Puck, samovar knight

Claudia Iuliana Ciofu

Jeremy Everett

Puck , Samovar knight

The Book of Legends

To all the lonely children in the world

-I-

“Huge moons there wax and wane-

Again- again- again-

Every moment of the night-

Forever changing places-

And they put out the star-light

With the breath from their pale faces.”

(Fairy-Land, by Edgar Allan Poe)

Once upon a future time, when dragons are hatching in the the tops of clouds that float in the highlands, Gastropodia, sometimes also known as Crystal Isle, is a very secret place where poems, legends and even reality are not separate things, as they are today.

And there, outside of time itself, in a great maple tree which had grown in the loft of a sky-scraper poem, lives a wise silver starling and a little orphan boy.

He is the last little boy in the world. The starlings had discovered him, perfectly preserved, in the waters of a frozen lake in the Strawberry Mountains.

The age of mankind has long since faded away.

The boy’s name is Puck. When the starlings found him, he had, in his pocket, a small, glow-in-the-dark laptop encased within a poplar bud. Every morning as soon as he wakes, he records all the sky’s wishful sighs, dreams, pictures and memories of clouds.

Days are infinitely long, so Puck and the silver starling waste away some of their time climbing the plastic trees, left long ago by mankind, to peer into the nests of other birds.

Each and every day, an old fluorescent sign showing ripe cherries still flashing and flickering away reminds Puck to ask the silver starling,

“Mr Starling, I feel so lonely as the only little boy in the world...I would love to know how wise you are and if you think it might be possible for me to learn to be a starling”.

The bird blinks and looks at him through his photo-shopped pince-nez a fancy accessory, purchased on the internet, from an outdated file fair. “What is there to be said?” is always his shrugging reply.

*

Despite sleeping under a large blackberry leaf, the sky is visible through the old cracked whitewashed walls and the friends are often cold. So at night the moon helps to keep them warm and in the morning, the sun rises and sends Puck his own personal rays of sunshine to warm him. For his breakfast Puck takes a bite from the ray while looking longingly at an old label, advertising jam filled croissants, that the starlings had found in his pocket when they discovered him.

The silver starling had never felt the warmth of the suns rays. He had seen them but had felt nothing. Now the heat is felt by Puck and he in turn warms the starling.

“Did you ever wonder yourself, Puck, why the world could end up like this? Why we are at war?”

“No. Why, mister starling. You never told me about a war!”

“Well, imagine, when we found you, or round about that time, Block Head, the snail king, was fighting the green starlings to try to re-enthrone his son Kra Kru. He had pleaded for his father’s help following the green starlings’ capture of Gastropodia the snail capital. Block Head had then attacked both Gastropodia and the starling’s capital Great City with a huge snail army”

“And what happened?” asked Puck excitedly.

“Oh.. not much. He was driven away by the bravery of the starlings, who had stood as one against him.

As well...It is said the green starlings were so brave that they dripped sacred fire on their own hearts and this would allow them to be swallowed by the smoke of oblivion if they were eventually defeated in battle. The snails had not been very mobile and were unable to fend off a humiliating defeat after only two weeks fighting and finally fled from the chequered Milk Meadow, the scene of the last battle.”

“Mr. Starling”, asked Puck, “why did they start fighting in the first place? “

The silver starling sighed and looked sorrowfully toward the horizon through a rusty rainbow.

“They say that green starlings cannot stand the snails because they are hermaphrodite. The snails, in turn, hate the starlings, because they have feathers.”

“Hermaphrodite. Whats that?”

“Well..It is a plumper fruit, which does not grow in trees, and which gives birth to itself several times”.

“And what happened after the fighting?”

“Well the snails and the green starlings still hated each other so much that neither one of them wanted to forcibly rule the other’s country so in the end they signed a peace treaty, setting the golden fur oak forest, which lies between the courses of the River No and the River On, as neutral ground so that they would never have to see each other again.”

The Ancient Baobab Spirits , acting as the peacemakers decided, in the Cinnabar Celestial Vault, to place the Ice Children as sentinels between the two kingdoms.

“Really, who were these ice children?” asked Puck. “Were they real children, like me?”

“That’s something the inhabitants of the two kingdoms often asked themselves. But no, I’m afraid not”, the starling replied sadly.” All humans had become extinct many light years before and had disappeared through one of time’s unpatched holes. These were starling children.”

“And why were they frozen?”

’Their mother froze them” the starling explained.”It’s all written down in the Crystal wing”.

“The Crystal wing?” questioned Puck.

“’It is the snail’s record of the past and since the starling victory, they too have access to it. It explains that the guardians of the threshold between the kingdoms, the ice children, had been frozen by Ozz-Anna their mother, a beautiful starling fairy who lived in the mountains.

You see, in ancient times the Oracle had prophesied that Ozz-Anna would give birth to two children who would then swallow the Moon instructed to do so by her evil husband. So Ozz-Anna threw her husband into the volcano and with the help of an old otter, cast a spell which froze her two children when they were only six years old. Thus, on the nights when the moon was full, Ozz-Anna was the only one flying across the golden fur oak forest, comforting her children with sobs, magical songs and sprinkling them with fragrant orchids’.

“She froze them so that they would not eat the Moon?” said Puck.

“Precisely !”

“So please Mr Starling- Why could they not eat the Moon?’ Puck implored.

“At the end of the Smooth-Flowing ocean, on a pine-tree island, there is a great golden ivy which hooks The Earth to the Moon. So by swallowing the moon they would have condemned the earth to spin into space”

“Well, did the Sun know about all this?”

“Just before mankind became extinct, the Sun married the most beautiful female mortal and took her to live in a far off palace he had built for them both”

“But he still sends me rays in the morning’ ‘Yes?’.

“Yes but if you notice, he only sends them to you,” pointed out the starling.”The sun must consider you very special indeed”

Puzzled and confused Puck looked around and noticed that it was now dark.

“And where are you from, do you miss your country?” Puck asked the starling, chasing an imaginary circle with a stick on the pavement.

“Not really. How can I miss my country if I have no country? All the starlings in this world are green. I am the only one who is silver”.

“You seem to be the only one who understands my language”, Puck chuckled and gave the starling a tight, teary eyed hug.

The surprised silver starling blinked gently. Poor soul he, like Puck was now very tired.

‘I think the other silver starlings left with the sun’, he sighed.

‘Why did the Sun go away, with his wife, and leave you?’ enquired Puck.

“Because of the awful winged snails! They sucked up the sun’s entire coat of clouds, until they left him naked. All the clouds in the world were stolen. Block Head shoved them in his magic crystal wing, to be able to foresee The Past- cell of the future - the seed of all times”.

“The sun can only really come back to all the world after the clouds are released”.

“Mr. Starling, I would like to bring back the sun so that everyone can see and feel his lovely rays and not just me. Perhaps, with the help of the sun, I can find my mother. Do you know anything about my mother? Have you ever seen her?”

“I haven’t seen her, but I have heard she was the most beautiful woman-human on earth. Now enough for today! It is time for bed”

*

The following morning Puck and his chum had recovered their strength sufficiently to swim across the Great Pond. On the far bank frogs had built themselves nests from bamboo sticks.

The starling took off his top hat and sat it down on a lotus flower, he then performed a peaceful silk symphony on the flute just for Puck. The little boy fell asleep, dreaming of great bunches of basil and fresh rain spreading bouquets of light to the dark world of the ants.

Then in his dream there appeared a woman with long hands and turquoise cheekbones descending from the sky carrying the sun in a straw basket, light gushing out between its strands and lovely newly baked bread spilling over the sides

The rattling of the ripe poppy flower heads in the wheat field where they lay did not disturb Puck’s dreamy slumbers.

The woman smiled at him, and he stretched out his hand in his sleep, - “maama...” he whimpered.

The silver starling peered at Puck and somehow understood immediately the significance of his friends dream for a grain of fire came from the embers of the sky and for the first time in his immortal starling life, he saw with his own eyes, a sunrise bursting, felt its warmth and saw returning the most wonderful fluffy clouds. Perhaps and just perhaps this might be the start of the future.

II.

“PUCK sings:

NOW the hungry lion roars,

And the wolf behowls the moon;

Whilst the heavy ploughman snores,

All with weary task fordone.”

“A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,” Act V. Scene 2, by William Shakespeare

Puck and the silver starling set off and wandered through a large forest of pixelated palm trees and crossed the sinuous highway that seemed to double back on itself, so much so that the pair of them crossed it time and time again. Little did they know it was a giant snake sleeping off his last meal!

They then suddenly came upon a park, the flickering forest. The boy shivered. The place was used by the rubber- eagles to kill off old poems. Using large cranes the eagles lifted and dropped the poems so that they shattered into a hundred pieces.

“Who are these, mister starling?” Puck asked peering through a plastic hedge.

“Shhhh..Don’t move. They might see us.”

Large poems, tiny poems, epithets, metaphors, oxymorons, even new-born incipits, all were caught up and some imprisoned in scrap iron cages, where they were ruthlessly crushed, heartbreakingly crying for their author. Then from one side of the park came a loud victory cheer and there they saw the eagles carrying, shoulder high, an old gramophone from which classical hymns and symphonies loudly played. This was a fanfare for the arrival of language itself writhing in the eagles’ claws.

“The rubber eagles, as far as we know, are the only creatures in the world the snails can tame. So they make them work for them. Whenever you see one, RUN. Nobody stands a chance when they chase you.They are enslaved by the snails. Block Head promised them their freedom after they succeeded to crush all traces of poetry remaining in the world and a human creature like you is really- the nicest poem they might ever wish to see, mister Puck.”

“Oh wow!” exclaimed Puck. Although merely a little boy, he flinched. He felt for the first time, a lion’s heart beating in his chest and vowed then and there that, when he grew up, all this would never happen again because he would become the rescuer of all the poems still left in the world.

The little boy bent over to see what was so shiny on the pavement.

“Look at that, he yelled! A dew-coin!”

“Watch out!” The silver starling took Puck by the hand and pulled him out of the way of a giant eraser which rolling with thunder and lightning bolts , this way and that, was ready to erase any straggling sentences, songs, or even emotional prose that had dodged the cranes.

And then night, as if haunting the earth like a blackened glove, suddenly descended and the slaughters of the day came to an end. The adventurers camped for the night in a windmill glade.

*

“Mr. Starling”, asked Puck, “do you know any legends about real people, since you also lived in their times?”

“Of course I do, my dear boy...”

“Well, for example, how many people were there on earth?” Puck enquired.

“Really, really so very many, perhaps as many as all the blades of grass”.

The boy continued, still confused.

“And how many might that have been? Please Mr Starling, think very hard”

The starling scratched his head for now he realised that this little boy had never seen a real grass leaf. For so many millennia, only plastic grass and cybernetic weeds had grown in the forests.

Now, with a full understanding and in the blink of an eye, the silver starling soared away to reach the shores of the Violaceous Sea, there he plunged like a meteorite at full speed to the sea bed. He searched carefully and there among thousands of pieces of trash such as still buzzing pieces of old radios and rusty satellites, he eventually found the precious broken green glass he was searching for.

He plucked, from a blue algae fence still flickering from its connection to high voltage, a bright coral crown, as thin as a sheet of paper, which he then rolled up. He added a tinfoil cover, an amber tear from the little box he had kept close to his chest for centuries and from all these parts he managed to scrape together a kaleidoscope for Puck to use.

Puck was now becoming impatient waiting for his friend to return. As soon as Mr Starling came back he offered Puck the kaleidoscope. With one eye closed the boy peered into the kaleidoscope but saw no thing! It was inky black inside.

It looked like some help might be needed.The silver starling placed two fingers between his teeth and producing a truly piercing whistle and called, from over the nearby hills, one of his old friends, who immediately appeared out of the blue.

“My name is Count Firefly. How do you do?”

“How do you do?” Puck replied.

A strange character, as some would attest. His Highness Count Firefly was always dressed to the nines whilst driving around in a somewhat ragged burdock convertible.

On his belt he always wore his forever polished lamp which, he felt, gave him an air of importance but unbeknown to him, many had realised long ago that the lamp was seldom turned on but not today. The flame was flickering.

“Oh, greetings, your highness!’ the starling welcomed him, raising an eyebrow.

“And greetings to you Mr Starling”, replied Firefly with an aristocratic swagger, guarding his magical lamp flame, lest the Crystal Wing should steal it away.

“Hm ...Hmm ... The light thieves are in plain view these days”, he gave a disgruntled cough and glancing skywards to check out the wind-snake who kept circling above him, pretending to gather grains of sand for the winter.

“Have no fear, count.” The starling assured him, taking off his top hat as guarantee. “We are decent.”

Puck turned up his pug nose, catching site of the colourful leggings of the blue-blooded newcomer, beneath which he could easily discern two crooked legs, nothing it seemed, but bones. Above the knees and with great nonchalance, he wore a pair of very puffed shorts, woven into pink stripes in his youth, by a colour-blind silk worm.

“Do you remember the dew penny you found in the dismantled poetry park? Give it to the Count.” The starling prompted the little boy. “He will, in exchange, light up our kaleidoscope.”

Puck immediately stretched out his hand with the penny. The firefly, seeing how it glowed, snatched it and in the blink of an eye he swallowed it, lest it should evaporate in the meantime.

Then Count Firefly pinched the flame in his magic lamp, breaking with the tips of his fingers a fire chick, which took wing and disappeared into the kaleidoscope.

As a last preparation and as if it might be a sacred ritual, the starling finished by throwing the piece of broken green glass through one end of the kaleidoscope, so that then all of them could now take turns looking inside it and with such self satisfaction that they might each and every one of them be smoking a peace pipe and passing it round. What they saw was unbelievably beautiful. A garden in spring, with apple tree flowers, blossoms opening, fruit flies, ladybirds and grass so fresh and green that the starling, as old and wise as he was, still shed a quiet tear which clung to his thick moustache.

“Wooow!... It is so beautiful”. Puck sighed and sobbed a little. “I have never seen real grass”, he explained to the Firefly, who nodded to show his sympathy and understanding.

“Mr. Starling, do you think I could perhaps see my parents in this garden?’ Puck asked with tears in his eyes.

“I don’t think so... Your parents weren’t even born at this time”, the count comforted him, stroking the boy’s shoulder.

Puck, Mr. Starling and Firefly took turns to gaze at the wonderful garden through the kaleidoscope until evening time.

They then thanked each other, and before leaving, the count shoved his hand deep into a long pocket, and pulled out a tiny book. He handed it to the little boy.

“Take it, it’s yours. It is a Book of Legends.”

Puck looked at the book with disappointment, biting his lips.

“Huuum… but I don’t know how to read”.

