THE SOGMARSH NURSERY BOOKS

A note on the use of these books — printed at the front of every edition, by order of the parish, whether anybody reads it or not.

From the nurse, to whoever comes after.

These are the tales we tell the small ones at bedtime. They are set down here because I am tired of being asked to remember them at short notice, and because I will not always be here to be asked.

You will notice they are not the tales they tell in drier countries. In drier countries the wolf is wicked and the fairy is sweet and the moral is that virtue is rewarded. We have tried that here. It does not survive contact with the weather.

Each one has a bit the children shout. Let them shout it. That is not the interruption. That is the tale. A story a child cannot join in with is a story a child is only being told at, and we have quite enough of that from the castle.

You will be asked why our tales end badly, or sideways, or in a damp bedsit with an argument about the sink. Here is your answer, and you may give it to any dry-country visitor who raises an eyebrow.

We do not tell our children that virtue is rewarded. We would be lying, and they would find out, and they would find out from the weather. What we tell them instead is this: the house will leak, the gift will have a clause in it, the wolf will very often be right, and the person who does the worst job in your life will never once be thanked unless you do it.

And then we tell them the other half, which the dry countries have somehow contrived to lose: that none of that is the end of anything. The wolf found the boy. The girl left the broth out. The dish and the spoon are still arguing, twenty years on, in the same small room, together.

A child who is told only that things go well will be broken by the first winter. A child who is told only that things go badly will not bother to try. We tell them both, in the dark, over the drip — and in the morning they get up and go out into a sinking realm and are, on the whole, remarkably decent about it.

They are not cheerful because we lied to them. They are cheerful because we did not, and they decided to be cheerful anyway. That is the only magic in Sogmarsh, and it is entirely home-made.

# THE FIRST NURSERY BOOK

Beasts of the Dry Countries, Corrected — being the five tales most asked for, as told in the parish, with the bits the children shout.

Read the front matter first (How to Use These Books). The short of it: let them shout.

I. THE WOLF WHO WAS RIGHT

Being the true account of the business with the three pigs, from the party who has been much maligned.

There were three pigs, and they built three houses, and one was of straw, and one was of sticks, and one was of good honest brick.

And a wolf came down the lane. And he was not hungry. He had had his dinner.

He was carrying a clipboard.

"That," said the wolf, looking at the straw house, "is not a wall."

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "STRAW IS NOT A WALL!")

"It is my house," said the first pig, "and I like it."

"It is a hat," said the wolf, "for a field. I am obliged to condemn it. If you will not take it down, I must demonstrate the defect." And he took a breath, and he demonstrated the defect, and the straw went over the fen like a thrown handful of nothing, and the first pig ran squealing to the house of sticks.

"Sticks," said the wolf, arriving with his clipboard, "are a fence. A fence with ambitions. Look at your joints. You have tied them with string."

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "STICKS ARE JUST A FENCE!")

And he demonstrated the defect, and the sticks went over the fen, and both pigs ran to the house of brick.

And the wolf came to the brick house, and he walked all the way round it, slowly, and he looked at the footings, and he looked at the damp-course, and he tapped the mortar with one claw. And he took a very great breath indeed —

— and let it out again, and wrote something on his clipboard, and said, "That will do."

And he pushed a piece of paper under the door, and it said PASSED, and he went away down the lane.

Now here is the part they leave out of it in drier countries. The wolf was right. Straw is not a wall. Sticks are a fence. He never ate one pig in his life, and he saved two, and the chronicles call him the villain of the thing to this day, because he huffed, and huffing makes a better story than a damp-course.

He is still out there, walking the realm with his clipboard, condemning straw, being right, being hated for it. He is very bitter and he is very good at his job, and those two facts have nothing to do with one another.

Moral: The one who tells you your house won't stand is not your enemy. Your enemy is the wind, and the wind is coming, and it has not read the story either.

II. MISTRESS PLIERS

For the night a tooth comes loose. Do not tell it on any other night; it works better if it is saved.

There is a woman who comes for your teeth.

