The Other Side of the Sun Part 3

The King, who had had his meals on a table all his life, voted for the floor; but when Eyebright said it would be more fun to see what would happen if they chose the table, he had to own that perhaps she was right. What happened was very simple: the magician just stamped on the floor, and a neat little table, covered with a nice white cloth, walked in at the door like any person and took up its position in the middle of the floor.

"Well!" exclaimed Eyebright; "I never knew tables could walk, before!"

"What do you suppose they have four legs for?" asked the magician, smiling.

"My nursery table does not walk," observed the little King.

"Ah," said the magician, wisely, "some tables do not know how to put two and two together. Now for some chairs!"

He stamped on the floor again, and two little arm-chairs bustled into the room as fast as their fat little legs would carry them. "You must excuse their being in such a hurry," said the magician; "they have been playing at musical chairs all their lives, you see. Now, while you are laying the table, I will boil the kettle. Crockery in the left-hand cupboard, and eatables in the right-hand cupboard!"

So the magician set to work and lighted the fire with peppermint-sticks, and the two children opened the doors of his wonderful cupboards. The crockery in the left-hand cupboard was the right sort of crockery, for none of it matched; so it did not take a minute to find a small pink cup and a green saucer for Eyebright, and a big blue cup and a red saucer for the magician, and a nice purple mug without any saucer at all for King Wistful. As for the right-hand cupboard, the little King was overjoyed when he found it stocked with jumbles and chocolate creams and plum-cake. "I _am_ glad," he said with a sigh of relief, "that you don't keep seed-cake in your cupboard. Seed-cake always reminds me of eleven o'clock in the morning."

"Ah," said the magician, "the wymps saw to that, when they filled my cupboard for me, centuries ago. There's never any bread-and-b.u.t.ter in it, either--until you've had as much plum-cake as you can eat."

That was a delightful tea-party. The magician did not mind in the least when they made polite remarks about the food and told him his jumbles might have been kept a little longer with advantage, or that his chocolate creams were not quite so soft as some they had known. But they hastened to add that his tea was the nicest tea they had ever tasted because it had only a grown-up amount of milk in it, so he would have been rather a cross magician if he had minded. Nor did he raise any objection when they walked about in the middle of tea and took a look at the picture-book, or whittled away the piece of firewood, or danced round the cave and shouted because everything was so nice. And after tea there were all the magician's treasures to be turned out of odd nooks and corners and left about on the floor, and all his new quill pens to be tried, and his clean sheets of note-paper to be scribbled over. And when they were tired of exploring the cave and had eaten as much plum-cake as they wanted, the magician saw it was the right moment to begin telling them really true stories; and as he was a magician, of course his true stories were all fairy stories, which, as every one knows, are the only true stories in the world worth believing. But even the stories came to an end at last, and then both the children remembered at once why they had come to see the magician.

"Well, what can I do for you?" he asked, before they had time to say anything; for, truly, he would not have been a magician at all if he had not known what they were thinking about. He smiled so encouragingly that the little King answered him at once.

"It's like this," he began, "there's something wrong with the way I see things."

"Of course there is," said the magician: "the wymps threw dust in your eyes when you were a baby; and you cannot expect to see things in the same light as other people when the wymps have once thrown dust in your eyes."

"Why did they throw dust in my eyes?" asked little King Wistful.

"Usual reason," answered the magician, briefly. "They were not asked to your christening, that's all. If people will persist in leaving the wymps out when they give a party, they must take the consequences.

However, as you were not to blame in the matter, the wymps would be the first to own that you ought not to be bewymped any longer. The best thing you can do is to go up to Wympland yourself and ask them to take away the spell."

The little King looked at Eyebright and hesitated. "It is a long way to go all alone," he remarked; and Eyebright immediately stepped up to him and took his hand.

"I'll come with you," she said; "I've always longed to go to the other side of the sun. How are we to get there, magician?"

"Well," answered the magician, "the usual way is to climb up a sunbeam, but that's not very quick and sunbeams are apt to be slippery in the dry weather. Shall I send you up in a flash of lightning or on the spur of a lark?"

"Spur of a lark!" echoed the King. "You mean on the spur of a moment, don't you?"

