Free The Baboons Who Went This Way and That by Alexander McCall Smith Page B

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    18
The Miracle Tree
    There were children who lived in a small village by a river. Nothing very much happened in that village, and there was hardly ever any water in the river. But there was a special tree just outside the village, and this tree was unlike any other tree in the whole country. It was a miracle tree, and the people were very proud of it.
    ‘This may be a small village,’ they said. ‘But at least we have the miracle tree.’
    Then there came a big storm. The country had been parched and dry, with the land crying out for water, but now even the normally empty river in that village was a raging torrent. And in the sky there were heavy clouds, high and purple, and lightning that joined the sky to the land with great flashes and bangs.
     

     
    One of these bolts of lightning hit the miracle tree. When this happened, some of the branches on the tree burned up and the leaves on the tree all shrivelled. Afterwards, when the storm had passed, the land turned green with new grass. But the miracle tree remained black and shrivelled. It had no new leaves and it gave no fruit.
    The people were very sad about what had happened to their tree and many of the children cried because they missed the fruit that the tree had so generously given them. Nobody went near the tree for a long time, but then one day a child went there and she ran straight home after she had looked at the tree.
     
    ‘There is a woman living in the tree,’ she said to her mother. ‘She has only one eye in the middle of her head, like the light of a train.’

     
    The mother laughed at this child, and said that it was impossible that a woman should be living in the tree and also impossible that she should have only one eye in the middle of her head. But secretly the mother went to visit the tree and she saw that what the child had said was true. There was indeed a one-eyed woman living on top of the tree.
     
    For a long time nobody went near the tree, as they were all afraid of the strange woman who lived on top of it. But then the same child who had first seen the woman went back and she saw that the woman had died and that there was nobody living on the tree.
    Not long after that, after word had got out that the woman who lived in the tree had died, a family went to the tree and started to pick the fruit that was growing on it. To their surprise, the tree began to shake and then changed into a lion. They were very afraid, especially when the lion began to sing. The words of the song warned people not to try to pick the fruit of the tree.
    As they ran away, the people looked back and saw that the tree had changed again. Now it was a river!
    ‘This is really a miracle tree,’ said a small boy who had seen this. ‘First it was a lion and then it was a river. Perhaps it will be something else now.’

     
    He was right. When they looked back next, they saw that the tree had become a tree again.
    Many days later, another family passed by the tree and, seeing the fruit that it bore, started to pick some of it. This made the tree shake.
    ‘Look,’ shouted one of the children of this family. ‘There is a crocodile up in the tree.’
     
    The family ran away when they saw the head of the crocodile peering down at them. They did not go back to the tree again, and nor did anybody else. And from that time onwards, nobody in that village spoke about the miracle tree. They thought that it was better to be a quiet village where nothing happened, rather than a village where too much happened.
     
     
     

     

 
    19
The Goat
And The Jackal
    Goat and Jackal were very good friends. They were always to be seen eating together and telling one another stories. Goat would tell a story and jackal would howl with laughter. Then Jackal would reply with his own story and Goat would make a very strange sound that showed that he, too, thought this was very funny.
    When Goat invited Jackal one day to come and have dinner with him, Jackal