Straw into Gold

by Hilary McKay

  Then she went back to bed.

  She was sure she could hear something. The tiniest sound in the world, but very nearby. A tiny, very close, scratchy sound.

  Sometimes Hatty was sure she could hear it. Sometimes not. And there was something about that small sound, in that empty room, that was very worrying. Just as Hatty had reached a point when she could not bear it any longer, and could not face the dark corridors either, something absolutely wonderful happened . . .

  The kitten arrived. And, even more wonderful, after the kitten came Meg.

  “Oh Meg, oh Meg, oh Meg!” cried Hatty, tumbling down the ladder to hug her. “Oh thank goodness!”

  “I had to come!” said Meg. “The kitten woke up all of a sudden and ran! Fancy it finding you, down all those corridors! WHATEVER . . . ,” she asked, emerging from the hug to blink and stare, “kind of a bed is THAT?”

  And she burst out laughing, and with Meg’s laughter everything became suddenly and brilliantly much better.

  “I KNOW!” agreed Hatty. “LOOK at it! Ten stripy mattresses and THEN ten feather quilts!”

  “The kitten likes it,” said Meg. And it was true that the kitten was having a very joyful mountaineering time, exploring the bed. It didn’t need a ladder to race up and down the quilts and mattresses. It hung on with its claws and dodged when Hatty tried to pick it up, and then sat at the top, purring and twitching its tail.

  “Please can I go up too?” asked Meg.

  “Of course you can! I’ll come after you. There’s plenty of room, but look how far away the floor is! Do you think people ever fall out?”

  “They must,” said Meg. “I would.”

  “I will,” said Hatty with conviction. “I’m sure I will, if I go to sleep. I nearly did before you came. I was lying here listening . . . Meg, there’s something making a sound, a tiny sound, like nearly nothing . . . anyway, I was trying to listen and my eyes must have closed just for a moment without me noticing and when I opened them again I was right at the edge of the bed. The trouble is, I’m so tired.”

  “Go to sleep,” suggested Meg. “I’ll stay awake and make sure you don’t fall out.”

  “What about you?”

  “Then you can stay awake and make sure that I don’t.”

  “Promise to wake me up and take turns fairly?”

  “Promise,” said Meg. “And I’ll listen for the noise you heard, now the kitten is quiet.”

  The kitten, having prowled round and round, and climbed up and down, and dived into the pillows and scrabbled under the golden coverlet, had settled down at last. It curled between the girls like a small silver cloud, very warm and comforting.

  The kitten slept, and so did Hatty, and soon Meg’s eyes began to close too.

  The tiny sound began again.

  A very

  small

  squeak . . .

  “Hatty!” cried Meg, jerking awake, and Hatty jumped in her sleep, rolled over, and grabbed a bedpost just in time to stop herself falling right out of bed.

  “I forgot where I was,” she gasped. “What is it?”

  “A mouse!”

  “A mouse?”

  “I heard a mouse, right here!”

  “Right where?”

  “Right here in this bed!”

  It was strange that although Hatty could manage wolves in the forest and Meg could manage beetles in the kitchen, neither of them could quite bear the thought of a mouse right there in the bed. They each knelt clutching a pillow and gazing at the other, tense with listening, and when the sound came again, quite clearly a squeak, they both toppled backward at exactly the same moment.

  The floor was just as far away and painful as they had expected it to be.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” gasped Meg.

  And Hatty groaned. “Ouch, ouch, ouch, I am bumped all over!”

  They were both banged and bruised, but the kitten, who had jumped down after them, was not hurt at all. The kitten was dancing with excitement.

  “It knows there’s a mouse,” said Meg.

  And Hatty agreed, and she caught the kitten before any awfulness could happen. And then she said, “I’m definitely not going back up that ladder again.”

  “Neither am I,” said Meg.

  “And why would there be a mouse in the bed anyway?”

  “Looking for food,” said Meg. “That’s what mice do. Perhaps the princesses have breakfast in bed and drop crumbs.”

