The moon was white when it rose that night, shinning on the clear lake, the ring of green trees turned silver in its light, and the small statue in a clearing of untouched dirt. The statue was of a young maiden wearing a long white gown that almost rippled even though it was only carved ivory. Her pale hair was free and wild, thrashing around her colorless face as though a terrible, unseen storm raged about her. Her eyes were tight shut as if this innocent girl did not want to see what was causing the wind and tumult. Her arms were folded tight against her breast. She looked frozen, so still and white.
This was no ordinary statue, and as the moonlight covered it with its pale light, the little statue seemed to stir. If anyone had happened to pass it on their way to the lake, which no one ever did, they would have stopped to stare in wonder as this transformation took place, but as it was, the ivory statue was all alone when she opened her eyes.
Her hair whipped the air around it in sudden motion only a moment before settling down around her shoulders. She relaxed her arms and turned toward the lake, smiling a pure little smile at the sight of the white moon, as perfect and pale as her ivory skin.
In the same forest as the little statue there was a man as black as the night sky when no moon shines and the stars hide themselves behind the clouds. The same moment the statue stirred, the man arrived in a large clearing next to a small cottage with anger smoldering in his heart.
Elephants were grouped around the cottage and beginning to doze where they stood, some of their ears waving lazily with their dreams. The man rapped loudly on the cottage door, and looked up at the moon.
The old witch who lived inside the cottage answered his knock.
He was her captive, forced to work for her and do her bidding as soon as the sun left the sky each night. When the moon appeared, he would come to this clearing in the forest to look after her elephants and guard them against any night thieves.
As soon as the sun rose, she told him he was free to do as he wished as long as he returned with the moon. But even if he ran with all his strength, there was nowhere to go. Everything was too far away to reach in half a day’s journey. When the sun was halfway done with its climb in the sky, he was forced to begin making his way back to the witch’s cottage in order that he should reach it by the time the sun was gone.
There was nothing to be seen in the forest except the trees and the dirt. Every day he began in a different direction, hoping that he would find something – a village, a well, a den, a stream, a meadow – but there was never anything except the forest.
Always his black eyes were filled with hate at this curse that bound him, and at the witch that had cast it.
He spent that night walking in circles around the sleeping elephants, his smoldering eyes squinting into shadows, clutching a staff of ivory the witch told him he must always hold onto while tending the elephants if he valued his life. There had never been any thieves. There never would be. Both he and the witch knew this. Yet every night it was the same. He was not allowed to pause in his restless stroll or close his eyes for a moment in sleep. Always moving. Always watching.
When the sun finally rose, burning the sky orange and chasing away the moon, he threw the staff to the ground and ran from the clearing, almost blind with exhaustion. He kept running, his legs numb and stumbling. This was as he always did.
He would need to sleep soon, yet he hated to be any where near the witch, so he made himself run as far as he could before sleep caught up with his speed.
His legs carried him into the small clearing where the little ivory statue, now as still as it was carved to be, stood next to the lake. He had never seen either before, and even now they were lost to his sight in his dash to freedom. He tripped against the smooth stones of the lake’s shore, unaccustomed to their hardness, fell to the ground and into sleep.
The little statue was as frozen as ice, her eyes squeezed shut once more, her arms hugged against her, her hair caught in a moment of a storm. She could not see with her eyes closed, neither could she move without the moon in the sky, but she could hear.
She listened to the man as he breathed, lying on the black stones of the lake’s shore, and the sound terrified her. She had never heard a sound like it in all her time standing here beside the lake. There were birds that sang, and fish that splashed and the wind that sighed, but never anything like this.
She dimly remembered the sound from a long time ago.
She had been a beautiful maiden, the daughter of a hardworking basket weaver.
When gathering plants in the forest one day, she heard a great noise in the distance. Catching up her skirts and running toward the sound, she soon came upon a group of wild men who had captured a young elephant. Keeping back from them so that they did not see her, she watched them from between the plants.
They had set a trap for an elephant, and now they had caught a young one, just old enough to begin to wander from its mother’s side. It was thrashing with fright against the strong ropes. The men laughed, knowing its tusks would hardly fetch any money at market, but hating to pass up such an easy opportunity.
