THE TRAVELLER

Hope springs eternal...

It had been a strange old week in the forest.

The Wanderer had discovered that life is more than just wandering around from place to place.

He'd discovered that people can sometimes be more worth knowing than the byways of the old forest.

It had been a Tuesday when she had come, riding her grey mare and with the kind of smile to melt even the hardest of hearts. But the Traveller had stabled her mare and breezed into the Wanderer's humble shack and made him a good drink of stiff coffee before telling him she intended to stay in the neighbourhood for a few days and he seemed exactly the sort of chap a young woman could depend on.

Her words had come so out of the blue to him that he was fair taken aback and agreed instantly, to share his humble abode with her, though, he said, the old creaking sofa was no place for a fair young creature to sleep.

She smiled and said it would be quite all right and then she tripped gaily up the stairs and he could hear her in his bathroom, having a good hot shower. The old geyser in the back room was struggling to keep up with all that hot water, but he didn't mind for he knew full well that the Traveller had come a long way on her grey mare and she clearly needed a good dousing with water to wash off all the dust of the road.

Then she said they should go out into the forest.

"There are things for a Traveller to explore," she announced. "I have need of things, for as you can see I am a young woman with great needs. It might seem to you, gentle Wanderer, that I am covered from head to toe in garments, but the truth is very far from what it seems to be. I need to refurnish my wardrobe and then I will look lovely in your eyes and you will want to sweep me off my feet and take me to the ball!"

He shook his head sadly. "I am too old for balls," he replied. "I always had two left feet and in recent years they have changed to become two left twigs! Look upon my legs and despair, you sweet young thing!"

She smiled at him and her smile was like the radiance from an angel's eyes.

"You have good legs," she observed. "They are firm and strong and bear your weight, which is all any of us can expect of our legs!"

"And I am crotchety," he complained. "I have no love of society and balls!"

She smiled at him again and then shook her head. "I love balls," she replied, obliquely. "I attend them whenever I can, and I intend to attend one this very week, sweet friend. So you may take me when the time comes, and I will be proud to be escorted by you!"

Upon hearing that the Wanderer fled into the forest and sat on the stump of a felled old oak and buried his head in his hands.

"What am I to do?" he wept. "I am no dancer! I cannot sing and I have no social skills yet the lovely Traveller wants me to escort her to the ball!

"Why are you so stupid?" asked a voice.

The Wanderer had seen nobody anywhere near the tree stump or he may well have been more careful with his uncontrolled outburst of self-pity.

"Who's there?" he demanded.

An elfin creature stepped into sight from behind a toadstool.

"It is I, Wanderer, and I think you're being very stupid," he said. "Just because you cannot dance you are weeping like a baby! Grow up, man, or I will have to see the Wise Old Owl on the matter, and he will surely demand that the Servants of the Trees slap your bottom good and hard!"

"I deserve having my bottom slapped," sniffed the Wanderer. "I have never felt so wretched in all my life, for the Traveller is the fairest and most radiant creature I have ever seen and already I can feel the stirring of passion in my ancient craggy heart!"

"Bah!" snapped the Elf. "You are nothing but a self-obsessed twallop! What did your beauteous Traveller say that has made you into such an imbecile?"

"She said that I am to escort her to the ball," sniffed the Wanderer. "She said that she has a passion for balls and that I am to lead her onto the dance floor and twirl her around like glitzy men twirl their loved ones, and be the great Fred Astaire to her Ginger Rogers!"

"She said all that?" asked the Elf cautiously.

"Not in as many words, but that was her meaning," replied the Wanderer.

"Look, Wanderer, you spin your fanciful yarns and we peasants follow them as if they were true gospels, and call you the Wanderer as reward for your bounty, yet it seems to me you have very little common sense," tut-tutted the Elf. "It seems to me that she made no suggestion of any kind of twirling, but that you added that to her words in order to make them less pleasing to your ears! Just you go out and enjoy the ball. Twirl with the Traveller if you must, but be warned: she must be back to your hovel by midnight or all manner of nasty things may well happen."