“Don’t worry about that, boy!” said the Count and –in the blink of an eye, directed his car to a bolt of thunder and was gone.

By the time the earth’s digital alarm sounded bedtime and played, from a scratched CD, the same daily dissonant chorus denoting that the winter of serene hearts was starting, Puck and the silver starling had already made a bed of leaves in the forest of celestial maple trees whose shadows truly came from the sky during the night hours.

The silver starling started by “reading” to the boy the first story, leafing, one by one, through the empty pages of his book..

III

“This rough magic

I here abjure, and, when I have required

Some heavenly music, which even now I do,

To work mine end upon their senses that

This airy charm is for, I’ll break my staff,

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,

And deeper than did ever plummet sound

I’ll drown my book.”

( William Shakespeare,The Tempest)

It is the sacred legend of the Crystal Isle, the silver starling begun. A story that can only be heard with eyes shut and a brave heart. Consider yourself lucky. This book was known to me but I had never seen a copy until now.

In those days, a great orange sequoia had sprouted on the moon. Everything was so silent, that if you tried to listen to the earth’s song, you would go deaf.

There in the middle of a great ocean was an island on which many people lived.One day, because of the wickedness of the people’s ancestors, God looked away for a moment.

Suddenly a dark storm arose, rushing, with thunder and lightning, upon that fairy-like land, striking it right at its centre and splitting the island in two. A stream of living water sprang from the place where it was struck and to this day it divides that country in two halves, namely the Left Island and the Right Island.

Then when God turned His eyes back once again towards mankind he asked the Great Baobab Spirits to hold the reins of Time again. Time was nothing but a copper stallion, carrying the soul of the earth on his wings. But time was confused. To this day, on Left Island the clocks hands turn anti clockwise and on the Right Island they still turn clockwise.

The stream of living water divided the two lands, but at the same time it united them. Although it wasn’t deep, it could not be crossed by men. On Left Island’s shoreside swam pink fish, and bluish fish swam on Right Island’s side. Only the dragonflies flew around freely on both banks. On the Right Island, every afternoon, a little boy would sit on a rock, on the banks of the stream of living water waiting for Little Girl to appear on the other bank.

The silver starling stole a glance at Puck, who was now peacefully snoring, cuddled in a plumped up water lily made of cardboard, and having stopped reading took the pince-nez off his nose.

“Good night.. Puck” he whispered.

The silver starling puzzled over this first chapter from the Book of Legends. He had read it without any words but only from the images springing from the pages as he turned them.

IV.

“So let me tell you that you will not regret the time spent on board my vessel. You are going to travel through a wonderland.”

20,000 Leagues under sea, by Jules Verne

General Phoenix was not happy!

“I just know those slimy snails are goingto look for the samovar and I’m not going to let them get away with it. If they mobilise then we must mobilise, is that understood?” he blustered.

“But sir, surely we should be dictating what happens, after all we did give them a thorough thrashing at the Milk Meadow” observed Colonel Beak.

“Hm yes you are right Beak but I just can’t trust that slimy Block Head and as for his son well more slime than a Slimey”

“Oh no not a Slimey, sir” Captain Feather retorted. “My brother got involved with a Slimey down by the River Sludge, took him weeks to get the slime out of his feathers!”

“Right, here’s what we do!” said the general’

The entourage gathered round to listen intently to their leader.

“We send a couple of spys to fly over Gastropodia dressed as ostriches, they’ll never notice” suggested the general.

“Think they might notice, sir” observed Lieutenant Gizzard. “Bit on the big side for one thing and ostriches can’t fly for another!”

“Of course they can fly you stupid man, they’re birds aren’t they. Those two I found skulking around the back of the cycle sheds could fly”

“Please excuse me sir but they were wagtails and not ostriches, a little bit smaller sir, if you don’t mind me saying” continued the Lieutenant.

“Well what about dressing them up as emus, now don’t tell me they can’t fly!” the general was getting just a wee bit miffed with his subordinates.

“Wonderful idea sir. Most inspired choice. I would never have thought of emus sir!” grovelled the Lieutenant.

“Excellent! Well that’s settled then, two of our privates dressed as emus to fly over Gastropodia and report on any troop movements, okay?”

“ Okay sir!” the entourage chorused.

“I really do think he should be put out to grass” confided the colonel to Major Crop.

“I think you might mean grass seed, sir!” the Major replied with a chuckle.

“Have we actually got any emu costumes” enquired the Colonel.

“Well having carefully considered your question, I can confidently confirm that the answer is NO” the Major grinned at his superior officer.

“Fancy a worm or two down the mess Crop?” the Colonel winked and off they went.

Look, the sky is so muddy, spiteful and dark today that even it’s silence is like those broken clocks whose cuckoos come out only to call you when least expected.

In Gastropodia dawn was no different but was waking to a great commotion. The silver starling watching from afar, saw, from four corners of the earth, whole regiments of pirate snails and soldier snails dressed in armour made of tin, silver and gold and in between rank upon rank of green starlings their plumage iridescent in the sunlight.

“I wonder what could be happening?” he mused quizzically under his breath.

“I don’t know” mumbled Puck taking his friend by surprise as the silver starling had not realised Puck was awake. So hiding carefully in a bush and with the help of long plastic spyglasses, they watched proceedings. They quickly but independently concluded that something was indeed happening. Extraordinary troop movements are taking place.

“These, in the striped suits, imitating bumble bees, are the multitude soldiers of Block Head, king of snails” offered the starling as an observation.

“What about those in the dragonfly helmets?” enquired Puck

“Those are the soldiers of Phoenix , the general of the green starlings”

“Alright, but why do they travel in opposite directions”. Puck wasn’t able to understand anything anymore.

“They travel to the four corners of the Earth. Look” explained the starling, pointing to the four cardinal points, “The Icy Sunrise, the Cold Moon Sunset, the Spring South and the Obsidian North.”

“What does obsidian mean?” Puck asked quietly, ashamed of his ignorance.

The starling, unsure himself, pulled a dictionary from under his wing and clearing his throat before speaking, read out the definition.

“It is a dark stone, with snow flakes” . The starling peered over his pince-nez as if to analyse his friend’s reaction.

“What real snowflakes!” Puck was dumbstruck.

“I’m afraid so,young man”.

Puck seemed satisfied at least for the moment.

“I wonder what the snails and the green starlings are looking for. Have they lost something?” asked Puck, while cleaning his spyglass lens with a pumpkin stalk.

“I believe they may have lost a samovar, if I am not mistaken”, answered the silver starling, with one eye closed and the other one open, tilting his head first to the right and then to the left, like a confused ostrich.

“A samovar?”

“Yeaaah... precisely. Can you see a colourful samovar drawn on the flags of both armies.”

“Why would they be looking for a samovar, I thought a samovar was for making tea?” Puck shrugged. “You told me the only drink in Gastropodia was paper milk.”

“Ah but it’s not a regular samovar.” He started “Ooooh..Alright. So be it. There is another story I must tell you” the starling explained taking out the Book.

“Well off you go then” Puck wriggled to get comfortable and readied himself for chapter two from the Book of Legends.

-V-

The Story of the Samovar

”sHad I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,”

He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by William Butler Yeatswonders

“When the Earth was born, the fortune fairy did not make him a heart in his chest, as she had for everyone else. For reasons known only to the Divine Grace alone, the Earth was given a heart on the outside. And his heart was a samovar.

The samovar held all the colours of the rainbow and it shone so brightly that it could never be concealed. It seemed only to be made of clay mixed with fire foam, like the rest of the earth, but what was magnificent about this samovar was that it spun a single thread of magic tea but without the need for anyone to add water or tea leaves. Indeed, when the earth celebrated its first birthday, the samovar made a huge sponge cake and started whistling so loud it called all the stars in the sky to the party”.

“Woooow.!”.. cried out Puck, nearly making his friend drop the book.

“That’s right!”... approved the starling continuing. “It was a truly fantastic samovar. But when man first appeared on earth, the Ancient Baobab Spirits decided to turn the samovar into a simple regular version so that it could be found only by those truly meant to find it.”

“But why should they not find the samovar?” Puck enquired.

“The samovar did not belong to the people or to any other being, it belonged to the Earth. It was his heart. Its whistling was supposed to be a secret from mankind so that they could never harm him!”

“You see Puck all this is because the Earth had been made for man but it was soon discovered that man may not always be trustworthy. However, there was one and only one certain person who could hear the samovar whistling”.

“A certain person? Who was that?”

“It was Little Girl”.

“Was this Little Girl from the Left Island?” Puck remembered.

“Yes, that’s right but what I never got round to telling you was that Little Girl was unusual!”

“Unusual? How? Why?”

“Well, let me tell you” the starling began. “The difference between her and all the other little girls was that she had no knowledge of good and evil. To her, the Earth was only a great good. And she loved everything on Earth with the same heart, with no fear and no dismay even before the most fearsome warrior, earthquake or wilderness”.

“Where did she live, was it Left Island like you told me before?”

“No one really knows where she lived. A little boy saw her there and lost his heart to her. All we really know is that she sometimes appeared there on Left Island but more importantly she would appear at turning points in the history of the universe, in orphanages when there were many abandoned and lonely children or perhaps she would be seen fleetingly in a street by the garden gate of a peasant family hoping desperately for a baby and there would appear, as if by magic, a little baby wrapped in embroidered towels, a gift from “The Sweet Samovar Mistress”, and she always would wear a biscuit, in the shape of a rose, threaded on plaited horse hair around her neck. This is the only way in which Little Girl could be distinguished from the other little girls.

“ How did she respond when the samovar was whistling” Puck enquired. “Ooooh... let me tell you now!” smiled the silver starling.. “She could stop it, start it, accelerate its heartbeats, or slow them down, from wherever she was. Her heart and the samovar beat together, and what Little Girl wished for, the samovar fulfilled in the blink of an eye”.

“I would love to have such a samovar myself...” Puck licked his lips, thinking of chocolate mountains with whipped cream.

“Who wouldn’t? Everybody would, except perhaps for her, because, you see by the irony of fate, she loved everything in the same way, just as it was and where it was. She wanted nothing in particular from the Earth” offered the silver starling.

“So Little Girl controlled the samovar which controlled the Earth itself but she also loved the samovar and therefore the Earth?” puzzled Puck.

“ Yes you have it my young friend”

“So why please Mr Starling are all these troops looking for a samovar now?”

“Well I just wonder that if the samovar is still the heart of the Earth and the Little Girl controlled the samovar...do you think somebody may have found Little Girl and by so doing hope that they can control the Earth through her controlling the samovar!Now you see why the armies of king Block Head and those of Phoenix have all come out in parade outfits”.

“Ahaaaa..”. the two mutually conceded, suddenly, jointly enlightened.

“Does this mean...?” Puck winced, his heart beating insanely.

“This means that if either the starlings, or the snails, have found Little Girl, you may not be the only human cub left inhabiting the earth.” The starling finished Puck’s fantastic observation.

“Wooow! Now that would be some piece of news.” declared Puck, hardly able to control his excitement.

Outside of the friends’ immediate world, a world now full of excitement and anticipation the Earth itself should have been turning from dark to light but other events were about to take place.

-VI-

“Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,

And never stops at all.”

Emily Dickinson

Flood in Gastropodia

Another day dawned. Early in the morning a smoke ogre appeared in the sky above Gastropodia. He had black eyes, with dark rings and a long tail which he kept turning and twisting frighteningly over the roofs of all the buildings, spitting out orange lightning which entered even the earth itself through the turreted roof-tops.

Rain was falling with capital letters and which, before noontime, had come to fill all the streets in the city and to turn them into a sea of prose so much so that even postcards created their own messages.

The storks flew high above the storm, protecting their chicks in little sacks under their wings. The inhabitants of the green starling’s Great City were hiding in their underground houses too frightened to face the deluge. They desperately telegraphed the remaining world to tell of the impending flood.

The telegraphs were so hot from constant use that the poles caught fire and now they stood upright in the middle of the waves, like candles. They sizzled quietly, burning down in the turbulence and which every now and then exploded into a steaming mini-aurora.

The silver starling was desperately raking out the cement, his face blackened with smoke and sweat criss- crossing his cheek. He was digging for healing leaves that grew in the mortar of the walls. Puck had stumbled and hurt his head while they were crossing the Angels’ bridge, which by now dangled on a single thread, like a dazed giraffe on one leg.

To make sure he wouldn’t pass out, the silver starling had to pinch the boy every few seconds.

A prairie mosquito had reached the suburbs of Gastropodia by mistake and with nowhere to shelter from the rain, offered to help the starling. This was quite a difficult task, because every time he woke up, Puck would try to catch the buzzing mosquito by flapping his open hand and then in turn slapping his knee, or his elbow..., his eyelid... and the poor mosquito could barely avoid the onslaught.

“Mr. Starling, are you almost ready? I might barely survive this battering” said the mosquito, wiping his forehead with his sleeve, during a moment of calm.

“One minute... one more minute!”... replied the starling. “I know there is an older root in this place somewhere. Ah, here it is! Look, look, I’ve found it. Quickly, let’s place it on the boy’s forehead. Take off his hat”.

The mosquito obliged immediately. The leaves stuck to Puck’s skin very quickly, eventually filling the entire wound. A green chlorophyl light pierced the deepest tissues, binding the injured cells and comforting the wound with a soft music. Within a few minutes, Puck was as good as new.

All three of them then took cover from the rain in a giant hawk egg-shell drifting lazily in the rising water.

“What is happening?” the starling asked the mosquito, finally catching his breath. “Where has such a dragon of a storm come from?”

“Oh, didn’t you know?” The mosquito replied between bouts of panting. “Because of the enmity between the green starlings and the snails, the golden fur oak forest was struck by a great earthquake last night. Between River On and River No, the earth opened up all the way nearly to its core. The Planet might be about to be split in two”.

“What is there to be done?”spluttered the silver starling, now very worried indeed.

The mosquito shrugged helplessly. How could he possibly know? After all he was only a lost tourist.

Mr.Starling made his fingers into an ocarina again, whistling for any kind of help as loud as he could, but received no answer.

-VII-

Secret Council in the Cinnabar Vault

“Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

In the meantime, at the borders between the two kingdoms, the Ice Children, who still stood guard now cried lavender tears. They cried so much that the entire earth and all the way up to the heavens, smelled like lavender. The Ancient Baobab Spirits, in the Cinnabar Celestial Vault, called a meeting.

“The boy Puck and the Little Girl must find each other”, cried the Baobabs in one harmonious declaration. “Otherwise, it will be too late!”.

