Arnica the Duck Princess

by ERVIN LAZAR

“I’m so glad you came by my house,” said the lovely girl.

  “Why?” asked Poor Johnny.

  “Oh, I’ve known you for a long time,” answered the girl. “You’re Poor Johnny.”

  “How do you know me?”

  “I saw you, when you were at King Tirunt’s castle. And, and… you won’t mind if I tell you?”

  “What?”

  “I fell deeply in love with you. It was love at first sight,” said the girl, lowering her eyes.

  “I’m sorry, miss, you being so beautiful and all,” said Poor Johnny, “but I’m engaged to be married to King Tirunt’s daughter Arnica. I’m heading there right now.”

  “Then I’m sorry for you, Poor Johnny,” said the girl, “because while you were away, Arnica completely forgot about you.”

  “That can’t be true!” cried Poor Johnny, dismayed.

  “I’m afraid it is. She’s married a prince, and has forgotten you even exist.”

  Johnny turned white as a sheet, and his heart began banging about alarmingly.

  “I don’t believe you,” he said.

  “Well, if you don’t believe me, see for yourself. The castle’s been knocked down, and they’ve moved away from the lake. You’ll never find them.”

  Poor Johnny was sitting folded into the depths of the basketwork chair like a frail old man. His limbs had become so heavy, he thought he’d never be able to move them again.

  “But she’s lying! Not a word of it is true.”

  “Of course she’s lying.”

  “Because she’s… she’s the Witch of a Hundred Faces?”

  “Of course.”

  “But he’s falling into her trap! You mustn’t let him!”

  “It’s not up to me. Poor Johnny has to get out of it himself.”

  “And does he?”

  “We’ll see.”

  The beautiful girl’s eyes, that is to say the witch’s eyes, lit up.

  “Now you’ll be mine from top to toe,” she thought. “You can’t get away now! Odds bodkins!”

  “Don’t you worry yourself about Arnica,” she cooed. “Stay with me. I’ll be a more faithful wife to you than anyone else could. You’ll be happy here, you’ll see.”

  Poor Johnny was gazing and gazing at the girl, and very nearly reaching out his hand to stroke her. Then, in his mind’s eye, he saw Arnica’s sweet innocent face, and he snatched back his hand.

  “It’s not true. Arnica can’t have left me!”

  He leapt up, realising with amazement that wickedness was streaming towards him from the beautiful girl’s eyes. Not stopping to think about it, however, he set off at a run. The Witch of a Hundred Faces once again transformed herself into a storm; lightning struck all around, a wind blew up.

  “Now, wouldn’t you know?” thought Poor Johnny as he dashed along, “I’ve ended up in the clutches of the very same witch as last time and oh! she almost had me convinced that Arnica had left me—what a nincompoop I am!” And he ran on as fast as he could. The witch tried the same wolf-howling and the same tree-stump-trick on him as before, but this time Johnny was on his guard. He skipped over the tree stump and was off the witch’s land in two ticks.

  But what was this? The palace had gone. There was only a sorry-looking duck house on the lakeshore, and some ducks paddling about on the water. But he didn’t think for a moment that the witch might have been telling the truth after all. He knew well enough that this must be the result of some sort of spell.

  “I’ll find my Arnica,” he thought, “if I have to walk to the ends of the earth to do it!”

  Very despondent, he sat down on the shore and began to consider what to do. Well, as he was sitting there, he saw that there was a great commotion among the ducks on the water. They were flapping their wings and quacking loudly, and look! A lovely white duck was swimming straight towards Poor Johnny, coming out of the water, laying her head on Poor Johnny’s knee and gazing and gazing at him with a sad look in her eye. Poor Johnny looked back sadly at the duck, stroked it and said:

  “Hey, little duck, you haven’t seen my sweet Arnica, have you?”

  And as he said those words, the earth shook, a rumbling ran the length of the countryside, and in a flash, standing in its usual spot, was the palace with all its thirty-six towers and three hundred windows and the ducks had all changed back into people. “Help! Help!” came the voice of the Royal Chief Counter from the middle of the lake, for he couldn’t swim, but luckily, the others were coming to his aid.

