ven Spinning Women.

They came to me and they told me that the man whose shadow I had seen
on the rock now claimed me for his wife and that Mananaun would not
gainsay him. When I heard this, O my listeners, the life nearly left
me.

This comfort the Seven Spinning Women gave me: I was to stay on his
island so that I might become used to the earthly kingdom, but that I
was not to see Branduv until the green had left my hair and the brown
that the sun makes had come into my cheeks. So I came to Branduv's
island. I lived by the sea-shore and the women of the island attended
me.

How different was this earthly land from the Kingdom-Under-Wave. With
us there was but the one mild season, the one mild light. Here there
was glaring day and terrible darkness, bitter winds and hot beams of
the sun. With us there were songs and tales, but the songs were about
love or about the beautiful things we had seen. Here the tales and
songs were about battles and forays and slaying with the sword. What
they told of their loves was terrible, so much violence and
unfaithfulness was in them.

The soft green tints were going out of my hair and the sun was putting
brownness in my cheeks. Soon my hair would be wheaten-colored like the
hair of the women of the islands and my cheeks would be brown like
theirs. And then the day would come when I should have to be with the
man whom I looked upon as my enemy.

I used to stay by the shore and speak with the birds that came in from
the sea, for I knew their language. Never again could I go back to the
Kingdom-Under-Wave. Green shade after green shade left my hair, brown
tint after brown tint came into my cheeks, and what could I do but
envy the birds that could make their flight from the islands of men.
And when the green had nearly gone altogether from my hair I
thought of a desperate thing I might do.

[Illustration: I put it to my lips, I drank it when he took a step
towards me.]

I sent a message to my sisters, and I sent it by many birds, so that
if they did not get it by one they might get it by another. And I
asked in my message that they send me a draft from the Well under the
Sea, and that they send it in the cup that the Seven Spinning Women
guarded. It would be terrible for any of my sisters to come to
Branduv's island with the draft and the cup, but I begged that they
would do it for me.

The days went by and the green color was now only a shade in my hair,
and brownness was on m