  “Oh no!” said Hatty. “But that can’t be true! The Queen makes the bed! She said so! She would sweep out the crumbs in the morning!”

  “Queens don’t know much about sweeping,” said Meg.

  “You don’t think she just puts another layer on top?” asked horrified Hatty.

  “Perhaps she does, and that’s why there are so many.”

  “Then all those mattress and quilts are just crumb sandwiches!” said Hatty.

  They both gazed at the bed, and it seemed even less inviting than before, and while they were gazing, they heard squeaking again, squeaking and scrabbling, quite definitely.

  “It is a mouse,” said Hatty. “It’s a mouse in that highly dangerous, mousey, giant crumb-sandwich bed! I won’t be able to sleep a single wink until I’ve taken it all to pieces and shaken all the crumbs out the window!”

  “I’ll help you,” said Meg.

  “We’ll have to put it back together again afterward,” said Hatty.

  “Of course,” said Meg.

  So then Hatty and Meg set to work.

  And it took ages and ages.

  Because the feather beds were very puffy.

  And the mattresses were very heavy.

  And the whole thing was very puzzling to Hatty and Meg, because there were not any crumbs.

  Only, toward morning, as they lifted the very last mattress of all, a very big gray mouse darted out and escaped away through the open window.

  And under that last mattress Hatty and Meg found three large dried peas, slightly chewed.

  When the Queen, tiptoeing along the corridor in the early morning to find out how the Princess had slept through the night, paused outside the golden bedroom door, she was astonished to hear voices.

  Girls’ voices, two of them.

  Very softly, the Queen pushed open the door.

  There was the bed, looking just as she had left it, but also, to her great bewilderment, there were two girls, where the night before she had only left one. Two brown-haired girls with their backs to her, examining something in the early-morning light at the window. One wore a shabby brown dress that she recognized from the night before. The other wore a white nightgown, rather too small.

  “Peas!” she heard the brown-dressed girl exclaim. “Dried peas! Now I understand why I hardly slept a wink! How do you suppose they got there?”

  “That mouse must have carried them all the way from the kitchen,” said the white-nightgowned girl. “If it was a mouse! It looked so big that perhaps it was even a ra—”

  “Don’t say it!” begged the brown-dressed girl. “Oh, what an awful night! I am black and blue with bruises! How could anyone sleep in a bed like that?”

  I’ve found her! thought the Queen with joy. I’ve found a true princess at last! But who is the other girl?

  She would have gone in to ask, if at that moment she had not heard the unmistakable slam of Prince Charming’s bedroom door, far along the corridor, followed by the equally unmistakable swish of him sliding down the banister toward the front hall, clearly intent on avoiding breakfast and princesses if he possibly could.

  “Charming!” called the Queen, speeding to the top of the stairs.

  “Oh, hullo, Ma,” said Prince Charming, his hand already reaching for the doorknob. “Just popping out!”

  “Not when we have a guest for breakfast!” said the Queen, hurrying down to the hall.

  “Oh, do we?” said the Prince, unenthusiastically.

  “We do!” said the Queen, getting firmly between him and the doorknob. “And d
arling Charming, listen! I think your Problem is solved at last!”

  The Prince could not have looked less thrilled if he had turned into a frog, and he followed his mother most reluctantly into the dining room, which was in such a state of dustiness that morning that for some time he could do nothing but sneeze.

  “Don’t!” begged his mother, although sniffing dreadfully herself. “Look at the state of this room! Where is the maid this morning?! Now, don’t just stand there sneezing, Charming! Do something useful! Dust!”

  “All right,” said the Prince, with most unusual helpfulness. “I’ll just dash to the kitchen for a duster!”

  “No!” exclaimed his mother. “Don’t go ANYWHERE! Any moment she will be here! Oh!”

