Fantastic Stories Page 10

  And so the wandering minstrel was compelled to remain in the palace, continually singing his magical song that made everyone feel happy.

  But the minstrel did not feel happy himself. ‘I cannot carry on singing this song over and over again,’ he said to himself. ‘I must stop to eat… besides, my voice will grow hoarse.’

  But day and night the guards stood over him, and he had no choice but to go on singing.

  Well, this went on for three days and three nights. On the fourth day, a string on his harp broke.

  ‘I cannot play the song any more,’ the minstrel said to the king. ‘I don’t have all the notes.’

  ‘Carry on!’ ordered the king.

  On the fifth day, the minstrel’s voice went hoarse, so that he could only croak, and all the magic went from the song.

  ‘Your Majesty!’ gasped the poor minstrel. ‘Now surely you will let me stop.’

  ‘Play on!’ growled the king.

  So the poor minstrel had to play on – even though he could no longer play the right notes nor sing the song, and everyone grew heartily sick of the dreadful noise he was making. Yet still the king would by no means allow him to stop.

  In the end, the minstrel could stand it no longer. He flung his harp at the king’s head, and it struck him right on the temple, so that he fell down dead. As soon as he did, of course, the guards drew their swords and cut down the unfortunate minstrel, and the magical song was lost for ever.

  So it was that the song that brought happiness ended up bringing misery – all through one man’s greed.

  TOUCH THE MOON

  A LONG, LONG TIME AGO, a king once decided to build a tower. ‘I shall build this Tower so high,’ he said, ‘that from its topmost battlements – if you stand on tiptoe – you will be able to touch the moon.’ ‘I fear,’ said his chief architect, ‘that there will not be enough stone in the whole country to build a tower so high.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said the king. ‘Get building.’

  ‘I am afraid,’ said his Chancellor, ‘that there won’t be enough gold in the Treasury to pay for such a building.’

  ‘Nonsense!’ said the king. ‘Get taxing.’

  ‘What is the point of being able to touch the moon?’ asked his daughter.

  But the king didn’t hear her – he was far too busy organizing the laying of the foundations, the raising of the finances and the knocking-down of half his capital city to make way for the Tower.

  The city itself was divided in two about the building of the Tower. Half the citizens thought it was a wonderful project. ‘It is vital,’ they said, ‘that we are able to touch the moon before any of our rivals can.’

  But the other half of the city (who were losing their homes and shops to make way for the Tower) were, naturally, much less enthusiastic. But even they were not against building the Tower altogether – they were just against building it in their half of the city.

  ‘It will indeed be marvellous when we can touch the moon – just by standing on tiptoe,’ they said. ‘But it would make much more sense to build it on the other side of the city – the ground’s higher there for a start!’

  ‘But what is the point of touching the moon at all?’ asked the king’s daughter again. But she might as well have been talking to a lump of wood. As a matter of fact, she was talking to a lump of wood! You see, the princess had a secret… but I can’t tell you what it was. Not just yet.

  Well, they knocked down half the city, and, in its place, they started to build the gigantic Tower. The citizens who’d lost their homes had to camp outside the city wall, and they suffered in the cold winter. But no one was allowed to rebuild their house, because all the stone was needed for the Tower.

  All the stone quarries in the land were ordered to send every stone they produced to help build the Tower. And the king’s builders worked day and night – all through that winter and all through that summer, and, by the time winter came again, they’d built the first storey.

  ‘The work must go faster than this!’ exclaimed the king. ‘Or we’ll never be able to touch the moon – not even by standing on tiptoe!’

  So the king gave orders that the work had to go twice as fast. No one was to take lunch breaks or tea breaks, and the mules pulling the carts had to walk twice as quickly.

  And on they built – all through that winter. Soon the quarries ran out of stone, and they began digging new quarries in fields where animals used to graze.

  And on they built, until by the end of that year, they’d finished the second storey.

  ‘Loafers! Do-nothings! Time-wasters! Afternoon farmers!’ exclaimed the king. ‘We’ll never be able to touch the moon at this rate!’

