The Adventures of King Midas (Red Storybook) Page 4

  “Do you give your word? Anything I ask?”

  “Yes, yes!” cried the King. “Only please hurry!”

  “You should never use that word to a man of magic,” said Nandan. “It is not polite.” At this moment he tripped over his beard and fell flat on his face, but as he was falling he worked a spell that made the ground in front of him turn into a feather mattress.

  “Now,” he continued, making himself comfortable on it. “I am a very lonely magician. I’ve been lonely for hundreds of years, so I can wait a few more. Just until that beautiful daughter of yours is old enough to get married.”

  The King gasped.

  “You don’t mean you want her as a reward for –”

  “Seven years from now,” Nandan said, “or eight at the most, I shall come and marry her. Unless, of course,” he added carelessly, blowing another series of green smoke-rings at the sky, “you’d rather keep her for ever – as she is.”

  The King was silent.

  I originally mentioned that the King had one fault. You may have noticed at least one other – the tendency to lose his temper. Now I have to reveal a third.

  Since he had lost his queen, the thought of one day losing Delia too – though differently – had set up an unnatural rebellion in his heart. He dreaded the loneliness he would feel when what he thought of as “some young whippersnapper” came to carry her off.

  If anyone had asked him, “What, you mean she’s to be an old maid, just to give you company in your old age?” he would have been shocked. No, no, he was not so selfish! But he would not part with her to just any young whippersnapper. It was no more than a father’s duty to be rigorously selective.

  So he had let it be known that he would never give her hand in marriage, unless it should be to a royal prince who could grow a better rose than the King.

  This sounded quite reasonable – no prince ever married a princess unless he could prove he had something special going for him. But in fact, it actually meant that Delia would never marry at all, because the King was one of the best – if not the very best rose grower in the world. Princes, I might add, are not known as good gardeners, in fact most of them wouldn’t know a trowel from a rhododendron.

  But now here was a difficulty Midas had not foreseen. Either he had to promise that when Delia was eighteen she should marry this little old magician, or keep her for ever as a golden statue.

  He thought and thought, while the little man lay in front of him on his mattress, smoking and playing with his long beard. At last the King gave a deep sigh and said:

  “Very well. If you can tell me how to bring Delia back to life, and take the magic off my hands, you have my permission to marry her. But only if she wants to.”

  “That,” said the magician, leaping nimbly to his feet, “goes without saying.” With a wave of his hand he turned the mattress into a box-hedge shaped like a wedding cake.

  “This means she is alive?” said the King eagerly.

  “She is, and she isn’t,” said Nandan. “She isn’t at this moment, and nor will she ever be again unless we can bring off one of the most difficult tricks in the book – the reversal of a permanent spell. I admit it’s beyond my powers, but there are those more learned in the magic arts than myself, who … Alas, not all of them are as benign as I … in fact, some of the cleverest are really very wicked indeed … We must hope you don’t have to resort to one of that kind, or the price I have requested will seem as nothing.”

  The King swallowed. The magician produced a red leather thinking-cap out of the air and put it on.

  “Got to get your hands right – that’s the first priority,” he said. “The only possible hope for that is Old Gollop.”

  “Old who?”

  “Old Gollop is the Father of the River Cijam.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a river. It can’t be in my kingdom.”

  “Ah, but it is. When it can be found at all. Among us it’s known as Cijam, which is ‘magic’ backwards, because it can de-spell all kinds of things.”

  “What do you mean, ‘when it can be found at all’? Isn’t it in a fixed place?”

  “Yes … no … Oh really, it’s very hard to explain to one outside the magic fraternity. You have to be shown, I mean led – that is, someone has to –”

  Suddenly he stopped, and stood with one hand to his ear as if trying to catch some faint but vitally important call.

  “Too bad!” he said in his cracked voice. “Have to go. Sorry.”

  With that, he started to melt, like butter on a hot plate, very quickly into the ground. Before the King could grasp what was happening, he had melted almost right away.

  “Stop! Come back! Bread loze, loom aben, I mean – Led hose, broom amen -I mean, DON’T LEAVE ME!” gibbered the King. “You must tell me how to find Old Whatsisname!”

  Out of the blob that was all that was left of the magician, a slurry voice, like syrup pouring, said: “The ash-birds know!” Then the blob sank into the ground and was gone.

  Chapter Five

  Old Gollop

  If the King had had a beard, he would have pulled it right off with frustration. But after a while, he stopped dancing up and down with rage, and started to think.

  The ash-birds know!

  What could the ash-birds be?

  Then he remembered. Of course! The little green birds that magically flew away whenever a bit of ash fell off Nandan’s black cigar!

  But how could he find one?

  He felt so hopeless about it that he sat down in the grass and put his head in his hands. After a moment, he began to cough.

  At first he thought this was just part of the awful cold he had (he was still soaking wet from the rain.) But it wasn’t that kind of cough. It was a tickle in his throat. And suddenly he noticed that a thin curl of smoke was floating up from the grass.

  Green smoke.

  He peered down, and there, sure enough, was the butt-end of the black cigar, still alight, with a little piece of green ash on the end!

