Rewards and Fairies - Penn State University

Rudyard Kipling
while it still quivered said: ‘This is witness between us that I ‘I hear. I know. I listen,’ said Puck.
speak the thing that has been. Before my Knife and the Na- ‘When I was old enough to take my place in the Sheepguard,
ked Chalk I speak. Touch!’
The Beast gnawed all our country like a bone between his teeth.
Puck laid a hand on the hilt. It stopped shaking. The chil- He came in behind the flocks at watering-time, and watched
dren wriggled a little nearer.
them round the Dew-ponds; he leaped into the folds between
‘I am of the People of the Worked Flint. I am the one son our knees at the shearing; he walked out alongside the grazing
of the Priestess who sells the Winds to the Men of the Sea. I flocks, and chose his meat on the hoof while our boys threw
am the Buyer of the Knife—the Keeper of the People,’ the flints at him; he crept by night ‘into the huts, and licked the
man began, in a sort of singing shout. ‘These are my names babe from between the mother’s hands; he called his compan-
in this country of the Naked Chalk, between the Trees and ions and pulled down men in broad daylight on the Naked
the Sea.’
Chalk. No—not always did he do so! This was his cunning!
‘Yours was a great country. Your names are great too,’ said He would go away for a while to let us forget him. A year—
Puck.
two years perhaps—we neither smelt, nor heard, nor saw him.
‘One cannot feed some things on names and songs.’ The man When our flocks had increased; when our men did not always
hit himself on the chest. ‘It is better—always better—to count look behind them; when children strayed from the fenced places;
one’s children safe round the fire, their Mother among them.’ when our women walked alone to draw water—back, back,
‘Ahai!’ said Puck. ‘I think this will be a very old tale.’ ‘I back came the Curse of the Chalk, Grey Shepherd, Feet-in-
warm myself and eat at any fire that I choose, but there is no the-Night—The Beast, The Beast, The Beast!
one to light me a fire or cook my meat. I sold all that when I ‘He laughed at our little brittle arrows and our poor blunt
bought the Magic Knife for my people. it was not right that spears. He learned to run in under the stroke of the hammer.
The Beast should master man. What else could I have done?’ I think he knew when there was a flaw in the flint. Often it
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