--had gone where she could no longer follow
it--had brought her into a horrible cavern, and there left her! She was
forsaken indeed!
"When _shall_ I wake?" she said to herself in an agony, but the same
moment knew that it was no dream. She threw herself upon the heap, and
began to cry. It was well she did not know what creatures, one of them
with stone shoes on her feet, were lying in the next cave. But neither
did she know who was on the other side of the slab.
At length the thought struck her, that at least she could follow the
thread backward, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She rose at
once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to feel it
backward, it vanished from her touch. Forward, it led her hand up to the
heap of stones--backward, it seemed nowhere. Neither could she see it as
before in the light of the fire. She burst into a wailing cry, and again
threw herself down on the stones.