Let Sleeping Sea-Monsters Lie (4 page)

Mostly when you climb a hill or scramble through the heather and come across a large rock it will be just what it seems: a large rock.

But sometimes – just sometimes – you might come across a rock that is
not
exactly what it seems. Such a rock will look strange and sinister and different.

A rock like that will be a
Frid rock
and inside it there will be a
Frid
.

What a Frid looks like is very hard to say because Frids never come out of their rocks, but what they do is nasty (as you shall see).

Once there was a Frid rock on a hill above a village in which there lived about two hundred people, some cows, some chickens, some pigs – and five dogs. All the people in this village were
very careful not to upset the Frid. They spoke politely and quietly when they went near the rock and they put out crumbs by it and bowls of milk because crumbs and milk are a what Frids like. And
the dogs were even more well behaved than the people, because an old story said that the last time a Frid had been angered it was by a dog and though no one could remember what had happened to the
dog they knew that it was bad.

The five dogs in the village were friends.

There was an Old English sheepdog with wise eyes, which peered out under his grey and white fringe of hair. There was a liver-coloured spaniel who loved everybody and wanted everybody to love
her, and spent a lot of time on her back with her legs in the air so that people could stroke or scratch her or even kick her if they wished. There was a basset hound with a body like a hairy
drainpipe and ears that were full of little spiders and beetles which had climbed in as he trailed them along the ground. There was a poodle who had once belonged to a travelling circus. And there
was a mongrel called Fred.

Every one of these dogs was a sensible dog. They knew that a Frid lived in the rock above their village and though they often went for walks together they took care to keep well away from the
rock and if they did have to pass it, they did so quietly with their tails down. As for lifting their legs against anything within half a mile of the Frid rock, they would rather have died. Nor did
the mongrel, though he was as tough as they came, ever make any jokes about a
Fred
not being afraid of a
Frid
because he knew that anyone who was not scared of a Frid was, quite
simply, a fool.

And so for many years the people and the dogs in the village lived in peace with the Frid and the Frid lived in peace with them, taking his crumbs and his milk at night and bothering no one.

Then one day a completely new dog arrived in the village. She came in a carriage with a rich and important lady who was staying in the inn and her name was Winsome Wilhelmina III of Bossybank
Snootersloop, from which you will see that she was a pedigree dog and very, very grand. Winsome had long blonde hair, masses and masses of it. She had hair on her back which flowed down to the
ground on either side. She had hair on her legs and hair rippling along her tail and hair on her head, where it was gathered into a topknot and tied with a pink satin ribbon. When Winsome
Wilhelmina walked (which she didn’t very often because she preferred to be carried) she looked like a blonde wig on castors and all you could see apart from her hair were her snappy black
eyes and her snooty black nose and, of course, her ribbon.

The other dogs saw her come and saw her carried into the inn, but they did not expect to see her again. She was obviously not the kind of dog who would mix with ordinary dogs like themselves.
But it is no good being terribly grand and pure-bred and important if there is no one to see how grand and pure-bred and important you are and on the third day of her visit, Winsome Wilhelmina
trotted out of the back door of the inn, found the five dogs lying in a patch of shade under a tree – and began at once to boast.

“I,” said the new dog, “am Winsome Wilhelmina. My pedigree goes back for nine hundred years. I sleep in a basket lined with white satin and it takes my mistress’s maid an
hour to comb my hair.”

“Goodness!” said the sheepdog.

“I only eat the best steak cut into finger-thin slices, and peeled grapes for my bowels,” Winsome went on.

The other dogs had never seen grapes, let alone peeled grapes, but they were very impressed and the spaniel grovelled in the dust and licked Winsome Wilhelmina’s toes.

“There are real diamonds in my collar,” the little show-off continued. “You may look.”