Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

though he would fall over from sheer tiredness. He took a deep

breath and started for the tower. But before he reached it, he asked the question he had been wanting to ask all day, but had not dared to.

“Blanchefleur, who is your father?”

“The man who lives in the moon,” she said. “Can you hurry up? I

haven’t had a meal since that mouse at lunch, and I’m getting hungry.”

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? Blanchefleur ?

v

“He’s an owl,” said Ivan.

“Of course he’s an owl,” said Blanchefleur. “What did you think he

would be?”

Professor Owl was in fact an owl, the largest Ivan has ever seen,

with brown and white feathers. When they entered the tower, which

was round and had one room on each level, with stairs curling around the outer wall, he said, “Welcome, welcome. Blanchefleur, I haven’t seen you since you were a kitten. And this must be the assistant the Lady has so graciously sent me. Welcome, boy. I hope you know how to write a good, clear hand.”

“His name is Idiot,” said Blanchefleur.

“My name is Ivan,” said Ivan.

“Yes, yes,” said Professor Owl, paying no attention to them

whatsoever. “Here, then, is my life’s work. The Encyclopedia.”

It was an enormous book, taller than Ivan himself, resting on a

large stand at the far end of the room. In the middle of the room was a wooden table, and around the circular walls were file cabinets, all the way up to the ceiling.

“It’s much too heavy to open by hand—or foot,” said Professor

Owl. “But if you tell the Encyclopedia what you’re looking for, it will open to that entry.”

“Mouse,” said Blanchefleur. And sure enough, as she spoke, the

pages of the Encyclopedia turned as though by magic ( although it probably is magic, thought Ivan) to a page with an entry titled Mouse.

“Let’s see, let’s see,” said Professor Owl, peering at the page. “The bright and active, although mischievous, little animal known to us by the name of Mouse and its close relative the Rat are the most

familiar and also the most typical members of the Murinae, a sub—

family containing about two hundred and fifty species assignable to no less than eighteen distinct genera, all of which, however, are so superficially alike that the English names rat or mouse would be fairly appropriate to any of them. Well, that seems accurate, doesn’t it?”

“Does it say how they taste?” asked Blanchefleur.

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? Theodora Goss ?

“The Encyclopedia is connected to five others,” said Professor

Owl, turning to Ivan. “One is in the Library of Alexandria, one in

the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, one in the Sorbonne, one in

the British Museum, and one in the New York Public Library. It is

the only Encyclopedia of All Knowledge, and as you can imagine, it

takes all my time to keep it up to date. I’ve devoted my life to it. But since I’ve developed arthritis in my legs,”—and Ivan could see that indeed, the owl’s legs looked more knobby than they ought to—“it’s

been difficult for me to write my updates. So I’m grateful to the Lady for sending you. Here is where you will work.” He pointed to the table with his clawed foot. On it was a large pile of paper, each page filled with scribbled notes.

“These are the notes I’ve made indicating what should be updated

and how. If you’ll look at the page on top of the pile, for instance, you’ll see that the entry on Justice needs to be updated. There have been, in the last month alone, five important examples of injustice, from the imprisonment of a priest who criticized the Generalissimo to a boy who was deprived of his supper when his mother wrongly

accused him of stealing a mince pie. You must add each example to