The Story of the Blue Planet Read online

  The Story of the Blue Planet

  ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON

  Illustrated by

  ÁSLAUG JÓNSDÓTTIR

  Translated by

  JULIAN MELDON D’ARCY

  SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  NEW YORK

  Copyright © 1999 by Andri Snær Magnason

  Illustration copyright © 1999 by Áslaug Jónsdóttir

  English translation © 2012 by Julian Meldon D’Arcy

  FIRST ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION

  Title of the original Icelandic edition: Sagan af bláa hnettinum

  Published by agreement with Forlagið, www.forlagid.is

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  SEVEN STORIES PRESS

  140 Watts Street

  New York, NY 10013

  www.sevenstories.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Andri Snær Magnason, 1973-

  [Sagan af bláa hnettinum. English]

  The story of the blue planet / Andri Snær Magnason; illustrated by Aslaug Jonsdottir; translated by Julian Meldon D’Arcy. -- 1st English-language ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: When Gleesome Goodday crash-lands on a beautiful island on a planet with no adults, he promises wonderful things in exchange for a bit of youth, but best friends Brimir and Hulda see that Goodday is not all he seems so it is up to them to stop him.

  ISBN 978-1-60980-428-2 (hardback)

  [1. Adventure and adventurers--Fiction. 2. Conduct of life--Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations--Fiction. 4. Best friends--Fiction. 5. Friendship--Fiction.] I. Áslaug Jónsdóttir, ill. II. D’Arcy, Julian Meldon. III. Title.

  PZ7.M27362Sto 2012

  [Fic]--dc23

  2012023316

  Printed in China

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  The translation of this book was made possible with a grant from the Icelandic Literature Fund.

  To my son, Hlynur, and his great grandparents

  Contents

  There Was a Blue Planet

  The Saga Begins

  The Space Monster

  Mr. Goodday

  Butterfly Powder

  Evening Falls, the Sun Sets

  Wolf! Wolf!

  The Strangest Stink

  The Great Flying Competition and into the Blue

  Wind-cold Wolf-trees

  The Fierce Grizzly

  Hairy Spiders and Poisonous Insects

  The Butterfly Monsters

  The Wildest Wild Animals

  The Ghost Children

  Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

  Jolly-Goodday the Comedian

  Who Owns the Sun?

  The Elections

  The Rescue Party

  The Bomb in the Crate

  Steel-hearted or Stone-hearted

  Jolly-Goodday’s Dream

  His Majesty Jolly-Goodday

  There Was a Blue Planet

  Once upon a time there was a blue planet far out in space. At first sight, it looked like a very ordinary blue planet and it’s unlikely that an astrologist or astronaut would even have given it a second glance. A sun and a moon circled the planet once every day and wind swayed the grass and flowers, while waterfalls tumbled from high mountains into deep dark canyons. Clouds were blown across the sky and stars twinkled behind them. The planet was covered with lands and around each land was an ocean that could be as calm as a mirror until it was caught by the roaring winds and smashed into a thousand drops on rocky shores.

  The blue planet was very special for one reason: Only children lived there. Plants and animals lived there too of course, but all around the planet were children in all shapes and sizes. Big children, small children, chubby children, and skinny children, and some were even weird like the child you see in the mirror. There were many more than a hundred of them, so let’s just say that they were countless. The children were completely free to do what they pleased since no grown-ups lived on the blue planet and there was no one to order them around. The wild children ate when they were hungry, slept when they got tired, and in between they played without anyone interfering. These words are not meant to criticize grown-ups; many of them are quite nice.

  The blue planet was beautiful, but it was also a dangerous place. Each day was so full of danger and excitement that no grown-ups could have lived there without getting gray hair and withering away from stress and worry. That’s why no grown-up had landed on the planet for as long as the youngest child could remember, and astronomers wouldn’t dare point their telescopes towards the blue planet.

  Now someone might ask: Where did the children come from? How did they multiply? Did they never grow up? How were they born if there were no grownups living on the planet? The answer is simple: Nobody knows.

  As I said, scientists were not interested in the planet and no research had been done on it. We only know that it was full of children that never grew up. For some unknown reason the well of youth in their hearts seemed limitless, and in fact, the children could easily have been many hundreds of years old.

  The children had endless adventures on the blue planet. They could follow fireflies in the dark or climb rocky cliffs and jump into warm waters. They could gather shells on the beach and watch the sea turtles crawl ashore to lay their eggs. There were high cliffs full of nesting birds and cold white glaciers that crawled to the sea, crunching and crumbling. The forests were light-green during the day when the tigers and parrots were about, but they turned dark-green in the evening when the wolves began howling, and black-green at night when the bats awoke and spiders with hairy legs wove their webs between branches.

