of the sea, wherever the shoes know the
way. But there are ways which they do not know, roads beyond the borders
of the world. And these roads have you to travel. Now first you must
go to the Three Gray Sisters, who live far off in the north, and are so
very cold that they have only one eye and one tooth among the three. You
must creep up close to them, and as one of them passes the eye to the
other you must seize it, and refuse to give it up till they have told
you the way to the Three Fairies of the Garden, and _they_ will give you
the Cap of Darkness and the Sword of Sharpness, and show you how to wing
beyond this world to the land of the Terrible Head."

Then the beautiful lady said: "Go forth at once, and do not return to
say good-by to your mother, for these things must be done quickly, and
the Shoes of Swiftness themselves will carry you to the land of the
Three Gray Sisters--for they know the measure of that way."

So the boy thanked her, and he fastened on the Shoes of Swiftness, and
turned to say good-by to the young man and the lady. But, behold! they
had vanished, he knew not how or where! Then he leaped in the air to try
the Shoes of Swiftness, and they carried him more swiftly than the wind,
over the warm blue sea, over the happy lands of the south, over the
northern peoples who drank mare's milk and lived in great wagons,
wandering after their flocks. Across the wide rivers, where the wild
fowl rose and fled before him, and over the plains and the cold North
Sea he went, over the fields of snow and the hills of ice, to a place
where the world ends, and all water is frozen, and there are no men, nor
beasts, nor any green grass. There in a blue cave of the ice he found
the Three Gray Sisters, the oldest of living things. Their hair was as
white as the snow, and their flesh of an icy blue, and they mumbled and
nodded in a kind of dream, and their frozen breath hung round them like
a cloud. Now the opening of the cave in the ice was narrow, and it
was not easy to pass in without touching one of the Gray Sisters. But,
floating on the Shoes of Swiftness, the boy just managed to steal in,
and waited till one of the sisters said to another, who had their one
eye:

"Sister, what do you see? do you see old times coming back?"

"No, sister."

"Then give _me_ the eye, for perhaps I can see farther than you."

Then the first sister passed the eye to the second, but as the second
groped for it the boy caught it