How the Whale Became (4 page)

Now in the middle of the earth lived a demon. This demon spent all his time groping about in the dark tunnels, searching for precious metals and gems.

He was hunch-backed and knobbly-armed. His ears draped over his shoulders like a wrinkly cloak. These kept him safe from the bits of rock that were always falling from the ceilings of his caves. He had only one eye, which was a fire. To keep this fire alive he had to feed it with gold and silver. Over this eye he cooked his supper every night. It is hard to say what he ate. All kinds of fungus that grew in the airless dark on the rocks. His drink was mostly tar and oil, which he loved. There is no end of tar and oil in the middle of the earth.

He rarely came up to the light. Once, when he did, he saw the creatures that God was making.

‘What’s this?’ he cried, when a grasshopper landed on his clawed, horny foot. Then he saw Lion. Then Cobra. Then, far above him, Eagle.

‘My word!’ he said, and hurried back down into his dark caves to think about what he had seen.

He was jealous of the beautiful things that God was making.

‘I will make something,’ he said at last, ‘which will be far more beautiful than any of God’s creatures.’

But he had no idea how to set about it.

So one day he crept up to God’s workshop and watched God at work. He peeped from behind the door. He saw him model the clay, bake it in the sun’s fire, then breathe life into it. So that was it!

Away he dived, back down into the centre of the earth.

At the centre of the earth it was too hot for clay. Everything was already baked hard. He set about trying to make his own clay.

First, he ground up stones between his palms. That was powder. But how was he to make it into clay? He needed water, and there in the centre of the earth it was too hot for water.

He searched and he searched, but there was none. At last he sat down. He felt so sad he began to cry. Big tears rolled down his nose.

‘If only I had water,’ he sobbed, ‘this clay could become a real living creature. Why do I have to live where there is no water?’

He looked at the powder in his palm, and began to cry afresh. As he looked and wept, and looked and wept, a tear fell off the end of his nose straight into the powder.

But he was too late. A demon’s tears are no
ordinary
tears. There was a red flash, a fizz, a bubbling, and where the powder had been was nothing but a dark stain on his palm.

He felt like weeping again. Now he had water, but no powder.

‘So much for stone-powder,’ he said. ‘I need
something
stronger.’

Then quickly, before his tears dried, he ground some of the precious metal that he used to feed the fire of his eye. As soon as it was powder he wetted it with a tear off his cheek. But it was no better than the stone-powder had been. There was a flash, a fizz, a bubbling, and nothing.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘What now?’

At last he thought of it – he would make a powder of precious gems. It was hard work grinding these, but at last he had finished. Now for a tear. But he was too excited to cry. He struggled to bring up a single tear. It was no good. His eye was dry as an oven. He struggled and he struggled. Nothing! All at once he sat down and burst into tears.

‘It’s no good!’ he cried. ‘I can’t cry!’ Then he felt his tears wet on his cheeks.

‘I’m crying!’ he cried joyfully. ‘Quick, quick!’ And he splashed a tear on to the powder of the precious gems. The result was perfect. He had made a tiny piece of beautiful clay. Only tiny, because his tears had been few. But it was big enough.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘what kind of creature shall I make?’

The jewel-clay was very hard to work into shape. It was tough as red-hot iron.

So he laid the clay on his anvil and began to beat it into shape with his great hammer.

He beat and beat and beat that clay for a thousand years.

And at last it was shaped. Now it needed baking. Very carefully, because the thing he had made was very frail, he put it into the fire of his eye to bake.

Then, beside a great heap of small pieces of gold and silver, for another thousand years he sat, feeding the fire of his eye with the precious metal. All this time, in the depths of his eye glowed his little
creature
, baking slowly.

At last it was baked.

Now came the real problem. How was he going to breathe life into it?

He puffed and he blew, but it was no good.

‘It is so beautiful!’ he cried. ‘I must give it life!’

It certainly was beautiful. All the precious gems of which it was made mingled their colours. And from the flames in which it had been baked, it had taken a dark fire. It gleamed and flashed: red, blue, orange, green, purple, no bigger than your finger-nail.

But it had no life.

There was only one thing to do. He must go to God and ask him to breathe life into it.

When God saw the demon he was amazed. He had no idea that such a creature existed.

‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Where have you come from?’

The demon hung his head. ‘Now,’ he thought, ‘I will use a trick.’

