Straw into Gold

by Hilary McKay

  “I could look after it!” Polly offered eagerly.

  “I don’t think so,” said the innkeeper. “No. You should help in the kitchen.”

  Polly did help in the kitchen, as often as she could, which was not very often because the innkeeper’s wife liked things done her own way, by herself. Polly bothered her, with her quickness and her differentness and her golden earrings. Often the innkeeper and his wife thought of the day when they had opened the door and taken the parcel that was Polly inside. They wondered about the orphanage.

  “There’s nothing to stop us sending her there yet,” said the innkeeper’s wife.

  “Nothing at all,” said the innkeeper. “And you should keep her away from that pig.”

  “She slips off,” said his wife.

  So at breakfast the next day the innkeeper himself told Polly, “Now don’t go getting fond of that pig!”

  “Diamond!” said Polly, between spoons of porridge. “I call him Diamond! Diamond Pig!”

  “Eh?”

  “Because he is precious, like a diamond!”

  “You leave him be now, Polly. You play with that doll. Pigs don’t have names.”

  “Why not?”

  “Pigs are pigs.”

  “Of course they are.”

  “It’s easier in the end.”

  “Easier for what?” asked Polly.

  The innkeeper was eating sausages and did not wish to continue the conversation, so he said, “Finish your porridge now, Poll!”

  “I have. Why—”

  “And no more talk about that pig.”

  “Diamond.”

  “Is she like this all day?” the innkeeper asked his wife. “Bothersome?”

  “Oh,” said Polly. “I didn’t know I was bothersome.”

  “Well, now you do,” said the innkeeper’s wife. “Bothersome! Now take a broom and off outside to get the inn yard swept!”

  Polly the Bothersome swept the yard, tiptoed down the garden path to give a private hug to Diamond, and then wandered on to the village street, where a group of girls were gathered, pulling petals from a daisy.

  “Why’re you doing that?” she asked.

  “Seeing who we’ll marry,” they said, friendly enough. “What’ve you been doing, Polly?”

  “Sweeping,” said Polly.

  “There’s a smell . . . Sniff your dress, Poll! Sniff your hands!”

  Polly sniffed and said, “Oh! I know! That’s Diamond!”

  “What’s Diamond?”

  “The innkeeper’s new little pig,” explained Polly. “I called him Diamond. He’s black. He’s lovely. He lets me hug him!”

  The whole group of girls burst into laughter. “Hug him!” they exclaimed. “Hug a pig!”

  Polly looked at them. They had fathers and mothers and little brothers and sisters to hug. Dogs and cats and grannies and grandpas. They shouldn’t laugh, just because she had only a pig.

  However, they did laugh, and so did the boys when the girls told them. The biggest boy, Tom Piper, the only person in the village who might have understood, laughed most of all. Tom was no blue-eyed, round-faced village boy. Tom’s parents were dead and he lived with his uncle, a rough, tough farmer who made Tom earn his keep. Tom did not have a proper home any more than Polly did. He need not have said, “And did you kiss the pig too, Polly?”

  “No she didn’t!” cried several of the girls protectively. “Shut up, Tom!”

  “She did; she’s blushing!” said Tom.

  “You didn’t, did you, Polly?”

  “Only between his ears!” said Polly.

  “Polly!” exclaimed the girls.

  “Polly!” mocked Tom, his teeth showing in a white grin.

  “Shut up!” Polly aimed a kick at his shins. “You’re just like the innkeeper! He doesn’t want me to like Diamond either.”

  “Diamond?” asked Tom, grabbing and holding her at arm’s length so she couldn’t kick again. “The innkeeper called his pig Diamond?” he asked, his grin wider than ever.

  “I called him Diamond!” said Polly. “The innkeeper said he shouldn’t have a name.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he doesn’t love him.”

  “Oh dear. But do you love him, Poll?”

  Polly turned her face from his laughter. The girls pulled his arms and said, “Let her go now, Tom.”

  “She’ll kick me.”

  “She won’t, will you, Polly?”

  “I might,” said Polly. But when Tom let her go, she didn’t. Instead she asked, “Why shouldn’t pigs have names?”

