by ROBERT BARR

The brother kings lived for a time in peace and harmony, but at last one brother grew envious of the other and made war upon him, in order to secure his kingdom for himself.  Through a most vile piece of treachery, the bad brother nearly overcame the good; but finally the good king won out, and, while allowing his brother to live, deprived him of his kingdom.  He caused him to be changed into a serpent, gave him a lonely castle atop a high mountain, and decreed he remain there to the end of his days.

But the serpent king vowed revenge, and watched each day for a chance to return evil to his brother who had spared his treacherous life.

Now the good king and his queen had a little daughter.  They dwelt all three atop a high mountain of their own, in a castle abounding in turrets and walls, with a moat and a drawbridge–safe and sound, as they thought, from the jealousy of their avowed enemy, the king’s brother.

From the turrets on the castle walls one could see the serpent king’s castle far off in the distance, as far as the edge of the sky away.  The little princess, who loved to go exploring, often asked her mother and father who it was who dwelt there, but the old couple would not answer the whole truth for fear of frightening the child, and would only say, “Your uncle.”  For the serpent king had vowed his vengeance, theyt knew, and they by no means wished to encourage any curiosity about him on the part of their little child.

Now, the little princess loved to explore, as has been told.  But the castle guards had strict overs from the king and queen never to lower the drawbridge for her, and she was as yet too young to be able to lower it for herself.  So she had to content herself with exploring the corners of the castle and courtyard, and she explored them so much that she knew them all by heart.  She longed for the day she would be old enough to cross the drawbridge and go exploring in the wide world.

Days passed and a year, and then another year, and finally one day the little princess was old enough to be able to lower the drawbridge herself.  She awaited a moment when no guards were watching, and quickly stepped up to the rope that held the bridge open, untied it, and let it go.  Down slammed the bridge, and across the moat flew the little princess as fast as her legs could carry her, lest the guards see who it was who had escaped down the mountain.  The guards heard the sound of the bridge falling and came running; and they found the drawbridge lowered over the moat, but saw no one either coming or going across the moat.

The guards reported the matter to the king.  The king, in his turn, told the queen, who by now was asking for her child and beginning to feel anxious about her when she was nowhere to be found.  And so it was learned that it had been the young princess herself who had lowered the drawbridge and fled away down the mountain.

Before long the little princess came to the foot of her mountain, where she sat down and rested.  She gazed out over the vast, level plain that stretched as far as the eye could see, to the other mysterious mountain at the edge of the sky.  The sky was dark and stormy, and night was not far off, but the little princess was so eager to explore the wide world that she rose and set out for the far mountain.  Perhaps, she thought, she could even make the acquaintance of her uncle there.

Now the evil serpent king had observed with his keen snake eye all that had occurred–how the little princess had been able to lower the drawbridge for herself, how she had fled down the mountain unbeknownst to her parents, and now how she had set toward his own mountain.  He was glad in his heart, for now he knew how he might wreak his revenge on his brother king.

The little princess had set out across the plain, but the two mountains at its either end were even farther apart than they had seemed from atop her castle wall, and to traverse them on foot must take at least a whole day, and now the day was already far spent.  But the little princess set out toward the night and the gathering storm.

Many hours she walked across the plain between the mountains, seeing nothing and meeting no one except a baby sparrow, who lay pitifully in the dust in the midst of the plain, flailing helplessly about, unable to fly because of a broken wing.  The little princess had never seen anything so weak and helpless, and she felt much sorrow, but at first she only shook her head and began to travel onward–then the picture of the suffering little bird in the eye of her mind made her turn back and think of what she might do to help him.

Then the little princess found two sticks, plaited some grass into a kind of string or cord, and fashioned a little splint to straighten the broken wing until it should mend.  When she had finished attaching the splint to the wing the little sparrow looked up at her so gratefully for this rescue that tears of joy came to her eyes, and she hoped with all her heart for the safety and happiness of the little sparrow; and she wanted to call a blessing upon his head.  The only blessing she could remember was one she had heard long ago in a story about a person who was making a journey from his home to a far away land, just as she was doing, so she said, “May your children be as many as the sands of the sea or the stars of the sky.”  Then she hid the little sparrow in a tuft of soft grass and continued her journey.

Long before the little princess could reach the foot of the mysterious mountain, night had fallen and a storm had broken, but she could not be kept from exploring the mountain, and she struggled ever onward.  By the time she had come to the foot of the mountain, she was utterly exhausted, and collapsed in the mud and wind and rain into a deep sleep.

Just as she fell asleep, the side of the mountain opened and thirteen evil-looking dwarfs emerged from its depths.  They surrounded the little princess stealthily as she lay asleep, then suddenly grasped her from all sides and bore her into the recesses of the mysterious mountain.  All her struggling and cries were to no avail, for the thirteen dwarfs held her fast.  Once under the ground they offered her magic cakes to eat, and when she had grown hungry enough she ate them, and fell asleep again.

This time she slept for seven years.  And for that long the dwarfs guarded her in the depths of the mysterious mountain.  For it was the evil plan of the serpent king to hold fast the little princess under the earth until she should be old enough to be his bride.  Then he would compel her to marry him.  In this way he thought to avenge himself on his hated brother, the father of the little princess.