(HERE THE CHILDREN GO VERY QUIET, WHICH IS ALSO A KIND OF SHOUTING.)

She is not a fairy the way they mean it in the drier countries — she is not pink and she does not glitter and she is not, on any account, sweet. She wears a thick leather apron with the burn-marks on it, and a utility belt, and she carries her own pliers, and they are rusty, and the wings on her back are frankly an afterthought and she knows it.

She comes in the small hours. She takes the tooth. She leaves the coin. And she goes away again.

And here is what nobody ever tells you: she knows your name.

She has a drawer — a long, deep, dark drawer — with a little label on every compartment, and in every compartment is a tooth, and beside every tooth is a name, and she remembers all of them. Every child in the realm. Every tooth that ever came loose in a bog cottage in the middle of the night. She has been doing this for longer than the castle has been standing, and she has never once been thanked, and she has never once been asked in.

Would you like to know why she is so brusque about it? Because everybody needs her, and nobody wants to meet her. That is the whole of her life. She does necessary, close, difficult work — work that everyone in three counties relies upon and would rather not think about — and every door in the realm shuts a little tighter when she is due.

Now. There was a girl in the Lower Fen who lost a tooth, and put it under her pillow, and then — because she was the sort of child who thinks about things — she got up again, and wrote a note, and put the note under the pillow with the tooth. And the note said:

Thank you for coming. It is a horrid job and you do it very well. There is broth in the pot if you are cold. — B.

And in the morning the tooth was gone, and the coin was there, and the pot on the fire was empty, and washed, and set upside down on the rack to dry, the way you leave a kitchen when you have been raised properly and you are grateful and you cannot say so.

She has never spoken to that girl. She has never spoken to anybody. But that house, on the coldest nights of the year, has never once had a child wake with the toothache — and if you ask the girl's mother about it she will tell you it's the salt in the water, and if you ask the girl she will not tell you anything at all, and she will smile.

Moral: Somebody has to do the horrid necessary jobs. Say thank you. Leave the broth out. It costs you nothing, and you have no idea how long they have been coming to houses that never once looked up.

III. THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF, AND THE WOLF WHO CAME ANYWAY

The warm one. Save it for a bad night.

You know the first half. Everyone knows the first half.

A boy minded the sheep, and the boy was bored, and the boy shouted "WOLF!" and the whole village came running with their sticks, and there was no wolf, and the boy laughed.

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "WOLF!" — and then again, quieter — "...wolf?")

And he did it again. And he did it again. And the fourth time he shouted, nobody came at all, and that is where the drier countries stop the story, with the boy alone on the hill, being taught his lesson.

We do not stop there. We are not in the business of leaving children on hills.

Because the boy stayed out there. Nobody came for him at supper, and nobody came for him at dark, and he sat down in the wet grass with his arms round his knees, and he was more alone than he had ever been in his life — and then, out of the mist, quite unhurried, came an actual wolf.

And the boy was too tired to run. And the wolf sat down a little way off, because it had had a poor sort of day itself.

And after a while the boy said, "Are you going to eat me?"

And the wolf said, "Are you going to shout?"

And the boy said, "There's no one to shout to."

And the wolf said, "No. Nor me."

They got talking. There was nothing else to do. It turned out they had a great deal in common — neither of them was much liked, and both of them had been made into a story by people who had never once asked them a question — and by the time the sun came up they had established that the wolf did not, in fact, much care for mutton, and that the boy could cook.

They share a very small flat near the common now. It is damp. They bicker about the washing-up. The wolf snores and the boy talks in his sleep, and neither of them has been lonely for eleven years.

Moral: Lie until the world stops coming, and the only one left who'll sit with you is the very thing you invented to frighten them. Which is a warning — but it is also, if you are honest about it, a rescue. Try not to need it.

IV. THE GODMOTHER'S RECEIPT

Short. Tell it to the ones who are old enough to want things.

A girl in the ashes wished, and a godmother came, and the godmother was very kind, and very quick, and had a great many papers.

The gown: magnificent. The carriage: a marvel. The slippers: fitted.

