The Girl Who Didn't Like Stories

The Girl Who Didn’t Like Stories

Once upon a time there was a young girl who didn’t like stories. Her name was Alice Menteith, and this is her story.

Alice grew up on the farm of Wester Raspberry, where her father grew kale and neeps, as well as old and tired. One winter’s night he grew so tired out at his work that he did not come home for his tea. One of his men, Rab, found him next morning in the middle of the park, frozen to death.

“Alice,” said her mother, “the time has come for you to set out into the world and seek your fortune, for I can no longer feed you on the proceeds of this farm.”

“But mother,” said Alice, “have you forgotten I’m a lassie? Isn’t it boys that go off and seek their fortunes?”

“No Alice,” said her mother, “It’s true that boys often go off and seek their fortunes, but lassies can do it just as easily. It’s just that a lassie’s fortune has to come from a man. So what I mean is, go and seek a man.”

And Alice, who never listened to stories anyway, believed the lie that lassies can seek their fortunes just as easily as boys. These were times, you see, when women had very few options in life.

But as it turned out, Alice did not have to seek very far, because word soon came that the family at Nether Sharpthorn were looking for a lassie to help out with the house and farm, and would be glad to employ Alice.

And so, at an age that was tenderer than you probably think, young Alice set off on the road to Nether Sharpthorn. It took her nearly four hours to walk there and was the furthest she had ever been from home.

“This will be your home from now on,” said Mistress McMonitor, the farmer’s wife. “You’ll sleep in this private room under the stair and you’ll help me around the house and take the men their rations and sometimes you’ll help my husband on the farm. Monday evenings will be your holidays unless we need you.”

Alice peered into her room, but there was no window and she could see very little by the light of Mistress McMonitor’s candle. The only way it was private was that there was no room in it for more than one person at a time..

And so began Alice’s new life. The work at Wester Raspberry had been hard, but here it was even harder. Her loving parents had not been particularly loving, but here the folk were not even her parents.

Her day started before the sun rose, when she had to make porridge for the four hired men, Archie, Billy, Chae and Leaf. They slept in a byre a few muddy paces from the main house, and she had to carry the pot of lumpy porridge from the kitchen to the byre. At noon she took their bannocks to them in the parks, no matter the weather. She had to wait while they ate so she could take any leftovers back to the kitchen.And in the evening, when they were often too tired to be hungry, she took them their supper in the byre.

It was not pleasant work, and the character of the men did not make it any pleasanter. Three of them were coarse men who made a lot of noise but rarely said anything worth listening to. Leaf was different.

One day Archie and Billy were arguing over which of them worked harder. Alice worried they might come to blows.

“Do you know who really works the hardest?” said Leaf. The two farmhands looked at him expectantly.

“Why, it’s Alice of course,” said Leaf. “Where are you when she makes the porridge?”

“In our beds,” said Archie.

“And where are you on the Sabbath?” said Leaf.

“In the alehouse,” said Billy.

“That’s right,” said Leaf, “while Alice does all the same work she does on the other six days except that on the Sabbath she washes your work clothes and cleans up the mess you make in the byre.”

Alice’s face went red, but not with embarrassment.

Another strange thing about Leaf was that he rarely ate anything. In the mornings and evenings he would set out the dishes before the meal and wash them after it. In the daytime, he wasn’t there when the others took their food. Alice wondered if he was some kind of under-servant, whose job was to look after the farmworkers rather than to work on the farm himself. But wasn’t that what she had been fee’d for?

She grew so puzzled that one day, out in the open air, when Chae had left his jacket at the wrong end of the park and went away to fetch it, she followed him and asked him why Leaf never seemed to do any farm work. She could talk to Chae when she caught him on his own.

“Leaf does more than his share of farm work,” said Chae. “But he does it at night.”

“And what does he do during the day?” asked Alice.

“That’s when he sleeps,” said Chae.

“One more thing,” said Alice. “Why do you call him Leaf? I’ve never heard of a man called Leaf before.”

”It’s short for ‘Autumn Leaf’’,” said Chae, “because that’s his colour.”

It was true. Leaf had short brown curly hair all over his face and his head. Alice had never seen a man with a beard that covered so much of his face, and the colour was similar to autumn leaves. But Alice didn’t like to think of him as Leaf. She had her own name for him: “Golden Brown”, because it had so much more sunshine in it.

