Scal the sorry, who often wasn’t but said she was, she sat down near the water’s edge on the shore and stared into it and frumped.
“I’m getting oldsome,” she grumbled as she looked at herself. “Look at that, all wrinkles and grey hairs and who knows what now. I’m sorry to say it, but I’ve been neglectful for sure and lazy at that; I should’ve been wed years ago before all this came along. I’d best find me a husband, and soonish rather than latish, or I’ll be sorrier for sure! Maybe when I’m married I can put all that behind me.”
So Scal the sorry went and looked all over the place. She splashed out into the surf and was knocked over by waves all over the place, dragged up and down the beach like a piece of old driftwood.
“I’m sorry for making so much noise,” she yelled out into the sea, “but is there anyone out there who would like to marry me?”
A shellfish by her foot coughed. A gull yawked.
“Fine then,” she snapped. “Sticks and stones to you all, see if I care.” And she flounced inland, where she tripped over roots and twigs in the forests and waded through boggy swamps and almost fell into a bear’s den face-first.
“I’m sorry for sounding so annoyed,” she called out through the woods, “but is there anyone out here who would like to marry me?”
A deer ran away in fright. The trees sighed in the wind.
“Take water and snort it sideways,” she swore. “Burn to cinders and snuff yourselves.” And she stomped away very noisily and angrily until the air grew cold and clean around her and the sky was at eye level, with stone underfoot and all the world spread down around her ankles underneath the big blue sky.
“Is there not anyone in all of this place,” she called out, “who will marry me, right now, right here!?”
“I will!” called back a voice from far, far below. “I will do that!”
“One moment,” said Scal the sorry, and she took a very long moment to climb herself all the way down the mountain again so she could talk to the voice properly.
It was waiting for her, and belonged to a man. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but did you agree to marry me just last moment?”
“Indeed I did,” said the man. “I am a great hunter and a great fisherman and a great eater. I can make things and I can break things, and I have so many muscles that I had to give some away to make space for the others. I will marry you, because I need something new to become great at.”
“This sounds like a good thing,” said Scal the sorry. “We’re married, then, and I need not be sorry any longer!”
“Wonderful!” said the man. And so they were.
“Married life is stranger than I thought it’d be,” Scal said some time later. “There is more snoring than I’d imagined.”
“I am indeed the greatest of snorers,” agreed the man. “And my elbows the sharpest and largest in all the places I know, as well as the most energetic.”
Scal felt this wasn’t ideal, but she was not sorry anymore, and so she said nothing but grumbles.
“Married life is odder than I’d imagined it to be,” Scal said to herself and the world at large a few days onward. “There is a great deal of yelling and strangeness.”
“I yell most fervently when I am ired,” confirmed the man, “and I grow ired when drunk with a speed that any other man I have met envies. Why, last night I out-growled a bear so grizzled his grizzles had grizzlies, and nearly kicked down four trees!”
Scal had rather liked those trees, but she felt she shouldn’t be sorry about things that way, and so she contented herself with grousing.
“Married life is peculiar in all ways,” Scal said loudly and aggressively and with a good deal of annoyance. “Today I went out to watch my icebergs float down the coast – bump-bump-bump as they go – and I found my husband peeing on one, and I would very much like to hear why he would do that sort of thing.”
“I am possessed of the mightiest urine of all beings in this wide world of ours,” boasted the man, “in both flow and strength of stream. I proved I could cut an iceberg in two, drown a whale, and dye whole waves with my abilities! Truly, I am indeed a superior individual!”
Scal liked the icebergs, as you recall. Scal liked watching them float by. Scal did not like any of those things her husband had said one bit – not even half a bit – and Scal might not be sorry about THAT but she was damned sorry she’d married him entirely and thoroughly at that very moment.
“I’m a sorry fool again to be sure,” Scal the sorry whispered to herself as she plotted, “but I’ve faced worse troubles and trounced them. I just need to get rid of him and it’ll all be fine, it’ll be fine for sure.”
“Husband dearest wonderfulest kindest gentlest man,” simpered Scal the sorry, “perhaps you could go a-fishing for us, and catch us some fish?”
“I am the finest fisherman I have ever known, and I have known them all,” said the man. “This is thus a thing that I can and will do, you wait here and see.”
So the man jumped in his boat and rowed away at great speed and enthusiasm. And Scal the sorry smiled happily to herself and began to rub and whisper at her left hand, because that hand was magic, and she became a little sea-lion, and followed after the boat of the man.
“Ahhh, here is a fine place to fish!” yelled the man aloud, and he threw down the oars and began to fish like crazy, yanking up fish after fish after fish after fish, big and small, fierce and quiet.
Scal the sorry snickered to herself underneath his boat, and she lightly nipped the left tip of her flipper. And as she nipped, the boat sprung a leak that sprung a crack that spurted water like a lovesick streambed.
“What’s this now!” said the man, as his ankles got wet and the horizon shrunk down. “But I know already, for I am a boatsman without peer! I can fix this with but spit and a snap of my fingers!” And he spat violently into the hole and snapped it shut with a moment’s work. “Better than new!” he laughed, and under the boat Scal the sorry cursed to herself and began to tickle her left flipper.
The seas roiled, the seas rumbled, and up from the depths charged a huge shark, an old shark, a shark that could eat small whales. Its eyes were deadest black and its teeth were whiter than snow and it shot for the man’s boat like an arrow to its target only much larger and more frightening and also a shark.
