child, looking through bubbles into the future; now those bright bubbles were all behind him. Once more he had - Hans Christian Andersen

You’re a fine one for tramping around,” the bandit girl said to Kai. “I’d like to know – do you really deserve to have someone run to the end of the world just for your sake?

I will fly to those royal birds,

Our princess moaned and wept. Her tears fell on the elder-stump, and it was quite moved, for it was the Marsh King himself, who lives in the quagmire. I saw the stump turn itself, so it wasn’t only a trunk, for it put out long, muddy boughs like arms. Then the unhappy girl was frightened, ans sprang aside into the quivering marsh, which will not bear me, much less her. In at once she sank, and down with her went the elder-stump - it was he who pulled her down. Then a few big black bubbles, and no trace of her left. She is engulfed in the marsh, and will never return to Egypt with her flower…