e basket-maker's foster-child, to gather berries in the wood.
Going here and there she got separated from Siav and Mor. She came to a
place where there were lots of berries and went step after step to pick
them. Her feet went down in a marsh. She cried to Mor and Siav, but no
answers came from them. She cried and cried again. Her cries startled
seven wild geese that rose up and flew round her. "Save me," she cried
to them. Then one of the wild geese spoke to her. "Anyone but a girl we
would save from the marsh, but such a one we cannot save, because it was
a girl who lost us our human forms and the loving companionship of
our father." Then Sheen knew--for the servants had often told her the
story--that it was one of her seven brothers who spoke. "Since ever I
knew of it," said she, "the whole of my trouble has been that I was the
cause of your losing your human form and the companionship of our father
who is now called the Lonely King. Believe me," said she, "that I would
have striven and striven to win you back." There was so much feeling in
her voice that her seven brothers, although they had been hardened by
thinking about their misfortune, were touched at their hearts and
they flew down to help her. They bore up her arms, they caught at her
shoulders, they raised up her feet. They carried her beyond the marsh.
Then she knelt down and cried to them, "O my brothers dear, is there
anything I can do to restore you to your human forms?" "There is," said
the first of the seven wild geese. She begged them to tell it to her.
"It's a long and a tiresome labor we would put on you," said one. "If
you would gather the light down that grows on the bogs with your own
hands," said another, "and if you spun that down into threads, and wove
the threads into a cloth and sewed the cloth into a shirt, and did that
over and over again until you had made seven shirts for us, all that
time without laughing or crying or saying a word, you could save us. One
shirt you could weave and spin and sew in a year. And it would not be
until the seven shirts were put upon us that the human form would be
restored to each of us." "I would be glad to do all that," said Sheen,
"and I would cry no tear, laugh no laugh, and say no word all the time I
was doing this task."

Then said the eldest brother, "The marsh is between you and our father's
house, and between you and the companions who were with you to-day. If
you would do the task that would restore u