Page:Turkish fairy tales and folk tales (1901).djvu/88

 courage and went on his way. He looked straight before him all the time, and his eyes were almost blinded by a dazzling light. Was it the sun he saw? No, it was the palace of the Queen of the Peris! Then he rallied all the strength that was left in him and shouted the name of the Queen of the Peris with all his might, and the words had not yet died away upon his lips when his whole body up to his knee-cap stiffened into stone. Again he shouted with all his might, and he turned to stone up to his navel. Then he shouted for the last time with all his might, and stiffened up to his throat first and then up to his head, till he became a tombstone like the rest.

But now the Queen of the Peris came into her garden, and she had silver sandals on her feet and a golden saucer in her hand, and she drew water from a diamond fountain, and when she watered the stone youth, life and motion came back to him.

"Well, thou youth thou," said the Queen of the Peris, "'tis not enough, then, that thou hast taken away my Peri branch and my magic mirror, but thou must needs, forsooth, venture hither a third time! Thou shalt share the fate of thy innocent buried mother, stone thou shalt become and stone shalt thou remain. What brought thee hither?—speak!"

"I came for thee," replied the youth very courageously.