Berzinska / Wakeling The Skeleton in the Cupboard

and other stories
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-915628-21-3
Verlag: The Emma Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 160 Seiten

Reihe: Emma Press Children's Fiction Books

In the north of Europe, on the top left-hand tip of a country shaped like a butterfly, lies the Livonian coast: a quiet place with wide sandy beaches, wild forests and not very many people at all. If you decide to go there yourself and sit on the edge of a forest, you might see some little creatures moving around, smaller than the elks but bigger than the wild boar and badgers... Can you spot prickly Spendthrift, desperately trying to impress her friends? Over by that little house is Hare, preparing buttercup tea and crisp golden waffles for his sailor friend (and prisoner) Wolf, who just wants to be back at sea. And that worried-looking fellow hurrying up the hill is Squishbod - he really does have a skeleton in his cupboard... Across nine deeply atmospheric and compelling fairytales, Lilija Berzinska follows the desires and anxieties of a community of mysterious creatures in the north of Latvia, gently exploring their preoccupations and suggesting solutions with resonant empathy and wisdom. A Skeleton in the Cupboard won the prestigious Latvian Literary Award of the Year (Children's Category) in 2019, with judges noting: 'Lilija Berzinska's tales ooze warmth and sweetness.'

Lilija Berzinska was born in 1978. She is a children's author and illustrator, and also works as a translator. Several of her children's novels were nominated for the Latvian Literature of the Year Award, and her collection of stories Skelets skap? / The Skeleton in the Cupboard won the children's category of Latvian Literature of the Year Award in 2019. She and her family live by the sea and near the forest, where different creatures, both wild and imaginary dwell.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Berzinska, Lilija

Wakeling, Kate

Weitere Mitwirkende

Vevere Pasqualini, Zanete

Smith, Sara

Leseproben

The Skeleton in the Cupboard

Squishbod always enjoyed the arrival of spring. In those first few days of sunshine, he could at last open the windows and doors to let the crisp, clean air into his house, chasing away the darkness and airing the skeleton in his cupboard. He always looked forward to this moment enormously.

Squishbod usually got the skeleton out once a year – on the first really warm day of spring. The rest of the time, he keptit safely locked behind an oak door, with a large armchair pushed in front of it, just to be absolutely safe. It wasn’t that he was especially worried about his skeleton being stolen, but one couldn’t be too careful, he reasoned.

This year, spring was late in coming. The cold breath of winter lingered in the air, while snow nestled in forest hollows and shady corners, refusing to melt.

Squishbod snuggled into his soft woollen scarf each time he went out to check if spring had come. He’d slowly circle the house and log shed, picking his way over frozen puddles and the slippery mounds of last year’s leaves, before heading back inside to wait for the next day, when he hoped he’d go outsideand be embraced by the longed-for warmth.

The week before, Squishbod had met a marmot (imagine a very large squirrel) who told him they were already harvesting birch sap over in the big forest. Everyone there was in a terrific rush to finish their spring chores – looking for the vegetable seeds they’d stored away in kitchen drawers and attic chests that’d soon need planting in the ground.

Squishbod felt pretty anxious on hearing this. If it was already so warm on the other side of the forest, might something be wrong this year? Had spring forgotten to visit the out-of-the-way corner that Squishbod called home? What if all the days that were usually spring and summer went on like this, wrapped in icy clouds of damp and heavy with grey-brown fog? Then there would be no fresh spring breeze, no sweltering summer heat scented with hay. If that happened, Squishbod wouldn’t be able to air his house and the skeleton would stay in the cupboard for another year.

These miserable thoughts gave Squishbod a stomach ache. Things had to be done properly and the skeleton needed to be taken out of the cupboard just like every other year. Anxiety scraped at his chest. What if spring had arrived everywhere else, while winter blew round just his isolated house, leaving it chilly and uninviting? What then? How would Squishbod be able to get his skeleton out of the cupboard and give it a dust and an airing, unnoticed? How could Squishbod have another look at his skeleton and really ponder it at length, contemplating the months and years he had spent with his secret hidden away in the cupboard, without once pricking the curiosity of nosy neighbours or raising any eyebrows? There was no way he’d be able to do this if the forest and meadows were swarming with hordes of excited marmots and snout beetles and other creatures who’d just woken up for spring to collect twigs, harvest sap and gather pinecones.

Squishbod spent a couple of weeks in a whirl of agitation – sometimes looking worriedly out of his window, sometimes circling his garden and the nearby forest, in the hopes of finding some small but irrefutable sign that spring had arrived. After one such round, he went back indoors and sagged down into his armchair, the same one that blocked the door of the skeleton’s cupboard, before he began the whole process again a few hours later.

One evening, Squishbod fell asleep in the armchair and slept there all night. He might have spent the best part of the morning there too, had it not been for a loud, nervous-sounding croak that woke him up.