  The girls murmured uncomfortably, eyeing Tom, wondering if he would tell.

  Tom said, “Show me this pig!”

  “No,” said Polly.

  “They bite, you know.”

  “He never would,” said Polly scornfully.

  “How big is he?” asked one of the girls.

  Polly held her hands apart to show that Diamond was about as big as the ginger cat had been.

  “Plenty of time, then,” said Tom, sauntering away.

  “Time for what?”

  “Kisses!” called Tom, over his shoulder, and he closed his eyes and made kissing, grunting sounds until all the girls were giggling again.

  Polly ran away from them, stumbling in her clumsy boots until she took them off to walk barefoot. At the edge of the forest she pulled them on again. That was not the place for bare feet: not only were there thorns and rough ground, but also the villagers had a habit of dumping their unwanted rubbish at the forest edge. Broken pots, rags, house waste and farm waste, a dead cat now and then.

  Polly picked her way through carefully, following the path. She had been that way before once or twice; it led to a sheltered hollow among the trees, and then on to an old cottage, hardly more than a mile from the last of the village houses, but still too far for most people. In the past, Polly had never been farther than the hollow, but this time she walked on, into the deeper green darkness under the trees.

  That was the first time Polly visited the old woman that the village called Granny.

  Polly, dressed in faded blue with muddy patches from the pig, did not show up at all among the forest shadows. Granny jumped with shock when she suddenly appeared in her open doorway.

  “Goodness, child!” she exclaimed. “Creeping up on me like that!” And she turned quickly to a chest in the corner of the room, but not so quickly that Polly did not see as the lid closed down.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Polly.

  “Oh, what?” asked Granny crossly, for in the chest were various things that she had acquired throughout her long and exciting life. Surprises from shipwrecks, gifts from grateful smugglers, and a few bright sparkles of pirate treasure, for Granny had once lived by the sea.

  Polly did not glance at the brandy flasks or the things that sparkled, but what she did notice was a most beautiful glowing redness, and she cried out as the lid went down, “Oh, please, let me look again!”

  “Look at what, my dear?” asked Granny, alarmed.

  “The red,” said Polly.

  And then Granny laughed and took from the chest a piece of ruby-red, glowing red, gorgeous red, woven cloth. The clearest, brightest, most-singing piece of color that Polly had ever seen.

  “That would just make a nice red riding cloak for you!” said Granny, when Polly had rubbed it, and sniffed it, and laid her cheek on it, and adored it.

  “For me?”

  “Why not?” Granny draped it round her shoulders and stood her in front of an old, speckled mirror.

  “But don’t you want it?”

  “Not as much as you do,” said Granny. And then and there she sat down with scissors and a sewing basket, and before the morning was over, there it was: a glowing red cloak with a wide hood, and a red bow to fasten it, long enough to cover the dull blue dress, right down to Polly’s knees.

  By the time the cloak was finished, Polly and Granny were friends, and Granny had heard all about Diamond and Tom, while P
olly had explored the whole one-roomed house, with its bed in the corner and round table by the fireplace, and the rocking chair and the wooden stool and the window at the back where deer came to be fed.

  She had also been useful. While Granny sewed, Polly milked her two white goats, pushed the treasure chest back under the bed, carried in logs for the fire, collected three eggs from the four brown chickens that each had names, and boiled two of them for their tea. Then, wearing her red riding cloak, and very happy, she walked with Granny to the edge of the forest because it was nearly dark and time to go back to the village.

  Overhead, the sky was dark purple, and stars were caught in the windblown branches.

  “Are there wolves?” Polly asked Granny, as they passed under the spangled trees.

  “There are and there aren’t,” said Granny.

  It was Tom who saw the scarlet cloak first. He bowed low to Polly, sweeping off an imaginary cap. “Oh, Red Riding Hood!” he exclaimed. “You look like you are wearing a sunset!”

  Polly sparkled with pleasure.

  “Where did it come from?”

  “Granny in the forest.”

  “Is that where you ran off to? Weren’t you afraid?”