One of them, his bare arms thick with well-used muscles and lined with dark scars, caught a hold of the baby elephant by its tusks while another rushed at it with a sharp spear. The elephant called out in terror and tried to shake the man off, but he was too strong for it. The man pierced the elephant’s side with the spear, and the elephant fell. The men shouted and rushed at it, holding it down while men began to saw at a tusk.
The maiden watched, white with fear, as the men broke the first of the elephant’s tusks away. Her own pale skin, so colorless in her fright, gave her inspiration.
She opened her mouth and began to sing, a cold haunting melody that no one had ever heard before, for singing was what she could do best in the world. The men stopped, terrified at the sound. She stepped out from the protection of the plants toward the men still singing, telling them in her shivering song that she was a ghost who haunted this forest and protected the beasts that lived within it.
The men’s skin paled.
She told them in chilling notes to leave the elephant and flee to their homes if they valued their lives. The obeyed, dropping sharp spears in their haste. The maiden’s song faded into the forest as the men disappeared into the plants.
Tearing cloth from her own skirt, the maiden bound up the wound that was bleeding freely and sang prayers over the elephant to help it heal. Then she dropped to the ground beside the wounded animal and picked up the severed tusk.
The elephant spoke to her, saying words in her own language, for that was some of the magic that her song had created, even though she had not known of it. The maiden listened to the elephant speak to her, her eyes wide.
The young elephant told her to always keep the tusk close beside her. When she held it in her hand, it would protect her as she had protected the baby elephant.
She thanked the animal and rushed home to tell her father of this strange happening. He told all his neighbors and immediately they sent out a search for the injured elephant.
The young elephant happened to belong to the rug maker of the town. He was overjoyed at seeing the elephant safely returned. It had wandered off and not been seen for many days, and he had assumed it dead. He thanked the young maiden and her father, and then, at the request of his son who had seen the beauty of the maiden, asked for the hand of the maiden in marriage to be promised to his son.
Her father agreed. For her hand in marriage, the rug maker had presented her father with the young elephant she had rescued, and she had grown up with the elephant and the knowledge of whom she was to marry, always keeping the white tusk at her side.
Several years further into her life, when at market to buy dates, she was suddenly overtaken by thieves. They grabbed her wrists and told her to be quiet. Afraid at what they would do to her, she had cried for help. Imperial guards that protected the streets rescued her from the harsh hands that held her.
Seeing her beauty, the guards brought her to the palace and presented her before the Sultan to see if he might fancy her as a wife. He exclaimed much over her, praising her beauty and asking her what she could do best in the world. She began to sing, and everyone was entranced by the sounds she wove into the air.
The Sultan declared that she was to become his most important wife and have everything her heart desired, so long as she would present herself to sing for him and his court each evening. He asked her father’s name that he might pay him for her hand in marriage.
Her father, once fetched from his home and brought to the palace, was astonished by all that had happened. He explained that she was already promised to a rug maker’s son who had paid an elephant which had grown up strong and healthy, symbolizing that their agreement was strong and unbreakable.
The Sultan demanded the rug maker and his son to be brought before him. Cowering, wondering whether the Sultan might order to have their heads cut off for an unknown deed, they bowed before him. The Sultan ordered them to choose an elephant from his own herd in payment for the wife that he was taking away from the son.
The rug maker protested, but was soon silenced at a gesture of an Imperial guard. He meekly chose a large mother elephant and led it home, his son barely containing his rage at being deprived of a beautiful wife.
The Sultan then ordered a white elephant to be brought and given to the maiden’s father in exchange for the girl’s marriage. This was done, and soon the palace was rejoicing at the marriage that would happen in three days time.
As the girl lay in her bed that night, she pondered upon all that had happened. The little elephant she had saved from death was at her father’s home and she missed it terribly. It’s tusk lay on the table beside her and she reached out to touch it for comfort.
The door to her chamber opened and one of the Sultan’s wives entered. It was too dark in the maiden’s chamber with the curtain drawn across the window to see the woman clearly. The maiden sat up, startled, and asked what the woman wanted.
She did not reply. She was the Sultan’s most important wife, and she was angered that this maiden, the daughter of a basket weaver, should take her place. She had concealed a dagger in her robe and now she drew it out, intending to kill the maiden to ensure her own importance in the Sultan’s life.
The maiden became frightened at the woman’s silence and slid back in her bed against the wall, asking again what the woman wanted.
