Stories for Another Day

There was a man who could find anything in the world if he had a forked stick and enough time. People used to pay him to find things for them, like water and buried treasure, but then he lost the stick and that was the end of that.

The stick was not lost, however. It had been stolen by a monkey-trainer, who had a monkey named Harold. He thought that if people would would pay a man to find things for them, they would pay a lot more to see a monkey find things. He was right. He trained Harold to use the stick and he gave him a nut whenever he found something.

Harold wasn’t much good at finding things, although he did find a whole steam train once, for someone who wanted to know where the station was. One day Harold got into a rage the way that monkeys do, and he threw the stick into the forest. There were so many sticks lying around in the forest, the monkey-trainer had no hope of finding it, so he gave it up as lost and that was the end of that.

But the stick was not lost, as you will see. Some time later a man called Toomie was walking through the forest, in a black mood. He was the head servant in a big house, and it was his job to clean his mistress’s jewellery once a month. He had been cleaning it that very morning, and somehow he had managed to lose a very large ruby on a chain. One minute it was on the table with the rest of the jewellery, and the next minute it was gone.

What Toomie didn’t know was that under the table there was a loose floorboard. When anyone stepped on one end, the other end lifted up just a little. While he was polishing the emeralds, the ruby pendant had slipped off the table onto the floor. Toomie’s chair happened to be resting on the other end of the loose board, and the ruby slithered down through the crack and into the space below the floorboards. When Toomie stood up to look for it, of course the board lay flat again and he had no idea there had ever been a gap there at all.

He knew that his mistress, Lady Florida, would be very angry. He might lose his job, or worse, he might be thrown into jail. So he decided to run away before anyone found out that the ruby was missing.

As he walked through the forest, hands in his pockets, looking at the ground, his foot kicked something and he nearly tripped over. Toomie picked the thing up. It was an ordinary forked stick. He was about to throw it away when he felt it tremble slightly in his hands. He grasped it tightly with both hands. The stick gave a definite tug.

Now if you were holding a stick and it started tugging you along, you might drop the stick and run a mile, but Toomie didn’t. He let the stick tug him back to the house, through the passage, to the room where he had been cleaning the jewellery earlier that day.

The stick pointed down to the floorboards. Toomie poked and pried, and discovered the loose floorboard and the space under it, and there was the ruby! He was so relieved, he went straight up to Lady Florida’s room and slipped it into the jewellery box with the rest of the jewels, so no-one would ever know it had even been missing.

He was very pleased with himself.

Then on the way out of the room, he felt the stick tugging again. It led him to a large cupboard full of ball dresses and fur coats. At the bottom of the cupboard there were rows of shoes, and in the toe of one shoe, there was a whole bag of coins.

Toomie’s eyes glistened, and greed stirred in his heart. Surely if he took only one or two, Lady Florida would never notice. And he had the perfect hiding place.

He made sure no-one was looking, and he slipped a coin into his pocket.

Stealing is a bit like chickenpox. It starts with just one, and you don’t think anyone will even notice. But before long there’s another one and another one, and then there are more than you can count.

Over the next few weeks, Toomie found excuse after excuse to be in Lady Florida’s room, and gradually all the coins made their way from her cupboard to the hiding place beneath the floorboards.

If you’ve ever had chickenpox, you’ll know it’s nearly impossible not to scratch. Once all the coins were in Toomie’s hidey-hole, his hands began to itch for other things to steal. Every Tuesday, all the servants had their day off. When they were all safely out of the house, Toomie sneaked back and searched all over the house. With the forked stick, it was easy to find where the other servants kept their small savings, under their pillows, or inside a sock. The parlourmaid kept hers in a money-box with a knitted cat on top of it. Toomie took a few coins here and there, not so much that anyone would think they had been robbed, but just enough so they might scratch their heads and think they must have counted wrong. But in the gap under the floorboards, it all added up. It gave Toomie a warm feeling every time he sat at his table, to know that secretly under his feet there was a real treasure trove.

Now Parry, the under-footman, was best friends with the parlourmaid. She confided to him one day, “I think someone has been stealing from my money-box.”

Parry said, “Maybe you just added up wrong,” but she shook her head.

“No, I’m sure, because they put my knitted cat back the wrong way around,” she said.

Parry said thoughtfully, “The cook said she thought she was missing some money last week. I’ll ask the others and see if anyone else has missed anything.” He quietly asked all the servants. All of them had lost some money, except for Toomie, and Toomie was looking particularly pleased with himself. Parry said to him, “Someone’s been stealing money, and I believe it’s you. Put it back and I won’t say anything. Otherwise I’ll tell Lady Florida.”

When Parry left, Toomie decided he had to do something. He didn’t want to lose his job, but he didn’t want to give the money back. He went up to Lady Florida’s room and took the ruby pendant out of her jewellery box. He hid it in Parry’s room, then he went back to his room and waited.

Soon there was an outcry. Lady Florida called all the servants together and said to them, “My ruby pendant is missing. If you know anything about this, say something now.”

No-one spoke a word. She said, “An untrustworthy servant is a terrible thing. If the thief does not come forward, I will have to dismiss you all.”

Toomie cleared his throat and said, “My lady, I may be able to help. In my family, we have a rare gift for find things that are lost, using a simple forked stick. Would you like me to look for the ruby?”

Of course she did, so Toomie fetched the stick, and then made a great show of going through the house, looking for the ruby, with everyone following him, amazed. When he got to Parry’s room, the stick dipped and pulled him forward towards one of the drawers. “In here, I think,” he said, opening the drawer. Everyone gasped. There, of course, was the ruby.

Lady Florida was extremely angry, and she exclaimed, “I’ll have you thrown into prison for this!” Parry shook in his shoes, protesting that he knew nothing about it.

She turned to Toomie, who was smiling broadly, and said, “It so happens that I have lost some money myself. Can your remarkable stick find it for me?”

Toomie went white. “I fear that the stick only works for jewels and treasure of that kind.”

“Really?” said Lady Florida, fixing him with a steely eye. “Let’s see, in any case.”

Toomie had no choice but to do as she said. The forked stick dragged him along the passage, try as he would to hold it back and turn it away. It tugged him relentlessly to the room with the loose floorboard and dipped down, pointing to the hiding place.

“You see, it has found nothing at all,” Toomie blustered, keeping his boot over the loose board.

“Remove those floorboards,” Lady Florida commanded. The other servants willingly pulled at the boards, until Toomie’s hoard was revealed.

Parry was released and it was Toomie who was taken to prison. The forked stick was thrown onto the woodpile, and it if hasn’t been burnt up by now, I expect it is there yet.

Stories for Another Day

In those days, the second kingdom was blessed with an excellent king, King Rupe. He took good care of his people and his lands, and he made sure that he kept on good terms with the neighbouring lands. He paid them visits from time to time, and occasionally sent them gifts. His people respected him and they were very happy with him.

But King Rupe had a secret. He had a deep, abiding, unappeasable hunger for diamonds. Rupe was not a greedy man, in most things. He didn’t overeat, except when it came to chocolate, but that was no different from anyone else. He wasn’t grasping or miserly. He taxed his people fairly. But where diamonds were concerned, he had a hunger that could not be satisfied.

It started when the king of the sixth kingdom sent him a gift, a pretty diamond on a chain. Rupe thought he would give it to his daughter, Shell, but the more he looked at it, and toyed with it, the more he thought he wouldn’t. It was probably quite valuable, he thought, and Princess Shell might feel uncomfortable wearing it, in case she lost it. So he kept it, and thought no more about it.

But as the days went by, he seemed to notice diamonds everywhere, and every time he did, he felt an overwhelming urge to have them for his own. When the queen, Alabaster, wore her diamond necklace to dinner, King Rupe said, “My dear! Those diamonds are very dusty. Give them to me, and I’ll have them cleaned for you.”

But he never did. He put them away in his private treasury. When he was by himself, he would secretly take them out and hold them up to the light and gaze at them for hours on end.

He sent his servants out to buy more diamonds, all the diamonds they could find, in rings, pendants, and tiaras. The more diamonds he had, the more he wanted.

After a while, he had spent nearly all the money in the Royal Bank. The king was dismayed. He looked at his piles of diamonds, letting them run through his fingers, but he could not bear to part with a single one. He decided to raise the taxes instead.

The people complained, but the king took no notice. What’s the point of being king if you can’t raise taxes now and then? he said to himself.

Then one day, the king fell ill. He lay in bed, white and shivering. The queen made him warm milk and his favourite pudding, and fed it to him herself with a spoon, but he turned his head away and wouldn’t eat. His daughter, Shell, came and offered to sing for him, but he couldn’t bear to have her in the room. The queen became very worried and sent for the palace doctors. They examined the king carefully, then they shook their heads. “There is nothing wrong with his body,” they murmured to the queen, out of the king’s hearing. “We suspect,” the Chief Medical Officer said, tapping the side of his head with his finger, “it may be a disturbance of the mind.”

Princess Shell had an idea.”I have heard of a violinist whose playing is so beautiful that it touches both the heart and the spirit. Perhaps if he played for my father, he would get better?”

The queen sent for the violinist and had him taken to the king’s bedroom. The violinist, whom we know as Cal, lifted his violin and played a few notes but the king cried out and pulled his pillow over his head. Cal lowered his violin, puzzled. It was very hot in the king’s bedroom, so he went to open the windows but the king shouted, “No! Don’t open them!”

Cal sat down on the end of the bed and said, “Your majesty, what is the matter?”

The king bent his head and wrapped his arms around himself. “I am afraid,” he said, “I am afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?” Cal asked quietly.

The king swallowed. He said in a low voice, “My daughter, oh, my daughter!”

Cal was intrigued. He said, “Tell me why you are afraid, your majesty.”

“There is a man,” King Rupe said, choking over the words. “He has a diamond, the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, exquisitely cut, perfectly clear, so beautiful, so beautiful,” he moaned. “I offered to buy it from him. I offered him all the gold in the palace, everything I have, but there is only one thing he will take for it: my daughter. And I am so afraid.”

Cal looked at the king, the truth beginning to dawn on him. He said gently, “Why are you afraid of this man?”

“I am afraid that I will do as he asks and give him my daughter for the diamond!” Rupe whispered.

“No!” exclaimed Cal.

“At first I refused, and laughed at him,” said the king, “but he came again and again, with the diamond in his hand, the lovely thing. Again I refused, but he smiled, and held it so that the light caught it in such a way… I sent him out of my sight, but I see him everywhere, with the diamond. And I dream of it.”

He looked up at Cal, and said, “Now do you see why I keep the doors and windows locked? Why I dare not leave this room?”

Cal got up and walked the length of the room, twice, three times. He came back and stood at the king’s side and said, “The music that I play has the power to touch the spirit. It has brought people back from the brink of despair, and turned the hearts of others away from evil. If you wish it, I can play for you.”

The light of hope sprang up in King Rupe’s eyes. “Yes, play for me!” he said.

Cal said, “If I play, and you change your heart, the change is permanent, and complete. There are no half measures, and no going back.”

The king stayed silent, thinking about his hoard. He wept with anguish at the thought of losing his love for his diamonds. Then he thought of his lovely daughter, Shell. For moments, his heart swayed between the two. Then he looked up at Cal and said a single word. “Play.”

The music of the violin was soft and gentle, like a hand caressing a child’s head. Then it grew deeper and stronger. It pleaded and insisted. It filled the room like a great storm, and then it gradually became quieter, until it came to rest.

The king opened his eyes, smiling. “I am cured, I am sure of it,” he said. “I can feel that my heart is my own again.”

He opened a great chest beside his bed, filled to overflowing with diamonds, large and small. Then he called his servants and said, “Take all these and sell them, and return the money to the Royal Bank. If there is any money left over, then give it to the poor.” The servants loaded up baskets and wheelbarrows full of diamonds and took them away, every last diamond. The king smiled, happier than he had been for a long, long time.

He shook Cal’s hand, saying, “How can I ever thank you?”

Frowning, Cal said, “One moment, your majesty.” In lowering his violin, he had brushed one of the strings, and heard a strange echo from somewhere in the room. He plucked the string again, firmly. The echo, like an eerie singing, came from the king’s robe.

“What is it?” Cal asked.

Rupe put his hand into his pocket and drew out a small, twinkling diamond on a chain. “This?” he said. “I… I had forgotten I had it. It was the first of my collection, a gift from my neighbour.”

They both stared at the diamond, glittering in the light, and they looked at each other. Rupe placed it carefully on the stone edge of the window. Cal lifted his violin and played a single note, over and over, with more and more intensity, until the king had to put both hands over his ears. Then the diamond shattered, into a hundred thousand sparks of light.

Stories for Another Day

A farmer had two sons. Together they worked on their farm, growing crops and tending the cattle and the chickens and ducks. The farm was very prosperous and all was well, until one day the farmer, Dreck, said to his younger son, Raymond, “When you are out in the fields today, make sure you shut the floodgates. The river is already high, and if more rain comes, the fields could be flooded.”

But the son forgot to close the gates. Heavy rains came during the night, and the river rose. Because the flood gates were open, water flooded over the farm. The crops were ruined, and many animals were lost, but worst of all, the eldest son was swept away in the floods and drowned.

Raymond was pierced to the heart with sorrow for what he had done. He wept and pleaded with his father to forgive him, but Dreck stormed and raged at him, shouting, “Never! I will never forgive you! Get out, and never come back!”

Raymond, full of guilt and sorrow that he had been the cause of his brother’s death, turned away and left. As he reached the gate of the farm, his mother came running after him. “Raymond!” she said. “I know that you are truly sorry for what you did, and I forgive you. Now promise me this: for your brother’s sake, you must forgive yourself, and you must try to live the best and fullest life you can.”

Raymond gave her his promise, and they embraced for the last time. She gave him her blessing and he went on his way.

As time went by, Raymond found work on other farms. He worked diligently, and studied hard, and learnt how to take care of sick animals. Soon he was being called on by people from all over the country to help their animals. In time he married and had three sons of his own, and taught them everything he knew. And in time, he managed to forgive himself for what he had done.

Meanwhile, his father was so filled with bitterness and anger that he stopped working on the farm and caring for the animals. He sat at home, day after day, raging and mourning for his lost son. The farm gradually fell into ruin. His wife pleaded with him every day to forgive his son Raymond and ask him to come back, but Dreck closed his heart.

When the crops failed, Dreck blamed his son, saying, “It was him who let the floodwaters in and ruined the land.” When the animals died, he blamed his son again, saying, “The animals have died because there isn’t enough food for them now that the crops have failed.” And when his wife finally died of sorrow, he blamed his son for that too. “Raymond broke her heart and left her without hope,” he said.

With his wife gone, Dreck spent all his time in a single room of the house, staring out over his desolate farm. He ate little besides black bread and porridge. The house began to fall into disrepair, with leaks in the roof, mould on the walls, and holes in the floors. One day he found it was all more than he could bear. He had to get out of the house.

He strode down to the gate and leant over it, looking down the road. A young man he had never seen before was walking towards the farm. The young man spoke to him. “You have a beautiful farm,” he said.

“Do you think so?” Dreck snorted. “Maybe it was once, but now it’s worthless.”

The young man, whose name was Luca, said, “The soil in this corner is good. If it was dug over well, I’m sure it would be fit for planting.”

Dreck shrugged. “You’re welcome to try, if you want to,” he said. He opened the gate and Luca came in. He dug over that corner of the farm thoroughly, and then he planted some seeds and they began to grow.

The young man looked over to the next corner of the farm, then he went and began to dig a long, deep trench. “What are you doing?” Dreck growled. “This land is nothing more than a swamp!”

“If I dig a ditch along the length of this field, the water should drain away,” Luca said. “Underneath, the soil is still good.” Sure enough, once the water had been drained away and the soil dried out, Dreck could see that it was good. Together they dug it over and planted some seeds, and they started to grow.

The young man took his spade to the third corner of the farm, and started digging. Dreck said, “The soil here is parched and arid. It’s a wasteland.”

Luca said, “If I can dig a channel to the river, there will be water to irrigate the land and bring it back to life.” He dug long and hard, and water began to fill the channel, and soak into the dry, hard ground. He and Dreck dug it over and planted seeds, and they grew tall and strong.

In the fourth corner of the farm, some weed-infested buildings that had once been barns were falling down. “If we clear all this away and pull out the weeds, the soil may still be good underneath,” Luca said.

They pulled down the old barns and hauled the rubbish away and tore out the weeds. Then they dug over the ground, planted some seeds and watched them grow.

Dreck said to the young man, “The house needs a lot of work to repair it. Will you help me?”

Luca helped him patch the roof and repair the floors. They cleaned and painted it inside and out. When it was finished, the old man went to the window. He stood there looking out, and he cried out in pain.

“What’s the matter?” Luca said quickly. “Are you ill?”

“I feel as if my heart is being crushed,” Dreck groaned. “I’m afraid I’m going to die without ever seeing my son again!” He wept and sobbed. “Long ago I turned him away, but now I would give anything to see him once more.”

Luca wiped the tears from Dreck’s face and said, “Your son, Raymond, is my father. You are my grandfather. My father speaks of you every day, and always with love.”

This made Dreck weep even more.

“If you want me to, I will go to my father and bring him to you,” Luca said. “Nothing would make him happier, I know.”

Dreck asked him to do as he said, so the young man went quickly and brought his father back. As soon as Raymond entered the house, he fell on his knees before his father, but Dreck lifted him up and embraced him.

“Please, I beg you,” Dreck said, “let me forgive you! For years I have fed on bitterness and anger and blame, but if I can forgive you, I will be free of them.” Raymond embraced his father, and they wept together. Dreck forgave his son, and he felt peace at last. With his son and his grandsons, the old man lived in peace and happiness for the rest of his life.

Stories for Another Day

Spor the enchanter, was in the habit of turning any of his servants who displeased him into pickles. And since he himself had been very lazy when he was a young man learning to be an enchanter, and he had never learned the spell for changing them back into servants, the result was that he had a great many jars of pickles in his pantry and he was always having to get new servants.

One day a tax collector knocked on his door. “Mr Spor,” he said, for tax collectors are invariably polite, “you have not paid your taxes for ten years. You must pay up at once or be thrown into prison!”

Spor protested, “But I don’t have any money!”

The tax collector looked around and said, “You have a great many jars of pickles, a great, great many. Why not pay your taxes in pickles?”

They both agreed this was the only thing to do. Spor loaded up the tax collector’s wagon with jars of pickles, and he drove off.

There was one jar left, with one very large pickle in it. Spor looked at the pickle, and the pickle looked back at him.

“Well, pickle, you had better set to work cleaning and tidying the house, and getting my dinner ready, for there are no servants left and I have no money to pay new ones,” Spor said.

The pickle said, “I must tell you that I am the sixth prince of the third kingdom, and I have always been brought up to the extremely lazy.”

Spor said, “Be that as it may, if you don’t work hard, I will chop you up and eat you between two slices of bread and butter.”

“I think I mentioned that I am the sixth prince of the third kingdom,” the pickle said. “If you were to eat me, you would call down a terrible vengeance on your head.”

“Then we are truly in a pickle, if you don’t mind me saying so,” said Spor.

“I might add,” said the pickle-prince, “that my father, the king, and my five brothers are even now searching for me, and if they find me here, in a jar, their vengeance will be terrible indeed.”

Spor said quietly so that the pickle couldn’t hear him, “My dear pickle, you’re forgetting that I am an enchanter, with at least one good spell up my sleeve.”

Just then there was a quiet knock at the door. A young woman stood there, rather thin with short brown hair, in a tidy dress with a clean apron. “Do you need a servant, by any chance?” she asked.

“Why, yes,” Spor said. “The work is very hard and the pay is very little, but by the look of you, you should be grateful to get any work at all.”

The young woman said, “I will work hard for very little money.”

“That is very convenient because that is what I have,” Spor said.

The young woman, who told Spor her name was Mirra, cleaned and scrubbed and dusted and picked up after Spor all day long.

One thing she cleaned and polished extra well every day was the pickle jar. Spor even thought he saw her whispering to it sometimes. But so long as the cleaning, the ironing, the cooking and the washing up were done, he didn’t mind any odd habits she might have.

Mirra was dusting the books in Spor’s workroom one day while he was checking the use-by dates on his bottles of potions. “Excuse me, sir,” she said, because like all good servants she was extremely polite, “all these books! Have you read them all?”

Spor smiled gently. People were always asking him that. “Yes,” he said, “some of them twice,” which was completely untrue. He had only read two books all the way through, and one was a dictionary of spiders and the other was a photograph album of himself from when he was a baby.

“Even this really big one?” Mirra said. “It says something about ‘pots’, I think. Is it a cooking book?”

Spor smiled his quiet smile again. “Potions, not pots. And no, it’s not a cooking book.”

“Potions?” Mirra said, in an awed voice. “Like for doing magic?”

“You might call it magic,” Spor said, pretending to be bored when in fact he was very flattered that she was interested. “I call it transformation, or transmogrification, to use the technical word.” He smoothed his eyebrows with a finger and tried to look intelligent and mysterious. “They’re for changing one thing into another.”

Mirra’s eyes opened wide and she gulped. “Like changing princes into frogs and things? And changing them back into princes again?”

“Yes,” said Spor. A thought occurred to him. Perhaps the answer to his pickle-prince problem lay in this book.

He picked it up. Oddly enough, Mirra happened to be dusting the very page he needed. The heading at the top said, ‘To change a pickle back into a person.’

“This is exactly what I’ve been looking for!” he exclaimed. “I must get to work at once.” He put his apron on and started looking for the ingredients. “Hair of thistle, root of dandelion,” he muttered. “Now where is the tincture of molasses?”

“Here it is, sir,” Mirra said, lifting down a big, black bottle. She passed him jars and bottles and spoons and ran out to the garden to fetch parsley seeds and curry leaves when he asked for them. Spor mixed and measured and stirred until at last the potion was ready.

“There! I couldn’t have done it without you, Mirra,” he said, which was perfectly true since he had almost used the wrong spoon twice and he didn’t know the difference between parsley and lemon balm.”Now to see if it works!”

Just then there came a thunderous knocking at the door. “Open up, in the name of the king!” shouted a loud voice.

Before Spor could get to the door, it fell down with a crash. The king and five young men walked in.

“Where is the prince?” the king roared. “Bring him out at once or I will cut your head off!”

“Um, it’s not very convenient right now,” Spor sputtered.

The king raised his huge, sharp sword but before he could bring it down on Spor’s head, Mirra stepped forward. “Now, Father, put that down,” she said. “If you kill him, he won’t be able to lift the enchantment that he put on Bob.”

“This miserable fellow has put an enchantment on one of the royal princes?” the king roared. He raised his sword again.

Spor got ready to turn the king and all five princes into pickles, then he stopped and said to Mirra, “Did you say, ‘Father’? You are the king’s daughter?”

“Yes, I am the Princess Mirra,” she said. “I came to rescue my brother from your evil clutches.”

“But you are the best servant I have ever had!” Spor said. “And your brother told me he had always been brought up to be extremely lazy.”

Mirra said, “My father brought up all his sons to be completely useless and unable to do a thing for themselves. My mother, the queen, and I have to do everything for them. In fact, my father is so lazy that when his children were born, he couldn’t be bothered to think of different names for them, so he called them all Bob.”

“Except you,” Spor said, smiling at her.

“No, he named me Bob too, but I always call myself Mirra,” she said.

“It’s a very pretty name,” Spor said. “I like it very much.”

“Enough of this tarradiddling!” the king roared. “Fetch my son, Bob!”

“Now, Father,” Mirra said, “sit down and I’ll make you all cup of tea while Spor goes to fetch Prince Bob.”

The potion worked perfectly. Prince Bob, (the sixth of that name), was soon himself again, except for just the faintest lingering smell of vinegar. They all had a cup of tea and some delicious butter cake that Mirra had made earlier.

“I supposed you’ll be leaving with your father,” Spor said, sadly.

“Not necessarily,” Mirra said. In fact, she had fallen in love with Spor’s quiet smile ages ago, when she first started working for him. “Are you willing to work hard and become a good enchanter?”

“I enchanted you, didn’t I?” Spor said, with a smile.

“Perhaps,” Mirra smiled back.

“Don’t you think it would be useful now and then to have an enchanter in the family?” Spor said.

“We’ll see,” Mirra said. And that is how the kings and queens of the third kingdom came to have the blood of enchanters mingled with their royal blood. And there came a time when it was very useful, as Spor had said, but that is a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

Cody never thought he would be a hero. Even when he was a small boy and he had rescued his mother from a spider by picking it up by one leg and carrying it outside, he was so frightened that the spider shook between his fingers. Still, he was always happy to do anything he could for anyone who needed help. Which was why, when the greatest and most terrible threat came, it was Cody who was the one, against all odds, who saved the city.