  Arnica, too, had changed back and was probably even more beautiful than she’d been before. King Tirunt was also himself again. Their joy knew no bounds, until Arnica suddenly shrieked:

  “Oh no, Johnny! Johnny, what’s happened to you?!”

  Indeed, something very strange was going on. At the very moment when the bewitched people had returned to their original shape, Poor Johnny had turned into a duck. Everyone stared in sorrow and wonder.

  Oh dear, oh dear! There was something very amiss here. The chief royal brainboxes and the minor royal brainboxes put their heads together, as did the chief royal dunces and the minor royal dunces, and tried to decide what should be done, but they couldn’t come up with anything. All they could be sure of, was that Poor Johnny had arrived, set them free from the spell they’d been under, and, in return, had ended up being a duck himself. But then, we knew that already.

  As she stroked the duck, Poor Arnica wept, her tears falling heavy and fast like raindrops in a thundery shower, and she found herself saying:

  “I don’t want to be human if this is the price that has to be paid. I’d rather stay as a duck, if it means Johnny can be human again.”

  Well, in the blink of an eye, her wish came true. Johnny became a man, Arnica a duck.

  “Oh no you don’t!” shouted Poor Johnny. “After all, I’m the one in the wrong here. I should be the duck, and you should be a person.”

  And, as he said the words, that’s precisely what happened; Johnny turned into a duck, and Arnica back into a girl. The palace staff couldn’t make head nor tail of it—what was going on? What kind of cursed spell could this be?

  “It looks like we’ve managed to mess something up here,” said King Tirunt regretfully.

  “It was me,” said Poor Johnny, “I believed the witch, just for a moment. I almost agreed to stay with her, having got it into my stupid head that Arnica wanted to leave me. I let my love waver a teeny-weeny bit. I deserve this fate. I ought to be a duck for ever and ever.”

  “No way!” said Arnica. “I’d rather be the duck for ever and ever.”

  “Come now,” said the Chief Courtier, “no need to get so upset about it. You can be the duck one day, and Johnny can be the duck the next day. You could go on like that quite happily till the end of the world.”

  “But if Johnny’s a duck, then I want to be a duck too,” said Arnica. “I want to be whatever he is.”

  The palace staff whispered among themselves, racking their brains, but couldn’t come up with anything sensible to suggest.

  “And what if Poor Johnny hadn’t believed the witch when she was wearing her beautiful face, not even for one second? Then neither of them would have to be a duck now, would they?”

  “In that case, no, they wouldn’t.”

  “Can’t anyone help them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You know what I think? I think they should go to the Seven-Headed Fairy and ask her to free them from the spell. She’s a good fairy, the most kind-hearted in the world, so she’s sure to do it. Don’t you think?”

  “But they don’t know where the Seven-Headed Fairy lives.”

  “Then they should start looking!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In which it becomes clear that Tig-Tag, the notorious thief, is blessed with great ball control

  As luck would have it, there was among the courtiers an old woman who knew about the Seven-Headed Fairy.

  “You know what?” she said to Arnica. “You should g
o and see the Seven-Headed Fairy. If anyone can help you, she can.”

  “Where does she live?” asked Arnica.

  “That I don’t know, to be sure,” said the old woman.

  “No problem. We’ll find her,” said Johnny. “Even if she lives at the ends of the earth, we’ll find her.”

  Not wanting a big send-off, they quickly said their goodbyes to King Tirunt, the Chief Courtier, the Chief Royal Counter, to all the courtiers and palace staff, young and old, and set out on their journey.

  “The good thing is, we can travel day and night,” said Arnica.

  “What do you mean, day and night?” said Poor Johnny, much surprised. “We’ll need to sleep sometime.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, we will,” said Arnica. “From morning to night, I’ll be the person and you’ll be the duck. I’ll tuck you under my arm and while I’m carrying you along, you can sleep just as much as you want. In the evening, we’ll swap; you tuck me under your arm and carry me till morning. Meanwhile, it’ll be my turn to sleep. That way we won’t waste a single minute. We’ll soon find the Seven-Headed Fairy, you’ll see.”