The ivy covering the walls quivered, its buds blooming frantically as if to make it’s anxiety known. The sky covered itself with the fragrance of the setting Sun and his four sister suns drawn to his side by his magnetic charms over many millenia. The Celestial Vault arched itself under the eyelashes of the stars trying to give heart by being even more beautiful than ever but today gloom was abounding by all that was happening on the Earth.

“They are too small to fall in love!” the Spirits answered themselves, yet again in chorus. “As for the boy – he might be special but he hasn’t even had the chance to build on any of his dreams”.

“Perhaps they are too small to fall in love and for the boy to be able to awake the power of the Samovar. But surely they are not too small to love each other, are they?” the Spirits mused between themselves.

“Hmm.. alright. So be it. We shall see. Let them be brought together” they agreed..

This now decided, the Spirits released a four-winged swan.

-VIII-

The hour- glass swan

In the midst of the storm, the three rowed and steered their hawk egg using dessert spoons and had even managed to fashion a sail from an embroidered handkerchief fished from the whirling waters. Puck saw something flying at some distance before them, a very strange looking creature and which he pointed out excitedly to the others.

The bird, a four winged swan, was as big as the winged dinosaur of very ancient legend and flying up and down, first to the left and then the right creating a zig-zag course, the purpose of which was known only to this mysterious, enchanted bird..

Swans were always a rare, magical occurrence. Their great, bright amber eyes, with shiny lids blinking and trimmed by lashes so long and ethereal they could only be described in poetic terms. Their white feathers spread a golden light brought from the heavens where they nested.

Of all the creatures of the sky, they alone had the grace to enter the Cinnabar Canopy, where, in the highest realms of the celestial baobabs, they laid their eggs in nests made of gold and precious stones. Their necks moved, undulating between their head and a white, elegant body, which was why they were sometimes known as hour- glass swans, but these were hour glasses where both ends never emptied as when they appeared, time stood still and seconds turned into eternity. The sight of a swan was not just a life changing experience but also a divine sign and it only occurred when the Great Baobab Spirits wished to intervene in the life of the earth. The swan’s presence was announced by an unaccountable rose fragrance, which suddenly streamed from everywhere and nowhere.

“An hourglass bird!” the starling cried loudly and who had appointed himself captain of this little craft and as if to make himself heard above the deafening roar of thunder and lightning “ It’s a sign, full speed ahead after that swan in front of us!”

But before his instruction could be obeyed, their improvised boat was gathered up by a giant wave of phantom letters and smashed down on a lonely shore.

-IX-

The Earth is severely troubled

„Patrocle :,Wuf, wuf!

Lizuca : Patrocle ! Don’t leave me alone!

Patrocle :It was only a rabbit.”

Mihail Sadoveanu, The enchanted grove

The storm continues to rage. The earth, almost split in two, spins wildly, its axis no longer functioning. The friends cast away on a far flung beach.

The landscape - such a mess! After they were cast ashore, Puck and the silver starling were seperated by the streams, each sent in a different direction. Both were totally lost. For the first time since he had taken the boy into his care, the starling completely lost track of where Puck was. He did not even know if he was still alive. For two whole days the silver starling, having escaped from the girders of a rusty old bridge, searched for Puck. No trace of him.

-X-

“Oh, my darling, my darling!” she moaned, over and over again. “And God meant your life to be so beautiful!”

Lewis Carrol, Sylvie and Bruno

Happiness

Many, many miles away from the place he last saw the starling, in an ancient grove which had washed out from a snail museum, Puck slept peacefully covered in fern leaves and lying under the eternal hazelnut trees bent haphazardly by the storm. After a day of roaming on his own looking for his friend and the mosquito, all he had found to eat was pressed blackberries plucked from the soggy pages of perhaps a thousand books lying gasping for breath, many close to death. Puck was woken by an unknown noise, inquisitive but cautious he lifted his head.

On a chrysoprase stone, curled up with her knees to her chest and wearing only a wet nightdress shining in the sapphire blue morning, a little girl with long russet hair, was sobbing so sadly and mournfully that even the stone on which she sat, seemed to rise and fall with her saddest of sorrowful weeping. Puck watched in awe struck disbelief, “this is a little girl, yes a little girl, yes a real little girl” he whispered to himself in a complete daze of wonder and euphoria..

He dared to take one step toward her, and then one more, now fearful lest she should run away if she saw him approaching. He pushed aside an elderberry bush, which shook its yellow, fragrant nectar on his arm and as he was preparing to take one more step, there appeared before him a leopard. The animal had butterfly antennae and shiny fur of opalescent indigo. He had a beauty that was impossible to describe and would need to be seen to be believed…..but was he perhaps as dangerous as he was beautiful. The leopard had already fixed an expression showing his fangs and with it a growl that was, for the moment, mute.

Puck, determined not to be intimidated, fixed the big cat with such a stare that his eyes might pop from his head and he closed his fists so tight to enforce his anger at this untimely intervention. They stared, their looks entwined as if in some bizarre dance. It all had to end sometime and to Puck’s joy the butterfly-leopard turned his eyes to the ground as if in acknowledgement of Puck’s higher status and additionally recognising him as the master he had been waiting for most of his life. He licked his mouth in submission and arched his back around the human cub’s legs, and now like a faithful domestic cat, he quietly accompanied him towards the little girl.

Puck wiped tears from his cheek. He had never seen a more beautiful sight in the whole of his short time on earth. The girl, with her round cheeks and sparkling eyes, seemed almost the embodiment of all his fantastic dreams. She held a freshly picked rose in one hand and a large gem in the other and even puck knew this to be a diamond glinting in the sunlight. Was this truly the Sweet Samovar Mistress?

She stood up in total amazement, looking him straight in the eyes. They admired each other as in a mirror, intensively curious, captivated as if they were seeing themselves for the first time and they continued to gaze at one another until the light in the forest dimmed, playfully, among the branches. The girl then smiled and taking Puck’s hand, kissed it gently and he, suddenly emboldened by this lovely girl’s confidence, took her hand and returned this gesture of affection.

A rain of fireflies and stardust fell from the sky. Birds flew in circles as if somehow in tune with nature itself and all the beasts of the forest became suddenly aware of something wonderful taking place. The two children ran hand in hand amongst the old trees, their feet wet from all the soft mosses and lichens. They tumbled and fell into dips and hollows created in the ground by the huge roots and then laughing and jumping from one rock to another, playing hide-and-seek in tree hollows until nights inky blackness became all embracing..

“It is the time of the four-winged swans - the hour-glass swans”, said Puck lazily stretching and so happily awake with his lovely partner. They had become almost as one. They had fallen asleep head to head, exchanging dreams and memories. They walked through the forest hand in hand turning simultaneously to smile at each other. At one point the pair found a little wounded swan chick. They pulled out the end of a lightning bolt that had wounded the chick in the storm and were spellbound as the wound closed in front of their very eyes. It was as if their very presence had a magic strong enough even to heal.Then the little girl moving her hair like waves, showed the chick how he might fly and off he went to find his mummy.

Another adult four-winged swan, as if in thanks for their kindness, showed them the way to the place where wild strawberries grew. There they also found wild cherries and sorrel but best of all were the enchanted strawberries. They kept eating and even the majestic moon refused to set for the day and played hoodmanblind with them in the bushes, first shining his light when the bushes were dense and then no light when the bushes beame more thinned out. The hour-glass swans using their magic powers to freeze time with the flaps of their wings made this day endless and the following night pass without their even noticing. They were so happy. The little girl, hugging Puck, pulled out her rose-shaped medallion and gave it to him. Once around his neck, it turned into a bluish smoke and was gone. The pair giggled mischievously.

-XI-

The abduction

Puck, waking suddenly, looked around nervously to see if he might find out what had woken him. Above the pair of them, the golden fur oaks shook their branches, they too were concerned. Puck lifted his nose, sniffing carefully. The lavender smell seemed to be getting stronger.

Suddenly he saw the crystaline shine of a snail soldier’s shield glint among the branches of a linden tree but even before he had a chance to scream a warning, his little girl was whisked from his side by a spider with a harpoon, ridden by Block Head himself, the king of the snails.

The butterfly leopard fell to the ground badly winded by a blow from the giant spider while attempting to protect his newly found master and mistress. Puck, not being the subject of the abduction, was left in the woodland alone and weeping for his lovely Little Girl.

Like the noise of an earthquake, the massive statues of the ice children guarding the forest started to move, frightened by the dragon thundering in the sky. The crack in the earth was growing deeper, even the great golden ivy could barely hold the earth’s two halves to the moon.

In the skies, even the Great Baobab Spirits froze. The end of the earth seemed near, possibly even heralding a fatal wound in the Cinnabar Vault itself. Were they watching the end of their planet now dying in agony before them and with it the last hope they had placed in the two human cubs.

At this moment even audible above the howl of disaster, the little girl’s crystalline voice sounded, crying for her Puck. Her little hand, a pale phantam with round, frail fingers and rose red nails, searched in the inky blackness for his, her heartbreaking voice mirrored endlessly in the forest’s echoes.

“Puck… please, please help me Puck!”

The boy closed his eyes. Everything swirled around him, like a chimera’s frantic dance. A fearful tear fell across his cheek, a small, crystalline, perfect drop. With all his strength, he stretched out his hand across the endless abyss that was keeping them apart, reaching as if for the sound of her voice. Then suddenly he felt her hand and immediately clasped it tightly. Surely now it was but their love and their joined hands that might be holding the earth’s two halves together.

At first gradually and then inexorably, the earth’s two hemispheres were being pulled toward each other by the love of two children. As the two halves slowly met each other the earth, as if by a miracle, healed itself along the gaping wound and became whole and as one..

-XII-

The curse of The Ancient Baobab Spirits

Word travels fast and the silver starling soon heard about his friend and his new found love, the Little Girl.

“Imagine me being the best friend of the boy who saved the world” he pondered excitedly.

“I really need to see him quickly, congratulate him and ask him to introduce me to her”

Soon enough they were re-united. The starling, Puck and the Little Girl were still holding hands as if this gesture was, even yet, holding the world together. Now finally the starling understood the significance of his friend’s love for the Little Girl.

However, as he was about to heave out a sigh of relief, already preparing a dreamy happy-end, the Great Baobab Spirits threw a quadrillion volt wall to the ground, a great invisible insurmountable wall, separating the boy from his feminine companion yet again.

“What a tragedy! What is happening ?” The starling searched around for an answer. But no answer came.

High up in the Cinnabar Vault, the Great Baobab Spirits had decided:

“As long as these two children who love each other are separated, their love shall keep the earth together. It is the only assurance we have right now for the protection of a planet whose continuous state of war is a threat to the safety of the Cinnabar Vault. The two shall only be together when the inhabitants of the earth have found their state of peace.”

-XIII-

-“Oh!” the starling cried. “That’s it! Journey back in time! Do you all hear me? I’ve got the idea, journey back in time. Why didn’t I think of it before? This is the only way to save Puck and his Little Girl. We must go back in time! We must change the Legend of the island. The legend goes that the little boy and Little Girl could only see each other from each side of the stream of living water.”

The stream of living water divided the two lands, but at the same time it united them. Although it wasn’t deep, it could not be crossed by men. On Left Island’s shoreside swam pink fish, and bluish fish swam on Right Island’s side. Only the dragonflies flew around freely on both banks. On the Right Island, every afternoon, a little boy would sit on a rock, on the banks of the stream of living water waiting for Little Girl to appear on the other bank.

“Please Mr Starling” sobbed Puck “Can we change the legend?”

“Sure we can! We will change the legend. We will blot out the paragraph and we will modify it!”

“But... It is carved in stone. History cannot be changed. How can you blot out that which is carved in granite?“. Puck is still so sad and confused.

“With your heart, my boy, simply with your heart!”

-XV-

Puck, Samovar Knight

“Mr. Starling”, said Puck, with sad eyes. “I should be the one to rescue the Samovar Mistress she is my wonderful Little Girl after all and I love her so much. In any story, the knight rescues a princess. It’s just that... honestly, I would like it if I were the rescued one. I have grown very tired, Mr. Starling... This war doesn’t seem to come to an end... I am only a child and I’m hungry, oh how I would love a croissant right now”

The starling split a sugar cane stalk in two. “Here... half and half.” They gulped it down in the blink of an eye.

“You don’t necessarily have to rescue the princess”, the starling continued.

“I don’t?” Puck was astounded.

“No. You could remain separated forever, might that be an easy solution. You know if we are to change history it is irrevocable”.

“Please Mr Starling I am so tired and bewildered, please may I sleep now?”

“Alright. Well then... this would be a good time to set camp here. We will be spending the night in this glade”.

No sooner said than done. The graffiti bush was just right, soft and comfortable and just as Puck’s eyelids were closing in the green light of the night he started hearing someone crying. It was his Little Girl. He knew immediately. She was weeping lonely tears. The moon carried her weeping over the seas. It was so cold. A biting frost, in mid-summer. He woke the starling to start a fire.

“Mr. Starling!”

“Hm?” the starling was thoughtful.

“The snails and green starlings are looking for the Samovar. That means they don’t have it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, naturally, if they had it, they wouldn’t be looking for it.”

“Does this maybe mean that we could look for it?” Puck was now somehow heartened after some sleep.

“Or rather, you could as I am only a starling. I do not have enough rods in the backpack of my eyes to be able to see it.” The starling replied.

“Do you know where this Samovar is?” Puck enquired.

“We will find out. We need to make a phone call.”

The starling quickly drew a square, old-fashioned phone on the sand, to which he attached a coiled cord. He rotated the crank, and dialled the number. A woman’s, slightly nasal, voice answered.

“Hello. This is ambulant information.”

“Good day Mrs. Ambulant Information. Our question is: Where is the Samovar?”

“Plastic, gold, or silver samovar? Porcelain?” The lady questioned him.

“Mmm... the starling was in a quandary. Which one do you like best?”

“I don’t drink tea. Please hurry, or the five hours allotted to you for this call will expire in precisely four hours and fifty nine minutes and I am in need of a walk”.

The starling conferred with Puck, who whispered to him: “The heart of the earth can only be made of gold.”

“The golden Samovar, he specified promptly.”

“Hold on for a minute. Mmmmmm… I’ve found it. Warning! ‘The Golden Samovar’, Four-verse children’s book. Riddle me this:

Although leafy, it’s no tree,

It’s not human, though, you see,

Stories it can say to you

And you cannot say “thank you” .”

What is it?

Your time is up. Thank you for using the ambulant information services”.

“ What could this be?” the starling puzzled,checking his pocket watch and finding the call had been cut short by four hours fifty eight minutes and thirty seven seconds.

The two turned about until dawn, with no success. Early in the morning, the Legend book that Count Firefly had given to them fell from the starling’s hat. That was it! They both shouted out together:

“The booook!”

