The Last Slice of Rainbow

by Joan Aiken

  “It is very queer,” she said, “that all these oak leaves keep falling on me when there is no tree anywhere near.”

  “You must try something else,” said the wood dove to the tree, when Polly did not come.

  So the tree sent a dream to the village carpenter—whose house stood nearest to its trunk—asking him to cut off a branch, and make it into a gift for Polly. Losing a branch was dreadful to the tree. As the saw bit deeper, the oak tree trembled and groaned. But at last the branch was off, and the carpenter turned it into a beautiful rocking chair.

  “Go to the city and find Polly,” the oak tree had begged him in his dream, “give her the chair with my love, and beseech her to come home.” So the carpenter put the chair on a mule and rode to the city. But when he arrived there, he thought, “I could sell this handsome chair for enough to buy a new mule. Why should I run errands for the tree? Why should I trouble to search for the girl?”

  So that is what he did. The wood dove had flown after him, saw what happened, and told the oak tree. The tree was so angry that another of its branches cracked down, split with rage, and fell on the carpenter’s roof. When he returned home with his new mule, he found his house in ruins.

  And the oak tree’s leaves continued to fall.

  “What shall we do now?” said the birds.

  They asked the advice of the mistletoe, which hung in the oak tree’s topmost fork. The mistletoe was growing anxious, for if the tree died, it, too, would be homeless.

  “Pick enough of my berries to make a necklace,” it said. “And carry that to Polly.”

  So the birds picked a hundred beautiful pearly mistletoe berries, and strung a necklace on a stem of grass, and the wood dove carried it to the city, looked for Polly, who was walking in the street, then skillfully dropped the necklace over her head.

  “My goodness! Who has sent me this beautiful present?” said Polly.

  But she never guessed that it was the oak tree who had sent it.

  Meantime the tree waited, growing sadder and sadder.

  “At least keep your leaves on till our fledglings have flown,” begged the birds.

  So the tree agreed to do this. But all the leaves turned brown, as if winter had come; only the mistletoe remained green in the topmost fork.

  Now a young man saw Polly walking along the city street, wearing her beautiful pearl-colored necklace, and he, like the oak tree, thought she was the prettiest girl in the world. So he asked her to marry him and she said yes. They had their wedding in the city, and the wood dove watched from the church steeple and was dreadfully troubled, for now it seemed unlikely that Polly would ever return home.

  But the wood dove was wrong.

  For when Polly’s new husband said to her, “How many children shall we have? And where shall we live?” Polly remembered the oak tree beneath which she had lain in her cradle, which had kept her dry from the rain while she played with her friends, and sheltered her from the sun while she did her homework; suddenly she became homesick for the place she had been born.

  “Let us go back to my village,” she said to her husband.

  So they bought a mule, and on the first day of autumn, when the leaves, red, golden, and brown, were beginning to blow from the trees, they came riding back. The carpenter had left his ruined home and gone away, so Polly and her husband repaired the house and moved into it.

  At first the oak tree could hardly believe its good fortune.

  But when it understood that Polly had truly come back to live in the village, the sap started running through its veins, and dripped down like tears of joy. New pink buds and new green leaves began to sprout from its twigs, just when the other trees were losing their leaves, and all winter long, the oak tree remained green from happiness.

  The next summer Polly had a baby of her own. She put it out under the oak tree in its cradle, and the oak tree looked down at the baby’s brown hair, blue eyes, and pink cheeks, and thought, “That is the prettiest baby in the world.”

  Lost—One Pair of Legs

  ONCE THERE WAS A VAIN, proud, careless, thoughtless boy called Cal Finhorn, who was very good at tennis. He won this game, he won that game, and then he won a tournament, and had a silver cup with his name on it.

  Winning this cup made him even prouder—too proud to speak to any of the other players at the tournament. As soon as he could, he took his silver cup and hurried away to the entrance of the sports ground, where the buses stop.