And the godmother said, "Sign here," and the girl signed, and the godmother said, "and here," and the girl signed, and the godmother said, "and this is your receipt, and mind you keep it safe," and was gone before the ink was dry.

Now the girl had a wonderful evening. Nobody disputes the evening.

But the magic did not end at midnight, whatever they tell you elsewhere. It ended when the warranty did. And the warranty was ninety days. And on the ninety-first, in the middle of the market, in front of everybody, the gown went back to being a curtain, and the slippers went back to being nothing at all, and the carriage sat down in the road and became, with a sad orange sigh, a pumpkin.

She had not read the receipt. Nobody ever reads the receipt. It was four pages.

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "READ THE SMALL PRINT!" — and they must shout it, because their parents did not, and that is why we are all in the Standing Account.)

Moral: A grand gift with a clause in it is not a miracle. It is a loan in a nicer frock, and the frock goes back.

V. THE DISH AND THE SPOON

Sung, not told. To the tune everyone knows.

The cat did the fiddle, the cow did the moon, The dish ran away with the spoon — (HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "THEY RAN AWAY!")

And that's where it stops, in the drier countries. It doesn't stop there.

They came to a bedsit. The roof had a drip. The dish had a chip. (The dish still has the chip.) The spoon got bent in the very first year And nobody straightened him out, my dear.

And they bicker each evening, and they always will, Over whose idea it was, and whose turn at the sink, And the answer is both, and the answer is neither, And they have never once slept a night apart.

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "WHOSE TURN AT THE SINK?" — and the answer, always, is "YOURS.")

Moral: Running away together is not the end of the story. It is the bit before the washing-up. The washing-up is the story. Mind you take your turn.

VI. THE SHOVING LEOPARD

For the nights when everyone is in the wrong place and needs a good push.

There was once a beast sent down to the Bogmoor by a grand mistake in the celestial ledger. The scrolls in Murkminster had intended to commission a Loving Shepherd to tend the valley, but the clerk's pen slipped, the letters swapped places, and what arrived on the moor instead was a Shoving Leopard.

He did not have a crook. He had four big, heavy paws and an irresistible urge to push things.

He came upon a flock of sheep who were standing in the middle of the track, debating the philosophy of a puddle. They would not move for the rain, and they would not move for the constable. They were perfectly content to sink.

The Shoving Leopard did not whistle. He did not lead them by a gentle stream. He simply bounded up behind the fattest ewe and gave her a tremendous, unceremonious SHOVE.

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "GET OUT OF THE BOG!")

And the fat ewe shoved the ram, and the ram shoved the lambs, until the whole flock went tumbling out of the mire and straight into the dry barn — thoroughly insulted, deeply offended, but entirely safe from drowning.

Next, the leopard trotted up to Castle Bastable. Lord Percival was standing on the battlements, delivering a magnificent, silver-tongued lie to a tax collector while standing directly on a section of masonry that Professor Clank had explicitly labelled structural failure pending.

The Shoving Leopard didn't care about the poetry of the lie. He trotted up behind his Lordship and gave his velvet coat a sharp, spotted SHOVE, right into a passing cart of damp straw. A clear half-second later, the battlements collapsed into the moat with a dreadful splash.

"Miserable, bad-mannered brute!" roared Lord Bastable from the straw, adjusting his cuffs. "I am completely uninjured and it is terribly inconvenient!"

(HERE THE CHILDREN SHOUT: "MIND THE BUCKET AND TAKE THE PUSH!")

The Shoving Leopard never did learn to sing hymns or carry a staff, and the chronicles cast him as a nuisance to this day. But he is still out there in the high heather — spotted, blunt, and entirely necessary — shoving travellers out of the path of the hidden mires, and pushing stubborn turnips back toward the safety of the Woods before the watch changes.

Moral: Drier countries pray for a gentle guide to take them by the hand. In Sogmarsh, you are far more likely to get a great spotted nuisance who knocks you into the bushes to save you from a falling roof. Don't look for the manners; look at where you landed, and get out of the way.