And this was the way of her packing. She went out into the broad
courtyard and waved a scarlet handkerchief, and instantly the whole
palace, golden and glittering, and the kingdom belonging to it, became
little, little, little, till it went into a little golden egg. The
Princess tied the egg in a corner of her handkerchief, and set out
with Sunrise to join her sisters and go home to her father.
Her sisters did their packing in the same way. The silver palace and
its kingdom were packed by the second sister into a little silver egg.
And when they came to the copper palace, the youngest of the three
lovely princesses clapped her hands and kissed Sunrise on both his
cheeks, and waved a scarlet handkerchief, and instantly the copper
palace and its kingdom were packed into a little copper egg, shining
ruddy and green.
And so Sunrise and the three daughters of the King came to the foot of
the deep hole down which he had come into the underworld. And there
was the rope hanging with the loop at its end. And they sat in the
loop, and Evening and Midnight pulled them up one by one, rejoicing
together. Then the three brothers took, each of them, a princess with
him on his horse, and they all rode together back to the old King,
telling talcs and singing songs as they went. The Princess from the
golden palace rode with Evening on his horse of dusky brown; the
Princess from the silver palace rode with Midnight on his horse as
black as charcoal; but the Princess from the copper palace, the
youngest of them all, rode with Sunrise on his horse, white as a
summer cloud. Merry was the journey through the green forest, and
gladly they rode over the open plain, till they came at last to the
palace of her father.
There was the old King, sitting melancholy alone, when the three
brothers with the princesses rode into the courtyard of the palace.
The old King was so glad that he laughed and cried at the same time,
and his tears ran down his beard.
"Ah me!" says the old King, "I am old, and you young men have brought
my daughters back from the very world under the world. Safer they will
be if they have you to guard them, even than they were in the palace I
had built for them underground. But I have only one kingdom and three
daughters."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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