And then they were on land again. “Fair Maid,” said the corpse of the Hunter-King, “put your hands on my shoulders again.” She put her hands on his shoulders. A storm came and swept them away. They were driven through the roof of the neighbor-woman’s house. The candle-wicks fluttered and light came on them again. She saw the hound standing in the middle of the floor. She saw the corpse sitting where it had been laid and the eyes were now open.
“Fair Maid,” said the voice of the Hunter-King, “you have brought me back to life. I am a man under enchantment. There is a witch-woman in the wood that I gave my love to. She enchanted me so that the soul was out of my body, and wandering away. It was my soul you followed. And the enchantment was to be broken when I found a heart so faithful that it would follow my soul over the Quaking Bog, through the Burning Forest and across the Icy Sea. You have brought my soul and my life back to me.”
Then she ran out of the neighbor’s house. The night after, in the Spae-Woman’s house she finished weaving the threads that were on the loom. The next night she stitched the cloth and made the sixth shirt. The day after she went into the bog to gather the bog-down for the seventh shirt. She had gathered her basketful and was going through the wood about the hour of sunset. At the edge of the thin wood she saw the Hunter-King standing. He took her hands and his were warm hands. His brown face and his gentian-blue eyes were high and noble. And Sheen felt a joy like the sharpness of a sword when he sang to her about the brightness of her hair and the blue of her eyes. “O Maid,” said he, “is there anything that binds you to this place?” Sheen showed him the bog-down in the basket and the woven thread that was round her neck. “Come with me to my kingdom,” said he, “and you shall be my wife and the love of my heart.” The next evening Sheen went with him. She took the six shirts she had spun and woven and stitched. The Hunter-King lifted her before him on a black horse and they rode into his Kingdom.
And now Sheen was the wife of the Hunter-King. She would have been happy if her husband’s sisters had been kind. But they were jealous and they made everything in the Castle unfriendly to her. And often they talked before her brother saying that Sheen was not noble at all, and that the reason she did not speak was because her language was a base one. They watched her when she went out to gather bog-down in the daytime, and they watched her when she spun by herself at night. Sheen longed for the days and nights to pass so that the last threads might be spun and woven and the last stitches put in the seventh shirt. Then her brothers would be with her. She could tell the King about herself and silence the bad talk of his sisters. But as she neared the end of her task she became more and more in dread.