Goodbye

I am closing this blog for the moment.

It's been fun, but also a distraction from what I ought to be doing.

Also, I'm afraid much of what I've posted is really quite awful, and I wince to think that it's there to be read: you deserve better

Anything that you've admired will be left here. And if I can think of anything that deserves your time, I'll put it up.

Thanks for reading!

Sarah
xx

Going Grey Again

Dear Reader! When I tried to write this before, it wouldn't come out quite right. But I believe passionately in the principle of thing, and have thought about it a great deal, and tried again. I'm still not sure that this is as it should be, but it's better than it was, and now I hope you'll believe in it, too. Much love, SGP


Stand with me now where she is standing, and see what she sees. Her hands rest on the iron railing round the balcony, pale at the knuckles because she's holding tight. The iron was painted red a long time ago, but now the paint's peeling and showing the metal underneath. The last winter cyclamen are rotting at the roots, but there are still a few reeling back from their stems and showing the blue stains underneath.

At the level of her eyes there's a pair of copper beeches with plum-coloured leaves and a young ash. She finds the ash makes her melancholy - always the last to gain its leaves, and the first to lose them - and there's not much there yet, just a green haze on the branches. Below her a spiteful cat in an apricot coat is sharpening its claws on the blue-grey kerb, and in the gutter a plastic bag is caught in the drain. There's something written on it she can't make out, in yolky letters inches high.

But to her none of these things have colour - not the plum-skin leaves on the beeches or the apricot cat, or the mist on the ash tree. In her sight the road and its yellow lines have faded to grey. She can't make out the clouds from the sky behind it: both are sketched in charcoal, and the sun's a dark thumbprint. Her own hands are flat and pale as paper, and her eyes in the mirror that morning were slate. Looking out she sees pricks of brightness - the sun on a car door as it's pulled shut, for instance - but no colour. The whole world has faded like something left out too long in the sun.

It happened like this.

She'd seen him before, of course. He stood out from the shabby parks and pavements as if he'd been spotlit. Sometimes she passed him on the canal path or saw him flung out in the white litter under a magnolia tree, reading something she recognised, resting the book on his upbent knee. If ever in passing he met her eye she'd throw her gaze down to her ugly shoes: it wouldn't do, she often thought, to be found glancing his way or caught out speaking to him. It made her think of the city pigeons sitting with their shit-stained feet on the Trafalgar lions: the two things ought not to be seen together.

That last day, out in the park after rain and not having seen him for a while, she'd bent to pick up a pine-cone that curved oddly at the tip, and not seeing the stem of gorse beside it drive a thorn deep into the palm of her hand. The shock dried her mouth before she felt it, then the blood welled and brought with it pain. She dropped the cone and gripped hard at her wrist, feeling it as much in her stomach as in her palm.

When an unfamiliar hand reached out and took her wrist and lifted it above her head she was biting too hard on her lip to answer when he said, "Put it up, like this, or it won't stop." She put it up and still unspeaking turned her head, and saw him somehow shining at her, not quite as if her pain amused him, but as if everything did. Seen closely, she saw he was painted brightly, his mouth red as a girl's. There were lights in his hair and on his skin she'd never seen before; he seethed with colour, indecently so; no artist could paint him, she thought - their pallette could never be big enough. She tried to thank him, but standing there was like standing in sunlight, and she felt more than ever that she'd been poorly-assembled, was never without a bruised knee, had never been admired.

He spoke to her again (and she later tried to recall every word and write them down, but by the end of the week they'd gone), and patting his pocket took out a tissue, which he ran up her arm from elbow to wrist, leaving a red streak.

