The Land of the Blue FlowerBurnett, Frances Hodgson
Science
The Land of the Blue Flower
Burnett, Frances Hodgson
Fairy tales
Then the little cripple got up trembling and hobbled through his rickety
gate and threw himself down upon the earth before the King's white
horse, sobbing hopelessly and heart-brokenly.
"Oh King!" he cried. "I am only a cripple, and small, and I can easily
be killed. I have no flowers at all. When I opened my package of seeds I
was so glad that I forgot the wind was blowing, and suddenly a great
gust carried them all away forever and I had not even one left. I was
afraid to tell anybody."
And then he cried so that he could not speak.
"Go on," said the young King gently. "What did you do?"
"I could do nothing," said the little cripple. "Only I made my garden
neat and kept away the weeds. And sometimes I asked other people to let
me dig a little for them. And always when I went out I picked up the
ugly things I saw lying about--the bits of paper and rubbish--and I dug
holes for them in the earth. But I have broken your Law."
Then the people gasped for breath, for King Amor dismounted from his
horse and lifted the little cripple up in his arms and held him against
his breast.
"You shall ride with me today," he said, "and go to my castle on the
mountain crag and live near the stars and the sun. When you kept the
weeds from your bare little garden, and when you dug for others and hid
away ugliness and disorder, you planted a Blue Flower every day. You
have planted more than all the rest, and your reward shall be the
sweetest, for you planted without the seeds."
And then the people shouted until the world seemed to ring with their
joy, and somehow they knew that King Mordreth's Land had come into fair
days and they thought it was the Blue Flower magic.
"But the earth is full of magic," Amor said to the Ancient One, after
the feast on the plain was over. "Most men know nothing of it and so
comes misery. The first law of the earth's magic is this one. If you
fill your mind with a beautiful thought there will be no room in it for
an ugly one. This I learned from you and from my brothers the stars. So
I gave my people the Blue Flower to think of and work for. It led them
to see beauty and to work happily and filled the land with bloom. I,
their King, am their brother, and soon they will understand this and I
can help them, and all will be well. They shall be wise and joyous and
know good fortune."
The little cripple lived near the sun and the stars in the castle on the
mountain crag until he grew strong and straight. Then he was the King's
chief gardener. The boy who was clever was made captain of his band,
which became the King's own guard and never left him. And the gloom of
King Mordreth's Land was forgotten, because it was known throughout all
the world as The Land of the Blue Flower.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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