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

Now, in that labyrinth of caves there was a crystal chamber. It was round, with a hole in the roof; and in this mirror, the mermaids could see their reflections in the water. All the mermaids loved this room, and spent many hours there, admiring themselves in the mirror. But the lonely mermaid avoided the room whenever the other mermaids were there. She did not like to see her reflection next to theirs in the mirror. She did not like the way her colours in her tail shone out; or like to see her sunny skin in the shoal of silver shadows.

And yet, the mirror drew her. At night, she would sometimes go there alone and look at her reflection. On these occasions, she would talk to the mermaid in the mirror. She told her all her secret thoughts; her sorrows and her loneliness. She would tell her all the things she dared not admit to the others. And all alone, in the crystal cave, the lonely mermaid did not feel quite so sad, or so different. Instead, she would look at her angelfish tail, and her golden eyes, and her close black hair, all filled with a mist of bubbles, and think:

Why, I’m just as beautiful as all the others, in my way.

But she dared not say so to the rest of the mermaid community. She knew they would laugh at her if she did. The other mermaids sometimes liked to tease and spy on her; and the lonely mermaid felt that she would die if they ever found out her secret.

And so she continued to hide away, and to creep to the mirror-cave at night. But one night, the other mermaids followed her in secret. They had noticed her habit of slipping away, and were curious to know what she did. In the silvery darkness, the others went almost unnoticed, pale against the nacreous walls; veiled in phosphorescence. Silently, they followed the lonely mermaid to the mirror-cave, and watched her approach her reflection, and speak to it in the shadows.

That day, the lonely mermaid was feeling especially sad. As always, she told her reflection; and then, as she combed her curly hair, she sang to it in a low, sweet voice—not the songs of the chilly North, but the merry, warm songs of the islands, where the mermaids in their vivid shoals would swim and sing with the dolphins, their tails flying colours of yellow and black, and brilliant orange, and butterfly-blue. She sang:

“Leave your shoes upon the shore,

Castaway, castaway.

Leave your shoes upon the shore

And listen to the ocean’s roar

And leave the land for evermore

My little castaway.”

And as she sang, the other mermaids started to laugh from the shadows. Not because they were wicked, but simply because they were foolish, and she had surprised them. None of them had ever seen the land or heard the waves on the shore. None of them had ever sung the songs of the southern islands. And the thought that the lonely mermaid might be homesick for a place that she had never even seen seemed to them so strange and absurd that they could not hold back their laughter.

The lonely mermaid heard them. Wildly, she turned, and saw them behind her, in the chamber. There was nowhere for her to hide; and yet, in her discomfiture, all she could think of was escape. And so, with a flick of her angelfish tail, she leapt right through the mirror and found herself, not in the Deeps, but on the surface of the Sea.

For a moment, the mermaid stared at the sky and the sunlight. It was all so different to the life that she had known. The sea was sparkling and blue; the sky was warm and cloudless. And all around her, on the rocks, were the other mermaids. Not the silvery shoals of the North, but the merry brown girls of the islands. And all of them were just like her: with vivid tails of orange and black and yellow and electric-blue, gleaming in the sunlight.

They smiled at the lonely mermaid, and stretched out their arms to her, and said, “We’ve been watching you for so long. We heard you singing every night. Why did you stay down under the Sea when you could have been here, with us?”

And the lonely mermaid (who knew right then that she would never be lonely again) replied:

“All this time, in my loneliness, I thought I was looking at myself. Now I understand that my mirror was really a window.” And off she swam, with her new shoal of friends, to warmer, happier places, and was never seen again down in that crystal kingdom.

79

T

HE

P

ETULANT

P

ULLET

In a certain farmyard, there lived a petulant pullet. She was not high in the pecking order, but she did so much pecking that over time she had earned herself quite a reputation. She pecked the other pullets. She pecked the hens and the bantams. She even pecked the old Rooster who liked to perch on the chopping-block, and because she was such a young pullet, highly-strung and temperamental, the others seldom pecked her back, believing that she might someday outgrow her petulance.

As a result of this, the petulant Pullet grew in confidence. She acquired a number of followers among the other pullets. Some of these joined her entourage simply in order to avoid being pecked. Others enjoyed being in a gang and felt there was safety in numbers. They began to go around the farmyard in a tight little feathery group, discussing the other birds in the yard (most often in unflattering terms).

“Oh, look at that old Houdan hen over there,” said the petulant Pullet one day. “She thinks she’s so much better than us. She thinks she’s terribly grand, you know.”

At this, the Houdan, who thought no such thing, felt impelled to protest. But the