“Hrrm!” said the man, squinting ferociously. “Now THAT’S a fish!” And he pulled out his fishing spear and threw it three times. The first cut out each of the shark’s eyes, and the third its heart. He lashed it to the boat with one hand, and chortled mightily at his luck.
The underside of his boat was home to many muffled words, and the furious scratching of Scal the sorry’s left flipper with her right. Before moments had passed the sky turned dark, then green, then red and orange and purple. Thunder screeched and lightning howled, the wind made noises like a raccoon in heat courting a mockingbird. Water began to fall from the sky fit to double the ocean’s depth.
“Ah, a breeze to sail home by!” cheered the man. He rowed until the oars broke in half, then rowed with the stubs of the handles, and touched foot to shore just as the last bit of his boat broke into splinters apart underneath him and sank down to the bottom of the ocean forever.
“Wife!” he called. “I have brought you your fish for our dinner, and a great fish indeed it is, as befits my greatness at fishing, which is one of the many ways in which I am greatest at a thing!”
“Wonderful, husband,” said Scal the sorry. “But we need berries now, or dinner will be duller than dirt in a deadfall. Go a-berry-picking and fetch us some from over the hills, and we will eat happily!”
“I can pick berries in ways that put bears to shame and bugs to flight,” said the man. “This is yet another thing I can do, and I will return here afterwards to make you see that this is true.”
So the man hurled himself into a great long bounding run with mighty strides and outthrust chest. And Scal the sorry frowned to herself, licked her left hand three times counterclockwise, and was a little bright jay-bird that flitted from tree to tree in his wake all the way to the far sides of the hills where the berry bushes were.
“The picking shall begin now at this time and place,” decreed the man, and he began to fill his pack with them at a most alarming pace. Up in the tree above him, the little jay-bird preened its left wing and watched, eyes twinkling. In mere instants a whole family of bears came lumbering out of the woods – mother and cubs – and came charging for him, teeth-and-breath-first.
“Such fun!” whooped the man, and he whooped with the bears for a full hour with kicks and punches and bear-hugs. He stopped when they were all too tired to wrestle, shook himself off, and began to fill his clothes with berries twice as fast as before, laughing to himself.
Away in a bush behind him the little jay-bird ruffled the feathers of its left wing and watched, eyes hardening. Right away a swarm of bees rose up from the berry-bushes, stingers a-bristle, swarm a-flutter, and they fell on the man with the fierceness of animals a million times their size.
“Ah, a honeying-time!” observed the man with good cheer and great enthusiasm. He started a fire quick as anything, and in the clouds of the dense and billowing smoke he evaded the bees and swatted them, pat-pat-pat. A minute’s work and he was done with them, a minute more and he was at their hive, a minute after and he had their honeycomb well in hand as he was busily stuffing his cheeks with berries, twist as fast as before, when he had done so twice as fast.
From under a leaf the little jay-bird snapped at its left wing and watched, eyes sharp. The trees sparked, the brush alit, and in no time at all the forest was a raging wildfire with hungrier teeth than a wolf and a fiercer heart than a wolverine with a cavity.
“How much faster can such a thing be?” asked the man of himself to himself. “Why, as fast as anything – except for me!” He laughed and ran and sprang and leapt and made it home with only the very tips of the tufts of his hair singed, smouldering like little coals.
“Wife!” he bellowed. “I have retrieved the berries you wished to have as part of our dinner, and they are the finest and also the most numerous of all berries, as a result of my impressive berry-picking, which is one of the most impressive skills of my many impressive skills, all of which are equally impressive!”
“Good,” said Scal the sorry. “Wonderful. Excellent.” And then a thought struck her. “But husband-dearest, I am afraid that after dinner you will need to pee, and we have no place suitable for you to do so. Dig a pit, so that we’ll be prepared.”
“I shall do that incredibly well,” vowed the man.
“Make sure it’s deep,” said Scal the sorry.
“This will be so exactly,” promised the man.
“And pile up all the dirt neatly, so we can fill it in properly,” suggested Scal the sorry.
“Perfectly!” swore the man. And in less than no time at all he’d dug a massive pit, with all the dirt he’d torn through stacked up neatly next to it in a careful pile.
“Are you through?” asked Scal the sorry.
“This pit can hold anything in all the wide world there is,” bragged the man.
“Anything at all?” asked Scal the sorry.
“Anything at all,” replied the man.
“Nothing won’t fit in it?”
“Nothing itself COULD fit in it,” proclaimed the man. “Nothing, anything, AND everything can fit in this pit, even myself!”
“Are you sure of this, husband dearest kindest?” asked Scal the sorry.
“Utterly!” said the man. “Look, I’ll show you!” And he leapt down into the pit and there it fit him perfectly. “See?” he said.
“I see, dearest wonderfulest kindest gentlest,” said Scal the sorry. “And I’m sorry about this, but it is absolutely necessary.” And she gave the dirt-pile a shove, and it filled up the hole perfectly, leaving just the man’s head sticking out.
“Oh what is this now?” shouted the man. “What is this now, eh? What is going on?”
“I am sorry to say that you are very good at many things, but a very poor husband,” said Scal the sorry. “Marriage may not be for me after all. But you may stay here, and become the best in all the world at being planted.” And she walked away.
“A fine idea!” said the man, although no one was listening. “A fine idea! I’ll beat the other plants to it, just you see! A fine idea! I’ll beat them hollow at their own game. A fine idea!”
And this is why we have poison ivy.