"Now let me see," he'd said, pulling her hand towards him, pressing his thumb into the hollow where her palm met her wrist and with his other hand bending back her fingers a little. "I thought it would be glass," he said, "But it's a thorn, isn't it. Roses?"
"Gorse, I think."
"Shall I try and get it out?" He lifted his head, which had been bent over her hand, and she saw how the whites of his eyes were unmarked, and how their pupils, which were the colour of chestnuts just out of the case, were ringed with black.
She said: "Please", and he felt for its end, but his fingers were blunt and she flinched when it drove in a little deeper.
"I could try my teeth," he said. It occurred to her much later that he might have been joking, but because the thorn frightened her, and the tips of her fingers were sore, she took her hand out of his and flexing back her fingers offered him her palm. He looked at her for a moment, then bent his head and on an indrawn breath fixed the thorn between his teeth and pulled it out. He let her hand drop and spat it onto the grass.
"There," he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. "Did I get it all out?"
The blood came again, more quickly but without pain, and she put her thumb onto the puncture and pressed down. "I think so," she said, and stepped back because he smiled at her then and it was too much for her.

Whether she thanked him, or whether he wished her well and said goodbye, she couldn't recall, only that when he went, he took with him the sunlight.

So she's standing there on the balcony, pressing her hand against the rail and feeling the thorn still there in her palm. Those minutes in his company, which after all had been very few, seem somehow to have used her up. By degrees, one day after the other, every smudge and flash of colour is leaving her sight. She often walks past her own front door, not seeing its familiar blue paint, or the colour of her kitchen blind. She's forgotten that her own eyes are flecked with green, only remembering that his had been frank as a child's. She can't remember the patterns made by oil on water, but can recall as clearly as if he still held her arm that on his upturned wrist branching veins ran blue under the skin.

You'd think it would make her unhappy, always setting her feet on grey stones in a grey city; but it simply preserves for her more brightly that afternoon, which she keeps close in vivid colour, and won't forget. Since he's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen, on both sides of his skin, it always strikes her as a fair exchange.

I don't seem to be able to write: so here's something from someone who could.

Seraph (Part I)

Only the opening, since it is rather long; the remainder to follow in due course. This was published in the Bedford Square 2 anthology (John Murray), 2007.

Waking early on hearing a fox at her gate, the late Martha Day put on her dressing gown, and went downstairs to make tea. She passed an angel on the landing: it had been there since last Tuesday, and looked as if it were tired.

She knew her way so well there was no need to turn on the lights, which in any case had such grimed shades, and such dim bulbs, they’d have been little use. Making her way to a table occupied by half a dozen young cherubs, one of whom had lost a wing, she heard the bark of the fox fade as it moved on to other gardens. She pushed aside a cherub to make room for the kettle, which she’d set on the stove to boil.

Pouring her tea, Martha saw that the sun was rising. She planned to make her way to town, as she did every fortnight, and was grateful that it seemed unlikely to rain: for months she’d examined the effect of rain on birds’ wings, and concluded that angels were most likely to be seen when it was dry. She turned to a photograph hung beside her, flanked by a severe pair of seraphim, showing a gentle-faced man with untidy hair.

“Morning, father,” she said. “The day's set fair. The barometer shows no change in air pressure, and there’s no sign of rain. I’ll be leaving soon.” She rose to wipe a little of the dust from the glass that covered him, and after a while said quietly, “I do think, you know, that you were right.”

Having spent his life in such an extremity of rationalism that he once attempted to find the mathematical formula for a sense of melancholy, her father had gone out one morning and found a French bible on the doorstep. Seeing it was still there when he returned home, he took it inside, abandoning for a moment his principles against having such books in the house. It remained unread for weeks, until one day, when it was raining and he was bored, he decided to use it to teach himself French.

Within six months he found himself proficient, though he spoke with a strange and beautiful formality. Martha, coming home one afternoon, was surprised to find herself greeted with a discomfiting pair of Gallic kisses; but this was nothing compared to her astonishment on later discovering that her father – who’d carried his unbelief above him like a banner - had developed an unshakeable faith in the existence of angels.

“I hasten to add, Martha,” he said, opening a dusty tin of biscuits, “That I maintain my objections to the vast majority of what is contained in this book.” He prodded the bible scornfully. “I cannot ally myself to such sensationalist nonsense, such manifest departures from the credible! As you know, I cherish reason above all things, and it’s in this that the angelic realm seems to me to embody all that I have sought.”

