'I have often looked out at you so before now,' she said, as she threw back the hood and mantle; 'and you would have seen me as plainly as you do now, but that the spell prevented you. So, you see, we shall take what was really Tom the Cat along with us, after all.'
'To our home in Fairyland,' answered the Queen.
'And are we never coming back here any more?' asked Hilda, glad to go, and yet with almost a sigh.
'No, we shall never see this land again,' the Queen replied. 'It was beautiful, but all its beauty lives again in the land whither we go. And there are no Rumpty-Dudgets in that land, and no grey towers full of corners, and no prickly hedges, nor winds from the north. And all the stars of the air and jewels of the earth are in that land, only more glorious and splendid than those that Hilda saw. But why should I tell you about it, when you are going to see it all for yourselves this very day? Are you ready?'
Then she folded her arms about them, and they clung to her neck, and so they seemed to rise aloft in the warm air, and float towards the south. Far beneath them lay the tops of the tallest trees; but the children felt no fear. For they were going to their home in Fairyland; and they are all three living there, with the Queen their mother, to this very day.
But Hilda's hair is golden still, and her eyes are blue.
If you were to take three hoops, the second half as large round as the first, and the third half as large round as the second, and lay them on the floor one inside the other, you would have a ground-plan of the house in which Calladon lived. The outermost wall was built of brick, and had five narrow windows; the middle wall was of stone, and had also five windows; the inner wall was of the purest alabaster, and was a kind of window in itself.
In the centre of the innermost room a lamp was always burning, and the light which it gave out was so soft and penetrating that it glowed through the alabaster walls and illuminated the room outside with a pale white lustre, and some rays penetrated through the windows of this room into the outermost room of all, and there met the darkness that streamed in through the outer windows--for the house stood in that part of the world where it is night all the year round. The name of the innermost room was Abra, that of the middle room was Cada, and that of the outermost room was Bra. The whole house, therefore, was called Abracadabra.