It had been a warm, rainy summer, and the crops on the farms outside the city were flourishing. Everyone in the city looked forward to an excellent harvest and a prosperous year. Then a rumour began that made every farmer shiver in his boots. A plague of locusts was crossing the country, drawn by the golden fields of wheat and barley. But these were no ordinary locusts.

The first sign of the invasion was a quiet rattling, then a slight rasping, just as the sun was rising. It woke Cody’s wife, Elinda, and she slipped out of bed and went to the window. What she saw froze her heart with horror. A single locust, as big as a man, was savaging the crops. Its mouth parts moved like threshing blades, and its legs, serrated like saw-blades, slashed through stalks and branches as if they were dry grass.

As Elinda took a breath to shout for Cody, the giant locust was joined by another, then five more, then a dozen. Elinda screamed, but by the time Cody reached her side, every living plant was gone.

Within days, the acres of crops around the city were little more than fields of dust. Then the locusts attacked hedges and gardens, even fully grown trees. The people huddled in their homes, waiting for the devastation to end, and the creatures to leave in search of fresh pastures. But when every leaf and every blade of grass had been devoured, the creatures turned their quivering antennas on the city itself.

The Town Council called an emergency meeting. “We could burn the fields, but there is nothing left to burn!” they said.

“What if we poison the locusts?” suggested one.

“There isn’t enough poison in the whole city to kill a tenth of them!” said another. “Our only hope is the army, with their armour and their swords and spears.”

Everyone agreed. “Who will take a message to the capital for us?” they said.

So they called all the people together and said to them, “We must send for the army, or all of us will perish.”

The people looked at each other. To reach the capital and summon the army, the messenger would have to pass the nests of the locusts. They looked down, hoping someone else would volunteer.

“Cody will go,” Elinda said. Cody started with surprise, but Elinda pressed his arm and smiled at him warmly.

“Yes, I will go,” Cody said, “if no-one else will.” Everyone else couldn’t wait to clap Cody on the shoulder and tell him he was definitely the right man for the job.

“Do you have any skill with weapons?” asked the Town Councillors. Cody shook his head. The Councillors looked at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and shrugged. “No matter. You must do the best you can,” they said.

Cody and Elinda went home to get ready. “Take my father’s sword,” she said, unwrapping an old weapon that had lain rusting in the barn for years. “I know you have never used a sword, but it may mean the difference between life and death for you. And take this too.” She gave him a piece of wood, little more than a stick. “When you make camp, put this in the fire, and if you are ever in need, say, ‘To me!'”

Cody strapped the rusty sword awkwardly around his waist and thrust the piece of wood into his pack. Elinda kissed him goodbye, and he slipped out into the night.

Even at night the locusts stirred in their rest, clicking their mouth parts ominously. Cody inched his way past them, keeping to the ditches at the sides of the fields, struggling through the mud, making as little noise as possible. Eventually he reached the outskirts of the city, a desert of destruction where even the locusts did not come.

He built a small fire for warmth and to deter the wild animals that roam the edges of all cities. Remembering Elinda’s strange gift, he put the piece of wood on the fire. A soft blue haze rose and hung in the air over the flames. It seemed to Cody that the image of a swordsman shimmered in the haze, twisting and turning as the flames leapt. As the image wavered, the swordsman seemed to dance, his armour flashing. It was oddly comforting, and Cody fell asleep quickly.

He was woken barely an hour later by a hurricane of growling and barking. A pack of wild dogs had found him. Starved since the locusts had cleared the land of everything living, they turned on Cody.

Cody struggled to free the rusty sword from its wrappings, at the same time shouting, “To me! To me!” Suddenly the swordsman was at his side, slashing right and left, sending the wild dogs skittering away, yelping. He put up his sword, saluted Cody and disappeared.

Cody sat down by the fire to catch his breath, more surprised by his rescue than he had been by the dogs attacking him. The image in the smoke of the fire wavered gently as before, dancing slowly before his eyes.

He put out the fire, taking care to keep the piece of wood, a little smaller now, and continued his journey. As he went, he turned what had happened over in his mind. The next time he paused to rest, he made a fire again. When the dancing swordsman appeared, he said clearly, “To me!”

The swordsman instantly stood before him. “It seems to me that two swords may be needed at some point and I am worse than useless with this,” Cody said, showing the swordsman his rusty sword.

The swordsman bowed without a sound, then began teaching Cody how to stand, how to move lightly on his feet and wield the heavy sword, thrusting and parrying. Hour after hour they practised, as the fire burned lower and lower, until Cody was too exhausted to even lift his sword.

Over the next two days, Cody journeyed during daylight hours, and at nightfall he called up the swordsman and they trained, dancing back and forth around the fire. As soon as it was light, he resumed his journey. Finally, on the evening of the third day, he reached the mountain pass above the main road into the capital. The pass was so narrow that no more than a single man on horseback or two men on foot could pass through at the same time. Cody went through the pass and crossed into the centre of the capital, where the Chief Minister’s palace stood.

The Chief Minister listened gravely to Cody’s account of the locust attack. “I will send the army at once,” he said, “before this horrific enemy lays waste to the whole country.” He gave orders for the army to prepare to leave immediately.

But an army cannot be ready to travel in an instant. There are supplies to gather, uniforms, weapons, food, carts and horses to carry the ammunition. Cody grew impatient at the thought of the ravenous locusts swarming over the city walls, and decided not to wait. “I will go on ahead,” he said, “and tell the people that the army is on its way.”

He hurried back the way he had come, going back through the mountain pass under cover of darkness. As he started to make his way down the hill, something made him pause. A faint rattling reached him. He stood motionless and peered into the darkness. To his right and left, mere metres away, there were the locusts, dozens of them, crouched on either side of the pass.

A terrible fear seized his heart. The locusts, lying in wait at the pass, could decimate the army as it passed through in single file. There would be no escape for them, nowhere to run or hide. The army would walk straight into the mouths of the enemy. And with the army disposed of, the way into the capital was open, and the last defence of the whole country was gone.

Cody pulled his last match from his pocket and lit the remaining fragment of wood. “To me!” he shouted, and the dancing swordsman was by his side in the next instant.

In a whirlwind of steel they attacked the horde of locusts. A terrible battle followed. The swordsman seemed tireless, but Cody was soon wounded in many places. He fought on as well as he could, although the numbers of locusts seemed endless. Then what he feared most happened. The last fragment of wood burned through and collapsed into ashes. The swordsman was gone.

Bleeding and barely able to stand, Cody faced the insect horde alone, ready to fight to his last breath. At that very moment, the army came pouring through the mountain pass, surrounding Cody and taking up the fight. The locusts fell back, scattering everywhere, and in a few short hours they were all dead.

The whole city and everyone in the capital were overjoyed when they saw they had been saved. The army carried Cody home on their shoulders, and although Cody never lifted his sword against an enemy again, he and Elinda and their children wanted for nothing for the rest of their lives.

Stories for Another Day

Long before Dharab became known as the greatest dragon-slayer in all of the fourteen islands, a terrible blight came upon the country where Dharab lived. One afternoon while Dharab was away on the other side of the mountains, battling a young dragon that was harassing a village, his wife Eva was foraging in the forest for herbs of healing. She was carrying their two little ones, Garth and Shanama, in a woven basket on her back.

Two people came up to her, in great distress.

“Our son is missing,” said the mother. “We’ve looked everywhere for him. Have you seen him?”

Eva shook her head. “I haven’t seen or heard anyone, except my own little ones. How did he come to be missing?”

“He was playing at my feet while I was cooking our dinner,” the mother said. “I went to the door to call my husband and when I turned back, my son was gone.”

The husband said, “How could he get out where there is only one door to the hut and you were standing in it? There must be some terrible wickedness here.”

Eva hurried back to the town and called people to come and help search for the child, but they could find no sign of him, although they searched long into the night.

When Dharab came home just before midnight, Eva told him what had happened. “But that’s not all,” she said. “I have been speaking to the villagers, and three nights ago, another child went missing, a little girl, her parents’ only child. She disappeared from her bed, although the door was bolted and the window shut. And last night, two more disappeared, without a trace. No-one saw or heard anything. The children just seemed to vanish as if by magic.”

Dharab’s face darkened. “Have there been any strangers in the town since I left?” he asked.

“Only the new cloth merchant,” Eva said doubtfully. “He brought a wagon full of silks and cottons, all beautiful bright colours, and set up a stall in the marketplace. But he’s very friendly, and very kind to the children. He even carries sweets in his pocket for them.”

Dharab strode back and forth distractedly. “No-one else?”

“No-one,” Eva said.

“I’ll go and pay this merchant a visit,” he said, strapping on his sword. “Just to see for myself what kind of man he is. Keep the little ones close to you. Don’t let them out of your sight, whatever happens.”

When he found the cloth merchant’s house, it was locked and bolted and there was no sign that anyone was living there. Dharab knocked and called, but there was no answer. Feeling more and more uneasy, he hurried back home. As soon as he came within sight of his house, his heart stopped in his chest. The door was wide open, ripped half off its hinges. He ran inside the house, and found Eva lying in the kitchen, in a pool of blood, with a great gash in her leg.

When she saw Dharab, she started screaming, “The children! He’s taken the children!”

Dharab rushed to her side, and grabbed a cloth to wrap around her leg to stop the bleeding. “What’s happened?” he said, fear clutching at his heart.

“The merchant!” Eva said, “He knocked at the door, asking for you, and when I opened it, he pushed me to the ground and snatched up the babies. I grabbed the kitchen knife and fought with him, but he suddenly reared up, and changed into the shape of a huge dragon!”

“I should have known,” Dharab said, through his teeth. “A dragon-enchanter! This wound will be poisoned.”

“I’ll take care of it!” Eva said, in an agony of impatience. “Go after him! Nothing matters but the children.”

Dharab grabbed his spear and ran out into the night.

It was easy to follow the dragon’s trail, through the village and up into the mountains. Eva had managed to cut one of the dragon’s arms badly, and drops of the dragon’s blood marked the track. Dharab followed them deep into the mountains, then up a steep, rocky path. The path grew narrower, and the rocks more slippery. Then Dharab heard a laugh behind him.

“So you are here where I want you, dragon-slayer!” the voice said.

“Tarn!” Dharab said. “I should have known it was you. Where are my children?”

The dragon sneered, “When I heard that the great dragon-slayer was fond of children, that he had children of his own, I could scarcely believe it!” Then he hissed, “But it was true. And they have made the perfect bait to lure you here.”

“I have come for my children,” Dharab said in a terrible voice.

“Your children? Squalling like young piglets – faugh! Still, they will make a tasty snack, once I have finished you,” the dragon said. “You have killed too many of my kind. Now it is your turn.” Tarn swung his tail, swift and low, to sweep Dharab off his feet but Dharab leapt out of the way and drew his sword.

They battled over the rocks, back and forth, up and down the treacherous pathway. The dragon pulled back inch by inch, until Dharab had him backed against a heavy rock, a sword’s-length away. He drew his arm back for the final blow, but the dragon’s breathless words stopped him.

“Kill me and your puny offspring die too!” he hissed.

Dharab froze. “Where are they?” he demanded. The dragon flicked his tail, once, twice, pointing down below the rock that he was pressed against. Dharab peered down and saw the babies lying on a ledge jutting out from the mountainside. One movement, even a shiver, would push the rock over the edge, crushing the crying babies, and sending them plunging into the ravine below.

The dragon laughed. “I planned to finish you tonight,” he said, panting hard, “but the woman’s knife cut my arm and that has slowed me, just a little, but enough. If you want to save your children, you must let me go. And know this: I will return, some day in your future and mine, to destroy you and them.”

Dharab hesitated for a heartbeat, then he lowered his sword.

“Fool!” shouted the dragon. Unfurling his huge, black wings, he lifted himself into the air. At the very last minute, he gave a backward thrust with his legs, to push the rock over the edge.

But Dharab was not such a fool as the dragon thought. He threw his sword like a spear, striking Tarn no more than a glancing blow to the chest, but it was enough to throw the dragon off balance, and give Dharab a few precious seconds. He scrambled under the teetering rock and leapt down to the ledge, grabbing up the children and pressing them and himself into a crack in the side of the mountain, just as the rock fell. It crashed and rumbled past him, taking half the ledge with it, the very place where the babies had been seconds before.

With a hollow laugh, Tarn swept away into the night. Dharab, his two little ones held tightly to his chest, made his way back down the mountains, to where Eva was waiting.

When she saw them, she took the children from Dharab and held them and cried over them until all three of them were crying together. But Dharab’s face was like stone. “I failed,” he said. “I let him go, to kill and destroy, wherever and whenever he pleases.”

Eva looked up into his face, her own covered in tears. “You couldn’t have done anything else. You had to save the children.”

So Tarn the dragon-enchanter lived to bring death and destruction wherever he went throughout the fourteen islands, until the day he returned to fulfil his promise to Dharab. But that is a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a boy who was very, very rude. When he was a baby he was the sweetest little thing, and everyone who saw him smiled and said, “What a darling!” and wanted to kiss him all over. When he was a toddler, just learning to walk, he was so cute that his mother couldn’t help picking him up all the time and cuddling him and covering him with kisses. His father used to take him for rides on his shoulders just so the neighbours could see what a fine young son he had.

But when he was four or so, something got into him and he started behaving very badly. One day when his mother asked him to pick up his toys, he said, “No! I won’t!” She was shocked, but he rather enjoyed it, so he kept on being rude. In fact, he got ruder and ruder.

When his mother said, “It’s time for bed, Jeremy dear,” he said rudely, “You can’t tell me what to do!” and when his father told him not to speak to his mother like that, he said, “I can do whatever I want!”

He was even rude to his grandmother. When she said, “Eat up your yummy vegetables, Jeremy, they’re very good for you,” he said, “What would you know?”

At school he was even worse. He had no friends because he was always calling them names like “Dumb-head,” and “Horse-face” so no-one wanted to play with him. Whenever his teacher asked him to do something like get out his books or put his pencil down, he said, “You’re not the boss of me!” or “I don’t have to if I don’t want to!” His teacher didn’t want the other children to think that this was acceptable behaviour so she sent him to the principal’s office.

The principal knew that Jeremy was a very rude little boy, so she left him to sit outside the office on a chair while she attended to more important business. Jeremy didn’t mind at all, because it meant he got out of doing hard things in class like maths, which he hated. To this day he hasn’t got the faintest clue about decimals or long multiplication.

When the principal finally did see him, she tried to look kindly at him and she said, “Now, Jeremy, you know I don’t like having to speak to you like this. Being rude is not a very nice way to behave, is it? Don’t you think you could try to be a little bit more thoughtful and kind?”

Jeremy actually poked his tongue out at the principal, and said, “This school is stupid, and you’re stupid!”

The principal sighed and said, “It might be best if you spend some time by yourself with a book or a puzzle, to try to calm down. When you’re feeling more like yourself, you can go back to class.”

Jeremy was already feeling exactly like himself, so he went back to his class and was just as rude all over again. He hadn’t done his homework, because whenever his father said, “Jeremy, you’d better do your homework,” Jeremy always answered back, “No way! You do it yourself!”

He tried to copy it from a girl who always did her homework, and did it very neatly. The girl said, very nicely, “Please don’t copy my homework, Jeremy.”

Jeremy answered very rudely, “Who’d want to copy from a dumb-head like you?” The girl was used to Jeremy talking like this so she just closed her book and looked the other way, but the teacher sighed and said for the tenth time already that day, “Now, Jeremy, please speak more kindly to the other children.”

Jeremy said to the teacher, “Why do you have to pick on me all the time, you big meanie?”

Some bears who were passing by outside, heard this. They reached in through the window and picked Jeremy up and took him away. Bears are notoriously rude themselves, and they thought Jeremy would fit in very well with their family.

They took him to their cave. Jeremy was shaking like a leaf. The father bear said, “Raarrh!” which means, “You’re way too skinny. Don’t you eat your vegetables?” but Jeremy didn’t understand, of course. He was sure they were going to eat him.

The mother bear gave him a light cuff around the ear as she did to all her cubs as a sign of affection, but to Jeremy it felt like an enormous whack. He fell over backwards into the dirt and he was sure the End was Near. He began to be sorry for the awful things he had said to people and how he had hurt their feelings.

Then, horror of horrors! the bears put a big pot of water on the fire to heat up. They got out a big chopping board and a great big knife. Jeremy was sure for certain that they were going to chop him up and throw him into the pot and cook him and eat him.

“Please, please don’t kill me!’ he said, crying piteously.

The bears said, “Arrh, awp, awp, arrrh, arrrh!” which means, “Don’t be silly, we’re vegetarians!” but Jeremy didn’t understand, of course.

“I promise I’ll never say anything rude to anyone ever again in my whole life,” he pleaded, sobbing and sniffling, “if you’ll only give me another chance and not eat me.”

The bears said to each other, “He seems rather polite after all, and besides he’s very damp and sniffly and his nose keeps running. I don’t think we should keep him.”

So they put him outside the cave and said “Mmwarrrh!” which means “Run along now,” and gave him a gentle pat on the bottom which felt to Jeremy like a great big smack.

He ran and ran all the way back home, and if he wasn’t perfectly polite every day for the rest of his life, at least he tried to be, which is all any of us can do.

Stories for Another Day

Once a boy was playing around in the bushes when he disturbed a snake. The snake leapt up and wrapped itself around his arm. At the very last minute, the boy grabbed hold of the snake’s tail.

“I’ve got you!” the boy shouted. “Let go of my arm!”

“No, I’ve got you!” the snake retorted. “Let go of my tail!”

“No! I’ve caught you!” the boy said, and so they went on arguing. Neither would let go and neither would give in.

The funny thing was that neither of them really meant to catch the other. The boy was far too big for the snake to eat, and the boy had no reason to kill the snake. But both of them were afraid to be the first one to let go, because of what the other one might do.

After half an hour of stubbornly arguing and not letting go of each other, and lunchtime getting nearer and nearer, they did the only thing they could both agree on: they went to ask Shukshu, the Old One, who should let go first.

Shukshu, the hawksbill turtle, was the oldest of all the creatures on the land and in the water, and so everyone felt he must be the wisest.

“Tell this annoying child to let go of my tail,” the snake said to Shukshu. Now it wasn’t wise to speak to Shukshu like this, without asking how he was or passing the time of day first, and perhaps offering a small gift, like an orange or a sweet, juicy melon.

“Make this stupid snake let go of my arm,” the boy said, even more rudely.

Shukshu was even more offended, but he said nothing.

The snake naturally thought that Shukshu would be on her side because, after all, they were both cold-blooded. The boy on the other hand expected Shukshu to be on his side, because after all, the snake was a silly female.

“She is hurting my arm,” the boy complained. “I can see it starting to turn purple!” He tightened his grip on the snake’s tail in return.

The snake said, “My tail! My tail! Let go!”

Shukshu said, “You should both let go at the same time. I will count to three, then both of you release the other. One, two, three!” But of course, the boy did not trust the snake so he waited until he could feel the snake’s grip loosen, and the snake did not trust the boy, so she also waited. So neither of them let go.

“Three! I said three!” Shukshu said, getting annoyed.

“I’ll let go if she will,” said the boy.

“I will if he will,” said the snake. They waited, watching each other, but of course neither let go.

Shukshu was getting hungry and and he had no patience for these two foolish creatures. He said, “If neither of you will listen to sense, then let there be a contest between the two of you, and the loser must release the other first.”

“Agreed,” said the two.

“Let it be a running race,” said the boy.

“No! Let’s see who can open their jaw the widest,” said the snake.

“No!” said the boy. The thought of seeing the snake’s fangs made him feel a little green. “High jumping!”

“No!” said the snake. “Spelling!” She was very good at forming letters with her long, lithe body.

“No!” said the boy. In fact, he was a terrible speller. “Arithmetic!”

“No!” said the snake, for sadly, having no fingers, she had never learned to count. “Singing!”

Now singing was something the boy felt he could do, and do well. “Yes, singing!” he said.

“Very well,” said Shukshu. “There will be a singing contest, and the winner will order the other to let go. Agreed?”

“Agreed!” they said.

“Me first!” said the boy, and opened his mouth to sing.

“Wait!” commanded Shukshu, who was, in fact, very wise. “A contest like this deserves a proper stage.”

He took them up to a high, flat rock overlooking the river. “Now, sing,” he said.

The boy sang very nicely, although the snake cheated a little by giving his arm an extra tight squeeze when he was singing his high note, making him squeak. The snake had her turn, and sang very nicely too, for a snake.

Shukshu pondered, then he announced, “The snake is the winner.”

“No!” said the boy. “All she did was hiss!”

“It was better than the noise you made,” the snake said. “It was all yowling!” And they began to argue all over again over who had won the competition.

Finally Shukshu shouted, “Enough!” The noise was giving him a headache, and besides, by now he was very hungry.

“There will be one final competition,” he said. “Flying!” As he said this, he pushed them both off the rock.

The boy scrabbled frantically and grabbed at the trunk of a young tree with both hands. The snake leapt into the tree and wrapped itself around one of the branches. And Shukshu smiled to himself and went off to get his dinner.

Stories for Another Day

Just after Bede turned seventeen, her mother said to her, “Bede, now that you’re old enough, I have something extraordinary to show you. It’s this.” She took a piece of dirty, ragged cloth out of her pocket, and laid it in front of Bede.

“What is it?” Bede asked, unimpressed.

Her mother said, “It may not look like much,” Bede had to agree with her – it didn’t look like anything at all but a dirty rag, “but it has been handed down in our family for generations, and now it is your turn to become its custodian. It’s a cloak of invisibility.”

“A cloak of invisibility?” Bede said, astonished. “How could something like this belong to our family?” Bede had always been the most ordinary person she knew, living in an ordinary house in a perfectly ordinary village.

Her mother said, “It was my great-great-grandfather who actually made it – or perhaps my great-great-great, I can’t remember. His name was Bishop, and there is a legend that he saved an entire town. His son, Vickery, used it to rescue a princess, and save the whole of the seventh kingdom.”

Bede was very impressed. She ventured to touch the cloth with her finger. “It doesn’t look like much,” she said doubtfully.

Her mother said, “It’s old now, and it’s been through many hands. Once it was sliced in half by a sword, and it has been dragged through dirt and snow and sand, through forests and jungles, up mountains of ice and through pits of vipers. There’s not much of it left, but what there is, is yours.”

She gave it to Bede solemnly. It was about the size of a handkerchief, frayed and worn thin.

“What should I do with it?” Bede asked.

“You must use it as you see fit,” her mother said. “But you must only use it for good.”

Bede folded it carefully and put it in her pocket. She couldn’t imagine what a cloak of invisibility the size of a pocket handkerchief could be useful for, but if ever there was a need, she would be prepared. That was how she came to have it in her pocket the day she saw a mouse being attacked by a malicious cat in the marketplace. Mice in the marketplace were very common, I’m sorry to say, but the way the cat arched its back and hissed triumphantly, ready to kill the mouse and eat it, stirred something in Bede.

“Stop! Don’t!” she shouted. The cat turned its head long enough for Bede to notice that the cat was wearing a jewelled collar, and long enough for her to toss the cloak of invisibility over the mouse. At once the mouse and the cloak disappeared.

The cat was astounded. Where there had been a tasty mouse a second before, now there was nothing but empty air. It walked around in a circle sniffing, then it stalked away embarrassed, pretending that it had not the slightest interest in mice.

Bede carefully slipped the mouse and the cloak into her pocket. At home in the safety of her room she lifted out the mouse and took off the cloak. He sat quietly on her hand, gazing at her with eyes like shiny black beads. “Aren’t you a handsome little fellow?” Bede said admiringly. The mouse was black, with satiny fur from the tip of his nose to the very end of his tail, which he held between his paws. “I know! You’re a fancy mouse!” she exclaimed.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened. The mouse bowed low and said, “I must thank you for saving my life.”

Bede almost dropped him in fright. “You’re a talking mouse?” she said.

“I am not a mouse at all,” he said.

“Wait! Don’t tell me – you’re an enchanted prince!” Bede said.

“How did you guess?” the mouse said. “I am Prince Locran, rightful heir to the throne. My half-brother, Raymis, put me under this enchantment when our father died, six months ago. He expected I would be caught in a trap or killed and eaten, and then the throne would be his. But for you, he would have succeeded.”

Bede remembered the sadness that had been felt throughout the kingdom when the old king died. It had been made even worse when the heir to the throne, Prince Locran, had disappeared. “But your brother, Prince Raymis, has search parties out looking for you everywhere across the seven kingdoms!” she said.

“He pretends to wish for my return, but in reality he plots to have me killed,” the mouse said, in his high, squeaky voice. “If I do not return within a year, he will be crowned king. That is all he has ever wished for. That, and the hand of the Princess Amabel, our beautiful cousin.”

“I’ll take you back to the palace at once,” Bede said. “But can a mouse, even a fancy mouse, be crowned king?”

