Something to read to your grandchildren at bed-time. This story was first published in the Linked-In portal on 18 April 2022
Image thanks to wallpapercave.com.
ONCE UPON A TIME, in a land far, far away, there lived an elf. He wasn’t particularly handsome and he wasn’t particularly well-connected. He was just an elf. He had some dark secrets that nobody knew and he knew his fellow elves in that land far, far away also had some dark secrets, but he never told of his own and they never told of theirs. He simply went about his business, farming the land, ploughing, harrowing, planting, nurturing and harvesting the grain that grew on his field. He had ambitions but he knew his limitations. He was happy with what little he had. Some of the other elves had more; and some of them had less. It was okay.
Sometimes he would look to the sky as the sun set in the west and he knew that over the horizon was another realm; one where unity and brotherhood reigned and he’d heard it was a land of milk and honey. He hoped one day that he could be one of them, for he also liked honey in his milk, but meanwhile he ploughed, harrowed, planted, nurtured and harvested.
One day, early in the morning, as he went out onto his field to start his day, he looked to the rising sun in the east. Along the edge of his field, outlined against the yellow sun that rose into the blue sky, he saw a mass of brigands. They stood facing him with scowls on their faces.
“What seek you here?” he asked them.
Their leader stepped forward. “We are here to take your field for our lord and master.”
“Oh! If you do that,” replied the elf, “what will I plough and harrow and plant and nurture and harvest to feed my family and bring to market?”
The brigand replied, “You shall have nothing to plough or harrow or plant or nurture or harvest to feed your family or bring to market, for you shall plough and harrow and plant and nurture and harvest your grain for us; and you shall shower us with flowers, grateful that we allow you to feed our bellies; and your surplus we shall send to our market.”
“And what shall you render me in return?” asked the elf.
“We shall allow you to live.”
The elf was puzzled. “On what shall I live if you take my grain? On what shall my family live if you take my grain? How will I bring my grain to market if you take the grain to your market?”
The brigand answered, “You shall live from the rising sun in the east as it climbs into the clear, blue sky, and from nothing else; so our lord and master has decreed.”
The elf was still puzzled, and replied, “If you threaten to take my field, I shall fetch my pitchfork and I shall defend my field with my pitchfork. I shall repel you if you tread upon my earth.”
“If you fetch your pitchfork,” said the brigand, “then we shall tread upon your field.”
“But you threaten to tread upon my field come what may, do you not?” said the elf.
To this the brigand had no answer, but called his fellows together and, together, they trod upon the elf’s field.
The elf turned to the west, where the sky was still dark, for the sun had not yet risen on that distant horizon, and he called with all his might, and with all his strength and with all his soul to the west, “Good folk of the west, there come brigands upon my field, and they plough up my earth, they harrow me with threats, they plant untruths in my land, they nurture evil intentions and they will pluck me from existence as the harvest in the fall. And if they succeed, they will do similar to you, for westward is where they are headed. They do this at the behest of their lord and master, which is evil.”
Far off in the distance he saw a light. It was one of the good folk of the west. After him came some others, and soon many of them stood at the western edge of his field and he cried to them, “Come upon my field and aid me to repel the brigands, for the harm you do will not save my field from the harm that the brigands, they do, but it shall help me repel the brigands back to whence they came.”
And the good folk of the land of milk and honey cried back to him, “We may not tread upon your field, for if we do so the brigands shall come and destroy our homes, and we shall no longer have milk and honey in our land. We are afeared that our honey may cease to flow and that we should be cast into discomfort and unworthiness. But we have brought sticks and shall give them to you, with which you might beat the brigands back whence they did come. And if you cannot fight, we will welcome you into our land of milk and honey, where we shall tend to your cares and fawn sympathy upon you, but we shall not impugn the deliverer of our honey, who is the lord and master of the brigands, and we shall not save your field.”
The elf gathered together his family and said unto them, “You must flee. Wife, you are my queen; children, you are my progeny. Flee, flee to where there is salubrity and safety from the brigands, and I shall remain to defend our field.” And his wife and his children, they did flee thither to wherever there was salubrity and safety.
The elf looked back to his field and was dismayed as he watched all that which he had ploughed, ploughed up; he was harrowed as he watched all he had harrowed, harrowed up; as he saw all he had planted was unplanted, all he had nurtured, destroyed underfoot by the brigands; he turned back to the good folk of milk and honey and he cried unto them, “You see how the brigands come; they trample my harvest underfoot; I am one and they are many, and they will not relent, for they serve a lord and master who doth whip them forward at his behest. Will you not come upon my field and help me repel this evil and restore peace and justice to my field?”
They would not, they said, but said that they would throw sticks upon his field until he could fight the onslaught no longer. And the elf said, “Thank you.” And he cried unto them no more. And, instead, cried.
The field was, indeed, trampled underfoot, and the brigands destroyed all the field and set forth to take into their hands other fields, farmed by other elves, and nor they could do naught against the onslaught; and it came to pass that all the fields in the land far, far, away were robbed by the brigands; and, finally, the elf, for their sport, they did kill.
The good folk of the west looked on in horror as this all happened, and the brigands, they did glower at them as they wreaked their evil, but never did the good folk take one step upon the field, but stood with their sticks in defiance at the onslaught upon the elf as he was beaten to death by the brigands, into the ground he had farmed.
When all was conquered, they saw that darkness had come. The lights they had brought were now gone, and uncertainty reigned across all the lands.
Yet, after some time, a light, it did appear. Tiny at first, but then it became much, much brighter, and over the eastern horizon there did rise a glorious, golden sun. As it rose above the horizon, the sky behind it did turn the most vibrant and wonderful deep blue, and the sun’s light shone down upon the devastated field and, upon the field laid waste by the brigands, came light, the hopeful light of the elf’s returning children.
For, the love with which the elf had nurtured his field was like the love with which he and his wife had nurtured their children. And the children had grown strong with the memory of their flight and the thoughts of their father’s plight. And they did come back to the field of their father, and they set the field to rights, and they did plough it, and harrow it, and plant it, and nurture it, and, against the glorious sun in the clear, blue sky, they did harvest the field; and they did love the land, and the land far, far, away did love them. And, as the brigands had themselves foretold, the children, they did live, from the rising sun in the east as it climbed into the clear, blue sky, for it instilled in them hope and faith, to never relent in the angry face of badness.
What became of the brigands, no one knows for sure. They came and they destroyed the field, but where they are now, few can tell. Some lie in the dirt of the field and nourish the plants as they grow, the few the elf could impale on his pitchfork; some returned home to their lord and master to reap praise and reward for the evil they had wrought upon the field at his behest. And some went to a place unknown, for no one has ever been there and returned.
In the land of milk and honey, the good folk of the west, they do hang their heads in abject shame, and remain still to this day at home, with their sticks, fearful that the brigands might some day stand outlined against the rising sun at the edge of their own fields.
But, in the land, far, far away, the sun rises day in, day out, and the corn, it does grow in the field under the clear, blue sky. And the elves of that land, they do live. They live as they’d always lived: for the rising sun in a clear, blue sky.