The Island of the Grass King Chapter 10

The next morning the Mender and her creatures were nowhere to be seen, and the travelers awoke to find themselves surrounded by a queer throng of folk who stood perfectly still with their feet in the sand and their eyes raised to heaven, as if they were praying for deliverance. Many of the women wore wings like angels, though they had caps instead of haloes, and they were waving flags, from which the colors had long been weathered away, so that you could not tell what countries they came from. The men wore periwigs or stovepipe hats or sailor suits; a few were dressed as Indian chieftains. The ladies who did not look like angels wore long gowns and bonnets. Scattered among this solemn crowd were eagles, lions, unicorns, mermaids, and a large robust figure who might have been King of the Sea, for he held a trident and wore a crown, both badly in need of paint. And nearly everyone carried banners inscribed with such names as Constitution or Glory of the Sea or Clara Belle or Polar Star or Dashing Wave.

Anatole felt anxiously in his pocket for the magician’s book. Yes, it was quite safe.

“What funny names these people have,” whispered Susannah. “They don’t seem to notice us at all. I believe we can walk right past them.”

“Bless me, they’re figureheads,” exclaimed Captain Lark. “Many’s the time I’ve admired such things on the prows of passing ships. But how odd to find them all heaped together in a field.”

A narrow flagstone path wound through the crowd of figureheads in Mother Weather-sky’s garden. The garden was laid out in beds, but no flowers grew in them. Sextants and compasses glittered in one, broken crockery shone in another, chests empty of treasure—their lids open or gone entirely—lay in a third. The path led past a jumble of weathervanes—roosters and archers and fish and horses—that had long ago lost their sense of direction; motionless, they pointed to the earth.

Then the path turned abruptly. At last, and to Anatole’s great delight, it entered a bed of toys. Model ships, steam engines, trucks, cars, cradles, puppets, dolls, like the stockroom of the biggest toy store in the world, except that everything was broken, everything had been battered by the sea. Anatole paused to finger a small ship that had lost its sails. Its ivory hull felt smooth as butter, and its brass spars shone.

“Do you think a sailor made this for his child back home?” he asked Captain Lark. But the rabbit only shook his head.

“Remember what the Mender told us,” he warned. “Take nothing from the garden.”

Anatole did not mean to take the ship, only to hold it. But the instant he picked it up, he felt a blow on his head that knocked him to the ground. He was back on his feet at once, and again something struck him, this time on the shoulder. He looked up. A stick twice the size of his baseball bat at home was dancing over his head. Now it pummeled Captain Lark on the back, and now it darted after Plumpet and nipped her tail, so that she mewed dreadfully. Fortunately it did not touch Susannah.

They ran down the path, the stick bobbing after them, as if it rode an invisible wave. In their haste to escape, nobody noticed that the end of the path was near and that it led straight into the side of a broken ship, which somebody had patched up to make a house. In the doorway stood a little woman wrapped in a green cape, like an ear of corn, and she was puffing on a pipe. She blew out a great cloud of smoke and said, “Stick, lay off.”

The stick stopped in mid-blow and leaped obediently into her hand. Anatole glanced round to see who had saved them.

“Don’t move,” said the woman. “My ash stick can split a rock if it chooses.”

Anatole stared at her. She was without doubt the same woman he had seen riding the dogs and throwing lightning bolts during the storm. But by the calm light of a windless day how small she looked! She might have been one of the plaster dwarves at the back of his grandmother’s garden. Her cape needed mending, her boots were split at the toes, and her blue apron, faded almost to gray, was smudged with ashes. Her hair was tangled with burrs and branches and—could it be? A sparrow had actually built its nest and was sitting on top of its eggs, fast asleep, just over her left ear.

“I’m not afraid of you,” said Anatole. “You aren’t much taller than my cat.”

“Smaller is stronger,” said Mother Weather-sky, and she stalked over to Plumpet and shook the ashes from her pipe over the cat’s ears and tail.

What happened next made Anatole regret his words. Plumpet’s honey-warm fur grew hard and bright, her whiskers began to shimmer, her claws shone, and where the lively cat had crouched a moment before he saw a cat of pure gold.

“She shall be my bench,” said Mother Weather-sky, puffing on her pipe. Then she walked from Anatole to Susannah to Captain Lark, her wicked green eyes peering at each of them in turn. Before Anatole could stop her, she took the pipe from her mouth once more and threw a shower of ashes over Captain Lark. Without a sound he curled up like a leaf in a bonfire, smooth and still, stretched in a golden sleep.

“A very serviceable table,” said Mother Weather-sky. Then she turned to Quicksilver.

“Down the path that branches to the right, you will find a well. Take the rope and climb down and fetch my water. Do not take the other path or things will go badly for you.”

Mother Weather-sky grabbed Susannah by the wrist and asked, “Can you cook? If you can cook, I shall keep you for a little while longer before I break you to bits and take that whistle.”

Susannah shrank behind Anatole, but Mother Weather-sky yanked her out and pushed her toward the open door, which was so low that the girl had to crawl through it on her hands and knees.