  Once a year an incredible event took place on the blue planet. A ray of light would burst through a little hole in the wall of a cave in the Blue Mountains. This was no ordinary cave. It was full of sleeping butterflies. As the light flooded the cave and shone on their wings, something wonderful happened: the butterflies awoke from their sleep. Very slowly and calmly they moved their wings and then rose in the air, one by one, and flew out of the mouth of the cave. They followed the sun for a whole day, circling the planet over land and sea, mountains and valleys, before fluttering back into the cave and falling asleep again, not to awaken until another year had passed.

  The flight of the butterflies was the greatest wonder on the blue planet and a day of true happiness. The children would lie on their backs and watch the butterflies fill the sky until they disappeared with the sun beyond the horizon.

  But all these wonders cannot compare with the adventure this story has to tell. Here comes the most dangerous and incredible adventure that any child on the blue planet could ever have imagined.

  The Saga Begins

  The saga begins on a little island in a deep ocean, shortly before the annual awakening of the butterflies. It was a bright summer’s day and Brimir was wandering along a black sandy beach collecting seashells and skimming the ocean with flat stones. He walked slowly through the penguin nesting grounds, zigzagging through the crowd, taking special care not to step on any eggs.

  Brimir was going to show his friend Hulda a beautiful stone he had found near the Blue Mountains. Only a glimpse of his head could be seen, as a lock of his yellow hair stood out among the black and white flock of penguins. His tummy was grumbling because he had completely forgotten to eat on his hike. He looked at the delicious eggs under the penguins’ bottoms and his mouth watered, but when he caught their nasty looks he decided to let them be. After all, he was alone against th
ousands of them; he had a sharp mind but their beaks were sharper.

  Brimir saw Hulda dragging a large sack and ran over to her.

  “Hi,” said Brimir. “What’s in the sack?”

  “Just a seal.”

  “Just a seal?”

  “Yes, just one seal, but also oranges and two rabbits!” “Mmmm! Did you catch the seal?”

  “Oh, it was no big deal, it was so small. I knocked it out with a club,” said Hulda as she tapped Brimir lightly on his head.

  “Shall I help you pull the sack?”

  “That would be nice.”

  Brimir and Hulda strolled along the beach, dragging the sack behind them, wiping out their tracks in the sand. They looked out over the sea and the black sand in the bay with the palm trees where they were going to skin and cook the seal. They collected logs, lit a fire, and grilled the seal in one piece. When they had eaten their fill they sat in the sand and watched the sunset. Then they lay on their backs and watched the stars grow brighter as the darkness grew blacker.

  “I think this was the best and most beautiful day of my life,” whispered Hulda.

  “Yes, it’s even better than the second-best day I’ve ever lived, which was yesterday,” said Brimir.

  “What did you do yesterday?”

  “Nothing special. I just felt so happy,” said Brimir, smiling. “Life keeps getting better and better.”

  “And the butterflies are coming soon,” said Hulda, glowing with happiness.

  Brimir showed Hulda the stone he found. How it glittered. Like a thousand rainbows. Like a million stars.

  “It’s beautiful!”

  “You can have it,” said Brimir.

  “No, I don’t want it,” said Hulda, “it’s too beautiful.”

  “Really, I want you to have it,” said Brimir.

  Knowing in her heart that it’s a greater blessing to give than to receive, Hulda accepted the stone to please Brimir.

  “What kind of stone is it?”

  “I think it’s a wishing stone.”

  “Can I make a wish?” asked Hulda.

  “Yes, if you want to,” replied Brimir, “but then the stone changes into an ordinary pebble.”

  “Do I only get the one wish?”

  “Yes, but you can make whatever wish you like.”

  Hulda was silent. She thought things over, racked her brains, and let her mind wander.

  “I really can’t think of anything to wish for.”

  “Nothing?” asked Brimir.

  “I have enough to eat and I have many friends because everybody’s my friend. But there’s always been one wish I’ve had,” said Hulda.

  “And what’s that?”

  “I’ve always wished that my best friend would give me an amazingly beautiful wishing stone. And now my wish has come true so I can’t think of anything else to wish for!”

  Hulda smiled shyly, kissed Brimir quickly on the cheek, and held the stone carefully, like a sparrow’s egg.

  “That’s a really strange star!” said Brimir suddenly.

  “Where?” asked Hulda.

  “There!” shouted Brimir.

  “There shouldn’t be a star there,” said Hulda and rubbed her eyes.

  But the star was not motionless in space. It zoomed about with a large tail of fire, sometimes twisting and turning as it drew glowing letters of fire in the sky.

  “It’s making letters in the air,” said Brimir.

  “L-E-T T-H-E-R-E B-E F-U-N,” spelled out Hulda.

  “Let there be fun? What kind of falling star is that?”

  The star suddenly stopped making circles in the air and now it was heading straight for the blue planet! A horrendous roar could be heard that became louder and louder. Brimir and Hulda clung to each other.

  “Oh, no, is it an asteroid or a comet?”

  “It’s a space rocket! And it’s going to crash!”

  The space rocket approached with increasing speed and everything around them became blindingly bright. The birds in the trees flew away shrieking. Squirrels crawled into rabbit holes. Fish hid in seaweed forests.

