Short Stories for Children

by Walter De la Mare

  ‘So, so, so,’ said the Lord Fish. And having made the round of John’s companions he retired at last from out of his larder, well content with his morning’s visit. And with but one quick reassuring nod at John over her narrow shoulder, his nimble larder-maid followed after him. John was safe until Saturday.

  Hardly had the Lord Fish’s scuffling footsteps died away when back came the little maid, wringing her hands in glee, and scarcely able to speak for laughing. ‘Ay, Master Tench, did you hear that? “Up there in the shadows. Here’s a dullard; here’s a rack of bones; here’s a gristle-trap. He wants cosseting and feeding and fattening.” Did he not now? Was I sly? Was I cunning? Did the old Lord nibble my bait, Master Tench? Did he not now? Oho, my poor beautiful; “fatten”, indeed!’ And she lightly stroked John’s snout again. ‘What’s wrong with the old Lord Fish is that he eats too much and sleeps too long. Come ’ee now, let’s make no more ado about it.’

  She dragged up a wooden stool that stood close by, and, holding her breath, with both hands she carefully lifted down the jar of green fat or grease or unguent. Then she unlatched John from his hook, and laid him gently on the stone slab beside her, bidding him meanwhile have no fear at all of what might happen. She stripped off his verdant coat of moss, and, dipping her finger in the ointment, smeared it on him, from the nape of his neck clean down his spine to the very tip of his tail.

  For a few moments John felt like a cork that, after bobbing softly along down a softly-flowing river, is suddenly drawn into a roaring whirlpool. He felt like a firework squib when the gushing sparks are nearly all out of it and it is about to burst. Then gradually the fog in his eyes and the clamour in his ears faded and waned away, and lo and behold, he found himself returned safe and sound into his own skin, shape and appearance again. There he stood in the Lord Fish’s fish larder, grinning down out of his cheerful face at the maid who in stature reached not much above his elbow.

  ‘Ah,’ she cried, peering up at him out of her small water-clear eyes, and a little dazed and dazzled herself at this transmogrification. ‘So you were the other kind, Master Tench!’ And the larder-maid looked at him so sorrowfully and fondly that poor John could only blush and turn away. ‘And now,’ she continued, ‘all you will be wanting, I suppose, is to be gone. I beseech you then make haste and be off, or my own skin will pay for it.’

  John had always been a dullard with words. But he thanked the larder-maid for all she had done for him as best he could. And he slipped from off his little finger a silver ring which had belonged to his father, and put it into the palm of the larder-maid’s hand; for just as when he had been changed into a fish, all his clothes and everything about him had become fish itself, so now when he was transformed into human shape again, all that had then been his returned into its own place, even to the parchment in his breeches’ pocket. Such it seems is the law of enchantment. And he entreated the maid, if ever she should find herself on the other side of the great wall, to ask for the village of Tussock, and when she came to Tussock to ask for Mrs Cobbler.

  ‘That’s my mother,’ said John, ‘is Mrs Cobbler. And she’ll be mighty pleased to see you, I promise you. And so will I.’

  The larder-maid looked at John. Then she took the ring between finger and thumb, and with a sigh pushed it into a cranny between the slabs of stone for a hiding-place. ‘Stay there,’ she whispered to the ring, ‘and I’ll come back to ’ee anon.’

  Then John, having nothing else handy, and knowing that for the larder-maid’s sake he must leave the pot behind him, took out of the fob in his breeches’ pocket a great silver watch that had belonged to his grandfather. It was nothing now but a watch case, since he had one day taken out the works in hopes to make it go better, and had been too lazy to put them back again. Into this case he smeared as much of the grease out of the pot as it would hold.

  ‘And now, Master Tench, this way,’ said the larder-maid, twisting round on him. ‘You must be going, and you must be going for good. Follow that wall as far as it leads you, and then cross the garden where the Lord Fish grows his herbs. You will know it by the scent of them in the air. Climb the wall and go on until you come to the river. Swim across that, and turn sunwards while it is morning. The Lord Fish has the nose of a she-wolf. He’d smell ’ee out across a bean field. Get you gone at once then, and meddle with him no more. Ay, and I know it is not on me your thoughts will be thinking when you get to safety again.’