  “Just wait till I show them this cup at home,” he was thinking. “I’ll make Jenny polish it every day.”

  Jenny was Cal’s younger sister. He made her do lots of things for him—wash his cereal bowl, make his bed, clean his shoes, feed his rabbits.

  He had not allowed her to come to the tournament, in case he lost.

  On the way across the grass toward the bus stop, Cal saw a great velvety fluttering butterfly with purple and white and black circles on its wings.

  Cal was a boy who acted before he thought. Maybe sometimes he didn’t think at all. He hit the butterfly a smack with his tennis racket, and it fell to the ground, stunned. Cal felt sorry then, perhaps, for what he had done to it, but it was too late, for he heard a tremendous clap of thunder, and then he saw the Lady Esclairmonde, the queen of winged things, hovering right in his path.

  She looked very frightening indeed—she was all wrapped in a cloak of gray and white feathers; she had the face of a hawk, hands like claws, a crest of flame; and her hair and ribbons and the train of her dress flew out sideways, as if a force-twelve gale surrounded her. Cal could hear a fluttering sound, such as a flag or sail makes in a high wind. His own heart was fluttering inside him; he could hear that, too, like a lark inside a biscuit tin.

  “Why did you hit my butterfly, Cal?” asked the Lady Esclairmonde.

  Cal tried to brazen it out. He grinned at the lady. But he glanced nervously around him, wondering if people noticed that she was speaking to him. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, they might think she was congratulating him on his silver cup.

  Nobody else seemed to have noticed the lady.

  “Ah, shucks, it was only a silly butterfly,” said Cal. “Anyway, I don’t suppose I hurt it.”

  “Oh,” said the lady. “What makes you think that?”

  “It hasn’t written me a letter of complaint,” said Cal, grinning.

  As he spoke these words, he noticed a very odd feeling under his right hip. And when he looked down, he saw his right leg remove itself from him and go hopping off across the grass, heel and toe, heel and toe, as if it were dancing a hornpipe. The leg seemed delighted to be off and away on its own. It went dancing over to the bus stop. Just then a number 19 bus swept into the stop, and the leg hopped up on board and was borne away.

  “Hey!” bawled Cal in horror. “Come back! Come back! You’re my leg! You’ve no right to go off and leave me in the lurch. And that isn’t the right bus!”

  Lurch was the right word. With only one leg, Cal was swaying about like a hollyhock in a gale. He was obliged to prop himself up with his tennis racket. He turned angrily to the lady and said, “Did you do that? You’ve no right to take away my leg! It isn’t fair!”

  “Nothing is fair,” said the lady sternly. “What you did to my butterfly was not fair either. You may think yourself lucky I didn’t take the other leg as well.”

  “I think you are a mean old witch!” said Cal.

  Instantly he felt a jerk as his left leg undid itself from the hip. Cal bumped down onto the grass, hard, while his left leg went capering away across the grass, free as you please, up on the point of its toe, pirouetting like a ballerina. When it reached the bus stop, a number 16 had just pulled up; the left leg hopped nimbly on board and was carried away.

  “You’re on the wrong bus! Come back!” shouted Cal, but the leg made no answer to that.

  Todd Cros
sfinch, who was in Cal’s class at school, came by just then.

  “Coo! Cal,” he said, “you lost your legs, then?”

  “You can blooming well see I have!” said Cal angrily.

  “Want me to wheel you to the bus stop in my bike basket?” said Tod.

  “No! I want my legs back,” said Cal.

  “You won’t get them back,” the Lady Esclairmonde told him, “until a pair of butterflies brings them.”

  Then she vanished in a flash of lightning and smell of burnt feathers.

  “Who was that?” said Tod. “Was that the new French teacher? You sure you don’t want me to wheel you as far as the bus stop, Cal?”

