Caryll Houselander - More Catholic Tales for Boys and Girls

by Caryll Houselander

Illustrated by Renee George

Catholic Tales for Boys and Girls

by Caryll Houselander

Illustrated by Renee George

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ust before the strange and wonderful thing happened to us, I was dreaming a lot. I mean asleep-dreaming, not daydreaming. In my youth, I would have a fine, big dinner and sleep without moving, shut up, it seemed, in a tunnel of velvet darkness that had the evening star at one end and the rising sun at the other, and nothing at all in between. But as I grew older, I began to think that something had gone wrong with me or the world, or both. I would dream that I was hungry, and the hunger was gripping hold of my stomach like some great beast's teeth, a very nasty feeling. Or I would dream that I was fighting, my claws out, my eyes blazing, my body stiff, and my coat pricked up; and instead of doing it for fun and enjoying it, I was doing it in a rage and feeling ever so miserable.

I had a friend, a brontosaurus, very old and wise, and one day I went to see her and told her about my dreams and about the way life was all topsy-turvy. She listened with her eyes closed, nodding her great horned head and snuffling enormously now and then. Every time she snuffled, the whole jungle shook.

Well, after a time, she opened her eyes and said slowly, in a sing-song voice, as if she was inspired, "My friend Tiger, what you are coming to know is sin, alas!"

"Sin?" I said. "What is that?"

"It is hard for us animals to understand," she replied, "but as you know, I am some hundreds of years old, and I remember a time when no animal ever suffered at all. Things like hunger and thirst were pleasures; they only sharpened our joy in being alive. We used, even mighty beasts like myself, to pick our way on the grass not to tread down the opening flowers. We all knew that when we ate, we pushed our eager snouts into the invisible hand of a great Person. And that hand stroked and ruffled our fur and closed our eyes in sleep, and - "

The Brontosaurus broke off as if the memory was so lovely that she could not go on speaking of it. Then shaking herself and at the same time shaking all the neighboring bushes and the birds in them, she went on in a loud, violent voice: "Now all is changed. Man set himself up against God, against all the burning stars and flowing waters and springing fields, and he brought our troubles in the world. That's hard to understand. That's sin. And we animals feel it in our insides, in our dry tongues when we thirst, in our heaving flanks when we are hungry. Because of that, men, who used to love us and whom we used to serve, hunt us down, and we feel inclined, for our part, to eat them.

"Every sort of nasty thing happens now, and that, my friend, is why you dream. You, a tiger, get indigestion, and you dream! Alas!" She went on mumbling darkly, saying that sad things were gathering like a cloud of black flies, and no one knew where it would end, and so on, until she fell asleep. I slipped away, not really cheered up, to my own cave and my young wife, Mitsie.

It was to Mitsie that the call came first. She got up in the night and began pacing our cave, to and fro from wall to entrance, listening, listening. I rose with a thrilling shiver trembling through me and listened, too; but I heard nothing, at least only wolves howling, and nearer at home the squeak and scuffle of a mouse. Then Mitsie said, "Don't listen to outside. Listen to inside." So I did, and it was as if the sun had gotten inside us and called us. And now it led us out of the cave.

We trotted through the forest and were not surprised to find many other animals awake and trotting in the same direction. Their coats were all silvered in the moonlight, and they moved as if they were in a trance: tigers with little birds perching on their backs, and little silver mice scampering round their feet; bears and lions and zebras and rabbits and squirrels and weasels and every kind of beast, all together as friends, moving as if a gentle wind carried them along with it. You would not have supposed that any of these animals could quarrel and fight.

I remembered what the old Brontosaurus had said about everyone eating out of a big, kind hand. Now it seemed to me that this beautiful hand, although invisible, was stretched out over us all. As we turned out of the forest to the open plains, I saw many other animals coming from all the four corners of the earth: camels and elephants, and flights of birds like singing clouds, and on the ground hosts of shining insects.

As we moved on faster and faster, I saw that the wind was rising and the forests, now in the distance, were tossing and swaying like fields of grass. It was beginning to rain, too. I saw little diamonds glistening on our fur and hanging like dew on our whiskers. A feeling of hope and joy began to fill us, and we moved with a swinging movement, like dancing, like the birds that were circling overhead. We lurched from side to side and stamped our feet, and each in his own way, we started to sing. There was roaring and bellowing and squeaking such as I have not heard before or since.