The woman rushed at her bed. The maiden called out in terror, but no help came. The woman pierced the maiden’s side with the dagger, and the maiden fell. The woman knew her terrible deed was not finished, for the maiden still breathed and she prepared to end the poor girl’s life. But just as she brought the dagger down again, the maiden rolled away from her and off the bed. Then the maiden leapt to her feet, trying not to feel the pain from her wound, and wrestled the dagger from the woman’s hand.
The woman was frantic. If her deed was unfinished, the maiden would tell the palace all that had happened and the woman would loose her own life. She grabbed the elephant tusk from the maiden’s table, turned, and thrust it through the maiden’s heart.
The maiden fell to the ground and the woman let the tusk fall after her, so that it landed beside her on the bloodstained ground.
Now, the young elephant to which the tusk belonged had promised that the ivory tusk should save the maiden, as she had saved the young elephant. The maiden’s body was dead, but her spirit stayed alive and well, unharmed, and as pale as the ghost she had pretended to be when saving the young elephant.
In the morning, the Sultan was horrified at finding his bride murdered before he had married her. He demanded that everyone be brought to the throne room. His guards walked among the people of the palace, asking to see each person’s hands, examining their clothes, and then looking into their eyes and telling them to answer honestly when they asked if they had murdered the Sultan’s bride.
The woman was determined to not be found out. The guards questioned her as they had everyone. There was no blood on her clothes, but the sides of her hands were still stained a dark color. She denied, saying she had eaten berries. Then they asked to her to answer honestly and though she said she had not, she could not look into their eyes. They brought her before the Sultan who ordered her to be executed, just to know what her reaction would be.
She screamed a hideous scream and drew a dagger forth. The Sultan’s then knew that she was the murderer and called for his guards to drag her away. She threw the dagger toward the Sultan and escaped before anyone could restrain her.
The Sultan was unhurt, the dagger having just missed his left shoulder. He sent guards after the woman and then ordered the maiden to be given a proper burial.
Upon finding the tusk lying beside her, he recognized that she had been stabbed with it, and commanded that it be fashioned into a dagger to plainly reveal to all the terrible deed the tusk had done. He then ordered the best craftsmen in the kingdom to carve a statue in a perfect a likeness of the maiden out of pure ivory. He paid them handsomely for it and set it up in his throne room that he might look upon it every day and remember the maiden’s loveliness.
The woman, who had murdered the maiden and fled, began to learn dark magic. She built herself a cottage deep in the forest that no one should find her.
When she determined that her magic was strong enough, she flew to the palace disguised with invisibility and stole the ivory statue out of the sultan’s throne room. She brought it to an uninhabited place beside a wide lake that reflected the moon’s light when the moon rose. Then she spent the night working dark magic.
The maiden, discovering that the statue had disappeared, set off in the dark to find it. Dawn was approaching when she saw the woman on the shore of the lake, murmuring over the ivory statue. The maiden came closer, her ghost as white as the ivory.
The woman suddenly turned and threw a spell upon her. The maiden folded her arms and closed her eyes against the violent wind the spell created, and as she did so, the woman slid the statue right into the place where she stood. The ivory shuddered and moved under the direction of the spell, fitting itself into the position of the maiden and then holding her frozen in place, just as the sun’s light touched the sky.
The witch, for that was what she truly was now, screamed in delight and told the maiden she would never be free. Only when the moon came, would it release her with its white light, and even then it would only be for a night. As soon as the sun’s light touched her, she would become a statue once more.
Remembering the maiden’s beautiful voice, the witch further proclaimed that even when the maiden was freed by the moon, she would not be able to speak or sing, thereby ensuring that her song could not haunt the night nor charm people who might be able to help her into her path.
Wild with excitement for what she had done, the witch left the ivory maiden to hug herself with grief, frozen in the sun.
Now, as the ivory maiden listened to the man lying on the lake’s shore breathing as he slept, it reminded her of all that had happened. It had been so many years ago that she would not still have been alive, had she not been trapped by magic and ivory, and everyone she had known was dead, except the witch who kept herself alive through her dark magic.
The maiden’s terror left, and she began to feel a tremor of hope rise in her. If he stayed until the night, she would be able to open her eyes and look upon him. Perhaps she could communicate to him. Perhaps he could speak to her and help her.
