Long, long ago, in the Kingdom of the Third Sun, there dwelt a carver named Pip and his little son Tink. They were humble but happy.
One day Pip heard that there was to be an inaugural ball for the new High King (there were no coronations in those days, only inaugurations, for crowns had not yet been invented). He wanted nothing more than to present something of benefit to the new monarch.
Pip thought long and hard about it, till one day he saw little Tink playing with a blown egg shell, blowing across the hole on top and making it whistle. The idea immediately sprang to Pip that a beautiful egg that made beautiful music would be the ideal gift for the High King. The only problem was that the eggs of all the birds that Pip knew were far too delicate. If one were dropped it would shatter.
Seeing his problem, Pip decided to sleep on it, and in his dream he saw a priest reading from a great scroll in a library of many scrolls.
The next morning when he awoke, Pip knew immediately that the priest was the obvious person to ask, for the priest had read many scrolls and been instructed of many masters. So Pip went to the priest and said to him, “I believe that the high king needs a beautiful egg which will make music to calm his spirits when the weight of the kingdom rests heavily on his mind. But I know of no bird which lays an egg of such immense strength.”
“There is such a bird,” said the priest.
“This bird has not been seen of man in ages, but it still exists beyond the Stone Mountains. The hen of the Speckled Kingfisher lays one egg of hollow stone each year. But she is a foolish bird, and often sits on it, when she should be caring for her true young, which unlike the stone egg, have the breath of life in them.”
“It is sad,” thought Pip. “I will go and seize this egg of stone, that it too may have the breath of life, and not be as one born dead.”
Pip was a widower, and so he left Tink in the care of the child’s grandmother, and prepared for his great journey across the mountains. He packed food and water and blankets and headed across the mountains. The passing of the mountains was as in a dream, for he was a man on a mission. He soon arrived at the nest of the Speckled Kingfisher. There he found the Silly Hen atop the stone egg.
“Mrs. Kingfisher,” he said, “if I may have your egg of stone I will breathe the breath of life into it.”
She very much wanted this, and so she said “I will do anything that this my child might possess the breath of life.”
“I ask but one thing in return,” said Pip. “The egg shall come to live in the Palace of the High King, that the breath of the King and his court musicians might sustain its life.”
The mother Speckled Kingfisher was delighted at this. So delighted that she called out to the other birds. The woodpecker came along and pecked holes in the front, which frightened Mother Kingfisher, but Pip just laughed and carved a mouthpiece into the egg, and breathed into it, producing the music which still haunts the palace of every high king to this day.
–Walden