He poured her a cup of tea. “I have for some years been troubled by little mysteries, such as the fact that when one looks at the Pleiades, one can never see all seven stars at the same time: one star is always in darkness. You have observed this yourself, of course.”
“Of course,” said Martha.
“Other things,” he went on, gesturing with a biscuit, “Have puzzled me. Your mother, for example, would frequently come in from the garden, thinking that I’d called her, when often I had hardly drawn breath. Is it not possible that there are beings, acting fully in accordance with fundamental laws, whose actions may offer explanations for all these things?”
“But wouldn’t we see them, if they’re so often at work?” asked Martha.
Her father frowned. “You cannot expect me to provide you with detailed explanations at this early stage,” he said. “I intend to investigate further at the earliest opportunity, and handed in my notice this morning. I will need to take lodgers: have you a copy of the Gazette? I shall place a notice.”

On Fear

I'm not afraid of anything, I often say, citing my road-crossing technique, which includes throwing myself into the path of the number 26 to Waterloo with a merry grin. But, dear me, what an untruth! There are three things that frighten me, so much I taste metal on my tongue:

The Monster Under The Bed
I can't sleep unless I've first pulled at the covers until both feet are completely tucked-in. This is because the monster that has lived under any bed I've ever slept in is only interested in feet (I don't know why, and don't like to ask), and for some reason won't bother me if he can't see them. If I wake up, and my feet are uncovered, there's a good deal of frantic scrabbling until they're decently protected, and it takes a while for my heart to settle down. If it's very hot - too hot for covers - then there has to be a very complicated arrangement of sheets only wrapping my feet. He really isn't interested in anything else. He's a fetishist. I don't blame him: my feet are absolutely charming.

I know what you're thinking! But I've thought of it too: wearing socks doesn't count, and also (this is crucial) if I am sleeping on the floor, the monster still threatens me, though heaven only knows where he is, at that point. Absorbed in the floorboards, perhaps? Lying underneath me, flattened thin as the sheets? Also, he likes to change things up a little, and sometimes, when I'm ascending a staircase in the dark, that thin-fingered hand is dabbling at the steps, feeling for my bare ankles...ah! I just shivered!

The Stars
This is quite a new terror, and came on me last year, as I unzipped the tent in a dark Norfolk field an hour or so before sunrise.

The stars don't trouble us much here, veiled by flouride streetlights and exhaust fumes, but there it's a different matter, and as I put back my head to see them I was pole-axed with terror, not having seen anything like it before. The night was indecently bright with them, so that there was more light than blackness, and it made the sky seem low-bellied and heavy. I put up my fist thinking I could knock on it and hear it ring hollow; it was pressing down on me, and I remember wondering if I should kneel down, so as not to bang my head.

It was the first time I'd seen the Milky Way, and it was like a plume of smoke, and though I've had a moon-shadow many times that night I had a shadow from starlight. I wanted to stay and remember every prick and bloom of it, but standing with my face turned up I thought I was looking into a shower of falling glass, and imagined coming back to the tent with my face in ribbons. So I pulled up my hood and ran as fast as I could to the toilets, where there was, of course, no toilet roll.

The Third Fear
Can you keep a secret?

You can?

Yes, well: so can I.

Memento Mori

Terror and consolation and beauty and horror, all at once, in 22 little colourless squares:

www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/mar/31/lifebeforedeath?picture=333325401

This will do for the moment, since I now can think of nothing but these, and not a single damn phrase I can write will do it justice...

The Moon in Pieces

(for Michelle, with my love; and for Gold class)

Once upon time, so long ago that all memories of it have been shut up in boxes and locked with brass keys, there was a pirate-ship whose name no-one ever told me.

I'm sure you've heard that pirate-ships are the biggest and best of all the ships that sail the seas, and you should believe it: this one had masts so high they reached the clouds, and a deck so wide that if you ran from port to starboard the sun would rise and set before you'd reached the other side.

