Honeycomb by Joanne Harris (book series for 12 year olds .txt) 📕

IDER

W

HO

D

REAMED OF THE

O

CEAN

In a desert as vast as the ocean, there lived a boy who dreamed of the sea. His tribe were the Sand Riders, herders of camels and dwellers in tents, who moved from one watering-place to the next, faces veiled against the perpetual lash of the sand. The boy’s family was wealthy, with more than a hundred camels to their name, and he was the favoured eldest son; born to inherit his father’s herd and to move on with the Sand Riders.

But the boy dreamed only of the sea beyond the desert; a place where the blue salt water rose and fell in waves as high as the tallest dune; where the wind blew spray instead of sand; where fish leaped and mermaids swam.

His father, who had never seen the sea, was first scornful, then impatient. “There are no mermaids,” he would say. “These things have only ever existed in the heads of foolish old women.”

But the boy’s old grandmother said, “Don’t listen to him. All this desert was ocean, once, a thousand thousand years ago.”

And she showed him, under the crest of a dune, where the rocks still bore the traces of the bones of sea-creatures long dead; starfish, and shells, and fronds of weed, frozen in time beneath the sand; etched in salt against the stone.

And so the boy continued to dream; and everywhere the Sand Riders rode, he searched for the people of the sea. He searched around the water-holes; he looked for them in the waves of sand. And in his dreams he saw them; their long hair gleaming with ocean salt; their tails sending up great rockets of spray. When he rode his camel across the endless waves of the desert, he always imagined the waves of the sea rising and falling around him.

Then, one scorching midday, he saw a blue shimmer on the horizon.

“It’s a mirage,” his father said. “There’s no water here for a thousand miles.”

But the boy did not believe him. Eyes narrowed against the burning sands, he thought he could see the ocean. And when night fell and they pitched their tents, he set off in secret to find it.

He walked all night under the stars, and although he could not see the sea, he thought he could hear the sound of the waves, so like the pounding of his blood as he drew closer to his dream.

Morning came; and the desert grew rose-gold, then red, then bone-white. The blue at the horizon had gone. And yet the boy kept walking, alone, watching his shadow rise and fall against the frozen waves of sand.

Behind him, only his footprints: the Sand Riders had already moved on.

On the second day, his water ran out; but the blue shimmer was back in the sky, and he could hear the cries of gulls above the pounding of the waves.

On the third day, his legs gave way, and he was forced to crawl towards the shimmer of blue on the skyline. But now he could see the waves on the shore, and the jumping fish, and the mermaids, and his heart swelled with inexpressible happiness.

But although he could see it, and hear it, and smell it, the ocean never came nearer.

On the fourth day, the boy stopped. Even crawling had become impossible. “Perhaps it was a mirage,” he thought, as he dragged himself to the crest of a dune and waited for the sun to set. “Perhaps my father was right,” he thought, “and there never were any mermaids.” And he laid his head against the sand that had been there for a thousand years and prepared himself for the inevitable.

And then, just then, he noticed a piece of rock pushing out of the sand. It was a flat and silvery rock, etched with writing a thousand years old. And the boy, in wonder, realized that it was a map of the ocean, embellished with pictures of mermaids and flying fish and sea monsters and ships. He smoothed away the sand from around the crest of the dune, and as he did, he realized that this was what his grandmother had described: the fossilized remains of the People of the Sea, their scales gleaming silver against the stone; their fine, sharp bones standing out like tiny shards of mica.

The boy, exhausted, closed his eyes and slept, the silvery stone against his cheek. And in the morning, he was gone—swallowed, perhaps, by the tides of sand.

Or maybe he’d found his way home at last—for Dream is a river that runs through Nine Worlds, and Death is only one of them.

34

T

HE

P

ERSUASIVE

P

ARROT

In a certain farmyard, the animals were choosing a king. The Dogs said, “We are the cleverest. The king should naturally be one of us.”

The Sheep said, “We have the majority. We should choose the new king.”

The Cart-horse said, “I’m the strongest. Obviously, I should rule.”

The Chickens said, “We are the most productive. The king should naturally be one of us.”

The animals, unable to agree, decided to put it to the vote. “Every animal has a voice,” said the leader of the Dogs. “I suggest that every group of animals here elects a representative. Then, we lay out our agenda. After that, every animal will speak out in favour of his choice. The winner will be king for a year. Agreed?”

All the animals agreed. The Dog was very convincing.

And so the barnyard election began. Every species had a champion; from the rabbits in the hutch to the ducks on the duck-pond. And every species had its agenda; better swill for the pigs in their sty; superior pecking rights for the hens. But it soon became very clear that some voices were louder than others.

“Why vote for a chicken?” said the Dog. “Chickens are not natural leaders. If chickens vote for a dog to be king, then we promise never to chase you again.”

And so the chickens gave up their voice and voted