Wood Magic: A Fable
him for you, and send him to you."
"How long shall you be?" said Bevis. "I am tired of sitting here now,
and I shall go on along the path."
"Oh, then," said the hare, "I shall not know where to find you, and that
will not do. Now, I know what I will do. I will take you to the
raspberries, and there you can eat the fruit till I send the squirrel."
The hare leapt into the fern, and Bevis went after her. She led him in
and out, and round the ash-stoles and bushes, till he had not the least
idea which way he was going. After a time, they came to an immense
thicket of bramble and thorn, and fern growing up in it, and honeysuckle
climbing over it.
"It is inside this thicket," said the hare. "Let us go all round, and
see if we can find a way in."
There was a place under an ash-stole, where Bevis could just creep
beneath the boughs (the boughs held up the brambles), and after going on
his hands and knees after the hare a good way, he found himself inside
the thicket, where there was an open space grown over with raspberry
canes. Bevis shouted with delight as he saw the raspberries were ripe,
and began to eat them at once.
"How ever did they get here?" he asked.
"I think it was the thrush," said the hare. "It was one of the birds, no
doubt. They take the fruit out of the orchards and gardens, and that was
how it came here, I daresay. Now, don't you go outside the thicket till
the squirrel comes. And when you have quite done talking to the
squirrel, ask him to show you the way back to the timber, and there I
will meet you, and lead you to the wheat-field, where you can see the
oak-tree, and know your way home. Mind you do not go outside the thicket
without the squirrel, or you will lose your way, and wander about among
the trees till it is night."
Off went the hare to find the squirrel, and Bevis set to work to eat as
many of the raspberries as he could.
Among the raspberry canes he found three or four rabbit-holes, and
hearing the rabbits talking to each other, he stooped down to listen.
They were talking scandal about the hare, and saying that she was very
naughty, and rambled about too much. At this Bevis was very angry, and
stamped his foot above the hole, and told them they ought to be ashamed
of themselves for saying such things. The rabbits, very much frightened,
went down farther into their holes. After which Bevis ate a great many
more raspberries, and presently, feeling very lazy, he lay down on some
moss at the foot of an oak-tree, and kicked his heels on the ground, and
looked up at the blue sky, as he always did when he wanted some one to
speak to. He did not know how long he had been gazing at the sky, when
he heard some one say: "Bevis dear!" and turning that way he saw the
squirrel, who had come up very quietly, and was sitting on one of the
lower branches of the oak close to him.
"Well, squirrel," said Bevis, sitting up; "the toad said I was to
remember him to you. And now be very quick, and tell me all you know
about Kapchack, and who it is he is in love with, and all about the
rebel, Choo Hoo, and everything else, in a minute."
"Well, you are in a hurry," said the squirrel, laughing; "and so am I,
generally; but this afternoon I have nothing to do, and I am very glad
you have come, dear. Now, first----"
"First," said Bevis, interrupting, "why did the starling say it was a
great secret, when everybody knew it?"
"It was a great secret," said the squirrel, "till Prince Tchack-tchack
came down here (he is the heir, you know) in a dreadful fit of temper,
and told the tomtit whom he met in the fir-tree, and the tomtit told the
woodpecker, and the woodpecker told the starling, who told his lady-love
on the chimney, and the fly heard him, and when you opened the window
the fly went out and buzzed it to everybody while you were at breakfast.
By this time it is all over the world; and I daresay even the sea-gulls,
though they live such a long way off, have heard it. Kapchack is beside
himself with rage that it should be known, and Tchack-tchack is afraid
to go near him. He made a great peck at Tchack-tchack just now."
"But why should there be so much trouble about it?" said Bevis.
"Oh," said the squirrel, "it is a very serious business, let me tell
you. It is not an ordinary falling in love, it is nothing less than a
complete revolution of everything, and it will upset all the rules and
laws that have been handed down ever since the world began."
"Dear me!" said Bevis. "And who is it Kapchack is in love with? I have
asked twenty people, but no one will tell me."
"Why, I am telling you," said the squirrel. "Don't you see, if it had
been an ordinary affair--only a young magpie--it would not have mattered
much, though I daresay the queen would have been jealous, but this----"
"Who is it?" said Bevis, in a rage. "Why don't you tell me who it is?"
"I am telling you," said the squirrel, sharply.
"No, you're not. You're telling me a lot of things, but not what I want
to know."
"Oh, well," said the squirrel, tossing his head and swishing his tail,
"of course, if you know more about it than I do it is no use my
staying." So off he went in a pet.
Up jumped Bevis. "You're a stupid donkey," he shouted, and ran across to
the other side, and threw a piece of stick up into an elm-tree after the
squirrel. But the squirrel was so quick he could not see which way he
had gone, and in half-a-minute he heard the squirrel say very softly:
"Bevis dear," behind him, and looked back, and there he was sitting on
the oak bough again.
The squirrel, as the toad had said, was really a very good fellow; he
was very quick to take offence, but his temper only lasted a minute.
"Bevis dear," he said, "come back and sit down again on the moss, and I
will tell you."
"I sha'n't come back," said Bevis, rather sulkily. "I shall sit here."