  “No.”

  “Not of wolves? Bears? Darkness? The pits under the trees? Not of Granny?”

  “No.”

  “Gold earrings, red cloak, and nothing frightens you!”

  “I didn’t say nothing frightened me.”

  “Where are you going now, Poll? Back to the inn?”

  Polly nodded, her sparkles fading.

  “Well, don’t go wasting any more kisses on that pig!”

  “Shut up, Tom Piper! Stop laughing! Shut up! You spoil everything!”

  “Oh Poll, I don’t! Poll, I’m not laughing! Oh Red Riding Hood! I’m just jealous, that’s all!”

  Tom’s name for Polly, Red Riding Hood, stuck. The village took it up, half kindly, half as if to say, You’re not one of us.

  Granny’s present caused a sensation. The girls gazed and gazed.

  “You can put it on if you like,” Polly offered.

  And one or two of them did, nervously sliding it round their shoulders, glancing down with their hands to their mouths, shaking it off as fast as they could, saying, “Oh, it’s pretty, but I never could! I never could wear such a color as that!”

  “I should feel such a poppy!” said one.

  The fact that it came from Granny in the Forest made them all nervous. Granny visited the village now and then, and although she was old and bent and stiff and wrinkled, there was something about those visits that bothered the villagers.

  “I can’t abide whispers,” Granny would say, “and I can’t abide fools, and they might as well know it!”

  There were a lot of whispers when Granny came into the village, and a lot of people she thought fools, including the innkeeper and his wife. They did not believe in witches, but they did not believe in taking chances either, so when they saw Polly’s new cloak they did not say, “You’re not going out dressed like that, Young Lady!”

  Although they did say:

  “First the earrings, now this!”

  and

  “You’ll scare every horse in the village!”

  and

  “I suppose it would cut up for dusters.”

  and

  “Let’s hope it fades!”

  Polly took no notice of any of these remarks and she wore the cloak every day. It did not fade or scare the horses or get cut up for dusters, and it seemed to make Polly’s gold earrings shine even brighter than before. The village got used to it, even the innkeeper and his wife. They also got used to the fact that Polly had a new friend. Very often she set off to visit Granny in the forest, and the innkeeper and his wife (so as not to take chances) now and then sent small presents: a little loaf of bread, a cake or two, some butter or some cheese. In return Granny would send back her own presents: honey, blackberry wine, cold roast pheasant and venison pasties.

  So the summer passed. Polly was happy. Diamond grew from a small black piglet to a fat friendly little pig. Polly still hugged him first thing in the morning, and she still kissed him between his ears last thing at night. The village girls still said, “Polly! You shouldn’t!”

  “What shouldn’t she do?” Tom asked.

  “Make such a pet of that pig,” the girls told him.

  “He’s not just an ordinary pig,” said Polly. “He’s a very clever pig. He knows all sorts of things. If I say, ‘Speak, Diamond!’ he squeaks back at me. And if I say, ‘Bedtime!’ he lies down quiet! And he can dance! He does twirls! I taught him!”

  “How big is he now?” asked Tom.

  Polly proudly stretched her arms to show how big Diamond had grown.

  Tom whistled and said, “I’ve got to see this pig!”

  “One day,” said Polly.

  “One day soon,” said Tom.

  “All right,” agreed Polly, pleased at such interest in her beloved Diamond, “but it will have to be early, early, early in the morning. That’s when I teach him things. Before the innkeeper wakes up.”

  “Well then,” said Tom, “that’s when I’ll be there. Early in the morning tomorrow, so mind you’re awake!”

  Polly looked at him in surprise. His voice was suddenly cold, not joking anymore, and his eyes, looking back at her, were watchful and gleaming. Something was wrong, but what it was Polly could not think, and before she could ask questions, he had turned away.

  That night she woke feeling uneasy, without knowing why. She wondered if Tom would be there in the morning.

  But Tom did come, and he was his usual self again, calling her Red Riding Hood and grinning as he stalked ahead of her through the long frosty grass. It was a fine morning, the beginning of winter. Polly fed Diamond with apples saved from the orchard, and acorns and beechnuts gathered in the forest, and Tom watched them together, heard Diamond squeak on command and saw him lie down quiet when Polly said, “Time for bed!”

