Fables Chapter 8 - The House of Eld

Robert Louis Stevenson (0:01)

Section 8 of Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson The Slivervox Recordings in the Public Domain Read by Ben Tucker The House of Eld So soon as the child began to speak, the guive was riveted, and the boys and girls limped about their play like convicts. Doubtless, it was more pitiable to see, and more painful to bear in youth. But even the grown folk, besides being very unhandy on their feet, were often sick with ulcers. About the time when Jack was ten years old, many strangers began to journey through that country. These he beheld going lightly by on the long roads, and the thing amazed him.

I wonder how it comes, he asked, that all these strangers are so quick afoot, and we must drag about our fetter. My dear boy, said his uncle, the catechist, do not complain about your fetter, for it is the only thing that makes life worth living. None are happy, none are good, none are respectable, that are not gived like us. And I must tell you besides it is very dangerous talk. If you grumble of your iron, you will have no luck. If ever you take it off, you will be instantly smitten by a thunderbolt.

Are there no thunderbolts for these strangers? asked Jack. Jupiter is long suffering to the benighted, returned the catechist. Upon my word, I could wish I had been less fortunate, said Jack. For if I had been born benighted, I might now be going free, and it cannot be denied the iron is inconvenient, and the ulcer hurts. Ah! cried his uncle. Do not envy the heathen. Theirs is a sad lot. Ah! poor souls, if they but knew the joys of being fettered. Poor souls, my heart yearns for them. But the truth is they are vile, odious, insolent, ill-conditioned, stinking brutes, not truly human. For what is a man without a fetter? And you cannot be too particular not to touch or speak with them.

After this talk the child would never pass one of the unfettered on the road, but what he spat at him and called him names, which was the practice of the children in that part. It chanced one day when he was fifteen he went into the woods and the ulcer pained him. It was a fair day, with a blue sky. All the birds were singing, but Jack nursed his foot. Presently another song began. It sounded like the singing of a person, only far more gay. At the same time there was a beating on the earth.

Jack put aside the leaves, and there was a lad of his own village, leaping and dancing and singing to himself in a green dell, and on the grass beside him lay the dancer's iron.

Oh! cried Jack, you have your fetter off.

For God's sake, don't tell your uncle! cried the lad. If you fear my uncle, returned Jack, why do you not fear the thunderbolt?

That is only an old wives' tale, said the other. It is only told to children. Scores of us come here among the woods and dance for nights together, and are none the worse. This put Jack in a thousand new thoughts. He was a grave lad. He had no mind to dance himself. He wore his fetter manfully and tended his ulcer without complaint. But he loved the less to be deceived or to see others cheated. He began to lie and wait for heathen travellers at covert parts of the road, and in the dusk of the day, so that he might speak with them unseen. And these were greatly taken with their wayside questioner and told him things of weight. The wearing of guives, they said, was no command of Jupiter's. It was the contrivance of a white-faced thing, a sorcerer, that dwelt in that country in the Wood of Eld. He was one like Glaucus that could change his shape, yet he could be always told. For when he was crossed, he gobbled like a turkey. He had three lives, but the third smiting would make an end of him indeed. And with that, his house of sorcery would vanish, the guyves fall, and the villagers take hands and dance like children.

And, in your country? Jack would ask. But at this the travellers with one accord would put him off, until Jack began to suppose there was no land entirely happy. Or if there were, it must be one that kept its folk at home, which was natural enough. But the case of the guives weighed upon him. The sight of the children limping stuck in his eyes. The groans of such as dressed their ulcers haunted him. And it came at last in his mind that he was born to free them. There was in that village a sword of heavenly forgery, beaten upon Vulcan's anvil. It was never used but in the temple, and then the flat of it only, and it hung on a nail by the catechist's chimney. Early one night, Jack rose and took the sword, and was gone out of the house and the village in the darkness.