How the Whale Became (6 page)

The unhappiest of all the creatures was Bombo. Bombo didn’t know what to become. At one time he thought he might make a fairly good horse. At another time he thought that perhaps he was meant to be a kind of bull. But it was no good. Not only the horses, but all the other creatures too, gathered to laugh at him when he tried to be a horse. And when he tried to be a bull, the bulls just walked away shaking their heads.

‘Be yourself,’ they all said.

Bombo sighed. That’s all he ever heard: ‘Be yourself. Be
yourself.
’ What was himself? That’s what he wanted to know.

So most of the time he just stood, with sad eyes, letting the wind blow his ears this way and that, while the other creatures raced around him and above him, perfecting themselves.

‘I’m just stupid,’ he said to himself. ‘Just stupid and slow and I shall never become anything.’

That was his main trouble, he felt sure. He was much too slow and clumsy – and so big! None of the other creatures were anywhere near so big. He
searched hard to find another creature as big as he was, but there was not one. This made him feel all the more silly and in the way.

But this was not all. He had great ears that flapped and hung, and a long, long nose. His nose was useful. He could pick things up with it. But none of the other creatures had a nose anything like it. They all had small neat noses, and they laughed at his. In fact, with that, and his ears, and his long white sticking-out tusks, he was a sight.

As he stood, there was a sudden thunder of hooves. Bombo looked up in alarm.

‘Aside, aside, aside!’ roared a huge voice. ‘We’re going down to drink.’

Bombo managed to force his way backwards into a painful clump of thorn-bushes, just in time to let Buffalo charge past with all his family. Their long black bodies shone, their curved horns tossed, their tails screwed and curled, as they pounded down towards the water in a cloud of dust. The earth shook under them.

‘There’s no doubt,’ said Bombo, ‘who they are. If only I could be as sure of what I am as Buffalo is of what he is.’

Then he pulled himself together.

‘To be myself,’ he said aloud, ‘I shall have to do something that no other creature does. Lion roars and pounces, and Buffalo charges up and down bellowing. Each of these creatures does something that no other creature does. So. What shall I do?’

He thought hard for a minute.

Then he lay down, rolled over on to his back, and
waved his four great legs in the air. After that he stood on his head and lifted his hind legs straight up as if he were going to sunburn the soles of his feet. From this position, he lowered himself back on to his four feet, stood up and looked round. The others should soon get to know me by that, he thought.

Nobody was in sight, so he waited until a pack of wolves appeared on the horizon. Then he began again. On to his back, his legs in the air, then on to his head, and his hind legs straight up.

‘Phew!’ he grunted, as he lowered himself. ‘I shall need some practice before I can keep this up for long.’

When he stood up and looked round him this second time, he got a shock. All the animals were round him in a ring, rolling on their sides with laughter.

‘Do it again! Oh, do it again!’ they were crying, as they rolled and laughed. ‘Do it again. Oh, I shall die with laughter. Oh, my sides, my sides!’

Bombo stared at them in horror.

After a few minutes the laughter died down.

‘Come on!’ roared Lion. ‘Do it again and make us laugh. You look so silly when you do it.’

But Bombo just stood. This was much worse than imitating some other animal. He had never made them laugh so much before.

He sat down and pretended to be inspecting one of his feet, as if he were alone. And, one by one, now that there was nothing to laugh at, the other animals walked away, still chuckling over what they had seen.

‘Next show same time tomorrow!’ shouted Fox, and they all burst out laughing again.

Bombo sat, playing with his foot, letting the tears trickle down his long nose.

Well, he’d had enough. He’d tried to be himself, and all the animals had laughed at him.

That night he waded out to a small island in the middle of the great river that ran through the forest. And there, from then on, Bombo lived alone, seen by nobody but the little birds and a few beetles.

One night, many years later, Parrot suddenly screamed and flew up into the air above the trees. All his feathers were singed. The forest was on fire.

Within a few minutes, the animals were running for their lives. Jaguar, Wolf, Stag, Cow, Bear, Sheep, Cockerel, Mouse, Giraffe – all were running side by side and jumping over each other to get away from the flames. Behind them, the fire came through the tree-tops like a terrific red wind.

‘Oh dear! Oh dear! Our houses, our children!’ cried the animals.

Lion and Buffalo were running along with the rest.

‘The fire will go as far as the forest goes, and the forest goes on for ever,’ they cried, and ran with sparks falling into their hair. On and on they ran, hour after hour, and all they could hear was the thunder of the fire at their tails.

On into the middle of the next day, and still they were running.

At last they came to the wide, deep, swift river.
They could go no further. Behind them the fire boomed as it leapt from tree to tree. Smoke lay so thickly over the forest and the river that the sun could not be seen. The animals floundered in the shallows at the river’s edge, trampling the banks to mud, treading on each other, coughing and sneezing in the white ashes that were falling thicker than thick snow out of the cloud of smoke. Fox sat on Sheep and Sheep sat on Rhinoceros.