As the day wore on, she stood there, perfectly still, listening to his breaths and waiting. At last he stirred. The sun wasn’t even halfway through the sky yet. She heard him yawn, and then he gasped. She wondered at what he was gazing.
He had never seen anything but trees for more years than he could count on his fingers, and here before him stretched a wide, sparkling lake, dancing with fish. He got to his feel slowly, one foot at a time, pushing himself up from the black rocks on which he had lain. He played his hands through the water and picked up a smooth black stone that matched his dark skin.
Then he turned and his eyes began to sparkle as much as the lake when he saw the little ivory statue of the maiden. Still holding the black stone, he stepped toward the statue and touched one of the ivory hands.
The maiden’s heart thrilled. She still could not see whom this man was, but his skin was warmer than even the sun that burned down upon her. She wished her hand could reach out and take his. He stood before her a long while and she wanted to be able to open her eyes and look at him as he looked at her.
Then the sun reached the middle of the sky, and the man knew he had to begin the journey back to the witch’s cottage if he was to reach it before moonrise.
The maiden’s heart was filled with sorrow as she heard him turn and walk away. She wished with her whole soul that she could call out to him and beg him to stay, but her ivory lips stayed carved and silent.
The man with skin as black as the stone he held, did not want to forget how he had reached this place. The witch’s cottage pulled him toward it with each step, yet there would be nothing to guide him if he should try to find this lake again. The black stones were too heavy to carry enough to leave a trail, so he clutched the one he had, and marked the trees he passed with deep bruises, denting the bark with his strength and the hard stone.
When at last he reached the witch’s cottage at sunset, she answered his knock as always. Upon seeing the stone that he still held, she became outraged and demanded where he had gotten it. He refused to tell and she threatened to curse him. When he still would not speak, she handed him the ivory staff and left, glancing back only once to see how he gazed down at the stone and touched it gently.
The witch flew to the statue’s clearing and found the maiden staring out at the lake and the moon. The maiden was startled to see the witch. They had not met since the maiden had been trapped inside the ivory of the statue. The witch demanded to know if a man had been there. The maiden could not speak, of course, but she refused to answer even by gesture or sign.
Yet the witch saw the way the maiden looked at her hand and touched the back of it softly, remembering the man’s touch, and so the witch knew that it was true. But the witch hid her knowledge from the maiden and flew away at once, thinking to cause the poor girl further mischief.
The next day the man returned again. He had been afraid that he would not be able to find the place and that perhaps he had dreamed it, but his marks in the trees led him true.
The maiden was filled with excitement when the man entered the clearing. He walked directly to her and touched her carved hand. She felt how warm his skin was and wanted more than ever to open her eyes.
Then he stood beside her ivory form and looked out at the lake. There was nothing for her to do but listen. There was nothing for the man to do but speak, and so he did. He spoke to the ivory maiden, imagining that she was more than a carved statue and her heart took courage at that. He told her all his adventures with the witch and why it was that he must leave the ivory maiden in the middle of the day.
As a young boy, he had found that he had a great talent for blending into shadows and remaining inconspicuous. He could sneak into any place, eavesdrop on any conversation, and steal anything. This proved to be useful, as he had no mother and father to care for him since they had died in a plague.
One day, he chanced to be careless in his attempt to steal from an Imperial guard. It had been too easy for his liking with one guard all alone and almost unarmed, so he had played up the risks and now found that he was caught. It was late at night, and the street was almost deserted. Knowing that he would have his hand severed if he should be revealed to the Sultan, he grabbed the man’s wrists and told him to keep quiet. Afraid at what this angry thief would do to him, the guard called for help.
There were no other Imperial guards that protect the streets, since the village was poor and ill thought of, so no one rescued the guard from the harsh hands that held him.
The lad, his eyes terrified and determined, grabbed the ivory dagger that he had been attempting to steal from the guard’s own belt and thrust it through the guard’s heart.
The guard fell to the ground, and the lad let the dagger fall after him, so that it landed beside him on the bloodstained ground.
Then he fled.
He scrubbed his hands in the filthy stream running on the edge of the village, and tore his stained clothes from him, letting the stream carry them away as well. Inside, his heart was aching and beating faster than ever before, as though it were beating all the extra beats the innocent guard’s own heart should have been beating.