“If I return to the palace like this, Raymis will have me in his power, and he will not hesitate to put an end to my life, even under the heel of his own boot!” the mouse squeaked.

“Then we must break the enchantment,” Bede said firmly. “But how?”

“It is almost impossible,” Locran said. “Raymis wears a precious jewel, a rare black carbuncle, on a chain around his neck, day and night. It is the source of his power over me. The only way I can be freed is for the carbuncle to be destroyed.”

They both sat in silence. Locran nibbled on a sunflower seed he had found, and Bede absently stroked his silky back with her finger. “At least we have six months to come up with a plan,” she said.

“Six months of this!” Locran threw up his paws. “Eating whatever crumbs I can find, running for my life, danger around every corner!”

“You will be safe with me,” Bede said. “Wherever I go, you can be in my pocket, and at night I will make you a bed of straw in a safe place.”

Locran was thinking hard. “Do you have any extraordinary skill, or talent?”

Bede said sadly, “No, unfortunately I am the most ordinary, talent-less person I know. All I have is this ragged cloak of invisibility.”

“You can’t spin straw into gold?” he asked. Bede shook her head. “Knit shirts out of thistles?”

“No,” Bede said. “All I can do is tap-dance a little.”

“Tap-dance?” said Locran. His tiny black eyes shone and he clapped his paws together. “It is true, then, as they say, that fate brings all things together at the right time and the right place for those who wish to do good!” And he told her his plan.

Bede was more than reluctant, she was positively unwilling. But as Locran said, there seemed to be no other way, and the coming together of herself and Locran and the cloak of invisibility just at the right moment had to be more than mere chance. “It will take extraordinary timing and all the courage you can muster,” Locran said, and Bede agreed with him. In spite of all her misgivings, she began to practise her tap-dancing, for hours a day.

Exactly twelve months to the day that the old king had died, the court and the people of the seventh kingdom gathered to see Prince Raymis crowned as the new king. Bede was there, in a startling red skirt with golden bells and a matching red jacket. The little black mouse was hidden in her pocket with a supply of sunflower seeds, just as he had been for the past six months, going everywhere with her. To her family and friends Locran was her pet mouse, so tame that he would sit on her palm or her shoulder, even nibbling at her ear as if he were whispering to her. But Bede never forgot that he was the crown prince, and his life and the future of the kingdom were in her hands.

Bede had used the remains of the cloak of invisibility to make a small pouch, just big enough to hold a mouse. Now she slipped the mouse out of her pocket and into the pouch, with a couple of sunflower seeds, and hung it around her neck. When they entered the room there was a sharp hissing and a “Mreowr!” A cat wearing a jewelled collar leapt towards Bede, yowling. Bede managed to push it away, and with the help of a servant, put it, hissing and spitting, into a cage.

Prince Raymis, tall and handsome with curly golden hair and noble bearing, sat on the coronation chair while the archbishop in charge of coronations intoned the blessings and prayers. He raised the crown over Raymis’s head, ready to crown him king. Raymis smiled confidently.

“Wait!” yelled Bede, stepping forward, with her bells jangling. The archbishop stopped with the crown in mid-air.

Deeply embarrassed, Bede said, “I beg your pardon, your Highness, but on such occasions, I believe it’s customary to have an anthem, or an ode, or least a sonnet, to show the people’s joy.” Red from her ears to her toes, she went on, “I have written a song to mark this auspicious occasion. May I sing it for your Highness?”

Raymis flapped his hands and said, “Yes, thank you, but keep it short and to the point.” The archbishop put the crown down, and the people gave a small cheer.

Bede stepped forward in front of the prince. Clearing her throat she began to sing and tap-dance at the same time.

“O Prince Raymis who can blame us

if we sing because you’re famous?

For there’s no-one who’s the same as

you, incredible Prince Raymis!”

She was not a good singer, and everyone realised that very quickly, but it was a holiday and there was going to be cake and ale afterwards, so they listened good-humouredly. Prince Raymis liked it very much, except for the tap-dancing which went on longer than he thought was necessary.

“Thankyou, that will do!” he said. The crowd clapped kindly. Bede made the curtsy that she had practised over and over and managed to step even closer to the coronation chair where Raymis was sitting. As she straightened up, she suddenly pointed at the chair and screamed, “Look! A mouse!”

“Where?” Raymis screeched, springing to his feet. Bede pulled the invisible pouch over her head and threw it as hard as she could. It flew through the air and landed on the coronation chair. The mouse scrambled out, suddenly visible.

“Got you!” shouted the archbishop, bringing the crown down smartly on top of the mouse, for in his day, before he became archbishop, he had been known as the best rat-catcher in his village.

Bede launched herself at Raymis and snatched the carbuncle from around his neck. She dropped it on the floor and tap-danced all over it, shattering it into a million pieces.

Immediately a shortish young man with smooth dark hair, rose from the coronation chair, with the crown on his head. “Your Majesty,” cried the archbishop, sinking on one knee. “King Locran!” The crowd, seeing the rightful king rightfully crowned, although they didn’t understand in the least how it had happened and supposed it was some kind of magic show arranged for their benefit, gave three enormous cheers. Then they sank on their knees too.

“So, you have won,” Prince Raymis said bitterly. “Defeated by a mouse!”

“A mouse and a courageous young woman,” King Locran said.

“So now the throne is yours, and the hand of Princess Amabel, just as you always wanted,” Raymis said heavily.

In the corner of the room. a high-pitched screaming was coming from the cat’s cage. The princess Amabel, who was squashed into the cage with her fingers and toes poking out through the gaps, was screaming, “Let me out of here!” The servants quickly opened the cage and she climbed out, smoothing down her hair.

Bede recognised the pretty jewelled necklace she was wearing, and said, “You! You were the cat who tried to kill Prince Locran in the marketplace!”

“A smelly little mouse!” hissed Amabel. “I begged Raymis to tun me into a cat so I could take care of the little rodent, but you got in my way! However, that is all in the past.” She took Locran’s hand with a smirk.

The king put her hand into his brother’s hand. “She’s all yours, Raymis,” he said, “so long as you both find somewhere to live far away from me and my true queen.” He took Bede’s hand, smiling. “If she will have a mere mouse.”

So Bede and Locran were married and ruled wisely and well. It is said that it was under their rule that the growing of sunflowers and the making of cheese in the seventh kingdom became what they are today, the best and most successful in all the secluded kingdoms. What remained of the cloak of invisibility stayed in the royal treasury for a long time, until a time came when the kingdom was in great need again, but that is a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a rich nobleman who lived in a great house and had everything his heart could desire. All around him lived poor people in cold, cramped houses with little enough to eat in spite of working hard from dawn till dusk every day, but Valerian never gave any thought to them.

Then one day a terrible plague struck the town and the countryside around it. People fell sick and lay in their homes with no medicine and no-one to look after them, and many of them died. In his great house, with plenty of food to eat and warm fires in every room, Valerian hardly knew what was happening, until one day his favourite servant, a young man named Coby, fell sick and fainted before his eyes.

Valerian lifted him in his own arms and carried him to the servants’ rooms. “The boy is ill,” he said. “Help him.”

But no-one rushed to help him. The cook was sitting in her chair weeping into her apron, for her own child had just died of the sickness. The head footman, who was trying to comfort her, said, “There is no-one to help, and nothing we can do. Many of the servants are in bed with the sickness themselves, or else they have gone to say goodbye to the dying in their own families.”

Valerian was struck with horror and shame. “But surely, with good care and medicine, they will recover?” he said.

The footman shook his head. “None of those who become sick with the plague live longer than a few weeks,” he said.

Valerian laid Coby down and instructed the head footman to do what he could for him, then he rushed from the house. Throughout the whole town and the neighbouring city he searched for medicines, or for a doctor who could help him, but he could find no-one. Everywhere he went, there were houses full of the sick and the dying.

Returning to the marketplace, he searched wildly for healing herbs or medicines of any kind but there was nothing. Everything had been tried, and everything was useless.

He was standing in the centre of the marketplace tearing his hair, when he heard a low voice, singing, “In sorrow or in sickness, healing comes soon for those who are touched by the tears of the moon.”

Valerian turned and saw a girl plaiting vines and weaving them into a basket. “You, there,” he said. “What is this about the tears of the moon? What are they, and how can I get them?”

The girl, whose name was Silva, said, “It’s only an old song, sir. My mother used to sing it to me, and her mother to her.”

“Is it true?” Valerian demanded. “Can the tears of the moon save someone from this sickness?”

“I don’t know,” said the girl, her deft fingers continuing to form the sides of the basket.

“Look at me when I speak to you,” Valerian said roughly. “Don’t you see who I am?”

“No, sir, for I am blind,” said the girl, her fingers still working.

“Blind?” said Valerian. “How can you do that work, if you cannot see?”

Silva smiled. “This is work of the hands, not of the eyes,” she said. “My fingers know the vines and the baskets form themselves under my hands. See?” She plaited the top edge of the basket and wove in a handle.

“The song you sang – where can I get these ‘tears of the moon’? Is it a herb, or a plant?” Valerian asked.

Silva shook her head. “It is only an old legend. Whoever can weave three reed baskets in one night between moonrise and moonset will find the tears of the moon.”

“Your fingers are swift and skilful,” said Valerian. “You can surely finish three baskets in one night.”

Silva shook her head again. “Baskets of willow, or cane, are quickly made. But reeds from the Black Lake are as sharp as knives and as thick as leather. They must be woven on the same day that they are harvested, for by the next morning they are dried out and brittle, and impossible to weave with. Only the most skilled hands can make baskets from reeds without being cut to pieces. But once woven, they make the most beautiful baskets, light and waterproof.”

Valerian said, “If you will do this for me, I will pay you whatever you ask.”

Silva said, “I would gladly weave one hundred baskets if it would help cure the sickness, but even as skilled as I am, I can barely finish one in a day.”

Valerian thought for a moment, then said, “Then you must teach me.”

“You?” said Silva. “Have you ever made a basket before?”

“No,” Valerian said, “so you had better begin at once.”

Day after day he sat at Silva’s side, letting her take his hands and guide them in bending and twining the vines together. His first efforts went straight into the fire, and his second were not much better, more like sieves than baskets. After endless hours of learning, and weaving long into the night, he could make a passable basket.

“I don’t think you would find a buyer for it in the market,” Silva laughed, “but it is a basket of sorts.”

“Now teach me how to cut and weave the reeds from the lake,” Valerian said.

The reeds grew straight as swords all around the edges of the lake, and they were tough as leather, as Silva had said. Even the heaviest knife could only cut a handful before it became blunt and needed sharpening again. After a whole morning of harvesting the reeds, there were barely enough to make even one basket.

Valerian began to weave them and the first reed sliced though his fingers. He cried out in pain, “How can anyone ever make a basket with these?”

“Perhaps that is why it is only a legend,” Silva said. But Valerian refused to give up hope. He went on cutting down the reeds and trying to weave them in a basket. The reeds cut his fingers and his palms, and his fingers bled so much that the baskets were red with blood.

Then he remembered what Silva had said, that the baskets must be made in a single night, between moonrise and moonset and he almost despaired. If he could barely make a single basket in full daylight, how could he ever finish three, working in darkness? His heart sank, then he remembered her gentle voice saying, “It is a work of the hands, not of the eyes.”

He covered his eyes with a bandage and set to work. His fingers were clumsy and took much longer to find the strands he wanted. But he persisted until his hands flew at the task more swiftly than they ever had with the guidance of his eyes. Finally he decided that ready or not, Coby and the others who lay close to death could wait no longer. “If I don’t succeed in finding the tears of the moon, whatever they may be, they will die. I simply must succeed.”

It was the night of the full moon, close to the middle of winter when the nights are longest. All day he and Silva cut and hacked at the reeds around the lake until there was a huge pile ready. As soon as the moon rose, Valerian set to work.

He plied and twisted, weaving the reeds tightly up against each other, round and around. He could barely see what he was doing but his hands knew their job. His first basket was finished just as the moon reached the highest point in the sky. “Half the night gone, and only one basket made!” he exclaimed. He redoubled his efforts, weaving faster than he knew he could, and finished the second basket in almost half the time of the first.

His fingers were split and covered in blood, but he set to work on the third basket with all the determination he had. The moon was sinking quickly and he had to force himself not to slacken his pace, no matter how tired he was.

The moon was within touching distance of the horizon when he reached the top of his third basket only to discover that he had used the last of the reeds. He jumped to his feet and ran to the edge of the lake and began sawing at the reeds. In his haste he dropped his knife. It sank into the water and hid itself in the mud. He searched frantically but he could not find it.

With tears in his eyes, he tore at the razor-sharp reeds with his bare hands. With blood running down his arms, he glanced past the reeds towards the moon which was slipping silently below the horizon. Suddenly he noticed that on the reeds around him there were droplets of a clear liquid like dew, which reflected the silver light of the moon, as if the reeds themselves were weeping. “Tears!” Valerian cried. “The tears of the moon!”

He sped back to his nearly finished basket and wove the last of the reeds into its border. Then with the finished baskets, he raced back to the lake edge. One by one he shook the standing reeds gently so that the droplets fell into the baskets, while the moon dipped lower and lower. As the last echo of moonlight left the sky, he shook the last of the dew into his full baskets.

Carefully he carried them back to the town, to his own house, where he gave some to Coby and the rest of the servants. They stirred and woke, refreshed and well again. With Silva at his side, he went through the town, giving the medicine to anyone who was sick, and they too were cured.

From that day on Valerian had his house made into a hospital for the sick, and he and Silva and their children and grandchildren after them were famous throughout the seven kingdoms as basket-makers and healers.

Stories for Another Day

Long, long ago when dinosaurs were as common and ordinary as trees and worms, a baby dinosaur popped out of his egg who was different from all the other dinosaurs. This dinosaur had no bones. Instead his inside parts were made of rubber. Everything worked perfectly well, and to look at he was just like the other dinosaurs, except that when he walked, he bounced a bit instead of stomping.

His parents called him BeeBee. His big brother, Rolf, looked down on him with his long, elegant, diplodocus neck, and tried to pretend that he was someone else’s brother. “We don’t look anything alike,” he declared. “Everyone says I look exactly like my great-great-grandfather, Supersaurus. Personally, I think another species of dinosaur put their egg in our nest.” He turned away and went on cleaning his teeth. It would never do to leave behind a tooth that had decay in it for the archaeologists to find.

All the dinosaurs spent hours talking about where they were planning to die, so that their bones would be in perfect condition when the scientists dug them up in a thousand years. A nice sandy river, or a muddy swamp was the best. Every dinosaur’s dream was to be famous, and if they were very lucky, to have their bones put in a museum. Rolf’s dream was to have his whole skeleton found, and have it strung together with wires and hung in pride of place in the Dinosaur Hall in a famous museum. He spent a lot of time lying down in the swamp, practising artistic poses.

BeeBee had no bones at all to leave for collectors to find. No team of archaeologists with their spades and their soft brushes would ever find one of his bones and then dig up his skeleton and become famous overnight and have their names put in books.

None of the other diplodocuses had anything to say to BeeBee. He felt more and more lonely every day, until finally one day he decided he might as well leave, and see what there was to see in the rest of the world.

Because he wasn’t weighed down by big, heavy bones, BeeBee could travel faster than most dinosaurs. He travelled all over the world, from the forests at the very top to the wild jungles at the very bottom. Having no bones helped him to float too, so he could swim in great oceans and deep rivers. It was while he was swimming at a beautiful beach one day that something happened that changed everything for him.

BeeBee was floating on his back in the clear, warm water when he heard a commotion on the beach. A mother turtle was crying and wringing her flippers. “My babies!” she cried. “All the eggs that I laid up in the sandhills are hatching out!”

“That’s nice,” said BeeBee.

“But there’s a great, big pteranodon swooping down and eating them, one by one! Please, please, help me!” she pleaded.

BeeBee got up at once to see what he could do. “Hey, stop that!” he yelled. “Shoo! Go away!” But the pteranodon smiled its evil, crooked smile at him and kept on snapping up the baby turtles.

BeeBee thought hard. The baby turtles had to waddle all the way from the sand hills to the water, where they could swim away and be safe. What they needed was a safe passageway where the pteranodon couldn’t get them.

BeeBee clambered to the top of the sand hills, then he slid all the way down, dragging his long tail behind him to make a deep, narrow track that reached all the way to the water. It was just wide enough for a baby turtle to walk down, but too deep for a pteranodon to get his claws into. One by one, the baby turtles found their way into the track and toddled safely down to the sea.

The mother turtle was so happy that she told everyone what BeeBee had done. Soon lots of creatures were coming to BeeBee for help. He dug holes when the ground was too hard for the lizards and snakes to lay their eggs. He reached up his long neck to pick fruit and leaves for the smaller animals. Sometimes he helped when the young ones were playing soccer, using his tail to keep the ball out of the goal. He gave the baby lizards rides on his back, and let the little crocodiles jump on his big, bouncy tummy. Every time he helped someone, he made a new friend.

One day he came to a wide, flat plain, covered in trees and ferns and bushes. BeeBee sighed and thought what a beautiful place it would be to live. There was a wonderful smell in the air, that seemed to be coming from a strange, coloured plant. Then a family of salamanders ran over his foot. BeeBee stepped out of the way, and asked, “What’s the hurry?” BeeBee asked. “Where’s everyone going?”

One of the salamanders stopped for a second and said, “Haven’t you heard? The rains are coming. There’s going to be a terrible flood soon.”

“A flood?” said BeeBee. “But there’s no water here at all, not even a river.”

“If there was a river, it could carry the water away to the sea,” said the salamander, “but this plain is so flat that when the rains come, the whole plain is flooded. We’ve got to get to higher ground, or we’ll all be drowned.”

“What about all your homes, and the beautiful plants and trees?” BeeBee asked.

“They’ll all be washed away. It happens every year,” the salamander said. “I can’t stand around talking to you now, I have to go.” And it ran off as fast as its legs would carry it.

“Wait!” BeeBee called. “Can you tell me what this plant is, that smells so nice?”

“It’s called a flower,” said the salamander over its shoulder as it sped away.

“A flower,” BeeBee said, wonderingly. He thought about the whole plain being covered with water and everything being washed away, all the trees, the plants, and this flower. He made up his mind. He wasn’t going to let this plain be flooded if he could help it.

The flat plain was surrounded by low hills. BeeBee started by charging into the hills with his head down, over and over, until he made a gap through them. Then using his tail he dug a long trench from one side of the plain to the other, through the gap he had made in the hills. He dug more and more dirt out of the trench, making it good and wide, and he piled the dirt up on each side of the trench. Then he jumped up and down in the trench, making the bottom of it flat and hard.

The rains began, and still BeeBee dug and jumped and piled. It rained all day and all night, pouring down on the plain. Instead of spreading out over the plain and getting deeper and deeper, the rain water ran into the canal that BeeBee had made. It filled up the canal, and then it flowed through the gap in the hills, down to the valley on the other side and then out to the sea. The plain and all the animals and plants were saved.

Every year, BeeBee dug the canal a little deeper and piled the sides up a little higher, so that the plain could never flood again, no matter how heavy the rains were. The animals knew that their homes were safe, and the trees and flowers grew and flourished by the banks of the canal.

One day the salamander said to its friends, “We are very lucky we have BeeBee to look after us. But sometimes he seems unhappy.”

The mother crocodile said, “That’s because BeeBee has no bones, so he’s never going to be a fossil in a museum like the other dinosaurs.”

“I know a way that everyone will remember BeeBee long after all the dinosaur bones are dug up and taken away,” said a thoughtful iguana. So all the animals helped to carve a picture of BeeBee on a big flat rock where everyone could see it, so that he would always be remembered, for generations to come.

Stories for Another Day

One day, in a great sandy desert, there was a stirring in the sands and a small creature poked her nose out, and then climbed out of the hole she had made. The brightness of the sun did not blind her eyes, for she had no eyes, and she felt no thirst, for she never drank. The sun burned down fiercely, but the creature only smiled and went back into her hole.

The sun was angry. He said to the Maker of All Things, “This creature, the mole rat, does not bow to me the way all other creatures do.”

The Maker of All Things replied slowly, “Why should this creature bow to you?”

“All things bow to me,” the sun said proudly. “I am the oldest, the first of all created things, the most powerful, the most glorious! This creature does not show me the respect that is due to me. It cannot be.”

The Great Maker pondered what the sun had said.

“And the creature is naked,” the sun added. “To appear naked before you, the Great Maker of All Things, is very disrespectful.”

“Are you not naked?” the Great Maker asked.

“I am clothed in fire,” the sun said loftily. “Any covering would burn away in an instant. But all other creatures wear some kind of skin, or fur or feathers. Even the alligator wears his armour plates.”

The silence stretched for so long that the sun feared the Maker had gone to sleep.

Then in a deep rumble, the Maker said, “What do you propose, First of All Created Things?”

“A competition,” said the sun, who loved contests of every kind. As the most powerful, he always won, and this pleased him more than anything. Why, this very desert, barren and empty of anything except sand and rocks, had once been a rainforest until the sun had won a competition with the Rain to see who had the most endurance.

The silence this time was even longer. Then, “As you wish,” said the Maker, and withdrew into silence.

The sun thought hard. This competition must show his overwhelming power so that the disrespectful mole rat would be truly humiliated, and acknowledge the sun’s superiority in all things. That night, while he lay in the darkness below the horizon, he thought through many different plans.

He recalled one of his first contests, with the moon, when she had challenged him to see who was the most beautiful. It seemed that he would have no chance of winning since the moon alone made people stop and gaze into the night sky. But the sun, even from below the horizon stirred himself up and made the aurora, the northern lights, appear in the sky in swirling colours of red and green and blue. People turned away from the moon to gaze awestruck at the glimmering lights. To this day the moon was so embarrassed that she only dared to appear in her fullness for a few days each month, and appeared as a mere sliver at other times.

But he must be careful. He remembered all too well challenging the thunder to see who was loudest. The thunder rolled and boomed across the sky triumphantly while the sun boiled and crashed and exploded with all his might, only to find that not a whisper of sound reached the earth, so he might as well have stayed silent. Thunder was rejoicing in his victory over the sun when the sun thought of another way to defeat him. He stirred up the solar winds and sent out cosmic rays that caused a rumbling volcano to explode with the loudest sound ever heard on the earth. Thunder was soundly defeated. From then on he stayed in the shadow of his friend, the lightning, and only rumbled when she flashed.

The sun chuckled to himself. Nothing so powerful would be needed to defeat a mere desert mole rat. He had the perfect plan.

“O mole,” he called, “come up and stay a while, and chat with me. There are questions that are troubling me. If you can answer them, then I will declare that you are even wiser than I am, and more powerful, for it is well known that true power comes from wisdom.”

The mole rat put her head out of the sand and considered what the sun was saying. She could not afford to make the sun angry. His blazing heat on her naked skin was like being roasted alive, and she had young ones to think about.

“Very well,” she said, “But I am very busy this morning. Three questions only.”

The sun smiled. He was sure that one question would be enough to win the contest. A beam of golden light struck the desert, and the mole rat felt a scorching pain on her back.

“You are a creature of the dark,” the sun said in a humble voice, pretending to be seeking knowledge. “Then tell me, what is darkness made of?” For in truth, the sun hated darkness, and every day he burned as fiercely as he could, in order to keep the darkness away.

The mole rat said, “I live in the darkness, it is true, but I am blind. I have never seen darkness. How can I know what it is made of?”

The sun smiled on the other side of his face. Clearly he was going to win this competition. But the mole rat went on, “I think darkness must be made of nothing, the emptiness left behind when light leaves.”

“A ridiculous answer!” the sun said crossly. “How can anything be made of nothing?” He thought carefully before he asked his next question. “Can you tell me,” he asked craftily, “where is the best place to hide from the dark? For if one is afraid of the dark, where can they possibly hide?”

“Some might say they should hide in the light,” the mole rat began, and the sun smiled, thinking of how her answer gave him more glory, but she continued, “but that is impossible. To know where to hide from the dark, you must ask my little one. For when he is afraid, he hides in my pouch. He knows that there is no need to fear the dark, for his mother’s love dispels any fear.”

The sun was angry with her clever answer. The leaping pools of fire on his face boiled and rolled. He blazed his fiercest and the mole rat felt her skin turning red. Angrily, the sun threw his last question at her.

“What sound does the darkness make?” he asked.

The mole rat thought, then she answered, “It makes the same sound as the heart beating, the eye closing and the ear listening.”

“That is no answer,” the sun said angrily. “It has no meaning!”

“It is enough answer for a meaningless question,” said the mole rat. “And now that you have asked your three questions- “

“Wait! One more question,” said the sun, anxious to win the contest. “Where is the darkest place of all?”