  John, knowing no other, stooped down and kissed this little wiseacre’s lean cold fingers, and casting one helpless and doleful look all about the larder at the fish on hook and slab, and seeing none, he fancied, that could possibly be in the same state as his had been, he hastened out.

  There was no missing his way. The Lord Fish’s walls and water conduits were all of stone so solid that they might have been built by the Romans, though, truly, they were chiefly of magic, which has nothing to do with time. John hurried along in the morning sunshine, and came at length to the stream. With his silver watch between his teeth for safety he swam to the other side. Here grew very tall rough spiny reeds and grasses, some seven to nine feet high. He pushed his way through them, heedless of their clawing and rasping, and only just in time. For as soon as he was safely hidden in the low bushes beyond them, whom did he now see approaching on the other side of the stream, rod in hand, and creel at his elbow, but the Lord Fish himself – his lank face erected up into the air and his nose sniffing the morning as if it were laden with the spices of Arabia. The larder-maid had told the truth indeed. For at least an hour the Lord Fish stood there motionless on the other side of the stream immediately opposite John’s hiding-place. For at least an hour he pried and peeped about him, gently sniffing on. And, though teased by flies and stung with nettles, John dared not stir a finger. At last even the Lord Fish grew weary of watching and waiting, and John, having seen him well out of sight, continued on his way …

  What more is there to tell? Sad and sorrowful had been the maid’s waiting for him, sad beyond anything else in the fish-tailed damsel’s memory. For, ever since she had so promised him, she had not even been able to sing to keep herself company. But when seventeen days after he had vanished, John plunged in again under the stone arch and climbed the steep stone steps to her chamber, he spent no time in trying to find words and speeches that would not come. Having opened the glass of his watch, he just knelt down beside her, and said, ‘Now, if you please, lady. If you can keep quite still, I will be quick. If only I could bear the pain I’d do it three times over, but I promise ’ee it’s soon gone.’ And with his finger he gently smeared the magic unguent on the maid’s tail down at last to the very tip.

  Life is full of curiosities, and curious indeed it was that though at one moment John’s talk to the enchanted creature had seemed to her little better than Double Dutch, and she could do his bidding only by the signs he had made to her, at the next they were chattering together as merrily as if they had done nothing else all their lives. But they did not talk for long, since of a sudden there came the clatter of oars, and presently a skinny hand was thrust over the window-sill, and her daily portion of bread and fruit and water was laid out on the sill. The sound of the Lord Fish’s ‘Halloo!’ when he had lowered his basket into the boat made the blood run cold again in John’s body. He waited only until the rap and grinding of the oars had died away. Then he took the maid by the hand, and they went down the stone steps together. There they plunged into the dark water, and presently found themselves breathless but happy beyond words seated together on the green grass bank in the afternoon sunshine. And there came such a chattering and cawing from the rooks and jackdaws over their heads that it seemed as if they were giving thanks to see them there. And when John had shaken out the coat he had left under the tree seventeen days before, brushed off the mildew, and dried it in the sun, he put it over the maid’s shoulders.

  It was long after dark when they came to Tussock, and not a soul was to be seen in the village street or on the g
reen. John looked in through the window at his mother. She sat alone by the hearthside, staring into the fire, and it seemed to her that she would never get warm again. When John came in and she was clasped in his arms, first she thought she was going to faint, then she began to cry a little, and then to scold him as she had never scolded him before. John dried her tears and hushed her scoldings. And when he had told her a little of his story, he brought the maid in. And John’s mother first bobbed her a curtsey, then kissed her and made her welcome. And she listened to John’s story all over again from the beginning to the end before they went to bed – though John’s bed that night was an old armchair.