Its black sails were mended every morning by the Captain's daughter, who sewed with her own yellow hair. Its boards were painted black, except where the Captain's son put prints of his hands in red paint. All along the sides were thirteen cannon, and the cannon were red, and the crow's nest high up on the main-mast had a seat with a red cushion, because no-one should be uncomfortable, even if they're pirates and thieves.

You see, these pirates were thieves, which is shocking of course; but I think it's important to tell you the truth. It wasn't gold they stole, or silver. Money didn't interest them one bit, and they wouldn't have had any idea what to do with diamonds or sapphires or rubies or pearls, or even with books, which are the greatest of all treasures.

No: these pirates were song-thieves. It was music they wanted, and they'd sailed the seas for ninety-three years, always keeping an ear to the wind to listen for it, sailing silent at night close by ports and lighthouses and fishingboats, stealing away the music they heard.

They never slept on that pirate-ship, because the best music comes out at night. Below decks, in the galley, the keel, the hold and the bilge, they kept music playing every half-minute of every half-hour, on pipes and drums and stringed instruments and on an organ with pipes made from a whale's bones. They were always singing in case they forgot something they'd heard long ago. I don't think they knew how to speak like you or me. They said everything singingly.

All this is very nice, but it did mean that the Captain and his mate were absolutely hopeless at firing the cannon. They did it every week, on a Wednesday evening, just as the sun was washing itself in the sea, and something often went wrong. Once the Captain blew the skull-and-crossbones off his hat, so that his daughter had to sew it on again, with her yellow hair. Once the Captain's mate forgot to light the fuse, and sat beside it for seven hours with his legs crossed, humming a tune stolen from a swimming boy, waiting for it to fire.

On the particular evening I'm telling you about, the Captain sang a new song so beautiful and funny and sad that the crew sighed and laughed and cried all at the same time, which I'm sure has happened to you, and which can give you terrible tummy-ache. So it wasn't until the sun had gone away and left the moon alone in the black sky that he remembered it was a Wednesday, and time to fire the cannon.

He ran to the deck with his son and his daughter and his mate, and looked up at the black sky and the silver moon, and down at the black sea. The silver moon's silver reflection lay on the water and shivered.

"Tell you what, me hearties," he said (pirates really do speak like that): "Tell you what. Let's fire the cannon at the moon." And without thinking, because music at night can make you behave in strange ways, he pulled the cannon down, and fired it into the black water, and into the reflection of the moon.

A terrible thing happened then, so terrible it happened every day after that and is still happening now. The moon on the sea, which had been as round and as perfect and as silver as the real moon up in the black sky, broke into pieces. It shattered into silver shards. Pieces of it were carried away on the backs of mackerel swimming by. Pieces of it were caught on the Captain's cutlass. Pieces of it shone in his daughter's yellow hair. Pieces of it flew into his son's eyes and flashed there for years. Pieces were taken by birds and carried to the east and the west.

The Captain stood on the black deck and looked at the black sea and the moon in pieces. He was silent for thirty-six minutes, and then he sang his last song, which has a long echo, and which you can still hear now on a quiet night, if you listen hard enough.

Pirates know something very important, which is that being sad for longer than thirty-six minutes never did anyone any good, and so the Captain set about putting it back together. Wherever he found moon-pieces, he threw them overboard in the place where it was broken. Sometimes he saw it shining on his silver knife just as he was eating his tea, and he threw the knife in the water. Sometimes he saw it shining on his daughter's silver necklace, and he threw the necklace in the water, which made her very cross indeed.

But mostly he saw it where you and I see it now, at night-time in buckets and bowls and puddles, in watering-cans and flower-pots full of rain and in your spoon, or in lakes and ponds and smaller seas: small bits of silver moon, lying on the top. Have you never seen it? Then take a bucket outside at midnight, and there it will be.