  “Oh, all right,” said Cal, very annoyed; so Tod packed him in his bike basket and wheeled him to the stop, and then waited and helped him onto a number 2 bus. It was all very upsetting and embarrassing. People on the bus said, “Ooh, look! There’s a boy whose legs have gone off and left him. He must have treated them badly. Wonder what he did?”

  When Cal got to his own stop, the conductor had to lift him off the bus, and then he had to walk into the garden on his hands. Luckily he was quite good at that. There he found his sister Jenny feeding her butterflies. She had about forty tame ones who used to come every day when she sprinkled sugar on a tray: small blue ones, large white ones, yellow ones, red-and-black ones, and big beautiful Tortoiseshells, Peacocks, Red Admirals, and Purple Emperors. They were flittering and fluttering all around Jenny, with a sound like falling leaves.

  “Ooh, Cal,” said Jenny, “whatever have you done with your legs?”

  “They ran off and left me,” said Cal, very annoyed that he had to keep telling people that his legs didn’t want to stay with him.

  As Cal spoke, all the butterflies rose up in a cloud of wings and flew away.

  “Oh, poor Cal!” said Jenny. “Never mind, I’ll wheel you about in my doll’s stroller.”

  “I’d rather wheel myself about on your skateboard,” said Cal.

  Jenny was rather disappointed, but she kindly let him have the skateboard.

  “Er, Jenny,” said Cal, “you don’t suppose your butterflies would bring back my legs, do you?”

  “Oh, no, Cal,” said Jenny. “Why should they? You haven’t done anything for them. In fact they don’t like you much, because you always chase them and try to catch them in your handkerchief.”

  Cal’s father said that Cal had better try advertising to get his legs back.

  So he put a card in the post office window, and also a notice in the local paper:

  LOST

  One pair of legs. Reward offered.

  Lots and lots of people turned up hoping for the reward, but the legs they brought were never the right ones. There were old, rheumatic legs in wrinkled boots, or skinny girls’ legs in knitted leg warmers, or babies’ legs or football legs or ballet dancers’ legs in pink cotton slippers.

  “I never knew before that so many legs ran away from their owners,” said Jenny.

  This fact ought to have cheered Cal up a bit, but it didn’t.

  Jenny would have liked to adopt a pair of the ballet legs, but her mother said no, a canary and some rabbits were all the pets they had room for. “Besides, those legs must belong to someone else who wants them back.”

  Then a friend told Cal’s father that one of Cal’s legs was performing every night in the local pub, the Ring o’ Roses. “Dances around on the bar, very active, it does. Brings in a whole lot o’ customers.”

  Mr. Finhorn went along one night to see, and sure enough he recognized Cal’s leg, with the scar on the knee where he had fallen down the front steps carrying a bottle of milk. But when the leg saw Mr. Finhorn, it danced away along the bar and skipped out of the window, and went hopping off down the road in the dark.

  The other leg was heard of up in London; it had got a job at the Hippodrome Theater, dancing on the stage with a parasol tucked into its garter.

  “I don’t believe they’ll ever come back to me now,” said Cal hopelessly.

  Cal was becoming very sad and quiet, not a bit like what he had been before. He was a good deal nicer to Jenny and even helped his mother with the dishwashing, balancing on a kitchen stool.

  “It’s not very likely,” his mother agreed. “Not now that they’re used to earning their own living.”

  “Maybe if you fed my butterflies every day, they’d bring your legs back,” suggested Jenny.

  So Cal rolled out on his skateboard every day and fed the butterflies with handfuls of sugar. They grew quite accustomed to him, and would perch on his arms and head and hands.

  But summer was nearly over; autumn was coming; there were fewer butterflies every day. And still Cal’s legs did not come back.

  School began again. Every day Cal went to school on the skateboard, rolling himself along with his hands. He couldn’t play football, because of having no legs, but he could still swim, so he did that three times a week, in the school pool.

  One day while he was swimming he saw two butterflies floating in the center of the pool. They were flapping and struggling a little, but very feebly; it looked as if they were going to drown.