“There is nowhere darker than a proud, wicked heart,” the mole rat said coldly. The sun was so confused and embarrassed by this answer that he pulled the clouds over his face. Even then his red face glowed through them and spread across the whole sky. Seeing this, he slid below the horizon and hid himself out of sight.

In the soft new evening, the voice of the Maker of All Things was heard. “Itjaritjari, little mole!” came the voice.

The mole rat bowed low, her face in the sand.

“Itjaritjari, you have spoken well,” said the Maker. “From now on you will have a coat of finest golden fur, so that anyone seeing you will know that you have my favour. And it will protect you from the burning rays of the sun, for he will not take this defeat easily and will always seek to harm you.”

Itjaritjari smiled, and bowed again. “May it please you,” she said, “and my children after me?”

“And all your children,” said the Maker. “And one more gift: you and your children will have strong paddles on your front and back feet so that you can dig more swiftly than any other creature, and no longer be troubled by those who would ask foolish questions.”

Itjaritjari laughed, and in the space of a short breath, she dug herself out of sight.

Stories for Another Day

In the third kingdom there was a village where nearly everyone was peaceful and contented. The soil was rich, the crops were abundant and a clear river flowed wide and deep along the edge of the village.

Alongside the river, at the outer edge of the town, Nemmy lived with her grandmother. Their land was especially rich because water was always plentiful, so their animals were healthy and strong, with fine, silky coats. Nemmy’s grandmother spun yarn from the fleeces of their sheep and their goats, that was prized as the finest and most beautiful across the whole kingdom. As she got older and her back ached and her fingers didn’t work as well as they once had, she taught Nemmy all that she knew, and Nemmy brought her own special understanding of the animals and their fleeces that made her yarn even finer and more beautiful than her grandmother’s.

Nemmy’s mother had left not long after she had been born. Nemmy had nothing of her mother’s except a black-covered book, a sort of journal. Her grandmother had given it to her on the day she turned fourteen, saying, “This journal has been kept by women in our family for generations, passed on from mother to daughter. I only wish your mother was here to give it to you,” and she sighed deeply.

The book was old, full of pages written in different hands, even in different languages. Most of the pages were full of ordinary details about chickens or planting, or nursing sick animals. There were odd drawings on some of the pages, one that seemed to be of a large diamond, and another of a key with a design like a dragon’s head. Some of the writing was too faded or too strangely written to read at all.

Nemmy turned straight to the pages her mother had written, but they were just ordinary notes about which pastures produced the best milk from the goats, and how to keep the ducks out of the cabbage patch. She was bitterly disappointed. She had been hoping that the pages of the book would tell her something about her mother, what she was like, her thoughts and ideas. But all she found was that her mother and her grandmother and all the women before her had taken up the task of looking after the land and the animals in their care. Somehow it was comforting to think that now it was her turn.

One day, some time after, there was an outcry in the village. A whole row of turnips growing in the common ground were diseased, soft and mushy and black at their hearts. The Town Council met hurriedly and decided that the turnips must be dug up straight away. Their leader, a big man called Ornn, took his spade, but as he lifted it to dig up the first turnip, a voice shouted, “No!” A boy called Will came rushing up. “If you break the skin of even one of the turnips, the blackness will seep into the soil and poison the whole ground!” he panted.

“What are you talking about?” Ornn growled, but Will, who had no parents of his own, lived in a tiny hut on the common ground, among the plants themselves, and the people listened to him. Ornn put down his spade and strode off.

That night as Nemmy was falling asleep, or perhaps just after she had fallen asleep, a dark, hooded figure appeared in her room, standing by her bed. “The book,” it whispered. “Take a page from the book.”

When she woke in the morning, Nemmy remembered the mysterious whispering. She took the book from under her pillow where she always kept it. She scoured its pages again and again, but she could find nothing that seemed to be of any help. In the end, she gave up and shut the book with a snap. But then she closed her eyes and let her fingers open the book and pull a page right out of it.

With clever fingers she folded the page into the shape of a duck, and took it down to the common ground where Will was keeping an anxious watch. She set it down on the ground and it immediately began snapping up the sick turnips, one after another, until every one was gone. Will was astonished, but no more than Nemmy was. She picked up the duck, straightened out the paper and put it back into the book.

They said nothing to anyone, except that Will made it known that the common ground was safe again. The whole village rejoiced. But before long, more cries of distress arose. “The river! The river has stopped flowing!” they cried.

Everyone rushed to the river, which had always provided clean water for drinking and washing and for watering the crops. It was choked with weeds, long twisting ribbons that had sprung up overnight. The water, unable to flow, was brown and full of dead fish.

Some tried pulling out the weeds, but the ribbons were as sharp as knives and sliced their hands. Ornn turned to Nemmy and said, “Your land runs along the length of this stretch of the river. This has happened because of your bad management, and it is threatening all of us in the village. You need someone of experience who can manage your lands for you. Come, let us be married, and I will take care of it for you.”

“Married!” Nemmy was horrified. Ornn was repulsive, coarse and loud-mouthed and a bully. But the villagers all urged her to accept his offer. “Let me have a night and a day to think,” she faltered, and escaped back to her home.

As soon as darkness fell, she opened the book and took out a page. She folded it into the shape of a fish and took it to the river. She put the paper fish into the water, where it swam about happily. With its sharp mouth, it nipped the base of each reed at the roots, cutting them off to float away downstream. Soon the river was clear and flowing once more.

In the morning when the villagers gathered at the riverbank, Ornn roared, “What magic is this?” He swung round and pointed an accusing finger at Nemmy. “You have done this, by some kind of sorcery!” He turned to the people and shouted, “She is the source of all the evil in this place – get rid of her! Put her to death!”

Will stepped forward and stood in front of Ornn. “It is you who have been playing with magic and bringing disaster down on us,” he said. “I saw you sprinkling some black powder over the turnip patch. You must have done the same to the river.”

Ornn roared at the top of his voice and came charging towards Will, drawing his great sword. Will fell back, dodging out of the way. Nemmy opened her book, which she had carried with her in her apron pocket, and tore out a page. She quickly folded it into a sword which she tossed to Will.

Ornn laughed scornfully. “A paper sword, for a paper hero!” He slashed at the sword in Will’s hand, but as it met the paper, his own sword trembled and shattered into a dozen pieces. His eyes filled with fear. He staggered back and fell into the river. The last of the reeds tangled around him like ribbons of iron and he was swept away, never to be seen again.

At that moment, the dark figure that Nemmy had seen at her bedside stepped out of the shadows, and pulled back its hood. Will raised his sword, but the woman said, “Don’t be afraid, I am Nemmy’s mother.”

“My mother?” Nemmy said uncertainly.

The woman said, “I have been in hiding all this time, my dear child. Ornn pursued me, day and night, trying to force me to marry him, not because he loved me, but because he wanted to get his hands on our land. When you were old enough and his eyes turned to you, I had to do something to save you from him.”

“You saved the whole village!” Nemmy said,

“Your strength and Will’s courage saved the village,” her mother smiled. “Now I can come out of the shadows and live in the light again, with you and my mother.” And so she did, even after Nemmy and Will were married, and they all lived very happily together. Nemmy passed the book down to her own daughter and her granddaughter, and they all added their own stories to its pages. In time the secrets it held saved more than the village and its people, but that is a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a boy who would not sleep, and the reason was this. As a tiny baby, when his mother put him in his crib one night to sleep, he chanced to open his eyes and see the first star of the evening. It so enchanted him, twinkling prettily in the violet sky, that he lay awake watching it. As the night sky darkened, and more and more stars showed themselves, he watched them, delighted, smiling and gurgling and waving his little hands.

Every night after that he stayed awake, looking at the stars and watching the moon striding up and over the skies. If he was put to bed with the curtains closed, or in another room where he could not see the stars, he cried and fretted until he was placed where he could see them again. Then he would settle down contentedly.

As he grew, the stars, the planets and the moon were his friends. He was hopeless at his lessons because he kept falling asleep, having been awake from early evening until the last star disappeared in the brightness of the dawn. In fact, he probably would never have learned to read at all except that his mother found him a book about planets and stars. As he pored over it, the mysteries of how the stars moved, what kept them in place, and what gave them colour unfolded for him.

His parents despaired of him ever being any use for anything. He was unskilled at everything important, at ploughing, building, cooking, or caring for animals. He complained that the sun hurt his eyes, and he preferred to be inside during the daylight hours, so he was useless at games, sluggish and uninterested. His brothers and sisters teased him relentlessly, so the cloak of darkness became his escape, and solitude his choice. He began to spend his days in hiding, and his nights roaming the fields and the forest, learning the ways of the stars.

And then the dragon came to his village. This dragon had eaten its way through many villages in its time, and several good-sized towns. It started by devouring the herds, two or three animals at a time, a dozen for a meal. When all the animals were gone and the fields and barns were empty, it started on the villagers themselves. When it had eaten the last beating heart, it preened itself for a while and then it flew off to find a new village to feed on.

The boy, whose name was Castor, was the first to see the dragon arrive. Awake as usual while everyone else slept, he noticed a great black cloud obscuring the stars, moving across the sky. When the cloud sprouted wings that began to flap, Castor knew what it meant, and he was terrified.

He went to the house where the Head Villager lived and knocked at the door with a shaking hand.

Old Oscar got out of bed, grumbling, “Castor, is that you, you young fool? Why have you come disturbing a man in the middle of the night?”

“A dragon!” Castor croaked, hardly able to speak the word. “I saw a dragon flying into the valley!”

Oscar’s face went white. He clutched Castor’s arm. “Pray God you are wrong!” he said. But when the morning came, it was clear to everyone that he was not.

So it began. The dragon settled itself comfortably in the elbow of the mountain stream just where it flowed into the village, in easy reach of the fields and the village itself. Day by day it gobbled and stuffed itself, its body sinking heavily into the stream, which it fouled with its filth.

The village leaders all met secretly. “We must send for a dragon-slayer, or we are all doomed, every one of us,” they agreed.

“I’ve heard of a young dragon-slayer,” said old Oscar. “He is young, but he seems to know his business well enough. His name is Dharab.”

“Send for him!” the others said. “There is no time to lose! The more the dragon eats, the hungrier it gets!”

“But who will go?” old Oscar asked.

They looked at each other, fear written plainly on their faces. The only road out of the village passed directly in front of the dragon’s nest. Each of them weighed up the certainty of being snatched up and eaten alive against the few weeks of huddling indoors waiting for the dragon to sniff them out. They looked away from each other and returned to their homes without speaking another word.

Everyone in the village soon knew what had been said at the meeting, and now little hope remained. One by one, their eyes turned to Castor. They knew that if anyone was going to slip under the dragon’s guard and fetch the dragon-slayer, it would have to be in the dead of night, and the only person who could find their way across the fields and over the mountain in the darkness, was Castor.

So it was Castor, with fear in his stomach like a belt of lead, trembling so much that he thought everyone must be able to hear his bones knocking together, who slipped out of the village in the middle of the night, swathed in black from head to toe.

He could hear the dragon snoring as he slipped past like a shadow. He was afraid that he would trip, or stumble and wake the monster, but it was far easier than he expected. His feet were sure in the dark and he could read the path as he always did, by the map of the stars overhead. Before dawn he was safely on the other side of the mountain.

It took him one long day and half the the next night to reach the dragon-slayer’s house. The dragon-slayer agreed to come at once, and the journey back began. Castor led the way, sure-footed as always in the dark. The stars, like an open book, showed him the way back over the mountain when Dharab or any other man would have been completely lost.

When they finally reached Castor’s village, Dharab fought the dragon and defeated it after a great struggle, but that story has been told elsewhere. At the end of the battle, Dharab put his hand on Castor’s shoulder and offered to take him as his apprentice, but Castor slowly shook his head.

“That is not for me,” he said firmly. “I know what an honour is it to be offered the chance to be your apprentice, but I have a different calling.”

Dharab nodded. “The stars call you, don’t they? To know the patterns of the stars as they move, to know their names and how they tell the seasons and the times – that is great wisdom indeed!”

Castor said warmly, “The starts have taught me many things. I am only beginning to realise how grateful I should be.”

Dharab said, “Sailors, fishermen at sea, hunters, and soldiers lost in unknown lands – so many people would give a great deal to have your skill, to be able to find their way by the stars alone, by signs that no other eye can see!”

They embraced each other, each of them full of admiration for the other, and then they went down the mountainside to the village together, where the feasting and celebrations lasted more than a day and a night. And as night fell and the stars rose, Castor set out on his next adventure.

Stories for Another Day

Malachy was a weaver who worked hard at his trade. His workroom was full of great reels of coloured thread that he used to weave strong, handsome cloth on his loom. All day long he clacked his shuttle back and forth, weaving cloth for shirts and trousers and dresses and blankets.

His daughter Elodie cooked his meals and kept the house tidy, did the scrubbing and dusting, carried the cloth to market and sold it, and carried home new reels of wool and cotton for Malachy to make more cloth from. All in all they did very well together. But time changes everything, as you know, and things could not go on like this forever.

One morning Malachy got up and stretched and yawned and went into this workroom as he always did, to see how his work was progressing and how much he would have to do that day. When he saw the loom, he stopped and rubbed his eyes. How could it be? He was certain that when he went to bed the night before, he had left the loom all threaded up and ready to weave a new length of cloth, but here was the job finished, the cloth cut off the loom and neatly folded on his bench.

Did he dream it? Had he gotten up in his sleep and woven the cloth with his eyes shut? But when he looked more closely at the cloth, he knew very well it was not of his making. The pattern was one he had never seen before, and the weaving was finer and more even than he could ever possibly do.

His daughter Elodie came in and said, “Finished already, father?”

Malachy looked at her, confused, then he said, “Yes, yes,” and handed her the cloth.”This should fetch a good price at the market!” And indeed it did.

Malachy spent the day threading a new warp onto his loom. When he went to bed that night, it was all ready for weaving, but when he got up the next morning, the cloth was already woven, just as it had been the day before. The pattern was unusual and very beautiful, entwined ferns and vines, much more difficult than Malachy would have had the skill to weave even in his wildest dreams.

“Elodie!” he called. “Take this cloth to the market, and ask a very high price for it. This is finer than any other cloth you could buy.”

His daughter took it to the market, and got almost twice the money she usually got for her father’s cloth.

The next night it must be said, the weaver’s curiosity was too much for him. He threaded the loom before he went to bed, as he always did, but this time he crept down to his workroom in the middle of the night, to see who was doing such miraculous weaving. He could hear the loom clacking and clattering inside the workroom. When he eased the door open, the room was full of snakes! There were snakes carrying the shuttle back and forth, and snakes pulling the beater down and back again, and snakes pressing the treadles, snakes everywhere!

Now the weaver had a greater horror of snakes than anything in the world. “Elodie!” he shouted. “Fetch a club, and bring me my shovel! There are snakes all over the workroom!”

Elodie came running, but she didn’t bring a club or a shovel. “Now, Papa,” she said, closing the workroom door quietly, “don’t make such a fuss. It’s just a few snakes, after all, and you know, they are very good weavers.”

Malachy wiped the sweat off his face. “Just a few? Even one snake would be too many!”

Elodie led him to his favourite chair and said, “Sit down, Papa, I have something to tell you.” She went to the stove and heated a little milk and put some into a cup for him.

“Oh no!” groaned Malachy, putting his head in his hands. “Don’t tell me you met a handsome young man in the woods who fell in love with you at first sight and asked you to marry him, then led you to his lair underground where he changed into a snake before your very eyes and now you find yourself the Queen of the Snakes?”

“No, Papa, that’s hardly likely, it is?” Elodie said, for in actual fact, she was no longer a girl, and besides, several of her teeth were missing, and she had given up hope of any young men falling in love with her at first sight.

Malachy said, “Did you find an injured snake in the woods and bring it home and care for it only to find that it was an enchanter who offered to grant you anything your heart desired?”

“No, Papa,” Elodie said. “What an imagination you have!”

“You weren’t bitten by a magic spider that gave you the power to understand the speech of animals so you have commanded these snakes to do your bidding?” he asked.

“Getting closer,” Elodie said. “Now sit quietly and drink this warm milk and I will tell you what happened. Do you remember there was a circus in the village a few weeks ago? Their trained snakes were getting too old and too stubborn to do their act any more and the ring-master decided to get rid of them. I thought that trained snakes would be the very thing for weaving, with their long thin bodies and their clever tails, and those tricky forked tongues for threading the heddles, so I bought them.”

“Bought them?” Malachy cried. “When you know that snakes are the one thing in the world that I cannot bear? You could have gotten spiders, or sharks, or savage man-eating tigers, and I would have been happier!”

“Yes, Papa,” Elodie said calmly.

“I can’t bear to go into the workroom while there are snakes in there!” he moaned.

“Yes, Papa,” Elodie said, still calmly.

“What do you mean, you wicked girl!” her father shouted.

“Now, Papa, drink your milk and calm down,” Elodie said. “You know that your cloth hasn’t been fetching the price it used to. You’re not as young as you used to be and your eyes are getting weaker. It takes you much longer to thread the heddles, you know, and your back is not as strong, so the cloth is of poorer quality.”

“I suppose that may be so,” Malachy said, grudgingly.

“And although I have designed new patterns for you time and again, you insist on sticking to your old patterns,” Elodie said.

“New patterns, pah!” Malachy snorted. “A waste of time.”

“No, Papa,” Elodie said. “Everyone wants new patterns, and they are selling very well, especially when they are woven so expertly.”

Malachy sighed. “I must say that every day I feel more tired than the day before. It is harder to thread the heddles, and the beater seems heavier every day.”

Elodie patted his arm and said, “Now that we have a workroom full of clever, willing workers, you can retire from your weaving and never have to set foot in the workroom again. You can sit by the fire, and read your paper, and warm your toes to your heart’s content.”

And that is exactly what he did.

Stories for Another Day

In the days when Dharab lived, he was known as the greatest dragon-slayer in all of the seven secluded kingdoms, yet he lived very quietly in a small house with no more than he needed. One night he was sitting by his fire, eating his bread and cheese, when out of the darkness there came a knock at his door.

A young man stood outside, his clothes flapping and his hair blown into his face by the stormy winds. “Are you the dragon-slayer, the great Dharab?” he asked.

“My name is Dharab,” Dharab answered. “Come inside to the warmth of the fire.”

The young man was thin, barely half-grown, but he was already tall. “My name is Delf,” he said. “I want to be your apprentice. I want you to teach me the art of dragon-slaying.”

Dharab said, “Mine is a humble trade, difficult and very dangerous.”

The young man persisted. “You are the greatest dragon-slayer ever known. I want to learn everything you have to teach,” he said, and he was determined.

Dharab had never had an apprentice, or even an assistant, and he was uncertain whether or not to take him on. But the young man was so keen and persistent that in the end Dharab agreed. He made a place in his home where Delf could sleep, and he shared his bread with him.

Then began months and years of training. At the beginning, Delf knew next to nothing about the use of the short sword or close fighting with dagger, and although he could throw a spear, his aim was woeful. Dharab patiently coached him and trained him, hour after hour, in the fields outside the town. They fought together with swords, and practised throwing spears hard and fast, at targets high and low, and near and far. In the evenings Delf learned how to clean his weapons and keep their edges sharp and true. When the weather forced them to stay inside, Dharab instructed him in the ways of dragons, how to find their weaknesses and overcome their strengths.

Dharab took Delf with him whenever he went to fight a dragon. Many times his task was made harder because he had to protect Delf as well as deal with the dragon, and more than once his life was endangered when Delf missed his throw or stepped in his way, but gradually the young apprentice learned his trade. His aim and his speed improved, and his hands no longer shook when he faced a fully-grown dragon with only his spear in his hand.

As time went by, Dharab began to be able to rely on him as a skilled assistant, until one day he clapped Delf on the shoulder and said, “You have learned well. You have all the skills to make you a great dragon-slayer. There is nothing more I can teach you.”

Delf smiled, deeply content.

Some weeks later, they were sent for, to kill a dragon in a distant, mountainous part of the kingdom. Now this dragon was old, and wily, steeped in every trick that a dragon knows.

Dharab instructed Delf, “Be on your guard. This dragon is old in the ways of dragons and cleverer than many that we have fought before.”

Delf looked around at the lonely place. Rubbish, bones and half-eaten carcasses lay everywhere. Even the rocks and the earth were burned black and dead.

The dragon, when it emerged from its lair, was the biggest Delf had ever seen. Although it was old, it had lost none of its strength or agility. It took all Dharab’s skill to defeat it, with Delf’s assistance. The battle was long and hard, and it was Delf who dealt the final blow, plunging his sword into the dragon’s heart. But as he drew his sword out, he happened to slash it across Dharab’s arm.

Dharab cried out and his sword fell from his hand. The cut was deep, and besides, the blood of dragons burns and poisons human flesh.

Instead of rushing to help him, Delf stood over Dharab and smiled. “So the legend of the great Dharab will end here,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” Dharab said. “Help me clean this wound before the poison takes hold.”

Delf said, “The poison will not trouble you for long. Your life has reached its end, here in this lonely place, far from any nosy villagers. When I go down to the village and tell them that the great Dharab was killed in his final battle, they will mourn and weep – and I will be the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven kingdoms!”

“What?” Dharab said, his injured arm hanging useless at his side. “You would kill me, just for this?”

Delf said, “This is what I came for, all I ever wanted, to be known as the greatest. While you live, I know that can never be, but with you dead, there is no-one greater than I am.” He raised his sword, ready to bring it down on Dharab. But Dharab was not looking at him but past his shoulder, where he had seen the old dragon begin to stir.

“Look out!’ he yelled, for he recognised the dragon’s oldest trick, to take a blow to the heart and lie as if dead and then to turn on the dragon-slayer while his guard was down. Behind Delf’s unsuspecting back, the dragon reared to its full height, ready to attack. His sword-arm useless, and the poison seeping into his body making him dizzy and weak, Dharab did the only thing he could. He thrust Delf to one side and put his own body between Delf and the dragon.

Delf cried out, “No! What are you doing? I would have killed you, and yet you would save my life? Why are you doing this?”

Dharab had no words to explain. “You are like a son to me,” he said finally.

Delf wept. “Never, I will never be as great as you, living or dead,” he said. With a great cry he pushed Dharab aside and ran at the dragon. He drove his sword into its throat, even as the dragon’s claws stabbed into his heart.

Dharab looked at his friend who had died saving him, and he wept as if his heart would break. He collected his weapons and carried Delf’s body to the foot of the mountain, where he buried him with his own hands. And he and all the villagers for miles around mourned as if for the greatest dragon-slayer ever known.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a man who had two sons. One day when his sons had reached the age where they were ready to go out into the world and fend for themselves, he called them to him.

To the eldest son, Wallis, he gave a golden violin whose sound was so beautiful that it lifted the hearts of all who heard it, no matter how unskilled the player. To his younger son, Cal, he gave an old, battered violin that sounded worse than a rusty door swinging in a gale, unless it was played by the most skilful of players.

Wallis took the golden violin and began to play, and in no time an audience gathered around him. He began to give concerts and before long, hundreds of people were coming to listen to him play. The sound of the violin delighted them, and they begged him to play more and more.

The younger son, Cal, also took the violin his father had given him, but after only a few notes people covered their ears and walked away. Cursing the violin and his unwelcome gift, he threw it into a cupboard and left it there.

Years went by, and Wallis made a great deal of money playing his violin for large audiences. Feeling sorry for his younger brother, he shared his earnings with him. Cal took the money happily and spent it on lavish parties and expensive holidays.

One day Wallis’s father said to him, “Your kindness to your brother is not kindness at all. Don’t you see how he spends what he has not earned, and takes as his own what he has no right to?”

The eldest son said, “But I have more than I need and I have the golden violin as well.”

His father said, “I gave each of you a gift according to your abilities. It is time that Cal used his.”

So Wallis went to his brother and said, “I’m not giving you any more of my money. From now on, you must earn your own.”

Cal said, “You can’t mean it! You have so much and I have so little!”

But Wallis stood firm. Cal shouted angrily, “I don’t need you or your money! I’ll show you!” He strode away. First he went to his friends, who had been more than happy to eat and drink at his parties, but when they saw that he had nothing more to give them, their faces closed and they walked away.

Next he went to his father. “Father, I need money for food and for rent. Please give me what I need.”

His father said, “My son, I have already given you all that I can.”

Cal went away, bitter and angry. He tried to find work, but he had no skill for anything apart from spending money, and no-one would pay him to do that. He sold his clothes and everything he had, but the money they brought was gone quickly. He would even have sold the old violin but no-one would take it. Finally everything was gone, and he was thrown out into the street.

Sitting in the gutter, he looked at the violin and said to himself, “Well at least if I play it, someone may give me money to stop playing!” He took out the violin and began to play.