"Not a bit of it," answered the magician; "you'd never get up to Wympland on the spur of anything but a lark, I can tell you! You have to get up there very early in any case, if you want to be even with the wymps; so the best way is to rise with the lark. However, as it is getting rather late in the day for larks, I had better send you up in a lightning flash. Will you manage it alone, or shall I send a conductor with it?"

"Would the conductor show us the way?" asked Eyebright.

"Dear me, no," said the magician. "Lightning conductors never show anything but the stupidity of some people. Perhaps you'd better have the lightning without a conductor; so stand on one side, while I pick you out a nice quiet flash without any thunder hanging to it."

He took down a large sack, labelled _Storms_, from the shelf, untied the top and plunged his head into it. Eyebright stole a little closer to the King than before and hoped that nothing would go off with a bang.

"I say," said his Majesty, putting his arm round her, "it strikes me--"

"That is impossible," interrupted the magician in a stuffy voice from the middle of the sack, "for I've got it in both hands, and it isn't going to strike anybody so long as you treat it kindly. Now, off you go in a flas.h.!.+"

And off they did go in something, though they never knew what it was, for they had no time to see anything before they found themselves dropped with a thud on the other side of the sun. For a moment or two they just lay where they had fallen without moving; then they sat up and rubbed their eyes and looked round.

"Oh!" exclaimed Eyebright, clasping her hands tight; "I had no idea it was like this."

Of course Eyebright knew no more about Wympland than she had learned in her geography lessons, and we all know how little geography books ever tell us about the really nice places in the world. So, although she knew as well as any other little girl that Wympland has no physical features and its inhabitants have no occupation, that its climate is dull and foggy and its government is a sleeping monarchy, she was not in the least prepared for what she did see.

"Well," said a voice somewhere near, "what do you think of it?"

Just in front of them a wymp was standing on his head, which is a wymp's favourite way of resting his legs. He seemed to expect an answer, so the King did his best to think of one that should be both polite and truthful. As a matter of fact, he did not think much of Wympland at all.

"It--it is rather full of fog, isn't it?" he began, a little nervously.

The wymp looked distinctly hurt; but before he had time to get angry Eyebright put things right in her quiet little way.

"I don't think it is yellow fog," she said; "it is more like dull suns.h.i.+ne."

The wymp fairly wympled when he heard this.

"You've hit it!" he cried in a delighted tone; "that's what it is really. It's the folks from the front of the sun who call it yellow fog; they're blinded by their own suns.h.i.+ne, they are. This is the back of the sun, you see, and the suns.h.i.+ne naturally loses a bit of its polish by the time it has worked through."

"I think I like bright suns.h.i.+ne best," observed the King.

"That is absurd!" said the wymp. "Why, you can't look at it without blinking, to begin with. In Wympland you get all the advantages of the sun and none of the drawbacks,--no sunblinds or sunstrokes or sunspots!

You must be a stupid boy if you can't see that!"

"It is your fault, not mine," answered the King boldly; "you shouldn't have thrown dust in my eyes if you wanted me to see Wympland in the right light!"

The wymp turned several somersaults to show his amazement at the King's words, and finally stood thoughtfully on one leg.

"That's serious," he said. "We didn't know you'd ever come up here, or we shouldn't have done it. However, it can't be helped now, so you'd better go back again. It doesn't matter if you _do_ see things wrong--at the front of the sun."

"But it does matter!" they both exclaimed; "and that's why we want you to take away the spell, please."

The wymp stood on his head again and shook it from side to side, which no one but a wymp could have done, considering the awkwardness of the position. "There's only one thing to be done," he said at last. "You must exchange eyes."

They stared at the wymp and then at each other. The little King began to think busily, but Eyebright spoke without thinking at all.

"Very well," she said. "How is it to be done?"

"Quite easy," answered the wymp, cheerfully. "All you've got to do is to wish with all your might to have the King's eyes instead of your own, and there you are!"

At that moment the King finished his thinking. "Stop!" he shouted. "If I take her eyes away, _she_ will always see things wrong!"

But the King had spoken too late. Eyebright had already wished with all her might, and her eyes had turned as blue as deep water while his Majesty's were round and large and brown.

"What fun!" she cried, laughing happily. "Isn't it a nice change to have somebody else's eyes?"

The little King, however, was far too furious to listen to her.

"Stand up and let me knock you down!" he cried, shaking his fist at the wymp. "Look what you have done. She will see things wrong to the end of her days!"