The Boy and The Man, Offer R [ereader for textbooks .txt] 📗

Chapter 1

T'was a fine day in a fine year in the fine kingdom. The river was flowing, the birds were chirping, and the Gods were smiling upon the land. The sun shone brightly and the white clouds formed funny shapes beneath her. A fine day indeed, as were all days in the kingdom. What made this ordinarily fine day into the seed of an eternal change in the kingdom's history began in the little red house to the south of the woods.

There, in the little red house, a boy whom we shall call The Boy' was preparing to set out on a journey across the woods. The reason he was doing so was because it was his mother's wish, and The Boy, having good manners and a fair heart, always complied with his mother's wishes. She was a small lady with a shrill voice and many wishes, and a more talkative woman than she couldn't be found in that side of the woods. We may hereby refer to her simply as The Boy's Mother'. Her current wish of him, her only child and the thing she treasured above all else in the world, was to deliver a bag of tools and a homemade meal to her husband, The Boy's Father. You see, The Boy's Father was a carpenter who served many people to the north of the woods. The people there were quite wealthy, and often in possession of fine woodworks; fine woodworking, on the other hand, was in short supply and so a skilled carpenter was always in high demand. The Boy's Father was one of the finest in the whole kingdom, and he made the journey through the woods every day. He would leave his home at dawn to cross to the north and return at dusk with an aching back and weary legs, but with a reveling heart and a heightened spirit. He generally led a busy, productive, strenuous, content life and was grateful for every moment of it.

On the day in question, hastening to make an early appearance at the abode of a wealthy customer whose lavish home was to host his daughter's betrothal party, The Boy's Father had departed from two of his morning habits. The first was to fill his stomach with digestible matter and his body with nutrition before putting it to work, and the second was to carry his special bag of light tools that he never left at a work sight overnight out of fear for theft. Theft wasn't a common occurrence in the kingdom due to the severe punishments, but The Boy's Father never left his most important and personal tools to the hands of chance. Having neglected his morning routine, his precision would be impaired and his spirits dampened. The Boy's Mother knew this, and she wouldn't stand for it. It was the boy's job to fix the damage by making the delivery as fast as possible.

"Run along the river", she instructed as she always did when The Boy or his father were about to cross the forest. "When you get tired, walk. Then when your breath is back, run again. Be swift for the sake of your father."

So the boy took off at a trot, and accelerated when he reached the bank of the river that sliced through the forest from south to north. He ran as fast as he could until he was out of air, then slowed back to a trot, then ran again when his legs and lungs were equal to the challenge. There was no cover from the sun along the riverbank, but it was still morning and the heat was tolerable. He ran faster than the flow of the river, and when the forest was behind him his legs were burning, but he felt a sense of great satisfaction. He asked around for the domicile of his father's client and was pointed in the right direction. He didn't make a single wrong turn though the way was quite winding. He managed to complete the delivery in due time, and was thanked profusely by his father.

"You are a wonderful son, and I am lucky to have you", his father said. "Tell your mother I said so; she shall be ever so proud! Be careful on your way back, my boy; be sure to keep along the river."

"Yes, father", The Boy said. He made his way back through the forest with a light heart and spring-like legs. He whistled first, then he hummed a jolly tune, but there was one thing that bothered him. The sun was high in a cloudless sky, and she seemed to be more excited than usual. She hung right above him as he marched along the river. He ran almost as fast as before, but couldn't outrun her. She was extremely displeased by it, and he felt much hotter after that. There was no way for him to escape her, and she made him suffer very much. Then, suddenly, a brilliant thought occurred to him. He always spoke to himself when he was deep in thought, and here is what the birds in the trees heard:

"I've just crossed almost the entire forest running. I'm sure that nobody has ever done it faster! And father was so pleased with me- I did a wonderful thing. And the sun- she is so stubborn! Why is she so stubborn? What will happen if I take just a few steps that way into the shade and continue through there? Nothing will happen! I'm a great boy, and I'm a great runner."

And so he decided, against the instructions of his mother and then his father, to move away from the river under the canopy of the trees. "Let's see you now!" He exclaimed daringly to the sun, which tried in vain to penetrate the canopy and heat him up again.

