Сказки / Fairy Tales. Уровень 1

They went away and after many days they saw a great, high, tall forest full of tree trunks and shadows.

‘What is this,’ said the Leopard, ‘that is so exclusively dark, and yet so full of little pieces of light?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the Ethiopian, ‘but I can smell Giraffe, and I can hear Giraffe, but I can’t see Giraffe.’

‘That’s curious,’ said the Leopard. ‘I can smell Zebra, and I can hear Zebra, but I can’t see Zebra.’

‘Wait a bit,’ said the Ethiopian. ‘We saw them a long time ago. Perhaps we don’t remember anymore what they are like.

‘Nonsense!’ said the Leopard. ‘I remember them perfectly on the High Veldt, especially their marrow-bones. Giraffe is about seventeen feet high, of a exclusively fulvous golden-yellow from head to heel; and Zebra is about four and a half feet high, of a exclusively grey-fawn colour from head to heel.’

‘Umm,’ said the Ethiopian, and looked into the speckly-spickly shadows of the forest. ‘Then they will soon appear in this dark place like ripe bananas.

But they didn’t. The Leopard and the Ethiopian hunted all day; and though they could smell the animals and hear the animals, they never saw one of them.

‘Let us wait till dark,’ said the Leopard, ‘This daylight hunting is a perfect scandal.’

So they waited till dark, and then the Leopard heard something. It breathed sniffily in the starlight, and he jumped at the noise, and it smelt like Zebra, and it felt like Zebra, and when he knocked it down it fell like Zebra, but he couldn’t see it.

‘Be quiet, an animal without any form. I will sit on your head till morning, because there is something about you that I don’t understand.’

Presently he heard a grunt and a crash and a scramble, and the Ethiopian called out,

‘I have an animal that I can’t see. It smells like Giraffe, and it kicks like Giraffe, but it hasn’t any form.’

‘Don’t you trust it,’ said the Leopard. ‘Sit on its head till the morning – same as me. They haven’t any form – any of them.

So they sat down on them hard till bright morning-time, and then Leopard said,

‘What have you, Brother?’

The Ethiopian scratched his head and said,

‘It is orange-tawny from head to heel, and it must be Giraffe; but it is covered all over with chestnut blotches. And what have you, Brother?’

And the Leopard scratched his head and said,

‘It is greyish-fawn, and it must be Zebra; but it is covered all over with black and purple stripes.