Septimus Septimusson

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Title:     Septimus Septimusson
Author: Edith Nesbit [More Titles by Nesbit]

The wind was screaming over the marsh. It shook the shutters and rattled the windows, and the little boy lay awake in the bare attic. His mother came softly up the ladder stairs shading the flame of the tallow candle with her hand.

'I'm not asleep, mother,' said he. And she heard the tears in his voice.

'Why, silly lad,' she said, sitting down on the straw-bed beside him and putting the candle on the floor, 'what are you crying for?'

'It's the wind keeps calling me, mother,' he said. 'It won't let me alone. It never has since I put up the little weather-cock for it to play with. It keeps saying, "Wake up, Septimus Septimusson, wake up, you're the seventh son of a seventh son. You can see the fairies and hear the beasts speak, and you must go out and seek your fortune." And I'm afraid, and I don't want to go.'

'I should think not indeed,' said his mother. 'The wind doesn't talk, Sep, not really. You just go to sleep like a good boy, and I'll get father to bring you a gingerbread pig from the fair to-morrow.'

But Sep lay awake a long time listening to what the wind really did keep on saying, and feeling ashamed to think how frightened he was of going out all alone to seek his fortune--a thing all the boys in books were only too happy to do.

Next evening father brought home the loveliest gingerbread pig with currant eyes. Sep ate it, and it made him less anxious than ever to go out into the world where, perhaps, no one would give him gingerbread pigs ever any more.

Before he went to bed he ran down to the shore where a great new harbour was being made. The workmen had been blasting the big rocks, and on one of the rocks a lot of mussels were sticking. He stood looking at them, and then suddenly he heard a lot of little voices crying, 'Oh Sep, we're so frightened, we're choking.'

The voices were thin and sharp as the edges of mussel shells. They were indeed the voices of the mussels themselves.

'Oh dear,' said Sep, 'I'm so sorry, but I can't move the rock back into the sea, you know. Can I now?'

'No,' said the mussels, 'but if you speak to the wind,--you know his language and he's very fond of you since you made that toy for him,--he'll blow the sea up till the waves wash us back into deep water.'

'But I'm afraid of the wind,' said Sep, 'it says things that frighten me.'

'Oh very well,' said the mussels, 'we don't want you to be afraid. We can die all right if necessary.'

Then Sep shivered and trembled.

'Go away,' said the thin sharp voices. 'We'll die--but we'd rather die in our own brave company.'

'I know I'm a coward,' said Sep. 'Oh, wait a minute.'

'Death won't wait,' said the little voices.

'I can't speak to the wind, I won't,' said Sep, and almost at the same moment he heard himself call out, 'Oh wind, please come and blow up the waves to save the poor mussels.'

The wind answered with a boisterous shout--

'All right, my boy,' it shrieked, 'I'm coming.' And come it did. And when it had attended to the mussels it came and whispered to Sep in his attic. And to his great surprise, instead of covering his head with the bed-clothes, as usual, and trying not to listen, he found himself sitting up in bed and talking to the wind, man to man.

'Why,' he said, 'I'm not afraid of you any more.'

'Of course not, we're friends now,' said the wind. 'That's because we joined together to do a kindness to some one. There's nothing like that for making people friends.'

'Oh,' said Sep.

'Yes,' said the wind, 'and now, old chap, when will you go out and seek your fortune? Remember how poor your father is, and the fortune, if you find it, won't be just for you, but for your father and mother and the others.'

'Oh,' said Sep, 'I didn't think of that.'

'Yes,' said the wind, 'really, my dear fellow, I do hate to bother you, but it's better to fix a time. Now when shall we start?'

'We?' said Sep. 'Are you going with me?'

'I'll see you a bit of the way,' said the wind. 'What do you say now? Shall we start to-night? There's no time like the present.'

'I do hate going,' said Sep.

'Of course you do!' said the wind, cordially. 'Come along. Get into your things, and we'll make a beginning.'

So Sep dressed, and he wrote on his slate in very big letters, 'Gone to seek our fortune,' and he put it on the table so that his mother should see it when she came down in the morning. And he went out of the cottage and the wind kindly shut the door after him.

The wind gently pushed him down to the shore, and there he got into his father's boat, which was called the _Septimus and Susie_, after his father and mother, and the wind carried him across to another country and there he landed.