  Then he gave orders that half of his subjects must give up their usual jobs, and work instead upon the Tower. And on the building went.

  The countryside began to disappear as quarries took the place of farms. Food became scarce, and everybody in the land suffered.

  ‘This is CRAZY!’ shouted the king’s daughter. ‘My dad’s gone loony! He’s ruining his own kingdom, and for what? Just so some idiots can stand on tiptoe and touch the moon!’

  But the lumps of wood she was talking to didn’t reply. They just lay there, the way that lumps of wood do.

  ‘You’ve got more sense than my dad!’ she exclaimed. ‘And you’re just two short planks!’

  Meanwhile the building went on and on. The citizens suffered more and more each day, but they kept telling each other that it would be all worth it, once they could touch the moon.

  Eventually they completed the third storey. But the king’s coffers were now empty, there was scarcely any food, and life was miserable.

  By the time the fourth storey had been completed, most of the kingdom had been carried away in carts as stone for the building. The green fields had disappeared, the woods and forests had all been chopped down, and all that was left was the Tower.

  And now even the citizens themselves began to complain. They sent some representatives to the king, who fell on their knees in front of him, and said: ‘O, King! Of course we all know the vital importance to our country of being able to touch the moon, but we have hardly anything left to eat, the kingdom has been turned into one vast quarry, and life has become intolerable. Please may we stop?’

  But the king just became furious, and he ordered his army to compel every single person in the kingdom to work on the Tower.

  And so they built the fifth storey.

  It was at this moment that the king’s daughter, who was, by this time, a fine young girl of sixteen, said: ‘I am going to put a stop to this nonsense once and for all.’

  And now the time has come when I must tell you the princess’s secret. Only you mustn’t tell anyone else because … well … she liked doing something that princesses aren’t really supposed to like doing. In fact, it was something which she only did if she was sure – absolutely sure – that nobody else, except her most trusted chambermaid, was around. I wonder if you can guess what it was? Well… I suppose I’d better tell you… The princess was very keen… very keen indeed… on carpentry!

  Now, in those days, the only people who normally did carpentry were carpenters, and it was considered a pretty lowly job. But the princess loved oak and chestnut and boxwood. She loved sawing it and planing it and making things from it.

  Of course, if her father had found out, he’d have probably jumped through the hole in his crown with rage, because it was such an unprincess-like thing to do. But he never did find out, until… well hang on! That’s jumping to the end of the story.

  Now the princess was not only very keen on carpentry, she was also very good at it. So she built herself a flying boat, and attached six white-necked swans to it. Then she stood in the market square, disguised as a lunatic, and called out: ‘Who wants to touch the moon?’ Well, of course, she pretty soon had a crowd of people around her, all laughing and making fun of her and pretending they wanted to touch the moon. So she invited them into her flying boat
, and they all piled in, still joking and smiling and thinking the princess was just some poor lunatic.

  Then – to everyone’s surprise – she cracked her whip, and the swans flew up into the air, pulling the flying boat up with them. Up and up they rose, until they were as high as the moon, and everyone leaned out and touched it. Just like that.

  When they returned to the earth, however, they found the king in a terrible rage, surrounded by his guards.

  ‘Arrest that lunatic!’ screamed the king.

  But the princess flew above the king and his guards, and called down: ‘What’s the matter? I thought you wanted to touch the moon? Jump aboard and I’ll fly you there!’

  But the king screamed with rage. ‘There’s only one way to touch the moon!’ he cried. ‘And that’s from the battlements of my Tower – standing on tiptoe!’

  ‘But we’ve already touched it,’ cried the citizens, who’d flown in the flying boat. ‘Look! You can see our fingermarks all over it!’

  The king looked up, and he could indeed see their fingermarks all over the moon – like little smudges. (For you must know that up until that time the moon had been just plain white, and had no markings at all.)

  ‘Fly with her!’ pleaded all the citizens. ‘Touch the moon! And then we can all stop building this wretched Tower that has destroyed our kingdom!’

