How To Find Your Way in Minced Forest

Write Preface in the search space below right to get to the Preface.To go to the table of contents, write table of contents in the search space below right. To read a chapter, write the number of the chapter in the search space. To read the tales in Fay Spanish, go to cuentosdelbosquetriturado.blogspot.com. Thank you.

Monday, 30 March 2020

131. The Egg Thief



                                    
 We always become little kids at Easter. Although it was still very cold outside, Heather and Thistle and Alpin and I got together in Heather’s ideal kitchen to paint some eggs for Easter with a great many natural dyes we prepared ourselves.

We used fruits and vegetables like blueberries and grapes to obtain blue, turmeric and cumin for yellow, chilli powder for orange, spinach for green, brewed coffee for brown and yellow onion skins for rust, red beets for pinks and purples and reds and – surprise- even sky blue!
                                      
                                  
“Pass me the blue, please. Are you still having inexplicable nightmares, Heather?” I asked.
  

“Yes,” she said. “A couple of days ago I dreamt I was a seal ring. My profile got stamped on paper after paper. My face hurt and I felt awfully hot because of the sealing wax I sank into when I slammed against the papers or parchments and the desk below them. I couldn’t stop myself from sealing everything I saw because that was going to save the world.

The strangest thing was that the face I saw on the seal wasn’t mine. I only felt it was.”

“Which world were you saving?” I asked.

              
“I have no idea. The night after that I dreamt I was climbing up a paper ladder all the way to somewhere up in the highest part of the sky. The steps were files, folders full of documents. Whenever I felt I was almost there, a couple of shooting stars would come flying by in opposite directions and collide and turn into a new folder. That dream was kind of pretty. Many colourful lights, like the aurora borealis in the background. Ah! And there was a soundtrack of celestial music.And last night I dreamt I was standing in a very crowded place with lots of panels with strange things written on them that lit up and there were people shouting and making signs with their fingers I thought were insults and then someone said to me I had to be happy because I had done well at the stock market. What is a stock market?”

 “We’ll look it up. But what if I make an appointment for you with Dr. Freud?” I suggested. “He helped me with my nightmares.”

                        
“Poor Heather!I hope these dreams aren’t foretelling anything. Imagine if it does happen to be up to you to save the world. What a bummer!” 

“Shut your mouth, Alpin!” cried Thistle with much annoyance. She was not just angry because Alpin seemed to be trying to frighten Heather. She had noticed that five eggs had disappeared from the table. “And shut it so tight you won’t be able to eat any more of the eggs we are painting.”

“Hah!” cried Alpin indignantly. “I swear I haven’t eaten a single egg excepting the hundred you set aside for me to sate my hunger with.”

“Well, they are disappearing from the table, you liar,” insisted Thistle.
 
“Ask your evil doll for accounts,” replied Alpin.

                    
 “What? I don’t have an evil doll!” said Thistle.

“Well, then what’s that thing with long, stiff, stringy hair and a face so  round it looks like an onion with the leaves on it, that’s been jumping behind all of you and swiping eggs when you weren’t looking because you were busy painting?”

“What you’re capable of inventing!” said Thistle, waving Alpin away with disgust.

She said no more, giving him up for impossible.

Once we had finished colouring the eggs we had sarsaparilla and sandwiches and soup and salad and tiny sugar cakes for lunch.

In the afternoon we made chocolate eggs with little gifts secretly stuffed in them. Just before twilight we  went outside to hang the already dry eggs we had painted from a tree in the garden that was to be our Easter Tree. We also hid the chocolate eggs, now wrapped in metallic paper, among the many flowers and herbs in Heather’s fragrant garden.

Alpin behaved reasonably well that day and we all had good fun doing all we did to prepare for Easter.


Only Heather’s pet bunny, Munchy, was aware that we had company.
  


 The next day was Easter morning and we went out to the garden to admire all the eggs we had coloured and hung from the tree and to hunt for the ones we had hidden. And what should we find there,  aside from our eggs, but five exquisitely decorated eggs bound with a red ribbon to a tiny branch.


“They’re pysanky!” cried Heather with delight. “Who brought them here?”
                                   

“I’ll bet they are also the eggs you thought I stole,” said Alpin. “Why aren’t you asking me if I painted those eggs? Think only the bad and never the good of Alpin! You accused me of stealing them, Thistle, you suspicious skinflint! Well, it was your evil doll that did this.”


“What are pysanky?” asked Thistle, ignoring Alpin.


“Russian Easter eggs,” said Heather. “There are five, one for each of us and a fifth for the mysterious painter. You get to choose one first, Alpin. That should make you feel better.”
  
Alpin chose a bright red egg with black and gold abstract symbols crisscrossed all over it.

We raffled the rest of the eggs and Heather won a pale blue one with violets painted on it.

Thistle’s was all silver with a gold flower within a dark blue square and small red roses on the silver outside the square.

Mine was water green with a gold and silver sun in the center and small star symbols floating around that.

The fifth egg was white, with a blue flower with a golden center painted over a gold cross. We supposed that would be the mysterious artist's.    

“Let’s leave them on the tree with ours till after Easter,” suggested Thistle. “Don’t eat your egg, Alpin. It’s a true work of art. Keep it among your treasures.”


“Be careful with those eggs,” I said. “It would be enough that they are pretty, but they are also potent talismans meant to ward off evil.” I had just looked that up in my pocket encyclopaedia.

“It’s funny, what you just said. Last night I dreamt that the world would exist only while eggs were painted,” said Heather. “It would go with the last painted egg. A snake would swallow it.”


“Keep painting eggs,” whispered Kikicheeky from behind us.

I heard, and turned just in time to see him disappear among the clouds with a gigantic bound.



No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

My blogs are Michael Toora's Blog (dedicated to my pupils and anyone who wants to learn English and some Spanish), The Rosy Tree Blog (dedicated to RosE), Tales of a Minced Forest (dedicated to fairies and parafairies), Cuentos del Bosque Triturado (same as the former but in Fay Spanish), The Birthdaymython/El Cumplemitón (for the enjoyment of my great nieces and great nephews and of anyone who has a birthday) and Booknosey/Fisgalibros (for and with my once pupils).