The sound was so dreadful, he could hardly bear it himself. The other beggars pushed him out of the street and shopkeepers chased him away with brooms and buckets of cold water. He went out into the country, still playing, but the sheep and goats in the fields ran away from him, and farmers came after him with rakes and hoes, claiming that he was turning the cows’ milk sour.

He went further, still playing, deep into the wild forest. The animals hid, and the birds in the trees flew away in a cloud, screeching. Still he played, on and on. He played out his misery, his jealous rage against his brother, and his anger towards his father. Hour after hour, day after day, week after week, he played, and gradually his fingers learned how to hold the bow and press the strings so that the true voice of the violin was allowed to speak, in all its loveliness. The sound of the old, battered violin changed and became melodious and beautiful.

Entranced, the young man’s anger and desolation melted away, as he drew from the violin the sounds of the forest, the wind among the leaves, the birds and their song. He left the forest and made his way back to the town, playing the music of the sunrise, and the swaying of corn in the fields. When the people of the town heard him, they stopped what they were doing to listen. They sang and danced and wept and sighed. When he paused to rest, they pleaded for him to go on.

When he had played until he was so exhausted that he could not play another note, he felt a hand on his shoulder. It was his father.

Cal put down his violin and fell on his knees. “Father!” he said. “How can I thank you enough?”

His father lifted him to his feet and said, “Your brother Wallis is a good and kind man who works hard and shares what he has with anyone in need. But your gift is for music. The music you play will comfort the sorrowful, bring people back from the brink of despair and fill joyful hearts with thanks.”

Cal took up his violin and began playing again, a new song, whose every note spoke of his gratitude and happiness. And so he played every day, for the rest of his life.

Stories for Another Day

In the early days before Dharab became known as the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven kingdoms, when he was simply a young man learning his trade, there was a knock on the door of his hut one evening. He opened it to find a messenger from a village far away in the mountains, two days’ journey away.

“Can you help us?” the young messenger, Castor, pleaded. “For months we have been menaced by a dragon who eats our livestock and fouls the mountain stream from which we draw our water. Please, please come and rid us of this monster, if you can.”

“I will do what I can,” Dharab answered. He strapped his sword to his back and took his spear. He wrapped his cloak around himself and set off with Castor at once.

When they reached the village, tired and hungry after days of travel, the first thing Dharab saw was the dragon. Like a fat, black hillock it had ranged itself across the stream on the outskirts of the village, lying at its ease half in and half out of the water.

Dharab approached it warily, and said, “You are making the lives of these villagers miserable. Leave this place, and leave them in peace.”

The dragon raised a sleepy eyelid and gazed at Dharab. “Puny man, why are you disturbing my rest?” it said.

“These people have asked for my help,” Dharab said. With the courage that was ever his great strength, he said loudly, “You have oppressed them far too long. Begone!” and he lifted his spear.

The dragon coughed mildly. The plume of black smoke that came from its mouth sank into the stream and left a thick, dirty stain. “I am old,” it said, “and I do not see or hear as well as I once did. Come closer, puny one.”

Then Dharab made his first mistake. A dragon’s words may be true or they may not, but you should always ask yourself why it speaks them. Dharab came closer.

The dragon said, “Flying is not as easy as for me as it once was. I only wish to end my years peacefully, in a beautiful place such as this.” It carelessly stabbed a sheep with the pointed end of its tail, roasted it with a blast of fire from its mouth, and popped the sheep whole into its mouth.

Dharab tightened his grip on his spear. “Then find another place, far from here,” he said.

The dragon swept its tail angrily back and forth crushing two or three houses. Then it spoke. “You are young in years and in wisdom,” it said, and then it struck. In moments the dragon had caught Dharab up between its jaws and was flying away over the mountains. It was then that Dharab made his second mistake. He struggled with his spear, trying to attack the dragon. The dragon tossed its head as you would if a fly or a mosquito bothered you, and Dharab’s spear fell to the ground far below.

The villagers watched in horror. Castor shouted, “We must help him!”

The villagers backed away, saying, “What can we do against such a monster, if even the dragon-slayer is helpless? Anyway, the dragon is gone now.” They went back to their homes and their work.

Castor would not give up so easily. After all, it was he who had brought the dragon-slayer here. He picked up Dharab’s spear where it had fallen, and trudged up the mountain towards the place where the dragon had disappeared.

Fortunately for both Dharab and Castor, the dragon had told the truth when it said that it was old. It flew only a short distance, to one of its lairs on the mountainside. There it stopped to catch its breath before it devoured Dharab.

Castor, toiling up the hillside with Dharab’s spear, was not far behind them. The dragon had told the truth when it said that it couldn’t see well, but unfortunately its hearing was as sharp as ever. It heard Castor coming a mile off and as soon as he drew near, it struck out with its tail and swept Castor off his feet. It smiled lazily and turned on Dharab. However, it had forgotten that Dharab still had his sword strapped to his back.

While Castor was keeping the dragon’s attention, Dharab had drawn his sword. With the strength that in years to come became legendary, Dharab swung his sword and sliced off the dragon’s tail. Unbalanced, it toppled onto its back. Dharab rushed forward and drove his sword into its heart.

Castor got to his feet, still shaking with fear but his eyes shining with admiration. Dharab put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and said, “You did well. As it happens, I am looking for an apprentice to learn the trade of dragon-slaying.”

Castor shook his head. “That is not for me,” he said firmly. And in truth, Castor had a very different calling, but that is a story for another day. The two went down the mountainside to the village, side by side, and the feast that the villagers gave to celebrate their victory was so magnificent that it lasted longer than a day and a night.

Stories for Another Day

Long ago, the second kingdom was ruled by darkness for many long years. Any of the people who complained or rebelled were imprisoned in deep underground caverns, so far beneath the earth that no light ever reached them. When the darkness was finally vanquished and light reigned in the second kingdom once more, the people dwelling in the caverns had long been forgotten. Their captors gone, they themselves had forgotten that they had once lived in the light. They married and had children and their children had no memory of what the light even was.

Once or twice a man or a child might venture along the path that led upwards towards the surface, but they always came back with terrifying tales of a great burning redness that scalded their eyes and burnt their skin, and no-one ever went a second time. They were content to live always inside the earth, eating worms and beetles, and any roots and bulbs that they found.

Although they could not see each other, or anything at all for that matter, they recognised each other and their surroundings by touch and by their extraordinarily sharp sense of hearing. Music and singing were their delight. Some of them were experts at sleep, and could entertain the others by the hour, by relating their dreams.

Now there was one young man, Marten, who was always full of questions. He knew that the world above was dangerous, ugly and filled with nothing but deadly, fiery heat, but he wanted to know how dangerous, how ugly, and how deadly it was. Questions and wondering bubbled in him like water boiling in a pan, until he couldn’t stand it any more. He had to find out for himself. So without telling anyone, he went and found the path leading to the surface, and started up it.

It rose slowly, uncoiling like a twisted root. At every corner, Marten expected to be scorched to a crisp where he stood, but when he finally came to the end of the path where the outside world began, he found thick curtains of vines, which blocked every scrap of light. When he pushed past them and stepped outside, he found himself in the most wonderful place.

It was a deep forest, with trees wider than a man could stretch both arms around, that had grown up over many long years. It happened that Marten had come out in the middle of the night rather than in the daytime. Thick, comforting darkness surrounded him, but above he could see the shining sliver of the moon, and a myriad of stars glinting among the treetops.

He wandered, awe-struck, in the forest, until he came to a clearing where he sat down with his back against a tree and simply gazed at the heavens above him. And so it happened that when the sun began to rise, Marten first saw it as a gentle glow, then colours such as he had never seen before, streaking the sky, and then a soft golden warmth.

For hours he sat there, bathed in light and colours and smells he had never known. He found the answers to questions he had never thought of, that sparked even more questions in him. Eventually he got up and went forward, out of the forest and into the world of light.

Days and weeks passed and Marten could hardly get his fill of wonders, sights and sounds, food, flowers, people dressed in bright colours, murmuring streams and wide rivers, and more animals and plants then he could ever dream existed. After a long time of wandering and learning, he began to think of his old home, and in particular of a girl called Tamsen. He wondered how she would look in the light, how her voice would sound without the thick muffling walls of earth on every side. So he made his way back to the forest and found the thick curtains of vines and slipped back between them.

When he reached the bottom of the path, his friends and family, who had long given him up for dead, came crowding around him, eager to know where he had been.

“He smells strange,” they said to each other. “His skin is hard and rough, and oddly warm.” And they stood back from him, afraid. One of them Jorden, said, “These strange smells that cling to him – what if he is bringing a sickness among us?”

“No,” said Marten. “I have been to a wonderful place, a new world, full of light and colour!”

“Colour?” they said to each other. “What is that?”

Marten took some things from his pockets to show them. “Tomatoes,” he said “warm from the sun. Taste them!”

Jorden bit into one and immediately spat it out. “Faugh! What is this foul thing?”

The others took the fruit and the nuts that Marten gave them and sniffed them, amazed. Tamsen took a bite of a ripe apricot and her face lit up with wonder. At last Marten took a rose from his pocket and held it up for her to smell. “Take care not to hurt yourself on the thorns,” he said, but Jordan grabbed it away from her.

“Arhh!” yelled Jorden, sucking his finger where a thorn had caught it. He threw the rose on the ground and trampled it into the dirt. “Dangerous, foul-smelling things – and Marten is bringing them among us! Get him! Lock him up! Let’s block up the pathway so no-one will go up to that evil place again!”

The people grabbed Marten and went to drag him away. “Wait!” he yelled. “First listen to this!” He took one last gift from his pockets, a small wooden flute, and he began to play. The people fell back, astonished and enchanted, then they crowded around eager to know how he made such beautiful sounds. Marten began to sing for them the songs he had heard up in the world of light, songs of valleys of ripened corn, and clear, sparkling rivers full of fish, songs of joy at the coming of spring, of longing as the leaves fell in autumn, of peace at sunset. The people wept, moved to the heart by the beauty of the music.

Tamsen put her hand in his. “I would like to see this place,” she said.

Turning, Marten led her up into the light.

Stories for Another Day

There was a man and his wife who loved each other dearly but they were not blessed with children, and this was a great sorrow for them. And then one night in a great storm, they heard a light knocking on their door. When they went to open it, there was a basket, with a beautiful baby girl laughing inside it.

The baby was wrapped in a blanket, and laid beside her in the basket, with her tiny fingers curled around it, was an arrow carved out of stone, with feathers that looked as if they had been spun from moonlight.

The man and his wife joyfully took the baby into their home and raised her as their own precious child. But the arrow they wrapped in the baby’s blanket, and laid it out of sight.

The child, whom they named Electra, was taught all the arts of cooking, singing, dancing, drawing and painting, music and fine embroidery. At these last two she excelled. There was no-one in the kingdom whose embroidery was finer or more beautiful, and she played the lute with such a sure touch that people would stop in the streets to listen to her play.

One day she was sewing by the window where the light was best, when she happened to look up and see a sleek, silver-grey dog slipping silently between the trees. She left her sewing and went after it without a second’s thought. Always ahead of her but just out of reach, the dog led her through the forest, along tracks that only the dog could see. Eventually they came to a clearing, in the centre of which was a woman, tall and exceedingly beautiful, except for heavy lines of sorrow that marked her face. In her hands was a bow, and she was shooting arrows at a target on the opposite side of the clearing.

When she saw Electra, her face broke into a smile, and she gestured to Electra to take the bow. It came to Electra’s hand as if she had known it all her life. She took an arrow and fitted it to the bow-string, and with the woman guiding her, shot straight and true into the target. They spent what seemed like hours together, and Electra improved minute by minute. Then the dog lifted its long, silver muzzle and gave a single bark. The woman sadly kissed Electra goodbye and disappeared.

It was nearly a month before the dog appeared again, and again led Electra to the heart of the forest where the woman was waiting for her, with the bow and arrows. They spent long, happy hours together until the dog gave its single bark. This time when the woman kissed Electra goodbye, she pressed the bow into Electra’s hand before she disappeared.

From then on, though Electra watched every day for the dog, it never came again. So she made herself a suit of forest green, with a cap and boots of soft, thick felt and made her way into the forest, taking the bow with her. Hour after hour she practised until she could strike any target she set herself, no matter how small or how distant, and she could load and fire every arrow in her quiver in the blink of an eye.

Now the king of that country was a cruel and dark-hearted man. In fact he was not the true king. Years ago he had come to the kingdom as a friend of the king. When he saw his chance, he murdered the king and shut the queen up in a high tower. Then he had himself proclaimed king. He knew something of the dark arts and he always wore a vest which could not be pierced by any metal, neither knife nor spear nor arrowhead. Likewise the lock of the high tower in which the queen was imprisoned was protected by dark magic, so the key could not be turned by anyone except the king himself.

The king decided that he wanted a wife. He ordered every beautiful young woman in the kingdom to be brought before him so that he could make his selection. His guards went through the land, collecting every beautiful girl they could find. Naturally Electra was one of those who caught the guards’ eye, and she was brought before the king, along with twenty other girls. But she had no desire to marry the evil king so she put mud on her face and rotten fish on her hands, and cobwebs in her hair, and she slipped a sharp stone into her shoe so that she seemed to limp.

When the girls were brought before the king, they all smiled as prettily as they could, except for Electra who kept her eyes downcast and fixed an ugly scowl on her face. The king passed her without even a glance, holding his nose because of the smell she gave off. But then out of nowhere the silver dog appeared. He ran to Electra and in his excitement he licked her face and her hands clean. Electra bent down to pat him and smiled. The king turned and saw straight away that Electra was by far the most beautiful of all the girls.

“This one shall be my bride!” he exclaimed. “Have her washed and prepared!” Electra was led away. She was bathed in perfumed water, her hair was brushed until it shone like gold, and she was dressed in a gown of satin and pearls. Then she was brought before the king. “Let the marriage take place at once!” he said.

Electra curtsied and said, “Of course, your Majesty. When will the feasting begin?”

“Feasting?” said the king.

“The marriage of a king should be celebrated with pomp and grandeur,” Electra said. “Of course there will be a grand feast, with entertainments.”

“Entertainments?” said the king.

“Contests in fencing, and wrestling, and archery, to show the skill of your men, and your own greatness and power,” she said.

“Of course!” said the king. He gave the orders and a feast was prepared. Tables loaded with rich food and wines were set up at the side of a wide playing-field where the contests were to be held. The king took his place at the head of the table and shouted, “Let the contests begin!”

The king’s best swordsmen came into the arena, and fought each other with displays of great skill and strength. Then those trained in wrestling and hand-to-hand fighting took the field. They fought long and hard, and it was the king’s guards who won every match.

The king clapped his hands, very pleased. “Now for the archery competition! My men are sure to win! And after that,” he looked at Electra with an evil smile, “the wedding!”

Electra got to her feet, saying, “I must get ready.” She slipped away from her ladies and ran home. She took off the satin gown and put on her forest green suit and her felt boots. She braided her hair up and covered it with her cap, then she took her bow and arrows and would have set off, but her father called her back.

“Electra! Take this!” From its hiding place he brought out the stone arrow which had lain beside Electra in the basket when she was a baby. Electra slipped it into her quiver with hardly more than a glance. She kissed her father goodbye as if it was the last time she would ever see him. “For I will never marry this evil man,” she told herself. “I will die first.”

She arrived back at the playing field just as the archery contest was about to begin. Targets were set up at the farthest end of the field. The king proclaimed, “He whose arrow is closest to the centre of the target will be the winner.”

Each of the archers shot in turn. The captain of the guard’s arrow struck in the dead centre of the target. When it was Electra’s turn, she laughed and said, “Do you see that speck of dust on the shield behind the row of targets?” The speck of dirt was almost too small for the eye to see, but Electra’s arrow struck it.

“Disqualified! The archer missed the targets, so he is disqualified!” shouted the king, but inwardly his heart shrank in fear. The next contest was to bring down a bird in flight. Each time a bird was released, each of the archers took his turn shooting it down. One by one the birds fell, but when it came to Electra’s turn, the king secretly gave an order for no bird to be released, so she could not possibly win. When Electra saw that there no birds for her to fire at, she laughed and said, “Do you see the moth fluttering in the highest leaves of the tree?” She fired her arrow at the moth and struck it, and it fluttered down to the ground.

The king turned pale. He called the captain of the guard to him. “If the mysterious archer wins the next round, tell the guards to fire on him and kill him where he stands!”

The last contest was to shoot at a flag that hung at the very top of a pole, many metres above the ground. One after another the archers shot and missed. Finally the captain of the guard stepped forward. Taking careful aim, he shot his arrow and brought down some threads from a corner of the flag.

The king clapped and declared him the winner, but Electra stepped up, her arrow already against the bow-string. “Not so fast,” she said. She raised her bow and loosed the arrow. It flew through the very centre of the flag and tore it from the flagpole.

The captain of the guard gave the order to his men to fire on her, and they turned their bows towards her. But Electra swung around to the great high tower of the castle and fired a second arrow before the guards could take aim. It burst the lock and the door opened. All the people cheered and shouted for joy to see their own beloved queen, Ilya, appear from the tower.

“Kill him!” the king shouted, pointing at Electra. As the guards raised their bows, Electra reached into her quiver and drew out her last arrow, the arrow made of stone. She aimed at the king and shot. The stone arrow pierced the armour over his heart and he fell dead.

The people cheered and clapped. The captain of the guard, seeing that the king was dead and the queen lived, ordered his men to lower their weapons. He himself led the queen down from the tower, to great shouts from the people.

Queen Ilya walked to where Electra was standing. She took her hand and drew Electra into her arms. “My dear child!” she said in a voice of deep joy. She turned to the crowds and said, “This is my own daughter, who has been living in secret for her own safety, ever since the king seized power and imprisoned me in the tower. Now you see her before you, the rightful heir to my throne!”

The feasting and celebrating continued for many days, with the princess Electra sitting at the queen’s side. The queen ruled wisely and well over the kingdom for many years, and was loved by all the people. Electra herself had many trials to overcome before she came to the throne herself, but that is a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a wealthy man who had three sons. The eldest son, Marcus, was tall and well-made, the second son, Elford, was not as tall and not as well-made, and the youngest son, whose name was Jack, was the smallest but the bravest and the cleverest.

Marcus worked hard on the farm and looked after the house. The youngest son, Jack, set off to have adventures, in the time-honoured tradition. The middle son, Elford, really didn’t have much to do.

Elford had read all the story-books so he knew that his job was to do whatever his older brother Marcus did, but not quite as well. When there was a princess that needed rescuing, Marcus would leave his work and go to rescue her, and fail at the last moment, or be bewitched or turned to stone. Then Elford would try, knowing that he too would fail and be bewitched or turned to stone in his turn. And then Jack would come along and rescue the princess and defeat the witch or the wizard and undo the enchantment so that Marcus and Elford could go back to their normal work.

Elford wondered sometimes why he bothered. But still, it was what people expected and he didn’t want to let anyone down.

One day while Marcus was off riding his big, black horse, and Jack was out slaying giants as he often did, there was a knock at the door. It was a girl with brown curly hair and a silk dress and very nice shoes. Elford knew at once that she was a princess. He bowed low and said, “Your highness, how may I help you?”

The princess, whose name was Tissa, looked behind him and around him, and said, “Do you have an older brother? Or a younger brother, possibly named Jack?”

Elford knew that if he said he had an older brother, or a younger brother named Jack, then that would be the end of any chance of adventure for him, so he said, quite truthfully, “I am the youngest here.”

Tissa looked at him. He wasn’t particularly tall or well-made, he had ordinary straight brown hair, and altogether he looked, well, ordinary. She sighed. “Oh well, if there’s no-one else,” she said.

“How can I be of service?” Elford said, with growing excitement. “Have you a wicked stepmother, or are you afraid of pricking your finger on a spindle and falling asleep for a thousand years?”

“No, nothing like that,” Tissa said. “The fact is, I am under an enchantment.”

“Oh,” said Elford. “Are you transformed into an ogress each day at sunset? Does your hair grow another arm’s-length every day? Do lizards and toads fall from your mouth when you speak?”

“Hardly,” said Tissa. “Wouldn’t you have noticed by now?”

“Yes, of course,” said Elford. It must be said that he was a little disappointed.

“The fact is,” Tissa said, clearing her throat and looking over his shoulder once more. “Are you sure you don’t have an older brother?” she asked.

Elford admitted, “I do have an older brother but he is busy just now trying to ride his horse up a glass hill to rescue another princess.”

“What about a younger brother?” she asked.

Elford said, shamefaced, “Jack is busy slaying giants today, and tomorrow he has an appointment with a cat in boots, and the day after that he is planning to steal some gold from a castle at the top of a giant beanstalk. Would you like to wait?”

The princess said, “Oh. I suppose it will have to be you then.”

Elford’s heart beat faster. “Yes?” he said.

“The enchantment is this,” she said. “I can’t dance.”

Elford smiled. He may even have given a slight chuckle. “Are you sure it is an enchantment, not just a lack of practice, or if you’ll forgive me, a lack of ability?”

Tissa said, “No, listen to me. I can’t dance. Before I became enchanted I was a very good dancer. Everyone said how graceful and elegant I was. But now – just watch.” She lifted her left foot slightly and immediately she fell over as if someone had pushed her flat on her face.

Elford helped her up. “An unfortunate slip,” he said.

“No, you’re not listening,” Tissa said. “Watch.” She tried to give a very small twirl. Her body flew around, banging against one wall and bouncing off another. “See?” she said. “All my sisters dance, but this is what happens whenever I try. It’s terrible! Will you help me?”

Elford was disappointed that her problem was so small and unimportant, but at least a simple enchantment like this couldn’t be hard to fix. It wouldn’t involve anything really difficult, like walking over hot coals or drinking deadly poison, he chuckled to himself. “I’d be happy to help,” he said.

Tissa explained, “A wizard put an enchantment on me after I danced with him at the Royal Ball, just because I stepped on his foot once or twice. He got very angry and said I shouldn’t be allowed to dance again unless I could find someone stupid enough to be willing to risk their life. He said that dancing with me was more dangerous than walking over hot coals, or jumping off a cliff or drinking deadly poison, so that’s what my rescuer would have to do to break the enchantment.”

Elford went pale. The hardest challenge he had ever had was to pick which of three boxes had a princess’s picture in it, and even then he had chosen the wrong box. Still, he had given his word. He swallowed hard and said, “Of course.”

They went down to the village where some of the villagers were burning hot coals in a big pit for a really big barbecue. It was so hot that it burnt the hairs off Elford’s arms when he was still a metre away from it.

Tissa gasped, “You would do this for me? Walk over hot coals?”

Elford wanted nothing more than to turn tail and run away, but that was not the way a hero would act. “Yes, your highness,” he said. The villagers offered to lend him their big, thick boots, but he thought they would make him slower. He took a long, long run-up, and came tearing towards the pit at high speed.

“Wait!” yelled the princess. Elford teetered on the edge of the pit but he managed to save himself from falling in.

“What?” he said, backing away from the scorching heat.

Tissa told the villagers to bring all the blankets they could find, and lay them on top of the hot coals. “Now, Elford, run across the blankets.”

Elford sped across the pit as fast as he could go. His shoes caught on fire, and even his socks were smoking when he got to the other side, but he made it in one piece, with most of his eyebrows.

Tissa was very pleased. “Now go and jump off a cliff,” she said.

Elford’s face lost its smile. “Would a very low cliff be all right, do you think?” he asked.

“I don’t think so,” Tissa said. They made their way to a nice, high cliff.

Elford looked over the cliff to the ground far beneath and groaned. “Jack would have found a way out of this,” he said to himself. “He’s never come home with burnt feet or broken legs.” Then an idea came to him and he smiled widely.

“What are you thinking?” Tissa asked.

“It’s not jumping off a cliff that hurts,” Elford said, “it’s the landing.”

Tissa smiled back. “Of course!” she said. “I know a friend who has a huge pile of mattresses that she sleeps on at her mother-in-law’s place.”

They borrowed the mattresses and made a pile of them at the bottom of the cliff, then Elford jumped down quite safely.

“Now all you have to do is drink deadly poison,” Tissa said happily.

Elford went pale again. Was he really prepared to die for the princess? And suddenly he realised that he was. “Right,” he said, “bring it on.”

Tissa was thinking. “The wizard didn’t say how much deadly poison. Or how deadly it had to be.”

“You mean, fairly deadly poison, or even quite deadly poison would do?” Elford said.

“Definitely,” Tissa said. “If you drink only a tiny, tiny drop, and then you drink the antidote straight away, perhaps it won’t kill you, but only make you very, very sick.”

“An antidote?” said Elford. “Why didn’t you say so? Let’s do it!”

They got a bottle of only slightly deadly poison, and Elford drank a tiny, tiny amount, hardly enough even to taste it. Then he drank a whole bucketful of the antidote. He was hardly sick at all, considering. When he had stopped being sick, Tissa said joyfully, “The enchantment is lifted! I can dance again! See?” She twirled and spun and waltzed around, and only crashed into one wall and knocked two tables over.