'Now,' said the wind, clapping him on the back, 'off you go, and good luck to you!'

And it turned round and took the boat home again.

When Sep's mother found the writing on the slate, and his father found the boat gone they feared that Sep was drowned, but when the wind brought the boat back wrong way up, they were quite sure, and they both cried for many a long day.

The wind tried to tell them that Sep was all right, but they couldn't understand wind-talk, and they only said, 'Drat the wind,' and fastened the shutters up tight, and put wedges in the windows.

Sep walked along the straight white road that led across the new country. He had no more idea how to look for _his_ fortune than you would have if you suddenly left off reading this and went out of your front door to seek _yours_.

However, he had made a start, and that is always something. When he had gone exactly seven miles on that straight foreign road, between strange trees, and bordered with flowers he did not know the names of, he heard a groaning in the wood, and some one sighing and saying, 'Oh, how hard it is, to have to die and never see my wife and the little cubs again.'

The voice was rough as a lion's mane, and strong as a lion's claws, and Sep was very frightened. But he said, 'I'm not afraid,' and then oddly enough he found he had spoken the truth--he wasn't afraid.

He broke through the bushes and found that the person who had spoken was indeed a lion. A javelin had pierced its shoulder and fastened it to a great tree.

'All right,' cried Sep, 'hold still a minute, sir.'

He got out his knife and cut and cut at the shaft of the javelin till he was able to break it off. Then the lion drew back and the broken shaft passed through the wound and the broken javelin was left sticking in the tree.

'I'm really extremely obliged, my dear fellow,' said the lion warmly. 'Pray command me, if there's any little thing I can do for you at any time.'

'Don't mention it,' said Sep with proper politeness, 'delighted to have been of use to you, I'm sure.'

So they parted. As Sep scrambled through the bushes back to the road he kicked against an axe that lay on the ground.

'Hullo,' said he, 'some poor woodman's dropped this, and not been able to find it. I'll take it along--perhaps I may meet him.'

He was getting very tired and very hungry, and presently he sat down to rest under a chestnut-tree, and he heard two little voices talking in the branches, voices soft as a squirrel's fur, and bright as a squirrel's eyes. They were, indeed, the voices of two squirrels.

'Hush,' said one, 'there's some one below.'

'Oh,' said the other, 'it's a horrid boy. Let's scurry away.'

'I'm not a horrid boy,' said Sep. 'I'm the seventh son of a seventh son.'

'Oh,' said Mrs. Squirrel, 'of course that makes all the difference. Have some nuts?'

'Rather,' said Sep. 'At least I mean, yes, if you please.'

So the squirrels brought nuts down to him, and when he had eaten as many as he wanted they filled his pockets, and then in return he chopped all the lower boughs off the chestnut-tree, so that boys who were _not_ seventh sons could not climb up and interfere with the squirrels' housekeeping arrangements.

Then they parted, the best of friends, and Sep went on.

'I haven't found my fortune yet,' said he, 'but I've made a friend or two.'

And just as he was saying that, he turned a corner of the road and met an old gentleman in a fur-lined coat riding a fine, big, grey horse.

'Hullo!' said the gentleman. 'Who are you, and where are you off to so bright and early?'

'I'm Septimus Septimusson,' said Sep, 'and I'm going to seek my fortune.'

'And you've taken an axe to help you carve your way to glory?'

'No,' said Sep, 'I found it, and I suppose some one lost it. So I'm bringing it along in case I meet him.'

'Heavy, isn't it?' said the old gentleman.

'Yes,' said Sep.

'Then I'll carry it for you,' said the old gentleman, 'for it's one that my head forester lost yesterday. And now come along with me, for you're the boy I've been looking for for seven years--an honest boy and the seventh son of a seventh son.'

So Sep went home with the gentleman, who was a great lord in that country, and he lived in that lord's castle and was taught everything that a gentleman ought to know. And in return he told the lord all about the ways of birds and beasts--for as he understood their talk he knew more about them than any one else in that country. And the lord wrote it all down in a book, and half the people said it was wonderfully clever, and the other half said it was nonsense, and how could he know. This was fame, and the lord was very pleased. But though the old lord was so famous he would not leave his castle, for he had a hump that an enchanter had fastened on to him, and he couldn't bear to be seen with it.