Straightening up, clammy with sleep, Squishbod understood what was going on outside and shot out of his world of dreams like he’d been stung.

‘Spring is here! The snowdrops are in bloom! Hey, come outside! Spring is finally here!’

Crowkin was running around outside Squishbod’s little house as if he was on fire, screeching and hooting with joy.

Squishbod slid off his chair. Not even bothering with his scarf, he raced to the door. He’d barely got out into the garden before Crowkin, dashing past, somehow managed to trip him up.

‘Have you gone berserk?’ Squishbod complained.

‘I’m wild with the joys of spring,’ Crowkin grinned. ‘At last! Spring is here! Now warm sunshine and summer berries and new potatoes are just around the corner...’

Squishbod wasn’t listening. What did he care about new potatoes and other nonsense that only idiots cared about? He had serious business to attend to that couldn’t be put off any longer.

Squishbod looked past Crowkin as he disappeared into the distance, his croaks growing fainter. Let him run cackling off to Lumblebee, Cloudberry and the other windbags. Squishbod would sit back and wait.

This time, however, he didn’t have to wait long, as the warm weather came in a sudden rush of heat rolling through the forest, meadows and Squishbod’s house. Just three days later and everything had come to life, lit by bright sunshine; it was time to open up the house to the breeze.

Squishbod was relieved he’d made it; the big day for airing his cupboard had finally arrived. Now he could really get down to the job he’d been forced to put off for so long. He set about throwing open his windows and doors, washing his curtains and hanging out rugs and blankets to dry, until nothing stood in the way of tackling this last crucial task.

Squishbod started by pushing aside the big armchair. Then he rocked the old cupboard first to one side, then the other, so he could to push thick curls of potato peel under its feet. That way he could slide it across the floorboards much more easily. Once he’d done this, he slowly pushed the cupboard over to the front door where, after jiggling it backwards and forwards a little, he managed to get it over the doorstep and carefully into his wheelbarrow. Now came the easy bit. From there, just like other years, Squishbod wheeled his barrow up the hill behind his house where, undisturbed, he could open the squeaking door and pull the old skeleton out into the sunshine.

Having spent a year in the cupboard, the skeleton was covered in a thick layer of dust and a tricksy spider had even managed to spin a web between two ribs. Squishbod wiped off the dust and got rid of the spider’s web with a colourful feather duster, before tossing a couple of mothballs into the cupboard (he wasn’t sure if moths posed a threat to skeletons and preferred to be safe rather than sorry). When he’d finished cleaning, Squishbod sat down next to his secret in the fresh new grass.

Squishbod couldn’t remember exactly when the skeleton had first appeared in his cupboard. It might have been the year he was considering turning into a silkworm or maybe another time when he’d been accosted by a wood ranger while in the forest one evening and this ranger hadn’t left Squishbod alone until his next birthday. It didn’t matter really how the skeleton had got there. The important thing was preserving it in one piece and never mentioning it to anyone.

Squishbod sometimes wondered what would happen if he showed the skeleton to anybody else. Maybe he could organise a picnic with tea and pastries, before solemnly addressing all those present and revealing what was behind his cupboard door. Or he could just slide the fact he had a skeleton in the cupboard casually into conversation one day. There were all sorts of ways Squishbod could share his secret with the world, but somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to do it.

Would anyone actually be interested in a rattling pile of old bones of no practical use at all, but which he was loathe to get rid of? What if the person he showed it to was so terrified of its gaping teeth that they ran off shrieking, never to return? Or they might become suspicious of Squishbod himself; if he had a skeleton in his cupboard, what else might he have in his basement or attic or pantry? And they might wonder if his house was unhygienic. Did he keep the skeleton well away from the flour and potatoes, or did he perhaps clean the skeleton with the same dishcloth he used to wipe the crumbs from the dining table?

It was for all these reasons that Squishbod never said a word to anyone and kept the secret to himself. At times, though, he felt he could do with a helping hand to get the skeleton out and put away again, as well as lugging the heavy piece of furniture over the threshold. That said, working slowly but surely, he always managed on his own.

Squishbod yawned and happily stretched out his rather short arms. The sky hung high and blue above his head, but on the horizon dark grey clouds were gathering. Squishbod judged that the first spring showers weren’t far off. As it looked like rain, it was probably best to put the skeleton back into its hidey-hole again. It would be silly to let the bones get wet and the rain ruin the old cupboard.

In the warm spring sunshine, Squishbod chivvied himself up and in no time at all got the wheelbarrow – its wheels squeaking – back to the front door. Then he paused for a moment, setting the barrow gently down on the ground, and looked warily around. There was no one in sight, meaning that this year, like every time before, Squishbod had managed to air his secret skeleton and bring it home again unnoticed.

‘Fancy going to the beach, Beady-Eye?’ Crowkin suggested.

‘No, better not,’ Beady-Eye...