That was it!

There was no time left. Tremendous time shortage! They needed help and Puck thought of everybody but realised his ‘everybody’ was really nobody apart from one!. They called Count Firefly who, in the blink of an eye, appeared.

-XVI-

Ptero

Gathered round the fire, inside a circle marked with epiphytic plant seeds, the starling opened the legend book and spoke:

“Puck wishes to go in search of the Magic Samovar to rescue the Samovar Mistress. She is the only one who can help save the Planet.

The book was suddenly caressed by a colourful fire wreath. Immediately and apparently from out of nowhere, a few words emerged written on a previously blank page.

“Law number one, the seeker shall be given a pterosoar”, spelt out the magical book.

“A ptterrossaaauur!” They were all very scared.

Bang! Bgfsjsgfasgang!Boom! Out of a giant mushroom cloud of dust a giant bird emerged, with the head of a kangaroo!

“My name is Ptero and I am your diligence. Nice to meet you” exclaimed the creature.

“Nice to meet you too!” said Puck, rather unsure both of himself and this stranger that had suddenly appeared in their midst. He stared in awe at Ptero’s endless tail and at the huge footprints he had created when he landed.

Ptero was as yellow as lemon pulp and he was so biiiig….. oh boy.... he was so big that the ground shook like an earthquake when Ptero flapped his wings. He was so big that when he moved, the sunlight was cast into shadow. His face, however, was somewhat... amusing, as he had a piece of grass stuck between his huge teeth.

“Sorry, I was eating when the book called me!” Ptero offered as an excuse.

“Well whoopee!” he went on “... everything here seems very familiar, even the almond flowers at the foot of the marzipan mountains I just flew over, you know up there on top of those mountains was where, when I was younger, I was able to lay a secret egg. I can’t wait to find out why I’m here”, he said, shaking his wings.

“Law number two, the book continued. The seeker shall be given the Guiding Samovar Voice. He will wear it on the back of his left hand, and from there it will speak to him and guide him.”

Puck stretched out his hand. On it, a mouth with bold lipstick appeared and it said

“I am the Guiding Samovar voice. Nice to meet you!”.

“Law number three. The samovar is surrounded by three lightning walls, three squires and three harpies. If the seeker manages to get through all these alive, he will find the samovar placed on a fresh snow yoke, on top of the Little Mountain, in the Lad’s Boot. Go with the Baobab Spirits.”

After this, the colourful fireworks emanating from the book throughout its prose suddenly and miraculously vanished.

The starling prompted Puck to ask the Voice for the first directions. They had no time to waste. Almost certainly Kra Kru and Block Head’s other slimy sons were well ahead in their search for the Samovar.

“ Samovar Voice”, asked Puck.”Which way should we go?”

Count Firefly and the silver starling took out, one after the other, their swords made of dried garlic stalks, ready to fight their way if necessary.

“To the West, to the marzipan mountains!” ordered the Voice.

“Whaat, where?” the count blustered, “To get there we need to cross the stream of living water and the King’s Geysers! That’s impossible”.

The voice sighed. “You should not have awoken me if you are cowards. If you think the geysers are hard to pass, what will you do when you come face to face with the Harpiette, whose scales are as large as your heads and who spits out laser lights and with the three-headed Gorgonella who eats up the embers and turns ‘scaredycats’ into stone, and finally with Dragonette - the bald harpy whose scalp is so shiny she can blind you with a toss of her head?”

They gulped in unison and now they really did have the creeps to add as well.

“And who might you be calling a coward” enquired the Count covering his quaking knobbly knees by pretending to be appalled. “What an offence! I demand satisfaction! My entire count family is throwing down the gauntlet”.

“Count, you have, yet again, left your gauntlet at home. Just as you always do!” sighed the silver starling.

But Count Firefly had neither the time nor inclination to answer.

“We are not afraid of anything! Ptero, get ready to take off! Of course Ptero-soar, why didn’t I think of that before” observed Puck. The starling understood, after all he had done some ‘soaring’ himself. Count Firefly shrugged his shoulders. Fireflys don’t soar they merely flit about with a glowing rear end.

The Ptero-soar arched his back, to be mounted.

“Onward, Samovar knights!” ordered Puck thrusting his arm in the air, prompting Ptero now with all three passengers on board, to take off like a storm through the asparagus bushes.

Ptero really was an asset to the trio, crossing three great and deep chasms in one flap of his gigantic wings.

“Wooooow!” Puck shouted, gulping for air in the rushing wind of the flight. “We are at the top of the skies!”

-XVII-

The first trial

“I can no longer fly you” explained Ptero. “I can watch over you and help you later but you must undertake all the tasks from the Book of Legends, starting with swimming across the Stream of Living Water. I will fly over and wait on the other side”

Puck and his two companions managed to swim across the Stream of Living Water, although the Count complained profusely about his soggy trousers.

Then came the Royal Fire Geysers, this was an entirely different matter indeed. No matter how they studied the problem those geysers just kept gushing fire and the poor Samovar Knights felt that they just might fall at only this second hurdle. Thismust be the first of their lightning walls.

Puck might just have to admit that the Count could be right, what now could be done, there was no passage around the plumes of fire. The only way was to rush through the centre of the firestorm and hope, just hope, to reach the other side without becoming burnt to a cinder. The three knights’ sat and stared first at the problem and then one another looking for inspiration. The Count was right. It was insurmountable. Puck was now wondering if he should simply give up.

“If the girl touches the Samovar, all your dreams will come true”, the voice said to the boy, and then it added smoothly and rather temptingly: “She could also help you find your parents. Just one thought from her is enough for any of your dreams to come true”.

Puck winced, suddenly he understood very clearly indeed. “Find my parents, oh my word!” now he realised he just had to do everything in his power to find the Samovar.

During the night, the starling had sat by the camp-fire, counting the stars with a fir-tree sprig. Although he was looking after Puck or at least felt he should be, he could not see him nearby.

Puck was not far away. In a secluded corner, unseen by his friends, he was speaking to the Samovar Voice.

“You are about to find the Samovar. You are almost there. You will own the planet. What will you do when you see your parents?” enquired the voice.

“I will ask them why they left without me”, Puck answered, with a tinge of sadness.

“Listen to me carefully, Puck. I am the Samovar Voice and you are the Seeker.”

“Yes that’s right.”

“A sacrifice will be required for you to pass the Royal Fire Geysers. Without this, the planet cannot be saved. Tomorrow, you must sacrifice one of your friends for me”.

Puck looked up, terrified.

“You will be the one to choose which one of them is to be sacrificed. - Whether it is the silver starling, or Count Firefly, you will push him into the abyss of fire. Do I make myself clear?”

Behind Puck, the silver starling, who had been looking for him for half an hour, had heard the entire conversation. He waited, carefully eyeing his friend, looking for a reaction to this appalling decision the boy must make. The count also arrived on the scene, looking questioningly at this drama taking place in the moonlight.

Puck gazed at each one of them, he then looked across to the abyss of the Royal Geysers now filling the darkened sky with plumes of firey red flames.

“You are obliged to make your choice. Now!” the Samovar Voice ordered.

After no longer than moment’s thought, Puck looked up and when he did, his friends could see his eyes were filled with tears. Which one of them would he sacrifice?

“ My dear friends, the little boy started. I cannot rescue the Samovar Mistress. We are going home.” He almost choked on his own words.

“You will never see your parents. You will die lonely!” the Voice made one final attempt to persuade the boy. “And the answer is...?”

“ No. No and a thousand times no!” Puck squealed.

At that point and all of a sudden a bridge of light emerged from between two mounds covered by stone slabs. Like long, gilded stalks, the light strips entwined dreamily before them, piercing the flames and connecting the two sides of the abyss.

“You may cross,” the Voice announced. “Please understand the Seeker had to be tested. The greatest good, if it is built upon even the smallest of evils, is no longer truly good. The Samovar cannot be allowed to be found by someone who would throw his friend into the abyss, even if he did it to save the world. There is no world without a friend. Long live your friendship! You may pass”.

The group crossed the bridge of light noisily and excitedly while Ptero contentedly viewed the scene from high up a mountain. Puck had passed another trial. Morning came with the sun’s colourful rays, under the milky lamp shade of the crescent moon.

-XIX-

“In black ink my love may still shine bright.”

William Shakespeare, Sonnets

The Sweet Samovar Mistress

The snail king peered into the Crystal Wing to note the friends’ progress. Fearing they might ultimately be successful in locating the Samovar as this could quite easily jeopardize their only chance to rule the world, they locked the Sweet Samovar Mistress in the Golden Fur Forest and surrounded her with a blow up balloon of invisible steel thus creating a bulletproof globe. There she was always watched and guarded by a small sepia army and two giant octopuses. She had been found, lying in a forest glade, totally bewildered and confused, by a snail patrol after her appalling separation from Puck.

Each day of her imprisonment the girl walked through the forest pensive yet unafraid. A gentle breeze would lift and caress her beautiful russet hair which then wrapped itself around all the butterflies she encountered. The forest animals stopped and stared, enchanted by her magical beauty.

Whether by day or night, smiling as she did so, she took a star from the globe of the heavens, took it to her mouth and kissed it. She would then return it to the vault of the sky and watch while it fluffed itself up until it found its position amongst its star family again. This is so funny, the girl would giggle to herself playfully. Somehow she knew Puck was looking for her and the samovar and by re-uniting her with the earth’s heart, she and Puck would bring happiness and joy back to the troubled world.

The forest swung its leaves to one side and then the other celebrating its beautiful guest. The leaves then hummed a lullaby that was so beautifully performed even the nearby mountains would fall into a deep slumber. So too did the girls octopus guards succumb to the forest’s song of sleep. They could hardly keep their armoury of ‘the guard’ from falling to the ground when all those hundreds of tentacles relaxed on hearing the siren voice of the forest. And to the lids of each sleepy eye they tied magic nettles to prevent sleep engulfing them. Just who was this Samovar Mistress? And furthermore why were they being forced to guard this most magical of prisoners?

During her latest walk she noted, in her palm, a pink camelia flower brought to her as a gift by a colourful caterpillar. From its centre the petals grew and grew as if they might never end and before she realized what was happening the little girl felt the flower sticking to her palm and now taking root deeply in her flesh. She watched in amazement as suddenly it evaporated leaving just a glowing light followed by pink camelia buds springing from her flowing hair which then in turn magically blossomed.

The little girl shrugged her shoulders and giggling to herself enquired of the caterpillar.

“Do you have any more flowers Mr Caterpillar, I loved all those beautiful flowers coming out of my hair. Please, please let me see that again!”

The caterpillar had now become a butterfly and flew off, his irridescent wings catching the sunlight in the glade.

Then, looking up, she was confronted by an entire tree filled with pink camelia flowers.

“Wooooow! How lovely, surely not all this just for me” she exclaimed happily.

Pollen dust glinting like diamonds shook from the crown of the tree as if the tree was speaking to her.

She realised that she had come to edge of the forest and this wonderful tree was growing from a hillside surrounded with a patchwork of square stands of sweetcorn intermixed with further squares of bright yellow sunflowers and surrounding all this was a beautiful hedge of wild dog roses competing with the camelia tree for the pinkness of their respective blossoms.

The trunk of the tree, massive and with bark like an elephant’s skin, seemed as if it had exploded from the ground and in its explosion had come thousands upon thousands of delicate spiralling branches and there in amongst these tresses of pure green were nesting magic skylarks and silver peacocks.

The Little Girl watched in amazement how the flower blossoms of this wonderful tree adopted all at once all the four seasons from winter in tight bud, spring bursting open, summer for full open blooms and finally to autumn as the blooms withered and dropped to the ground and at all times the wonderful fragrance. As she took another step toward the tree she noticed to her left yet another tree, equally as beautiful and yet slightly different.

The difference was that in this tree, instead of skylarks and silver peacocks, starlings and crows were the residents. This tree was just as big and it too stood on the side of the next hill just a few steps away. “Those trees must have been twins” she thought. They had just as many branches as each other and just as many flowers, but the flowers in this second tree were not pink but green. They did not blossom endlessly like the camelia as every now and then they shook off the petals and then in their place would appear a tiny little fruit which would then grow and swell becoming larger by the second. The crows would bite hungrily at these swollen fruits. Those remaining fruits, which were not eaten, shrivelled up and dropped to the ground. Seeds burst from them as they hit the ground and blew away in the wind and on to other hills and fields far away there to give birth to other trees.

She also noticed the big and oh so fat bumble bees gathering the tree’s pollen from one blossom after another and then flying off to other trees of the same type to carry on the good work of pollenation.

She then stretched out her hand to caress the petals of one of the flowers but this little flower sheltered its petals as if in fear.

“Flower - dear flower, pretty little flower, tell me, what is the dream of your life?” she asked gently.

The flower cast its eyes down, shyly.

“I am looking forward to becoming a fruit”.

“Why is it that you have to wait?”

“That is the natural order of things” the little flower replied.

Little Girl saw the natural order of things in the green tree. The buds forming after winter passed, the buds turning into flowers, the flowers turning into fruits. The fruits dropping and winter coming again to repeat the cycle, not in seasons but in seconds in this magical world she lived in.

An old crow gave her a measured look and explained.

“You must understand in this tree children cannot be born until their ancestors die. Their mother is the tree itself but their father is another tree perhaps miles away. As the number of places for children are strictly limited, their mother and father can only make the numbers that their mother can sustain.”

The crow offered the girl a piece of fruit, but she declined politely whilst thanking him for his kindness. She continued her walk thinking of the two trees. She noted her shadow was now following her as the sun was setting over the hills, its brightness dimming and now turning the green grass varying shades of sapphire blue.

The dark of the night was slowly covering the garden in a thick black quilt. When the sun finally flickered and disappeared from the sky, the little girl could see that her shadow was walking quietly alone and separate from her. She became somewhat wistful and started crying. She crouched on a green stone, gathering her hair to her for warmth. She peered into a mirror of dew drops that the crickets carried on their backs and there she could see a little boy. That little boy was the only one in this world who had a nose like hers, eyes like hers, little hands like hers, and a heart like hers. He was all she had in the world. Sometimes she even wondered if he might even be a part of her, because she realised her life and his were as one.

“That’s enough strolling about enjoying herself” bellowed Kra Kru. Put her in chains and throw her in the dungeon”.

-XX-

The Samovar Voice

They had been flying for three days over the arid deserts of former cities. Ptero was tired and short of breath after this non stop voyage in the air. His eyes were sore and full of tears. His wide wings could barely flap so he soared as best he could, flapping only to gain a little height from the ground. Above this bright-red deserted land, the rain fell only as hot sulphurous showers. The arid wind lashed the empty streets below and baking sand dunes formed between each city they passed over. Even flying over they could hear old metal signs squeaking and hanging crooked on every old street corner.

