Just So Stories for Little Children / Просто сказки. Книга для чтения на английском языке

This is the picture of the four gull-winged Djinns lifting up Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s Palace the very minute after the Butterfly had stamped. The Palace and the gardens and everything came up in one piece like a board, and they left a big hole in the ground all full of dust and smoke. If you look in the corner, close to the thing that looks like a lion, you will see Suleiman-bin-Daoud with his magic stick and the two Butterflies behind him. The thing that looks like a lion is really a lion carved in stone[349], and the thing that looks like a milk-can is really a piece of a temple or a house or something. I don’t know the Djinns’ names. They were servants of Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s magic ring, and they changed about every day.

The thing at the bottom is a picture of a very friendly Djinn called Akraig. He used to feed the little fishes in the sea three times a day, and his wings were made of pure copper. I put him in to show you what a nice Djinn is like. He did not help to lift the Palace. He was busy feeding little fishes in the Arabian Sea when it happened.

So he stamped once more, and that instant the Djinns let down the Palace and the gardens, without any bump. The sun shone on the dark-green orange leaves; the fountains played among the pink Egyptian lilies; the birds went on singing; and the Butterfly’s Wife lay on her side under the camphor-tree waggling her wings and panting[350]. ‘Oh, I’ll be good! I’ll be good!’

Suleiman-bin-Daoud could hardly speak for laughing. He leaned back all weak and hiccoughy, and shook his finger at the Butterfly and said, ‘O great wizard, what is the sense of returning to me my Palace if at the same time you slay me with mirth?’

Then came a terrible noise, for all the nine hundred and ninety-nine Queens ran out of the Palace shrieking[351] and shouting and calling for their babies. They hurried down the great marble steps below the fountain, one hundred abreast, and the Most Wise Balkis went statelly forward to meet them and said, ‘What is your trouble, O Queens?’

They stood on the marble steps one hundred abreast and shouted, ‘What is our trouble? We were living peacefully in our golden Palace, as is our custom, when upon a sudden the Palace disappeared, and we were left sitting in a thick and noisome darkness; and it thundered, and Djinns and Afrits moved about in the darkness! That is our trouble, O Head Queen, and we are most extremely troubled on account of that trouble, got it was a troublesome trouble, unlike any trouble we have known.’

Then Balkis the Most Beautiful Queen – Suleiman-bin-Daoud’s Very Beat Beloved – Queen that was of Sheba and Sabie and the Rivers of the Gold of the South – from the Desert of Zinn to the Towers of Zimbabwe – Balkis, almost as wise as the Most Wise Suleiman-bin-Daoud himself said, ‘It is nothing, O Queens! A Butterfly has made complaint against[352] his wife because she quarrelled with him, and it has pleased our Lord Suleiman-bin-Daoud to teach her a lesson in low-speaking and humbleness, for that is counted a virtue among the wives of the butterflies.’

Then up and spoke an Egyptian Queen – the daughter of a Pharaoh – and she said, ‘Our Palace cannot be plucked up by the roots like a leek for the sake of a little insect. No! Suleiman-bin-Daoud must be dead, and what we heard and saw was the earth thundering and darkening at the news.’

Then Balkis beckoned that bold Queen without looking at her, and said to her and to the others, ‘Come and see.’