  But the king went purple with rage. ‘No one will stop me building my Tower!’ he cried. And he ordered his archers to shoot the six white-necked swans, so the flying boat came crashing down to earth, and the king’s daughter with it.

  When the citizens ran to her side, they found her disguise had fallen off, and they recognized the princess. They turned to the king and said: ‘Now see what you’ve done! You’ve killed your own daughter!’

  Whereupon the king knelt down by her side, and grief swept over him like a hand wiping a slate clean. ‘I’ve been mad!’ he cried. ‘I have been obsessed – not with touching the moon – but with my own power and glory.’

  And there and then he ordered his workmen to destroy the Tower, and start to rebuild his kingdom and his people’s homes.

  At this moment, the princess stirred – for she had not been killed by the fall, only stunned – and she murmured: ‘Why touch the moon? It looks best as it is.’

  And from that day on, no one in that land ever thought of touching the moon again.

  But, you know, it still has their fingermarks all over it, and, if you look up at it on a clear night, you will see them – like a face crying out: ‘Don’t touch me!’

  TOM AND THE DINOSAUR

  A SMALL BOY NAMED TOM once noticed strange noises coming from the old woodshed that stood at the very bottom of his garden. One noise sounded a bit like his Great Aunt Nelly breathing through a megaphone. There was also a sort of scraping, rattling noise, which sounded a bit like someone rubbing several giant tiddlywinks together. There was also a rumbling sort of noise that could have been a very small volcano erupting in a pillarbox. There was also a sort of scratching noise – rather like a mouse the size of a rhinoceros trying not to frighten the cat.

  Tom said to himself: ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say it all sounded exactly as if we had a dinosaur living in our woodshed.’

  So he climbed onto a crate, and looked through the woodshed window – and do you know what he saw?

  ‘My hat!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘It’s a Stegosaurus!’

  He was pretty certain about it, and he also knew that although it looked ferocious, that particular dinosaur only ate plants. Nevertheless, just to be on the safe side, he ran to his room, and looked up ‘Stegosaurus’ in one of his books on dinosaurs.

  ‘I knew I was right!’ he said, when he found it. Then he read through the bit about it being a vegetarian, and checked the archaeological evidence for that. It seemed pretty convincing.

  ‘I just hope they’re right,’ muttered Tom to himself, as he unlocked the door of the woodshed. ‘I mean after sixty million years, it would be dead easy to mistake a vegetarian for a flesh-eating monster!’

  He opened the door of the woodshed very cautiously, and peered in.

  The Stegosaurus certainly looked ferocious. It had great bony plates down its back, and vicious spikes on the end of its tail. On the other hand, it didn’t look terribly well. Its head was resting on the floor, and a branch with strange leaves and red berries on it was sticking out of its mouth. The rumbling sound (like the volcano in the pillarbox) was coming from its stomach. Occasionally the Stegosaurus burped and groaned slightly.

  ‘It’s got indigestion,’ said Tom to himself. ‘Poor thing!’ And he stepped right in and patted the Stegosaurus on the head.

  This was a mistake.

  The Stegosaurus may have been just a plant-eater, but it was also thirty feet long, and as soon as Tom touched it, it reared up onto its hind legs – taking most of the woodshed with it.

  If the thing had looked pretty frightening when it was lying with its head on the floor, you can imagine how even more terrifying it was when it towered thirty feet above Tom.

  ‘Don’t be frightened!’ said Tom to the Stegosaurus. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  The Stegosaurus gave a roar … well, actually it wasn’t really a roar so much as an extremely loud bleat: ‘Baaa – Baaa – Baaa!’ it roared, and fell back on all fours. Tom only just managed to jump out of the way in time, as half the woodshed came crashing down with it, and splintered into pieces around the Stegosaurus. At the same time, the ground shook as the huge creature’s head slumped back onto the floor.

  Once again, Tom tried to pat it on the head. This time, the Stegosaurus remained where it was, but one lizard-like eye stared at Tom rather hard, and its tummy gave another rumble.