Houses that once belonged to humans but long since evacuated, now stood forlorn like eyeless shadows, forgotten amid the wasteland. Water no longer sprang from any fountain or indeed from anywhere else. However, all this was meaningless as Gastropodia was their destination, lying over the mountains that surrounded the land of snails like a mouth full of bluish pointed shark’s teeth. Now they were drawing near and the air became humid and unpleasant as might be expected perhaps from a slimy landscape.

The clouds, floating high, evaporated in the steam coming from beneath the ground. This was indeed a hostile land and Ptero, with nearly his last ounce of strength, ducked the giant drops of acid rain.

Count Firefly had also lost nearly all his appetite for life a few hours before and had fallen asleep. In the water flask they were carrying they had not even a drop of the liquid of life to give him. His golden yellow eyes dilated in the shadow and contracted in the sun, these were the only movements of life left in the Count’s dehydrated body. Ptero, now totally exhausted, managed to somehow discover, a tap that gave out the smell of two hydrogen atoms combining with one oxygen atom and calculated his landing.

“Be careful!” the silver starling warned Puck. “The unguarded water taps in this land of the snails are traps. The snails used to have a great fondness for eating people but after all the people were no more they turned their attention to more mundane foodstuffs like plants. Now, as you have seen, they will feed on anything that lives. A human cub would be a treasure that only snail dreams are made of. If no one is eager to catch us, then we could reasonably assume that the water is poisoned”.

Puck discovered The Samovar Voice was no longer answering his calls despite vigorously shaking his arm in the hope that, somehow, the Voice would open and help them with some useful friendly advice.

Puck turned on Count Firefly’s lamp and he took out the Fire, which immediately climbed on his shoulder. It was their only weapon. Leaving the starling to tend to Count Firefly and as carefully and as quietly as possible he mounted the pterosoar’s back and the pair worked their way toward the half-fallen building, in which the rusty fawcet dripped: drip, drip, drip.

They had hardly entered the building when a living harpoon made up of a three-headed snake arrowed through the window toward them. Extending its arms around them, it started shrieking and hissing frightfully.

Ptero was covered with a layer of gelatine spray, which stuck his wings together and he writhed madly trying to escape but the gelatine was very powerful and already weak he was very quickly losing what remained of his strength. Puck jumped from the middle of the room, running up and around the ‘walls as fast as lightning’, trying to figure out where the attack had been unleashed from.

Among the piles of garbage and lumps of, long since discarded, rusty metal, he saw only the scab-filled eye of a giant harpy. As this terrible apparition grew larger he could see the monster was riding a horse with a human head and three arms dressed bizarrely as a country squire of long distant human memory. Puck closed his eyes both in fear and disbelief. For a minute, he could no longer hear the pterosoar’s shrieks, nor the cry of the silver starling, who was screaming: “Get back! Get back!”

In the strange quiet world, behind his eyelids, complete silence reigned. At this point he remembered that he still had the dew drop inside the kaleidoscope which the silver starling had made for him. He put it to his mouth and blew straight towards Ptero. The magic dew drop immediately dissolved the gelatine chains into a sticky yet hamless goo on the floor. Puck mounted Ptero’s back, and buoyed by his master’s energy the animal stretched out his wings now more eager, more furious than ever, dashing at the enemy in great loops of flight that the living harpoon could not even hope to follow. Puck, with his right hand, grabbed the Fire, which had remained on his shoulder and hurled it at the living harpoon which erupted in a huge shower of sparks and fell back towards the earth in spirals like a broken helicopter.

Puck now engaged the harpy on his very strange steed. The harpy, shrieking its evil intent, cast a blue fire shower from the tips of his claw like fingers. Momentarily bewildered Puck threw up his arm to fend off the blue fire sparks and to his utter amazement yellow sparks shot from his little fingers crashing into the blue sparks and exploding into a green acrid smoke. The harpy’s steed and Ptero also engaged each other with crashing blows from their respective tails, Ptero spitting fire balls, a trick he had learned from the dragons of Stumpy and the human headed horse vomiting a string of vitriolic expletives hoping to shock his adversary into crashing to the ground.

In the heat of the fight the adversaries gave everything they had, but Puck was small, and the harpy was big. The one remaining head of the harpy’s harpoon managed to grab a lock of the boy’s hair. At this point and as if from a dream, among the swirling smoke, he saw, coming from the sky, a baby hour-glass swan which was so very white that it might come from a different world altogether. In it’s beak it carried a pink diamond, each faceted surface flashing its brilliance. As the bird dropped the stone it went straight down Puck’s jacket and into the kaleidoscope. Taking the now loaded kaleidoscope to his mouth, he blew it straight at the harpy.

The blast was devastating. Such a strong blast lit up the valley, even stunning the earthworms beneath the ground. But only moments later, Puck, Ptero, Count Firefly and the silver starling were shaking the dust from the clothing and looking at each other first with total disbelief and then with ever broadening smiles. A battle had been won. “Hip, hip hooray” they all shouted!

The valley had miraculously changed. No trace of ruins, black clouds, killer plants, harpy, snake, or horse. Instead, Puck had woken in a green-green glade of young fir trees. Butterflies flew around him and his friends. Where the rusty fawcet had been, there was now a spring of sparkling water, clear-clear as bright crystal.

Puck, the silver starling and Ptero had no time left to waste. They immediately tended to Count Firefly who, despite the euphoria of the friends’ victory, was still very weak.They administered a steady watery trickle to his mouth and dabbed yet more on his temples until he chastised them for being over zealous as he had been perfectly alright all along.. All four of them now feasted on the sap of life, just as if they simply could not get enough. Finally, Puck jumped into the small pool formed by the spring and splashed the contents all over himself. “Ah wonderful!” he exclaimed.

On one side of the glade, where butter cups grew knee-high, the four discovered the horse with three arms, who was now a real man, a handsome man, with black hair and the very smart attire of a country squire. Wounded badly in the fight, he could but barely blink his eyes as he awaited his demise.

“Who are you?” Puck asked. “Do you know what happened to all the people?”

The squire spoke, with his last few ounces of strength.

“A few hundred thousands of springs ago, people lived on this planet in peace. One day, a poisonous fog came down and it smothered all the houses, the trees and settled upon peoples’ heads, blinding them and worse still made all conversation incomprehensible so that they could no longer understand each other. They saw phantasms and they thought their brothers were beasts. And then a great war started, and people started killing each other, believing they were enemies. At the end of the war, out of the poisoned fog first came out a large plague of toothed snails with evil eyes, spitting fire and with huge wings. They started gnawing at everything and they soon spread across the entire face of the earth. Behind them came green starlings. They were as a form of control on the snails and the two species became sworn enemies. Now upon the ruins of an earth that was burnt and all but destroyed, the snails and the green starlings started to fight to rest control of the earth from each other. Eventually they agreed to split the earth in two and never to trespass on each other’s territories.

The snails feed from water and the starlings feed from fire. For this reason they cannot live together but they do benefit each other by their actions. Wherever one has nothing to eat, the other does. On earth, all the people were eventually eaten by the snails and in turn the starlings fed on the ruins of their homes, which perished in the flames and were able to lay their eggs and build their nests there.

A few people, including me as a squire at the court of the Azure King, were transformed into beasts and forced into slavery. Only the king’s son, who was still an infant at one year old, escaped and was hidden by the white monks in a glacier and all trace of the boy was erased from memory. This is my story, and now I am tired, after hundreds of years of slavery, I have finally been released, and I shall now go and fall into my eternal sleep”.

The squire passed to Puck from his inside pocket a small poem about the beauty of the world and love and longing, a poem he had kept with him throughout his life. The world described so beautifully and eloquently in this little gift touched Puck’s heart and tears rolled down his cheeks as this man, once his enemy, quietly passed away.

Ptero, who as a flyer was more concerned with things drinkable than the somewhat ethereal matters of the soul, looked inside the flask to see if the water had disappeared. But no, the flask was filled with untainted water now rippling beautifully.

-XXI-

Enchanted tears

During this time, KraKru, the son of the snail king Block Head, together with his slimy brothers were very annoyed that they had returned home in shame having failed in the search for the Samovar. In the absence of the king, who had left to settle some matters occurring in Eastern Gastropodia, Kra Kru ordered the security octopuses to bring to him the Samovar Mistress. The guards placed her in the middle of the large hall, with a hemp sack on her head, so that she couldn’t see and understand where she was. Kra Kru walked, or more properly slithered around her as if she wasn’t there.

“It is impossible for her not to know where the Samovar is” said a little brother.

“She does not know, your highness”, said one of the vassals, pointing at a large book he was carrying. “The legend says that she doesn’t know where the Samovar is. It could be anywhere. Even on this table.” he added, pointing to a samovar from which tea was being poured.

“But perhaps the enchanted Samovar knows where she is!” the hunchback youngest son uttered and whose eyes were sparkling devilishly. “And if the Samovar knows where she is, and she is in danger... would not the Samovar try to defend his mistress?”

“Clever thinking, brother Kro Kro!” Kra Kru praised him. “The Samovar would try to defend the girl, thus giving us his whereabouts. Father would then be so proud of us. We shall rule the world and the green starlings will be hopping mad, full of anger and jealousy”.

“Could we maybe cut off one of her little hands? Or perhaps a little leg?” grinned Kro Kro, feeling around the hemp sack with the tip of his sword.

“The legend says that the girl must be alive and well to be able to harness the power of the Samovar,” the vassal read out.

“Furthermore she must be in love. May I remind your highnesses that your father the king has ordered that the girl must be guarded day and night and not a single hair on her head shall be harmed, otherwise... as you know very well, the king can wreak havoc when he’s mad!”

“We know, yes, we know.” They all mumbled.

King Block Head originally had sixty sons but now only five were still alive. The others... had been cast into the cage of the Furies, for disobedience. However, Kro Kro the petulant, as he was known to his brothers just simply could not resist the temptation to cut of a lock of the little girl’s hair. Pulling off the sack, he sliced the hair with the tip of his sword and then scattered it on the floor laughing as he did so. Little Girl, now very, very frightened began to cry.

“Come to me little one” whispered Kra Kru. “I am ashamed of my little brother. He had no right to do that” consoling her with his gelatine-filled snail lips and slippery eye horns. Little Girl was now even more frightened of these revolting creatures. Losing a bit of hair was one thing but being caressed by a smarmy, sticky revolting snail was another altogether.

“Ooh.. please don’t cry little one, no one will hurt you, we only want to ask you which one of us you will choose as your husband”

Little Girl gulped. She was feeling sicker and sicker by the moment. Her skin had turned white.The whites of her eyes had started to turn yellow and she was weakening visibly.

“You are making her blush,” said Kro Kro. She does not understand Gastropodian.

“You are being downright thoughtless!” Kra Kru retorted. “How can she blush like that if she doesn’t understand what we say. She is blushing because she would love to marry us all and doesn’t want to offend those of us she eventually rejects”

“No, you are the thoughtless one!”

“No, you are.”

“No, you are.”

They started recounting out loud!.

“Ip dip doo-

The cat’s got flu

The monkey’s got chicken pox

And out goes you! “

“No, out goes you, and out goes you!”

“No, out goes you!”

The five thoroughly stupid brothers now fell over one another, throwing at each other sheets of paper, pencils, erasers, sceptres, crowns, and whatever fell into their so slippery hands.

The vassal closed the book with a despairing sigh and stood to one side to witness the brawl from a safe distance. He considered that being completely impartial was probably the best and safest stance to adopt. Not taking sides with the king’s sons was always a good policy.

In the meantime the squabbling snails were missing something truly wonderful.The girl’s lock of hair had fallen on a stone slab and had split into small grains of hair like living fibres which were swept by the melee into the cracks around the slab. They instantly took root and started to grow becoming first shoots and then vibrant stalks and then small shrubs with wonderful pink flowers.

“Oh my gosh, oh my life!” she exclaimed. “The camelia is still with me, I have at least one friend in this terrible place!”

Whilst the sticky brothers were further distracted fighting, 108 great celestial baobabs entered through the walls of the royal palace casting yet more pink camelia seeds on and around the walls. The seeds immediately burst into dramatic growth and swaithed the palace in vibrant pink flowers. So great was this fantastic miracle that the palace itself was on the verge of cracking wide open. Into the great hall swept four hour glass swans brushing aside the slimy occupants with the beat of their wings. They swept Little Girl off her feet and carried her, head first, back through the walls of the palace and towards the Obsidian North.

-XXII-

“My dear, here we must run as fast as we can, just to stay in place. And if you wish to go anywhere you must run twice as fast as that.”

Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

The second trial

Now under the guidance of the Samovar Voice, which had stuttered into life again following the fight with the harpy,the four brave lads set off again over the dubious landscape delights of deepest Gastropodia, now jokingly called the ‘horror lands’ by the ‘musketeers’, a title conjured from the strange thought processes of a now fully recovered Count Firefly. The snail nests were well hidden and as they only ventured out from their dens at night, their phosphorescent trails could be seen by the travellers during the following day with that strange, sickly glow.

In the daytime there was less chance of them encountering patrols of snail soldiers, so Puck had decided they all should sleep by night and travel by day. Ptero didn’t sleep anyway. His eyes never closed. “Pterosoars, as they have three brains, pride themselves on not falling down like skittles when day passes.” Ptero would remind his friends every evening.

Puck saw, while flying overhead, an iron library that had fallen from a deserted apartment block. The books, now completely lifeless, hung from tattered fences and walls, their sad pages had lost all their words and all of them were blank.

“Mr Starling,” Puck asked. “Why were even books destroyed, all those stories, poems, legends, must have been pulled from their printing houses and thrown into the street, every one of them spoiled?”

“Because poems are thoughts and feelings. The green starlings need the letters to give them the courage contained in the meaning of the verse or story. They eat the letters and can then build their flying machines, namely the feathers.”

“You are also a starling,” Puck hinted subtly.

“I am a silver starling,” he emphasised , slightly offended. “Yes, at one time I stole poetry. Many hundreds of years ago, I nibbled on a Shakespeare volume, all by myself. But that was a long time ago. In it was an entire family, with beautiful ladies and handsome gentlemen and love and betrayals and all the things so loved of Shakespeare by the humans who read his work. There also lived the grandparent and parent pieces of odes and with a few odd baby odes thrown in. I sipped them all up without even counting them. Only one of them got away, stolen by a wisp of wind, it darted towards the clouds as it threw a round tear and a bitter smile back at me. Since that time, I have never eaten poetry in my life. As you can see, I cannot boast feathers too great. I live as I can.”

