The Story of the Blue Planet Read Online Free Page A

sun. First a small one, and then more and more came until the sky was full of clouds. Then came pouring rain. The children sat under trees in a foul mood.

    “Oh, I hate rain,” whined Elva.
    “Me too,” said Magni dejectedly.
    “You don’t get a belly full of butterflies in the rain,” muttered Brimir.
    The kids waded through the mud and slush on the beach to Jolly-Goodday’s where he lay under the flower-patterned parachute, using it as an umbrella.
    “It’s really intolerable when you’re innocently flying along and the clouds suddenly cover the sun. It’s highly dangerous. You could simply crash to the ground and be smashed to pieces,” said Hulda. She was quite furious.
    “Yeah, that’s right. We can’t have rain getting out of control and taking everyone by surprise! Rain is boring!”
    “Down with rain! Down with rain!”
    Jolly-Goodday thought long and deeply.
    “I think I can fix this, dear kids, and it shouldn’t cost much.”
    The children brightened up.
    “How?”
    “Look at the clouds in the sky.”

    They all looked down at their feet.
    “Look at the clouds, kids, don’t be silly.”
    “But they’re so unexciting, we can’t be bothered to stare at them anymore,” said Brimir. “We want to fly, that’s exciting!”
    “But what do the clouds look like?”
    The children gawped listlessly up into the sky.
    “Why don’t you tell us instead? We don’t want to look at clouds. We want to fly higher than the clouds.”
    “Shall I tell you what I think?” asked Jolly-Goodday. “I think the clouds look like little woolly lambs that have come here to pee on you,” he said as he burst out laughing.
    “Ugh, what disgusting lambs,” said the children. “Just as well they don’t poop on us too.”
    “But how does one get rid of these pesky lambs?” asked Jolly-Goodday.
    “You scare them away,” said Hulda grinning.
    “And what are lambs scared of?”
    “They’re scared of the big bad wolf!” shouted Brimir.
    “That’s right!”
    Jolly-Goodday took a large fat cigar from his back pocket and lighted it. He sucked and blew, sucked and blew, coughed and blew, and a horrid cloud of smoke came from his ears. His nose smoked like a factory chimney. His mouth was like an exhaust pipe. The smoke rose up in the sky and gathered in a black and ominous cloud. The cloud grew bigger and bigger and became uglier and uglier. When the cigar was burned to ashes Jolly-Goodday looked proudly up into the sky.
    “Well, how do you like it?”
    “The ugly black cloud?” asked the children.
    “How do you like the wolf!”

    The children looked thunderstruck up into the sky and saw that the black cloud was just like a big, fierce wolf. Jolly-Goodday waved his arms and cried:

    From the sky came the most terrifying growl they had ever heard. It was like a thousand thunderstorms, and from the wolf’s eyes and mouth shot streaks of lightning. The wolf raced across the heavens and swallowed a few lamb-clouds in one big bite.
    The clouds fled in all directions and hid themselves behind the horizon so that the sky was once again clear and blue.
    After that not a single cloud was seen in the sky apart from the black one, which ran like a wolf round the horizon making sure that no cloud ever came over it.
    “Hooray,” shouted the children. “If Jolly-Goodday hadn’t saved us we would have been bored to death in the rain.”
    “Is the wolf dangerous?” asked Hulda.
    “Not unless you fly bleating like a lamb through the sky in a white woollen sweater.”
    “Could it swallow the sun?”
    Jolly-Goodday made no answer.
    “How … how much does the wolf cost?” asked Brimir.
    “Oh, nothing at all really,” said Jolly-Goodday, “maybe just a little more youth.”
    “You need more youth?”
    “I need just a teeny-weeny drop more, hardly enough worth mentioning. Within 10% of usable youth.”
    “We don’t really understand this % stuff.”
    “How do you collect youth?” asked Arnar the