“My kitchen lies to the back,” called Mother Weather-sky after her. “I like tea with my meals and I’m very fond of currants.”

Susannah disappeared into Mother Weather-sky’s house. It had not a single window; even the portholes were sealed up. Mother Weather-sky folded her arms and cocked her head at Anatole.

“My vegetable garden wants weeding. I am fond of vegetables, but where I walk weeds spring up. The center path will lead you to the vegetable plot. Pull every weed by sundown or I shall change you into a turnip and eat you for supper.”

Anatole did not wait to be told twice. He ran down the path and almost immediately found the vegetable garden. It was so overgrown with burdock and thistles that ten men could not have cleared it in a week, and he knew he could never clear it in a day, for he had no spade and no rake, nothing but his bare hands.

But even worse than the weeds were the stones. He kept stubbing his toes on them. Soon he was so weary that he had to sit down, and when he remembered Susannah in that dark little house, Plumpet and Captain Lark changed into furniture, and his own fate if he didn’t finish, he burst into tears.

Something splashed, not far from where he sat. He looked around startled and was very surprised to discover among the weeds a clear pool, perfectly round, just to his left. He ran to it eagerly and leaned over the rim to drink and saw, at the same moment, two golden fish—one large, one small—gliding slowly through the water, their tails fanning gently back and forth. Then he spied something else gleaming in the darkness at the bottom of the pool, and he drew in his breath and gave a cry of delight.

Before he could reach for it, a blossom sailed down from the tree overhead and glided to the water. The touch of the water turned the blossom to stone and it started to sink. But now a strange thing happened. The water, so still and clear, began to churn and stir itself, foaming and frothing, until at last the waves leaped up like hands and flung the stone flower out of the water.

A snorting and crashing among the trees at the far side of the pool made him freeze in his tracks. Something was charging toward him, heaving dirt into the air as it came. There flashed across his mind his mother’s lullaby about the boy who played the harmonica so well that all the animals lay down around him, even the fiercer kinds, and in desperation he felt for his harmonica in his back pocket, pulled it out, and tried to play his old standby, “Yankee Doodle.” To his surprise it began to play his mother’s lullaby instead:

“Everything that heard him play,

even the billows of the sea,

hung their heads and then lay by.”

The crashing and snorting among the trees stopped, and a husky voice supplied the rest of the words:

“In sweet music is such art,

killing care and grief of heart,

fall asleep or hearing, die.”

Into the sunlight trotted a wild boar. It was as big as a horse, and its tusks curled over its snout like two nicely matched scythes. Humming to itself, it sat down beside Anatole and then it said, “Leave off and catch your breath.”

“Aren’t you going to run me through?” quavered Anatole, who was almost too frightened to speak.

“No sense in running you through,” replied the boar. “I’ve few enough folk as it is. What brings you to this dreadful place?”

So Anatole told the boar how he and his friends had fallen into Mother Weather-sky’s power and he had little hope they would ever get home again. And he added that he wanted to free the King of the Grass, but he did not mention the Magician’s book. The boar listened gravely.

“No. I won’t see him till I carry five and sink alive. That’s part of the spell. What do you think it means? Five of what? Sink into what? And where’s the lost key to be found?”

“The key is in the pool,” Anatole exclaimed, pointing, “but if you touch the water, you’ll turn to stone.”

The boar squinted into the water. “As I live and breathe! Now if we only had the lost book of spells, we’d go straight to the door.”

Hearing this, Anatole brought the book from his pocket and handed it to the boar, who sniffed it all over and raised his head slowly so that his tiny eyes met Anatole’s.

“Wonderful!” exclaimed the boar. “Hey, my dears”—he called out to the two fish, who flamed through the dark water—“bring us the key, won’t you? You know I can’t reach it myself.”

The biggest fish leaped out of the water, spat the key out into Anatole’s pocket, turned a somersault, and disappeared again into the depths.

“That’s a good fellow,” said the boar. “Now let’s see what the book advises.”

He opened it to the last and only page. When the light struck it, the letters began to fade in, like invisible ink before a candle. Anatole could make nothing of the words, but the boar read in a low voice:

“One for the rook, one for the crow,

one to die, and one to grow.”

And now before Anatole’s eyes, the strange words shifted and slowly changed themselves into the words he knew. In the R of rook crouched a rabbit, in the C of crow dozed a cat, in the G of grow stood a girl. The D of die opened up into a door, through which something had just passed, for you could see part of its shadow, but you could not tell what it was.

“When bells ring clear,

summer is near.”

At these words the page faded into smoke and the cover of the book crumpled into a handful of dry leaves.

“Well, well,” said the boar, brushing off his paws. “I’ve come to the end of the spell. Do you hear the bells ringing clear?”

Anatole heard nothing. Then it seemed to him he did hear something—was it the wind? No, it was the bells, some deep and sonorous as church bells, some high and brilliant as chimes. The boar pricked up his ears.

“Let’s follow them,” said the boar, and he trotted away so briskly that Anatole had to run to keep up with him.

10.