Unnatural Creatures by Neil Gaiman
The King told her all his troubles.
“You see,” he began, “what a pretty place my Green Land was once. It has points even now; but things aren’t what they used to be. It’s that bird—that Cockatoucan. We daren’t kill it or give it away, and every time it laughs something changes. Look at my Prime Minister. He was a six-foot man—and look at him now. I could lift him with one hand; and then your poor maid. It’s all that bad bird.”
“Why does it laugh?” asked Matilda.
“I can’t think,” said the King. “I don’t see anything to laugh at.”
“Can’t you give it lessons or something nasty to make it miserable?”
“I have. I do. I assure you, my dear child, the lessons that bird has to swallow would choke a professor.”
“Does it eat anything besides lessons?”
“Christmas pudding. But, there—what’s the use of talking? That bird would laugh if it were fed on dog biscuits and senna tea.”
His Majesty sighed and passed the buttered toast.
“You can’t possibly,” he went on, “have any idea of the kind of things that happen. The bird laughed one day at a Cabinet Council, and all my Ministers turned into little boys in yellow smocks. And we can’t get any laws made till they come right again. It’s not their fault—and I must keep their situation open for them, of course, poor things.”
“Of course,” said Matilda.
“There was the dragon, now,” said the King. “When he came I offered the Princess’s hand and half my kingdom to anyone who would kill him; it’s an offer that’s always made, you know.”
“Yes,” said Matilda.
“Well—a really respectable young Prince came along—and everyone turned out to see him fight the dragon; as much as ninepence each was paid for the front seats, I assure you, and the trumpets sounded, and the dragon came hurrying up. A trumpet is like a dinner bell to a dragon, you know. And the Prince drew his bright sword, and we all shouted, and then that wretched bird laughed, and the dragon turned into a pussycat, and the Prince killed it before he could stop himself. The populace was furious.”
“What happened then?” asked Matilda.
“Well, I did what I could. I said, ‘You shall marry the Princess, just the same.’ So I brought the Prince home, and when we got there the Cockatoucan had just been laughing again, and the Princess had turned into a very old German governess. The Prince went home in a great hurry and an awful temper. The Princess was all right in a day or two. These are trying times, my dear.”
“I am so sorry for you,” said Matilda, going on with the preserved ginger.
“Well you may be,” said the miserable monarch. “Why, if I were to try to tell you all that that bird has brought on my poor kingdom I should keep you up till long past your proper bedtime.”
“I don’t mind,” said Matilda, kindly. “Do tell me some more.”
“Why,” the King went on, growing more and more agitated. “Why—at one titter from that revolting bird the long row of ancestors on my palace wall grew red-faced and vulgar; they began to drop their H’s and to assert that their name was Smith, from Clapham Junction.”
“How dreadful!”
“And once,” the King went on, in a whisper, “it laughed so loudly that two Sundays came together, and next Thursday got lost and went prowling away and hid itself on the other side of Christmas. And now,” he said, suddenly, “it’s bedtime.”
“Must I go?” asked Matilda.
“Yes, please,” said the King. “I tell all strangers this tragic story because I always feel that perhaps some stranger might be clever enough to help me. You seem a very nice little girl: do you think you are clever?”
It is very nice even to be asked if you’re clever. Your Aunt Willoughby knows well enough that you’re not. But Kings do say nice things. Matilda was very pleased.
“I don’t think I’m clever,” she was saying, quite honestly, when suddenly the sound of a hoarse laugh rang through the banqueting hall. Matilda put her hands to her head.
“Oh, dear,” she cried. “I feel so different! Oh, wait a minute! Oh, whatever is it? Oh!”
She was silent for a moment. Then she looked at the King and said: “I was wrong, Your Majesty. I am clever, and I know it is not good for me to sit up late. Good night. Thank you so much for your nice party. In the morning I think I shall be clever enough to help you, unless the bird laughs me back into the other kind of Matilda.”
But in the morning Matilda’s head still felt strangely clear. Only, when she came down to breakfast, full of plans for helping the King, she found that the Cockatoucan must have laughed in the night, for the beautiful palace had turned into a butcher’s shop, and the King, who was too wise to fight against fate, had tucked up his Royal robes, and was busy in the shop weighing out six ounces of the best mutton chops for a charwoman with a basket.
“I don’t know how ever you can help me now,” he said, despairing. “As long as the palace stays like this, it’s no use trying to go on with being a King, or anything. I can only try to be a good butcher, and you shall keep the shop accounts, if you like, till that bird laughs me back into my palace again.”
So the King settled down to business, respected by his subjects, who had all, since the coming of the Cockatoucan, had their little ups and downs. And Matilda kept the books and wrote out the bills, and really they were both rather happy. Pridmore, disguised as the Automatic Machine, stood in the shop, and attracted many customers. They used to bring their children and make the poor innocents put their pennies in, and then read Pridmore’s good advice. Some parents are so harsh. And the Princess sat in the back garden with the Cockatoucan, and Matilda played with her every afternoon. But one day, as the King was driving through another kingdom, the King of that kingdom looked out of his palace window and laughed as the cart went by, and shouted “Butcher.” The Butcher-King did not mind this, because it was true, however rude. But when the other King called out, “What price cat’s meat?” the King was very angry indeed, because the meat he sold was always of the best quality. When he told Matilda all about it, she said:
“Send the army to crush him.”