I don't think it really matters that the pirates broke the moon on the water, because I like to keep pieces of it with me now. But if you like, you can try and catch the bits you find, and throw them back in the sea. And maybe you could sing a song for the Captain, in case he is listening, because he really is the most terrible thief.

That Saved A Wretch Like Me

We covered our hair, which was left to grow long, in dark hats that in the summer made our foreheads itch. Our nails were unpolished, and though once I tried to paint my eyes and cheeks they first laughed (well: I suppose I did it badly) then offered me tissues to wipe it away. We wore long skirts. Sometimes I'd made them but not well, so that I was scared the seams would split when I sat in the pew. When we were very young we'd mark our territory on the brown strips of velvet that covered the seats: I sat on my side of the pencil and she sat on hers. There's a place in the small of my back that curves in too far, so that the back of the pew couldn't touch it, and sometimes I'd push a hymnbook in there to stop it hurting.

These hymnbooks were almost a hundred years old, and I liked to fray at the fabric that covered the boards and make a fringe of it. The paper was spotted and I remember that there were more than a thousand songs in them, some of them so sad that my throat would close up when I sang. There was a harmonium at the front. I don't know how old it was. Someone had made a box to cover it in dark plywood which was marked with damp, but inside there were ivory keys and a pretty wicker board above them. There was a pair of pedals you had to pump with your feet as you played and a dozen ivory stops which were painted with their names. When I played, I'd pull out the one called vox humana, and think how little it sounded like any human voice I'd ever heard.

To our left was the county cricket ground and to our right the footpath that ran to the cinema I'd never been inside. On sunny days we'd hear not the wickets falling or the umpire's voice, but the applause, which always seemed impertinent under the high cold roof. I'd see on the other side people passing behind the window, which had thick mottled glass so I couldn't see their faces or what they wore, but I knew they'd look nothing like me. And if ever they passed while we were singing I wouldn't be ashamed of it, because I'm telling you now you'll never hear a word or phrase sung more truthfully than there.

At the back there's a narrow door on each side and it's nearly impossible to come in without it flying back against the painted walls. Sometimes with my covered head bowed I'd hear someone unexpected come in, and I'd turn to look and think: will this be it?

And I think: what if one day it had been you, or someone like you? Would it have been like being split by lightning, or would it not have mattered at all?

Katerina Finds Her Tongue

KATERINA FINDS HER TONGUE

Once upon a time, in a land you've never heard of, there lived a woman with very beautiful hands. So beautiful were they that when a king rode by, seated on his black giraffe, he said to himself, "I must have her, or I shall die." The king was mistaken in this; but he was a man, and must be pitied rather than despised.

Being a king, he did as kings do, and the beautiful-handed woman, whose name I forgot long ago, lived for nine days and nine nights in his ugly palace on the riverbank. On the ninth night he noticed a blister on her palm, and his love dissipated like an early mist in summer, and he bade her depart; but since he wasn't a bad man (as men go), he gave her threepence, and a kiss on the cheek. He watched her go, and sighing said, "I shall never love again." That night he dreamt that the moon was an eye that wept dew on the grass, and he wept in his sleep, and never woke.

Nature had its way, as it so often does, and the beautiful-handed woman gave birth to a daughter, and named her Katerina. "It's as good a name as any," she observed, and went out to plant her potatoes.

It is only reasonable to suppose that a girl in a fairy story should be beautiful and good, and Katerina was both of these. So bright were her eyes that the violets on the riverbank closed their petals in shame as she passed. Her hair was amber-coloured, and grew an inch each night, so that though she bound it three times about her white brow, still she carried a sheaf of it over her arm as she walked. So light were her feet that she walked in silence, and once, going to buy black bread, the baker thought an angel had suddenly appeared, and fell into the bread oven, and died. Her mother ought to have hated her for her beauty, but Katerina had excessively ugly hands, with broad palms and stout fingers, and nails bitten to the quick, and so she preserved her vanity, and gave a little affection to her daughter on the feasts of St Stephen and St Nicholas.

