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Ford H. Madox Hueffer

The Feather

THE FEATHER

ONCE upon a time there was a King who reigned over a country as yet, for a reason you may learn later on, undiscovered – a most lovely country, full of green dales and groves of oak, a land of dappled meadows and sweet rivers, a green cup in a circlet of mountains, in whose shadow the grass was greenest; and the only road to enter the country lay up steep, boiling waterfalls, and thereafter through rugged passes, the channels that the rivers had cut for themselves. Therefore, as you may imagine, the dwellers in the land were little troubled by inroads of hostile nations; and they lived peaceful lives, managing their own affairs, and troubling little about the rest of the world.

Now this King, like many kings before and after him, had a daughter who, while very young, had, I am sorry to say, been very self-willed; and the King, on the death of his wife, finding himself utterly unable to manage the Princess, handed her over to the care of an aged nurse, who, however, was not much more successful – but that is neither here nor there.

For years everything went on smoothly, and it seemed as if everything intended to go on smoothly until doomsday, in which case this history would probably never have been written. But one evening in summer the Princess and her nurse, who had by this time become less able than ever to manage her charge, sat on a terrace facing the west. The Princess had been amusing herself by pelting the swans swimming in the river with rose-leaves, which the indignant swans snapped up as they fluttered down on the air or floated by on the river.

But after a time she began to tire of this pastime, and sitting down, looked at the sun that was just setting, a blinding glare of orange flame behind the black hills. Suddenly she turned to the nurse and said:

‘What’s on the other side of the hills?’

‘Lawk-a-mussy-me, miss!’ answered the nurse, ‘I’m sure I don’t know. What a question to ask!’

‘Then why don’t you ask some one who has been there?’

‘Because no one ever has, miss.

‘But why not?’

‘Because there’s a fiery serpent that eats every one who comes near the hills; and if you’re not eaten up, you’re bound to tumble down a precipice that’s nearly three miles deep, before you can get over the hills. ’

‘Oh, what fun! Let’s go,’ said the Princess, by no means awed. But the nurse shook her head.

‘No, miss, I won’t go; and I’m sure your pa won’t let you go. ’

‘Oh yes, he will; let’s go and ask him. ’

But at that moment a black shadow came across the sun, and the swans, with a terrified ‘honk, honk,’ darted across the water to hide themselves in the reeds on the other side of the river, churning dark tracks in the purple of the sunlit water’s glassy calmness.

‘Oh dear! oh dear! it’s a boggles, and it’s coming this way,’ cried the nurse.

‘But what is a boggles, nurse?’

‘Oh dear, it’s coming! Come into the house and I’ll tell you – come. ’