The Twins With the Golden Star

As the princes entered, one of these twelve cushions fell to the floor, only eleven remaining under the royal lady.

"Take off your caps!" cried a courtier.

"To wear the head covered is a token of rank among men. We wish to be what we are."

"Why, yes!" exclaimed the emperor, softened by the musical words that fell from the boys' lips. "Remain what you are, but who are you? Whence do you come, and what do you want?"

"We are twin brothers, members of a family that is broken in twain, half in the earth, half at the head of the table; we come from whence we went, and have reached the place whence we came; we have had a long journey, have spoken in the sighing of the wind, given a voice to wood, sang in the ripples of the water, but now we wish to chant in human language a song you know without knowing it."

A second cushion fell from under the empress.

"Let them go home with their nonsense!" she said to her husband.

"Oh! no, let them sing," replied the emperor. "You only wanted to see them, but I wish to hear them. Sing, boys!"

The empress was silent, and the princes began to sing the story of their lives.

"There was once an emperor," they began, and a third cushion fell from under the empress.

When they described the emperor's departure to the war, three cushions fell at once, and when the princes had finished their song not a single one remained. But when they took off their caps and showed their golden hair and the golden star on their foreheads, guests, courtiers and emperor closed their eyes, that they might not be dazzled by so much radiance.

Afterward, what ought to have been from the beginning, happened.

Laptitza sat at the head of the table beside her husband, but the step-mother's daughter served as the humblest maid in the palace, and the wicked step-mother was fastened to the tail of a wild mare and dragged around the earth seven times, that the whole world might know and never forget, that whoever plans evil comes to a bad end.