The Wanderer looked alarmed. "What nasty things?" he asked, hurriedly.

"There are dark stories," muttered the Elf, "of glass slippers that won't fit and unlikely things happening to white mice and carriages forming out of this or that gross vegetable."

"They're children's stories!" scoffed the Wanderer. "You can't scare me with those, young Elf!”

"Then what about this," whispered the Elf. "You may find your angel lying in a crystal box and sleeping for a hundred years, or pricking her finger and doing likewise, and no man coming her way to kiss life back into her dusty old flesh! And all much to the consternation of all who loved her, too!"

The Wanderer looked at him scornfully. "And all because I must return her to my sofa by midnight?" he asked.

The Elf winked and nodded. "You will see that I tell the truth," he chirruped.

The Wanderer returned to his hovel, thoughtfully, and the Traveller was sitting in a chair eating porridge or some such nourishing concoction, and smiling the sweetest smile when she saw him again.

"We are to return from the ball by midnight," grunted the Wanderer.

"Then we shall," laughed the Traveller. "Look: I have discovered about the Ball! If we go to the Great Park at the evening hour there will be great revelry, and, old fellow, we will hear songs that were sung when we were ourselves knee-high to grasshoppers or beetles or the like!"

She held a paper before her and the Wanderer looked at it doubtfully, but all seemed to be very much in order and was signed by the King, who always signed such things.

GREAT PARTY said the paper, ALL ARE WELCOME, ALL MUST COME, AND DANCING WILL BE FREE!

"I do not do dancing," growled the Wanderer.

"Tonight you shall," sighed the Traveller, "Tonight we will fall in love!"

"Hey!" shouted the Wanderer, "we will have no such nonsense as that! There can be no falling in anything, and particularly not love! I don't do love!"

"We shall see," grinned the Traveller, prettier than ever

At the appointed hour they went to the great Party and all manner of folks were there: men in fancy hats and their ladies in great big girdles and children in rolls of fat. There were even dogs there, brown and black and white and even puce dogs. And there was a great stage upon which youths twittered about nothing very much at all �" until the Choristers struck up their melodies. And then there was loud singing and great clapping and cheers, and everyone who went to that party said how jolly everything was.

It was, indeed, so jolly that when the Wanderer looked at his shiny silver pocket watch the hour hand was approaching the midnight!

"Come, dear Traveller!" he shouted, "We must depart or we will never get to my cot by midnight, and you may sleep for a thousand yours or prick your thumb or some such nonsense, and I will have no idea what to do!"

The Traveller laughed and said he shouldn't go round listening to mischievous Elves, but if he had to maybe he should choose one with more sense.

But they did depart, and when the great Church Clock struck twelve absolutely nothing happened that was in any way untoward, so the Wanderer turned to the Traveller and kissed her full on the mouth.

"You are safe!" he declared. "No outrageous thing happened when the clock struck twelve!"

"I always knew that I would be," replied the Traveller, "Tales of disasters because of clocks chiming are grossly exaggerated. And you, my dear Wanderer, just as I predicted seem to be in love, for you just kissed me full on the mouth!"

The Wanderer paused for a moment and then he saw the huge truth behind her words, for he knew there and then that he loved the Traveller more than he loved life itself, and his heart quivered inside him and he sweated, even on his feet, and his wild instinct to travel became suddenly muted.

"Oh dear," he sighed, "oh dear me. What ever shall I do?"

"This," she whispered, and draped herself around his neck, and when they got back to his hovel she slowly led him, still draped round his neck, to the tiny winding staircase and to an upper room.

Peter Rogerson 08.05.07

Author's Note

I discovered this on my computer. It was originally posted in 2007 on MySpace and I have decided to rescue it, edit it and repost it here.