Free Venetia Kelly's Traveling Show by Frank Delaney Page A

Venetia settled on the arm of the chair from where he could look straight into her face, he began to tell his tale. I’m repeating the story here as Venetia told it to me many years later, and I’m repeating it because it formed such a fundamental influence in the early making of Venetia Kelly’s Traveling Show—and in the management of Venetia’s life.
    There’s a man I know, and I know him well. He’s living up in the north of Ireland, and he’s a very unusual man—because he had a very unusual teacher. His teacher taught this man something that nobody else ever knew—how to talk to animals. He understands everything that animals say, even to one another. Because, as you know, animals and all creatures have their own language
.
    If this man hears the crows out in the field and they’re cawing and jawing, he knows they’re discussing where the next best bit of food might be. And if he sees the cows coming in to be milked, he hears them saying to each other, I hope there isn’t anybody milking us tonight who has cold fingers. He told me that himself. And every time the dog barks or the cat meows, he knows perfectly well what they’re saying—because his teacher taught him every animal language he needed to know. When he was a young lad, he tried to tell his family but they laughed at him
.
    One day, he was going off to his aunt’s house with his father and mother, and they were driving in a lovely painted pony trap drawn by their own horse on the farm, and the horse’s name was Myko
.
    Now my friend had conducted many secret conversations with Myko the horse. As he had had many secret conversations with the dog, Ted, and with the two pigs, Betty and Buster, and the cat, Chester, posh cat it was, name like that. All these chats were secret, you understand, because the animals didn’t want to get my friend into trouble with his parents, and he certainly didn’t want to get them into trouble
.
    Well, they were belting along with Myko in great rapid form, and the sun
shining, and suddenly Myko gives a big whinnying neigh out of him and my friend jumps up off his nice leather seat and says, “Stop, stop.”
    His father looks at him and says, “I’ll do no such of a thing,” and my friend says, “Stop, you have to stop—one of the shafts is going to break.”
    Well, against his better judgment, his father looks out over the front of the trap and sure enough he sees that the shaft has a big crack in it, and he draws the reins slowly tight until Myko the horse comes to a gentle standstill. They all get down and inspect the damage and as they do so the shaft finally breaks off and falls down like a dying thing
.
    If they’d all been still aboard when that happened, they’d be as dead as doornails. The father scratches his head in puzzlement, and the horse lets out another whinny
.
    “Tell him you heard a crack,” says the horse to the boy. And the boy says, “I heard a crack.”
    “Back there on the bridge,” whinnies the horse
.
    “Back there on the bridge,” says the boy
.
    “I suppose,” says the father, with a snigger as big as a curse, “the horse told you.”
    The boy said nothing. And now he felt worse than ever, because the animals were talking to him in their language and they didn’t know any of his language. So he decided to teach them. That night, when they were all home safely, Ted the dog came up into his bedroom as he always did and snuck into the bed with him. He said to my fiend, “Myko told me about today and the broken shaft.”
    My friend said, “Ted, I feel awful bad. Because I know how to speak in dog and horse and cat and pig, and you don’t know any of my language.”
    Ted the dog said to him, “Why don’t you teach us?”
    And so my friend started off teaching the dog to say “Hello” and “How are you” and “Please” and “Thank you.”
    In no time, all the animals in the farmyard were speaking the boy’s language. And then they hit a snag—and it could have