Whispering in the Wind Read online

  ‘A King never breaks his word,’ Lowana reminded him.

  ‘That’s understood,’ said the King shortly, ‘but too much is expected of Kings altogether. I’ll ask you never to remind me of such things again. You may have got your Matriculation but you are singularly lacking in tact. As a businessman, I expect negotiations to be weighted my way. You can be sure I won’t harm this Prince, or whatever he is, now, but I will never consent to give your hand in marriage to any man who fails to complete the three tasks I will set for him.’

  ‘Whatever they are, I will do them,’ said Peter. ‘Name them.’

  ‘Good,’ said the King. ‘First, you have to produce a man who can tell a better lie than I can.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ Lowana whispered to Peter. ‘My father is the greatest liar that ever lived. You will never get a man to beat him.’

  ‘I know one,’ whispered Peter. Then he said to the King, ‘I’ll produce such a man provided the Bunyip is made judge.’

  The King was pleased with this. The Bunyip had always guarded the Princess so well that he was sure he would favour him in a lying competition.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I agree to the Bunyip being judge.’

  ‘What are the other tasks?’ asked Peter.

  ‘If you can find a man who can beat me at lying, your next task will be to tame Firefax, the wild horse of the Deep Mountains. I want him brought to me saddled and bridled and fit to ride.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of him,’ said Peter.

  The King laughed. ‘You will,’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘He is more deadly than a dragon. He is faster than a streak of lightning and can buck as high as a tree. No man has ever had a bridle on him. If he doesn’t kill you, he’ll toss you so high that your friends will hold your funeral service before you hit the ground.’

  Peter couldn’t imagine such a horse but, with Crooked Mick’s help, he was sure he could tame him.

  ‘What is the third task?’ he asked.

  ‘Ah, the third task,’ said the King. ‘That is the most important of all. The crown Lowana must wear, if ever she is to marry you, was cast into a lake behind the castle by the witch who sweeps the moon. She stole it when I wasn’t looking. I would have let her have it cheap, too. You can’t trust anybody nowadays.’

  ‘Was the witch carrying a camera?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Yes, a most expensive one.’

  ‘Is that the last task I have to do before I can win the hand of Lowana?’ asked Peter, who guessed that the witch who had thrown away the crown was the one he had met on his journey to the castle.

  ‘Yes, it is the last, but I am afraid you will never live to bring back the golden crown from the bottom of the lake, even if you succeed in accomplishing the other two. If you complete them all, the Princess is yours.’

  The King flicked a piece of fluff off his jacket, then said, ‘Now you are both free to wander round the castle till the time comes to attempt the first task.’

  He coughed behind his hand to show how important he was and ordered the guard to depart.

  ‘Come,’ he said to the Queen. ‘I want to have a talk to the Bunyip about the rules of this lying competition.’

  He turned to Peter, ‘We will hold the competition in the Great Hall tomorrow afternoon. In the meantime you are not to leave the castle.’

  When they had gone Lowana said, ‘Now we must look for Greyfur.’

  They ran up to the room where Peter and Greyfur had hidden, but she wasn’t there. They went down the stairs and along the corridors, ignored by the guards who had instructions to allow them the freedom of the castle. In the courtyard they found Greyfur penned behind wire netting and rows of stakes. She looked quite happy as she had had no doubt that Peter and the Princess would rescue her.

  ‘I knew you would come,’ she said. ‘And I was hoping it would be soon. The food they have been giving me is terrible—mouldy hay. And I haven’t been able to speak once since I was captured. In a day or two they would have killed me for pet food. I kept trying to think of something else. But, tell me, why are you free with the Beautiful Princess beside you?’

  ‘Her name is Lowana,’ said Peter.

  ‘That is the sound of the She-Oak whispering in the wind,’ said Greyfur. ‘I love it.’

  ‘I am glad you love it,’ said Lowana.

  Peter told Greyfur all about their experiences. He told her of the three tasks he had to do, and of how he would bring Crooked Mick to help him by cracking the long lash of Thunderbolt.