  “Saved!” he all but shouted. “Now all I have to do is pick it up, and –”

  The treacherous right hand was actually reaching towards the cigar, when Midas, unable to stop it, rolled violently away, dragging the hand after him.

  “Not this time, you don’t,” he growled at his own hand, which drooped from his wrist as if disappointed that its plot had been foiled.

  Holding his right hand in his left, behind his back, he rolled over onto his knees and, very uncomfortably because of his round stomach, put his face into the grass. With great difficulty he managed to get the cigar-butt between his lips.

  He lifted his head cautiously so as not to disturb the ash, and puffed and puffed till there was hardly anything left of the cigar at all. Midas was not a smoker, and the smoke from this cigar was ferociously strong. It stung his nostrils, his eyes, and worst of all, his throat, but he dared not let himself cough.

  Just when his lips were going to get burnt if he puffed once more, the piece of ash fell off at last.

  Up from the grass flew the little green ash-bird. Midas dropped the cigar and scrambled to his feet. Over the box-hedge and away across the palace garden went the tiny bird, with the King in hot and breathless pursuit.

  It was lucky that the ash-bird didn’t fly through the town. People would have thought it very strange to see their King, puffing and panting, with his face turned up to keep his small guide in sight, running through the streets of the capital.

  Instead, the bird led him across fields and meadows, through gates and over stiles, along country lanes and under the branches of trees. The King had no idea where they were going because he was looking up all the time, which is how it happened that he suddenly found himself face down in a foot of ice-cold water.

  By the time he had picked himself up, soaking wet once more from head to foot, the ash-bird was nowhere in sight.

  He looked around in all directions.

  He was standing up to his calves in a qu
iet little river that ran between two meadows. On his right it disappeared into a clump of trees. On his left, it twisted out of sight among some rocks that were the beginning of a range of hills. Except for a cow, peacefully chewing the cud near him, there wasn’t a living thing in sight.

  “What can I do now?” the King asked himself. “My ash-bird has gone, and I’ve no idea where I am.”

  He was so wet! Surely the first thing to do was to wring out his clothes. He took off his shirt first and began wringing the sleeves. When he’d got as much river-water out of it as possible, he laid it on the bank in the sun, before removing his trousers and his vest for the same treatment.

  It was only when he took his shoes off to empty the water out of them that he stopped dead.

  He stared at the wet shoe in his hands. Then his eyes snapped to the clothes laid out to dry. The shoe was made of leather and the clothes were made of cloth. Still.

  The King felt as if a black monster that had been crouching on his back had suddenly flown away. He leapt to his bare feet and began capering about in his underpants, filled with joy and relief.

  “Hooray!” he shouted, like a schoolboy again. “It’s the River Cijam! I’ve found it! I’m saved! Delia’s saved! We’re all saved! Hooray!”

  The cow looked at him in surprise.

  “Dear cow!” cried the King, lost to all sense of decorum. “I’m all right again. Look! I can stroke you!” And he did.

  And she turned into solid gold.

  The black monster, having had a little flap around, settled itself back upon poor Midas, who almost collapsed with disappointment.

  But he pulled himself together again quickly.

  He had to understand this. He rushed back to the river and dabbled his fingers in the water. It stayed water. He picked up some pebbles from the bed of the stream. He pulled a swaying weed that grew up from the bottom. They stayed as they were.

  He was baffled. He wiped his wet hand on the grass to dry it, and then he noticed something. The first wipe changed nothing. But with the second wipe, a few leaf-edges and blades of grass became gold. His hand was dry now. He laid it on the bank and lifted it. There was the outline of his hand in gold, made up of grass-blades and tiny leaves and flowers.

  “Ah! So that’s it!”

  It was the River Cijam all right, and its waters were powerful enough to fight the magic. His wet clothes were resistant. The water itself could not be affected, and while his hands were wet, all was safe from their enchantment. But as soon as they were dry …

  “But Nandan said the river could de-spell me,” he thought. “Here, it clearly can’t … I still have my cursed magic touch! I shall have to find Old Gollop. He’s the Father of the River. So I must follow it into the hills until I find its source.”

  He sat down, with unusual patience, to wait until his clothes were more or less dry. Then, dipping his hands often to keep them wet, he dressed himself and put on his shoes.

  He left the golden cow standing in the field and began to walk along by the river. Soon the path grew steeper and steeper until he was turning rocks and trees and bushes into gold by using them to pull himself upward.

  By this time the river no longer flowed along quietly, but splashed past him over waterfalls. He noticed that as the way got steeper, the river was getting smaller, narrower and shallower.

  At last he was very high up in the hills. The river here was no more than a trickle, hurrying down over the stones in a series of waterfalls. He was getting very tired by now, but he’d forgotten his hunger until he saw some berries on a briar.

  “Ah! Blackberries! Careful, now …”

  It was hard to bite them off and he got his face badly scratched, but they tasted wonderful – wonderful! Even the few he managed to eat helped allay his hunger pangs. He wondered if they might be magic, too, so near to this extraordinary river.

  He rounded a bend in the path, and all at once, up ahead of him, he saw it! A great rock in the shape of a huge head – an old man’s head. Out of its mouth poured the beginnings of the river.

