The Water Was Locked Up

Long ago, on a farm near Tavistock, two girls, Beth and Molly, worked. And you probably know that in those olden times, there was hardly a house in the entire county of Devon without its own house spirit, or as they were also called, a brownie.

There were also various pucks, elves, and water spirits, but they weren’t quite like the brownies. Do you remember the Hilton brownie? Well, just like that one!

Beth and Molly were very pretty girls, and both loved to dance. But here’s what was strange: other girls often didn’t have enough money even for colored ribbons or new hair combs and ribbons. Sometimes, they would even cry about it in secret. But Beth and Molly always had an extra penny, and they would buy whatever they wanted from the village peddler.

And no one could ever get them to reveal where they got the money. It was their secret! And to reveal a secret means to scare away good luck; they knew that very well.

Every evening, before going upstairs to sleep, they would place a low wooden bucket of water in front of the fireplace grate in the kitchen. In the morning, the bucket would be empty, and instead of water, there would be a silver coin at the bottom. Of course, no one except them knew about this.

One day, the girls returned from a dance very late and went straight to bed. Suddenly, Beth heard a noise, as if someone was knocking on the kitchen door with tiny fists. She sat up in bed and listened. The knocking came again, and she could make out loud, high-pitched voices:
— The water is locked! The water is locked!
— Wake up, Molly! — Beth whispered, shaking Molly’s shoulder.— It must be our brownies. We forgot to leave them water.

But Molly just pulled the blanket tighter over her head and said she wouldn’t get out of her warm bed for all the brownies in Devon.

Beth sat for a while, listening to the brownies knocking on the door and shouting, and finally got up herself and went downstairs.

In the kitchen, she saw no one, but there was rustling and whispering in the corners with tiny voices. She took the lid off a large barrel and began pouring water into the low wooden bucket. As she poured, she kept listening to what the brownies were whispering about in the corners. It turned out they were discussing how to punish Molly for not wanting to get out of her warm bed "even for all the brownies in Devon."

One said she should be pinched hard several times. Another wanted her to go blind in one eye. The brownies argued for a long time and finally agreed that the worst punishment for Molly would be to make her unable to dance!

And they decided to make her lame for seven years. After seven years, the punishment could be lifted, but it would require a herb with a strange name: "kiskilaskibriss."
They all said it loudly and syllable by syllable:
— Kiskilaskibriss!

Hearing the terrible punishment that threatened Molly and the long, strange name of the herb that could lift it, Beth became very frightened. She was afraid she would forget this long and strange word and then wouldn’t be able to help poor Molly.

So she quickly ran upstairs to the bedroom, repeating the word to herself, and tried to wake Molly to tell her the word. But Molly didn’t want to wake up. And the more Beth shook her shoulder, the higher Molly pulled the blanket over her nose.

And when Beth woke up in the morning, she couldn’t remember a single letter of that word.
So poor Molly became lame.

Seven years passed, and one day Molly was walking alone far from home in a field. Suddenly, she saw a large mushroom in the middle of the field. She bent down to pick it, but the mushroom jumped up and turned into a strange little man. The little man shouted a strange, long word that Molly had never heard before and whipped her sore leg with a strange, long herb.
— Kiskilaskibriss! — the little man shouted, and Molly immediately stopped limping and ran home as fast as she could.
From that day on, she and Beth went dancing again.

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The Water Was Locked Up

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