Knjigice
Fairy tale · Animal stories
Just So Stories
Four funny tales of how the animals got what they have
Also in: Zgodbe kar tako (Slovenian) · Rozprávky len tak (Slovak)
Once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale in the sea, and he ate the fishes — the starfish and the crab, the plaice and the dab, the cuttlefish and the snail and all the twirly-whirly little fishes. At last one small Astute Fish was left in the sea. She swam behind his right ear and said: "Have you ever tasted Man?"
1
"And what is Man like?" said the Whale. "Nubbly, and very tasty," said the Astute Fish. "Out in the middle of the sea sits a shipwrecked Mariner on a raft, in blue breeches and braces, and he is a man of infinite resource and sagacity." So the Whale opened his mouth wide, and wide, and wide — and swallowed the Mariner, raft and braces too.
2
Inside the Whale it was dark and warm, and the Mariner did not like it one bit. So he danced and jumped and stamped until the Whale's insides ached. "Take me home and you shall have peace!" he shouted. And when the Whale coughed him up on the shore, the Mariner wedged a grating of raft and braces deep in his throat. That is why whales eat only tiny things. Just so, O my Best Beloved.
3
In the beginning of years, when the world was quite new, a Camel lived in the middle of a Howling Desert. She did not care to work and she did not care to talk. Whenever anybody asked her anything she said only: "Humph!" The Horse brought a saddle — "Humph!" The Dog brought a stick — "Humph!" The Ox brought a yoke — "Humph!" And the Camel chewed her thorns.
4
So the Horse and the Dog and the Ox did double work, and at last they went to the Djinn of All Deserts. "Is it right that somebody should do nothing at all since Monday morning?" The Djinn wrapped himself in his cloak of desert dust and rolled away across the sand. He found the Camel admiring herself in a pool. "Why do you not work?" And the Camel said: "Humph!"
5
"I shouldn't say that again if I were you," said the Djinn. He waved his hand — and that very humph curled up on the Camel's back and settled there as a great round hump. "Now you can work three days without eating," he said, "for you live on your humph." And from that day the Camel carries her hump — and works for the three days she missed. Just so, O my Best Beloved.
6
In the High and Far-Off Times, O my Best Beloved, the Elephant had no trunk. He had only a blackish bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle from side to side but could pick up nothing at all. Now there was one Elephant's Child, full of insatiable curiosity. "Why is your tail like that?" he asked, and "Why are your eyes red?" — and all his aunts and uncles spanked him in turn.
7
"What does the Crocodile have for dinner?" asked the Elephant's Child — and nobody would tell him. So he set off for the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees. There he found the Crocodile. "Excuse me," he asked most politely, "but what do you have for dinner?" The Crocodile grinned from ear to ear and said: "Come closer, little one, and I shall whisper it."
8
The Crocodile caught him by the nose. The Elephant's Child pulled and pulled and sat back on his little haunches, and a long snake wound round his legs and pulled with him — and the nose stretched longer and longer and longer. When at last it came free, he had a fine long trunk. He picked grass with it, squirted mud on his head, flicked off flies — and at home he spanked every aunt and uncle in turn. Just so, O my Best Beloved.
9
Listen, O my Best Beloved: once all the animals were wild. The Dog was wild, the Horse was wild, the Cow was wild — but the wildest of all was the Cat, who walked by himself, and all places were alike to him. Then one evening a fire burned outside a Cave and the Woman sang. The Wild Dog came for a bone, the Horse for hay, the Cow for grass — and each one stayed by the fire.
10
At last the Cat came to the Cave. "I am neither dog nor horse," he said, "but I should like milk and a warm place by the fire." The Woman smiled: "If ever I praise you three times, you shall have milk and a place by the fire for always." So the Cat hushed her baby and caught a mouse in the Cave — and the Woman praised him three times over. The bargain was made.
11
Ever since, the Cat has his milk and his warm place by the fire. But when the moon gets up he stretches, walks out and goes over the roofs and along the branches. And then he is what he always was. "I am the Cat who walks by himself," he says into the dark, "and all places are alike to me." Just so, O my Best Beloved.
12The End