  ‘Well, let’s not waste any time,’ said Greyfur. ‘If the lying competition takes place tomorrow, we must give Crooked Mick time to think of some tremendous story that will knock the King rotten.’

  They walked out into the centre of the courtyard and Peter uncoiled the long lash of Thunderbolt. He braced himself and whirled the sinuous whip around his head till it became a great wheel spinning above him. Suddenly he jerked his arm down and back, and there came a report like the shot of a cannon. The soldiers and knights lounging against the walls jumped with fright, but all they saw when they turned round to look was a wrinkled stockman standing smiling in front of Lowana and her friend.

  Crooked Mick had been just as startled by the sudden crack of the whip. He had been repairing a saddle and now here he was in the courtyard of the castle, and it had all happened in a flash. But Peter soon explained everything to him and he sat down on a bench against the castle wall to consider the position.

  ‘I’ll have no trouble in tossing the King in a lying competition,’ he said, ‘but this Firefax has me worried. How do we run him down, that’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘I’ll yard him on Moonlight,’ said Peter. ‘He couldn’t be faster than Moonlight. After I’ve yarded him, I’ll ride him.’

  ‘Where does he hang out?’

  ‘He lives in the Deep Mountains,’ said Peter. ‘He shouldn’t be that hard to find.’

  ‘He might be very hard to find,’ said Crooked Mick, ‘but we’ll leave that for the moment. What about the last task? The lake is probably very deep and I am no diver.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Peter. ‘I know a person who will get it for me. It’s the other two tasks I dread.’

  ‘The lying competition is in the bag,’ said Crooked Mick. ‘The King won’t stand a chance with me. Crack the whip tomorrow, just before it’s time to go into the Great Hall, and I’ll be there. Now I’ll go home and finish repairing that saddle.’

  He rose to his feet and disappeared in a puff of dust.

  16

  The Lying Competition

  Next day, the people gathered in the Great Hall from the four corners of the kingdom. There were farmers and orchardists, graziers and fossickers, and the Managing Director of Tin, Copper, Zinc, Lead, Gold and Oil Proprietary Limited had brought his wife and children with him. The King made a fuss of him because he hoped he would discover oil on his property. He gave them all the chairs in the front row.

  The Managing Director was not a bad liar himself. ‘I’m hoping I can pick up a few hints from your yarns, Your Majesty,’ he informed the King.

  ‘I couldn’t teach you anything,’ said the King modestly. ‘I’m really an amateur and haven’t had your experience. But I assure you I can beat anyone they bring along.’ And he nodded towards Peter and Greyfur who had entered with Crooked Mick.

  Lowana was not with them. She was sitting next to the Queen on one of the thrones scattered around the room for the use of her father and mother.

  The King had been talking to the Bunyip who was feeling very pleased at the success of his ruse for smuggling his friends into the castle. He was sitting on a huge log rolled on to the centre of the platform. Beside him was a throne so studded with brilliant gems that it hurt the eyes to look at it. The King was to sit there. Crooked Mick walked up on to the platform and sat on the log beside the Bunyip who was looking at a sheaf of papers in his hand. Peter sat on a chair to the left of the throne reserved for the Kin
g.

  In a moment the King came over and sat down. He adjusted his robes, straightened his crown and looked important.

  ‘Are you comfortable, Your Majesty?’ asked Crooked Mick.

  ‘Very,’ said the King. ‘I always lie best when sitting up, so I’d rather sit up than sit down in lying competitions.’

  ‘According to the rules,’ said the Bunyip, opening the proceedings and perusing the parchment document covered in red seals he had been reading, ‘you can either sit up or sit down. You can lie from a horse or from any other animal you care to ride. You can lie when walking towards the judge—that’s me. But not when walking away from the judge. That would be an insult to me. You can lie…’

  ‘That’s enough,’ said the King testily. ‘Let’s get on with the competition. I know the rules—I wrote them.’

  ‘Is that your first lie of the contest, Your Majesty?’ asked Crooked Mick who regarded the King as a very poor liar indeed. In fact he was sure he could beat him with an exaggeration, certainly with a fib, or even a mild untruth.