  Now before the bells of Tussock church – which was a small one and old – rang out a peal for John’s and the fish-maid’s wedding, he set off as early as ever one morning to climb the wall again. In their haste to be gone from the Sorcerer’s mansion she had left her belongings behind her, and particularly, she told John, a leaden box or casket, stamped with a great A – for Almanara; that being her name.

  Very warily John stripped again, and, diving quietly, swam in under the stone arch. And lo, safe and sound, in the far corner of the room of all her grief and captivity, stood the leaden casket. But when he stooped to lift it, his troubles began. It was exceedingly heavy, and to swim with it even on his shoulders would be to swim to the bottom! He sat awhile and pondered, and at last climbed up to the stone window, carved curiously with flowers and birds and fish, and looked out. Water lay beneath him in a moat afloat with lilies, though he couldn’t tell how deep. But by good fortune a knotted rope hung from a hook in the window-sill – for the use, no doubt, of the Lord Fish in his boat. John hauled the rope in, tied one end of it to the ring in the leaden casket and one to a small wooden stool. At last after long heaving and hoisting he managed to haul the casket on to the sill. He pushed it over, and – as lively as a small pig – away went the stool after it. John clambered up to the window again and again looked out. The stool, still bobbing, floated on the water beneath him. Only a deeper quiet had followed the splash of the casket. So, after he had dragged it out of the moat and on to the bank, John ventured on beyond the walls of the great house in search of the Lord Fish’s larder. He dearly wanted to thank the larder-maid again. When at last he found it, it was all shut up and deserted. He climbed up to the window and looked in, but quickly jumped down again, for every fish that hung inside it hung dead as mutton. The little larder-maid was gone. But whether she had first used the magic unguent on the Lord Fish himself and then in dismay of what followed had run away, or whether she had tried it on them both and now was what John couldn’t guess, he never knew and could never discover. He grieved not to see her again, and always thought of her with kindness.

  Walking and resting, walking and resting, it took him three days, even though he managed to borrow a wheelbarrow for the last two miles, to get the casket home. But it was worth the trouble. When he managed at last to prise the lid open, it was as though lumps of a frozen rainbow had suddenly spilled over in the kitchen, the casket was crammed so full of precious stones. And after the wedding Almanara had a great J punched into the lead of the box immediately after her great A – since now what it held belonged to them both.

  But though John was now married, and not only less idle but as happy as a kingfisher, still when the sweet south wind came blowing, and the leaves were green on the trees, and the birds in song, he could not keep his thoughts from hankering after water. So sometimes he made himself a little paste or dug up a few worms, and went off fishing. But he made two rules for himself, First, whenever he hooked anything – and especially a tench – he would always smear a speck or two of the unguent out of his grandfather’s silver watch-case on the top of its head; and next, having made sure that his fish was fish, wholly fish, and nothing but fish, he would put it back into the water again. As for the mansion of the Sorcerer, he had made a vow to Almanara and to his mother that he would never go fishing there. And he never did.

  * As printed in CSC (1947). First published as ‘John Cobbler’ in Number Four Joy Street, Oxford 1926.

  A Penny a Day*

  Once upon a time, there lived in a cottage that had been built out of the stones of a ruinous Castle and stood within its very walls, an old woman, and her granddaughter – whose name was Griselda. Here they lived quite alone, being the only two left of a family of farmers who had once owned a wide track of land around them – fields, meadows, heath and moorland – skirting the cliffs and the sea.

  But all this was long ago. Now Griselda and her old grandmother had little left but the roof over their heads and a long garden whose apples and cherries and plum-trees flowered in spring under the very walls of the Castle. Many birds nested in this quiet hollow; and the murmur of the sea on the beach beyond it was never hushed to rest.

  The old woman tended the garden. And Griselda had very little time wherein to be idle. After her day’s work in the farms and fields, she went so weary to bed that however much she tried to keep awake in order to enjoy the company of her own thoughts, she was usually fast asleep before the wick of her tallow candle had ceased to smoulder. Yet for reasons not known even to herself she was as happy as she was good-natured. In looks she resembled a mermaid. Her fair face was unusually gentle and solemn, which may in part have come from her love and delight in gazing at and listening to the sea.

