herself, when she saw the king's son. "This is not my father."
She asked him, "Who are you? Why do you come here? If my father sees
you he will eat you." "No, he won't," said the prince, "for I am your
aunt's son, and your father himself brought me to his house. But why
is it that you are dead all day, and alive all night?" The girl had
told him that her father brought her to life every evening, and made
her dead every morning. "Such is my father's pleasure," she answered.

So they talked together all day, and he said to her, "Suppose one day
your father made you dead as usual, and that he was killed before he
had brought you to life, what would you do? You would always be dead
then." "Listen," she said; "no one can kill my father." "Why not?"
said the boy. "Listen," she answered; "on the other side of the sea
there is a great tree, in that tree is a nest, in the nest is a
_maina_. If any one kills that _maina_, then only will my father die.
And if, when the _maina_ is killed, its blood falls to the ground, a
hundred demons would be born from the blood. This is why my father
cannot be killed."

At evening, before the demon came home, the prince made the girl dead.
Then he went softly into another room.

The fakir had said to the boy, when they were in the jungle together,
"If ever you are in trouble, come to me and I will help you. It will
take you now one week to ride to the demon's country; but if ever you
need me, you shall be able to come to me here in this jungle, and to
return to the demon's house in one day." The fakir was such a holy man
that everything he said should happen did happen. So now the prince
determined he would go to the fakir and ask him what he should do to
kill this _maina_. In the morning, therefore, as soon as the demon had
gone out, he set off for the fakir's jungle, and, thanks to the holy
man's power, he got there very quickly. He told him everything, and
the fakir made a paper boat which he gave him. "This boat will take
you over the sea," he said to the prince. "This paper boat!" said the
boy. "How can a paper boat go over the sea? It will get soaked and
sink." "No, it will not," said the fakir. "Launch it on the sea, and
get into it. The boat will of itself carry you to the tree where the
_maina's_ nest is."

The prince took the boat, and went back to the demon's house. He got
there before the demon came home, so that he did not know the boy had
been to the fakir. When the demon retu