She found herself thinking of Golden Brown more and more. One night he even entered her dreams. She dreamed that he brought her a dish of warm milk in her bed before she got up. Nobody had ever been so kind to her before. Then she woke up and there was a dish of warm milk next to her bed. Oh, how had he done it? And why?

She began to think he must love her as much as she loved him. And then she scolded herself for thinking anybody could love her when she was just a simple servant with no charms or talents or money. And then she thought: why not? She didn’t even notice that she had admitted to herself that she loved him.

At breakfast that day she risked smiling at him. She wanted to thank him for the milk, but she didn’t dare to do it in words. She was sure she had caught his eye, but he didn’t smile back at her. She would have to find another way to show her gratitude.

Later on, when she took the other men their dinner, they were mowing a paddock with scythes, and to keep their dangerous blades out of each others’ way, they were working a long way apart. Alice went to Chae first.

“What kind of food does Leaf like?” she asked him.

“Just food like ours,” said Chae. “But the thing he likes to eat the most of all is porridge with honey.”

Alice gave Chae his bannock and went on to feed the other two. She did it absent-mindedly, for she was wondering all the time how she could give Golden Brown some porridge and honey in return for his present of hot milk. Porridge was no problem. But honey was as rare as kindness at Nether Sharpthorn.

Every Monday evening, except when Mistress McMonitor gave her work to do, which was often, she would go, if she could get away early enough, for a walk. There was nowhere in particular to go, but she enjoyed just walking, with no burden on her back and no deadline to meet. She found herself strolling up Fugitive Brae with, if not exactly a song in her heart, at least a musical feeling.

It was in this rare peaceful frame of mind that she encountered a tinker walking in the opposite direction. He seemed to be singing and when he came close enough, she made out the words of the song:

As I stroll down this thorny path, upon a door I’ll chap.

A servant girl will hear the noise and open up the flap,

Unless of course she’s on the road and meets me on the way.

And then she’ll help me sell my goods and earn a tinker’s pay.

“Good evening to you, fair maid,” said the tinker, interrupting his own song. “Are you from Nether Sharpthorn?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“And is your mistress Mistress McMonitor?”

“Yes,” said Alice. “Do you know her?”

“Oh, I know her,” said the tinker, “and I know she doesn’t like me, though she needs my goods, for there’s a surcharge on normal deliveries to these parts, and Mistress McMonitor doesn’t like to spend a penny more than she has to.”

Alice could see he was telling the truth.

“I just have one more call to make this evening,” said the tinker, “before I lie down at the roadside and try to sleep. But if my last business of the day is with Mistress McMonitor, I’ll try in vain, for she always sets my jaws and fists clenching and I never can sleep.”

“I understand,” said Alice. “Can I help you?”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said the tinker, “Yes you can. If I give you a selection of my wares, things she has bought from me in the past, will you take them to her and say you are acting on behalf of Tinker Hephaestus and will accept payment from her, which you will bring to me forthwith, along with any unsold goods? If you do that I will pay you by letting you select one item from my bundle to keep as your very own. Do you accept my terms?”

“Do you have any jars of honey in your bundle?” said Alice.

“Just the one,” said Hephaestus, “but if it’s what you want, then it’s yours.”

“I’ll do it,” said Alice.

Tinker Hephaestus hung a large bag from her shoulder and loaded it up with about a quarter of his goods. It was extremely heavy and made Alice wonder how he could carry so much so far. But love gave her strength, and Alice carried the bag to Mistress McMonitor, who lightened it by about a half and then offered her much less than the goods were worth.

“I have no power to bargain,” said Alice. “If you want the goods, you must pay the price I told you.”

Amid much muttering, Mistress McMonitor gave Alice the full amount. Alice returned to the tinker, who was waiting not far from the steading.

“Did she try to bargain?” said Hephaestus.

Alice nodded.

“Then my plan has worked,” he said. “She would have tried the same trick with me, and she would have succeeded, for she knows I do have the power to decide the price. Thank you, fair maid, you have saved me much more than the price of a jar of honey.” And with that, he limped off on his way, leaving her with her prize.

The next morning Alice made porridge as usual for the four men. And as usual Leaf took his outside and sat on a tree stump. Alice followed him and gave him the jar of honey.

“We don’t have honey with our porridge,” said Leaf. “Why are you giving this to me?”

“You like it, don’t you?” said Alice.

“I love it,” said Leaf.