“But have you ever eaten my thoughts?” Puck questioned.

“I have had the pleasure of eating them every now and then. Please forgive me.”

“It’s alright..”. Puck said, forgivingly. “I keep no secrets from you”.

The silver starling merely smiled in grateful response.

A windmill forest could be seen in the horizon, hundreds of different shapes and colours but sadly all of them rusty and trying as hard they might to move in the direction of the wind. It was such an effort for the windmills to make such a pointless gesture, yet nevertheless squeaking as if to protest, to some unseen bystander, their inability to perform their given function.

The musketeers landed on the Copper Hills near the windmills as darkness was starting to fall. Ptero wandered off to stretch his legs. As might be expected his wings didn’t need stretching. A nearby, smelly puddle of gas was burning and from the light it gave, Ptero thought he saw something move. There on the ground, badly wounded was a baby patriotic poem shuffling its letters in an attempt to find shelter in some purple nettles. Ptero called Puck to ask him what to do but before he could reach Ptero and the little poem all hell was let loose.

Over the horizon, screaming like a banshee, came Kra Kru in purple regalia as befitting the son of the king. His steed was a steel tyrannosaur thundering towards the four of them, its huge feet smashing into the ground and raising a fearful storm of dust and debris. Behind Kra Kru there appeared, with swollen nostrils and huge red eyes, several nocturnal prey reptiles called Trodons. They proceeded to ransack every bush with their huge split noses as they followed their master. They had been trained by the snails to root out and destroy all the little epigrams and poems that were still hiding in the wilderness. Puck and the others could hear the screams as these now frail works of literature were found and torn apart by the monsters.

Initially, Puck had thought he and his friends were the target for the onslaught and that they had been discovered. But not so, this was Kra Kru out hunting and what better things to hunt than defenceless books, magazines and little manuals. For the moment at least the four of them appeared safe hiding in the windmill ruins.

.

“Puck, watch out! The king’s son although dressed in purple, the style is that of a squire!” the Count hissed a warning at the last minute, before darting around the hideout in panic. “Look, look, he is not a snail he is a chimera! This is the second trial!”

Puck darted out to find Ptero and climbed aboard as Count Firefly and the silver starling were being attacked by the Trodons who had encircled the windmill they were hiding in. The Trodon nose is particularly adept at sniffing out anyone or anything that might need tearing apart. Standing back to back, fighting with nothing but their garlic swords, the two musketeers stood up against this army of heaving Trodon flesh.

Puck, using only his heels to guide his flying friend, was able to aim the kaleidoscope at the enemy below besieging the windmill. Count Firefly had earlier carved out several fire kernels and Puck had loaded them into his kaleidoscope. His first fire kernel struck a Trodon and blew it to smithereens but now Kra Kru and his fearsome steed, attracted by the furore, appeared on the scene of the battle. The tyrannosaur viciously swept the ground with the scales of his huge tail, destroying huge numbers of hidden limericks that had tried to group together for safety.

The boy, now also using his garlic stem sword, swooped down on Kra Kru and with a skilful blow, managed to throw the king’s son off his monsters back.. Finding himself upon the ground, the chimera rolled quickly aside to avoid being crushed by the tyrannosaur. Puck, somewhat startled by the agility of a snail despite it’s chimera appearance, quickly darted across to Kra Kru and plucked from his hand the whip of poisonous algae. Still slightly off guard, Kra Kru stumbled and the warrior mask fell from his face.

From beneath the mask a thatch of russet hair appeared, framing the round, colourful, big eyes of the Samovar Mistress. Puck was motionless unable to say or do anything, not believing his eyes. He urged Ptero to start toward her now hypnotized, truly enchanted, while the starling and Count Firefly, still fighting with the trodon hoards, shouted his name.

The Samovar Mistress smiled at him with a strange, sad look. Turquoise drops of blood ran from the tips of her hair. When Puck, still on Ptero’s back, got close enough, the girl lifted off the ground and threw a magic dust in Puck’s eyes while recanting a spell. This cast Puck from Ptero’s back and he fell to the ground some distance away. Then, with a terrible unearthly look, the girl pulled out her sword from its sheath and stabbed Ptero in the chest..

The animal, under the Count’s and silver starling’s horrified gaze, sank to the ground closing his eyes for the first time in his long life.

Puck now started to realise that something was dreadfully wrong. His Samovar Mistress, the Little Girl, the wonderful girl he had fallen in love with, could not possibly kill his friend Ptero. Of course, of course this is a chimera created by Kra Kru and what he was seeing was the chimera changing shape and appearing as a vision of his beloved girl in order to trick him and then kill him. He leapt to his feet astounding everyone and as if nothing had happened, he just had to be right in what he was about to do. The girl turned from Ptero’s body to stare straight at Puck as he charged toward her. Her eyes turned bright red as she changed yet again into a gorgon. She would surely turn him to stone. The monster’s snake hair hissed so loud that even the starling and Count Firefly could hear them. She screamed such an unearthly scream that even the Trodons turned to witness the source of this appalling noise. Puck didn’t look, he didn’t see, he just kept running toward this creature from hell. He grabbed a fire kernel from his pocket and smashed it straight into the head of snakes. The vision shrieked as a ray of light split its skull from inside out.

Kra Kru was dead.

Ptero stirred. The evil creature was destroyed as was its acts. He got to his feet, gave himself a quick shake and looked down as his chest wound closed.

“Ha, hum, the things a Pterosoar has to put up with” he said nonchalantly.

Without its master the tyrannosaur was transfixed to the ground like a huge lump of rusty iron. Ptero walked casually over, gave this pile of ferrous oxide a good smack with his tail and watched as it collapsed in a clanking, grinding pile of scrap metal.

. Seeing their master dead the Trodons turned tail and ran as fast they could over the horizon.

“Well done young man!” proffered Count Firefly, patting Puck on his back. “How did you manage to avoid the gorgon’s stare, I really expected to see you turn to stone.”

“I don’t really know” replied the hero of the day. “I just shut my eyes but as I ran I could still see somehow but her eyes could not penetrate mine and I was able to kill her”

“Ah, you know I have been thinking about all this” the starling joind in. “Puck was found in a frozen lake, yes?”

“Well so you tell me” replied Puck and the others just nodded.

“Do you remember the first squire telling us about the Azure King’s son being hidden in ice”. They all nodded in agreement.

“Well Prince Puck, I think we have found a magical little man and that’s you”

“Me no surely not but I suppose you could be right” Puck was now very confused.

“I tell you what, let’s consult the Samovar Voice and see what she says” suggested the starling. “Go on Puck, ask her about you and where we have reached in progressing the three trials”

“Good idea” said Puck “Yes I could do with an update, it would make life a little easier. Please Miss Samovar Voice, how much further have we to go?”

“Now let me see” replied the voice. “What did I say?”

“Law number three. The samovar is surrounded by three lightning walls, three squires and three harpies. If the seeker manages to get through all these alive, he will find the samovar placed on a fresh snow yoke, on top of the Little Mountain, in the Lad’s Boot. Go with the Baobab Spirits.”

“Hm yes, not bad so far” continued the voice. “Three lightning walls- yes first the Royal Geysers, second ‘running around the walls as fast as lightning’. Still one to go there. Hm yes, three squires, two down one to go! And well pretty much the same with the Harpys”

“What about those Gorgonella, Harpiette and Dragonette creatures”

“Well that was more to frighten you to see if you had the courage to start out on this journey” replied the voice. “So let me see now, for Harpiette let’s say Samovar Mistress the chimera and for Gorgonella I’ll give you the ‘the living harpoon of a three headed snake’ so just one left there as well”

“I believe that to be extremely generous and thank you most kindly” offered Count Firefly in deferential humility.

“Yes thank you voice, where to now,” added Puck.

“North always north the Obsidian North” answered the voice.

Before they slept that night, Ptero went out, yet again, to stretch his legs.

“Shut your eyes, Mr Puck” said Ptero on his return. “I have found someone who says he knows you. He was lurking about outside. Saw the battle but was too much of a ‘cowardy custard’ to join in. He says you will know him even with your eyes closed!”

“Butterfly Leopard I would know that rub round the legs anywhere!” Puck thrilled.”Where have you been! I’ve missed you! Do you know where the Little Girl is?”

“Well master I hear she is in safe hands in the Obsidian North” purred the leopard.

“And that’s the direction we are going” chimed the four musketeers in unison.

“Wait a minute!” mumbled Ptero. “I think I have just got a fourth passenger, yes?”

“Afraid so!” replied Puck. “Yes I am confidently agreeing with you Ptero!”

“Thought so!” despaired Ptero. “And a pesky Butterfly Leopard of all things!”

“Purrrrrrrrrrrrrr” murmured the leopard.

Evening came. The moon emitted its usual glow like some old and dusty bead. The moon’s moon that had arrived a thousand years ago dutifully emulated her parent.

“Oh bother” thought Puck as he fell asleep “I forgot to ask the voice if I am a prince. Still, never mind, whatever I am, I will still be that in the morning.

-XXV-

The third trial

Puck, the silver starling, Count Firefly and the butterfly leopard climbed aboard Ptero, ready for their next adventure, buoyed with their success so far. Obsidian North was the agreed direction and off they went in a great cloud of dust stirred up by Ptero’s huge wings.

“Shortly after this next bend in the river below there is a rock,” spoke the Samovar Voice. “Under the rock there is a gate. You must all creep through it. Well all but Ptero that is. He’s just too big!”

The four of them crouched down and crawled through the gate and behind them they heard the stone close with a mighty thud.

Count Firefly turned on his lamp.

“Watch where you tread,” added the voice.

Around them there were thousands of skeletons and odd loose bones and skulls both of human and animal kind. Everywhere, under stones and leaves, bottomless pits and trap doors opened as they carefully passed by. They then passed through a short tunnel and emerged into a large square hall with glass walls. Puck scratched the wall with his nail and tasted it.

“This is salt. Edible salt! He exclaimed.

Count Firefly lifted the lamp, motioning them to look down.

“What is this?” he asked.

The floor was made from green marble squares interspaced, as in a chess table, with yellow ones. Some of them had strange signs written on them.

“Wooow!” Puck said, happily. “Mr. Starling! This is the multiplication table. It’s our game!”

On warm nights, before their adventures began the starling would teach the boy this strange chess. They would play for hours on a similar board in the basement of their tower block. Puck and the starling would pick a colour, then they would hop from one square to another, calculating. The starling would always win. “This is the most important game of life,” the starling had told him, always prompting him to strive to try harder and harder.

“Young Samovar Knight,” the voice called. “Warning! Ready, set, go. Warning! You are before the third and hardest trial. Warning! The third squire, the third harpy! Warning!”

Puck took out the kaleidoscope from its casing and stood en garde, looking around. There was no one but the four of them. The wind danced dust whirls on the chequered floor making strange patterns. A wandering leaf stopped on the boot of the silver starling, who had also taken the en-garde position. Then Puck turned to his friend.

The silver starling was no longer the same. His feathers had turned into green scales, and his eyes were glowing with a strange green light. He had become a green starling and he was wearing pants and a squire’s vest.

Count Firefly too had disappeared. Where he had stood was now a viper dragon, lifting his lizard body in a rhythmic writhing action and with numberless legs like a giant centipede.

Butterfly leopard was hiding in the corner with his tail over his eyes.

Puck now understood clearly that what the starling had taught him was the game for his own life. He just hoped the starling had taught him well, because now was the ultimate test. Puck hopped on a golden slab, the starling on a green one. The numbers were starting to appear.

“One times one?” the Samovar Voice umpired. “I will start and you will continue. Jump please to the right answer in order to continue”

Puck got a glimpse of the number one slab just in time and jumped on it.

“One!”

“That is correct.” Commended the voice.

“Now green starling it is your turn, nine times five?”

“Forty five” growled the green starling, jumping to the correct square.

“That too is correct” offered the voice.

Now it was Puck’s turn to pick his own move. A wrong slab meant being catapulted into a furnace now burning all around the edge of the floor of tiles. On one of the cave walls appeared the face of the Samovar Mistress, at whose neck a snail officer held a scimitar and issuing a mocking laugh. Puck knew he must not be distracted. There was no time left. Every second mattered. He searched for clues. On another wall behind the starling, he saw a red sign. One choice was six times six. Quickly finding the number thirty six square.

“Six times six is thirty six” he cried jumping to the coreect square.

“Six times seven” squawked the green starling.

“ Forty two”he continued and jumped to the forty two square.

The green starling was starting to get close to Puck and the viper was moving around the square the other side of the furnace. Puck was frightened, would he die in the furnace or at the hands of the green starling or bitten by the awful viper.

He must pick a square that would take him away from at least one of the monsters and perhaps toward the middle of the board. Frighteningly the middle square had no number on it. He was starting to get flustered.

“Oh what am I going to do?” he thought to himself. “Oh here goes, zero times zero is nothing” he squealed and jumped to the middle square.

“Oh well done! I am so delighted,.” purred the voice. “You have won the star prize, an evening with Dragonette the gorgon, you know the one with the shiny head!”

“I hope you are joking” exclaimed Puck, looking all around him. The green starling had gone as had the viper and sitting side by side against the far wall was Mr Starling and Count Firefly stroking a purring butterfly leopard.

“Yes I am joking and congratulations on completing your three trials Mr Puck.”

His friends burst into spontaneous applause and a great crescendo of snapping twigs and crashing branches heralded the arrival of Ptero.

“An honour to be your means of transport Mr Puck” uttered the Pterosaur.

“Well done indeed Puck, I am so relieved you have won. I must tell you all a story that I have never been able to tell before because previously it has always ended badly” the starling began.

“You were not the first little Puck boy on the planet. Every one hundred years another Puck appeared. They were all named Puck, they were all an orphan like you, and they all had blue eyes. I have taught all of them the multiplication table and I have led them here, where their days ended. Yet, you know, somehow I knew you were just a little different and this time you would win. I knew you were the one, Puck. I had always hoped that one day I would find the ultimate Puck and would be able to retire and perhaps find a nice little lady silver starling to spend my final years with”

“So was there a Samovar Mistress before Mr Starling?”

“Oh yes, of course but as the earlier Pucks always failed, they could never claim her love” the starling explained.

“And what about her. Was she continually being let down and made sad?”

“ No, it doesn’t work like that” the starling continued. “ Because she is the only Little Girl and at the same time the Samovar Mistress, all the different Pucks are but one to her and they all live in the real time which is now”

“Oh wow Mr Starling, so she has only known one Puck and that’s me, yes?”