  “Dance now, Diamond!” whispered Polly.

  And Diamond twirled in enchanting, fat black circles. “Oh you brilliant Diamond!” said Polly, and bent and kissed him between his ears. And when she looked up, Tom was gone.

  That was the last time Polly saw Diamond in his sty at the end of the innkeeper’s garden, the last time he danced for her in the early morning on his short little sausagey legs. The innkeeper put his pig to bed himself that night, and when Polly ran down the next morning the sty was empty and Diamond was gone.

  After one long, horrified stare, Polly turned and ran. Back to the house, up the stairs and then she was hammering on the innkeeper’s bedroom door with both fists and shouting, “Where is he? Where is he? What have you done with Diamond?”

  “That girl!” Polly heard the innkeeper’s wife exclaim. And then the door was opened and there they both were, as bewildered and angry as Polly herself, especially after they had pulled on boots and coats and gone down the garden to look at the pigsty. They noticed what Polly had not seen: the little gate splintered and wrenched off its hinges, the scattered straw and overturned water trough, and in the mud by the trough a footprint like a dog’s, but much, much bigger.

  An enormous footprint.

  A wolf.

  It was the first of many footprints found around the village that day. They appeared outside henhouses and barns and sheds and even cottages. A huge wolf had prowled the village that night, and people were afraid. All day the air echoed with the noise of sawing and hammering as doors and walls were patched and strengthened. Meanwhile people went off in little groups, following the path to the edge of the forest. They found pad marks there as well, and they came back hurrying, looking over their shoulders. That evening the village street was quiet and there were no children playing on the green. People were all inside, with shutters closed and locks turned. Polly was inside too, up in her little room, staring out of the window at the great shadowy forest on the edge of the village.

&nbs
p; Somewhere in the forest was Diamond.

  The world looked very blurry to Polly, thinking that. She had to swallow and rub her eyes, over and over. So it was some time before she noticed the fir cone.

  There was a fir cone on her windowsill.

  That was an odd place to find a fir cone. The strangeness of it woke Polly up a little, enough to let her go downstairs. Half the village had gathered at the inn, beer was flowing, and the frightening old stories about the forest were being dusted off and polished up and told like they were new.

  “What about Granny?” asked Polly, clutching her fir cone as she came forward into the lamplight. “Did anyone go and see if Granny was safe?”

  “Old Granny can look after herself,” said the innkeeper. “Proper old witch, she is. She’ll take no harm.”

  “She is NOT an old witch!” exclaimed Polly indignantly. “She is my friend! She is the kindest person I know!”

  “Now then, now then,” said an old man reprovingly. “Talking like that, when the folk here have taken such care of you! That’s not nice, is it? And after they just lost that lovely pig!”

  “He was lovely,” agreed Polly, grateful for such kind words about Diamond.

  “Ham,” said the old man, nodding, “and bacon. Pork and crackling too, I daresay.”

  “Sausage,” added the innkeeper.

  “Black pudding,” sighed his wife.

  Then at last Polly understood what the girls had not told her, and what Tom had not mentioned, and also why it was not a good idea to give a name to a pig. Back in her room, looking out toward the forest, she thought, I’m glad the wolf came. Perhaps Diamond escaped.

  He wouldn’t have escaped the innkeeper, but perhaps he escaped the wolf.

  In the morning there was more news, and worse. Tom’s uncle, the red-faced farmer, was going from farm to farm and cottage to cottage asking, “Has anybody seen young Tom?”

  Tom had vanished, and nobody knew where or when. The innkeeper thought he knew. He told Tom’s uncle, “I caught sight of him hanging around here. I’ll have the price of that pig from you!”

  “The price of the pig!” roared Tom’s uncle. “The price of the pig! Were there not wolf prints all around your pigsty? And weren’t you the first to cry Wolf! My guess is he went missing in the forest searching for that pig, and I’ll have the price of his labor from you!”