They all set up a terrible roaring, wailing, crying, howling, moaning sound. It seemed like the end of the animals. The fire came nearer, bending over them like a thundering roof, while the black river swirled and rumbled beside them.

Out on his island stood Bombo, admiring the fire which made a fine sight through the smoke with its high spikes of red flame. He knew he was quite safe on his island. The fire couldn’t cross that great stretch of water very easily.

At first he didn’t see the animals crowding low by the edge of the water. The smoke and ash were too thick in the air. But soon he heard them. He recognized Lion’s voice shouting:

‘Keep ducking yourselves in the water. Keep your fur wet and the sparks will not burn you.’

And the voice of Sheep crying:

‘If we duck ourselves we’re swept away by the river.’

And the other creatures – Gnu, Ferret, Cobra,
Partridge
, crying:

‘We must drown or burn. Goodbye, brothers and sisters!’

It certainly did seem like the end of the animals.

Without a pause, Bombo pushed his way into the water. The river was deep, the current heavy and fierce, but Bombo’s legs were both long and strong. Burnt trees, that had fallen into the river higher up and were drifting down, banged against him, but he hardly felt them.

In a few minutes he was coming up into shallow water towards the animals. He was almost too late, the flames were forcing them, step by step, into the river, where the current was snatching them away.

Lion was sitting on Buffalo, Wolf was sitting on Lion, Wildcat on Wolf, Badger on Wildcat, Cockerel on Badger, Rat on Cockerel, Weasel on Rat, Lizard on Weasel, Tree-Creeper on Lizard, Harvest Mouse on Tree-Creeper, Beetle on Harvest Mouse, Wasp on Beetle, and on top of Wasp, Ant, gazing at the raging flames through his spectacles and covering his ears from their roar.

When the animals saw Bombo looming through the smoke, a great shout went up:

‘It’s Bombo! It’s Bombo!’

All the animals took up the cry:

‘Bombo! Bombo!’

Bombo kept coming closer. As he came, he sucked up water in his long silly nose and squirted it over his back, to protect himself from the heat and the sparks. Then, with the same long, silly nose he reached out and began to pick up the animals, one by one, and seat them on his back.

‘Take us!’ cried Mole.

‘Take us!’ cried Monkey.

He loaded his back with the creatures that had hooves and big feet; then he told the little clinging things to cling on to the great folds of his ears. Soon he had every single creature aboard. Then he turned and began to wade back across the river, carrying all the animals of the forest towards safety.

Once they were safe on the island they danced for joy. Then they sat down to watch the fire. Suddenly Mouse gave a shout:

‘Look! The wind is bringing sparks across the river. The sparks are blowing into the island trees. We shall burn here too.’

As he spoke, one of the trees on the edge of the island crackled into flame. The animals set up a great cry and began to run in all directions.

‘Help! Help! Help! We shall burn here too!’

But Bombo was ready. He put those long silly tusks of his, that he had once been so ashamed of, under the roots of the burning tree and heaved it into the river. He threw every tree into the river till the island was bare. The sparks now fell on to the bare torn ground, where the animals trod them out easily. Bombo had saved them again.

Next morning the fire had died out at the river’s edge. The animals on the island looked across at the smoking, blackened plain where the forest had been. Then they looked round for Bombo.

He was nowhere to be seen.

‘Bombo!’ they shouted. ‘Bombo!’ And listened to the echo.

But he had gone.

He is still very hard to find. Though he is huge and strong, he is very quiet.

But what did become of him in the end? Where is he now?

Ask any of the animals, and they will tell you:

‘Though he is shy, he is the strongest, the
cleverest
, and the kindest of all the animals. He can carry anything and he can push anything down. He can pick you up in his nose and wave you in the air. We would make him our king if we could get him to wear a crown.’

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) was born in Yorkshire. His first book,
The Hawk in the Rain
, was published in 1957 by Faber and Faber and was followed by many volumes of poetry and prose for adults and children. He received the Whitbread Book of the Year for two consecutive years for his last published collections of poetry,
Tales
from Ovid
(1997) and
Birthday Letters
(1998). He was Poet Laureate from 1984, and in 1998 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.

for children

How the Whale Became

Meet My Folks!

The Earth-Owl and Other Moon People

The Coming of the Kings

The Iron Man

Moon-Whales

Season Songs

Under the North Star

What is the Truth?

Ffangs the Vampire Bat and the Kiss of Truth

Tales of the Early World

The Iron Woman

The Dreamfighter and Other Creation Tales

Collected Animal Poems volumes 1 to 4

Shaggy and Spotty

The Mermaid’s Purse

The Cat and the Cuckoo

Collected Poems for Children

(illustrated by Raymond Briggs)