"I am the Queen," she said; "ye might have excepted me." Then, turning
swift, like a texel that strikes its quarry, she said to the Princess:
"A laidley worm shalt thou be, crawling amongst the rocks; a laidley
worm shalt thou stay until thy brother, Wynd, comes home again."
So impossible seemed such a threat to the Princess that her red lips
parted over her white teeth, and she laughed long and merrily. But those
who knew that the new Queen had studied long all manner of wicked spells
and cruel magic were filled with dread, for greatly they feared that the
fair Princess's joyous days were done.
The Farne Islands were purple-black in a chill grey sea, and the waves
that beat on the rocks beneath the castle seemed to have a more dolorous
moan than common when next evening came. The joyous Princess, jingling
her big bunch of keys and smiling a welcome to her father's guests, had
gone as completely as though she lay buried beside the drowned mariners,
for whom the silting sand under the waves makes a safe graveyard all
along that bleak and rugged coast; but a horror--a crawling, shapeless,
loathsome thing--writhed itself along the pathway from cliff to village,
and sent the terror-striken peasants shrieking into their huts and
battering at the castle gates for sanctuary.
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