  ‘I haven’t started yet,’ said the King.

  ‘Silence!’ roared the Bunyip.

  The audience made themselves comfortable in their chairs. They were all hoping the King would lose for they loved Lowana and wanted her to marry Peter.

  ‘The contest is about to begin. The King will tell the first lie. I’ll allot one point for an exaggeration, and so on according to the quality of the lie, up to ten points for a whopper.’

  The King cleared his throat and began.

  ‘When I was a young man I made quite a lot of money cutting up disused mining shafts and selling them down south for wells.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’ asked the Bunyip.

  ‘Years ago. Long before I was born,’ said the King.

  ‘That is one of the finest openings to a lie I have ever heard,’ said the Bunyip. ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was a job that demanded great skill,’ said the King. ‘I had to be scrupulously honest and I had to have a profound knowledge of mathematics.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well there was a lot of adding, multiplying and subtracting to do.’

  ‘I can understand that, but I’d like to know what you were charging a well.’

  ‘One hundred dollars,’ said the King.

  ‘Only one point for that,’ said the Bunyip.

  ‘Four hundred dollars.’

  ‘That’s better. Another point.’

  ‘I loaded each well on to a bullock wagon,’ continued the King, ‘then set off to cart it to Melbourne. It was hard pulling.’

  ‘How many bullocks did you have?’

  ‘Two hundred and twenty.’

  ‘That’s a big team,’ said the Bunyip.

  ‘Yes. I stretched a telephone wire along the bullock chain from the wagon to the leaders and I paid a fellow to ride the lead. When I wanted to pull up, I’d ring through from the wagon and ask him to stop. He’d stop the leaders and then the others would stop as they slackened the chain. This meant that the polers didn’t stop till half an hour after the leaders. It made it difficult to pull up in a hurry but it worked well enough until one day I got the wrong number. By the time I got connected again we’d covered ten miles.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that would be a reasonable distance under the circumstances,’ said the Bunyip. ‘Proceed.’

  ‘The greatest trouble came in the morning when we started,’ explained the King. ‘The leaders would go off and then half an hour later the polers felt the chain tighten and they started off. We lost so much time starting and stopping that it took me six months to reach Melbourne. I managed to sell the length of mining shaft to a man who wanted a well in his backyard. And a very good well it was. But I gave the game away; it wasn’t paying.’

  ‘Is that all?’ asked the Bunyip.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a very good lie, but what I find most hard to believe is why you carted those shafts down by bullock wagon when you could have used a train.’

  ‘There were no trains outback.’

  ‘Ah, that explains it. Now we’ll hear from Crooked Mick.’

  Crooked Mick rose to his feet and began.

  ‘I was once bringing five tons of tin whistles on a bullock wagon down from Bourke.’

  ‘A good opening,’ said the Bunyip, busy writing in his notebook.

  ‘Where were you taking them?’ asked Peter who had suddenly become interested in the story.

  ‘Nowhere,’ said Crooked Mick.

  ‘But you must have been taking them somewhere,’ put in the King.

  ‘I wasn’t taking them anywhere,’ said Crooked Mick. ‘If I’d been taking them somewhere I’d have got there, and then I wouldn’t have had the tin whistles. By taking them nowhere I always owned them.’

  ‘But what use were they?’ asked Peter.

  ‘No use whatever,’ said Crooked Mick, ‘though they could have come in handy as gifts.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if you are lying,’ said the Bunyip.

  ‘That’s what I’m supposed to be doing, isn’t it?’ said Crooked Mick.

  The Bunyip looked embarrassed. ‘Of course,’ he said hurriedly. ‘I was forgetting. So far the lies have never once slipped into the truth. Go on.’

  ‘A gale of wind began blowing,’ continued Crooked Mick. ‘It rocked the trees and raised the dust.’

  ‘That’s a truthful statement,’ interrupted the Bunyip. ‘Gales always rock trees and raise dust. I’m afraid I’ll have to penalise you ten points. Confine yourself to lying, please.’