Facing the setting sun, the lad pressed a fist over his heart to bid it be still and closed his eyes against the pain and tumult that he knew he should feel, and as he did so, he slid himself away from it all. He shuddered, leaving all the pain at his actions behind and then holding his heart froze in place in the middle of beating so that it went still, just as the moon’s light touched the sky.
The man stopped speaking to the ivory maiden for the sun had reached the middle of the sky, and he knew he must return to the witch’s cottage. He promised the statue to return the next day and departed.
The maiden waited for the moon to release her so she could cry.
The next day the man did return. He had to sit on the black stones for a long time to catch his breath, since he had run the entire way, and he even dozed off for an hour.
The maiden waited with her eyes closed, listening to his even breathing.
Eventually he did wake, and walk over to the maiden, and touch her hand a third time. Then he continued his tale, and the maiden thought he must think her no more than ivory to reveal himself to her like this.
Unfortunately, the witch could sense fear and murder in the air, for they were things she herself was very well acquainted with, and she had flown to the where the lad stood, his heart frozen, and she had watched him for a moment. Then she moved from the shadows where she had been concealed and presented herself to him. He had drawn back in fear, but she assured him everything would be well if he obeyed her every word. She promised him further that, should he do exactly as she commanded, he should have the Sultan’s daughter for a wife.
All knew of the Sultan’s daughter’s beauty. The lad wanted her for a wife as much as every man did, and he agreed, his frozen heart not able to warn him against it.
Reaching into her cloak, she brought out the ivory knife that the lad had just used to kill the guard. The guard had received it as a gift from the Sultan for saving the Sultan’s life from assassins and had carried it with him always. The witch told the lad to take the ivory dagger. It was his now.
His black hand closed around the white blade.
The witch began to use the lad to overhear secret conversations, to steal ingredients for powerful potions, and to kill people who got in her way. The lad did all that she asked of him, and he was very good at it.
One night, she told him that he must go kill the Sultan himself. Now, this was a different Sultan than the one that had wanted to marry the maiden who had saved the young elephant. That Sultan was long dead. The Sultan that the witch wanted killed was a descendant of the other Sultan. The story of the beautiful maiden who was murdered by the Sultan’s most important wife had been passed down through the years, and every child in the palace knew of it. The witch was still full of revenge and sought to do the long-dead Sultan’s family harm.
The lad nodded once and slipped out of the cottage where he had lived with her for a year now. He used a magic potion to transport himself to the palace and then crept through the corridors looking for the Sultan.
The Sultan’s bedchamber was not hard to find, and it was easy for someone so clever at his horrible deeds to distract the guards away. He snuck into the Sultan’s chamber and pulled the ivory dagger from his tunic.
Just as he lunged for the Sultan, the Sultan’s most important wife, the Sultana, awoke from a horrid dream of her husband’s death. Seeing the lad above her with an unconcealed weapon, she screamed.
The lad was shocked at her having awoken, and delayed a precious second. In that second, guards swarmed into the room, wrestled the ivory knife from him and held his hands behind his back, their arms strong as iron. He fought against them, but all in vain.
They took him to the dungeons to await execution.
The witch became furious when he did not return at the appointed time. She flew to the palace to see what had happened, arriving just as he was brought from the dungeon and into the courtyard, blindfolded, to be beheaded.
The witch cast a spell over everyone present and snatched the lad away from his death. At the cottage, he explained what had happened. The witch was so angry she began screaming spells and incantations until the whole cottage was cursed with dark magic. The lad tried to run, but she caught him with magic and laid a powerful curse over him so that he could never leave when the sky was as dark as his skin.
To punish him for not being strong enough to fight off the guards, she gave him the task of carrying an ivory staff she had made, telling him that if he should ever let go of it in the night, he should die. The staff was enchanted to weigh as much as an elephant. The lad himself had stolen all these elephants, and at first he could not even lift the ivory staff.
But every night the witch handed it to him, and he was forced to walk around and around the elephants, dragging it as he went, until the sun appeared. As the days went by, and then weeks, and then months, and then years, he grew stronger and stronger, until, as a man, he could carry the staff with ease.
But ever since that night he had hated the witch for what she had done to him. He felt hatred toward her more than he felt any other emotion in the whole entire world and it consumed him until it was all that he thought about night and day, as he ran from her each morning, as he slept, and especially as he returned to her cottage each night.
The sun reached the middle of the sky and the man was forced to leave.