'But you'll get rid of it for me some day, my boy,' he used to say. 'No one but the seventh son of a seventh son and an honest boy can do it. So all the doctors say.'

So Sep grew up. And when he was twenty-one--straight as a lance and handsome as a picture--the old lord said to him.

'My boy, you've been like a son to me, but now it's time you got married and had sons of your own. Is there any girl you'd like to marry?'

'No,' said Sep, 'I never did care much for girls.'

The old lord laughed.

'Then you must set out again and seek your fortune once more,' he said, 'because no man has really found his fortune till he's found the lady who is his heart's lady. Choose the best horse in the stable, and off you go, lad, and my blessing go with you.'

So Sep chose a good red horse and set out, and he rode straight to the great city, that shone golden across the plain, and when he got there he found every one crying.

'Why, whatever is the matter?' said Sep, reining in the red horse in front of a smithy, where the apprentices were crying on to the fires, and the smith was dropping tears on the anvil.

'Why the Princess is dying,' said the blacksmith blowing his nose. 'A nasty, wicked magician--he had a spite against the King, and he got at the Princess when she was playing ball in the garden, and now she's blind and deaf and dumb. And she won't eat.'

'And she'll die,' said the first apprentice.

'And she _is_ such a dear,' said the other apprentice.

Sep sat still on the red horse thinking.

'Has anything been done?' he asked.

'Oh yes,' said the blacksmith. 'All the doctors have seen her, but they can't do anything. And the King has advertised in the usual way, that any one who can cure her may marry her. But it's no good. King's sons aren't what they used to be. A silly lot they are nowadays, all taken up with football and cricket and golf.'

'Humph,' said Sep, 'thank you. Which is the way to the palace?'

The blacksmith pointed, and then burst into tears again. Sep rode on.

When he got to the palace he asked to see the King. Every one there was crying too, from the footman who opened the door to the King, who was sitting upon his golden throne and looking at his fine collection of butterflies through floods of tears.

'Oh dear me yes, young man,' said the King, 'you may _see_ her and welcome, but it's no good.'

'We can but try,' said Sep. So he was taken to the room where the Princess sat huddled up on her silver throne among the white velvet cushions with her crown all on one side, crying out of her poor blind eyes, so that the tears ran down over her green gown with the red roses on it.

And directly he saw her he knew that she was the only girl, Princess as she was, with a crown and a throne, who could ever be his heart's lady. He went up to her and kneeled at her side and took her hand and kissed it. The Princess started. She could not see or hear him, but at the touch of his hand and his lips she knew that he was her heart's lord, and she threw her arms round his neck, and cried more than ever.

He held her in his arms and stroked her hair till she stopped crying, and then he called for bread and milk. This was brought in a silver basin, and he fed her with it as you feed a little child.

The news ran through the city, 'The Princess has eaten,' and all the bells were set ringing. Sep said good-night to his Princess and went to bed in the best bedroom of the palace. Early in the grey morning he got up and leaned out of the open window and called to his old friend the wind.

And the wind came bustling in and clapped him on the back, crying, 'Well, my boy, and what can I do for you? Eh?'

Sep told him all about the Princess.

'Well,' said the wind, 'you've not done so badly. At any rate you've got her love. And you couldn't have got that with anybody's help but your own. Now, of course, the thing to do is to find the wicked Magician.'

'Of course,' said Sep.

'Well--I travel a good deal--I'll keep my eyes open, and let you know if I hear anything.'

Sep spent the day holding the Princess's hand, and feeding her at meal times; and that night the wind rattled his window and said, 'Let me in.'

It came in very noisily, and said, 'Well, I've found your Magician, he's in the forest pretending to be a mole.'

'How can I find him?' said Sep.

'Haven't you any friends in the forest?' asked the wind.

Then Sep remembered his friends the squirrels, and he mounted his horse and rode away to the chestnut-tree where they lived. They were charmed to see him grown so tall and strong and handsome, and when he had told them his story they said at once--

'Oh yes! delighted to be of any service to you.' And they called to all their little brothers and cousins, and uncles and nephews to search the forest for a mole that wasn't really a mole, and quite soon they found him, and hustled and shoved him along till he was face to face with Sep, in a green glade. The glade was green, but all the bushes and trees around were red-brown with squirrel fur, and shining bright with squirrel eyes.