So the King sent his army, and the enemy was crushed. The bird laughed the King back onto his throne, and laughed away the butcher’s shop, just in time for His Majesty to proclaim a general holiday, and to organize a magnificent reception for the army. Matilda now helped the King to manage everything, and she wonderfully enjoyed the new and delightful feeling of being clever. So that she felt it was indeed too bad when the Cockatoucan laughed—just as the reception was beautifully arranged. It laughed, and the general holiday turned into a new income tax; the magnificent reception changed itself to a Royal reprimand, and the army itself suddenly became a discontented Sunday-school treat, and had to be fed with buns and brought home in breaks, crying.
“Something must be done,” said the King.
“Well,” said Matilda, “I’ve been thinking. If you make me the Princess’s governess, I’ll see what I can do. I’m quite clever enough—”
“I must open Parliament to do that,” said the King. “It’s a constitutional change.”
So he hurried off down the road to open Parliament. But the bird put its head on one side and laughed at him as he went by. He hurried on; but his beautiful crown grew large and brassy, and was set with cheap-colored glass in the worst possible taste; his robes turned from velvet and ermine into flannelette and rabbits’ fur; his scepter grew twenty feet long, and extremely awkward to carry. But he persevered. His Royal blood was up.
“No bird,” said he, “shall keep me from my duty and my Parliament.”
But when he got there he was so agitated that he could not remember which was the right key to open Parliament with, and in the end he hampered the lock, and so could not open Parliament at all; and the members of Parliament went about making speeches in the roads, to the great hindrance of the traffic.
The poor King went home and burst i
“Matilda,” he said, “this is too much. You have always been a comfort to me. You stood by me when I was a butcher—you kept the books, you booked the orders, you ordered the stock. If you really are clever enough, now is the time to help me. If you won’t, I’ll give up the business—I’ll leave off being a King—I’ll go and be a butcher in the Camberwell New Road, and I will get another little girl to keep my books—not you.”
This decided Matilda. She said: “Very well, Your Majesty—then give me leave to prowl at night. Perhaps I can find out what makes the Cockatoucan laugh. If I can do that, we can take care he never gets it—whatever it is.”
“Ah,” said the poor King, “if you could only do that!”
When Matilda went to bed that night she did not go to sleep: she lay and waited till all the palace was quiet, and then she crept softly, pussily, mousily, to the garden, where the Cockatoucan’s cage was, and she hid behind a white rosebush, and looked, and listened. Nothing happened till it was grey dawn, and then it was only the Cockatoucan who woke up. But when the sun was round and red over the palace roof something came creeping, creeping, pussily, mousily, out of the palace. And it looked like a yard and a half of white tape creeping along, and it was the Princess herself.
She came quietly up to the cage and squeezed herself between the bars; they were very narrow bars, but a yard and a half of white tape can go through the bars of any birdcage I ever saw. And the Princess went up to the Cockatoucan and tickled him under his wings till he laughed aloud. Then, quick as thought, the Princess squeezed through the bars, and was back in her own room before the bird had finished laughing. And Matilda went back to bed. Next day all the sparrows had turned into cart horses; the roads were impassable.
That day, when she went as usual to play with the Princess, Matilda said to her, suddenly:
“Princess, what makes you so thin?”
The Princess caught Matilda’s hand and pressed it with warmth.
“Matilda,” she said, simply, “you have a noble heart! No one else has ever asked me that, though they tried to cure it. And I couldn’t answer till I was asked, could I? It is a sad, a tragic tale. Matilda, I was once as fat as you are.”
“I’m not so very fat,” said Matilda.
“Well,” said the Princess, impatiently, “I was quite fat enough, anyhow. And then I got thin.”
“But how?”
“Because they would not let me have my favorite pudding every day.”
“What a shame,” said Matilda, “and what is your favorite pudding?”
“Bread and milk, of course, sprinkled with rose leaves, and with pear-drops in it.”
Of course, Matilda went at once to the King, but while she was on her way the Cockatoucan happened to laugh, and when she reached the King he was in no condition for ordering dinner, for he had turned into a villa residence, replete with every modern improvement. Matilda only recognized him, as he stood sadly in the park, by the crown that stuck crookedly on one of the chimney pots, and the border of ermine along the garden path. So she ordered the Princess’s favorite pudding on her own responsibility, and the whole Court had it every day for dinner till there was no single courtier but loathed the very sight of bread and milk, and there was hardly one who would not have run a mile rather than meet a pear-drop. Even Matilda herself got rather tired of it; though, being clever, she knew how good bread and milk is for you.
But the Princess got fatter and fatter, and rosier and rosier—her thread-paper gowns had to be let out and let out, till there were no more turnings-in to be let out—and then she had to wear her old ones that Matilda had been wearing, and then to get new ones. And as she got fatter she got kinder, till Matilda grew quite fond of her.
