Tale #11: The Old Lady And The Thief

A thief was walking along by the river when he came upon an old lady carrying a heavy sack over her shoulder. He called out to her and said, “That sack looks heavy, old dear. Perhaps I can help you carry it.”

“What is in this sack is me and mine alone to carry,” she said, and continued on her way.

The thief then stood in front of her and said, “If you don’t give to me what I want then I will just have to take it for myself.”

“What is in this sack is me and mine alone to carry,” she said again, and continued on her way.

The thief stabbed her in the back as she passed by and pushed her body into the river. He watched her corpse float away and then picked up her sack, undid the cord, and looked inside. Two hands came out and grabbed him round the neck and pulled him screaming into it. Then the old lady climbed out, tied it back up, hoisted it over her shoulder, and continued on her way.

___________

Notes:

1. Written on July 18th, 2014
2. A condensed version of The Old Lady And The Three Brothers

“Why do the dead float?”

The swollen birds heaved themselves from the river and waddled awkwardly across the mud banks. The water they left behind was the same pale orange as the sky, and as silent and still.

“Tell me a story from before I can remember.”
“From before you were born?”
“No. After I was born but before I can remember.”
“Okay. Let me think.”

The sun was almost down. We lit the fire. I stared into it and offered up my nightly prayer.

“I could tell you about the snow.”
“No. I remember that.”
“But you were only one.”
“You’ve told me before. So I can remember that.”
“It’s not the same.”
“I want to hear something new.”
“I could tell you something about before you were born. That’d make it easier.”
“No, I have to be in it. That’s what makes it real.”
“Do you remember the boat?”
“No.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you about the boat.”

*

This was after mum and dad had gone, ages after it seemed, although it couldn’t really have been long, and it was much closer to them going than it was to where we are now. Time can move at different rates, and those first few months lasted forever. You were about three. It was still summer. I would have been nine.

It wasn’t this river. It was a different river. Wider and longer and somehow calmer, almost like a lake at times. The other bank was a world beyond our reach. We found the boat tethered to a collapsed old tree. Or rather you found the boat and I found you in it, your bare feet stamping up and down in the mucky water that puddled in there at one end, where the boat leaned down the shallow bank towards the water.

It was an old rowing boat, wooden, painted a peeling blue on the outside and white inside, about six feet long. All the paint was peeling off and you could see glimpses of the wood beneath it.

I’d seen a lot of boats before, when I was younger. I haven’t seen any since. There were two benches, one at the back and one across the middle, and a single oar tucked under them. A dead frog lay bloated and white in the puddle by your feet. I scooped it out with oar rather than touch it with my hands.

It didn’t take much for me to push the boat into the river. I clambered in and used the oar to push us out, away from the shallows and into the river proper, and we floated away.

What I remember most about the water were the jellyfish. Some just hung there, completely still, suspended motionless in it as if the water was a slab of glass. Others gently pushed their way onwards to wherever it was they were going. The perpetual rippling of their bodies – from the outside edge all the way in towards the centre – was hypnotic and serene. That movement is the way I’ve always dreamed our hearts beat inside us, if only we could ever see them. If somehow we could turn our skin to glass and look down into the dark depths of that sea of blood that fills us up and keeps us alive in some way.

The sun shone that day and there was hardly even a breeze. We left the hum of insects and the cries of birds behind us on the shoreline and drifted out into silence. I let my hand fall into the river and watched the water bubble up and break around it, felt the steady constant push of the current against my palm. You pointed at everything – at the boat, the water, the oar, at the sky and the clouds and at the jellyfish and at me.

The boat crashed heavily and we both fell off our seats. You looked at me for a moment and then burst into tears. I picked you up and held you and comforted you while trying to turn and see what it was that we had hit. It was huge, dead, floating there in the middle of the river. I pushed at it with the oar. It didn’t move, and instead we did, driven slightly back from it for a second, before the current pulled us back toward its mass. I pushed again with the oar and slowly manoeuvred us around it, and once we were past we floated off away and left it behind.