But before he departed, he looked at the pure white ivory statue and thought that her face, with her eyes closed against a storm, showed much of what was happening inside him. A little thought crept into the corner of his mind that perhaps his captivity had something to do with his own actions, not just with the witch’s. He wished for a moment that he could be as unblemished as the ivory she was carved from and feel as beautiful in his frozen heart as she looked.
Then he turned away, and anger at the witch filled him again, only now it was mixed with anger at his own actions, as he began to run toward the cottage.
The ivory maiden was restless the next day, waiting for him to come and speak to her again. She wanted to open her eyes and walk about on the shore of the lake, yet she stood still, trapped in ivory.
Yet still he did not come.
When the sun reached the middle of the sky, she realized he was not coming. Her heart ached with dread and sorrow as she wondered at the reason. She listened to the trees rippled by the wind, and to birds calling to their mates, and heard nothing of the man who had visited her for three days.
When the moon rose, she opened her eyes in its light, full of determination to travel to him herself in the night. Surely she could run to where he was. She would leave when the night was half over to be sure that she was beside the lake when her curse bound her again. But until then, she might be able to talk with him as he carried his ivory staff and walked around and around the elephants he was guarding.
She turned and began to run, her bare feet as light as a doe, her hair as slippery as moonlight flickering through the shadows. It was easy to follow the heavy marks he had left dented into the trees, and soon she was upon the clearing where the cottage stood.
She gasped in her breath, for never before had she seen him.
He paced around and around, clutching the heavy staff in his hand. His skin was so black that he looked to be a piece of the night around him.
She wanted to call out to him, but her voice was still bound by the curse even in the light of the moon, trapped inside her. She moved from the shadows and approached him, her footsteps like the whisper of wind.
He didn’t see her until he was almost upon her, so occupied in his own thoughts was he. Then he gasped in his breath as well, for though he had seen her as an ivory statue, never had he truly imagined that she might live. At the sight of her, his heart stirred the faintest bit, as if reminding him that it used to beat, but then it went still.
For a long while they both stood there, staring into each other’s eyes – one black as the sky, and one white as the moon, but both filled with pain.
Then the curse began to tug at the man and he began to walk around the circle again. The maiden walked beside him, her light steps quick beside his long one. Around and around the circle they walked in silence, looking up at the stars.
The maiden knew the night was about half over, and that she should leave to be sure the curse did not catch her unaware in such a strange place. She reached out and touched his hand once, and then she fled into the night.
The man did not visit her the next day, but when the night came, she ran to where he was. She touched his hand once in greeting, and then they began to walk around the circle together. The man, seeing that she would not speak, filled the silence by telling what had kept him from visiting the lake.
The witch, knowing that the maiden would seek out the man if he should not appear, had kept him from going to her in the day. She set up spells and enchantments to confuse the man as he wandered though the forest trying to find the markings he had made on the trees. The man did not know anything of this, and he searched until the sun was high in the sky, but the witch’s spells worked well, and he was forced to return without having seen the lake.
The third night the maiden ran to the man’s side, her heart thrilling at the sight of him waiting for her. He had not come during the day, but the maiden did not mind, for in the day she could not walk beside him.
The next night she tried to run to him as well, but try as she might she could not find the cottage. She got lost among the trees and could not find the markings the man had dented into the soft bark. She wept and wanted to call out to him, for her heart ached at the thought of never seeing him again.
Finally she was forced to return to the shore of the lake. She bent down and touched the black stones before the sun rose. Its light touched her and her ivory body shuddered in its light. Her hair began to blow about her, the spell renewing itself upon her. Her eyes closed, even though she desperately wished to keep them open, and her arms folded across her breast. Then she went still.
The witch came to the maiden that day and spoke to her, even though the maiden could not move or answer. The witch told the maiden that the man with black skin had found a young girl who had wandered into the forest and been lost. The moment the man had seen the girl he had fallen in love with her.
The maiden’s heart hurt with grief at this news.
The witch told the maiden that now this girl was all the man could think about, even though the girl had told him she was the daughter of the Sultan and betrothed to a great prince in a distant kingdom. The man was very determined to marry this girl.
The maiden was glad that the moon had not risen yet, so that the witch could not see the way she wished to weep. She stayed perfectly still and felt her heart trembling with anguish.
