The Golden Key

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The Golden Key is a fairy tale written by George MacDonald. It was published in 1867 .

[edit] Synopsis

A woman tells her grandson of a golden key found at the end of a rainbow. One day, he saw a rainbow and set out to find the end. The sun set, but as the forest was in Fairyland, the rainbow only glowed the brighter, and he found the key, and it dawned on him that he did not know where the lock was.

Also on the borders of this forest, a merchant's daughter was being cared for by servants, who were such poor housekeepers that they disgusted the local fairies, who resolved to get them sent away by frightening off the child. Their first attempts, by animating the furniture in her room, make her laugh, but as she had been reading Silverhair, when they made her think three bears were coming into her bedroom, she flees into the woods.

A tree traps her there, but an air fish frees her and leads her to a lady. A pot is boiling there, and the air-fish flies into it. The lady asks her name; the girl saus that the servants always called her Tangle, and the lady decides that although her tangled hair was their fault for not looking after her, Tangle is a pretty name. She tells the girl that she is her grandmother, and that it has been three years since she ran away from the bears. She has the girl washed by fish and dresses her. Then they eat a dinner of the air-fish, after the lady assuredsher that the air-fish had voluntarily gone into the pot to be their dinner, and the pot that had cooked the air-fish produces a little winged figure, who flies off.

The lady sends another air-fish after the young man at the foot of the rainbow. At supper the next day, the young man, whose name is Mossy, arrives. The lady tells Mossy that if he searches for the keyhole, he will find it, and sends Tangle with him.

In their wanderings, they come across a land where beautiful shadows fill the air, and they resolve they must find the land from which the shadows fall, but they are separated.

Tangle meets with the aëranth that used to be the fish, and it leads her to the mountain. There she meets the Old Man of the Sea. He can not tell her the way to the land from which the shadows fall, and sends her to his brother the Old Man of the Earth. He, also, does not know, and sends her to the Old Man of the Fire.

Then the Old Man of the Earth stooped over the floor of the cave, raised a huge stone from it, and left it leaning. It disclosed a great hole that went plumb-down.

"That is the way," he said.

"But there are no stairs."

"You must throw yourself in. There is no other way."

She throws herself in, and the Old Man of the Fire sends her to follow a serpent, which will lead her to that land.

Mossy also finds the Old Man of the Sea, who shows him a way leading to a door that his key unlocks. Behind the door, he finds Tangle, and another door that his key unlocks, where a stairway leads to the land from which the shadows fall. They start to climb.