Wood Magic: A Fable
clouds, and once or twice narrowly escaping a branch blown off by the
wind which had risen to a gale. Nor did he see the fox with his brush
touching the ground, creeping unhappily along the mound, but never
looked to the right nor left, hastening as fast as he could glide to
King Kapchack.
Now the king had waited up that night as long as ever he could,
wondering why the thrush did not return, and growing more and more
anxious about the ambassador every moment. Yet he was unable to imagine
what could delay him, nor could he see how any ill could befall him,
protected as he was by the privileges of his office. As the night came
on, and the ambassador did not come, Kapchack, worn out with anxieties,
snapped at his attendants, who retired to a little distance, for they
feared the monarch in these fits of temper.
Kapchack had just fallen asleep when the owl arrived, and the attendants
objected to letting him see the king. But the owl insisted, saying that
it was his particular privilege as chief secretary of state to be
admitted to audience at any moment. With some difficulty, therefore, he
at last got to the king, who woke up in a rage, and stormed at his
faithful counsellor with such fury that the attendants again retired in
affright. But the owl stood his ground and told his tale.
When King Kapchack heard that his ambassador had been foully
assassinated, and that, therefore, the treaty was at an end--for Choo
Hoo would never brook such an affront; when he heard that Ki Ki, his
trusted Ki Ki, who had the command, had offered to retreat in the hour
of battle, and expose him to be taken prisoner; when he heard that the
weasel, the weasel whom that very afternoon he had restored to his
highest favour, had revealed to the enemy the existence of the spring,
he lost all his spirit, and he knew not what to do. He waved the owl
from his presence, and sat alone hanging his head, utterly overcome.
The clouds grew darker, the wind howled, the trees creaked, and the
branches cracked (the snail had foreseen the storm and had ventured
forth on the wall), a few spots of rain came driving along. Kapchack
heard nothing. He was deserted by all: all had turned traitors against
him, every one. He who had himself deceived all was now deceived by all,
and suffered the keenest pangs. Thus, in dolour and despair the darkness
increased, and the tempest howled about him.
CHAPTER XI.
THE STORM IN THE NIGHT.
When the fox, after humbling himself in the dust, was rudely dismissed
by King Kapchack, he was so mortified, that as he slunk away his brush
touched the ground, and the tip of his nostrils turned almost white.
That he, whose ancestors had once held regal dignity, should thus be
contemned by one who in comparison was a mere upstart, and that, too,
after doing him a service by means of the gnat, and after bowing
himself, as it were, to the ground, hurt him to his soul. He went away
through the fern and the bushes to his lair in the long grass which grew
in a corner of the copse, and having curled himself up, tried to forget
the insult in slumber.
But he could not shut his eyes, and after a while he went off again down
the hedgerow to another place where he sometimes stayed, under thick
brambles on a broad mound. But he could not rest there, nor in the osier
bed, nor in the furze, but he kept moving from place to place all day,
contrary to his custom, and not without running great danger. The sting
lingered in him, and the more so because he felt that it was true--he
knew himself that he had not shown any ability lately. Slowly the long
day passed, the shadows lengthened and it became night. Still
restlessly and aimlessly wandering he went about the fields noticing
nothing, but miserable to the last degree. The owl flew by on his errand
to King Kapchack; the bats fluttered overhead; the wind blew and the
trees creaked; but the fox neither saw, nor heard, nor thought of
anything except his own degradation. He had been cast forth as
unworthy--even the very mouse had received some instructions, but he,
the descendant of illustrious ancestors, was pointedly told that the wit
for which they had been famous did not exist in him.
As the night drew on, the wind rose higher, the clouds became thicker
and darker, the branches crashed to the earth, the tempest rushed along
bearing everything before it. The owls, alarmed for their safety, hid in
the hollow trees, or retired to their barns; the bats retreated into the
crevices of the tiles; nothing was abroad but the wildfowl, whose cries
occasionally resounded overhead. Now and then, the fall of some branch
into a hawthorn bush frightened the sleeping thrushes and blackbirds,
who flew forth into the darkness, not knowing whither they were going.
The rabbits crouched on the sheltered side of the hedges, and then went
back into their holes. The larks cowered closer to the earth.
Ruin and destruction raged around: in Choo Hoo's camp the ash poles beat
against each other, oaks were rent, and his vast army knew no sleep that
night. Whirled about by the fearful gusts, the dying hawk, suspended
from the trap, no longer fluttered, but swung unconscious to and fro.
The feathers of the murdered thrush were scattered afar, and the leaves
torn from the boughs went sweeping after them. Alone in the scene the
fox raced along, something of the wildness of the night entered into
him; he tried, by putting forth his utmost speed, to throw off the sense
of ignominy.