That Katerina was beautiful and good is not the most interesting thing about her. What is interesting about her is this: Katerina had no tongue. Her mouth, which was framed by gentle lips that lay in a gentle smile, was perfectly empty. On delivering her, the midwife, peturbed at her silence, smacked her seven times to break her quietitude. When she saw the empty mouth, she fainted clean away, and knocked her head on the firegrate, so that when she woke, she thought she was a cat, and for the rest of her days would wander the little village mewing for saucers of milk.

Katerina's silence didn't bother her mother, who was not a good woman, or an imaginative one. It didn't much bother her, either, until the morning of her sixteenth birthday, when the blacksmith rode past on a grey horse, and wearing very little besides a leather apron. Katerina dropped her potatoes, and said to herself: "Whilst it is certainly the case that I am as beautiful as I am good, this is a man for whom I might be persuaded to be really very badly behaved indeed." The blacksmith, seeing her amber hair and violet eyes, and never having been a man much bothered by ugly hands, slowed his horse as he passed.

Katerina opened her mouth to bid him good morning (or good afternoon: I don't recall the details), but, since she lacked a tongue, what emerged was merely a sort of moan. The blacksmith said to himself, "Why, the girl's a fool!", and rode on by, much disappointed, since his cottage was very untidy, and he had never properly mastered the art of making soup and dumplings.

Katerina threw a potato after him (which may be the very worst thing she had ever done), and sat on the withered grass beneath a poplar tree, and wept. She wept for seven days and seven nights, and although this did very little to mar her beauty, it did make her eyes rather sore, and so eventually she stopped. Lifting her pretty head from her pretty arms, she looked about her, and saw something that seemed to her to be a vision. Swimming a little in the remnants of her tears was a small man apparently dressed in a knitted grey jerkin, with a handsome head of golden curls, and eyes as wise as they were black.

"Who are you?" asked Katerina, forgetting for a moment that she had no tongue.This was of no matter to the small man, who simply nodded, and opened his mouth, which seemed (although Katerina thought this was simply her tears) to be as knitted and as grey as his clothes. He opened his mouth, and she saw that he, too, had no tongue. This was apparently less of a problem for him than for her (fortunately, as this story would have a very different ending if it was at all logical), because he opened his mouth again, and said, in a voice so dark it had the colour of treacle, "I am the Puppet Head."

Katerina nodded: this seemed to her a sensible name, since, now that she looked a little more closely, and now that her tears were drying, the man had the unmistakeable appearance of a puppet. You or I might have run away at this: we might have been frightened, or peturbed, or possibly (though this seems to me to be very unlikely) not at all interested. Katerina, however, may have been as beautiful as she was good, but she was not a bright girl, and took things very much as they came.

"You have lost your tongue," observed The Puppet Head, for he was an astute puppet, as puppets go. Katerina nodded mournfully.
"It seems to me," The Puppet Head went on, in a voice so dark it had the colour of ebony, "That sitting looking prettily mournful is not the solution to so sad a problem."
Katerina nodded again, and sensing that The Puppet Head was not perhaps as entranced by her beauty as she might have expected, opened her eyes so wide that the sun passed behind a cloud out of sheer envy.
"That sort of thing will not impress me in the slightest," said The Puppet Head, in a voice so dark it had the colour of jet, and that was, by this time, very nearly as sharp. "Dry your tears, child. Many a long year have a walked this riverbank by this ugly palace on these cold shores, and I think I have a pretty shrewd idea where your tongue might be."
Katerina jumped up, and smiled so brightly that the sun fell into a sulk at being so comprehensively outshone, and set three hours too early. She indicated, by gesturing with her dirty little hands, that where The Puppet Head went, there she would follow.

For seven days and seven nights she followed him, past the ugly palace on the riverbank, past the potato fields, beyond the white mountains where the black giraffes were hunted with glass spears on the dead king's birthday, and finally to a forest where grey moths flew by day, and white butterflies flew by night. "Wait awhile, child," said The Puppet Head, and sat beneath a tree that grew apples and pears on its lower branches, and nothing at all above. They waited until there was neither sun nor moon in the sky, until there came a lift and flurry of birds, and a lift and whistle of birdsong, and all around a rustle of russet wings.