  ‘I should have said this gale neither rocked the trees nor raised the dust,’ corrected Crooked Mick, ‘though you couldn’t see your hand in front of you. The wind blew with such force in opposite directions that it clashed with itself and remained locked in a deadly calm while it struggled to overcome itself. Do you understand what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ said the Bunyip.

  ‘That’s what I was hoping,’ said Crooked Mick.

  ‘Was it like two bulls pushing their heads together and not moving?’ asked Peter.

  ‘Yes,’ said Crooked Mick.

  The Bunyip was annoyed. He looked sharply at Peter. ‘I’m judge of this contest. The yarn has nothing to do with bulls.’ Then to Crooked Mick, ‘Please continue.’

  ‘I was urging the bullocks over a sandhill,’ went on Crooked Mick. ‘I was down to the axles and the bullocks’ heads were down to their knees. I cracked my bullock whip and yelled, “Hup, hup”—when suddenly I heard the most glorious music. I leant on my whip and listened. As it continued I realised I was listening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony played on tin whistles. You see, the whistles were tied in bundles with the mouthpieces turned to the wind. The cords that bound them closed some holes and left others open. As the wagon rocked to the straining bullocks, holes were uncovered and others blocked, and such was the order in which they were shut and opened that the strong wind blowing through the mouthpieces came out in this masterpiece of music. I tell you it amazed me.’

  ‘It certainly amazes me,’ said the King sourly.

  The Bunyip was busy adding up figures in his notebook. He gazed up at the roof and tapped the end of the pencil on his teeth. He drew a picture of a horse’s head on one of the pages, crossed it out, and said, ‘After taking into consideration the rules of the contest as outlined in section three of the memorandum and terms of reference hereandafter called—well, we’ll forget all that. I declare Crooked Mick the winner.’

  The people clapped and shouted ‘Hurrah!’ and one of the Ladies-in-waiting fainted. Not that she had any need to. She just liked doing it at competitions of this nature. She was delicately nurtured and couldn’t bear to hear people lying.

  The King was furious. He rose and flung his cloak up and outwards so that it wrapped itself round him like a wing. He paused at the head of the steps leading to the throne and said in an angry voice, ‘The decision was outrageous. It will serve to make one doubt the word o
f all distinguished liars. I must apologise to the Managing Director of Tin, Copper, Zinc, Lead, Gold and Oil Proprietary Limited for this insult to his intelligence.’

  ‘Please, please,’ said the Managing Director hastily. ‘Don’t create a scene.’ He scribbled a note on a piece of paper and handed it to the King. ‘You can have a job on our Board of Directors any time you want it.’ The King read the note and felt much better but it didn’t kill his anger.

  ‘I am pleased that two more tasks remain to test the skill of this imposter who pretends he is a Prince. When he produces Firefax, the wild horse of the Deep Mountains, saddled and tamed and fit for riding, then he will be ready for the final task.’

  The King strode out of the hall followed by the Queen who caught her heel in her train when stepping down into the courtyard. She tore the hem but one of the Ladies-in-waiting pinned the edges together. It was a most unfortunate thing to happen since the King had to stand waiting while retaining his dignity, which is a hard thing to do after a lying competition.

  Peter saw Princess Lowana to her room. She held his arm and they walked down the long passageways together and, whenever they met anyone, Peter raised his plumed hat and bowed and the Princess smiled and bowed also. Those she smiled at said later ‘It was just as if all the birds of the bush were singing.’

  17

  The Return of the Willy Willy Man

  Peter left Lowana in her room and hurried through the castle and across the drawbridge to where Crooked Mick and the Bunyip were awaiting him beneath the big tree. Greyfur had gone to bring in Moonlight who was grazing a mile out beside the road.

  The Bunyip was lying on his back in the shade with his hands clasped on his stomach while he considered how they could accomplish the second task.

  Peter sat down beside them.

  ‘I have thought of a way to find Firefax,’ he said. ‘There are hundreds of valleys in the mountains and he could be grazing in any one of them. We might search for months and never find him. But I know a man who will tell us where he is.’