"You want no power for yourself, you say, and you're too stupid to be able to steal my secrets. This isn't a pretty cottage, while outside are sunshine, broad prairies and beautiful wildflowers. Yet you insist on sitting on that bench and annoying me with your unwelcome presence. What have you in that kettle?""Three fishes," he answered readily.
"Where did you get them?"
"I caught them in the Lake of the Skeezers.""What do you intend to do with the fishes?""I shall carry them to the home of a friend of mine who has three children. The children will love to have the fishes for pets."She came over to the bench and looked into the kettle, where the three fishes were swimming quietly in the water.
"They're pretty," said Reera. "Let me transform them into something else.""No," objected the Skeezer.
"I love to transform things; it's so interesting. And I've never transformed any fishes in all my life.""Let them alone," said Ervic.
"What shapes would you prefer them to have? I can make them turtles, or cute little sea-horses; or Icould make them piglets, or rabbits, or guinea-pigs;or, if you like I can make chickens of them, or eagles, or bluejays.""Let them alone!" repeated Ervic.
"You're not a very pleasant visitor," laughed Red Reera. "People accuse me of being cross and crabbed and unsociable, and they are quite right. If you had come here pleading and begging for favors, and half afraid of my Yookoohoo magic, I'd have abused you until you ran away; but you're quite different from that.
You're the unsociable and crabbed and disagreeable one, and so I like you, and bear with your grumpiness. It's time for my midday meal; are you hungry?""No," said Ervic, although he really desired food.
"Well, I am," Reera declared and clapped her hands together. Instantly a table appeared, spread with linen and bearing dishes of various foods, some smoking hot.
There were two plates laid, one at each end of the table, and as soon as Reera seated herself all her creatures gathered around her, as if they were accustomed to be fed when she ate. The wolf squatted at her right hand and the kittens and chipmunks gathered at her left.
"Come, Stranger, sit down and eat," she called cheerfully, "and while we're eating let us decide into what forms we shall change your fishes.""They're all right as they are," asserted Ervic, drawing up his bench to the table. "The fishes are beauties -- one gold, one silver and one bronze.
Nothing that has life is more lovely than a beautiful fish.""What! Am I not more lovely?" Reera asked, smiling at his serious face.
"I don't object to you -- for a Yookoohoo, you know,"he said, helping himself to the food and eating with good appetite.
"And don't you consider a beautiful girl more lovely than a fish, however pretty the fish may be?""Well," replied Ervic, after a period of thought, "that might be. If you transformed my three fish into three girls -- girls who would be Adepts at Magic, you know they might please me as well as the fish do. You won't do that of course, because you can't, with all your skill. And, should you be able to do so, I fear my troubles would be more than I could bear. They would not consent to be my slaves -- especially if they were Adepts at Magic -- and so they would command me to obey them. No, Mistress Reeraq let us not transform the fishes at all."The Skeezer had put his case with remarkable cleverness. He realized that if he appeared anxious for such a transformation the Yookoohoo would not perform it, yet he had skillfully suggested that they be made Adepts at Magic.
