Wood Magic: A Fable

by Richard Jefferies

Then Kapchack pecked up the ground with his beak, and tore at it with his claws, and gave way to his impotent anger.

"There shall not be a feather of her left!" he said. "I will have her utterly destroyed! She shall be nailed to a tree!"

"Nothing of the kind," said the weasel, with a sneer. "She is too beautiful. As soon as you see her, you will kiss her and forgive her."

"It is true," said Kapchack, becoming calmer. "She is so beautiful, she must be forgiven. Weasel, in consideration of important services rendered to the state in former days, upon this one occasion you shall be pardoned. Of course the condition is that what has passed between us this day is kept strictly private, and that you do not breathe a word of it."

"Not a word of it," said the weasel.

"And you must disabuse your mind of that extraordinary illusion as to my identity of which you spoke just now. You must dismiss so absurd an idea from your mind."

"Certainly," said the weasel, "it is dismissed entirely. But, your majesty, with your permission, I would go further. I would endeavour to explain to you, that although my conduct was indiscreet, and so far open to misconstruction, there was really nothing more in it than an ill-directed zeal in your service. It is really true, your majesty, that all the birds and animals are leagued against me, and that is why I have been afraid to stir abroad. I was invited to the secret council, of which you have heard from the gnat, and because I did not attend it, they have one and all agreed to vilify me to your majesty.

"But in fact I, for once, with the service of your majesty in view, descended (repugnant as it was to my feelings) to play the eavesdropper, and I overheard all that was said, and I can convince your majesty that there are far greater traitors in your dominions than you ever supposed me to be. The gnat does not know half that took place at the council, for he only had it second-hand from that villain, the fox, who is, I believe, secretly bent on your destruction. But I can tell you not only all that went on—I can also relate to you the designs of Kauc, the crow, who conferred with Cloctaw in private, after the meeting was over. And I can also give you good reasons for suspecting Ki Ki, the hawk, whom you have just nominated to the command of your forces, of the intention of making a bargain with Choo Hoo, and of handing you over to him a prisoner."

Now this last was a pure invention of the weasel's out of envy, since Ki Ki had obtained such distinction. Kapchack, much alarmed at these words, ordered him to relate everything in order, and the weasel told him all that had been said at the council, all that Kauc, the crow, had said to Cloctaw, and a hundred other matters which he made up himself. When Kapchack heard these things he was quite confounded, and exclaimed that he was surrounded with traitors, and that he did not see which way to turn. He hopped a little way off, in order the better to consider by himself, and leant his head upon one side.

First he thought to himself: "I must take the command from Ki Ki, but I cannot do that suddenly, lest he should go over to Choo Hoo. I will therefore do it gradually. I will countermand the order for an immediate attack; that will give me time to arrange. Who is to take Ki Ki's place? Clearly the weasel, for though he is an archtraitor, yet he is in the same boat with me; for I know it to be perfectly true that all of them are bitter against him."