The Water of the Wondrous Isles · Chapter
X: How It Fared with the Three Ladies After the Escape of Birdalone explained
Viridis recounts to Birdalone the events that transpired after Birdalone's escape.
What happens
Viridis recounts to Birdalone the events that transpired after Birdalone's escape. The three ladies return to the witch's house, disguise their involvement, and narrowly avoid suspicion. Later, two doves arrive with scrolls from the witch's sister, revealing the ladies' betrayal. The witch chains and torments them, but they endure until Birdalone's return brings deliverance. They journey to the Isle of the Young and the Old, rest, and eventually return to the castle, where Birdalone struggles with guilt over Atra's love.
Themes in this chapter
Female Agency and Autonomy
The three ladies endure the witch's tyranny but maintain hope and agency, ultimately surviving through their own resilience and solidarity.
Power and Sorcery
The witch uses magical doves, scrolls, and potions (Water of Might, red water) to control and punish the ladies, highlighting the theme of sorcerous power.
Love and Desire
The ladies' love for their champions sustains them during torment, and Birdalone's guilt over Atra's love adds emotional complexity.
Characters to notice
- Viridis
Viridis narrates the tale of the three ladies' ordeal after Birdalone's escape, describing their fear, punishment, and eventual deliverance.
- Atra
Atra shows boldness in confronting the witch, kneeling to give the scrolls, and endures torment alongside her sisters.
- Aurea
Aurea is one of the three ladies who suffer the witch's punishment and are chained in the hall.
- The Witch Wife
The witch wife suspects the ladies, receives the doves' messages, and chains them as punishment for their betrayal.
- Birdalone
Birdalone listens to Viridis's tale and feels sorrow and guilt over Atra's love and the loss of a slain man.
Key passages
“When we had seen the last of you, dear Birdalone, that early morning, we turned back again to the house as speedily and as covertly as we might, lest the witch might espy our disarray and question us thereover.”
After Birdalone left, the three ladies hurried back to the house secretly to avoid the witch noticing their changed appearance.
Viridis describes their cautious return after Birdalone's escape.
“But the witch read those scrolls to herself, sitting in her throne, and spake not a long while; then she said: Come hither, and grovel before Us, and hearken!”
The witch silently read the scrolls from her sister, then commanded the ladies to kneel and listen to her judgment.
The witch confronts the ladies with their betrayal after reading the messages.
“Verily then we suffered at her hand what she would, whereof it would shame me to tell more as at this present; and thereafter did she chain us to those three pillars of the hall whereas ye found us chained; and we were fed as dogs be, and served as dogs, but we endured all for the sake of hope;”
The witch punished them severely, chaining them to pillars and treating them like dogs, but they endured because they still hoped for rescue.
Viridis recounts the torture and imprisonment they suffered.
“So passed the days, and at last hope had grown so pale and wan, that she was no more to be seen by us than we were by our lords; and now it seemed to me that death was coming, so feeble and wretched as I grew.”
As time passed, hope faded and they felt near death from their suffering.
Viridis describes the despair that set in during their captivity.
“So wore the time till that evening, when came hope together with the fulfilment of hope, so that one minute we durst hope for deliverance, and the next we were delivered.”
Hope and rescue arrived simultaneously, transforming their despair into sudden freedom.
The moment of deliverance is described as swift and complete.
