莫魘寐我 Do Not Put A Spell On Me
娘娘不信，淚滴滴，悄語低聲道：「你莫魘寐我。」行者道：「我豈敢魘寐你？你若不信，展開手，等我跳下來你看。」那娘娘真個把左手張開，行者輕輕飛下。娘娘不信，泪滴滴，悄语低声道：「你莫魇寐我。」行者道：「我岂敢魇寐你？你若不信，展开手，等我跳下来你看。」那娘娘真个把左手张开，行者轻轻飞下。
逐句解 Line by line
The Queen did not believe him. Tears dripping, she whispered under her breath, "Do not put a spell on me."
She thinks she is being enchanted, and asks the enchanter to stop — which is the sort of request that never works. 魘寐 is nightmare magic, the trick of reaching a sleeper and bending what they see. 悄 is qiǎo. 康熙 心部七畫 gives the character two bands, 親小切 · 七小切, 音𢓮, and 七肖切, 音俏, and both rise or fall. The Ming official rime book 洪武正韻 files it at 七小切 and glosses it 又靜也 — quiet, which is the sense wanted here — so the reading and the meaning meet in one band. The flat tone of modern speech is in neither.
Pilgrim said, "How would I dare put a spell on you?
Nine characters, and he does not actually deny it — he asks whether he would dare. 豈 is qǐ, the rhetorical how-could, which always expects the answer no.
"If you do not believe me, open your hand and let me jump down for you to see."
The proof he offers is to make himself visible on her palm — a fly the size of a bean, held at arm's length. 不 drops to bú before the falling tone of 信.
The Queen really did open her left hand, and Pilgrim floated gently down.
真個 is the storyteller's aside — she actually did it — and it carries a note of surprise at her nerve. 把 is the disposal marker, hauling the hand out in front of the verb that opens it.
The scene turns on a problem of evidence. A disembodied voice claims to be a rescuer; she has no way to check, and the obvious explanation is witchcraft. 魘寐 is the specific charge — the kind of spell worked on someone asleep, so that what they see is not there. Given the last three years of her life, it is not an unreasonable guess.
Notice that Pilgrim never says no. 我豈敢魘寐你 asks whether he would dare, which is a different sentence from I am not doing it, and he moves straight past it to a demonstration. He wins the argument by changing it from a question about honesty into a question about what she can see.
Then the small brave thing. She opens her left hand. Everything about her position — captive, watched, three years into a sentence she did not earn — argues for doing nothing, and 真個 catches the narrator half surprised that she went through with it.