‘This is how it happens,’ replied the Sun’s mother. ‘In the morning
when he stands at the gates of paradise he is happy, and smiles on the
whole world, but during the day he gets cross, because he sees all the
evil deeds of men, and that is why his heat becomes so scorching; but
in the evening he is both sad and angry, for he stands at the gates of
death; that is his usual course. From there he comes back here.’
She then told the Princess that she had asked about her husband, but
that her son had replied that he knew nothing about him, and that her
only hope was to go and inquire of the Wind.
Before the Princess left the mother of the Sun gave her a roast chicken
to eat, and advised her to take great care of the bones, which she did,
wrapping them up in a bundle. She then threw away her second pair of
shoes, which were quite worn out, and with her child on her arm and her
staff in her hand, she set forth on her way to the Wind.
In these wanderings she met with even greater difficulties than before,
for she came upon one mountain of flints after another, out of which
tongues of fire would flame up; she passed through woods which had
never been trodden by human foot, and had to cross fields of ice and
avalanches of snow. The poor woman nearly died of these hardships, but
she kept a brave heart, and at length she reached an enormous cave in
the side of a mountain. This was where the Wind lived. There was a
little door in the railing in front of the cave, and here the Princess
knocked and begged for admission. The mother of the Wind had pity on
her and took her in, that she might rest a little. Here too she was
hidden away, so that the Wind might not notice her.
The next morning the mother of the Wind told her that her husband was
living in a thick wood, so thick that no axe had been able to cut a way
through it; here he had built himself a sort of house by placing trunks
of trees together and fastening them with withes and here he lived
alone, shunning human kind.
After the mother of the Wind had given the Princess a chicken to eat,
and had warned her to take care of the bones, she advised her to go by
the Milky Way, which at night lies across the sky, and to wander on
till she reached her goal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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