‘I’m a jewel-smith,’ he said humbly. ‘And I live in the centre of the earth. I have brought you a present, to show my respect for you,’

He showed God the little creature that he had made. God was amazed again.

‘How beautiful!’ he kept saying as he turned it over and over on his hand. ‘How beautiful! What a wonderfully clever smith you are,’

‘Ah!’ said the demon. ‘But not so clever as you. I could never breathe life into it. If you had made it, it would be alive. As it is, it is beautiful, but dead.’

God was flattered. ‘That’s soon altered,’ he said. He raised the demon’s gift to his lips and breathed life into it.

Then he held it out. It crawled on to the end of his finger.

‘Buzz!’ it went, and whirred its thin, beautiful wings. Like a flash, the demon snatched it from God’s finger-tip and plunged back down into the centre of the earth.

There, for another thousand years, he lay, letting the little creature crawl over his fingers and make short flights from one hand to the other. It glittered all its colours in the light of his eye’s fire. The demon was very happy.

‘You are more beautiful than any of God’s
creatures
,’ he crooned.

But life was hard for the little creature down in the centre of the earth, with no one to play with but the demon. He had God’s breath in him, and he longed to be among the other creatures under the sun.

And he was sad for another reason. In his veins ran not blood, but the tears with which the demon had mixed his clay. And what is sadder than a tear?
Feeling the sadness in all his veins, he moved
restlessly
over the demon’s hands.

One day the demon went up to the light to
compare
his little creature with the ones God had made.

‘Buzz!’ went his pet, and was away over a mountain.

‘Come back!’ roared the demon, then quickly covered his mouth with his hands, frightened that God would hear him. He began to search for his creature, but soon, frightened that God would see him, he crept back into the earth.

Still his little creature was not happy.

The sadness of the demon’s tears was always in him. It was part of him. It was what flowed in his veins.

‘If I gather everything that is sweet and bright and happy,’ he said to himself, ‘that should make me feel better. Here there are plenty of wonderfully sweet bright happy things.’

And he began to fly from flower to flower,
collecting
the bright sunny sweetness out of their cups.

‘Ah!’ he cried. ‘Wonderful!’

The sweetness lit up his body. He felt the sun glowing through him from what he drank. For the first time in his life he felt happy.

But the moment he stopped drinking from the flowers, the sadness came creeping back along his veins and the gloom into his thoughts.

‘That demon made me of tears,’ he said. ‘How can I ever hope to get away from the sadness of tears? Unless I never leave these flowers.’

And he hurried from flower to flower.

He could never stop, and it was too good to stop.

Soon, he had drunk so much, the sweetness began to ooze out of his pores. He was so full of it, he was brimming over with it. And every second he drank more.

At last he had to pause.

‘I must store all this somewhere,’ he said.

So he made a hive, and all the sweetness that oozed from him he stored in that hive. Man found it and called it honey. God saw what the little
creature
was doing, and blessed him, and called him Bee.

But Bee must still go from flower to flower, seeking sweetness. The tears of the demon are still in his veins ready to make him gloomy the moment he stops drinking from the flowers. When he is angry and stings, the smart of his sting is the tear of the demon. If he has to keep that sweet, it is no wonder that he drinks sweetness until he brims over.

Things were running very smoothly and most of the creatures were highly pleased with themselves. Lion was already famous. Even the little shrews and moles and spiders were pretty well known.

But among all these busy creatures there was one who seemed to be getting nowhere. It was Cat.

Cat was a real oddity. The others didn’t know what to make of him at all.

He lived in a hollow tree in the wood. Every night, when the rest of the creatures were sound asleep, he retired to the depths of his tree – then such sounds, such screechings, yowlings, wailings! The bats that slept upside-down all day long in the hollows of the tree branches awoke with a start and fled with their wing-tips stuffed into their ears. It seemed to them that Cat was having the worst nightmares ever – ten at a time.

But no. Cat was tuning his violin.

If only you could have seen him! Curled in the warm smooth hollow of his tree, gazing up through the hole at the top of the trunk, smiling at the stars,
winking at the moon – his violin tucked under his chin. Ah, Cat was a happy one.

And all night long he sat there composing his tunes.

Now the creatures didn’t like this at all. They saw no use in his music, it made no food, it built no nest, it didn’t even keep him warm. And the way Cat lounged around all day, sleeping in the sun, was just more than they could stand.

‘He’s a bad example,’ said Beaver, ‘he never does a stroke of work! What if our children think they can live as idly as he does?’