  Poor Johnny was delighted to have such a clever bride, and, as it was getting dark just then, he became the person and Arnica the duck. Poor Johnny tucked her under his arm and set off. This time, however, he had enough sense to give the witch’s land a wide berth.

  They went on without stopping for seven days and seven nights and didn’t meet a soul.

  “Arnica, do you think we’re going the right way?” said Poor Johnny, worried.

  “Don’t you worry, Johnny,” said Arnica. “If we really want to find the Seven-Headed Fairy, we will.”

  “They do really want to, don’t they?”

  “Yes, they do.”

  “And if someone really wants something, does that mean they can do it?”

  “I think so.”

  “You don’t sound very sure.”

  “Well, I don’t really know… I’m only sure that you have to really want it.”

  They were walking along the banks of a river—it was daytime, so Arnica was carrying Johnny—when they spotted a flock of sheep in the distance.

  “Look! There’s a flock of sheep over there,” said Arnica. “That means there must be a shepherd, and he might be able to set us on the right track.”

  They found the shepherd stretched out in the cool shade of a tree.

  “Never heard of any Seven-Headed Fairy,” he said, shaking his head. “But I will give you a piece of advice. If you value your life, young miss, don’t go any further.”

  “Why ever not?” asked Arnica.

  “Because Tig-Tag, the notorious robber, is rampaging around this area,” said the shepherd. “He’ll steal your duck, and kidnap you too. You’d do better to turn back.”

  “The fact is, dear brother,” said Arnica, “that I couldn’t turn back, even if a hundred Tig-Tags were rampaging in the area.”

  And on she went.

  “You’re a brave lass, a brave one,” murmured the shepherd. “I just hope you don’t live to regret it.”

  Arnica did seem brave as she strode on with her duck, which was, as we know, none other than Poor Johnny. There was now, however, a tiny dark shadow in the centre of her heart. That shadow was fear: oh, she did hope she wouldn’t bump into that fearsome robber, that Tig-Tag!

  Sure enough, they’d walked on no more than half a fairytale mile, when a bush behind them rustled. Arnica spun round, thinking, “Oh no! Who’s that?”, and a grim-looking man with a moustache jumped out from behind the bush.

  “Your money or your life!” he said, in bloodcurdling tones.

  “Oh, goodness! You must be Tig-Tag, the notorious robber,” said Arnica, because of course she knew at once who she was dealing with. “Have pity on me! I’ve got nothing to give you, not even a crooked sixpence.”

  “But you have got a duck,” said Tig-Tag. “Your duck or your life!”

  He was already stepping forward to take the duck from Arnica.

  “Then I’d rather you took my life,” said Arnica, very determinedly, and hid Poor Johnny behind her back.

  Tig-Tag, the notorious robber, began to guffaw.

  “Arguing with me, are you?” he guffawed. “All I’d have to do is blow on you, and you’d float off like the seeds on a dandelion clock.”

  “Arnica,” whispered Poor Johnny. “Let’s swap.”

  So Arnica said, “Let me be the duck, and Poor Johnny the person.” And, just like that, they were.

  Tig-Tag, the notorious robber, had reached out his hand towards Arnica, and was just about to grab her, when, to his utter amazement, he found himself face to face with a well-built, muscly young man. His jaw dropped, as you can imagine. But he shouted out anyway:

  “Hand that duck over!”

  At that, Poor Johnny gave Tig-Tag, the notorious robber, such a clout that he saw stars.

  “My stars!” he exclaimed. Well, I did say he saw stars.

  “This just stopped being funny,” he thought and took to his heels. When he got to a safe distance, he shouted back to them, “You’ll be sorry for this! I’ll get my gang together and sort you out good and proper.”

  Johnny walked off hastily, breaking into a run from time to time.

  “Until we’re out of Tig-Tag’s territory, I’ll stay a person and you stay a duck,” he said to Arnica. “I can probably handle them better.”