Walking between the trees, he was even gayer than before. Now there weren't even the rays of the sun to dampen his festivity. He zigzagged proudly from tree to tree, thinking how silly it was that his parents had warned him not to leave the riverside. There was nothing dangerous about it. Even a regular boy could go through the woods without any cause for concern, so certainly a wonderful boy like him! The air under the trees was cool and fresh, and there were fascinating sounds and smells all around. You might imagine that a forest is all green, and in fact it was a beautiful sea of green. But if you look deep down under the surface of the sea you will see a burst of different colors and life forms, and the forest was no different. Look at the woods from inside the forest and you will realize that it stores inside it an endless diversity of colors. They weren't always easy to spot but they were there. Flowers, fruits, vines, birds, little rodents and more- they all live in the woods, and they each had their own shape and color. This is what The Boy was seeing, and he was absolutely delighted.

He was perhaps half way home when he decided he wanted a walking stick. Sometimes young boys act for no particular reason, and this was just one of those cases. He didn't need the stick- he wasn't an old man, but he had an urge to get one. So he broke off a long branch from one of the trees and started using it as a walking stick.

He gained more confidence with his new walking stick, so he moved farther into the forest and away from the river. He was now so deep in the woods that he couldn't see the river anymore but only hear the rustling of the current. He was king of the forest! He wondered if ever there had been a boy brave enough to go so deep into the green sea, and if there was anything at all in the forest that could strike fear in his courageous heart.

Just then, he noticed in the corner of his eye a kind of unusual movement rather near the ground. He squinted and made a few curious steps toward the source of the movement, holding his stick forward. His heart was beating fast, and he enjoyed the tension and the excitement inside him. He stopped and stared hard at the creature that now froze as well.

"A cat?" He muttered to himself. That's what it looked like: just an oversize cat wandering through the woods. But what was a cat doing in the forest? Cats belonged in the homes of the people, or maybe sometimes on the street when they got away. Maybe this one was just lost, and he could take it back home-

He took one step too close, and suddenly realized that whatever he was looking at wasn't a cat at all! It had the outlines of a cat, but it was much, much larger than any cat he'd ever seen. It'd been crouching before, following a trail or sniffing the ground or searching for a suitable resting place, but now that The Boy was close, its attention was focused on him without distraction. It didn't curl its back like a threatened cat, but straightened itself like an arrow aimed directly at The Boy. It proceeded to make small, slow, calculated steps toward him, and soon cleared a bush that had been standing between them so that it was now in plain sight. The Boy's jaw dropped and his blue eyes opened to twice their normal size. This was no cat! Now he was sure of it. If ever a cat had looked so ferocious, nobody would ever seek the company of a cat again. It was taller than the height of his waist, had teeth like long razors, even sharper claws, and black spots on brownish yellow fur.

"You must be a leopard", he muttered with horror, though he'd never seen one before. Leopards were the most dangerous creatures in the forest, and it was said they could eat an entire person in just one sitting! The Boy was paralyzed with fear, and his enthusiasm from before vanished completely. The leopard looked angry, and if not angry then hungry. And in either case he was in big, big trouble.

'What am I going to do?' He thought. The leopard was maybe twenty steps away from him, and soon it would be close enough to pounce. He couldn't turn and run, because everyone knows that a leopard is much faster than a person. He couldn't fight, because there was nothing he could do against those deadly teeth and claws.

'Maybe if I'm nice to him…', he thought. So he tried smiling to the leopard and speaking softly to it, but it kept closing the distance with the same menacing steps.

"You are a true savage", he muttered in a shaky voice of a boy who is terrified beyond his wits. Oh, how he regretted now having strayed from the river! But this was no time for regrets, since these could be the final seconds of his life. And regret was such a foul thing- he quickly snapped out of it. If only he had some weapon with which to fight back…

The stick! He was suddenly greatly reanimated. The stick was a poor weapon indeed, and the leopard was still the stronger of the opponents, but at least it gave him hope. A long time ago people used to live in the woods, and surely they would come across a leopard every now and then. And they didn't have guns or swords or other advanced weapons- so how would they fight? With sticks!

He waved the stick violently in front of him, hoping that the leopard would be more impressed by it than he was. The stick swooshed