On a Pincushion: And Other Fairy Tales by Mary De Morgan

Author:Mary De Morgan
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fairy Tales
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2026-02-11T19:36:27+00:00

And you must stand be­fore it, and say—

‘I know, I know;

In­side the wind does blow,

In­side the wa­ters flow;

This makes the Hair Tree grow—

I know, I know.’

Then the doors will fly open, and you can pass in. With­in grows the Hair Tree. What else you will find there I shall not say. Now, I have kept my part of the agree­ment; see that you keep yours when you re­turn.”

So say­ing, the bird flapped his wings once and dis­ap­peared.

Rupert looked about, and find­ing him­self very near land, rowed to shore, and stepped from his boat. It seemed to be a pretty sort of coun­try, and at first he did not no­tice any­thing un­usu­al. He walked straight on till he came to a row of splen­did sun­flowers, and stopped in front of them to ad­mire them, when all at once a pair of beau­ti­ful white hands and arms were thrust out from the nearest stalk, and grasp­ing him by the shoulders began to pull him, with a strength he could not res­ist. At once all the oth­er stalks had put out their hands, and were reach­ing to­wards him. And from above the large yel­low flowers there ap­peared heads—wo­men’s heads—with beau­ti­ful dreamy faces and bright golden hair. In an­oth­er mo­ment Rupert felt the arms would have crushed him to death, for they were fast tight­en­ing their hold, and felt like iron hands.

Sud­denly he re­membered the jew­els in his pock­ets, and draw­ing out a bril­liant em­er­ald, flashed it be­fore the face of the sun­flower in whose arms he was. “Leave me alone,” he cried, “and you shall have this.”

But still the arms bound him with their strong grasp, and gave no sign of loosen­ing their hold. Then Rupert took the jew­el and, hold­ing it above his head, said, “If you don’t let me go at once, I will throw it bey­ond your reach, so that you will nev­er get it.”

For a mo­ment the arms wavered, then they slowly gave way, and Rupert burst from them trem­bling at the danger from which he had es­caped. With haste, and still keep­ing at arms’ length, he dropped the jew­el in­to the cruel beau­ti­ful white hand that was stretched out to re­ceive it. Then he ran as fast as he could from the row of sun­flowers and sat down, still pant­ing and trem­bling, on a large bare stone.

After he had a little re­covered him­self, he looked about him, and per­ceived that not only the sun­flowers but all the trees had hands and arms, which they were al­ways stretch­ing to try and catch some­thing, and on look­ing on the ground he saw that even the blades of grass were armed with tiny hands, which they kept stretch­ing in­to the air.

For amuse­ment he bur­ied his hand in the grass, and in an in­stant it was clutched by a hun­dred tiny hands, that pulled it hard. He could eas­ily draw it away, for it was no more than if a num­ber of spiders had seized his hand.

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