How the Whale Became by Ted Hughes

Author:Ted Hughes [Ted Hughes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571278831
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2011-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

And that is how Torto came to be known as ‘Tortoise’.

How the Bee Became

Now in the middle of the earth lived a demon. This demon spent all his time groping about in the dark tunnels, searching for precious metals and gems.

He was hunch-backed and knobbly-armed. His ears draped over his shoulders like a wrinkly cloak. These kept him safe from the bits of rock that were always falling from the ceilings of his caves. He had only one eye, which was a fire. To keep this fire alive he had to feed it with gold and silver. Over this eye he cooked his supper every night. It is hard to say what he ate. All kinds of fungus that grew in the airless dark on the rocks. His drink was mostly tar and oil, which he loved. There is no end of tar and oil in the middle of the earth.

He rarely came up to the light. Once, when he did, he saw the creatures that God was making.

‘What’s this?’ he cried, when a grasshopper landed on his clawed, horny foot. Then he saw Lion. Then Cobra. Then, far above him, Eagle.

‘My word!’ he said, and hurried back down into his dark caves to think about what he had seen.

He was jealous of the beautiful things that God was making.

‘I will make something,’ he said at last, ‘which will be far more beautiful than any of God’s creatures.’

But he had no idea how to set about it.

So one day he crept up to God’s workshop and watched God at work. He peeped from behind the door. He saw him model the clay, bake it in the sun’s fire, then breathe life into it. So that was it!

Away he dived, back down into the centre of the earth.

At the centre of the earth it was too hot for clay. Everything was already baked hard. He set about trying to make his own clay.

First, he ground up stones between his palms. That was powder. But how was he to make it into clay? He needed water, and there in the centre of the earth it was too hot for water.

He searched and he searched, but there was none. At last he sat down. He felt so sad he began to cry. Big tears rolled down his nose.

‘If only I had water,’ he sobbed, ‘this clay could become a real living creature. Why do I have to live where there is no water?’

He looked at the powder in his palm, and began to cry afresh. As he looked and wept, and looked and wept, a tear fell off the end of his nose straight into the powder.

But he was too late. A demon’s tears are no ordinary tears. There was a red flash, a fizz, a bubbling, and where the powder had been was nothing but a dark stain on his palm.

He felt like weeping again. Now he had water, but no powder.

‘So much for stone-powder,’ he said. ‘I need something stronger.’

Then quickly,

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