*

“And then what happened?”
“I don’t know. Nothing much.”
“How did we get back?”
“Get back where?”
“Where we started.”
“We didn’t.”
“But what about our things.”
“We had them with us.”
“In the boat?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t say that.”
“I forgot to. It wasn’t important.”
“What else did you forget to say?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Where did we end up? Did we float out into the sea?”
“We got out further up the river. On the other side.”
“What was there?”
“Nothing much. It was like the other bank. It was like this one. Like all of them. Like everywhere.”
“Did we see any people?”
“Not that day.”
“Why do the dead float?”
“I don’t know.”
“And the living sink?”
“I don’t know.”
“It doesn’t seem fair.”
“I don’t think it is.”
“Do you remember mum and dad?”
“A bit. Less and less.”
“I do.”
“You can’t. You were tiny then.”
“I do. Although sometimes I think I made them up. Or you made them up.”
“Maybe we both did.”
“What do you think that thing was in the water?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think you made that up?”
“I don’t know. How would I know? How could I tell?”

The fire crackled as it burned. Smoke drifted up towards the stars. The thin sliver of the moon fell down below the horizon and the last of the light left the night sky.

__________

Notes:

1. Written in June and July, 2012

The Bomb

We’d searched the house frantically for an hour or two now but we still hadn’t found the bomb.

We knew there was a bomb because the Bomb Location Service had rung us up and told us there was a bomb. They advised us to go outside and wait until they could get here, but that could take up to 28 days and we didn’t really want to have to sleep in the garden until then. And anyway our tents were in the house somewhere and if we had to search for them we might as well just search for the bomb.

So we were searching for the bomb but we’d stopped for a cup of tea. My mother was upstairs using the toilet and I was just boiling the kettle and my brother was searching around in the cupboards for some clean mugs making sure that none of the mugs had a bomb in them.

Before the kettle had even boiled my mother started calling down frantically from upstairs that she’d found something.

We found her in my sister’s room.

There was a box on the bed.

“What are you doing in here,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be in here.”

“There’s a box on the bed,” said my mother.

I looked at the bed, and there was a box on the bed.

“Where’d that come from?” I asked, looking at the box that was on the bed.

“Oh, yeah, they delivered that yesterday,” said my brother.

“Who delivered it?” I said.

“The delivery driver did,” he said.

“But what’s it doing in here?” my mother said.

“You didn’t let them come in here, did you?” I said. “They’re not supposed to come in here.”

“They said it was for your sister,” said my brother.

He always called her “your sister” when he was talking about my sister, as if by distancing himself from her he would somehow be absolved of blame, just in case there was going to be any blame.

“But she doesn’t even live here anymore,” I said. “Not till Christmas.”

My mother lifted the top off the box. It wasn’t even taped up or sealed or anything.

Inside the box there was a little pink woollen blanket all folded up neatly and tucked down at the edges like it was a quilt in a doll’s pram.

Whatever was under it was breathing.

We looked at the blanket rising up and down and we all held our breath for a bit and then we stopped holding our breath and my mother said, “What is it?”

“Maybe it’s a hedgehog,” my brother said.

“Why the fuck would it be a hedgehog?” I said.

“David!” hissed my mother.

“I don’t know,” said my brother. “It looks like it might be.”

“It’s not going to be a hedgehog,” I said.

“Well what it is, then?”

“I don’t know!”

My mother shouted, “Don’t shout!” and then the box started to cry and then she said, “Now look what you’ve done!”

She pulled the blanket back and underneath the blanket there was a baby.

“It’s a baby,” said my mother.

“Why’s there a baby in the box?” said my brother.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Well she’s your sister,” my brother said. “Surely she should have told you if she was having a baby delivered here.”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“To make sure you were in when it arrived,” he said. “Imagine if we were all out and they hid it in the wheelie bin like they usually do with parcels when we’re all out and then the binmen had come and emptied the bins before we got back.”

“Don’t say things like that,” my mother said. “It’s not nice.”

The baby was still crying but we were trying our best to pretend it wasn’t crying, but it was crying and it was probably that which was putting us all on edge.

“Can I hold it?” asked my brother.

“It’s not a toy,” I said. “And anyway it’s my sisters.”