"No, no; don't stop there," said the squirrel, very anxiously. "Don't
stop there, dear; can't you see that great bough above you; that
elm-tree is very wicked, and full of malice, do not stop there, he may
hurt you."
"Pooh! what rubbish!" said Bevis; "I don't believe you. It is a very
nice elm, I am sure. Besides, how can he hurt me? He has got no legs and
he can't run after me, and he has no hands and he can't catch me. I'm
not a bit afraid of him;" and he kicked the elm with all his might.
Without waiting a second, the squirrel jumped down out of the oak and
ran across and caught hold of Bevis by his stocking--he could not catch
hold of his jacket--and tried to drag him away. Seeing the squirrel in
such an excited state, Bevis went with him to please him, and sat down
on the moss under the oak. The squirrel went up on the bough, and Bevis
laughed at him for being so silly.
"Ah, but my dear Sir Bevis," said the squirrel, "you do not know all, or
you would not say what you did. You think because the elm has no legs
and cannot run after you, and because he has no hands and cannot catch
you, that therefore he cannot do you any harm. You are very much
mistaken; that is a very malicious elm, and of a very wicked
disposition. Elms, indeed, are very treacherous, and I recommend you to
have nothing to do with them, dear."
"But how could he hurt me?" said Bevis.
"He can wait till you go under him," said the squirrel, "and then drop
that big bough on you. He has had that bough waiting to drop on somebody
for quite ten years. Just look up and see how thick it is, and heavy;
why, it would smash a man out flat. Now, the reason the elms are so
dangerous is because they will wait so long till somebody passes. Trees
can do a great deal, I can tell you; why, I have known a tree, when it
could not drop a bough, fall down altogether when there was not a breath
of wind, nor any lightning, just to kill a cow or a sheep, out of sheer
bad temper."
"But oaks do not fall, do they?" asked Bevis, looking up in some alarm
at the oak above him.
"Oh, no," said the squirrel; "the oak is a very good tree, and so is the
beech and the ash, and many more (though I am not quite certain of the
horse-chestnut, I have heard of his playing tricks), but the elm is not;
if he can he will do something spiteful. I never go up an elm if I can
help it, not unless I am frightened by a dog or somebody coming along.
The only fall I ever had was out of an elm.
"I ran up one in a hurry, away from that wretch, the weasel (you know
him), and put my foot on a dried branch, and the elm, like a treacherous
thing as he is, let it go, and down I went crash, and should have hurt
myself very much if my old friend the ivy had not put out a piece for me
to catch hold of, and so just saved me. As for you, dear, don't you ever
sit under an elm, for you are very likely to take cold there, there is
always a draught under an elm on the warmest day.
"If it should come on to rain while you are out for a walk, be sure and
not go under an elm for shelter if the wind is blowing, for the elm, if
he possibly can, will take advantage of the storm to smash you.
"And elms are so patient, they will wait sixty or seventy years to do
somebody an injury; if they cannot get a branch ready to fall they will
let the rain in at a knot-hole, and so make it rotten inside, though it
looks green without, or ask some fungus to come up and grow there, and
so get the bough ready for them. That elm across there is quite rotten
inside--there is a hole inside so big you could stand up, and yet if
anybody went by they would say what a splendid tree.
"But if you asked Kauhaha, the rook, he would shake his head, and
decline to have anything to do with that tree. So, my dear Sir Bevis, do
not you think any more that because a thing has no legs, nor arms, nor
eyes, nor ears, that therefore it cannot hurt you. There is the earth,
for instance; you may stamp on the earth with your feet and she will not
say anything, she will put up with anything, but she is always lying in
wait all the same, and if you could only find all the money she has
buried you would be the richest man in the world; I could tell you
something about that. The flints even----"
"Now I do not believe what you are going to say," said Bevis, "I am sure
the flints cannot do anything, for I have picked up hundreds of them and
flung them splash into the brook."
"But I assure you they can," said the squirrel. "I will tell you a story
about a flint that happened only a short time since, and then you will
believe. Once upon a time a waggon was sent up on the hills to fetch a
load of flints; it was a very old waggon, and it wanted mending, for it
belonged to a man who never would mend anything."
"Who was that?" said Bevis. "What a curious man."
"It was the same old gentleman (he is a farmer, only he is like your
papa, Sir Bevis, and his land is his own), the same old gentleman who is
so fond of Kapchack, whose palace is in his orchard. Well, the waggon
went up on the hills, where the men had dug up some flints which had
been lying quite motionless in the ground for so many thousand years
that nobody could count them. There were at least five thousand flints,
and the waggon went jolting down the hill and on to the road, and as it
went the flints tried to get out, but they could not manage it, none but
one flint, which was smaller than the rest.
"This one flint, of all the five thousand, squeezed out of a hole in the
bottom of the waggon, and fell on the dust in the road, and was left
there. There was not much traffic on the road (it is the same, dear,
that goes to Southampton, where the ships are), so that it remained
where it fell. Only one waggon came by with a load of hay, and had the
wheel gone over the flint of course it would have been crushed to
pieces. But the waggoner, instead of walking by his horses, was on the