Twilight Land

To my daughter
Phoebe:
this book is inscribed
as her very own
by her father
.

I
f St. George and Sinbad settled in to swap stories beside a roaring fire, would you want to eavesdrop? What if those two heroes were not alone? What if they were joined by Ali Baba and Cinderella and Fortunatus and Aladdin and a whole assemblage of characters sprung to life from the myths and legends of the world, and each had a tale to tell? What would you give to be there?

Me? I’d give that magic stool I stole from the wizard and the solid piece of good luck I found in the desert and the mystical blade I used to kill the sorceress and her sister. And more.

Fairy tales and fantasies are as old as the world. This is an easy thing to forget. It is easy to see only the stories we tell
today—fresh and shiny—and then assume that they came from nowhere, that they have no ancestors, and no narrative parents whatsoever. But today’s fantasies are built on a rich, imaginative heritage, a global heritage. As long as there has been language, there have been stories. And as far back as we can trace, those stories have been about dragons and magic and sacrifices, fools and wise men and wizards, fate and luck and love. What we call realism in storytelling is a relatively new concept. It is the sapling in the wood surrounded by towering moss-covered giants as old as history, giants grown up out of myths and legends. Fantasy.

When I was young, Howard Pyle could grab me with a story as few other authors could. At the time, I did not know how important he was to American art and illustration. I did not know when he’d lived or died. I only knew that his stories were rich, that they had a depth and texture to them that made me feel connected to history and this mysterious world where we all live. Pyle knew his stories were built on older tales. He loved them for it, and I loved him for it.

Nowhere is he more open about his stories’ roots and inspiration than in
Twilight Land
. His many narrators, all gathered at the Inn of the Sign of Mother Goose, are his handpicked favorites from around the world. And they each tell tales of their own particular flavor.

Twilight Land
is a playful assortment of adventures. It is layered. Narration within narration, fantasy within fantasy, all filtered through Pyle’s own clever and folksy American voice. Genies and beggars and woodcutters. Princesses who inspire and princesses who bewitch. Kings and wizards, quests and betrayals and misunderstandings. Pyle climbs inside characters who have captured imaginations through centuries, and he lets them speak. He lets them laugh and cheer each other on as they listen and wait their turns, as they revel in Story.

Find a chair. Scoot closer to this rowdy group and listen from the shadows. It won’t cost you anything. Not even that feathered cap you took from the demon bird. Join in. Read. Lose yourself in the Twilight Land.

N. D. Wilson
Author of
100 Cupboards

I FOUND myself in Twilight Land. How I ever got there I cannot tell, but there I was in Twilight Land
.

What is Twilight Land? It is a wonderful, wonderful place where no sun shines to scorch your back as you jog along the way, where no rain falls to make the road muddy and hard to travel, where no wind blows the dust into your eyes or the chill into your marrow. Where all is sweet and quiet and ready to go to bed
.

Where is Twilight Land? Ah! that I cannot tell you. You will either have to ask your mother or find it for yourself
.

There I was in Twilight Land. The birds were singing their good-night song, and the little frogs were piping “peet, peet.” The sky overhead was full of still brightness, and the moon in the east hung in the purple gray like a great bubble as yellow as gold. All the air was full of the smell of growing things. The high-road was gray, and the trees were dark
.

I drifted along the road as a soap-bubble floats before the wind, or as a body floats in a dream. I floated along and I floated along past the trees, past the bushes, past the mill-pond, past the mill where the old miller stood at the door looking at me
.

I floated on, and there was the Inn, and it was the Sign of Mother Goose
.

The sign hung on a pole, and on it was painted a picture of Mother Goose with her gray gander
.

It was to the Inn I wished to come
.

I floated on, and I would have floated past the Inn, and perhaps have gotten into the Land of Never-Come-Back-Again, only I caught at the branch of an apple tree, and so I stopped myself, though the apple blossoms came falling down like pink and white snowflakes
.

The earth and the air and the sky were all still, just as it is at twilight, and I heard them laughing and talking in the tap-room of the Inn of the Sign of Mother Goose—the clinking of glasses, and the rattling and clatter of knives and forks and plates and dishes. That was where I wished to go
.

So in I went. Mother Goose herself opened the door, and there I was
.

The room was all full of twilight; but there they sat, every one of them. I did not count them, but there were ever so many: Aladdin, and Ali Baba, and Fortunatus, and Jack-the-Giant-Killer, and Dr. Faustus, and Bidpai, and Cinderella, and Patient Grizzle, and the Soldier who cheated the Devil, and St. George, and Hans in Luck, who traded and traded his lump of gold until he had only an empty churn to show for it; and there was Sindbad the Sailor, and the Tailor who killed seven flies at a blow, and the Fisherman who fished up the Genie, and the Lad who fiddled
for the Devil in the bramble-bush, and the Blacksmith who made Death sit in his apple tree, and Boots, who always marries the Princess, whether he wants to or not—a rag-tag lot as ever you saw in your life, gathered from every place, and brought together in Twilight Land
.

Each one of them was telling a story, and now it was the turn of the Soldier who cheated the Devil
.

“I will tell you,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, “a story of a friend of mine.”

“Take a fresh pipe of tobacco,” said St. George
.

“Thank you, I will,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil
.

He filled his long pipe full of tobacco, and then he tilted it upside down and sucked in the light of the candle
.

Puff! puff! puff! and a cloud of smoke went up about his head, so that you could just see his red nose shining through it, and his bright eyes twinkling in the midst of the smoke-wreath, like two stars through a thin cloud on a summer night
.

“I’ll tell you,” said the Soldier who cheated the Devil, “the story of a friend of mine. ’Tis every word of it just as true as that I myself cheated the Devil.”

He took a drink from his mug of beer, and then he began
.

“’Tis called,” said he—