  ‘You must have eaten something that disagreed with you,’ said Tom, and he picked up the branch that had been in the dinosaur’s mouth.

  ‘I’ve never seen berries like that before,’ said Tom. The Stegosaurus looked at the branch balefully.

  ‘Is this what gave you tummy-ache?’ asked Tom.

  The Stegosaurus turned away as Tom offered it the branch.

  ‘You don’t like it, do you?’ said Tom. ‘I wonder what they taste like?’

  As Tom examined the strange red berries, he thought to himself: ‘No one has tasted these berries for sixty million years… Probably no human being has ever tasted them.’

  Somehow the temptation to try one of the berries was overwhelming, but Tom told himself not to be so stupid. If they’d given a huge creature like the Stegosaurus tummy-ache, they could well be deadly to a small animal like Tom. And yet… they looked so… tempting…

  The Stegosaurus gave a low groan and shifted its head so it could look at Tom.

  ‘Well, I wonder how you’d get on with twentieth-century vegetables?’ said Tom, pulling up one of his father’s turnips. He proffered it to the dinosaur. But the Stegosaurus turned its head away, and then – quite suddenly and for no apparent reason – it bit Tom’s other hand.

  ‘Ouch!’ exclaimed Tom, and hit the Stegosaurus on the nose with the turnip.

  ‘Baaa!’ roared the Stegosaurus, and bit the turnip.

  Finding a bit of turnip in its mouth, the Stegosaurus started to chew it. Then suddenly it spat it all out.

  ‘That’s the trouble with you dinosaurs,’ said Tom. ‘You’ve got to learn to adapt … otherwise… ’

  Tom found himself looking at the strange red berries again.

  ‘You see,’ Tom began again to the Stegosaurus, ‘We human beings are ready to change our habits … that’s why we’re so successful… we’ll try different foods… in fact… I wonder what fruit from sixty million years ago tastes like? Hey! Stop that!’

  The Stegosaurus was butting Tom’s arm with its nose.

  ‘You want to try something else?’ asked Tom, and he pulled up a parsnip from the vegetable patch. But before he could get back to the Stegosaurus, it had lumbered to its feet and started to munch away at his father’s prize rose-bushes.<
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  ‘Hey! Don’t do that! My dad’ll go crazy!’ shouted Tom. But the Stegosaurus was making short work of the roses. And there was really nothing Tom could do about it.

  He hit the Stegosaurus on the leg, but it merely flicked its huge tail, and Tom was lucky to escape as the bony spikes on the end missed him by inches.

  ‘That’s a deadly tail you’ve got there!’ exclaimed Tom, and he decided to keep a respectable distance between himself and the monster.

  It was at that moment that Tom suddenly did the craziest thing he’d ever done in his life. He couldn’t explain later why he’d done it. He just did. He shouldn’t have done, but he did… He pulled off one of the strange red berries and popped it into his mouth.

  Now this is something you must never ever do – if you don’t know what the berries are – because some berries, like Deadly Nightshade, are really poisonous.

  But Tom pulled off one of the sixty-million-year-old berries, and ate it. It was very bitter, and he was just about to spit it out, when he noticed something wasn’t quite right …the garden was turning round. Tom was standing perfectly still, but the garden … indeed, as far as he could see, the whole world… was turning around and around, slowly at first, and then faster and faster… until the whole world was spinning about him like a whirlwind – faster and faster and faster and everything began to blur together. At the same time there was a roaring noise – as if all the sounds in the world had been jumbled up together – louder and faster and louder until there was a shriek! …And everything stopped. And Tom could once again see where he was… or, rather, where he wasn’t… for the first thing he realized was that he was no longer standing in his back garden… or, if he was, he couldn’t see the remains of the woodshed, nor his father’s vegetable patch nor his house. Nor could he see the Stegosaurus.

  There was a bubbling pool of hot mud where the rose-bushes should have been. And in place of the house there was a forest of the tallest trees Tom had ever seen. Over to his right, where the Jones’s laundry line had been hanging, there was a steaming jungle swamp.