Fir Apple Fir AppleFir Apple was the first tale Mrs Plant ever told us. I was new I was in a twin desk at the front of the class with no one in the other half. They used to fight not to sit next to me. When I was nervous I needed to pee and then I couldn’t wait. I wouldn’t have sat next to me either, given the chance.
I’ll tell you about Fir Apple. He was found at the top of a fir tree, in a huge dark forest. That’s how he got his name. He was a tiny baby all alone at the top of a tree in the middle of a deserted forest that spread over the mountains all around. Lying on a high feathery branch that trembled in the wind. Lying there crying with his voice so small and weak you could barely hear it for the soughing of the wind in the boughs and the cawing of the rooks in their nests.
But as luck would have it … (O listen)
As luck would have it … (it still makes my stomach turn over)
As luck would have it a woodcutter is making his way home through the lonely forest after a hard day’s work. Looking up he spies a strange dot of pinkness in the branches. Then he hears the baby’s thin wail. And he sets down his axe and his bundle, and straightway begins to climb the tree. A fir tree is dense and hard to climb but he forces his way up through the scented prickly branches, up up up until at last he can stretch out his arm and pluck little Fir Apple from the branch. Where he was dropped, it should be told, by an eagle who had snatched him from his mother’s arms whilst she slept, in a far distant land.
The woodcutter wraps Fir Apple in his jerkin. ‘Poor child,’ he says, ‘I’ll take you home and you can be a playmate for my young Lizzy. Our old cook will take good care of you.’
So Fir Apple and Lizzy grew and played together closer than ever any brother and sister, for wherever you found one you would be sure to find the other. Never were two children so happy together. Said Mrs Plant. O listen. Never were two children so happy.
One day Lizzy noticed that the old cook was toiling back and forth, back and forth to the well, drawing buckets of water.
‘Why do you need all this water?’ she asked.
‘If I tell you you must keep it a secret.’
‘O I will,’ Lizzy replied. (But she didn’t.)
‘In the morning when your father goes into the forest I shall boil up all the water and drop in young Fir Apple, to make a tasty stew.’
When the two children were in bed that night, Lizzy whispered to Fir Apple, as they were always used to whisper – ‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
To which Fir Apple replied, ‘Not now nor ever.’
Then Lizzy whispered to him the old cook’s plan. And the two children decided to escape together. Very early next morning while the cook was in the kitchen lighting the fire under her huge pot of water, Lizzy and Fir Apple climbed out of the window and ran away into the forest.
When the cook found them gone, she was furious. What would the woodcutter say when he came home? She sent three servants to chase after them.
Deep in the forest Lizzy and Fir Apple heard the servants running crashing through the trees. Fir Apple began to cry but Lizzy said, ‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
‘Not now nor ever.’
‘Then quickly, do you turn into a rose bush, and I shall be the flower that grows on it.’
In an instant the children vanished; as the cook’s servants burst into the clearing all they saw was a rose bush with a single bloom. So they made their way back to the cook and told her they had searched the forest far and wide, and found nothing but a rose bush.
‘You fools!’ screamed the cook. ‘You should have cut the bush down and carried the rose back to me. Go and look again!’
Again the servants chased through the forest, and the children heard their footfalls. Fir Apple clung in terror to his sister.
‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
‘Not now nor ever.’
‘Do you turn into a tall tower, and I will be the clock upon it.’
In an instant the children were gone, and in their place stood an elegant clock tower, nearly as tall as the trees that surrounded it. When the cook’s servants came by they saw from the clock that it was dinnertime, and ran back to tell the cook they had found no children but a tall tower with a fine round clock.
Then the cook was furious and screamed at the servants, ‘You should have knocked down the tower and brought me back the clock. You fools, I can’t trust you to do anything, I must find those children myself.’ So she ran off into the forest. But the children heard the sounds of her approach, and Fir Apple clutched Lizzy’s hand tightly.
‘If you’ll never leave me, I’ll never leave you.’
‘Not now nor ever.’
‘Do you turn into a pond, and I will be the duck swimming upon it.’
In an instant the forest was transformed, a beautiful blue pond appeared with one snow white duck swimming across the water. But the cook was clever, she fell to her knees and quickly began to drink the pond dry. Then the duck swam right up to her and pinched her nose with its beak, dragging her under the last of the water. Very soon she drowned.
Then Lizzy and Fir Apple ran through the forest to reach home before the woodcutter. They lived happily together for the rest of their lives.
Mrs Plant asked us to draw a picture for it, and I tried and tried to do a duck on a pond and it looked like a duck in a circle or a duck on a line. I couldn’t draw water. At last I gave up and drew the wicked cook with her boiling pot, squiggles of steam coming out and sharp orange flames beneath. I got a star for it but it wasn’t the picture I wanted to draw.