  “That’s him!” the King realised at once, and panted up the last few yards, certain in his heart that the end of his quest was in sight.

  But just as he reached the rock, a strange thing happened.

  The water stopped flowing. The last trickle ran out of the gaping mouth, down the hillside – and no more followed.

  “Excuse me,” said the King. “Are you by any chance Old Gollop?”

  “I am,” replied the rock in a rumbling, grinding voice.

  Breathlessly the King explained his plight, and his errand.

  “Ah! If you’d only come ten minutes ago,” grated Old Gollop, “I could have helped you. You see, to take the spell off for good, you would have to wash your hands in the river where it first comes out of my mouth. That is where the anti-spelling power of the water is strongest. But I’m sorry to say my throat has been blocked up by that old witch, Wuzzleflump, and unless something is done, the River Cijam will just…” he wheezed for a moment. “Dry – up,” he said at last, ominously.

  He gave a heavy sigh, like the wind round an old stone house.

  “I’m losing my voice, too,” he said indistinctly.

  “But that’s appalling!” cried the King. “How can we clear your throat?”

  “There’s only one thing that would do it,” wheezed Old Gollop gloomily. “And you know what that is.”

  “No I don’t!”

  “A flandy-bake, naturally.”

  “A what?”

  The old rock sighed again, pityingly this time. “You are obviously a very ill-educated person,” he said sorrowfully. “Flandy-bakes are highly effective, and extremely tasty, anti-witchidants.” Midas looked perfectly blank. “Anti – witch – Oh, never mind! Can you get me one, that’s the question?”

  “I could try,” said the King eagerly. “If I only knew what I was looking for.”

  There was a deep, grinding, growling sound from deep in the rock as Old Gollop cleared his throat a little.

  “Magic – fruits –” he ground out. “Grow – trees – witch – stole – feed – mumbo—”

  Midas was beginning to panic. Gollop’s voice was almost inaudible now, and he seemed to be talking nonsense.

  “Where is the witch?” he shouted into a crevice he took to be Gollop’s ear.

  “Not – deaf –” whispered the rock.

  “Sorry! Sorry! But please – try to tell me!”

  Gollop gave a cough that sounded like grindstones rubbing together, and screeched out with the very last of his voice: “Behind – seventh – fall – mind – mumbo!”

  And that incomprehensible word was the last Midas could get out of him. The King said a respectful goodbye and started scrambling down the hillside again.

  He might be stupid about some things, but Midas was quite quick on the uptake about others. “Behind seventh fall” made instant sense to him. The trouble was, as there was no more water to make waterfalls, it was difficult to count them; but it was all right, because when he got to the seventh he saw that, behind where the water would have been, if there had been any, was a little wooden door.

  It was streaked with wet green mosses, and a big ugly fungus grew out of it in three layers. The handle and hinges were old and thick with rust, and there was a notice under a bellrope that said:

  RING WRONG SING SONG BEWARE OF THE MUMBO!

  “Now then,” thought the King. “I must be careful.” Though he had never personally encountered a witch, he knew they were not to be fooled around with. According to his information, Riddling Witches were the most dangerous kind.

  “‘Ring wrong’,” mused the King. “Well. How would one ring if one were ringing right? One would pull a bellrope, of course. So as I’ve been told to ring wrong, I‘ll try pushing it.”

  The rope, when pushed upwards, gave a quick wiggle and disappeared into its hole above the door like a golden snake (for of course, it was gold by then).

&nbs
p; Just as the King was wondering what sort of song to sing when the witch came to answer the door, it creaked open by itself, and the King saw a long, dark passage ahead of him, leading straight into the heart of the hill. It smelt of damp and rot, and had long stalactites hanging from the roof like greenish swords waiting to fall.

  The King needed to sing, to keep up his courage. He made up a song on the spot that fitted the occasion:

  “What can a Mumbo be?

  It is unknown to me!

  I hope that if I meet – ONE! –

  I’ll see it before it sees me!”

  He kept his voice steady with an effort, and stepped forward into the dripping tunnel. No sooner was he inside the door than it creaked shut behind him, leaving him in total darkness.

  Chapter Six

  The Witch’s Cave

  Midas had to feel his way along the mossy-wet stone wall, every now and then bumping his face on a stalactite. He had never thought of himself as a brave man, and he was very much afraid now, but there was no question in his mind of not going on. He’d known it wouldn’t be easy – he didn’t deserve it to be easy.

  But in his mind were some awesome pictures. One was of a witch’s lair, complete with witch, her warty nose curving to her chin, straggly hair under a pointed black hat, stirring a cauldron of poison and stroking a black cat. Her stroking hand was long and knobbly, and had green nails.

  The other was of a strange monster like a vast black balloon with a terrifying face. This was his notion of a mumbo, a creature he had never even heard of.

  He shivered, and began his song again:

  “What can a mumbo –”

  “Great song,” said a voice beside him.

  Midas nearly jumped out of his skin, and found himself flattened against the cold wall, trembling all over.

  “Are you – harrumph! – Witch Wuzzleflump? ” he croaked.