  Hulda shouted, “It’s heading straight for us! We’ll be crushed.”

  “Hold me tight,” whispered Brimir.

  Hulda held onto Brimir so tightly she almost crushed him. Then came a tremendous explosion.

  BANG!

  The explosion echoed between the mountains, while sand and rocks rained all over the beach.

  Brimir and Hulda remained perfectly still with their ears ringing. A deep crater had been formed where the space rocket had crashed. They walked slowly to the crater’s edge and peeked over. Hardly anything could be seen because of the smoke, but they caught a glint of a glowing, battered, shapeless wreck at the bottom.

  “It’s just like an old vacuum cleaner,” said Hulda.

  “It’s a spaceship,” whispered Brimir.

  There was no sign of life in the spaceship, but then a low knocking sound could be heard—bang, wham, thump—as if someone was trying to break open the door of the rocket.

  “No one’s come here from outer space for ages,” said Hulda.

  The door continued to be struck, now much harder than before.

  BANG! WHAM! THUMP!

  “I hope it’s not a space monster,” whispered Brimir.

  Then a dreadful roar could be heard and the door was struck with full force. It fell open with a loud crash and a gigantic dark creature appeared in the doorway. It stared out into the darkness.

  The Space Monster

  Brimir and Hulda ran through the night as fast as their legs could carry them to let their friends know about the space monster. Their only light was from the moon, which sometimes disappeared behind a cloud or a palm tree. They ran over meadows and through forests and along the river and over the desert. All the time they were shouting and calling:

  “Beware of the space monster! A space monster’s arrived!”

  The children woke up and shouted terrified out into the darkness:

  “Where’s the space monster?”

  “It’s down on the beach with the black sand. RUN! HIDE!”

  “What does the space monster look like?” some of them asked.

  “I think it was black,” shouted Hulda and she kept on running.

  “Yes, it was black and hairy with four heads and its teeth were sharper than knives!” cried Brimir.

  “Bread knives or meat knives?” called out Arnar the thinker.

  “We’re not sure, the space monster was really just black,” cried Hulda pulling Brimir on behind her.

  And before they were out of sight they shouted to the kids: “Don’t go near the black beach!”

  The news spread through the forest that night like wildfire and lit up fear in every heart. All the children had heard about the monster but few of them knew what it looked like. Some of them said that it was black and hairy and could swallow whole planets with forests and lakes and all the animals in one big mouthful. Others said it had ten heads and eighteen eyes with x-ray vision to see through mountains.

  They all imagined the horror of disappearing into the stomach of such a monster and being crushed in its smelly and slimy guts. Brimir and Hulda, exhausted after their running, fell asleep in a forest glade under a sweet-scented pine tree.

  Hulda was awoken by a terrified cry from Brimir.

  “Oh, I had such a horrible nightmare! The space monster replaced our hearts with lots of feathers, which tickled so much that I couldn’t stop laughing when the monster ate me and chewed me a hundred times because the monster’s mother had taught it to chew its food very well, and finally, when the monster swallowed me, its belly was full of jellyfish jam. And you know how I hate jellyfish!”

  Hulda shook her head. “You and your crazy, mixed-up dreams.”

  “I think we’ve slept too long,” said Brimir rubbing his eyes.

  “Let’s find the others before the monster eats us all.”

  The children walked for a long, lon
g time through the forest. It was by now a bright sunny day, but there wasn’t a single child in sight. There were no children by the river or up on the hills. There was no child in the valley or under the mountain. Brimir and Hulda shouted and called, but nobody answered except the monkeys in the trees and the rustling leaves.

  “I think the monster’s already eaten our friends,” whimpered Brimir.

  “I’ll find the club I used to knock out the seal,” said Hulda, “and I’ll knock out the space monster.”

  Hulda swung her club and almost knocked out Brimir. They crept down to the black beach, where they heard a frightful noise.

  “Hush, Hulda, what’s that sound? Is that the noise a space monster makes when it cracks open skulls and sucks out the brains?”

  “It sounds more like laughter to me,” said Hulda.

  “Oh, no!” shouted Brimir. “That means there isn’t just one space monster but a whole bunch of horrible, laughing space monsters, more dangerous than all the wolves and all the lions and all the poisonous snakes put together!”

  They crawled, trembling on hands and knees, up to the ridge of the crater and looked down to where the spaceship had crashed. An unbelievable sight awaited them.

  Mr. Goodday

  “What’s that?” asked Brimir, amazed.

  “The monster is like an overgrown child!” said Hulda, catching her breath.

  “I think I know what it is,” said Brimir. “It could be a grown-up, they’re supposed to be gigantic.”

  This grown-up man also appeared to be hilarious, for all around him sat most of their friends laughing their heads off! They were all looking at this amazing creature sitting on top of a twisted space rocket. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt with a gray briefcase in his hand. He certainly did not look like a space monster.

  “Are grown-ups dangerous?” asked Brimir.

  “Some of them are very dangerous, but this one just seems to be funny,” said Hulda.