“Exactly to her all the Pucks are you and it is you she loves”

“ Please Mr Starling, can we go and find the Samovar so that I can call her to me”

“He will find the samovar placed on a fresh snow yoke, on top of the Little Mountain, in the Lad’s Boot. Go with the Baobab Spirits.”

“Where is the Little Mountain?” Puck asked.

“ North, still north, Obsidian North to be precise” replied the starling.

“Please can I sit at the front, puuuurrrry please master Puck” enquired the leopard.

“Oh go on then” Puck replied. “I have finished my trials and am in quite a good mood.

The four clambered aboard Ptero and off they went in search of a ‘snow yoke in a lad’s boot’, whatever that might turn out to be.

“The Little Mountain is ahead now” the voice advised. “Look there the only one with snow on its peak”

“Yes I can see it” said the starling. “What about the rest of you?”

They all answered yes and Ptero increased speed in his excitement.

They landed near the summit of Little Mountain and their host offered a short greeting.

“ Good day Puck, Mr Starling, Count Firefly , Ptero and Butterfly Leopard, welcome to me. I am all you are treading on and I do so hope that my little covering of warm snow makes you feel cosy and at home” so clearly spoke the mountain.

“Thank you so much, Mr Little Mountain and yes your lovely warm snow is a delight to us tired travellers” replied Puck swishing his now bootless feet in the warm snow.

“ Oh I am so glad it is you five that have found me. I have heard from the Baobab Spirits that I should eventually play host to five travellers in search of the earth’s heart the Samovar. You see I am actually a dormant volcano and the Samovar just had to be close to the soft centre of the world he is the heart of” continued the mountain. “For days and weeks I have had snails and green starlings clambering around my base but my sides are too steep to climb and also too slippery so they couldn’t climb to my summit”

“So you do have the samovar! Oh please Mr Little Mountain, where is he, I need to ask him if he will call the Samovar Mistress to him?” thrilled Puck.

“The Baobab Spirits have decreed that you must find him here and to receive no direction from me. My summit is large yes and covers a wide area but remember the instruction you received and you will find him. At least you won’t get cold. Speak again later, good luck” the mountain finished talking.

“He will find the samovar placed on a fresh snow yoke, on top of the Little Mountain, in the Lad’s Boot. Go with the Baobab Spirits.”

“Now let’s see” observed the starling. “We can forget the Little Mountain, we are here and the mountain has told us that the samovar is here somewhere” he continued. “We have the ‘snow’ so all we need to do is to find the ‘yoke’ and a ‘Lads’s Boot’”

“Well there can’t be many lad’s boots up here” observed Count Firefly swinging his skinny arm in a circle to denote the search area. “ Can’t be that difficult to find surely!” he continued.

“What’s a yoke?” Puck enquired .

“I believe it’s two pieces of wood in the shape of a cross and is to enable two oxen or other working animals to pull a cart or similar” replied Ptero. “My father had one for two dragons he used to pull him to work in his landau” he added.

“Wow, that I would have given a whole ‘dew penny’ to see a pterosaur in a landau being pulled to work by two dragons harnessed to it with a yoke!”giggled Puck.

“Just trying to help” scoffed Ptero.

“Hm……..” the starling continued, “the samovar can change size you know, so perhaps at this very moment it is very small in a very small yoke in a very small boot.”

“Oh thanks that’s just what we need, everything very small and impossible to find” moaned the Count.

“ Come on Puck!” shouted the starling. “Stop swirling about in that warm snow, we have work to do!

“Oh it’s so lovely and warm!” replied Puck. “Can’t the rest of you look and let me play in this lovely snow.

“No, come on, get your boots back on my lad, we must try to find the samovar before it gets dark” the starling chastised Puck.

“Oh no, where are my boots!” cried Puck “ I must have covered them with snow, look, you lot get started while I look for my boots”

The others left under instruction from the starling to go round in ever increasing circles from the point they all started from. The count was to look ahead as they walked, the butterfly leopard to the left and the starling to the right. Puck was to catch up after he found his boots. Ptero was to fly over everywhere looking for any tell tale sign,

“Oh goodness me! I can’t find them”complained Puck. “I’ll have to start afresh, ’s no joke” he continued.

“Congratulations Mr Puck, you have found me, together with your boots, which I admit were rather tight for me” the Samovar appeared from the snow, growing in size by the second and there at the base of the wondrous vase were Puck’s boots. These words were not spoken by the samovar but Puck heared them.

“He’s here, he’s here!” shouted Puck to the others who were still in sight.

“Oh my, the heart of the world is here in front of us all” stuttered an amazed starling as they all fell to their knees in wonderment. The starling continued.

“ Stay as you are Puck, don’t move, don’t be afraid. The Samovar is studying you. Let all your thoughts run freely, whatever they are. Don’t be afraid. The Samovar can only see TRUTH in you. It is not judging you, it is not condemning you, it is not criticizing you, it wants nothing of you, except to know you. The Samovar is programmed to destroy all that which does not open and which he cannot know. Fear closes your heart. Don’t be afraid. The truth, whatever it is, is always good. Open your heart to him”

Puck relaxed. He closed his eyes. He breathed slowly and methodically.

The words of the samovar came into Puck’s brain.

“ My world is troubled and divided by greed and hatred Mr Puck but your heart is true, I know this. I can only bring peace and love back to the world by allowing you to re-write the Book of Legends and I can only grant this with instructions from my mistress, who I know you love and who loves you. Take me to her, please”

-XXVI-

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”

Lewis Caroll, Alice in Wonderland

The Future

The musketeers, the butterfly leopard and the samovar, now gently simmering, prepared to leave Little Mountain.

“Come on Puck, how did you find the samovar in your boots. What did you say!” enquired the Count. “Come on lad, tell us how you did it, I saw no yoke?

“Well let me see” Puck replied. “ I think I said , I’ll have to start a-fresh ’s no joke-can’t find my boots”

“Got it, well done!” cried the starling. “The word must have been ‘joke’ and not ‘yoke’ and then it all fits. Oh super job Mr Puck”

Puck blushed as he dreamt of seeing his beloved Samovar Mistress again.

The voice interrupted his dream, “ the Baobab Spirits have instructed the white swans to bring the Samovar Mistress to you, so you may stay where you are. They will take one earth hour to reach you”

“Well I’m going to have bath, while we wait” offered the Count. “This lovely warm snow is so inviting” he continued.

They all joined in except butterfly leopard who preferred to lick himself clean as any other self respecting cat would do.

Count Firefly insisted that they all look the other way while he bathed. They assumed that his terribly knobbly knees were an embarrassment to him as much as they were a source of amusement to them.

The smell of roses filled the air and with a great cascade of rose and camelia petals, the four swans landed gently nearby. As they faced outwards to the points of the compass, a pretty little girl alighted from their backs and stood looking at the musketeers who had grouped together with the leopard as if having their photo taken and then the most wonderful of smiles crossed her face.

She ran to Puck and without a word said they simply held each other.

“My wonderful boy” she eventually said. “I have found my wonderful boy!” and with that she kissed him gently on both cheeks.

Holding his hand so that he walked with her she approached each of the other members of the little group of travellers.

“Mr Silver Starling, we meet again only this time in happier circumstances. Thank you for taking care of my Puck and bringing him here to me” she kissed the starling making him blush so much his silver feathers turned a bright pink.

“Count Firefly, your wisdom and fortitude has been an example to all this little group and I am honoured to be considered your friend”. The firefly simply bowed his head in deference. “Has been an honour and a joy to me to be of assistance!” he replied.

“Now young Ptero, some amazing flying I understand, I will no doubt also be using your services from now on”

“Oh mademoiselle!” replied Ptero “ I will have a special seat installed for you”

“Finally you, Mr Butterfly Leopard, I understand your purring can send people to sleep. Perhaps when I am tired and weary, you will purr for me sometime”

“Puuuuuuuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrr!” replied the leopard

“Come Puck with me to the samovar” said the Samovar Mistress. “There is much to be done and only the samovar, you and I can bring peace to this troubled world and re-write the Book of Legends so that the three of us can live in peace for all time to come.”

XXVII

“With good friends, you can’t lose”

Kermit the frog,( Jim Henson, The Muppets)

Block Head gets slightly annoyed!

“What!” screamed Block Head. “That nauseating little man child has killed my heir to the throne of Gastropodia. He will be brought before me before the day is out and I will personally cover him in slime so that he suffers a long lingering death from suffocation”

“Well dearest father” replied the hunchback Kro Kro. “After you have done that, do you think you might like to consider promoting me to be heir apparent”

“Stop creeping, you sickly, sticky, gooey, messy, slimy waste of space Kro Kro you are not even half the snail your brother was” the king replied.

The vassal interjected “Well sire, if you might forgive me, according to the Book of Legends, of which, of course, I have a copy for your enlightenment, your line of succession must pass to your eldest legitimate son. And if you might forgive me further, all your children including Prince Kro Kro here are actually illegitimate as you are naturally well aware. So actually you don’t have an heir at all”

“Dearest father, why don’t we just simply burn that awful and so unhelpful book?”

“No actually, the book is right!” replied the king.

“All you creepy, sticky bunch can get lost, I don’t want to see you again, any of you”

“Now vassal, where’s that pretty little girl child I left in your charge”

“Not in my charge, if you remember sire but in the charge of those two giant octopuses”

“Well, whoever it was, where is she” the King was getting annoyed.

“Gone sire, afraid she’s gone, well sort of gone sire!” the vassal’s sychophantic whining was doing him no favours with the king.

“Gone, where gone, gone where, gone to the lavatory, gone to the hairdressers, gone to the moon?

“Well the last choice is probably the closest sire. The Baobab Spirits took her on their white swans” the vassal glanced at the King awaiting a response. He got one!

“Now, I’m really going to have someone’s guts for garters. I was going to marry her, have lots of little slippery babies with her and have a rightful heir and now someone and I will find out who, is going to pay dearly for making me so mad I could eat a whole lettuce, non stop!”

“Kra Kru sire, Kra Kru instructed the guards to bring the little girl to him whilst you were away. So then she became sort of ’easy’to rescue, sire.”

“That pain in the backside Kra Kru, I’ll have him strung up, how dare he defy me!”

“Not easy sire” the vassal continued. “If you remember sire, he’s dead, very dead and irretrievably dead sire, apparently he exploded while in the guise of a chimera, dressed as a squire and with the appearance of a little girl. In fact THE Little Girl which, I understand, is the subject of your anxiety”

“Now listen hear vassal, YOU will find her for me and return her to me here in the palace. You have 24 earth hours.”

“And if I might require more time, sire” the vassal pleaded.

“Turn the clocks back an hour! Get out of my sight”

Block Head slithered off to find someone, anyone, who wasn’t a smarmy twerp. It wasn’t going to be easy.

The vassal looked in the jobs vacant file in the Crystal Wing.

XXVIII

“Always for the first time

Hardly do I know you by sight

You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window

A wholly imaginary house”

Andre Breton

The NEW book of legends

“Come Puck, you and I must speak with the samovar. Remember to speak clearly and both of us will hear him reply by thoughts” the Samovar Mistress instructed her beloved Puck. “Remember the Baobab Spirits are watching and expect us to heal the world otherwise, despite our love for one another, they will not allow us to be together”

The heart of the world beat faster and louder as his Mistress approached.

“Mistress, you have returned to me, please tell me what I must do to heal the world so that you and your Puck can be together!” Both of them heard this message in their heads.

“ First we must re-write the Book of Legends to change what has already happened and then change the present so that the future is assured” Little Girl asserted.

Although Puck ‘heard’ the conversation, he was awestruck and couldn’t find anything useful to add to the conversation.

“How might we re-write the Book of Legends, mistress?” the samovar continued.

On the Right Island, every afternoon, a little boy would sit on a rock, on the banks of the stream of living water waiting for Little Girl to appear on the other bank.

“These children must meet and fall in love and by joining these two islands back to gether we can achieve our aim. The Little Girl is of course me and the little boy must be Puck. I instruct you the samovar to rejoin the islands, record this in the Book of Legends to include our names as being the two starstruck children of legend and history”

“But mistress I only know you as mistress what name shall I include in the book?”

This was Puck’s chance to get involved “Camelya, please call her Camelya!” he implored.

“Yes Puck, Camelya is lovely. Yes samovar, call me Camelya, from henceforth I shall be Camelya” the mistress advised, holding Puck’s hand and squeezing it to thank him.

An almighty rushing sound then shook the ground beneath their feet. It was as if it were an earthquake in reverse if such a thing were possible. “The islands are joined and Camelya and Puck are in the Book of Legends as though they have always been there” spoke the samovar.

Camelya and Puck looked at one another and all those messages that had passed from each to the other, when they first met, were now absorbed totally into their conscious and unconscious minds. They were as if they were one entity and always had been.

*

“Did you feel that, what was that?” Ptero enquired of the others.

“Felt like a pretty puuurrry sort of earthquaky type thing” the leopard offered as an intelligent reply.

“Hm yes well perhaps possibly!” Count Firefly chipped in his opinion for what it was worth.

“I think their work has started, it is as simple as that!” advised the starling. “History is being changed so that peace can be restored and in order to do that, the samovar is re-writing the Book of Legends”

“How many copies of the Book of Legends were made Mr Starling?” enquired the leopard.

“I am given to understand there were seventeen at the beginning of time” replied the starling.

“Seventeen, what a peculiar number” the Count observed.

“No not really Count, seventeen is a prime number and cannot, therefore, be analysed” retorted the starling. “We were fortunate to have our mini copy, it helped us immensely in our quest”

“Who has the other sixteen?” asked Ptero.

“ Let me see now here goes, we have one, Block Head has one, the green starling council has one, the Obsidian North has one, The Icy Sunrise has one, the Cold Moon Sunset has one and the Spring South too”

“That’s only eight, at least I think that’s eight!” Ptero was easily confused by mathematics.

“Actually it’s only seven!” the Count could count you see.

“I haven’t finished, just wait please” the starling continued.

“Four copies were in the Great Hall of Adjectives, that is until the hall was destroyed by the snails in their war with the green starlings. The sun has one and the moon and of course the Baobab Spirits must have one in order to witness any changes we are able to get the samovar to make. Yes I know that leaves three!”

The starling continued “ One was lost when Auntie Bessie’s Tea Shop burned down 47,345,678 years ago. The old god of the sea Neptune had one but no one’s seen or heard of him for the same number of years as the aforementioned fire. Rumour has it he tried to put the fire out but got tangled in the hose and lassooed himself”

“Oh how sad!” chimed the audience. “He was probably a lovely old god!” they observed thoughtfully.

“That leaves one copy, doesn’t it?” enquired the butterfly leopard hopeful of having the right answer.

