Page:The jade story book; stories from the Orient (IA jadestorybooksto00cous).pdf/285

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EMPRESS JANQWI
269

Under their advice she ordered her subjects to collect all the stones they could find of these five colors—red, blue, yellow, white and black. These she had boiled in a huge cauldron, and the result was a cement which would mend anything.

With Shiku's magic help she then mounted the clouds, taking the cement with her, and having reached that corner of the sky which was broken, she mended it. She then repaired the broken pillar.

Now all of this was the more difficult to do because ever since the hole was made in the mountain the moon had ceased to shine by night, and the sun by day, so that it was quite dark, and even now it remained so.

She called another meeting of the wise men, and they decided that neither the sun nor the moon could travel because the roads by which they made their daily and nightly journeys had been damaged by the accident to the pillar, and it was now necessary to inform them that repairs had been made, and they could safely venture forth again.

But the sun and moon were millions of