For one terrible
moment she felt as if her grandmother had forsaken her. The thread
which the spiders had spun far over the seas, which her grandmother
had sat in the moonlight and spun again for her, which she had
tempered in the rose-fire and tied to her opal ring, had left her
- had gone where she could no longer follow it - had brought her
into a horrible cavern, and there left her! She was forsaken
indeed!
'When shall I wake?' she said to herself in an agony, but the same
moment knew that it was no dream. She threw herself upon the heap,
and began to cry. It was well she did not know what creatures, one
of them with stone shoes on her feet, were lying in the next cave.
But neither did she know who was on the other side of the slab.
At length the thought struck her that at least she could follow the
thread backwards, and thus get out of the mountain, and home. She
rose at once, and found the thread. But the instant she tried to
feel it backwards, it vanished from her touch. Forwards, it led
her hand up to the heap of stones - backwards it seemed nowhere.
Neither could she see it as before in the light of the fire.
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