Читать книгу The Story Giant - Brian Patten - Страница 12

DIFFERENT CREATURES HAVE ENDED UP LIVING THE WAY they do because of something that’s happened in their past. The dove, for example, leads a comfortable enough life in a dove-cote, being fed seed and coming and going at will. Presumably this is because it was so helpful to Noah when he was on the Ark.

Other creatures didn’t have such good luck in the past. Take the owl, the mole, the frog and the moth. Once they had lived together in a large orchard and wanted for nothing. Then one night a traveller came asking for shelter, and they offered him the use of a silver tent they kept for guests down by the river. Now, this guest was rather special, for with him he carried a jar that contained the Elixir of Life – immortality itself.

Some say the stranger was an angel, others are not so sure. Whichever way it was, he was a restless sleeper and that night, without knowing it, he knocked his precious jar into the river, and immortality was lost forever.

In the morning everyone was horrified to find the jar gone. Not knowing it had been carried away by the river, they all set about searching for it. The owl searched amongst moss-quiet ruins and in gloomy woods. The mole burrowed under the earth. The frog looked down dank wells and under stones. The moth searched in cupboards, looking up the sleeves of suits and in the folds of dresses. It even searched for the Elixir of Life in flames. None of them ever found it. But they still live the same way today; they are still searching.