Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/269

 than any before, for she came upon mountains of flint-*stones, one after another, through which darted flames of fire, forests untrodden by man, and fields of ice dark with snow-storms. More than once the poor creature was on the point of falling, but with perseverance and the help of God she overcame even these great hardships, and at last she reached a ravine between two mountains, large enough to hold seven cities.

This was the abode of the Wind.

There was a gate in the wall which surrounded it. She knocked and implored them to let her in. The mother of the Wind had compassion on her, and let her in and invited her to rest. "If she had hidden from the Sun," she said, "surely the Wind would not find her out."

The next day the mother of the Wind told her that her husband was living in a huge dense wood, which the axe of man had never yet reached, and there he had made him a sort of house by piling up the trunks of trees one on the top of another, and plaiting them together with withy bands, where he lived all alone for fear of wicked men. Then, after she had given her a roast fowl and told her to take good care of the bones, the mother of the Wind counselled her to follow the road that led straight to the sky, and let the stars of heaven be her guides. She said she