just wrote this. sure to be plenty of mistakes and lack of flow, but least we’ve got stories!
The Man with a Beard of Tales.
By Josh Pringle
Long ago, before the stories of the world were everybody’s to share, there was a grumpy old man who owned them all. He lived alone on the main street in the biggest house by far, surrounded by coins and gifts. Everybody in this town hated the man because he kept all the stories to himself. The only way people could hear these stories was if they paid him in gold coins or treasures of their trades and then gather around to hear him speak. The people would listen but as soon as they’d heard a word it would fall into his beard and be lost. The words would fill his beard and stay stuck there, making it impossible for the people to take the stories home to share with their friends of family. Now you and I both know how great stories are and it is no surprise that these people would empty their pockets for the chance to hear great yarns of distant dragons or a hopeful tale of a local hero. But as the years went on the grumpy old man got more and more greedy and would make people pay more and more to hear his stories. His wealth and his beard grew larger and larger as the people of the village grew thin and poor.
The villages thought it was unfair that only one man should own all the stories of the world. They wanted to share the great tales and be free to make their own; so they hatched a plan. One night the whole village came to hear the old man’s stories and formed a single line outside his house a mile long. Each person would pay him all their remaining gold and he would continue the longest most amazing story they’d ever heard. Words of rainbows and rivers and swords and hammers and kings and crayons flowed from his mouth and into his beard. Through the night more and more people came and showered him with the last of their gold until he grew weary and fatigued and his beard bulged with his used up words. But so large was his thirst for gold that as long as the coins kept coming he would not stop. And as the line continued so did the story until his beard was so large that you could hardly see the man. Finally the line came near to an end and the last people sifted through the door and their last coins were thrown. With these last coins came the story’s end but the words were too much. The man’s beard had grown so large that it had swallowed him whole and all you could hear was the clink of gold and a muffled ending through his whiskers. ‘The End’ said the greedy man as his beard grew so large that it engulfed him completely, sending hairs down his throat and choking him of his life. The villages cheered and all the strongest men gathered their axes and hacked the beard into a million pieces and as the final whisker fell to the floor an almighty wind blew through the town, twisting and twirling and sending all the words and hairs flying into their eyes and ears and mouths and throughout the land. The whiskers travelled near and far and gave the people of the world enough stories to last a million lifetimes. So next time you read a book or heard a tale and create one yourself, think of those brave villages and the greedy old man and try find the whisker that gave you your tale!