“Then accept it as a present from me, and as a reward for all the hard work you do without ever complaining and for the dish of warm milk you brought me.”

Leaf stood up.

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

He put the bowl of porridge and the jar of honey on the tree stump and stomped away.

Alice could not hold back her tears.

Leaf was never seen again at Nether Sharpthorn, and without his efforts as well as his support for the other workers, the farm soon began to fall into disrepair. Mistress McMonitor told Alice she would have to send her away, for she could no longer afford to feed her.

“And it’s not just that,” she added. “I know it’s your fault my best worker has left”

And so with a heavy heart, Alice set off on the long road to Wester Raspberry. Her heart must have been very heavy indeed, for it took her twice as long as in the opposite direction – and she had even less to carry this time.

Her mother was very surprised to see her, and maybe less pleased than she might have been. But she had a big pot of soup on the fire and she shared it with her daughter. And as they ate, Alice told her the story of her time at Nether Sharpthorn. As she reached the end, there were tears in her mother’s eyes.

“Oh, Alice, lassie, I told you to find a man, not a brownie. Did you not realise that creature was not a human being?”

Alice had never heard of a brownie and had no idea what such a thing might be.

“Alice, I tried so hard to educate you, to teach you about the things in the world that you had not seen and I could not show you. I took you all the way to the library. But…”

Alice stopped listening to her mother. She had heard that word, “library” before, but she could not recall what it meant. But then something from the distant past came to her mind.

“The library,” she said, interrupting her mother, “that ugly roaring monster with two heads! And you took me there to see it!”

“That wasn’t the library,” said her mother. “That was only the security guard. The library was the building it was guarding, a building crammed with books full of knowledge and wisdom.”

“And stories,” said Alice. “I don’t remember those other things you just said, but I remember you said we were going to read stories. And all I saw was a slavering orange giant with two heads.”

“I said stories because I thought you would understand the word,” said her mother. “I wouldn’t speak of knowledge and wisdom to someone as wee as you were then. And anyway, a lot of the knowledge and wisdom was in stories. That’s one of the main reasons folk tell them.”

Alice was having trouble with her memory.

“Mother,” she said, “did we… did we go into the library?”

“No we did not,” said her mother. “I couldn’t get you to go anywhere near it as long as that big Ettin was standing in front of it.”

“And then what?” said Alice.

“We walked back home,” said her mother. “It was a long way and you were very tired when we got here. So I put you straight to bed. But though you were tired, you weren’t sleepy, so I started to tell you a story. But then you got upset again and started to cry out.”

“Yes,” said Alice. “Now I remember. I thought stories all came from the Ettin and would hurt me in ways I couldn’t understand.”

“And you never let me tell you a story again,” said her mother. “But I still tried to do my duty. That’s why I taught you to read and write, in hopes that when you had put away these childish fears, you would read stories for yourself and learn about the world that way.”

“And if I had read those stories, would I have known a brownie when I met one?”

“Yes you would, for there are many stories that tell of them: how they love to work for the family that they stay with; how they mostly work at night when nobody is watching; how they like to be rewarded for their work, but only in secret, for if you offer them anything openly, they will be very offended and are like to disappear forever…”

Alice thought with shame of how she had treated Golden Brown. And all because the Orange Ettin had scared her away from books.

“And how they often stay with the same family for many generations, for they are usually centuries older than they look.”

Alice thought regretfully that such an age difference would probably have come between them, sooner or later. No, sooner.

“Mother, where is this library that you took me to?”

“It was on the edge of the Western Forest,” said her mother, “But now it’s gone.”

“Gone where?” said Alice.

“Knocked down. Removed. Demolished,” said her mother.

“Who did that?” said Alice.

“The Orange Ettin,” said her mother. “He hated people being able to read books. “He wasn’t very clever, but eventually he worked out that getting rid of the books would stop more people reading than scaring them away. So that’s what he did.”

“Are there any more libraries?” said Alice.

“Maybe,” said her mother, “but I don’t know where they are.”

Alice told her mother she felt very tired and must take her rest. She went to her old bed.

The next morning her mother was up before sunrise and went about her tasks a little slower than usual. Eventually she went to Alice’s bed to tell her the porridge was ready, but the bed was empty and showed few signs of having been slept in.

“Why,” she began, but she could not even form the question, much less answer it.

And while her mother was struggling to form a question, Alice was walking steadfastly westward. Her body was tired, but her mind was made up: she had libraries to find.

The End