Day and night for seven years the little princess slept, and day and night for seven years her mother and father sought her in vain.  With all their servants, guards, and armies they looked for their little child, but she was nowhere to be found.  Even when they approached the mountain of the serpent king they found no trace of her, since she lay hidden in its dark underground caverns.

At the end of the seven years the effect of the magic cakes wore off and the little princess awoke.  Then the serpent king arose from among the cushions on which he lay coiled, and slithered down the mountain to claim his bride.  His day of retribution and reprisal had come, he thought, and now his brother, the good king, would rue the day he had vanquished him in battle but had allowed him to live.

The thirteen dwarfs, then, released their captive to their master, and by the time the little princess had come to herself the ugly snake had coiled around her until he embraced her whole self like a vice and she could scarcely draw her breath.  Then with half of his coils he continued to hold her tight and with half he rose slithering back up the mountain.

On the mountain top a great wedding had been prepared, and the serpent king caused to be assembled, from all the corners of his dismal empire, every lizard and toad and bat and wasp and wolf and snake that walked, crawled, crept, or flew on that mountain of his, until the great hall of his castle was filled to overflowing and the air for miles in all directions was foul with their stench.  And he caused four great columns of black and yellow smoke to rise from four great pots placed at the corners of the castle atop its high walls, to announce to the world, and especially to his brother, his nefarious celebration.

The little princess’s mother and father saw the columns of smoke from afar, where they roamed the plain beneath their mountain searching for her, and sent to inquire what the occasion of it might be.  But their messengers were met in the plain itself by messengers of the serpent king, who announced to them the news of the little princess’s wedding to their master, beat them cruelly, and sent them back to the parents of the little princess.  When the good king and queen received them they knew their messengers had indeed met with the minions of the serpent king, so terribly were they battered, and that their awful story of the impending wedding could only be too true.

So the king and queen mounted an army, of all their guard as well as many hundreds of their subjects, and set off as rapidly as they might to try to rescue their daughter.  For even though they knew full well that the plain between the mountains was too vast for them ever to come in time, still their love for their little child urged them on against all hope.

Now the storm clouds that always crowned the castle of the great snake began to lighten and to thunder, and to hail burning pitch and sulfur, the evil king’s fireworks display.  The little princess was given to understand that unless she consented to marry her master the moment he so demanded, the coils that held her would tighten and tighten until the breath were gone from her body and her bones were crushed to powder.

At a certain moment as the horrible rite reached a specil pitch of wild solemnity, the serpent king cried out amidst the smoke, bolts of lightning, and thunder, “Thee do I espouse for my wedded wife forever!  Wilt thou for thy part have me for thy lord and husband?”

The little princess hesitated, refusing to reply, and the thunder boomed louder, the lightning flashed more brilliantly, the sulfur burned more foully, and the coils of the serpent king wound tighter.  At last the little princess was on the point of crying, “I will!”  But before she could pronounce the words something more strange occurred than all the strange things that had come to pass until now.  The roof of the great hall began to tremble and to crumble.  Dust and powder, then tiny chips, began to fall about the ears of the whole foul company assembled.  The debris fell too lightly, at first, to disturb any of the guests, accustomed as they had become to the blinding and deafening detonations of the infernal revel–but gradually the falling bits of timber began to grow in size and number until they were pelting painfully every creature in the noisome company.  Only the little princess, entwined in the devilish coils of the snake king, escaped their battery.  Some of the lizards were crushed to death, and the snakes and weasels were beginning to sneak away with painful wounds.

At last the whole roof of the great hall collapsed together with a resounding crash, killing everything beneath it except the serpent himself and his intended bride–for the huge snake had managed to twist and squirm sufficiently to avoid the largest pieces of debris.  But he had not released his pitiful captive.

All of a sudden the cause of the lucky disaster became known.  Atop all the walls of the hall, far above the heads of the little princess and her captor, appeared many thousands of sparrows, still picking and peckinng at wat was left of the edges of the roof, until the tops of the walls were picked quite clean.  Then they stopped.  As the serpent king and the little princess gazed aloft, all the sparrows turned toward one sparrow, the largest and oldest of their number, and to the lovely female at his side, as if awaiting some kind of signal.  For a moment all was perfectly still.  Then the pair of birds made a quick movement of their heads, in the direction of the captor and his captive, and all of the thousands of sparrows plunged headlong from the heights of the great hall to its floow, where they picked the serpent king’s bones clean as a pebble.

The blessing the little princess had called down upon the little injured bird in the plain had been granted.  He had recovered from his hurt, found a bride, and in the seven years they had lived together the weak little sparrow not only had become strong himself, but had increased and multiplied, a generation a year with many offspring of each new union, until his numbers were countless, and he had become mightier than any other living creature by having multiplied into so many children.

The sparrows and the little princess enjoyed each other’s company for the rest of that day, and into the evening.  In the course of the evening the good king and queen arrived with their army.  The royal pair embraced their little girl, now grown to be a beautiful woman, and escorted them in joy back to the castle of her childhood, high atop their mountain.

By and by the little princess married a handsome prince, and their wedding celebration was enhanced by the music of thousands upon thousands of little sparrows, singing the most triumphal music you have ever heard.  The little princes and her prince, too, increased and multiplied, and saw their children and their children’s children, to the third and fourth generation.