Elford took her in his arms. “I think it might be better if you stick to dancing just with me,” he said tenderly.

The princess said shyly, “I think so too. Would you like my hand in marriage?”

Hand in hand they went to ask Tissa’s parents. Since she was the seventh in a family of twelve princesses, the king and queen were very happy that she had found someone to marry all by herself, and they gave their consent at once. So Elford and Tissa were married and they lived happily together to the end of their days.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a man who lived in great house with a great many servants, but he was a hard master. He had no patience for servants who were not quick and clever and good at their work. He would beat them, or send them away.

Two of his servants were brothers, Abel and John. Abel was tall and strong. He finished his work quickly and did it well. His master put him in charge of other servants, and gave him new clothes and shoes, and a present of money once a year.

John, however, was slow at everything he did. He often had to think hard before he did anything, and even then he made mistakes, and had to go back and do everything over again.

His master had no patience with him. He shouted at him and threw things at him, and occasionally he beat him. Eventually he said to John, “You are worthless, useless as a servant. You can’t do anything right. Get out of my house and never come back.”

John left very sadly. “What am I to do?” he asked himself. “I am useless as a servant and I have no training for anything else.” He wandered the streets, cold and hungry. With nowhere to live, his clothes soon became ragged and dirty. People looked on him as nothing better than a beggar, and they turned their faces away when they saw him.

John said to himself, “I will soon die of hunger. There is nothing else for me to do, so I will become a highwayman.”

He covered his face with a mask to make people tremble with fear, and he hid among the bushes along a lonely, narrow part of the road. When a horseman or a carriage came past, he would jump out and point his gun at them and yell, “Give me your money, and all you have!” In this way he made enough money to buy food, and to live in a small, dark hut on the edge of the city.

One day he saw a horseman coming, and he leapt into the road, shouting, “Give me your money or it will be the worse for you!”

The man, whose name was Silas, pulled on his reins but the horse bucked into the air, kicking John’s gun. The gun went off and the horse was killed.

Silas was very angry, and very sad that his horse had died. But then he saw that the highwayman was crying too, under his fearsome mask.

“Why are you crying?” he asked the highwayman.

John said, “Because I have never killed a living creature before, and now this beautiful horse is dead!”

Silas’s heart was softened and he said, “Isn’t it the business of a highwayman to rob and to kill?”

John replied, “I only rob to feed myself, so that I don’t die of starvation. Killing I could never do – this gun is only to frighten people into giving me their money.”

Together they buried the horse, and then Silas said to John, “I am in need of a servant. Come and work for me.”

John stammered, “I am a worthless servant. My old master beat me and sent me away because I am slow and clumsy.”

Silas said, “I am an old man and I have trouble walking. A servant who is slow enough to walk with me would suit me very well.”

So John went to work for Silas. He was slow, and he was stupid and clumsy, but his new master was patient and he forgave John’s mistakes because he knew that John was still learning, and that he was trying his best. In time, John became used to the work. He was no longer stupid because he understood what was needed, and he was no longer slow unless Silas needed his help to walk from place to place, and then he was as patient as can be. Silas was very pleased with him, and gave him the best room and put him in charge of the other servants.

One day Silas came upon John beating the other servants and shouting rudely at them. He called out to John to stop at once. “Why are you beating these people?” he said sorrowfully.

“Because they are stupid and useless,” John replied. “Jolisette is slow at sweeping, and Lois takes forever to wash a few clothes, she is so stupid. You should get rid of them, and get better servants.”

Silas said, “But these are the best servants I could ever have! When Jolisette sweeps, she always sings, and she sings so beautifully that I wish she would take all day over her task. Lois washes slowly because she looks for every spot and stain and washes them out carefully. A man never had such clean clothes as I have.”

John took some time to think about this, and he saw that his master was right. He put away his stick and never beat any of the servants again. Instead he thanked them for their good work. When any new servants came, and they made mistakes and did their work badly, John taught them how to do their jobs well, so they could do their best for his master, and know that their work was appreciated.

Many years later, as Silas grew very old and was dying, he gave his house to John, and put all the servants in John’s care. John wept, for he loved his master dearly, but he promised to do as he wished. And after Silas was gone, there was never a better master than John.

Now some time later, John, who was now a wealthy householder with many servants, was walking in the marketplace. He saw a beggar sitting in the burning sun, dressed in dirty rags. He bent to give him some coins, then he recognised the beggar as his brother. “Abel!” he cried. “What are you doing here?”

The beggar looked down, ashamed. “Go!” he said. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

John took his brother’s arm and helped him into the shade. “What has happened to you?” he asked.

“I fell and hurt my leg,” Abel said. “It never healed properly, so I could not work as quickly as I used to, so my master turned me out. I have spent all I ever earned, and since I can’t work as a servant any more, there is nothing left for me but to beg.”

John said, “You must come home with me, for we are brothers, and all I have is yours to share.”

The two brothers went home together, and lived in great contentment for the rest of their years.

Stories for Another Day

Long ago, when lizards were as big as houses and turtles still had feathers, there was a very discontented turtle, named Lennie.

Lennie liked a quiet life, with plenty of lying in the sun and occasional nibbling at a lettuce leaf, but all the other turtles seemed to be interested in was racing and competitions, seeing who was the fastest, or who had the biggest shell, or who could eat a whole cauliflower in the shortest time, or who could say the whole of the alphabet backwards.

Lennie wasn’t fast, and he wasn’t a big turtle, and he could never remember if W came before X or the other way round, so he never won anything. That made all the other turtles want to race with him even more, because they knew they could always beat him.

He tried hiding in the cabbage patch, or pretending he was asleep or reading a very interesting book, but the others wouldn’t stop pestering him.

“Lennie! Lennie!” they shouted. “We’re having a tickling contest. We’re going to tickle each other and see who laughs first. You have to be in it!”

Lennie didn’t want to. He was very ticklish, and he knew he’d lose again. He said, “Why don’t we have a sleeping competition and see who can stay asleep for the longest?” Now this was something he thought he could win for once.

“Good idea!” they all said. They lay still and closed their eyes. Lennie gave a happy sigh and went off to sleep. But he had forgotten about Uncle Milo, who had been asleep for nearly two years, and didn’t look like waking up for another two, and who snored like a truck backfiring. At the first loud snore, Lennie woke up with a jump that woke all the others too. “You lose, Lennie!” everyone shouted happily.

He thought maybe he should have a big sign made that said, ‘Lennie the Loser’, and wear it around his neck. Why couldn’t there be a competition for turtles who didn’t want to be in competitions?

The other turtles came around, shouting, “Lennie, Lennie, we’re going to have a rowing race! We’re going to float on our backs down the creek and row with our flippers. You’ve got to be in it!”

Lennie’s flippers were definitely on the short side, and when he floated on his back, water always got up his nose, so he said, “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we have a slow walking race, and see who can walk the slowest?”

“Great idea!” they all said. “Let’s do it!”

Ferdy marked a starting line and a finish line in the dirt, and everyone got lined up. Tyrone shouted, “Go!” and they all started. All except Lennie, who stayed still and closed his eyes, ready for another long nap.

“Hey, Lennie!” Ferdy yelled in his ear. “You have to actually walk or you’ll be disqualified and you’ll lose!” he said.

“Oh, all right,” said Lennie. He started off walking as slowly as he could but he had forgotten about Albertine, who was as big as a flying saucer and who walked slower than a snail with its brakes on.

“Albertine wins!” everybody said happily. “Lennie, you lose!”

Lennie decided he had had enough. Losing was okay, but always losing at everything was just depressing. And then there was his friend, Georgette, who always came second last at everything. She wasn’t the biggest or the smallest, she wasn’t the smartest or the best-looking. Even if Lennie worked out a way of not being the last-losing-loser, then Georgette would be the loserest-loser, and he didn’t want to do that to her.

He thought and thought. Then the next time the other turtles came up with a new idea for a competition, he said, “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we have a slow-falling race? “

“A what?” everyone said.

Lennie said, “You know the big rock shelf over the swimming hole? We all go up there and drop something, and whichever takes the longest to fall into the water is the winner.”

“Yeah, let’s do that!” the other turtles said.

“And this time,” Lennie said, “whoever wins will be the king of all the turtles for a whole year.”

“Oohh,” everyone said. “King of the turtles! Let’s do it!”

The rock shelf was way on top of a whole pile of big rocks. It hung out over the deep part of the creek where the best swimming hole was. They all climbed up to the top of the rock and lined up ready to drop something. Lennie was last, as usual.

Tyrone got a big rock and dropped it over the edge. Everyone started counting: “One, two, three-” Splash! The rock hit the water.

“Me next!” said Alan. He picked a smaller rock because he thought it would be slower. “One, two, three – ” Splash! The smaller rock hit the water.

“It’s the same,” everyone said.

Ferdy went next. He chose a really small pebble, but it took exactly the same amount of time. Albertine was next. She tried a really, really big rock, because she thought a heavy thing might be slower, but it took exactly the same amount of time.

Finally it was Lennie’s turn. Lennie had done something sneaky. He had collected a handful of feathers and scrunched them into a ball. When he dropped it over the edge, everyone started counting, “One, two, three, four, five, six…” They kept on counting, but the splash never came. The ball of feathers had uncurled itself and the feathers had floated away on the wind.

“Wow!” everyone said. “It’s so slow it still hasn’t hit the water. Lennie, you’re the WINNER!”

Lennie never thought he’d hear those words. He was very pleased. He said, “Ahem. As King of all the turtles – “

“Ooh! King of the turtles!” everyone said.

Lennie looked at them sternly and they all hushed and looked at him respectfully. “As king of the turtles, I hereby decree that there will be no more competitions of any kind WHATSOEVER, for a whole year!”

Everyone’s faces fell. They looked so disappointed that Lennie relented just a bit. He said, “Except on Saturday mornings, between nine and twelve.”

Everyone cheered. “You’re going to be the best king!” Tyrone said, and Lennie thought he would be too.

Stories for Another Day

Once when a boy named Rustum was playing with a stick, it fell under a bush, and when he went to pick it up, he found a key. Now, whether the boy found the key, or the key made its way to the boy, there is no way of telling, but whatever the case, Rustum found himself brushing the dirt off a small, silvery key.

No sooner had he begun to wonder what sort of door this key with its intricate pattern of vines and leaves would open than a gate appeared in front of him. To begin with it was nothing but a hazy image, but it gradually became more solid. The gate itself was iron, shaped with leaves and flowers and wandering tendrils of vines all over it, but it was set inside an archway that glowed with all the colours and fire of an opal, blues and greens, pinks and golds, and glowing red.

Rustum put the key into the lock and opened the gate and went in. Then because he was a thoughtful boy, he took the key out of the lock and put it in his pocket, and closed the gate behind him.

He found himself in a room full of chests piled high with silver coins and lumps of silver, and silver plates, wealth beyond his wildest dreams. He went through this room and found another room, even larger, stacked with toppling piles of gold bars and gold coins and chains of gold, wherever he looked. Astonished, he went on into a third room, and found it crammed with jewels of all kinds, crowns and diadems, necklaces and sceptres and jewelled swords. He sat down amazed, trickling a handful of rubies through his fingers. Then he got up and began stuffing his pockets with gold and silver and jewels. He draped chains and necklaces around his neck and jammed two crowns onto his head, and then he made for the door. But it was nowhere to be found. The doorway through which he had entered had disappeared as though it had never existed.

Fear gripped Rustum’s heart, but he did not let it overwhelm him. Instead he began to think. He lifted off the crowns and chains and necklaces. In one corner of the room, a shimmering haze arose vaguely in the shape of a door. He emptied the gold and sapphires and amethysts, the silver and rubies and emeralds, out of his pockets. When every pocket was empty, the door took shape again, as solid as it had been before.

He sat down to give the matter some thought. It was then that he noticed another door he had not seen before. He opened this and found himself in a fourth room whose walls were covered in bookshelves stretching from the floor to a ceiling so far above him that it was almost out of sight. More bookshelves filled the centre of this vast room, except for a space at the very centre in which there was a desk with a single candle burning.

Rustum passed rows and rows of bookshelves and made his way to the desk. On it was a single piece of paper with only one line of writing. Rustum stared at it, then he read it over and over. It seemed that a wave of understanding came over him, and he understood a great many things that had been a mystery to him before.

He turned and went back through the rooms full of precious stones, of gold and of silver, until he came to the opal gate again. He had his hand on the gate ready to open it when something bright, glinting in a corner, caught his eye. He prised it out of the dirt, a single diamond, large and perfect, of untold worth. Rustum couldn’t resist slipping it into his pocket.

Immediately the gate began to shimmer and disappear. Rustum sprinted to it and threw himself through it before it clanged shut behind him.

On the other side of the gate, the world he had left just a short time ago was unrecognisable. Everything had lost its colour and its scent, and faded away to a dull, papery grey. The buildings were shabby and crumbling, the trees were dying, even the sky was grey and hung with listless grey clouds.

Rustum’s hand went straight to his pocket, and he fingered the diamond, thinking of what he could do with so much wealth, the house he could build for his grandmother, a well for the whole village, a school, even a hospital. He looked at the dull greyness creeping over everything in sight, and he made his decision.

The key to the opal gate was still in his pocket. He unlocked the gate and threw the diamond as far inside as he could. Immediately the great opal archway transformed into two towering, spreading trees covered with leaves in red and orange and gold. Behind him stretched the most beautiful garden with beds of flowers, vines covered in grapes, and trees with fruit of every kind. At the centre of the garden, under a blossoming cherry tree, there was a lake of cool, blue water which shimmered as the breeze stirred its waters.

The children of the village, which was now bright with colour and shining in the sunlight, streamed into the garden. They played in the tall grass and climbed the trees while their parents and the older people sat in the shade and shared the delicious fruit. Rustum smiled to himself, and walked down to the lake. He took off his shoes and swam in the cool water.

Try as he might, from that day to this, he could never remember what had been written on that single piece of paper. And as for the key to the opal gate, it was not in his pocket when he looked for it, and whether he had dropped it or it got out of his pocket some other way, I really cannot say.

Stories for Another Day

The day after she killed her first dragon, Zahara bound up her hair, changed her gown for cotton pants and a jacket, put on a strong pair of boots, and with a sword wrapped in felt strapped to her back, she left the castle where her mother and father and brothers and sisters lived.

She had no destination in mind, only a plan to travel until she found whatever it was that she was looking for, and what that was, she had no clue.

After many weeks of walking, she came first to the wild mountainous country where the villages were poor and the people were thin and hungry, plagued by dragons who would swoop down by night and steal their cattle, their goats and their sheep, and sometimes even their children, when the cattle and goats and sheep were too thin.

Zahara stayed and fought her second dragon and killed it, and was badly injured by her third dragon but recovered. Little by little, month by month, she learned the skills of dragon-slaying, the quick slash and the powerful thrust, flawless aim and endless patience. She learnt quickly because, after all, her mother Shanama was a famed dragon-slayer, and her grandfather, Dharab, was known as the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven secluded kingdoms.

She moved from village to village, ridding them of the menace of death by night, so that the people could begin to live in hope and prosperity once more. In one village tucked into a crevice in a forbidding mountainside, she came upon a young boy who was facing a huge dragon with only a pitchfork in his hands. Zahara slew the monster, and stayed to teach the boy, whose name was Rustum, everything she knew.

When it was time to leave the village, Zahara found that she had no more heart for killing dragons and spilling their black blood on the earth, so she turned instead to the lowlands, where people lived in contentment in sunny villages filled with happy, laughing children and surrounded by fruit trees and vines. As she entered the first of these villages, she heard an entrancing sound. She followed it to a house, where a man was seated, playing a harp.

The sound captivated Zahara. She spent many months there, learning all the harpist could teach her. She became so skilled that her music rivalled that of anyone in the village, and they were a village of harpists. But discontent stirred in her again, and before a year was up she moved on, strapping a harp of her own making, wrapped in felt, to her back, for her sword she had given to the boy Rustum as a parting gift, many months ago.

Her steps turned by themselves to the deep, wild woods. She wandered for days and weeks until the smell of cooking led her along a faint trail to an encampment of foresters. In a dark clearing surrounded by forest as thick as an army, she found small huts made of fallen branches and sticks and mud, each one big enough for only one or two people. In the centre of the clearing was a huge campfire, warm and inviting to a traveller such as Zahara, who had spent so many days with little to eat but whatever berries and leaves she could scrounge.

A cooking pot full of a fragrant stew of vegetables and herbs nestled in the campfire, and the foresters welcomed Zahara to share their fire and their food. The vegetables and herbs they had grown themselves, among the trees which they tended.

Zahara was glad to sit with them and listen to their quiet talk. After the meal she took out her harp and played for them. They were struck with amazement and gathered around her to find out how the harp was made and how it made its sounds. They sang their own songs and she played with them, far into the night, as the fire sank to red, glowing coals.

She stayed with them then, and the craftsmen among them made harps of more and more extraordinary beauty from the wood that the forest gave them. Zahara taught them how to string and tune and play the harps, until the forest rang with gales of wonderful music every night. She even built her own small hut, on the edge of the circle of huts around the fire, but still her heart was not content.

She had made up her mind to leave, and continue on her travels, when one night a voice spoke out of the darkness. “I know who you are,” it said.

“What? What do you mean?” Zahara asked, recoiling from the sound. In the darkness, she could not see who spoke.

“You are a rose petal child,” the voice said, “born in the heart of a rose.”

Zahara was taken aback. “How do you know?” she said.

“By the little finger of your left hand,” he said, emerging from the darkness to stand a few feet away from her. “For I am one myself,” he said. He held up his hand, and by the light of the fire she could see that his little finger was half the size of the others.

Now Zahara had always been ashamed of the deformity of her finger. From her earliest years resentment and anger had churned in her heart at this difference. Yet in all these months and years of travelling, she had hardly remembered that her hands were not as other people’s. Wielding her sword, playing the harp, building and making, she had given little thought to it. Now she held her hand to the light, and she found that all the resentment and shame had gone.

“I am Lincoln,” the man said. “I would tell you two things. One, for the rose petal child, you will not find your heart’s desire by seeking it. And two, the human heart is made for giving.” And he was gone, slipping away into the darkness.

In the morning when Zahara was making her farewells, she could not tell which of the foresters he was, until he raised his hand, with a smile. Zahara raised hers, and so a bond was forged between them.

She gave her harp to a young child named Silvana who was especially skilled at music, and she set off again, with a new light step and a heart warm with hope.

After some weeks of walking, she came to a small valley lit by sunshine, bordered by the forest, with its back to the mountain. A cold, clear stream ran down from the mountain through the valley. Here she built a hut for herself and planted vegetables, which grew in such abundance that she could trade them for chickens and a pair of goats, so she had milk and eggs and cheese besides.

There was always room for travellers at her fireside, and hot food, and music. Before long she found herself sharing her knowledge of music and instrument-making, and then the art of wielding swords and daggers. Others came to join her in the sunlit valley, some for a short time, and others who built houses for themselves and settled there.

One of those who came was Lincoln. When Zahara saw him, she knew her happiness was complete. Together they had two happy, rosy children, a daughter named Rosabel and a son named Carlo. They taught them all the skills of the forest and the hearth, music and swordplay, but although the children learned quickly and easily, these were not the skills they excelled at – but that’s a story for another day. Indeed, Carlo eventually married a princess of his own, after many struggles, but it was Rosabel who was acquainted with more wonders than the human heart can tell.

Zahara and Lincoln lived many, many years in great contentment, giving of their food, their knowledge and themselves, as the human heart is made for.

Stories for Another Day

Once there was a girl named Sukey, who would never say she was sorry. If she ever made a mistake or did something naughty, like dropping a jar of honey, or leaving the tap on in the bathroom so that the sink overflowed and water went everywhere, and her parents said “Oh, Sukey, look what you’ve done!” or “Sukey, that was naughty of you!” she would frown and push her lips out. Then she would fold her arms and sit in a corner with her face turned away, sulking.

After a while her parents would get tired of her sulking and not saying anything, and they would say things like, “Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway,” and give her a piece of cake or a chocolate to make her stop sulking.

One day they went to the zoo. While her mother and father were watching the meerkats, Sukey got bored and wandered off by herself. She came to the ducks’ pond and she took a piece of toast out of her pocket that she had put there after breakfast, and she broke it into pieces and threw it into the pond, even though there was a sign that said, clear as day, Please Do Not Feed the Ducks.

One of the zoo-keepers came up and said, “Excuse me, young lady, you mustn’t feed the ducks. It’s bad for them.”

Sukey didn’t say anything, but she frowned with a face as black as thunder. She went off and sat near the elephants’ enclosure and folded her arms, thinking how mean the zoo-keeper was. She picked up some stones and started throwing them at the baby elephant, who was standing near his mother. One of the stones hit him on his leg, and one on his soft new trunk. The baby elephant started to cry in a loud voice.

The monkeys in their playground all screeched and chattered and ran up and down their trees and rope swings. The noise they made upset all the birds. They flapped and shrieked and flew up in clouds, swirling round and round over the lion’s park, and that woke the lion. Now the lion always liked to have a long sleep in the middle of the day, and he was very cranky at being woken up.

“What’s going on?” he roared.

The monkeys chittered, the birds screeched and even the hyenas started howling. The mother elephant, whose name was Ivy, said, “That girl was throwing stones at my little boy, Sebby.”

“What!” roared the lion. He turned to Sukey and he glared at her.

Sukey folded her arms and didn’t say anything. She frowned her meanest frown and glared back.

The lion roared, “Right! That’s enough!” He made a sign to Ivy, and Ivy reached over the wall and wrapped her trunk around Sukey and lifted her up into the air.

Sukey gasped with fright, and said, “Put me down, put me down!”

Ivy said, “That’s not good enough, young lady. The least you can do is say you’re sorry. Look at the bruise on Sebby’s trunk. You almost hit his eye!”

Sukey shut her lips tight and tried to fold her arms. The monkeys chattered, “Say sorry, say sorry!” but she pushed out her lips obstinately and didn’t say anything.

Ivy had had enough. She swung Sukey across the fence and dangled her in the air just over the lion’s head. Sukey found herself face to face with a very angry lion.

She gulped and said in a very small voice, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” roared the lion, shaking his mane and showing his very long, very sharp teeth. He was a little deaf, because of his age.

“I’m sorry!” Sukey said loudly. “I’m sorry I hurt the little elephant, I’m sorry I was throwing stones, I’m sorry I fed the ducks.”

“What??” roared the lion. “You fed the ducks? Is there no end to this girl’s wickedness?”

Ivy said soothingly, “Now, now, she said she was sorry.”

The lion stopped shaking his mane, and said, “Well, that’s all right then. But don’t do it again!” He gave Sukey one last fierce look and went back to sleep.

Ivy put Sukey back down on the right side of the fence, and Sukey ran off as fast as she could to find her parents. They were still watching the meerkats and taking photos. She ran up to them and hugged them tightly. “I’m sorry, I really am!” she said.

“What for?” her parents asked.

“Everything,” Sukey said.

They laughed, and said, “That’s all right, Sukey,” and hugged her back.

When they got home, I’m not going to say that Sukey never sulked again, or that she never did anything naughty again, but when she did and her parents scolded her, she remembered the lion’s hot breath in her face and most often she quickly said, “I’m sorry.” And she meant it.

The king and queen of the fourth kingdom had many children, fine healthy girls and boys, but only one of them was born in the heart of a rose, and that was the youngest, Zahara. She was tiny enough to fit inside a rose, with the petals wrapped tightly around her, and although she grew to be a normal size soon enough, the fragrance of roses clung around her for the rest of her life.

While her brothers and sisters were generous and kind, Zahara was not. She was selfish, and always thought of herself first. And although she was very pretty, with perfectly-shaped red lips and pale pink cheeks as soft as rose petals, the littlest finger on her left hand never grew to be the same size as the rest of her. It remained tiny and wizened, and Zahara hated it. It turned her whole heart into resentment and anger.

One day when Zahara was in the garden, swishing off the heads of daisies with a stick, she found a small, black worm lying on the path. For some reason she took a fancy to it. She carried it back to her room and put it in a small box and fed it on scraps from the kitchen. It grew quicker than you’d expect, first into a small lizard, and then into a fat lizard the size of a cat, and still it kept growing.

Zahara was pleased to have a pet of her own, but she told no-one about it in case her parents said that she couldn’t keep a pet in her room, especially one that sharpened its claws on the furniture, and liked nothing better than catching and eating birds that foolishly landed on the windowsill.

When Zahara’s pet tried to eat the maid that came to do the dusting, it couldn’t be hidden any longer, but it was already too late. Zahara had spent so much time petting the dragon, for that is what her pet truly was, and whispering to it of her unhappiness and resentment, that she had taken on some of the dragon’s nature. Its black heart had made its way into her heart too, so that she had gradually become more selfish, and more cruel and more wicked.