“Yes, well done leopard” replied Puck. “The remaining volume is in mint perfect condition and its whereabouts is only known to the Little Girl. In it it is decreed that this last remaining copy will be inherited by whoever eventually brings eternal peace to the world”

“Wow that could be us then!” observed Ptero.

“Well hardly, Ptero, if you look over there it is Puck and the Samovar Mistress that are re-writing the Book of Legends as we speak. If they are successful it will be they who inherit the last volume and that will, of course, be exactly in the form they are making it now”The starling became quite emotional as he realised the immensity of what he was saying.

“Oh Mistress” messaged the samovar. “History is now changed. We must change the present to rid the world of hatred, division and jealousy and to ensure the future world is one of peace and tranquillity where you and Puck can live without fear”

“Yes of course samovar, might I suggest that the principal cause of division at the present time is the war between the green starlings and the snails. Now if we were to turn these warring species into peace loving species, then there would be only love and gentleness both now and in the future” Camelya turned to Puck, took his arm in hers and they both allowed their respective ideas to enter each others heads without speaking.

“We have an idea samovar and with your consent and help, I think we can achieve all we are attempting”

“Mistress, I am the heart of the world, I must always do all that I can to bring peace and this is all achievable now because of the love you and Puck share with each other. There is no better time in the history of the world than now”

“Very well samovar, I instruct you to turn the starlings to rabbits and the snails to deer with effect immediately. They will share the pastures of the land we create for them, beautiful lush grass and clover for them to nibble.”

“Mistress consider it done!”

*

Are you still here, vassal!” Block Head shouted at his servant. “You should have left hours ago to find that pretty little girl I want! And why are you hiding behind that cloak?”

“I have a slight problem sire” replied the servant.

“Well I’ll tell you now, imbecile that you are, that whatever your problem is now, it is nothing compared to the problem you will have if you don’t produce that girl within the next hour” the king was on the verge of exploding.

“Well sire, begging your pardon, I have developed something sire” began the servant.

“Developed what exactly, a cold, a sore throat, ear ache, what is it serf that you are” the king was really taking a strong dislike to this feeble snail.

“Legs sire! I have developed legs, four of them, one at each corner so to speak and furthermore I have developed big soft brown eyes, little buds for antlers and an insatiable desire to eat grass and to be nice to everyone including you sire”

“ Well I can assure you, you feeble monstrosity, that turning into a deer will not save you from…well actually, I think I might let you off as I appear to share a similar set of appendages and am feeling rather at one with the world. Shall we trot off down that new meadow together and munch some of that lovely green alfalfa I see growing there”

“Oh sire. I thought you would never ask!” replied the servant “and I see the place is now teeming with bunny rabbits”

“Oh how joyful, they are playing chase, do let’s join them!” the king was at one with his world. Finally!

XXIX

“It was many and many a year ago,

In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

By the name of Annabel Lee;”

Edgar Allan Poe

The peace is confirmed

“ Mistress your instructions are completed. The world is at peace. Your love for Puck and his for you have healed all in the world and the pair of you have inherited the world” thus spoke the last words of the samovar. He now stood motionless and simply simmering with joy.

The Baobab Spirits rejoiced and bathed the world in such a warmth of sunlight that every inhabitant of the world was full of joy and embraced each other as their dark times turned to light and life.

“There are one or two small things left to do samovar” whispered Camelya so that the others could not hear.

“First, allow Mr Starling a name and give him his own little family of silver starlings.

Secondly, bring Ptero’s family from the mountains to enjoy with us these celebrations.

Thirdly, give Count Firefly a brand new limousine that he might take some friends and tour the world.

Fourthly, allow Butterfly Leopard the opportunity to become our pet pussy cat and the chance to have a saucer of proper milk every day”

Camelya stood beside the samovar and bent down to hug the heart of the world. She took him to her chest and felt his body, now of flesh like hers, merge with her body and she now knew the whole truth and history of the world. But above all else she knew that her Puck was also beside her and he placed his hands gently on her head, bent towards her and kissed her. They too were now as one, two bodies yes but one soul, one life, one truth, one meaning and the new heart of the world..

XXX

“Why do I love” You, Sir?”

Emilly Dikinson

The Wedding

“Now come on all you deer and bunnies, get in a proper line. This is supposed to be a guard of honour not a bus queue!” barked Count Firefly given the unenviable task of MC at Puck and Camelyas wedding.

“Well why not a wedding, cheer us all up a bit and despite the bride and groom being a little on the young side, I am sure we can stretch a point for the only two humans on the planet!” the Baobab Spirits had issued this decree.

Puck and Camelya had gazed at one another hardly believing that all the horrors were over and a life of peace was laid out before them. There was still so much to do. The Baobabs had agreed the pair full autonomy over the whole world trusting, as they did, Camelya and Puck to rule the world with kindness and understanding and a wedding seemed a most appropriate way to start the future.

So many to invite, Block Head now renamed King Sweetie the First of Cervidae, his remaining sons, Princes Cuddly, Softy and Peachy and also with their four ladies, Queen Doedoe and the Princesses Faun, Faunee and Faunikins.

Then there was General Phoenix now known as His Lordship Lovely Bunny, his lady called Lady Bunnykins and now numerous offspring each named alphabetically and on the fourth version of that. Colonel Beak was now named His Excellency Fluffy Tail, Major Crop was now His Grace Even Fluffier Tail, Captain Feather was now named His Prominence Long Silky Ears and poor Lieutenant Gizzard was blessed with His Exuberance Hop, Hop Hoppy I’m so Happy!

Ptera and his lady Ptero and their wee ‘soars’, Steggy, Bronty and Tyranny whose nickname just happened to be Rex!

Mr Starling was of course Puck’s best man and had chosen for himself the name ‘Sammy the Silver Starling’. On the morning of the wedding he had looked slightly wistfully out of his window in the loft of his sky scraper poem. His life’s work now done, everyone now happy and at peace, what might become of him?

“Anyway enough with sobering thoughts” he said to himself. “I must prepare for the ceremony, best bib and tucker for the boy Puck and the delightful Camelya”. He went out onto the roof top to collect his freshly laundered number one silver starling plumage of many colours from the washing line.

“Ahem!” a voice came from behind him. He turned, blinked, blinked again and fainted.

“There, there my lovely Sammy, are you alright.”

“Well yes I suppose I am alright but I seem to be dreaming and awake at the same time!” answered a bewildered and totally disorientated Sammy the Silver Starling.

He continued “I know what you are but I have no idea how you came to be here and where have you been all my millennia of life” he stuttered.

“My darling Sammy, I am your Samantha, the only lady silver starling left in the world and I would love to make a home for us both and a life together, how does that sound?”

“Wonderful, simply wonderful!” he replied. “But how did you find me?”

“Well, I was living with some wagtails behind the cycle sheds when some idiot green starling general started shouting at us and accusing us of being ostriches. We all thought it better to leave and go our own separate ways. So I phoned Ambulant Information to ask if there was any chance of finding another silver starling to spend my life with.”

“And, what did she say?” continued Sammy.

“Well first she warned me that I only had four hours and fifty nine minutes left of the five hours allocated to me and told me to be brief and to the point as she needed a walk.” Samantha recounted.

“Sounds familiar, please continue” Sammy suggested.

“Your starling is not gold, nor is he green but he lives with one who is not his son.” Is what she said.

So I said. “Please give me a bit more than that.”

“Times up, you may phone again in 8 years, 7 months, 3 days, 9 hours, 41 minutes and 17 seconds and don’t be late and she hung up.”

“So how did you find me?” Sammy continued.

“I didn’t find you, I was brought here by a four winged swan under instruction from the Baobab Spirits. The swan told me I had to accompany a wonderful silver starling called Sammy to a wedding and then to stand by his side for the rest of our lives, so here I am, will I do?”

“Oh yes, oh very yes, oh decidedly yes.” exclaimed Sammy. “ Let’s get ready!”

“Yes my Silver Starling boy, let’s get ready” she simply hugged Sammy and gave him the biggest but gentlest peck of his life.

This was truly a wedding not to be missed by anyone who was anyone. Encyclopaedia Britannica had rewritten him self and took up two rows of seats. The Times World Atlas had republished himself and now with additional 3D. Chaucers Canterbury Tales had teamed up the Complete Works of Shakespeare and were having a good old fashioned chin wag. Loads of odes filled the venue with rows of prose and everyone was as happy as someone who had lost 50p and found a £1.

“Wow, young man, you really look the business!” enthused Sammy at seeing the groom to be dressed in his finest. Not an easy task to find a boy a wedding suit when there were no shops selling human clothing left on the planet, probably not really surprising as there was no humans to buy anything anyway. Count Firefly had collared and then coerced his cousin Baron Gloworm, a taylor to the aristocratic echelons of the insect world, to fashion a morning suit for Puck from some rather natty left over silk pantaloons last worn by some merry old soul called King Cole.

“What do you think Sammy, will Camelya like my suit?” Puck enquired of his friend.

“Of course she will young man, how can she fail to love anything you wear, after all you not only think alike, you are alike and your taste will be her taste, so don’t worry eh? Come on, we must go, if we are not to be late”

Four hour glass swans carried Puck, Sammy and Samantha to the Camelia Palace, renamed as such following the ‘transformation’ of Block Head and his entourage in to something rather more pleasant. They flew over countless citizens, both rabbits and dear, waving and cheering in the fields and orchards below. All the fruit trees had blossomed in unison to celebrate this momentous occasion and the earth below was a wonderful shade of pink and which colour grew evermore vibrant as they neared their destination. The palace was covered in flowering camelias. So dense were the blooms that hardly a single piece of wall could be seen between them.

“Now look you lot the groom is arriving!” barked Count Firefly. “Smarten up you rabbits at the front, what’s that you’re reading, oh I see “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” newly published I assume. Put the book down now, or else” he warned. “ Now if I hear the name Bambi anymore, I’m going to confiscate that book as well” he warned the inattentive dear element of the guard of honour.

“Attenshun!” he bellowed.

“What’s that then ‘at ten shun’?” enquired a rather laid back rabbit called Dillon. “It’s already eleven and we didn’t shun anyone at ten” he continued.

Count Firefly was NOT amused! “Look, young man!” he whispered in the rabbit’s ear. “Let’s just say ‘attenshun’ means something other than nibbling a carrot and then at least pretending to be interested and then we might get somewhere, UNDERSTOOD!”

The rabbits and dear all stood bolt upright as a somewhat bewildered Puck, Sammy and Samantha entered the palace. They now awaited the arrival of the bride, the heart of the world!

“Oh I’m so nervous” mumbled Puck “but at least I have you and Samantha to calm my nerves. Who is going to help my lovely Camelya when there are no ladies or human girls in the world other than her?”

“Ah well, young man” replied Sammy “ the Baobabs thought of that and gave her six four winged swans in temporary human form to attend to all her needs, to dress her, brush and manage her hair, bring her here in a glass coach and just simply stay with her until you two are married!”

The smell of roses became stronger and stronger and a wonderful glow filled the entire palace. Then the walls shimmered with all the colours of the rainbow taking their turn to mesmerise all the occupants of this great auditorium. The glass coach glided in as if floating in the air and without making a sound. Puck was transfixed!

The coach then just melted away leaving six swans in female human form dressed in flowing pink dresses and each holding a part of the train to the dress warn by the Heart of the World – Puck’s Camelya! The dress was silver and sparkled with every movement Camelya made as she walked slowly towards her boy who now stood in the centre of the palace floor with Sammy by his side.

A ghost like apparition appeared immediately in front of Puck and for moment he was frightened until he felt the warm hand of his beloved Camelya join with his.

“Don’t worry, my darling” she whispered, “it is a Baobab Spirit who is here to conduct the ceremony”

The six ladies stood behind Puck and Camelya in a semi circle as the Baobab Spirit began.

“Good morning one and all. Today we are all here to celebrate the marriage of the Heart of the World to the only little boy in the world, a marriage of love, kindness, understanding and truth. Their love for each other has saved the world and we are all indebted to them both for eternity!”

Slightly embarrassed by all this praise the two children stood gazing at each other and not a little bemused by all that was happening to them.

“Who has the rings for the marriage of these two young people?” enquired the spirit.

“I do” said Sammy.

As the samovar had become flesh and was absorbed into Camelya’s body, she had noticed two bright shiny gold rings on the ground where the samovar had stood. The samovars last wish was that he could leave for the both of them the means for them to marry. Smiling at Puck, Camelya had picked them up and handed them to Puck and had said “for our future happiness my wonderful boy, keep them safe until we can be married” and had gently kissed his cheek.

Sammy offered the rings to the spirit slightly concerned that as the he was only an apparition, the rings might fall to the floor. But they simply hovered in mid air waiting to be placed on their fingers.

“I see no reason why these two young people may not be joined in matrimony and I therefore pronounce them man and wife” stated the spirit. With this the rings moved to the outstretched hands of Puck and Camelya and nestled perfectly on the third finger of each left hand. “You may now kiss the bride Master Puck!” the spirit continued.

“My darling boy” Camelya started to say. “All you life you have wanted to know who your parents were and what became of them. Well my wonderful boy, in rewriting the Book of Legends, I was able to place them back into reality and so my wedding gift to you is to meet, for your first time, your mother and father who are standing here behind us! Puck may I introduce to you The Azure King and The Azure Queen.”

The boy raced to his parents and without a word they held their son between them. Puck closed his eyes and with the power he now had to understand all thoughts and emotions he read their life history as if from the memories they both had retained.

“ Mother , father, can you please stay with us a while, there is so much to talk to you about!” pleaded Puck.

“ I believe we might stay for as long as it takes, yong man!” replied the king.

“Oh I am so sorry, may I introduce my wife Camelya” Puck stuttered, beckoning Camelya to join them.

The four of them stood with their arms around each other and the whole of the gathered guests erupted into the loudest cheer heard in the world for many many millennia.

“I now declare this ceremony over!” uttered the Baobab Spirit and quietly faded from view.

“All our lives start now, we four are the heart, soul and meaning of life, truth and destiny” declared Camelya. “Let us begin at the beginning”

Camelya, Puck and his parents, followed closely by Butterfly Leopard went off to stroll around the camelia gardens at the palace. Sammy and Samantha returned home to plan a life together, Count Firefly admired his brand new bamboo convertible and started to consider who he might take on his round the world trip. Ptero, Ptera and the little ‘soars’ returned to their mountain home to do some redecorating.

“You know son” declared the Azure King “ you will need to get someone to wipe the slime off the handle of that gate we just came through!”

“Slime, what slime, where!” uttered Puck.

“Well we can’t have these two with nothing to do, can we?” declared the Baobab Spirits, they mustn’t get complacent. The spirits laughed and laughed.

THE END

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