“Well, we can’t just leave it in the box forever, can we?” he said. “Can we?”

My brother looked a bit bewildered by it all, to be honest. I shook my head.

“When’s your sister back from uni, anyway?”

“I don’t know. December some time.”

“It better not keep on crying until then,” he said.

It was still crying.

“Shouldn’t we call her?” he said.

“Aw, I wonder the baby’s called,” said my mother.

She had a faraway look in her eyes now.

“Isn’t it lovely?” she said.

Me and my brother didn’t say anything.

“I wonder what it’s called,” she said again.

“We should definitely call her,” my brother said.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll call her.”

“Aren’t you a lovely baby,” my mother cooed. She reached down into the box and picked the baby up and said, “Don’t cry, dearie, it’ll be alright, it’ll be alright.”

The baby exploded.

__________

1. Written on July 17th, 2016

Tale #10: The Old Lady And The Three Brothers

There was a road on which three brothers lived. The youngest of these brothers was a farmer, and one evening as he worked in the fields he saw an old lady walking past. He called to her and said, “My friend, it is a long road ahead, and almost dark. Why not join me for dinner and stay here the night, and continue on your way upon the morn?”

The old lady said, “I am but old and poor, with nothing save the hair upon my head, the clothes upon my back, and the hands I have with which to work.”

To which the man replied, “I expect no payment in return, nor do I wish to place an obligation upon you that you cannot fulfil. I offer my hospitality as a gift, for we are all travellers together in this world, upon a journey we know not where will end.”

“Then I will join you,” said she. “And thank ye kindly.” And they went together to the farmer’s cottage.

There the farmer, though it meant he would go hungry in the days to come, cooked for the lady a fine meal, and while they ate they talked of many things. Later, though it meant he would sleep that night upon the cold stone floor of the hearth, the farmer prepared for her a fine bed, with quilts of fur and blankets of homespun wool to keep her warm. And finally, though it meant by the next morning he would have no more, he piled the last of his wood on the fire and kept it burning until the darkness waned and the sun rose up and brought with it the warmth of the new day.

As she came to leave, the old lady said to the farmer, “You have been greatly kind to me. Although I would not wish to insult you by attempting to pay for that which was freely given, I hope you can accept a small gift from me in return.” And she reached up and took the hair from her head and placed it in the farmer’s hands, and as he held it he saw it was not hair but finely spun yarn of purest gold.

She left him then and went on her way. The road was long, as the farmer had said, and she met no-one on it for the rest of the day. As dusk was falling, she happened upon a large house by the side of the road. The second brother, a merchant, lived there, and on seeing the old lady passing by he came out and said, “My lady, it is a long road ahead, and almost dark. Why not stay here the night, and in the morn continue upon your way?”

The old lady said, “I am but old and poor, with nothing save the clothes on my back, and the hands I have with which to work.”

The merchant looked at her clothes, and saw they were made not from cotton, but from finely spun yarn of purest gold. And so he said, “Then I will have your clothes, for I should be able to sell them for a high price.”

“Then I will join you,” said she. And they went together into the merchant’s house.

The merchant gave her some bread, which was stale and old, and left her at the table to eat by herself. When she had finished he showed her to the cellar and, pointing to the cold stone floor, said, “Here is your bed.” And then he took her clothes in payment, and went back up the stairs and locked the door behind him.

The next morning at the break of dawn he unlocked the door and woke her up and threw her out on to the road. “You tricked me, you witch!” he shouted. “Last night these clothes were made of purest gold. Yet now they are nothing more than old rags.”

“It was your greed that tricked you, not I,” she said, and turned to the road and continued naked on her way.

The road now was longer than ever, and she met no-one on it for the rest of the day nor into the night. Eventually she fell down in exhaustion by the side of the road and lay there asleep until dawn.

The third brother, a king, saw her there and said, “How dare you sleep upon my road. Pay me what is rightfully mine or I will place you in chains and not let you go.”

The old lady said, “I am but old and poor, with nothing save the hands I have with which to work.”

“Then your hands it will be,” said the king. And with a desperate laugh the old lady reached up and throttled him dead.

__________

Notes:

1. Written on July 18th, 2014