The witch then stepped right up close to the little ivory statue and whispered in her ear. She whispered that there was still a way that the maiden might win the man’s love for herself if she desired it.
The ivory maiden listened, her heart full of dread and longing.
The witch explained that the maiden’s own voice could capture the man’s heart. There was a song that the maiden could sing that would cause the man to forget the girl he had found lost in the woods, and think only of the maiden. Her song could make the man fall in love with her.
The maiden thrilled with hope for a moment. Then remembered that she could not speak or make any noise with her voice at all.
The witch smiled a wicked smile that the ivory statue could not see. She then said that she would let the maiden have her voice back for a few moments at twilight that night, just as the sun was setting and the moon was rising. She would let the maiden find the man in the woods, halfway between the statue’s clearing and the witch’s cottage. She would have a few moments to sing.
In exchange for giving her back her voice for a few moments, the witch would lay a spell in the maiden’s song. This spell, she told the little statue, would cause what she sang to be like a dagger to heart of the Sultan’s daughter and would end her life speedily.
The witch smiled her curved smile once more, and left the maiden frozen in ivory to ponder all this in her heart.
The man had spent much of the day with the Sultan’s daughter. The girl said she must return soon for her father would worry. When the day was half over, she bade him farewell. Before she left, the bewitched man promised that he would find a way to come to the palace and claim her hand in marriage.
Now, this girl had not gotten lost in the forest of her own carelessness, but rather it was the witch’s doing. The witch, intent on destroying the Sultan’s family completely, had cast spells to make the girl loose her way while she walked in the forest, then put an enchantment over the man so that he should be forced to fall in love with the girl when he should first see her. This had been done and had all gone as the witch desired.
With terrible intentions in her heart, the witch approached the man. She told him that while the Sultan lived the man could never have the daughter’s hand in marriage. He would need to kill the Sultan to accomplish this desire. Yet, before he could do this deed, he must do another.
The man listened, his frozen heart unable to feel anything but anger and the bewitched love that the witch had cast over him.
The ivory dagger that he should use to kill the Sultan was enchanted. It was made from the same tusk that had killed the ivory maiden, and while the maiden was still partway alive inside her carved statue, the dagger could not kill anyone she had known in her life, or the descendants of anyone she had met while alive. This was the true reason the man, as a young lad, had been unable to kill the Sultan when he had tried.
The witch whispered to the man, who stood as still as his heart staring at the bright sky, that if he was to marry the Sultan’s daughter, he must first kill the ivory maiden. It could be easily done if the man used his enchanted ivory staff to shatter her carved body.
She then said that she would let the man have his freedom for a few extra moments at twilight that night, just as the sun was setting and the moon was rising. She would let the man find the maiden in the woods, halfway between the witch’s cottage and the statue’s clearing. He would have a few moments to kill the maiden.
Then the witch left the man alone with his frozen heart trapped inside him to ponder on all of this.
The little statue found that the moon began to come up into the sky before the sun had finished setting. She blinked her eyes, able to move a little, and yet still stiff with the sun’s light upon her. She turned toward the forest, thinking of her voice that she should soon have returned to her, and of the man with warm stone-black skin. She ran forward.
The man found that the curse did not pull him toward the witch’s cottage as the day drew to a close. He walked there on his own, knocked on the witch’s door, and, when she answered, asked for the ivory staff. She handed it to him with a curling smile, reminding him that he was still partly bound, and that should he let go of this staff during the night, he should still loose his own life. His black hand closed around it.
The sun and moon were side by side, each halfway in the sky on the very rim of the earth when the ivory maiden and the man with his ivory staff reached the middle of the forest and looked into each other’s eyes.
The maiden saw how his black eyes were smoldering with anger, and she saw how he was thinking of the Sultan’s daughter. Her heart was in pain. The man saw how her white eyes were filled with anguish and how she was thinking of him. His heart stirred inside him, just the smallest bit, at the sight.
They looked away from each other.
The maiden took in a breath of air and felt how her voice would work now. The man lifted the staff from the ground, feeling how easy it was to lift after all these years.
The precious moments were going by, and they both stood silent and still.
The maiden was afraid to open her mouth for fear that she would sing the terrible song she had come to win the man’s love with, and yet wanting to sing it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life before.