In the darkness, and in his distress of mind, he neither knew or cared
whither he was going. He passed the shore of the Long Pond, and heard
the waves dashing on the stones, and felt the spray driven far up on the
sward. He passed the miserable hawk. He ran like the wind by the camp of
Choo Hoo, and heard the hum of the army, unable to sleep. Weary at last,
he sought for some spot into which to drag his limbs, and crept along a
mound which, although he did not recognise it in his stupefied state of
mind, was really not far from where he had started. As he was creeping
along, he fancied he heard a voice which came from the ground beneath
his feet; it sounded so strange in the darkness that he started and
stayed to listen.
He heard it again, but though he thought he knew the voices of all the
residents in the field, he could not tell who it was, nor whence it
came. But after a time he found that it proceeded from the lower part or
butt of an elm-tree. This tree was very large, and seemed perfectly
sound, but it seems there was a crack in it, whether caused by lightning
or not he did not know, which did not show at ordinary times. But when
the wind blew extremely strong as it did to-night, the tree leant over
before the blast, and thus opened the crack. The fox, listening at the
crack, heard the voice lamenting the long years that had passed, the
darkness and the dreary time, and imploring every species of vengeance
upon the head of the cruel King Kapchack.
After a while the fox came to the conclusion that this must be the toad
who, very many years ago, for some offence committed against the state,
was imprisoned by Kapchack's orders in the butt of an elm, there to
remain till the end of the world. Curious to know why the toad had been
punished in this terrible manner, the fox resolved to speak to the
prisoner, from whom perhaps he might learn something to Kapchack's
disadvantage. Waiting, therefore, till the crack opened as the gust
came, the fox spoke into it, and the toad, only too delighted to get
some one to talk to at last, replied directly.
But the chink was so small that his voice was scarcely audible; the
chink, too, only opened for a second or two during the savage puffs of
the gale, and then closed again, so that connected conversation was not
possible, and all the fox heard was that the toad had some very
important things to say. Anxious to learn these things, the fox tried
his hardest to discover some way of communicating with the toad, and at
last he hit upon a plan. He looked round till he found a little bit of
flint, which he picked up, and when the elm bent over before the gale,
and the chink opened, he pushed the splinter of flint into the crevice.
Then he found another piece of flint just a trifle larger, and, watching
his opportunity, thrust it in. This he did three or four times, each
time putting in a larger wedge, till there was a crack sufficiently open
to allow him to talk to the toad easily. The toad said that this was the
first time he had spoken to anybody since his grandson, who lived in the
rhubarb patch, came to exchange a word with him before the butt of the
tree grew quite round him.
But though the fox plied him with questions, and persuaded him in every
way, he would not reveal the reason why he was imprisoned, except that
he had unluckily seen Kapchack do something. He dared not say what it
was, because if he did he had no doubt he would be immediately put to
death, and although life in the tree was no more than a living death,
still it was life, and he had this consolation, that through being
debarred from all exercise and work, and compelled to exist without
eating or drinking, notwithstanding the time passed and the years went
by, still he did not grow any older. He was as young now as when he was
first put into the dungeon, and if he could once get out, he felt that
he should soon recover the use of his limbs, and should crawl about and
enjoy himself when his grandson who lived in the rhubarb patch, and who
was already very old and warty, was dead.
Indeed by being thus shut up he should survive every other toad, and he
hoped some day to get out, because although he had been condemned to
imprisonment till the end of the world, that was only Kapchack's
vainglorious way of pronouncing sentence, as if his (Kapchack's)
authority was going to endure for ever, which was quite contrary to
history and the teachings of philosophy. So far from that he did not
believe himself that Kapchack's dynasty was fated to endure very long,
for since he had been a prisoner immured in the earth, he had heard many
strange things whispered along underground, and among them a saying
about Kapchack. Besides which he knew that the elm-tree could not exist
for ever; already there was a crack in it, which in time would split
farther up; the elm had reached its prime, and was beginning to decay
within. By-and-by it would be blown over, and then the farmer would have
the butt grubbed up, and split for firewood, and he should escape. It
was true it might be many years hence, perhaps a century, but that did
not matter in the least--time was nothing to him now--and he knew he
should emerge as young as when he went in.
This was the reason why he so carefully kept the secret of what he had
seen, so as to preserve his life; nor could the fox by any persuasion
prevail upon him to disclose the matter.
"But at least," said the fox, "at least tell me the saying you have
heard underground about King Kapchack."
"I am afraid to do so," said the toad; "for having already suffered so
much I dread the infliction of further misery."
"If you will tell me," said the fox, "I will do my very best to get you
out. I will keep putting in wedges till the tree splits wide open, so
that you may crawl up the chink."
"Will you," said the toad, excited at the hope of liberty, "will you
really do that?"
"Yes, that I will," said the fox; "wait an instant, and I will fetch
another flint."
So he brought another flint which split the tree so much that the toad
felt the fresh air come down to him. "And you really will do it?" he
said.
"Yes," repeated the fox, "I will certainly let you out."
"Then," said the toad, "the saying I have heard underground is this: