The White Elephant

By Sid Fleischman

How can a beautiful white elephant be a terrible curse?

Run-Run, a young elephant trainer, discovers the answer when he incurs the fury of the prince. The boy's punishment? The gift of an elephant, white as a cloud. From that moment forward, the curse reveals itself. According to tradition, so rare an elephant cannot be allowed to work for its keep. It is poor Run-Run who must feed the beast the hundreds of pounds of food it eats each day, and scrub it clean, and brush its pom-pom of a tail, and wash behind its ears, and, above all, keep it from doing any work.

Oh, if only Run-Run could make the magnificent white elephant disappear! Clever as a magician, he does—but the curse has tricks of its own for Run-Run.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9780061964916

Sid Fleischman

Sid Fleischman wrote more than sixty books for children, adults, and magicians. Among his many awards was the Newbery Medal for his novel The Whipping Boy. The author described his wasted youth as a magician and newspaperman in his autobiography The Abracadabra Kid. His other titles include The Entertainer and the Dybbuk, a novel, and three biographies, Sir Charlie: Chaplin, The Funniest Man in the World; The Trouble Begins at 8: A Life of Mark Twain in the Wild, Wild West; and Escape! The Story of The Great Houdini.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Run-Run and the tall elephant turned up the road leading to his hillside village.

A Smile FOR Run-Run

There, in old Siam, do you see the boy with dirty ears sitting as proud as a prince on the tall old elephant? Oh, how those two love each other! The boy, whose name is Run-Run, sometimes sleeps between the elephant’s front legs, safe from the world.

But what a terrible mischief the elephant got that boy into!

It happened on a day like today, hot as an oven with its doors flung open.

They were returning from clearing the tangled stumps of aged jackfruit trees for the new mango plantation over on the hillside. The tall elephant would get a stump between his great yellow tusks and shove with his padded forehead. Out came the stump, squealing like a bad tooth.

Walking Mountain! the boy shouted with a smile, for that was the elephant’s name. A morning’s work under this sun is enough, big brother! Your old bones ache, eh? Come, let us have a bath, great Walking Mountain.

Half a century old, was Run-Run’s elephant, with his final set of teeth! Walking Mountain had carried the boy’s father on his neck, and his father’s father. Brave mahouts, they commanded elephants many times their size. Mahouts had been Run-Run’s tutors. Now, only half grown, he, too, was a mahout, with his father’s colored headdress packed away under his grandfather’s porcelain amulet.

But how many years could Walking Mountain remain on his legs? One day he would lie down, lame and toothless, and refuse to get up.

In the river, Run-Run washed his ears and the red dust out of his hair, as if to avoid a scolding from his mother. He had been barely eight when she was mauled by a tiger. They say she’d fought the wild creature, even biting off his ear. Someday, Run-Run would meet that great cat, that awful, one-eared beast, and then, watch out, murderer!

But, where are you, tiger? Run-Run sometimes muttered. Afraid to venture out of the jungle and show your ugly eyes around here, eh?

Tight-lipped, he replied to his own question. "Dreamer! And what if he has been shot dead by a hunter? Aye, dead and eaten by flies!

I bless the flies, he added.

Now he gave his head a toss, and his long and black hair wrapped itself around his neck like a wet towel.

Run-Run and the tall elephant turned up the road leading to his hillside village. Tucked far below the hazy teak mountains to the north, shady Chattershee would be hard for anyone in the kingdom of Siam to find. No one except the pariah dogs who could be heard barking as Walking Mountain shuffled by; no one except the fruit bats, the wild green parrots, and a tiger or two.

Summer was brief with airless days, bringing heat as fiery as dragon’s breath.