Four Odd Socks for the Glass Hill
Once there was a small grey donkey called Maud, who carried the milk churns down from the dairy every morning and was the slowest thing on the road. The baker’s cart passed her. The geese passed her. One morning Old Nan, the king’s ancient nurse, passed her on foot, knitting all the way.
“You’re slow, Maud,” people said.
“Slow and sure,” said Maud.
And she was sure. She had never once slipped. Before she put a hoof down, she looked at the place it was going, and then she put it there. This takes a little longer than not looking. Maud thought it was worth it.
In the middle of the kingdom was a hill made all of glass, as clear as a window and as slippery as a frozen pond. Nobody climbed it, because nobody could. Nobody needed to, except once in a hundred years, when a star fell into the meadow at the bottom. Then somebody had to carry it to the top, so it could rise again. Every grandmother in the kingdom knew that rule. None of them had ever seen it done.
One night at the end of autumn, the star fell.
It came down over the meadow like a dropped lantern, went straight through the roof of Maud’s stable, and landed in her water trough with a hiss.
At the bottom of the trough sat a star about the size of a loaf of bread, glowing silver and humming the thin, fretful hum a kettle makes just before it whistles.
Maud put her nose in the water. It was very cold.
“Well, no wonder,” she said.
She lifted the star out gently in her teeth, set it in the deepest straw, and lay down with her chin over it to keep the draught off. After a while the humming stopped, and Maud and the star slept till morning.
In the morning the king came. He was a kindly man and a worried one, and he owned forty fine horses. He looked in at the star and said, “Oh, thank goodness.”
“I kept it warm,” said Maud.
“Thank you,” said the king. “We’ll carry it up the hill on Saturday. A job like this needs a fine horse. Would you mind it until then?”
“I could carry it,” said Maud.
“You are very good,” said the king. “But you are a little bit slow.”
“Slow and sure,” said Maud.
“And only a royal horse may carry the star,” said the king, who was not sure where he had heard this, but felt very sure of it all the same.
So Maud minded the star all week. Every time the door opened, the star began to hum, and Maud nosed straw over it until it stopped. She learned that it liked the straw deep on the side by the wall. By Saturday she knew that star better than anybody in the kingdom. She wanted very much to carry it home herself, because she did not trust anybody else to keep it warm on the way.
At dawn on Saturday the king brought Banner, his finest horse, with ribbons in his mane and iron shoes polished like spoons. The star went into the royal basket on his back and began at once to hum.
Banner trotted up the glass hill with great dignity. He got about as high as a tall man’s hat. Then his shoes went clink, and his legs went four ways at once, and down he came.
“Beg your pardon,” said Banner, sliding. “So sorry. Do excuse me.”
He arrived at the bottom in a heap at the king’s feet.
Maud watched. Then she set off, slowly, up the road to the castle.
She had remembered something. Every winter, when the castle yard froze hard, Old Nan fed the hens in woolly socks pulled on over a pair of boots. The kitchen boys fell over. The milkmaid fell over. The king, once, fell over. Old Nan never did.
It is a long way to the castle for a donkey who looks at every step. Halfway there, Maud heard a clattering behind her. The king had brought out Dart, his fastest horse. The grooms had decided the trouble was going slowly. If Dart went fast enough, they said, he would be at the top before the hill noticed.
Dart went very fast. He got twice as high as Banner. Then he slid twice as far, right across the meadow and into the hay barn.
“Terribly sorry,” said Dart, from inside the hay. “My fault entirely. Lovely hay.”
Maud kept walking.
Old Nan was in the castle kitchen with a big basket by the fire. Old Nan had been nurse to the king, and to his father, and to his grandfather, and to his great-grandfather, and had knitted socks for all four. Kings, it turns out, lose one sock of every pair exactly as often as anybody else. Old Nan kept every odd one, in four labelled piles.
“I need four socks,” said Maud. “Please.”
Old Nan did not ask what for, and chose one sock from each pile. A red one from the king’s. A green one from his father’s. A striped one, very long, from his grandfather’s. And a blue one from his great-grandfather’s pile, with the heel darned in gold thread.
Then Old Nan got down on the kitchen floor, which took some time. One by one, Old Nan pulled a sock onto each of Maud’s hooves and tied it at the top with a bit of wool.
“Bring them back,” said Old Nan.
“I will,” said Maud.
On the road back to the meadow, Old Nan passed her, on foot, knitting all the way.
By dusk, all forty of the king’s horses had tried the glass hill, and the bottom of it was a heap of polite apologies. The king sat on an upturned bucket beside the humming star.
Maud walked up to him in her four odd socks.
“May I have one try?” she said.
“You’re not a horse,” said the king.
“No,” said Maud.
“You’re not royal.”
Maud lifted one hoof, and then the next, and then the next, and then the last.
The king looked at the socks. “That’s mine,” he said. “I lost that when I was nine. That’s my father’s. That’s Grandpa’s, he had very long feet. And that one has Nan’s gold darning on the heel. Nobody else in the kingdom darns in gold.”
“Royal socks, every one,” said Old Nan, who had been there for some time.
The king was much too tired to say no. So he said, “One try,” and the grooms buckled the basket onto Maud’s back.
Now, you may be thinking that a sock on a glass hill would go like butter in a hot pan. That is what the king thought too. But wool takes hold of glass the way a kitten takes hold of a curtain, and Old Nan had known that for years, and Maud had worked it out by herself.
Maud put her red sock on the glass and looked at it. It held. She put her green sock down beside it. It held. Then the striped one, then the blue one with the gold heel, and up she went.
She went very slowly. At the bottom, forty horses stopped apologising to watch. In the basket on her back, the star hummed.
“I know,” said Maud. “Nearly there.”
Halfway up, Dart said, “She’s awfully slow.”
“Slow and sure,” said Maud, without looking round, and put her next foot down.
She did not slip once.
At the top the sky was full of stars, with one small gap in the middle. The star in the basket stopped humming. It grew warmer and brighter, and then it lifted out of the basket all by itself, like a bubble rising off a pond. It hung by Maud’s ear for a moment, warm on her face. Then it rose up into the gap, and fitted itself in, and shone.
Down at the bottom everybody cheered, and forty horses said how very glad they were, and also sorry, out of habit.
Maud came down the same way she had gone up, one sock at a time. It took ages, and nobody minded in the least.
“I thought a job like this needed a fine horse,” said the king, when she reached him. “It needed a sure one.”
Three things happened after that.
First, Maud took the socks back to Old Nan, as she had promised. The king had them framed, and now they hang above the kitchen fire, four odd socks in a row.
Second, the king mended the hole in Maud’s stable roof with a square of glass.
And third, every night after that, the star shone straight down through that square of glass and turned Maud’s straw silver. On the coldest nights of winter, if Maud lay very still, she could hear it up there, humming faintly, like a kettle in another house. So she hummed back, low and steady, until it stopped. It always stopped.
And Maud went to sleep under her star every night, warm, and very pleased with herself, which she had every right to be.