The man tried to make himself lift the staff, afraid that if he looked into the maiden’s eyes again, he might not be able do what he had come to do to her. He thought that he wanted to marry the Sultan’s daughter more than he wanted anything else in life, yet the staff stayed motionless beside him.
They both took a breath of air. The man raised the staff and looked at the maiden. The maiden looked at the man and spoke, “I want to sing for you.”
The leaves themselves seemed to hold their breath and the wind ceased to blow. Everything was as still as though it had been carved ivory.
“But I cannot,” the maiden whispered.
Then the man saw her eyes, and how they shone like the lake with tears, and his heart stirred. “I cannot,” he whispered back to her, and then, with a last look into her eyes, he let the ivory staff fall from his hands.
The witch knew the instant the man was dead. The ivory staff had touched the ground only a moment before he did. Outraged, the witch flew to where the ivory maiden lay weeping over the man with skin as black as the night sky.
The maiden turned just as the witch snatched the ivory staff from the ground and raised it above the maiden. Her tears shinning in the moonlight, the maiden reached out and grabbed the ivory dagger from the man’s belt. She rose to her feet, her skin pale and white as a ghost.
The witch smashed the staff down, but it did not harm the maiden. Startled, the witch let the staff sit loose in her hands and the maiden was able to yank it from her grasp. Then, holding the witch by the wrist she placed the dagger at the witch’s heart and whispered, “This dagger is more powerful than your magic. You cannot harm me while I hold it. I can kill you with it if I desire to, and I will succeed. It is the same dagger you tried to kill me with many years ago.”
The witch knew all of this was true.
The maiden looked into the witch’s eyes then thrust the witch away from her, unharmed. “Leave!” she told the witch. “Leave and never return.”
The witch knew that the maiden had spared her life, and she knew that she did not deserve it. She realized just how horrible she had been to the ivory maiden, and her rage and grief consumed her until she screamed a horrible scream and fell down quite dead. The wind moaned through the dark trees and swirled around the witch’s body until it had disappeared, leaving behind only a single black stone.
The maiden turned to the man lying dead on the forest floor. She reached down and grasped the heavy ivory staff in her hands, looking at it a long moment. Then she dragged it across the grass to her side. She placed the dagger gently back into the man’s belt, hoping it could protect him as it had protected her. Then she began to sing.
It was not a song to win his heart. It was not a song that would cause the death of a poor innocent girl. It was simply a song of pure love. She sang all through the night, her tears falling freely onto the man lying before her, her heart sparkling with the sounds of the music, her white ivory skin glowing in the fading moonlight.
The sun was bright when it rose that morning, burning in the clear sky, and down on the green leaves turned gold in its light, and on the small statue in a clearing of scuffled dirt. The young maiden stood frozen, so still, white, and silent, for even though the witch was dead, her curse was still very much alive.
The maiden listened, and hugged her arms to her, and wished that she had not had to let her song fade when the night did. If she had been able to stay kneeling beside the man, she might have laid her tired head down on his chest, and she would have been filled with wonder. But as it was, the man was alone on the ground when his heart began to beat. He opened his eyes, and saw the small white statue standing beside him. Her music and her love was its own kind of enchantment, and it has stirred his heart to life, for while his heart was frozen he could neither truely live nor die.
The man stood and touched his lips to hers. As the sunlight covered them both with its brilliant light, the little statue seemed to stir. Her white lips flushed a deep red, her pale cheeks turned as pink as the sunrise, and her hair thrashing about her face calmed as gold returned to it. She relaxed her arms, and turned toward the man, smiling a pure smile at the sight of his black skin and eyes and his beating heart, as alive and warm as the maiden herself.
Then, just as the sun was about to rise, she let the song fade away, and laid her head upon the man’s chest. She was asleep in an instant, so she did not feel that the man’s heart inside him was beginning to beat.
He opened his eyes, now blue like the midday sky, and listened to the sleeping maiden breathing and his own heart beating. He sat up, his skin pale brown once more, and gently touched the maiden’s hand. She awoke and saw him sitting there beside her, alive and healed, more so than he had been before, for now his heart was alive as well.
Knowing she had saved him, and that it was she that he truly loved, he bent down and kissed her. Her lips warmed under his touch and their whiteness faded into a beautiful red. Her cheeks flushed pink and her long hair became golden as the rising sun.
She was no longer ivory, carved and cold. She truly lived.