"Chaffinches," said The Puppet Head, and his voice was so dark, and so full of hatred, that the moon came up a little too quickly out of sheer fright. "I can't stand the thieving little swine," he explained to Katerina, who was simply not bright enough to wonder what a thousand chaffinches were doing out by the light of the moon. "We must follow!" cried The Puppet Head, and in the absence of an arm with which to point, nodded his curly golden head in the direction that the chaffinch-flock flew.

Follow they did, and at such a speed that Katerina's gown was almost torn off by the grasping branches of the pear trees, but since she was as beautiful below the neck as above, you needn't worry that this small detail will spoil the story. After seven miles, they came to a great pear tree that grew figs on its lower branches, and nothing at all above. On the topmost branch was a great nest, and the chaffinches circled the nest in a fury, so that every now and then a small tornado grew up, and tore the leaves from the trees around.

"I can follow no further," said The Puppet Head. His voice lightened, so that it became the colour of the night where it meets the morning. "You must be strong, child. Climb! Climb!" Laying his head briefly on her knee (which was naked by now, and smooth in the moonlight, although I do not like to think that The Puppet Head was at all motivated by this fact), he turned his head to the great nest in the pear tree, and Katerina knew what she must do.

It was rather a long climb, and but what use is being sixteen if a little tree-climbing defeats you. So it was that in a very short time she had reached the nest, and defending herself from the chaffinches with her arms, she looked down into it, and saw that it was full, from bottom to brim and from left to right, with tongues. If there is one advantage to not being very bright, I think it's probably that you are not easily scared, and so instead of crying, or falling out of the tree, Katerina very sensibly climbed in, and began trying out the tongues for size. Some of them were babies' tongues, and made little crying noises when she lifted them to her mouth. These she lay aside very carefully. Some were sharp, and hurt her hands when she picked them up, and she cast them aside, which is the only proper thing to do with the tongue of a mother-in-law. Some were old and dry, and these she simply trod on, because she was only sixteen, and there's nothing so cruel as youth. Eventually she found one that fit, and putting it into her mouth, she tried her voice out for size, and screamed a scream of joy and rage and anger and mirth all at once. It rang over the pear-tree forest and past the blue mountains and killed three black giraffes, and past the riverbank into the ugly palace, where it broke the third-best stained glass window. More importantly, it terrified the chaffinches, who lifted away in a great russet-winged cloud, so that she climbed down without any trouble from beak or claw.

"Well done," said The Puppet Head solemnly.
"Thank you," said Katerina, and by these first words demonstrated that she was a very nicely-brought-up young lady. They journeyed home in relative happiness, for although The Puppet Head was a valorous man, he was easily bored, and Katerina (as I think I have said) was not very bright. When they came to the potato fields beside the village, Katerina turned to thank her friend, but he'd gone, every bit as mysteriously as he had appeared, and we can only assume that he continues going about his duties to this very day.

"Oh well," said Katerina. "Nice chap." And I think you'll agree with me that by these words she demonstrated the proper place of the excessively beautiful, which is that they should also be rather dull. Then came the tread of the blacksmith's horse, and this time the blacksmith stopped so suddenly that he flew over the horse's head, and landed on a potato.

Seeing that the girl's state of undress was a more than adequate compensation for dumb idiocy, the blacksmith instantly offered her his hand in marriage. I would have liked to be able to tell you that Katerina refused him, knowing that he could never love her as well as she deserved, but she did not. "Yes please," she said, and the blacksmith was so delighted that not only had she found her tongue but she also appeared to be nicely-brought-up, that he married her on the spot, because blacksmiths are allowed to do that sort of thing.

It is not a very satisfactory ending, but I am a truthful teller of tales, and that, you see, is simply how it was.