Tales from the Perilous Realm: Roverandom and Other Classic Faery Stories. Alan Lee

what a tiny tot he was, even beside the moon-dog who was only small, and instead of barking something rude he only said: ‘I would like to, if only I had some wings and knew how to fly.’

      ‘Wings?’ said the Man-in-the-Moon. ‘That’s easy! Have a pair and be off!’

      Mew laughed, and actually threw him off his back, right over the edge of the tower’s roof! But Rover had only gasped once, and had only begun to imagine himself falling and falling down like a stone onto the white rocks in the valley miles below, when he discovered that he had got a beautiful pair of white wings with black spots (to match himself). All the same, he had fallen a long way before he could stop, as he wasn’t used to wings. It took him a little while to get really used to them, though long before the Man had finished talking to Mew he was already trying to chase the moon-dog round the tower. He was just beginning to get tired by these first efforts, when the moon-dog dived down to the mountain-top and settled at the edge of the precipice at the foot of the walls. Rover went down after him, and soon they were sitting side by side, taking breath with their tongues hanging out.

      ‘So you are called Rover after me?’ said the moon-dog.

      ‘Not after you,’ said our Rover. ‘I’m sure my mistress had never heard of you when she gave me my name.’

      ‘That doesn’t matter. I was the first dog that was ever called Rover, thousands of years ago—so you must have been called Rover after me! I was a Rover too! I never would stop anywhere, or belong to anyone before I came here. I did nothing but run away from the time I was a puppy; and I kept on running and roving until one fine morning—a very fine morning, with the sun in my eyes—I fell over the world’s edge chasing a butterfly.

      ‘A nasty sensation, I can tell you! Luckily the moon was just passing under the world at the moment, and after a terrible time falling right through clouds, and bumping into shooting stars, and that sort of thing, I tumbled onto it. Slap into one of the enormous silver nets that the giant grey spiders here spin from mountain to mountain I fell, and the spider was just coming down his ladder to pickle me and carry me off to his larder, when the Man-in-the-Moon appeared.

      ‘He sees absolutely everything that happens on this side of the moon with that telescope of his. The spiders are afraid of him, because he only lets them alone if they spin silver threads and ropes for him. He more than suspects that they catch his moonbeams—and that he won’t allow—though they pretend to live only on dragonmoths and shadowbats. He found moonbeams’ wings in that spider’s larder, and he turned him into a lump of stone, as quick as kiss your hand. Then he picked me up and patted me, and said: “That was a nasty drop! You had better have a pair of wings to prevent any more accidents—now fly off and amuse yourself! Don’t worry the moonbeams, and don’t kill my white rabbits! And come home when you feel hungry; the window is usually open on the roof!”

      ‘I thought he was a decent sort, but rather mad. But don’t you make that mistake—about his being mad, I mean. I daren’t really hurt his moonbeams or his rabbits. He can turn you into dreadfully uncomfortable shapes. Now tell me why you came with the postman!’

      ‘The postman?’ said Rover.

      ‘Yes, Mew, the old sand-sorcerer’s postman, of course,’ said the moon-dog.

      Rover had hardly finished telling the tale of his adventures when they heard the Man whistling. Up they shot to the roof. There the old man was sitting with his legs dangling over the ledge, throwing envelopes away as fast as he opened the letters. The wind took them whirling off into the sky, and Mew flew after them and caught them and put them back into a little bag.

      ‘I’ve just been reading about you, Roverandom, my dog,’ he said. ‘(Roverandom I call you, and Roverandom you’ll have to be; can’t have two Rovers about here.) And I quite agree with my friend Samathos (I’m not going to put in any ridiculous P to please him) that you had better stop here for a little while. I have also got a letter from Artaxerxes, if you know who that is, and even if you don’t, telling me to send you straight back. He seems mighty annoyed with you for running away, and with Samathos for helping you. But we won’t bother about him; and neither need you, as long as you stay here.

      ‘Now fly off and amuse yourself. Don’t worry the moonbeams, and don’t kill my white rabbits, and come home when you are hungry! The window on the roof is usually open. Good-bye!’

      He vanished immediately into thin air; and anybody who has never been there will tell you how extremely thin the moon-air is.

      ‘Well, good-bye, Roverandom!’ said Mew. ‘I hope you enjoy making trouble among the wizards. Farewell for the present. Don’t kill the white rabbits, and all will yet be well, and you will get home safe—whether you want to or not.’

      Then Mew flew off at such a pace that before you could say ‘whizz!’ he was a dot in the sky, and then had vanished. Rover was now not only turned into toy-size, but his name had been altered, and he was left all alone on the moon—all alone except for the Man-in-the-Moon and his dog.

      Roverandom—as we had better call him too, for the present, to avoid confusion—didn’t mind. His new wings were great fun, and the moon turned out to be a remarkably interesting place, so that he forgot to ponder any more why Psamathos had sent him there. It was a long time before he found out.

      In the meanwhile he had all sorts of adventures, by himself and with the moon-Rover. He didn’t often fly about in the air far from the tower; for in the moon, and especially on the white side, the insects are very large and fierce, and often so pale and so transparent and so silent that you hardly hear or see them coming. The moonbeams only shine and flutter, and Roverandom was not frightened of them; the big white dragon-moths with fiery eyes were much more alarming; and there were sword-flies, and glass-beetles with jaws like steel-traps, and pale unicornets with stings like spears, and fifty-seven varieties of spiders ready to eat anything they could catch. And worse than the insects were the shadowbats.

      Roverandom did what the birds do on that side of the moon: he flew very little except near at home, or in open spaces with a good view all round, and far from insect hiding-places; and he walked about very quietly, especially in the woods. Most things there went about very quietly, and the birds seldom even twittered. What sounds there were, were made chiefly by the plants. The flowers—the whitebells, the fairbells and the silverbells, the tinklebells and the ringaroses; the rhymeroyals and the pennywhistles, the tintrumpets and the creamhorns (a very pale cream), and many others with untranslatable names—made tunes all day long. And the feather-grasses and the ferns—fairy-fiddlestrings, polyphonies, and brasstongues, and the cracken in the woods—and all the reeds by the milk-white ponds, they kept up the music, softly, even in the night. In fact there was always a faint thin music going on.

      But the birds were silent; and very tiny most of them were, hopping about in the grey grass beneath the trees, dodging the flies and the swooping flutterbies; and many of them had lost their wings or forgotten how to use them. Roverandom used to startle them in their little ground-nests, as he stalked quietly through the pale grass, hunting the little white mice, or snuffing after grey squirrels on the edges of the woods.

      The woods were filled with silverbells all ringing softly together when he first saw them. The tall black trunks stood straight up, high as churches, out of the silver carpet, and they were roofed with pale blue leaves that never fell; so that not even the longest telescope on earth has ever seen those tall trunks or the silverbells beneath them. Later in the year the trees all burst together into pale golden blossoms; and since the woods of the moon are nearly endless, no doubt that alters the look of the moon from below on the world.

      But you must not imagine that all of Roverandom’s time was spent creeping about like that. After all, the dogs knew that the Man’s eye was on them, and they did a good many adventurous things and had a great deal of fun. Sometimes they wandered off together for miles and miles, and forgot to go back to the tower for days. Once or twice they went up into the mountains far away, till looking back they could see the moon-tower only as a shining needle in the distance; and they sat on the white rocks and watched the tiny sheep (no bigger than the Man-in-the-Moon’s Rover) wandering in herds over