LITMIR.BIZ

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Ilona said she couldn’t go until the old worn doorsill over which so many of their forefathers had walked should fall to splinters at the brush of her skirts. So Osmo secretly split the old doorsill into thin slivers and, when next Ilona stepped over it, the brush of her skirts sent the splinters flying.

      “I see now I must go,” Ilona said, “for the house of our forefathers no longer holds me.”

      So she packed all her ribbons and her bodices and skirts in a bright wooden box and, calling her little dog Pilka, she stepped into the boat and Osmo rowed her off in the direction of the King’s castle.

      Soon they passed a long narrow spit of land at the end of which stood a woman waving her arms. That is she looked like a woman. Really she was Suyettar but they, of course, did not know this.

      “Take me in your boat!” she cried.

      “Shall we?” Osmo asked his sister.

      “I don’t think we ought to,” Ilona said. “We don’t know who she is or what she wants and she may be evil.”

      So Osmo rowed on. But the woman kept shouting:

      “Hi, there! Take me in your boat! Take me!”

      A second time Osmo paused and asked his sister:

      “Don’t you think we ought to take her?”

      “No,” Ilona said.

      So Osmo rowed on again. At this the creature raised such a pitiful outcry demanding what they meant denying assistance to a poor woman that Osmo was unable longer to refuse and in spite of Ilona’s warning he rowed to land.

      Suyettar instantly jumped into the boat and seated herself in the middle with her face towards Osmo and her back towards Ilona.

      “What a fine young man!” Suyettar said in whining flattering tones. “See how strong he is at the oars! And what a beautiful girl, too! I daresay the King’s Son would fall in love with her if ever he saw her!”

      Thereupon Osmo very foolishly told Suyettar that the King’s Son had already promised to marry Ilona. At that an evil look came into Suyettar’s face and she sat silent for a time biting her fingers. Then she began mumbling a spell that made Osmo deaf to what Ilona was saying and Ilona deaf to what Osmo was saying.

      At last in the distance the towers of the King’s castle appeared.

      “Stand up, sister!” Osmo said. “Shake out your skirts and arrange your pretty ribbons! We’ll soon be landing now!”

      Ilona could see her brother’s lips moving but of course she could not hear what he was saying.

      “What is it, brother?” she asked.

      Suyettar answered for him:

      “Osmo orders you to jump headlong into the water!”

      “No! No!” Ilona cried. “He couldn’t order anything so cruel as that!”

      Presently Osmo said:

      “Sister, what ails you? Don’t you hear me? Shake out your skirts and arrange your pretty ribbons for we’ll soon be landing now.”

      “What is it, brother?” Ilona asked.

      As before Suyettar answered for him:

      “Osmo orders you to jump headlong into the water!”

      “Brother, how can you order so cruel a thing!” Ilona cried, bursting into tears. “Is it for this you made me leave the home of my fathers?”

      A third time Osmo said:

      “Stand up, sister, and shake out your skirts and arrange your ribbons! We’ll soon be landing now!”

      “I can’t hear you, brother! What is it you say?”

      Suyettar turned on her fiercely and screamed:

      “Osmo orders you to jump headlong into the water!”

      “If he says I must, I must!” poor Ilona sobbed, and with that she leapt overboard.

      Osmo tried to save her but Suyettar held him back and with her own arms rowed off and Ilona was left to sink.

      “What will become of me now!” Osmo cried. “When the King’s Son finds I have not brought him my sister he will surely order my death!”

      “Not at all!” Suyettar said. “Do as I say and no harm will come to you. Offer me to the King’s Son and tell him I am your sister. He won’t know the difference and anyway I’m sure I’m just as beautiful as Ilona ever was!”

      With that Suyettar opened the wooden box that held Ilona’s clothes and helped herself to skirt and bodice and gay colored ribbons. She decked herself out in these and for a little while she really did succeed in looking like a pretty young girl.

      So Osmo presented Suyettar to the King’s Son as Ilona, and the King’s Son because he had given his word married her. But before one day was past, he called Osmo to him and asked him angrily:

      “What did you mean by telling me your sister was beautiful?”

      “Isn’t she beautiful?” Osmo faltered.

      “No! I thought she was at first but she isn’t! She is ugly and evil and you shall pay the penalty for having deceived me!”

      Thereupon he ordered that Osmo be shut up in a place filled with serpents.

      “If you are innocent,” the King’s Son said, “the serpents will not harm you. If you are guilty they will devour you!”

      Meanwhile poor Ilona when she jumped into the water sank down, down, down, until she reached the Sea King’s palace. They received her kindly there and comforted her and the Sea King’s Son, touched by her grief and beauty, offered to marry her. But Ilona was homesick for the upper world and would not listen to him.

      “I want to see my brother again!” she wept.

      They told her that the King’s Son had thrown her brother to the serpents and had married Suyettar in her stead, but Ilona still begged so pitifully to be allowed to return to earth that at last the Sea King said:

      “Very well, then! For three successive nights I will allow you to return to the upper world. But after that never again!”

      So they decked Ilona in the lovely jewels of the sea with great strands of pearls about her neck and to each of her ankles they attached long silver chains. As she rose in the water the sound of the chains was like the chiming of silver bells and could be heard for five miles.

      Ilona came to the surface of the water just where Osmo had landed. The first thing she saw was his boat at the water’s edge and curled up asleep in the bottom of the boat her own little dog, Pilka.

      “Pilka!” Ilona cried, and the little dog woke with a bark of joy and licked Ilona’s hand and yelped and frisked.

      Then Ilona sang this magic song to Pilka:

      “Peely, peely, Pilka, pide,

      Lift the latch and slip inside!

      Past the watchdog in the yard,

      Past the sleeping men on guard!

      Creep in softly as a snake,

      Then creep out before they wake!

      Peely, peely, Pilka, pide,

      Peely, peely, Pilka!”

      Pilka barked and frisked and said:

      “Yes, mistress, yes! I’ll do whatever you bid me!”

      Ilona gave the little dog an embroidered square of gold and silver which she herself had worked down in the Sea King’s palace.

      “Take this,” she said to Pilka, “and put it on the pillow where the King’s Son lies asleep. Perhaps when he sees it he will know that it comes from Osmo’s true sister and that the frightful creature he has married is Suyettar. Then perhaps he will release Osmo before the serpents devour him. Go now, my faithful Pilka, and come back to me before the dawn.”

      So

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