  Whenever she had time to herself, which was very seldom, she would climb up by the broken weed-grown steps to the very top of the Castle tower, and sit there – like Fatima’s sister – looking out over the green cliffs and the vast flat blue of the ocean.

  She sat as small as a manikin there. When the sea-winds had blown themselves out she would search the beach for driftwood – the only human creature to be seen – in the thin salt spray blown in on the wind. And the sea-birds would scream around her while the slow toppling Atlantic breakers shook the earth with their thunder. In still evenings, too, when storms had been raging far out over the ocean, and only a slow ground-swell poured in its heavy waters upon the shore, it seemed that sunken bells were ringing from a belfry submerged and hidden for ever in the deeps.

  But no humans, except Griselda, were there to listen. It was seldom, even, that the people in the nearest village came down to the sea-strand; and never when night was falling. For the Castle was a place forbidden. It was the haunt, it was said, of the Strange Folk. On calm summer evenings unearthly dancers had been seen dancing between the dusk and the moonlight on the short green turf at the verge of the sands, where bugloss and sea-lavender bloomed, and the gulls had their meeting place, gabbling softly together as they preened their wings in the twilight.

  Griselda had often heard these tales. But, as she had lived under the walls of the Castle, and had played alone in its ruins ever since she could remember anything at all, she listened to them with delight. What was there to be afraid of? She longed to see these dancers; and kept watch. And when the full moon was ablaze in the sky, she would slip out of her grandmother’s cottage and dance alone in its dazzling light on the hard, sea-laid sands of the beach; or sit, half-dreaming, in some green knoll of the cliffs. She would listen to the voices of the sea among the rocks and in the caves; and could not believe that what she heard was only the lully and music of its waters.

  Often, too, when sitting on her sun-warmed doorstep, morning or evening, mending her clothes, or peeling potatoes, or shelling peas, or scouring out some old copper pot, she would feel, all in an instant, that she was no longer alone. Then she would stoop her head a little lower over her needle or basin, pretending not to notice that anything was different. As you can hear the notes of an unseen bird or in the darkness can smell a flower past the finding, so it was with Griselda. She had company beyond hearing, touch, or sight.

  Now and again, too, as she slid her downcast eyes to right or left, she had actually caught a fleeting glimpse of a shape, not quite real perhaps, but more real than nothing – though it might be half-hidden behind the b
ushes, or peering down at her from an ivy-shadowed hollow in the thick stone walls.

  Such things did not alarm Griselda – no more than would the wind in the keyhole, or the cry of flighting swans at night. They were part of her life, just as the rarer birds and beetles and moths and butterflies are part of the Earth’s life. And whatever these shadowy creatures were, she was certain they meant her no harm.

  So the happy days went by, spring on to winter, though Griselda had to work nearly all her waking hours to keep herself and her old grandmother from want. Then, one day, the old woman fell ill. She had fallen on the narrow stairs as she was shuffling down in the morning, and there, at the foot of them, looking no more alive than a bundle of old clothes, Griselda found her when she came in with her driftwood.

  She was old, and worn and weary, and Griselda knew well that unless great care was taken of her, she might get worse; and even die. The thought of this terrified her. ‘Oh, Grannie, Grannie!’ she kept whispering to herself as she went about her work, ‘I’ll do anything – anything in the world – I don’t mind what happens – if only you’ll promise not to die!’ But she soon began to take courage again, and kept such a cheerful face that the old woman hadn’t an inkling of how sick with care and foreboding Griselda’s small head often was, or how near her heart came to despair.

  She scarcely had time now to wash her face or comb her hair, or even to sleep and eat. She seldom sat down to a meal, and even when she did, there was but a minute or two in which to gobble it up. She was so tired she could scarcely drag her feet up the steep narrow staircase; the colour began to fade out of her cheeks, and her face to grow haggard and wan.