On the headstone next to Mother's house, a skip rope was turning in the moonlight, and the thump, thump of invisible feet echoed in the rooms below. The animals did not mind, any more than they minded when the squirrels clucked in their sleep or the cock crowed at false dawn, waking everyone up, and then again at real dawn, waking everyone up all over again. The last sound they listened for was the voice of the invisible girl singing them into oblivion:
'Bottom, bottom, dish clout,
Dutch cheese and sauerkraut.
Our first lieutenant was so neat
He stopped in the battle to wash his feet.'
The possums, who had never seen a lieutenant, spread the rumor that the first lieutenant—and the ancestor of all other lieutenants—had had a pink snout and a long thin tail like theirs.
-from Chapter Seven |
'Is there no one who can help us?' bellowed the old otter with gray whiskers.
...A brown spider crawled to the middle of the table, and all the creatures leaned forward to listen.
'Our old lore says, Let a great hero win the thread of death, let the thread be knitted into a cloak, and let the cloak of death be joined to the cloak of life, and all whom Arcimboldo has enchanted will be whole again.'
'Can you spiders do this?' asked Mother.
'Our old lore says, Whoever wants it must win it,' squeaked the spider. 'And the hero must be human.'
Everybody looked at Anatole.
'You're human,' said the otter. 'You can't deny it.'
-Chapter Five |
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