And the Cockatoucan had not laughed for a month.
When the Princess was as fat as any Princess ought to be, Matilda went to her one day and threw her arms round her and kissed her. The Princess kissed her back, and said:
“Very well. I am sorry, then. But I didn’t want to say so. But now I will. And the Cockatoucan never laughs except when he’s tickled. So there! He hates to laugh.”
“And you won’t do it again,” said Matilda, “will you, dear?”
“No, of course not,” said the Princess, very much surprised. “Why should I? I was spiteful when I was thin, but now I’m fat again I want everyone to be happy.”
“But how can anyone be happy,” asked Matilda, severely, “when everyone is turned into something they weren’t meant to be? There’s your dear father—he’s a desirable villa. The Prime Minister was a little boy, and he got back again, and now he’s turned into a comic opera. Half the palace housemaids are breakers, dashing themselves against the palace crockery. The navy, to a man, are changed to French poodles, and the army to German sausages. Your favorite nurse is now a flourishing steam laundry; and I, alas, am too clever by half. Can’t that horrible bird do anything to put us all right again?”
“No,” said the Princess, dissolved in tears at this awful picture; “he told me once himself, that when he laughed he could only change one or two things at once, and then, as often as not, it turned out to be something he didn’t expect. The only way to make everything come right again would be—but it can’t be done! If we could only make him laugh on the wrong side of his mouth—that’s the secret! He told me so; but I don’t even know what it is, let alone being able to do it. Could you do it to him, Matilda?”
“No,” said Matilda; “but let me whisper—he’s listening—Pridmore could! She’s often told me she’d do it to me. But she never has. Oh, Princess, I’ve got an idea!”
The two were whispering so low that the Cockatoucan could not hear, though he tried his hardest. Matilda and the Princess left him listening.
Presently he heard a sound of wheels. Four men came into the rose garden, wheeling a great red thing in a barrow. They set it down in front of the Cockatoucan, who danced on this perch with rage.
“Oh,” he said, “if only someone would make me laugh—that horrible thing would be the one to change. I know it would. It would change into something much horrider than it is now. I feel it in all my feathers.”
The Princess opened the cage door with the Prime Minister’s key, which a tenor singer had found at the beginning of his music. It was also the key of the comic opera. She crept up behind the Cockatoucan and tickled him under both wings. He fixed his baleful eye on the red Automatic Machine and laughed long and loud, and he saw the red iron and glass change before his eyes into the form of Pridmore. Her cheeks were red with rage, and her eyes shone like glass with fury.
“Nice manners,” said she; “what are you laughing at, I should like to know? I’ll make you laugh on the wrong side of your mouth, my fine fellow!”
She sprang into the cage, and then and there, before the astonished Court, she shook that Cockatoucan till he really and truly did laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. It was a terrible sight to witness, and the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear.
But—instantly—all the things changed back, as if by magic, to what they had been before: the laundry became a nurse; the villa became a King; the other people were just what they had been before—and all Matilda’s wonderful cleverness went out like the snuff of a candle.
The Cockatoucan himself fell in two—one half of him became a common ordinary toucan, such as you may have seen a hundred times at the zoo—unless you are unworthy to visit that happy place—and the other half became a weathercock, which, as you know, is always changing, and makes the wind change, too. So he has not quite lost his old power. Only, now that he is in halves, any power he may have has to be used without laughing. The poor, broken Cockatoucan, like King You-know-who in English history, has never, since that sad day, smiled again.
The grateful King sent an escort of the whole army—now no longer dressed in sausage skins, but in uniforms of dazzling beauty, with drums and banners—to see Matilda and Pridmore home. But Matilda was very sle
The next day Matilda began to talk to Pridmore about the Green Land, and the Cockatoucan, and the villa- residence King, but Pridmore only said:
“Pack of nonsense! Hold your tongue, do.”
So, of course, Matilda understood that Pridmore did not wish to be reminded of the time when she was an Automatic Nagging Machine, and at once, like a kind and polite little girl, she let the subject drop.
Matilda did not mention her adventures to the others at home, because she saw that they believed her to have spent the time with her Great-Aunt Willoughby.
And she knew if she had said that she has not been there, she would be sent at once, and she did not wish this.
She has often tried to get Pridmore to take the wrong omnibus again, which is the only way she knows of getting to the Green Land, but only once has she been successful, and then the omnibus did not go to the Green Land at all, but to the Elephant and Castle.
But no little girl ought to expect to go to the Green Land more than once in a lifetime. Many of us, indeed, are not even so fortunate as to go there once.
9
MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY was once a non-fiction writer, and then she shifted her career and started making things up instead. I loved her recent novel, Queen of Kings, about a very scary Cleopatra. She was the assistant editor on this book and did everything that I couldn’t do.
And here she tells a story about a Beast in a forest.
There’s a Beast in the mini-forest, and everyone knows it, especially Angela, whose father hunts it full-time. She has no interest in anything to do with the Beast, until a collector arrives in town, attempting to use her as bait….