Then Sep said, 'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her voice.'

But the mole would not.

'Give the Princess back her eyes and her hearing and her voice,' said Sep again. But the mole only gnashed his wicked teeth and snarled.

And then in a minute the squirrels fell on the mole and killed it, and Sep thanked them and rode back to the palace, for, of course, he knew that when a magician is killed, all his magic unworks itself instantly.

But when he got to his Princess she was still as deaf as a post and as dumb as a stone, and she was still crying bitterly with her poor blind eyes, till the tears ran down her grass-green gown with the red roses on it.

'Cheer up, my sweetheart,' he said, though he knew she couldn't hear him, and as he spoke the wind came in at the open window, and spoke very softly, because it was in the presence of the Princess.

'All right,' it whispered, 'the old villain gave us the slip that journey. Got out of the mole-skin in the very nick of time. He's a wild boar now.'

'Come,' said Sep, fingering his sword-hilt, 'I'll kill that myself without asking it any questions.'

So he went and fought it. But it was a most uncommon boar, as big as a horse, with tusks half a yard long; and although Sep wounded it it jerked the sword out of his hand with its tusk, and was just going to trample him out of life with its hard, heavy pigs'-feet, when a great roar sounded through the forest.

'Ah! would ye?' said the lion, and fastened teeth and claws in the great boar's back. The boar turned with a scream of rage, but the lion had got a good grip, and it did not loosen teeth or claws till the boar lay quiet.

'Is he dead?' asked Sep when he came to himself.

'Oh yes, he's _dead_ right enough,' said the lion; but the wind came up puffing and blowing, and said:

'It's no good, he's got away again, and now he's a fish. I was just a minute too late to see _what_ fish. An old oyster told me about it, only he hadn't the wit to notice what particular fish the scoundrel changed into.'

So then Sep went back to the palace, and he said to the King:

'Let me marry the dear Princess, and we'll go out and seek our fortune. I've got to kill that Magician, and I'll do it too, or my name's not Septimus Septimusson. But it may take years and years, and I can't be away from the Princess all that time, because she won't eat unless I feed her. You see the difficulty, Sire?'

The King saw it. And that very day Sep was married to the Princess in her green gown with the red roses on it, and they set out together.

The wind went with them, and the wind, or something else, seemed to say to Sep, 'Go home, take your wife home to your mother.'

So he did. He crossed the land and he crossed the sea, and he went up the red-brick path to his father's cottage, and he peeped in at the door and said:

'Father, mother, here's my wife.'

They were so pleased to see him--for they had thought him dead, that they didn't notice the Princess at first, and when they did notice her they wondered at her beautiful face and her beautiful gown--but it wasn't till they had all settled down to supper--boiled rabbit it was--and they noticed Sep feeding his wife as one feeds a baby that they saw that she was blind.

And then all the story had to be told.

'Well, well,' said the fisherman, 'you and your wife bide here with us. I daresay I'll catch that old sinner in my nets one of these fine days.' But he never did. And Sep and his wife lived with the old people. And they were happy after a fashion--but of an evening Sep used to wander and wonder, and wonder and wander by the sea-shore, wondering as he wandered whether he wouldn't ever have the luck to catch that fish.

And one evening as he wandered wondering he heard a little, sharp, thin voice say:

'Sep. I've got it.'

'What?' asked Sep, forgetting his manners.

'I've got it,' said a big mussel on a rock close by him, 'the magic stone that the Magician does his enchantments with. He dropped it out of his mouth and I shut my shells on it--and now he's sweeping up and down the sea like a mad fish, looking for it--for he knows he can never change into anything else unless he gets it back. Here, take the nasty thing, it's making me feel quite ill.'

It opened its shells wide, and Sep saw a pearl. He reached out his hand and took it.

'That's better,' said the mussel, washing its shells out with salt water.

'Can _I_ do magic with it?' Sep eagerly asked.

'No,' said the mussel sadly, 'it's of no use to any one but the owner. Now, if I were you, I'd get into a boat, and if your friend the wind will help us, I believe we really can do the trick.'

'I'm at your service, of course,' said the wind, getting up instantly.