The queen, who came from a long line of dragon-slayers, wanted to kill the dragon then and there have it all over and done with, but the king stopped her, saying, “Zahara is more than half a dragon herself now. Would you kill her as well?” The queen put down her sword then, and didn’t know what to do.

The king said, “We’ll offer a reward. These things always work themselves out when a reward is offered.” So that is what they did. A proclamation went out throughout the kingdom, but secretly, of course, because if the princess Zahara had found out, she would have been furious and no-one wanted to have a furious half-dragon princess to deal with. Anyone who could kill the dragon but save the princess would be given a huge bag of gold, and the hand of the princess in marriage.

Once they heard that there was a dragon involved, who in fact was growing bigger every day because of the kitchen scraps, not to mention the birds and cats and pet dogs it managed to catch and eat, most of the young men in the kingdom decided that there were other, safer ways to earn a bag of gold and didn’t step forward.

In the end, after one or two false tries with young men who ran away as soon as they saw the dragon, now the size of a small dinosaur, and one young woman who thought she was supposed to kill the princess and save the dragon, it was the baker’s boy who came forward.

His name was Dray. As soon as the queen saw him, her heart sank. He was so sweet and gentle, she knew he could never kill even a weevil if he found it in a bag of flour, let alone a dragon.

The king said to Dray, “Now, young man, how are you going to kill the dragon, and save the princess from herself?”

Dray said, “I don’t know, but I beg you to let me try,” for he had loved the princess for as long as he could remember, since he was a very little boy. The queen offered to teach him the latest methods of slaying dragons, quickly and with as little blood going everywhere as possible, but Dray said, “Your majesty, I am a baker and pastry chef. My skill is with flour and yeast and butter, not with swords and spears. Let me try my own way.”

Dray began to take special treats and delicacies to the princess’s room every day. He would present them with a low bow, blushing with love for the princess, and because the pastries were made with love, the black bands around her heart loosened just a little. She fed the scraps to the dragon, as she usually did, and its eyes glowed nastily.

The next part of Dray’s plan was this. In the castle there was a room that nobody ever went into. A dragon had once been killed there, and although the whole room had been cleaned and scrubbed many times, the smell of dragon’s blood never quite disappeared. Indeed, no matter how well it was cleaned, drops of the dragon’s blood still appeared out of nowhere, and lay in corners and under the rugs like small, black coins.

Dray went to this room and collected all the drops of blood he could find. Then alongside the pastries he made for the princess, he made special treats for the dragon, and into each one he slipped a drop of dragon’s blood.

Now there is nothing more irresistible to a dragon than another dragon’s blood. The dragon grew fatter and its armoured body grew darker with each drop that it ate, and its eyes glowed fiery red. Indeed, after a week, Dray was so nervous of the glint in the dragon’s eye that he took to wearing Queen Shanama’s second-best sword hidden inside his shirt.

One day instead of almond crescents and custard tarts, Dray brought the princess a pretty little bird in a cage. “How sweet!” she said, and started coaxing it to see if it would sing.

The dragon was hungry and after all, he was a dragon, with a black heart, so he snapped up the bird, cage and all, in one bite.

Zahara turned on him and scolded him. “How dare you be so naughty?” she said. “It was such a pretty little bird.”

The glint in the dragon’s eye turned into a glare, and its tail swished ominously. It was still ravenously hungry for blood – the bird had been only one bite and a small one at that, whereas Zahara was big enough for a tasty meal. It opened its jaws so far that Dray and Zahara could see the burning coals in the pit of its stomach. Zahara screamed. Dray leapt between her and the dragon, pulling the sword from its hiding place, but clumsily and slowly because he was a baker’s boy, not a swordsman.

The dragon’s claw slashed once and cut off Dray’s sword arm at the elbow. Then it turned its evil eyes on the princess.

Zahara stopped screaming. She picked up the sword and sliced the dragon in two from its neck to its belly, for after all she was her mother’s daughter, and the granddaughter of the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven kingdoms.

The dragon lay dead, and Dray was clutching his elbow where his left arm used to be. “Your arm!” Zahara said.

“I would willingly have given more than my arm for you,” Dray replied. “I would have given my life.”

The black bands around Zahara’s heart finally snapped when she heard these words. She began to cry, as she thought about the years she had wasted in anger and resentment over her little finger.

Dray was rewarded with a bag of gold and the hand of the princess in marriage. However Zahara knew there were many things she had to do before she would be ready to marry, so she encouraged him to marry one of her sisters instead, and in a very short time he grew to love his new wife, a happy, roly-poly girl with a love for pastry, as well as or even better than he had ever loved Zahara. As for Zahara, she girded her sword at her waist and set off on a journey to find the years she had lost, but that is a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

Garth and Shanama were the children of the Dharab, the dragon-slayer and Eva, his wife, who was known across the seven secluded kingdoms as a healer. The children were born within the same hour on the same day, just as the morning star was rising. They grew together and played together and loved each other with all their hearts.

One day when they were about four years old, they were playing together in the front garden when a wicked woman snatched Shanama up into her carriage and drove off at high speed. She took her many miles away, to a place where she owned a weaving house. Children as young as Shanama were chained up and made to work unravelling silk threads from the cocoons of the silk moth, with their light, nimble fingers. As they grew older they were trained in dyeing the silk and then in weaving. The weaving house was filled with the clacking of shuttles passing back and forth in the looms, and the screams of the wicked woman urging them to go faster and work harder, for she sold the long, shining lengths of silk for a great deal of money, and it meant everything to her.

Garth, left alone as Shanama was carried off, screamed and cried. As the carriage disappeared down the road, he set off after it, running as fast as his study little legs would carry him. When their mother came out to fetch the two children, they were nowhere to be found. No matter how long and how far the parents searched, and they searched for many, many years with hearts weighed down with sorrow, they found no trace of them.

Garth ran and ran until his feet were cut and bleeding and his breath tore at his chest, but the carriage was long out of sight. He wandered weeping into the depths of the forest and fell asleep in the heart of a rosemary bush. The next morning a woodcutter found him, and took him home to his house, deep in the darkest heart of the forest. He and his wife treasured the little boy, and they brought him up just as if he were one of their own sons.

Garth grew strong and tall, a forester like his foster father and foster brothers. By the time he was a young man, he knew the name and care of every tree in the forest, when they should be planted and when thinned out, when to prune and how best to bring down an old dead tree. All foresters are skilled at these things, but Garth also had a deep understanding of the herbs and mosses, and he knew how to use them for healing. As time passed, he forgot his parents and his family home, but he never forgot losing his sister, Shanama.

Now Shanama grew to be a beautiful young girl, the most beautiful of all the young women who worked in the weaving house. She was also the most skilled, and everything Shanama wove sold for the very highest prices.

The wicked woman was very pleased. Only one thing troubled her. Every year, on midsummer day and again on midwinter day, a fierce dragon would fly out of the waste lands to the north, and snatch away one of the silk weavers. Its fiery breath would have burnt the weaving house and all within it to the ground, so the wicked woman turned her face away and allowed the dragon to claim its tribute. But each year she gave Shanama a special tea to make her sleep and then hid her away in a cupboard, rather than lose her best worker.

One year Shanama forgot to drink the tea the old woman gave her, and peeping out from her hiding place, she saw the dragon come. As it swooped down, the wicked woman pushed forward one of the older weavers, who was slower than the others. The dragon seized her in its talons and prepared to carry her off.

A cold fire of anger sprang to life in Shanama’s heart. She went to her loom and in no time she had woven a length of silk so closely set that it was as strong as steel, so fine that it shone like a silver mirror, and so soft and flexible that it wrapped around her body and clung to her. Wrapping it over her head and shoulders, she took her shuttle and went out and called to the dragon.

The dragon came, huge and old in evil. When it caught sight of Shanama standing alone, shining like a beacon in the sunlight, it glowed with excitement and dropped the young weaver it held between its talons. With heavy wingbeats, it flew towards Shanama while the old woman screeched and pleaded with Shanama to let the dragon have the other girl instead.

Fire streamed from the dragon’s mouth, but Shanama was protected by the silken armour she had woven for herself. As soon as the dragon was close enough, she threw her shuttle and struck the dragon in the eye, killing it with one blow. It fell out of the sky and landed on the ground with a noise like thunder. Its tail, lashing the air as it fell, pierced the old woman’s heart, and she lay dead at its side. But the shuttle, as it fell back to the ground, struck Shanama’s shoulder, so that her arm hung useless at her side.

News of this battle spread far and wide across the kingdom. Deep in the heart of the forest, Garth heard it and knew at once that this must be his sister, Shanama. He packed some herbal ointments that he had made and set out to find her. He knew the weaving house when he reached it, for the body of the dragon still lay where it had fallen. Villagers came to throw stones at its lifeless body, and occasionally they would saw off a piece of its tail to plough their fields with, or cut their firewood.

Garth went into the weaving house, and saw his sister weaving almost as fast as the others, even though she could weave with only one arm. “Shanama!” he cried.

She dropped her shuttle and ran to him, and they embraced and wept over each other. Garth rubbed the healing ointments into Shanama’s shoulder and it gradually regained its strength. They gave the weaving house into the hands of the women who worked there. Those who wished to, returned to their families and those who had no memory of their homes, stayed and taught other women their skills and made sure that all the workers were paid equally for the work that they did.

Garth and Shanama travelled home to their parents, and the joy and tears with which they were met can only be imagined. In time Garth married the gentlest of all the girls in the weaving house, who happened to be the one that Shanama had saved. They had happy, healthy children of their own who loved Shanama second only to their parents. Shanama did not marry for many years, until the Wild Dog came out of the west, but that’s a story for another day.

Stories for Another Day

In a land far away there is a place where three great rivers come together at the edge of the sea. Mangrove trees grow in the rivers and their roots grow upwards like black fingers in a sea of mud.

One day, a long way upriver, a melon fell off the back of a farmer’s cart and tumbled into the water. It floated and bobbed a long way downstream until it came to the place where the three rivers meet. A small eddy in the water pushed it towards the bank, where a tiger happened to be prowling around, looking for something to eat. The tiger, Kandaar, pulled the melon up onto the bank. It had thick, green rind so he couldn’t eat it himself, but gradually an idea grew in his head.

He pushed the melon with his paws and nudged it with his snout along the bank, until he came to where the old hawksbill turtle, Shukshu, was stripping green shoots off a riverbank plant and eating them.

Now Shukshu was old, the oldest and wisest of all the creatures that lived in the waters or on the banks or among the trees. He knew Kandaar, and he knew that he was vain and a coward. He went on quietly eating, and he waited for Kandaar to speak.

“Shukshu! Greetings, old friend!” Kandaar said heartily.

The turtle said nothing, only munched on his green shoots.

“Look at this fine melon I have,” Kandaar went on. “Doesn’t it look ripe and juicy?”

Shukshu nodded. “Indeed, it looks like a very good melon,” he said.

Kandaar said, “I’m not hungry just now – I had a big meal of young crocodile not long ago. Would you like this melon?”

Now Shukshu was very partial to a sweet, green melon, so he took it. He broke it open with his horned beak, and he ate the sweet, pink melon flesh inside. But every animal knows that a gift given means that a gift is expected in return. Shukshu ate the melon, and waited to see what Kandaar wanted in return for it.

“Shukshu, you are the wisest and cleverest of all the creatures hereabouts,” Kandaar began.

“What do you want, Kandaar?” Shukshu asked, cutting him short.

Now Kandaar was not the biggest tiger, nor the strongest, nor the cleverest. He disliked swimming, so he could not catch the fish and other water creatures that other tigers did. He often watched the river dolphins laughing and playing, jumping out of the water and tumbling in the currents, and he often thought how he would like to sink his teeth into their shining, meaty flesh and eat them.

Besides, once he had been trying to catch fish at the side of the river and slipped in the mud and fell into the water, splashing and flailing about, and the dolphins had seen him and laughed at him, and he hated the dolphins for it.

He said to Shukshu, the turtle, “O mighty one, I have always had an idea that I would look well with a pair of wings.” For he knew that dolphins are all but blind, and he dreamed of flying over the river and swooping down to catch one.

Shukshu threw back his head and laughed and laughed. “A tiger with wings? Seriously?”

Kandaar grew very angry, and he would have smacked Shukshu with his heavy paw and broken his old, tired neck, except that he remembered in time the sharp claw that the turtle had on each of his flippers. Instead, he forced a smile onto his face.

“Why, yes,” he said. “I think a pair of elegant wings would suit me very well. I have heard tell of horses with wings, and even pigs are said to fly from time to time.”

Shukshu knew very well what Kandaar had in mind, how he hated the dolphins, and how he was looking for an easy way to hunt them. He said, “Wings? Like a butterfly, or a blowfly?”

Cold anger filled Kandaar and he opened his jaws and bared his teeth. But he remembered in time that the hawksbill turtle eats almost everything, even the deadly Portuguese man’o’war, which makes their flesh poison to other animals, so he turned his growl into a smile and said, “No, of course not. I want wings like the great eagle who soars above the trees, noble and majestic.”

“Very well,” the turtle answered. Then he paused. “Do you mean the greatest eagle of all, the Whistling Eagle, whose talons whistle as the wind streams through them as he dives on his prey, striking terror into their hearts so they are frozen to the spot?”

Kandaar liked this idea very much. “Of course,” he said.

When he looked again, he had great, feathered wings on his sides. He flexed his shoulder muscles and sprang from the ground. His new wings carried him up and up, far above the trees, high into the sky. He laughed to himself, beating his wings in the warm air, soaring up, circling and dropping down.

Far below he could see the waters where the three great rivers meet, and he could see the dolphins swimming in packs. He picked out one that was a little behind the others, and he dived. The wind shrieked through the tips of his feathers and he laughed to himself.

Now Kandaar did not know, but Shukshu did, that although the river dolphins are all but blind, their hearing is excellent. They find their food and find their way by listening to the sounds around them, and how the sounds bounce and echo. When they heard the tiger dropping through the sky, his fur rippling, his wings beating and his talons whistling, they easily rolled out of his way and swam swiftly to safety.

But the river crocodile, Sunda, also heard the tiger plunging through the air, not with the grace of an eagle but heavily and clumsily. She slid silently off the bank and lay in the water, almost invisible, waiting for Kandaar. For she remembered that not so long ago it was Kandaar who had killed and eaten her young, just as they were hatching out of their eggs, and she hated him for it.

Kandaar came screeching down out of the sky, but his wings were heavy and cumbersome and he did not have the skill to turn or to lift himself up again. He crashed into the waters with a mighty splash. Fish, crabs, dolphins, all scattered quickly, but the Sunda the crocodile shot forward.

Her jaws fastened onto Kandaar’s leg and he gave a terrible scream. They wrestled in the water and the mud, crocodile and tiger, until Kandaar wrenched himself free. He slunk away through the mud, his wings shredded and one leg so damaged that he could never hunt again, but had to skulk in the mud at the water’s edge, feeding off crabs and beetles and the occasional dead fish.

Stories for Another Day

Once, in a small house on a small island in the middle of a vast, sparkling, blue sea, there lived a small family. The mother’s name was Shalinda, and there was a boy named Rush and a girl named Esha. Their father’s name was Kopp. It was such a small island that if you stood on the very highest point, in the hills that ran from one end of the island to the other, you could see the shore on both sides of the island at the same time.

Shalinda and Esha and Rush worked hard, collecting shells from the seashore every day. The most perfect shells, ivory, pink, or brown and white striped, they sold to people in fast boats who came from the other islands. The rest they made into necklaces and bracelets, which they also sold. When the moon was right, Kopp would take his long, barbed spear and stand on the rocks at the tip of the island, or in the waves as they crashed ashore, and spear fish for them to eat, or to be smoked in the tall smoke-houses so they would keep for the times when the fish were not running.

When he was not fishing or teaching Rush and Esha how to fish, Kopp spent his time gathering seaweed to burn for fuel. Some of the seaweed he even sold to the people in fast boats, to be made into creams for their rich wives to put on their faces.

Twice a year, at high tide, the sea came rushing up the beach, past the line where the old dry seaweed and broken shells lay, up and up, even to the doorsteps of the houses closest to the shore. These were known as king tides. Anyone who could afford it, built their houses on tall legs, with steps reaching up to the door so that the sea did not sweep away their cooking pots and fishing spears.

One day Rush noticed that the sea was creeping higher and higher with every high tide. “It must be the season for the king tide,” he said to his father.

“No, that is another month away,” said Kopp.

“But see,” Rush said, “the waves are reaching up past the high tide mark already.”

Kopp looked up and down the beach, and he could see that Rush was right. He called all the people together. “The tide is rising higher and higher,” he said. “It is almost as high now as the king tide.”

Others had noticed the same thing. “There are fewer and fewer shells to collect. The sea has swept them all away,” said one.

“The sea is beginning to come into my house,” old Vanca said. Her house had been built at the very edge of the shore many, many years ago by her grandfather.

“What can we do?” everyone said, looking to Kopp for an answer.

Rush said slowly, “I have heard of an old king, in ancient times, who took his throne to the edge of the shore and commanded the sea to go back.”

“Truly?” said Kopp. No-one could think of any other way of stopping the sea, so they decided to try it. Each person took a chair or a stool, or even an upturned bucket in Rush’s case, and sat at the high tide mark as the tide was coming in. “Go back! Go back!” they chanted together, but the waves still came in. The sea rushed in, in small waves at first, then in bigger and bigger waves. “Go back!’ everyone shouted at the very top of their voices, but the sea rushed on, in higher and higher waves that lapped the very chairs they were sitting on. It swept Rush’s bucket out from under him, and would have taken it out to sea if Kopp hadn’t swum after it and brought it back.

That night old Vanca’s house was swept away completely, and old Vanca with it.

The people cried and protested, but nothing would stop the sea. Eventually men in suits came in the fast boats, and told everyone that they would have to leave the island.

“It is not safe for you live here,” they said. “Before long, the island will be under water.”

“But where will we go? What will we do?” Kopp asked.

“It will be all be taken care of,” the men in suits promised.

Kopp and Shalinda gathered their pots and the fishing spears, but the men in suits said, “No, leave all those. They won’t be needed where you’re going. “

All the people from the island were loaded into fast boats. They were taken to a place a long way from the sea, where there were shops and big houses. Kopp and Shalinda found work in a factory that made plastic boxes, and Rush and Esha went to school. They both worked hard at school and in time they both got very good jobs, Rush as a teacher and Esha as a doctor. Rush married a beautiful, clever woman who was an artist, and they had two children of their own. Every night at bedtime, Rush told them stories about the sea, about shells and fish, sea creatures and rock pools, swimming and fishing and playing in the sand. But after a while his wife said, “Leave it, dear, they don’t understand what you’re talking about,” for the children had never seen the sea.

One day Rush said to his eldest son, Tali, “Tonight I feel like eating fresh fish for dinner.” Tali ran off and came back smiling, with a can of fish in his hand, and gave it to his father.

Rush looked at the tin of fish, and he looked at his son and daughter. He went to his wife and he said, “I asked my son for fish, and this is what he brought me.”

He and his wife sat up talking late into the night, and for days afterwards. Then Rush went to see his father Kopp, whom time had turned into an old man. His fingers were permanently bent and scarred from years of work in the factory. His wife, Shalinda, had injured her eyes in an accident at the factory and now sat at home all day, rocking in her chair.

“Come,” said Rush, “come with me, back to the sea.” He went to his sister, Esha, and told her what he and his wife wanted to do. “I think about the sea every day,” Esha said, “the feel of shells in my hands and sand under my feet. I will come with you gladly.”

They sold everything they had, and Rush and his wife and their children, and Esha and her partner, Talesh, and their father and mother travelled to a distant country, where they bought themselves a long stretch of land close to the sea. They built a house big enough for all of them, on tall legs to keep it safe and dry when the king tides came. Kopp went fishing every day and taught his grandchildren how to catch fish, and Shalinda and Talesh collected shells and made them into necklaces. And at the end of every day, they gathered to watch the sun set over the sea at their doorstep.

Stories for Another Day

A cat once had a litter of kittens, and the prettiest of all was named Zirka. She was as black as night all over except for a single splash of white on her tail, like a star. Perhaps it was for this reason that she was enchanted by the night sky. When other cats were off hunting and fighting and yowling, Zirka would perch on the highest fence post she could find, and gaze at the stars. Before she was even half-grown, she knew all the patterns which the stars made, the wriggling snake, the crow, the jumping dog and the fish caught on the end of a fisherman’s line. She was never lost at night, because one glance at the sky told her exactly where she was.

One night when she was staring at the sky, an extraordinary thing happened. One of the stars fell from the sky. Zirka watched it fall out of its place and drop towards the earth. Quick as a flash, Zirka was after it. She ran towards the place where she thought it must have landed, but there was nothing there but huge, grey buildings, protected by a very high fence.

“It must be behind one of those buildings,” Zirka thought. She climbed up and over the fence in no time. Slipping from shadow to shadow among the blank, square buildings, she came upon a very strange building. It was round but very narrow, with a pointed cap on top, and at the very tip of the pointed cap, there was a red light blinking. A wooden platform was going up and down the side of it, carrying boxes and tools and people from the ground to the top and back again. It was the highest thing Zirka had ever seen.

“If I can sneak onto that lifting platform,” she said to herself, “it will take me to the very top, so close I might even touch the stars.” She slipped in among the boxes, a shadow among shadows, and waited.

A voice hissed at her. “What are you doing here? This rocket is for me!”

Zirka jumped and shrank back. “What do you mean? What is a rocket?”

“You fool,” said the other cat, who was patched black and white, like moonlight on a puddle of ink. “I am Felicette, the first cat to ever travel in space. This is the rocket that I will travel in.”

“Ohhh,” breathed Zirka. “You’re going to the stars? Let me come with you!”

Felicette sniffed. “I have been chosen for my intelligence as well as my beauty,” she said. “A mere stray cat like you can never fly in a rocket.”

Zirka said, “Will you see the crow, and the wriggling snake, and the jumping dog?”

Felicette hissed, “What? Nobody told me there would be snakes and dogs!”

“Can you get out of the rocket and fly among the stars?” Zirka asked wistfully. She had dreamed all her life of flying in the darkness of space.

“Fly?” screeched Felicette. “I can’t fly! I’m not a bat!” She began scratching wildly at the door of her cage, until it sprang open. She leapt out, jumped off the platform and disappeared among the buildings.

The platform suddenly gave a jerk and started to move upwards. Zirka slipped into Felicette’s cage and held on tightly. At the top, a young scientist opened the cage and lifted Zirka out. “Wait!” he said. “You’re not Felicette! How did this happen?”

Zirka purred and rubbed her head against the man’s hand. “Where is Felicette?” he demanded. “She must go on this flight! We must have a cat, or the mission will have to be cancelled.” He lifted Zirka up and she settled comfortably into his arms. It was a pleasant surprise for him. Usually Felicette spat and scratched whenever he handled her.

Way below, under their feet, the rocket began to tremble as its first burners were lit.

The scientist looked at Zirka. “Well, a cat is a cat, I suppose,” he said. He put Zirka into the nose-cone of the rocket and tied straps around her to hold her safe during take-off. Then he shut the door and locked it tight. The platform sank back to the ground.

Zirka waited. There was a huge noise and the rocket was heaved up off the ground. Zirka felt herself being squashed flat, too flat to breathe or move a whisker. It got extremely hot, and her ears suddenly felt as they wanted to explode. Then just when she was sure she was going to die, and she wished that she’d never been such a fool as to get into the rocket, an amazing thing happened. The squashing stopped and she was floating. She felt like a fish in water, as if she didn’t weigh a thing.

Through the window she could see the stars, brighter and closer than she had ever seen them before, glittering in the deep blackness of space.

“This is what it must be like to be a star!” she said. “Heaven!” It was cold, colder than she’d ever been before. Then she slammed into the side of the cage again and the burning heat started up again and it was over. The rocket was plummeting back to earth. Everything inside her head went black.

When she woke up, the scientist was lifted her out of the nose-cone. “You did it!” he said to her, cuddling her into his arms and smoothing her fur. “The first cat in space – you’re a star! Let’s get you back to the lab where I can take a good look at you.” He put her into the cage and loaded the cage into the back of a truck.

Then out of the darkness in the truck came a voice. “Get out!” Felicette hissed. “I’m supposed to be the first cat in space, not you! Get out of here, before I slice you into little pieces!” She scrabbled with the catch on the cage door until she got it open.

Zirka didn’t argue. She slithered out of the cage and out of the back of the truck and ran. She dodged around buildings for what seemed like hours, searching for a way out, until finally she saw the fence in the distance. She ran to the fence, but just as she was about to launch herself at it, a large hand grabbed her.

