The áczKúgirl could not endure standing there with nothing to say for herself, so she told her sisters that the handsome hero was no other than her horse-husband--and no sooner had she pointed at him than he vanished from before them as if he had never been. Then only did she call to mind her lord’s command to her not to betray her secret, and away she hurried off to the stable. But ’twas all in vain, neither horse nor man came to her, and at midnight there was neither rose nor rose-garden.
“Alas!” wept the girl, “I have betrayed my lord, I have broken my word, what a crime is mine!” She never closed an eye all that night, but wept till morning. When the red dawn appeared she went to her father the Padishah, complained to him that she had lost her horse-husband, and begged that she might go to the ends of the earth to seek him. In vain her father tried to keep her back, in vain he pointed out to her that her husband was now most probably among devils, and she would never be able to find him--turn her from her resolution he could not. What could he do but let her go on her way?
With a great desire the damsel set out on her quest, she went on and on till her tender body was all aweary, and at last she sank down exhausted at the foot of a great mountain. Then she called to mind the three hairs, and she took out one and set fire to it--and lo! her lord and master was in her arms again, and they could not speak for joy.
“Did I not bid thee tell none of my secret?” cried the youth sorrowfully; “and now if my hag of a mother see thee she will instantly tear thee to pieces. This mountain is our dwelling-place. She will be here immediately, and woe to thee if she see thee!”
The poor Sultan’s daughter was terribly frightened, and wept worse than ever at the thought of losing her lord again, after all her trouble in finding him. The heart of the devil’s son was touched at her sorrow: he struck her once, changed her into an apple, and put her on the shelf. The hag flew down from the mountain with a terrible racket, and screeched out that she smelt the smell of a man, and her mouth watered for the taste of human flesh. In vain her son denied that there was any human flesh there, she would not believe him one bit.