  It was Hatty, and since the Queen had last seen her, she and Meg had been very busy. Hatty was once more in her silken stripes, now dried and ironed by Meg, her hair was smoothly tucked under her sparkling gilt crown, her bruises were hidden under her green-and-gold sleeves, and she was at her most princessly polite, even when the Prince greeted her by saying, “Oh. You got in, then?”

  “Yes,” she agreed, and curtsying beautifully to the Queen, added, “Thank you so much for having me.”

  “A pleasure,” said the Queen, wondering who in the world she was, but helplessly good-mannered in return. “You met my son last night?”

  “On the doorstep,” said Hatty, curtsying again, this time to the Prince.

  She was definitely a princess, thought the bewildered Queen, but what kind of a princess? And where had she come from? And most important of all, where was the shabby, brown-dressed true princess, whom she herself had shown to bed the night before, and overheard that very morning, saying quite plainly that she was bruised all over and had hardly slept a wink because of the three dried peas!

  “You slept well?” asked the Queen, staring in confusion.

  “On and off,” said Hatty, rubbing her bumped elbows. She did not mention, as no true princess would, dried peas or mice or rats, but the Queen looked so put out at her reply that Hatty could not help asking, “Is something wrong?”

  “No, no,” said the Queen. “Well. Yes. And no. It’s just that we thought the Prince’s Problem was solved at last and now it seems . . . OH, THERE SHE IS!”

  With these words the Queen rushed out of the room, leaving Hatty staring in surprise at the Prince. The Prince said nothing, but kicked a table leg so moodily that she asked, “What is the matter?”

  “Oh, she was hoping I would marry you, that’s all,” said the Prince grumpily.

  “NO!” exclaimed Hatty, shocked into impolite honesty. “What an awful idea!”

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to.”

  “Neither am I,” said Hatty with feeling.

  “She thought you were a true princess, that’s why. It’s because of my Problem.”

  “What is your Problem?”

  “I’ll tell you if you promise not to marry me,” said the Prince. And Hatty promised most sincerely, straightaway, and in return she heard about the christening of the Prince, and the Dust-Gray Fairy, and the need for a true princess to teach the Prince who was who, and what was what. She also heard about the peril of the palace tumbling to ruin if the Prince should marry anyone who was not a true princess, and how this terrible Problem had shadowed his life for years and years.

  “How many years?” asked Hatty.

  “Five next Wednesday,” said the Prince. “That’s how long I’ve known M—” He stopped abruptly. “Oh, never mind!”

  Hatty looked at him thoughtfully, and instead of demanding, “Known who?” asked instead, “And what if the palace did fall down?”

  “What?” exclaimed the Prince.

  “And what if the palace did fall down?” repeated Hatty.

  “Say that again!” said the stupefied Prince.

  “What,” said Hatty patiently, “if you married someone who was not a true princess and the palace did fall down?”

  “Then,” said the Prince, after blinking quite a lot, “I wouldn’t have a palace.”

  “But,” said Hatty, “you wouldn’t have a Problem.”

  Dust shimmered in the sunlight.

  The Prince stared at Hatty. He stared at the windows and the ceiling. He strode out of the dining room and across the hall and onto the terrace, where he stood back and held his hands to shade his eyes and stared at the turrets.

  “I suppose we could live in the stables,” Hatty heard him murmur. And then he stared some more at the tiles and the walls and the buttresses, and while he was still doing this the Queen came hurrying across the garden with Meg in her old brown dress.

  “I’ve found her! I’ve found her!” cried the Queen. “And she is a perfect darling and she didn’t sleep a wink and you should see her poor bruises and she still has the peas in her pocket and you absolutely must marry her, Charming! Why are you staring at the roof like that?”

  So Prince Charming stopped staring at the roof and he turned round and looked.

  “Why, Meg!” he said in a voice that no one except Meg had ever heard before.

  That was how the Prince at last learned from a true princess who was who, and what was what. He became very joyful, and so did Meg. And Hatty gave them the silver kitten for a wedding present. What was even better and kinder was that she took the Queen back to her own castle for a very long visit while the Prince and Meg got used to living in the stables. The Queen loved living at Hatty’s castle. Everyone there was so old that in no time she found herself feeling very young indeed.