“So I’ve found you,” said the young scientist. He picked her up and tickled her in her favourite spot under her chin. “You and I are the only ones who know that it wasn’t Felicette who went up in that rocket. What should we do about it?” Zirka rubbed her head against his hand and purred. “That’s what I think too,” said the man. “It’s our secret.”

Zirka never went into space again, but for years and years afterwards, when she had kittens of her own and they had kittens of their own, she would tell them the story of flying among the stars. And every single one of them was as black as night, with a single white star at the tip of their tails.

Dharab the Dragon-slayer

Dharab killed his first dragon when he was four years old, but then it was a very small dragon, hardly bigger than a lizard. When he was ten years old he killed his first fully-grown dragon, by luring it into a closed valley and levering a heavy rock onto it. It was then that he was taken into his first apprenticeship. By the time he was fifteen, he had far out-stripped all his masters, at an age when most young men were just beginning to flex their muscles and begin their apprenticeships.

From then on, in a few short years he became known as the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven kingdoms, and even beyond, possibly the greatest dragon-slayer of all time.

The townspeople of the village where he lived when he was not travelling the length and breadth of the seven kingdoms plying his trade, were very proud of him, and they built him a large house in the centre of the village. The master sign-painter made a sign that said, ‘Dharab the Great, Dragon-Slayer’, and hung it above the door of his house.

Dharab owned very little, only his weapons and his helmet and shield, but he had a great heart. He took no pleasure in slaying dragons, except the pride of a craftsman in a job well done, and the happiness of seeing a town freed from an evil menace. His needs were few. Half his time he spent polishing his shield and helmet and sharpening his weapons, because the sharpness of a dragon-slayer’s sword can mean the hairsbreadth between life and death. The other half of his time he spent daydreaming outside the house of a beautiful girl named Lainie.

Lainie had flaming red hair that flowed in waves down her back, and deep green eyes in a perfect, heart-shaped face, and she played the harp. Hour after hour Dharab would stand in the dark, in the street outside Lainie’s house, listening to her playing the harp, and sighing.

One day, when he was visiting the healer to have a cut from a dragon’s claw attended to, he asked, “How can someone like me ever find a girl who would marry him?”

The healer, Eva, sewed up the cut carefully, stitch by stitch, before she answered, “You’re a fool, Dharab,” and sent him away with a jar of ointment. “Put this on the cut every day, and the scar will be no worse than any of your others.”

Dharab thought about Lainie as he polished his shield and he sighed. What could he say to a girl like Lainie? What did he have to offer her? And then one evening, as he stood outside her house, listening spellbound as the notes of the harp died away, the door opened and she invited him in. Further down the street, Eva, who had been standing in the shadows watching Dharab, slipped away.

The wedding between Dharab and Lainie was celebrated in great style. Dharab spent all his savings to pay for the magnificent wedding that Lainie wanted, with musicians and fine clothes and a great feast. His heart was overflowing with joy when he led her to his house, with the flowers still in her hair.

She looked around his house, with its plain table and plain chairs, a cooking fire and a few simple bowls and cups, and she said. “But where is everything? Where is all your wealth, the gold and silver?”

Dharab said, “What do you mean? This is all I have, my home and the tools of my trade.”

“But the dragons’ hoards,” Lainie said. “Everyone knows that dragons heap up gold and jewels of every kind, gold cups, coins, crowns, necklaces…” Her eyes shone at the very thought.

Dharab shook his head. “Very few,” he said. “Most dragons are interested only blood, in killing and slaughtering cattle and children and anything they can catch. The few who do steal gold or silver, I return that to the villagers that the dragon stole it from, for it is rightfully theirs.”

“You what?” Lainie spat. “But the rewards! Townsfolk must give you great rewards for ridding them of their dragons?”

“They pay me what is just,” Dharab answered. He did not say that sometimes their grateful thanks was all that a poor village could afford to give him. “It is enough to live on.”

“But you are the greatest dragon-slayer in all the seven kingdoms! You could demand any fee you like!” Lainie said.

Dharab said nothing, but shrugged hopelessly. He knew then that Eva was right, he was a fool.

From then on there was no peace in Dharab’s house. Lainie jeered at him and taunted him constantly. When he made food for her, she threw it down in disgust, and when he tried to speak to her, she turned away coldly, or else she screamed at him in anger.

Dharab began to spend more and more time away, taking four days to reach a village and dispatch its dragon, when before he would have taken two. On one such trip he came home empty-handed, because the villagers were so poor they had nothing to give him.

Lainie screamed at him, and in her anger she caught up a pot and threw it at him. It shattered, and left a long cut down the side of his face. Dharab looked at her in sorrow, and she picked up a second pot to throw at him. He backed out of the house quickly and she slammed the door between them.

With blood trickling down his face, Dharab made his way to the healer’s house once more. Eva came down the stairs in her white nightgown, with her long dark hair hanging down over her shoulder. “This cut was not made by a dragon’s claw or teeth,” Eva said, wiping his cheek.

Dharab said nothing. Eva shook her head and said, “You are a great fool, Dharab.” Dharab looked at her bare feet and her deft hands and and he knew she was right.

That same evening he left for a quiet place, taking only his spear with him. He was gone for a week.

When he came back, everyone saw that his face was set, and his hand was steady on his spear. He went to his house and found Lainie there, brushing her hair by the fire.

“It is over between us” he said. “There is nothing here for either of us.”

Lainie said, “I will not go back to my father’s house with nothing. I will have this house.”

“Very well,” Dharab said. Taking only his shield and his helmet and his weapons, he left, with no other word of farewell. He built himself a grass hut on the edge of the village and lived there in peace and contentment. In a short time, Lainie married again, a wealthy silk merchant, who gave her all the riches she desired. They filled Dharab’s house with soft carpets and golden cups and plates. They took down the sign that hung at the front of the house and threw it into the gutter.

Some time later, Dharab saw Eva gathering herbs at the edge of the village, and he called to her. They stood talking for a few moments, then Dharab said, “I asked you once how I could ever find a woman to marry me. It is even harder now that I have nothing to offer except the tools of my trade and a house with dirt floors and a grass roof.”

“You are forgetting all the wealth of your heart,” Eva said.

Dharab’s heart caught in his mouth. He said, “Do you think…”

Eva said, “You are such a fool, Dharab,” and she took him into her arms.

They were married, and no home in all the seven kingdoms knew more joy or passion than theirs. In time they built a strong, sturdy house, with a garden full of herbs, and in time they were blessed with two extraordinary children, Garth and Shanama, but that’s a story for another day.

Once there was a soldier in the king’s army, who lost his taste for fighting, He put down his weapons and would not fight any more, so he was dismissed with a week’s pay and the clothes he stood up in.

He walked away, and kept walking until he was too tired to walk any more. He had reached a country he didn’t know, and he said to himself, “I have nothing and no-one. I will lie down under a tree and prepare to die, for there is nothing left for me to live for.”

The soldier, whose name was Ralf, lay down in the shade of a tree and closed his eyes, waiting for death. But the noise of birds in the tree above him, and the sound of water kept him awake. He got up and searched for the source of the noise, and he discovered a spring of water bubbling up out of the ground nearby. He looked around and found a large flat rock, and he heaved it over the top of the spring. The water was silenced, and he lay down again and closed his eyes.

In a little while he was woken by the sound of someone climbing up the hill towards him. It was a young boy dressed in rags. The boy was using a strong stick to help him climb, because his left leg dragged uselessly behind him. Ralf called out to him, “What are you doing here?”

The boy turned his head from side to side, and Ralf could tell at once that the boy was blind. The boy said, “I have come to find out why the source of the stream has dried up. I have brought my sheep to pasture at the bottom of this hill, but without water, they will soon die.”

Ralf replied, “Do you mean to say that the spring just here is the source of a stream?”

“Yes, sir,” the shepherd boy answered. “The water makes its way down the hill and becomes a stream. A little further on, it joins another stream and together they gather strength and eventually become a river that waters all the fields and farms around this part of the country.”

When Ralf understood this, he lifted the heavy rock away, and the spring started to flow again, bubbling up cheerfully out of the ground. Ralf saw that the channel that the water flowed through was overgrown and choked with weeds. He pulled out the weeds and dug the channel deeper, so that the water flowed freely down the hill. When the boy heard it beginning to flow again, his face was covered with happiness. He said, “Thank you, sir. This water is life to the whole valley.”

Ralf walked with him down the hill, asking him, “How do you come to be a shepherd, when you are both blind and lame?”

“When I was a child there was an earthquake in the country where I lived,” the boy said. “My parents and all my family were killed, but I was pulled out alive, although my leg was injured, and my eyes. Kind people looked after me, and brought me safely to this country. A farmer gave me a job as a shepherd, looking after just five sheep at first, but when he saw that I did the job well, he gave me more to take care of, and now I look after twenty sheep,” he said with pride.

They had reached the pasture at the bottom of the hill, where there was a flock of fine, healthy sheep. They left off eating the grass and came milling around the boy, nudging him and calling to him. He spoke to them, calling each one of them by name, and led them down to the freshly-flowing stream.

Ralf turned to leave, but the boy called after him, “Won’t you eat with me before you go?” So they sat down together, and ate bread and cheese that the shepherd boy pulled from his bag. “This is excellent cheese,” said Ralf.

The boy smiled happily. “I made it myself,” he said. “The farmer lets me have some of the sheep’s milk as part of my wages. And look,” he said, pulling out a wooden spindle, “I am learning to spin, so I can make my own wool. The farmer’s wife has promised to teach me to knit when I have enough of this yarn, so that I can make myself a new coat!”

Ralf marvelled at the boy’s happiness. He had so little, and yet he found so much contentment in it. Ralf looked at his own hands, and his feet, his strong arms and his straight back. He got to his feet, and prepared to set off, whistling. The shepherd boy said, “I suppose you must return to your own work now.”

“Yes,” said Ralf. “There is a great deal I have to do.” He thanked the boy for his meal, and set out. And for the rest of his life he used his strength, his health, his abilities and his kindness to do as much good as he could in the world. But that is a story for another day.

In the last years of Dharab, the greatest dragon-slayer ever known, his daughter Shanama hunted with him, and she learned from him many of the skills that made him great. She learned how to kill her dragon cleanly and humanely, how to protect herself from the fire that the dragon throws from its mouth, and how to avoid the razor-like flail that is the dragon’s tail. She learned to keep her weapons sharp and in good order, but she did not learn the art of burnishing armour or polishing a helmet, for her only armour was a sheath of silver that covered her from head to toe, which she had woven with her own hands.

Shanama had been a weaver of silk before she learned the trade of dragon-slaying, and between journeys across the secluded kingdoms to slay dragons, she would still find peace sitting at her loom, creating magical patterns in more colours than you can see in a rainbow. In between times, she played with her nieces and nephews, racing and tumbling with them, teaching the girls the art of swordplay and the boys the business of argument and persuasion.

One day, when she was passing the shuttle back and forth at her loom, making a blanket in the colours of the sunset for her youngest niece, she heard a scratching at her door. When she opened it, a great wild dog stood there. His head was a big as a drum, and his teeth were like daggers dripping with foam. He seized Shanama in his jaws but she twisted away, and pulled her sword from its place above the fireplace.

Back and forth they battled in the tiny room, lunging at each other, sometimes one briefly dominating, sometimes the other. Finally the great dog leapt in the air and threw himself against Shanama. She fell backwards and hit her head against the stone edge of the fireplace and lost her senses.

When she woke, she was in a large room hung with curtains and carpets of finest wool. It was lit with crystal lamps and scented with the fragrance of hundreds of roses, pink, red, yellow and white. She was lying in a soft, warm bed and a handsome young man was bending over her. “Shanama, my sweet!” he said when he saw that she was awake. “Forgive me for stealing you away, but my feelings for you overcame all wisdom. I have loved you from afar for longer than I can remember. My only wish is to make you my wife!”

Shanama sat up carefully, for her head was aching badly. She looked at the young man, his soft dark eyes, the way his hair curled softly on his neck, the rings that covered his fingers and the gold chains around his neck.

“Be that as it may,” she said, “you should not have had me brought here against my will.”

The young man’s face fell. “Forgive me, I beg you, beautiful one! I could not wait to call you my own.” Shining tears gathered on his eyelashes, and Shanama’s anger faded.

“Who are you,” she asked him, “and what is this place?”

“I am Prince Aleksey of the fourth kingdom. My father is king, and on his death, which I hope and trust will be many years from now, I will be king. My fondest wish is that you will rule with me as my queen.

“This dog,” he went on, indicating the wild dog who lay on the floor at his feet, “this miserable hound is my servant, whom I sent to bring you here. I cannot begin to tell you how angry I am that he has caused you hurt.” When he said this, he gave the dog a savage kick. “But I will not press any more questions on you for now. Come, eat and drink with me, now that you have rested.”

“I will not eat nor drink at your table, since you have brought me here by force,” Shanama said. “Return me to my home, and I will consider what you have said.”

For a moment the prince’s eyes darkened with anger, but then he bowed his head and said, “As you wish, my lovely one.”

He snapped his fingers, and the great dog leaped to his feet. “Carry her back to the place that you brought her from, and be sure no harm comes to her this time, or you will feel the bite of my anger,” he ordered. The dog growled deep in his throat, but obeyed immediately. He picked up Shanama with his teeth, and lifted her onto his back. In less than the blink of an eye they were back in Shanama’s own room. The dog gave a long, echoing howl and disappeared.

Over the next days, Shanama gave much thought to the handsome young prince with his enchanting smile, and his huge wild dog. The more she thought about it, the stranger it seemed to her. She took the problem to her father, Dharab, and they talked at great length, long into the night. When she returned home, she found the wild dog waiting outside her door, his tail whipping back and forth.

Shanama seized her sword, but the dog dropped his head and whined. Instead of launching himself at her, he paced back and forth in front of the door. Shanama saw the marks of many beatings on his back and on his belly, and a fierce anger rose in her. She dropped to her knees in front of the dog. She held his muzzle between her hands and said, “Your master has sent you to being me to him, is that so? And it is not what you would wish?”

She looked into the dog’s eyes and she knew it was true. “No matter, I will go with you,” she said. “But first…” She took her short sword and tied it in its scabbard on her back, between her shoulder blades. Then she dressed herself in a beautiful, silken gown, “For after all,” she said, “I must look my best for the crown prince of the fourth kingdom.” When she was ready, with her lovely hair falling as smoothly as water down her back, she placed one hand on the dog’s shoulder and in an instant they were transported to the elegant room where she had first met the prince.

“Shanama, my lovely one! You have come!” the prince cried. He took her hand and his eyes shone with pleasure. “I have never seen you look more beautiful,” he said. He took a golden ring from his breast pocket.

“You have come here freely, of your own will,” he said to her. “May I hope that you will accept my ring and make me the happiest man in the seven kingdoms by becoming my wife?”

The dog began a low, savage growling deep in his throat. “Quiet!” the prince snapped. He turned back to Shanama and said, “My darling, what is your answer?”

“My answer?” said Shanama. She drew her sword and in one swift movement she sliced the prince’s shirt from neck to waist. It hung open, revealing his bare chest, with a long mark over his heart. “This is my answer. I know you, Tarn, dragon-enchanter from the southern-most island. I know you by your voice, by your cruelty, and by the mark my father Dharab put on you when he almost ended your life!”

The prince’s face and body changed. His eyes grew darker, black and glittering, his face twisted and huge horns unfurled above his forehead. His body, banded with muscle and covered in armoured scales, grew until he towered over Shanama. He laughed, with a sound like chains in an empty cave, and with one huge claw, he swept her aside as if she were merely a blade of grass.

“If you had accepted my ring you would have become my own creature, a slave to my will like this miserable dog!” he hissed. “Now death is all you have to look forward to, you foolish, witless female!”

Shanama lay dazed at his feet but the wild dog hurled himself at the dragon, snarling. The dragon swung his tail to crush the dog like an irritating mosquito, but as it rose in the air, Shanama managed to thrust her sword into the pale flesh beneath the dragon’s tail, the weakest spot on his armour-plated body.

The dragon shrieked with pain. Blood, thick and black as oil, poured out of the wound. He turned his claws on them, long and sharp as knives, but Shanama was on her feet now, striking with her sword again and again. Losing blood, the dragon began to weaken, his huge head drooping lower. “Now – to me!” Shanama shouted. The great dog leapt towards her, and she sprang onto his back and threw her sword, straight and true, into the dragon’s throat. It crashed to the floor, dead.

Shanama fell back, exhausted. When she looked up, a man stood before her, with the piercing blue eyes and the rough, brown hair of the wild dog.

“You are the true prince of the fourth kingdom, Prince Aleksey?” Shanama asked.

“I was placed under an enchantment and held captive by that evil creature,” Aleksey said, “but now, through your courage, I am a free man again, and your humble servant, if you will have me.”

Shanama accepted him and they were married, and in the fullness of time she reigned at his side as queen of the fourth kingdom. Their children were known as the swiftest hunters and the bravest warriors the land had ever known. No dragon or enchanter ever dared even so much as set foot in the fourth kingdom while they reigned, until the Princess Zahara was born, but that is a story for another day.

In a village in a valley not too far away from here lived a doctor, called Dr Averil. He was a good doctor who looked after his patients well. If his patients could pay, well and good, but if they were very poor, he didn’t ask them to pay at all.

As time went on, Dr Averil began to notice that more and more of his patients were sick because they didn’t have enough to eat. They had no money to buy food or medicine or warm clothes. Dr Averil was afraid that it would not be long before their children started to die from hunger, and something must be done.

He left his home and went to see the king.

Now King Esher was a greedy and selfish man. When Dr Averil told him that the poor were starving, he merely said, “What is that to me? So long as I have plenty to eat, that’s all that matters.”

Dr Averil pleaded with him. “Even a small part of the food that you throw away every day would be enough to feed a family for a month,” he said.

The king stared at Averil and said. “My dear doctor, what are you suggesting? Feeding a family for a month would cost me a great deal of money.” He turned to the Keeper of the Treasury, Count Zilf. “How much would this ridiculous plan cost, Zilf?”

Count Zilf did some calculations on a piece of paper and said, “Oh, a great deal of money, your Majesty! Why, your Majesty might have to close down your third-favourite swimming pool!”

“You see?” the king turned back to Dr Averil. “It’s completely out of the question.” And he sent the doctor away.

Dr Averil fretted and worried, until he couldn’t stand it any longer. He called together all the newspapers and journalists and reporters and said to them, “Come with me. King Esher has an important announcement to make.”

He led them to the king’s palace. When they reached the audience chamber where the king was sitting on his throne with Count Zilf beside him, Dr Averil said to the reporters, “The king has an important announcement to make. He is concerned for his people, who are poor and hungry, so out of his extremely kind and generous heart he has decided that anyone who is in need, will be given bread from the royal kitchens and vegetables from the royal gardens.”

Everyone was shocked, none more so than the king. “What’s this?” he thundered.

Count Zilf touched the king’s sleeve and whispered into his ear, “Shhhh! Do you want people to think that you are NOT extremely generous and kind-hearted?”

The king looked at all the cameras and the journalists. He gritted his teeth and forced himself to smile. “Yes, they will be given all the bread and vegetables they need,” he said.

The very next morning there was a long, long line of people outside the palace. They were all given fresh vegetables and bread. Before many weeks had passed, the people were much healthier and happier.

The king was very angry with Dr Averil. He called the wickedest sorcerers in the kingdom and told them he had an enemy that he wanted to punish. The most wicked gave a sinister chuckle and said, “I have exactly what you need.” He showed the king a large, black, metal gong. “If you wish to make your enemy very unhappy, you only have to say his name and then strike the gong once. Half of his body will be turned to wood.”

The king was very impressed. “Let me see.” He took the gong into his hands. “Like this?” he asked. Then he said Averil’s name and struck the gong.

In his house on the other side of the village, Dr Averil felt both his legs turn to wood, all the way down to his feet and his toes inside his boots. “What is happening to me?” he said. He couldn’t walk, or get up out of his chair.

When the king heard that Averil’s legs had turned to solid wood, he chuckled gleefully. It almost made up for having to empty out his third-favourite swimming pool.

As winter drew on, Dr Averil was called to visit many more sick patients. He noticed that their houses were very cold, with leaky roofs that let the rain in. The drains were blocked up and some of them had no bathrooms at all. No wonder they’re getting sick, he said to himself. He shook his head, and thought hard. Then he went to visit the king again.

“Your people are living in broken-down shacks,” he said to the king. “You should build them proper houses, with bathrooms, and windows for fresh air, and gardens for the children to run around in.”

“What?” yelled the king. “Outrageous!”

Count Zilf took out his calculator and made some calculations. “It would cost a great deal of money, your Majesty,” he said. “You would have to get rid of all but five of your sports cars to pay for it.”

“Only five sports cars? Unbelievable!” the king said. “Take your impossible demands out of my sight,” he said to Averil, “and no tricks this time, or you’ll be sorry!”

Dr Averil went home and thought about how much his wooden legs ached and how he could no longer walk or swim or ride his bike, and how he could only move about using a wheelchair. Then he thought about his patients with their bad chests and their children with terrible illnesses, and he made up his mind.

He called the reporters and journalists again, and he told them, “King Esher is such a just and compassionate man that he is going to build new houses for all the poor people. No more leaky roofs or damp floors or smelly drains. “

The news was announced in all the newspapers, and so of course the king had to go through with it, or it would have seemed that he was not a just or a compassionate man. Rows of tidy new houses were built, with windows and bathrooms, and a small garden at the back so the children could run around, and people could grow their own vegetables.

King Esher had to sell all but five of his sports cars to pay for the houses. He ground his teeth and said in a rage, “I told that interfering doctor that he would be sorry!” And he struck the gong.

Its reverberations rang out across the country to the very house where Averil was sitting in his wheelchair by the fire. All at once his arms and his body turned to solid wood, everything but his face, his hands and his heart.

“What is happening to me?” he cried. But he was a doctor, and a very clever man, and he knew that this was no sickness or disease. “It must be the king’s doing,” he thought.

His back and his legs hurt constantly, and he could hardly bend his arms to feed himself any more, yet he still took care of his patients as well as he could. As the months went by and spring came, Dr Averil noticed that people were much healthier and happier, now that they had warm, dry houses, and gardens to grow their own food.

Then one day an old patient came to see the doctor, with a long gash along his arm. “How did you get this?” Dr Averil asked him.

“I have a new job in a factory,” the man said, “but I don’t know which machines are dangerous, and so I injured my arm.”

The doctor said, “Aren’t there signs saying ‘Danger’?”

“There may be,” the man said, “but I can’t read. There are no schools for poor people like us, only for the wealthy.”

“No schools?” Dr Averil said. “But everyone should be able to go to school and learn to read and write.” He gathered up his courage and went to see the king once more.

“So, it’s you, Averil,” the king said, chuckling to see the doctor in a wheelchair, unable to move his arms or his legs. “What do you want this time?” He was sure that the doctor would not dare try to trick him again, for it would be certain death for him if he did.

“The poor cannot read or write,” Dr Averil said. “They need schools where they can learn.”

“Schools?” blustered the king. “Absolutely impossible! Why, they might learn to read, and then they would start having ideas and opinions. That would never do!”

“Never!” agreed Count Zilf. He was adding up sums on a white table-cloth. “Very expensive,” he said, “very, very expensive. If your Majesty had to build a school, there would hardly be enough money left in the treasury to go on holidays more than three or four times a year.”

The king was horrified. “Holidays only three or four times a year? Unthinkable! Go home, and forget about this preposterous idea, or you’ll be VERY sorry.” He pointed to the black gong and nodded knowingly.

Then Dr Averil knew for certain that King Esher was responsible for what had happened to him. He went home, but he could not allow the king’s threats to stop him doing what he knew was right. He thought about his hands, and his face, and most especially his heart, and he sighed deeply. Then he called the journalists and reporters and told them, “King Esher in his great wisdom and foresight knows that his people need to be educated, so he is going to build a new school for anyone who wants to learn.”

The exciting news went out to everyone at once. The people gathered to cheer in the streets and wave flags with the king’s picture on them, but the king’s anger blazed. “Averil has gone too far this time,” he snarled. He pointed with a finger shaking with rage. “Strike the gong, three times!”

The gong was struck, once, twice, three times. Its sound rang through the streets, making the children shiver and the trees shed their leaves. Dr Averil felt the vibrations through his wooden legs, his wooden back and his arms. Then first his left hand and then his right hand turned to solid wood, then his head and his face. Lastly his beating heart turned to solid wood and stopped dead.

But his heart was so full of love that it could not be contained. It split the wood open, and life-giving blood poured out into every vein. His hands, his arms, his body, his legs and his feet were living flesh once more.

He sprang to his feet and gave thanks with a joyful heart. And so he lived out the rest of his long, happy life.