‘It’s time,’ said Weasel, ‘that Cat had a job like everybody else in the world.’

So the creatures of the wood formed a Committee to persuade Cat to take a job.

Jay, Magpie, and Parrot went along at dawn and sat in the topmost twigs of Cat’s old tree. As soon as Cat poked his head out, they all began together:

‘You’ve to get a job. Get a job! Get a job!’

That was only the beginning of it. All day long, everywhere he went, those birds were at him:

‘Get a job! Get a job!’

And try as he would, Cat could not get one wink of sleep.

That night he went back to his tree early. He was far too tired to practise on his violin and fell fast asleep in a few minutes. Next morning, when he poked his head out of the tree at first light, the three birds of the Committee were there again, loud as ever:

‘Get a job!’

Cat ducked back down into his tree and began to think. He wasn’t going to start grubbing around in the wet woods all day, as they wanted him to. Oh no. He wouldn’t have any time to play his violin if he did that. There was only one thing to do and he did it.

He tucked his violin under his arm and suddenly jumped out at the top of the tree and set off through the woods at a run. Behind him, shouting and
calling
, came Jay, Magpie, and Parrot.

Other creatures that were about their daily work in the undergrowth looked up when Cat ran past. No one had ever seen Cat run before.

‘Cat’s up to something,’ they called to each other. ‘Maybe he’s going to get a job at last.’

Deer, Wild Boar, Bear, Ferret, Mongoose,
Porcupine
, and a cloud of birds set off after Cat to see where he was going.

After a great deal of running they came to the edge of the forest. There they stopped. As they peered through the leaves they looked sideways at each other and trembled. Ahead of them, across an open field covered with haycocks, was Man’s farm.

But Cat wasn’t afraid. He went straight on, over the field, and up to Man’s door. He raised his paw and banged as hard as he could in the middle of the door.

Man was so surprised to see Cat that at first he just stood, eyes wide, mouth open. No creature ever dared to come on to his fields, let alone knock at his door. Cat spoke first.

‘I’ve come for a job,’ he said.

‘A job?’ asked Man, hardly able to believe his ears.

‘Work,’ said Cat. ‘I want to earn my living.’

Man looked him up and down, then saw his long claws.

‘You look as if you’d make a fine rat-catcher,’ said Man.

Cat was surprised to hear that. He wondered what it was about him that made him look like a rat
catcher
. Still, he wasn’t going to miss the chance of a job. So he stuck out his chest and said: ‘Been doing it for years.’

‘Well then, I’ve a job for you,’ said Man. ‘My farm’s swarming with rats and mice. They’re in my
haystacks
, they’re in my corn sacks, and they’re all over the pantry.’

So before Cat knew where he was, he had been signed on as a Rat-and-Mouse-Catcher. His pay was milk, and meat, and a place at the fireside. He slept all day and worked all night.

At first he had a terrible time. The rats pulled his tail, the mice nipped his ears. They climbed on to rafters above him and dropped down – thump! on to him in the dark. They teased the life out of him.

But Cat was a quick learner. At the end of the week he could lay out a dozen rats and twice as many mice within half an hour. If he’d gone on laying them out all night there would pretty soon have been none left, and Cat would have been out of a job. So he just caught a few each night – in the first ten minutes or so. Then he retired into the barn and played his violin till morning. This was just the job he had been looking for.

Man was delighted with him. And Mrs Man thought he was beautiful. She took him on to her lap and stroked him for hours on end. What a life! thought Cat. If only those silly creatures in the
dripping
wet woods could see him now!

Well, when the other farmers saw what a fine
rat-and
-mouse-catcher Cat was, they all wanted cats too. Soon there were so many cats that our Cat decided to form a string band. Oh yes, they were all great violinists. Every night, after making one pile of rats and another of mice, each cat left his farm and was away over the fields to a little dark spinney.

Then what tunes! All night long…

Pretty soon lady cats began to arrive. Now, every night, instead of just music, there was dancing too. And what dances! If only you could have crept up there and peeped into the glade from behind a tree and seen the cats dancing – the glossy furred ladies and the tomcats, some pearly grey, some ginger red, and all with wonderful green flashing eyes. Up and down the glade, with the music flying out all over the night.

At dawn they hung their violins in the larch trees, dashed back to the farms, and pretended they had been working all night among the rats and mice. They lapped their milk hungrily, stretched out at the fireside, and fell asleep with smiles on their faces.