  The Prince and Meg found the stables quite comfortable, hardly dusty at all. In time, they grew roses over the ruins of the palace, and whenever the Dust-Gray Fairy came to visit they gave her a bunch to take home.

  And they all lived happily ever after.

  Over the Hills and Far Away

  or

  Red Riding Hood and the Piper’s Son

  There was a village, with a forest behind it, close behind, like a shadow. The village had an inn, and the inn had a doorway, and the doorway had a doorstep, and one winter’s morning there was a parcel on that doorstep.

  You can’t leave a parcel on a doorstep for long. Not if it’s alive. So they took it in, the innkeeper and his wife, and they brushed off the frost and unknotted the string, unfolded the shabby brown blanket, and there was a baby.

  The innkeeper took a step back in dismay, but his wife unfolded the blanket further, uncovering a baby’s head.

  “It must be a girl!” she exclaimed, staring in surprise. “Look at that! Gold earrings! I’ve never seen the like!”

  “Nonsense!” scoffed the innkeeper. “Who’d put gold earrings on a baby around here?”

  “No one round here,” agreed his wife, “but there they are. See for yourself!”

  So the innkeeper came closer and bent and looked, and sure enough, the baby had gold earrings under its wisps of brown hair.

  “Someone will be back for it,” said the innkeeper. “One thing to leave a baby on a doorstep. Another to leave gold earrings.”

  “I shall say what I think when they come!” said his wife. “Leaving it there for anyone to trip over! Half frozen too.”

  The baby’s wide green eyes looked at her. It didn’t cry. They found out later that it hardly ever cried.

  They gave it bread and milk, and a warm basket by the stove. No one ever came back for it, and so it stayed, from day to day, and then from week to week, and eventually from year to year. The innkeeper and his wife got paid a little for keeping it instead of sending it away to the orphanage. They called the baby Polly.

  “A good plain name,” they said, looking disapprovingly at Polly’s ears. Although they had both tried, they could find no way of taking off the earrings without taking off the baby’s ears too. So the earrings also stayed. Perhaps if they had come off, they would have liked Polly more than they did; but perhaps not, because Polly was different. She was not like any child that had ever been in the village before, nor any
grown-up either. For one thing, Polly was not afraid of the forest.

  The forest curved around the village like a heavy, green, growing threat. To the villagers it was like living on the borders of a dangerous unknown world. Except for gathering firewood on its borders, they avoided it. Some of the forest dangers were real: falling branches from ancient trees, hidden pits dug in the bad old days for animal traps, the possibility of being lost forever. Some dangers were less certain. The villagers were almost sure there were no bears, but also almost sure there really were wolves. There were probably no witches and certainly no dragons, but there were brambles like trip wires and poisonous mushrooms. The owls were eerie; large bats swept from its borders at night to hunt over the fields, while small, amber-eyed foxes slipped from bone-littered dens and returned with fat chickens clamped in their jaws.

  Polly said, “I like foxes better than chickens.”

  The village children who heard this were not shocked, as they would have been if one of them had said it themselves. They did not think of Polly as one of them. Even after living all her life in the village, her newness had not worn off. The innkeeper’s wife dressed her exactly like the other village girls, in pale browns, and grays and blues, thick boots for winter, sun hats for summer, but she did not look like the other girls. They were blue-eyed and sunny-haired, with sturdy legs and freckled noses. They played with raggy dolls in homemade dresses, made houses under willow trees, read and reread their few battered storybooks, gathered flowers in floppy bunches, and arranged each other’s hair. Polly could not seem to join in with their games. Her straight brown hair was not interesting to comb, and her doll lay in its wooden cradle for months on end without being disturbed.

  Until it died, her favorite companion had been the inn’s ancient ginger cat. She had been lonely for a while after it was gone, until the innkeeper bought a small black pig for the sty at the end of the garden.