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

was still there, and though there was no one left alive who remembered the terrible King, the villagers still feared his return.

“When the King returns,” they said, “the trees will fall beneath his tread. The earth will tremble, and the island sink into a lake of boiling fire.”

“When the King returns,” they said, “the sky will crack open, and even the stars will fall from the sky like fruit from the tree.”

“When the King returns,” they said, “he will devour every one of us.”

The High Priest listened in silence, smiling from his place on the rock. He had no fear of the absent King. In fact, he had long ago decided that the King would never return; and yet, he enjoyed his status. He knew that, if the villagers ceased to fear the terrible King, he would lose his position of privilege. This is why, every day, he would climb down to the foot of the rock, and address the villagers solemnly:

“The omens are bad,” he would tell them. “The ocean was red this morning. The crows were flying above the sea, and the sky was black as murder.”

Given that none of the villagers had ever seen the ocean, or even dared to look at the sky, this sounded all the more ominous.

“Is there sign of the King?” they would say.

At this, the High Priest always shook his head. “Not yet,” he would say. And then he would return to his vantage point on the rock, to enjoy the rewards of his labours. These rewards took many forms. The villagers, in their gratitude, gave him the best of everything. They gave him the best of their food and wine; even, sometimes, their daughters. In these cases, the girl was always drugged and blindfolded before the High Priest took her up to his rock. This added to the priest’s mystique, and heightened his sense of power.

“What a man am I!” he would say. “What a King among men am I!”

One day, a girl more spirited than most caught the eye of the High Priest. But when he asked for her to be sent up to him, the girl refused, saying:

“Why should I sacrifice myself for the sake of an absent King?”

This only inflamed the High Priest’s desire. And so, the next day, when he came to report to the tribe, he assumed an air of even greater solemnity than usual, announcing:

“I have terrible news. The King has finally returned.”

The folk of his tribe were stricken with fear. “What must we do?”

The High Priest shrugged. “Word of your defiance has already reached His Majesty. Much as I hope to placate him, I fear that it may be too late.”

The terrified people pleaded with him to intercede on their behalf, seizing the girl who had rejected him and saying, “Not our defiance, but hers. Take her, give her to the King!”

The High Priest pretended to hesitate. But inside he was smiling. Finally, he accepted the girl, drugged and blindfold, as was the custom, and had her lifted to the top of the rock. But the girl, who was as cunning as she was spirited, only pretended to swallow the drug, so that as soon as she reached the top, she pulled off the blindfold and looked around.

The High Priest was relieving himself over the side of the big rock. There, in the sunlight, he looked much smaller to the girl, who had only ever seen him in the semi-shadows.

“Where is the King?” she said at once. “Where are the terrible omens?”

The High Priest turned. He was furious. “Why have you defied me again?” he said in his most impressive voice. But the girl was not impressed. She looked at the sky, and the clouds, and the sea, and the green canopy of the forest below the rock on which she was standing. And she understood that the terrible King—if he had existed at all—was now nothing more than a story to frighten the weak and gullible.

The High Priest saw her expression and understood that he had lost. If he had been braver or stronger, he might have tried to push the girl off the rock to her death. But his power was all in illusion, and now the illusion was broken. Besides, there was a look in the girl’s eye that suggested she would just as happily fling him off the rock instead—and so he ran away to the shore of the Sea, where he lived out the rest of his life as a recluse, eating nothing but shellfish, and occasionally weeping at the ingratitude of his people.

As for the girl, she went back to her tribe and told them everything she had seen. Most of them did not believe her, and stayed there in the darkness, afraid of what they might find outside. But some of the brighter, more spirited girls followed her into the sunlight, where they live happily to this day, filling the clear and salty air with the sound of their laughter.

44

T

HE

P

EACOCK

The animals of a certain farm were under a dreadful pall of fear. It seemed that an elderly Hen had once encountered a Peacock, which had startled her considerably. Since then, tales of this Peacock had grown, spreading all around the farm.

“ ’Twas a terrifying sight,” said the Hen to her comrades. “Blazing eyes, a thunderous voice, and a tail like a wheel of fire.”

The other hens listened in silent awe, and were duly terrified. The Hen, who was rather enjoying the attention, widened her audience to include the Ducks, the Geese, and even the Sheep, and soon, every group of animals, from the cows in the field to the guinea pig in its cage, knew about the Peacock.

“This Peacock will devour us all!” squealed the suckling pigs in their sty.

“The Peacock will burn down the farm with its eyes!” said the Horse, who was fond of drama.

“The Peacock will take us to Heaven in the wheel of its glorious tail!”