The mussel whispered to the wind, who rushed off at once; and Sep launched his boat.

'Now,' said the mussel, 'you get into the very middle of the sea--or as near as you can guess it. The wind will warn all the other fishes.' As he spoke he disappeared in the dark waters.

Sep got the boat into the middle of the sea--as near as he could guess it--and waited.

After a long time he saw something swirling about in a sort of whirlpool about a hundred yards from his boat, but when he tried to move the boat towards it her bows ran on to something hard.

'Keep still, keep still, keep still,' cried thousands and thousands of sharp, thin, little voices. 'You'll kill us if you move.'

Then he looked over the boat side, and saw that the hard something was nothing but thousands and thousands of mussels all jammed close together, and through the clear water more and more were coming and piling themselves together. Almost at once his boat was slowly lifted--the top of the mussel heap showed through the water, and there he was, high and dry on a mussel reef.

And in all that part of the sea the water was disappearing, and as far as the eye could reach stretched a great plain of purple and gray--the shells of countless mussels.

Only at one spot there was still a splashing.

Then a mussel opened its shell and spoke.

'We've got him,' it said. 'We've piled our selves up till we've filled this part of the sea. The wind warned all the good fishes--and we've got the old traitor in a little pool over there. Get out and walk over our backs--we'll all lie sideways so as not to hurt you. You must catch the fish--but whatever you do don't kill it till we give the word.'

Sep promised, and he got out and walked over the mussels to the pool, and when he saw the wicked soul of the Magician looking out through the round eyes of a big finny fish he remembered all that his Princess had suffered, and he longed to draw his sword and kill the wicked thing then and there.

But he remembered his promise. He threw a net about it, and dragged it back to the boat.

The mussels dispersed and let the boat down again into the water--and he rowed home, towing the evil fish in the net by a line.

He beached the boat, and looked along the shore. The shore looked a very odd colour. And well it might, for every bit of the sand was covered with purple-gray mussels. They had all come up out of the sea--leaving just one little bit of real yellow sand for him to beach the boat on.

'Now,' said millions of sharp thin little voices, 'Kill him, kill him!'

Sep drew his sword and waded into the shallow surf and killed the evil fish with one strong stroke.

Then such a shout went up all along the shore as that shore had never heard; and all along the shore where the mussels had been, stood men in armour and men in smock-frocks and men in leather aprons and huntsmen's coats and women and children--a whole nation of people. Close by the boat stood a King and Queen with crowns upon their heads.

'Thank you, Sep,' said the King, 'you've saved us all. I am the King Mussel, doomed to be a mussel so long as that wretch lived. You have set us all free. And look!'

Down the path from the shore came running his own Princess, who hung round his neck crying his name and looking at him with the most beautiful eyes in the world.

'Come,' said the Mussel King, 'we have no son. You shall be our son and reign after us.'

'Thank you,' said Sep, 'but _this_ is my father,' and he presented the old fisherman to His Majesty.

'Then let him come with us,' said the King royally, 'he can help me reign, or fish in the palace lake, whichever he prefers.'

'Thankee,' said Sep's father, 'I'll come and fish.'

'Your mother too,' said the Mussel Queen, kissing Sep's mother.

'Ah,' said Sep's mother, 'you're a lady, every inch. I'll go to the world's end with you.'

So they all went back by way of the foreign country where Sep had found his Princess, and they called on the old lord. He had lost his hump, and they easily persuaded him to come with them.

'You can help me reign if you like, or we have a nice book or two in the palace library,' said the Mussel King.

'Thank you,' said the old lord, 'I'll come and be your librarian if I may. Reigning isn't at all in my line.'

Then they went on to Sep's father-in-law, and when he saw how happy they all were together he said:

'Bless my beard but I've half a mind to come with you.'

'Come along,' said the Mussel King, 'you shall help me reign if you like ... or....'

'No, thank you,' said the other King very quickly, 'I've had enough of reigning. My kingdom can buy a President and be a republic if it likes. I'm going to catch butterflies.'

And so he does, most happily, up to this very minute.

And Sep and his dear Princess are as happy as they deserve to be. Some people say we are all as happy as we deserve to be--but I am not sure.

[The end]
Edith Nesbit's short story: Septimus Septimusson

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