  Could he though? It was getting towards evening, when they began to hear whistling, cries of “Hulloo!” and the snapping of branches. The robbers were coming.

  “There he is!” yelled Tig-Tag. “Head him off!”

  They surrounded Poor Johnny, and though he fought back manfully, he didn’t stand a chance against thirteen robbers. They tied him up, carried him off to their hideout, and threw him in a great iron cage along with his duck. When they had done a victory dance around the cage, Tig-Tag, the notorious robber, said, “Now you can just lie here till morning. By then we’ll have thought of a nice little punishment for you.”

  “And we’ll have duck stew for breakfast,” added the gang’s second in command.

  The robbers quietened down, and then went to bed. Only Poor Johnny was left awake. This was it, they were going to be murdered by robbers. That it should come to this! Arnica couldn’t sleep either, but instead of bemoaning their fate, her mind was whirring away.

  “Johnny,” she whispered.

  “Yes?”

  “Let’s escape.”

  “From this iron cage? Fat chance!” said Johnny dismissively.

  But Arnica knew what she needed to do. Up she got, and squeezed herself through the bars. It wasn’t difficult. She was, after all, a duck. Then Poor Johnny saw what she was up to.

  “Oh, you’re a clever one, Arnica!” he thought.

  He said the magic words; Arnica turned into a person, Johnny into a duck. All he had to do then was squeeze through the bars himself, and away they could go.

  “You see, Johnny,” said Arnica. “Every cloud has a silver lining.” “Really? Does every cloud have a silver lining?”

  “That’s what they say.”

  “So does it, or doesn’t it?”

  “Something good often does come out of something bad, but there are things that are just bad through and through.”

  “And if I cut my finger, for example. What’s good about that?”

  “What’s good about that is, that you learn to be more careful when you’re handling a knife, and you learn what it is to feel pain.”

  “And what about Mr Vincent from next door dying? What’s good about that?”

  “There’s nothing good about that at all. That’s just bad through and through.”

  Johnny had changed back into a person and was hurrying along as fast as his legs could carry him. But around dawn the robbers had realised that the cage was empty and had run off, lickety-split, to hunt down Poor Johnny. By midday they were hot on his trail, and then, all of a sudden, they’d caught up w
ith him. At that moment, Poor Johnny happened to be in the middle of a melon field, and, for want of a better idea, he started to fling the melons at Tig-Tag and his gang. And would you believe it? Those robbers caught the melons so skilfully that not a single one got smashed. As the melons flew through the air, the robbers took control of them using their heads and feet just like the best footballers do with the ball on the pitch.

  Poor Johnny gaped at them. The robbers, however, called out encouragingly, “Throw some more. It’s a great game, this!”

  “Well I never!” said Poor Johnny. “You lads have got amazing ball control!”

  “What have we got?” asked Tig-Tag, the notorious robber.

  “Ball control,” repeated Poor Johnny. “You’d make a great football team.”

  The robbers just stared at him. Football? What was that?

  Poor Johnny cobbled together a kind of rag-ball, and taught the robbers the rules of the game.

  “What do you mean, we’re not allowed to touch the ball with our hands?” blustered Tig-Tag, the notorious robber. “I’m allowed to do anything!”

  “You may be allowed to do other things,” Poor Johnny explained to him, “but touching the ball with your hands is forbidden in football, because it means the other side get a free kick.”

  In the end, even Tig-Tag understood that you can’t have a game without rules, and resigned himself to the fact that not even he was allowed to touch the ball with his hands. And once he was playing, it didn’t bother him, as he realised that he could manoeuvre the ball with his feet just as well as he wanted. The robbers all started to get into it, and were really enjoying themselves. Hardly surprising, given that they’d never played football in their lives, and were now learning what fun it is. It was a long time before they were tired of it, and then Tig-Tag beckoned Johnny over to him.

  “Well, that’s all great and everything, but we can’t make a living out of it,” he said. “We’ll finish you off, and then get down to some robbing, ransacking, burgling and highway robbery.”