  Cal dog-paddled toward them, as fast as he could. “Poor things,” he thought, “they must feel horrible with their wings all wet and floppy.”

  They were two of a kind he had never seen before—very large, silvery in color, with lavender streaks and long trailing points to their wings.

  Cal wondered how he could save them.

  “For if I take them in my hands,” he thought, “I might squash them. And they would have to go underwater when I swim. Oh, if only I had my legs! Then I could swim with my legs and hold the butterflies above water.”

  But he hadn’t got his legs, so he could only swim with his arms.

  “I’ll have to take the butterflies in my mouth,” Cal thought then.

  He didn’t much care for the idea. In fact it made him shivery down his back—to think of having two live, fluttery butterflies inside his mouth. Still, that seemed the only way to save them. He opened his mouth very wide indeed—luckily it was a big one anyway—and gently scooped the two butterflies in with his tongue, as they themselves scoop in sugar. He was careful to take in as little water as possible.

  Then, with open mouth and head well above water, he swam like mad for the side of the pool.

  But, on the way, the butterflies began to fidget and flutter inside his mouth.

  “Oh, I can’t bear it,” thought Cal.

  Now the butterflies were beating and battering inside his mouth—he felt as if his head were hollow, and the whole-of it were filled with great flapping wings and kicking legs and waving whiskers. They tickled and rustled and scraped and scrabbled and nearly drove him frantic. Still he went on swimming as fast as he was able.

  Then it got so bad that he felt as if his whole head were going to be lifted off. But it was not only his head—suddenly Cal, head, arms, and all, found himself lifted right out of the swimming pool and carried through the air by the two butterflies whirring like helicopters inside his mouth.

  They carried him away from the school and back to his own garden, full of lavender and nasturtiums and Michaelmas daisies, where Jenny was scattering sugar on a tray.

  And there, sitting in a deckchair waiting for him, were his own two legs!

  Cal opened his mouth so wide in amazement that the two silvery butterflies shot out, and dropped down onto the tray to refresh themselves with a little sugar. Which they must have needed, after carrying Cal all wet and dripping.

  And Cal’s legs stood up, stretched themselves a bit, in a carefree way, heel and toe, the way cats do, then came hopping over to hook themselves onto Cal’s hips, as calm and friendly as if they had never been away.

  Was Cal a different boy after that? He was indeed. For one thing, those legs had learne
d such a lot, while they were off on their own, that he could have made an easy living in any circus, or football team, or dance company—and did, for a while, when he grew up.

  Also, he never grew tired of listening to his legs, who used to argue in bed, every night, recalling the days when they had been off in the world by themselves.

  “… That time when I jumped into the tiger’s cage—”

  “Shucks! That wasn’t so extra brave. Not like when I tripped up the bank robbers—”

  “That was nothing.”

  “You weren’t there. You don’t know how it happened!”

  So they used to argue.

  For the rest of his life Cal was very polite to his legs, in case they ever took a fancy to go off again.

  The Voice in the Shell

  ONCE THERE WAS A BOY called Michael who was walking along the beach, thinking about his future.

  “I want to be a painter,” he thought. “I really want to be a painter.”

  He looked at the green sea, and the gray sand, and the waves rolling in, each with a white frothing crest, the white stones on the beach, the black breakwaters, and the golden hills behind.

  “I would like to paint all that,” he thought.

  The problem was that Michael’s father told him he had better not become a painter unless he could be quite sure that he would be the best painter in the whole world. Painters don’t make much money, Michael’s father said. It was wiser to be a builder, or a banker. Or a butcher, or a grocer.

  “Oh,” Michael thought, “if only I could be the best painter in the whole world!”

  Just then he heard a voice crying and grieving.

  “I want my mother!” it cried and groaned. “Oh, oh, oh, I want my mother!”

  Michael glanced around him in surprise. He had thought he was the only person on the beach. He could see nobody. But the voice sounded like a crying child.