The pencil sharpener

I mostly use a pencil to put down ideas for my stories. I sharpen it using a tiny axe I once obtained. It’s only about as long as my little finger and I thought it might be of some interest if I told you how I got the thing.

Once upon a time when I was young, handsome and single, I decided to go up into the mountains to find my destiny and possibly fame and fortune at the same time. I met many people and had several adventures that have no bearing on this story, before eventually meeting a beautiful girl tending her sheep on a mountain side.

We fell to talking and it was obvious right from the start that we were destined to live out our days with one another, so she took me to her home to meet her parents. They seemed as pleased as she was that she had met a young handsome fellow like myself, even though I had no prospects at the time. Like us they knew that fate had thrown us together and once married we would live together happily ever after.

As is the custom amongst the mountain people she was given her dowry in the form of a pet goose. At first I could see no real advantage in this except for the fact that it laid one egg a week and if driven by starvation we could at least eat the bird. However as we slowly walked away from the mountainous regions the goose became of some value. More precisely it was the eggs that people seemed to want and we traded these for a more varied diet on our way back to my homelands.

My people lived on the edge of the world and as soon as we arrived, I visited my parents in their castle to introduce my bride. They were as pleased as myself with my wife and we soon began looking for a castle of our own to live in and bring up a family.

One of the major problems living at the edge of the world was that it’s a very windy place. As you would expect, the cheapest property was to be found in the windiest positions. Still as I’ve already said we were young and at our age we felt we could put up with a little inconvenience, so it wasn’t too long before we found a lovely little castle right on the edge. All right, so it swayed a bit sometimes, but as I’ve said we were young and in love.
Right out here the goose eggs became even more valuable and we were able to pay a carpenter to make us essentials like a bed and a table with some chairs. More eggs paid for a down filled quilt for the bed and quite soon we were living together in comfort. We were now able to accumulate our eggs to pay for even more luxuries to equip our home.

All went well for a month or two, then one day I noticed that there were fewer eggs in the morning than there had been the night before. My wife had also been counting them, she’d been hoping to buy a larger wash tub from the cooper. We both agreed that we must have a problem with vermin.

We soon noticed that there was a pattern to the thefts. Every Wednesday one of the eggs would disappear, so I decided to lay in wait for the little varmint on the next occasion.

I have to admit I must have dozed off and never caught the thief in the act, but I did hear the goose honking as one of her eggs disappeared.

I ran out of the door and sure enough I was just able to spot a small creature holding the egg climbing over the edge of the world. I walked over carefully and for the first time in my life peered over the edge.

It was a fantastic sight; it may well be that I was the first person ever to look. The world seemed to be resting on the tops of trees growing through clouds, no wonder the castle swayed about a bit when the wind blew. About halfway down one of the trunks I could see a small figure descending rapidly into the clouds clutching one of my eggs to his chest.

Well the trunk was obviously strong enough to support my weight, so I began going down after him. As I went through the cloud I could see the ground below me and the egg thief running away. Then to my surprise a larger figure came out of the woods and shouted “run Jack” in a silly squeaky little voice, before he began chopping at my tree trunk with his axe. It was ridiculous really, the trunk was far too thick to cut through before I reached him. I took his axe away and holding him in one hand, chased after the small one, eventually taking my egg back from him and then throwing them both into a nearby pond.

That seems to have taught them a lesson, we’ve never had any more trouble from them.
But as I said at the beginning I kept the axe as a souvenir and just to prove the truth of this tale any one who would like to pay me a visit is welcome to come and see it.