Lessons & Learning 2

Lessons - Bits and pieces from everyday life at the Unicorn Farm.
Susan pulled the lever. Nothing happened. She had expected an immediate effect on the fire in the oven where the potions were brewing. "Knud," she called out, "Could you help me. This thing seems to be stuck." Knud came to her aid, and together they succeeded in opening the big oven. A fragrance like sunshine over golden feathers wafted from the phials in the oven.
"Wow, Susan, you seem to have done it. My potions smelled like something had gone bad."
"I'm still dubious," Susan said. "Between Kirsti and Rósa brewing poison and your rotten potion, I begin to doubt any of us will ever make this stuff come out right. I am tempted to go and get Helge or one of the other nice Swedes from the blue team come and help us. I don't understand why we all have to learn all branches of magic, not only the ones we're adept in."
"Yes it is hard, I admit," Knud said with a sigh, "but I'm sure we are all becoming better witches and wizards from not concentrating solely on transformation, potions, invocations or what else we're best at."

***

The bike path was winding along, roughly parallel to the road. The twins were ahead with Susan and Heidi tagging along. They were watching a fox twitching its ears in the early morning fog when they heard the bell calling from the Unicorn Farm.
  "Oh, we're late!" Lis called. "At this pace we won't arrive until Gilvi has already spoken the magic formula, and then we get to wrangle all those languages all day. We're not guest at a funeral, but witches to be. Please hurry up!"
  They hurried on to the Unicorn Farm, washed their hands at the pump and trough, using Martine's mood soap that changed colour and smell to suit the needs of the user. It turned black, as Heidi used it, with a soothing smell of lily-of-the-valleys. "Oh granny soap," Heidi said. "It's a rare occurrence that I get a smell I really like."
  They arrived in the stable just in time to seen Gilvi put away his wand. "Hi you four. You're late again. But as you already know this carries its own punishment."
  Susan looked at Gilvi: "I hope to learn that language spell very soon. I am comfortable with Swedish and Norwegian. Icelandic is still quite hard for us, while Finnish is another cup of tea altogether."
  "You will learn it, Susan, as will all of you," he said smiling. "But not today, so you all got to fumble on as best you can."
   Susan, Heidi, Lis, and Tage did not look forward to a day where they had to try and understand the other apprentices in their own languages, and even worse, make them understand Danish. It was super tiring. And the first lesson for Susan was Crypto-zoology with Thora. A subject, she really loved, but she would not benefit greatly from Thora's wise words when spoken in Icelandic. Oh well, she thought, she just had to get the most out of it.


 ***
 
Sometimes first year Autumn holidays or late Summer Hoildays.

The barn was gloomy with the precipitation as they jokingly called it, falling outside. All the witches and wizards to-be had fun using long, and old fashioned words. One of the professors, the lanky, black pirate, Jon from Norway, stood by the window, casting grotesque shadows every time lightening struck. The quills and feathers went like clockwork across as many papers and pieces of parchment despite the gloom. They still had to sit their exams on the transporting system in the Scandinavian wizarding community, come hell or high water. Or a thunderstorm.

Next day the skies were clear and ordinary classes resumed. The orphan of the storm, an Eskimo, caught in a cyclone when trying to teleport home, now was in the sick room.
Susan though that the Eskimos' battered face under the dressings and his hair standing up in a blue-black Mohawk gave him an uncanny likeness to the Cassowary. This bird was among today's subjects in the lessons on exotic animals' properties and values as pets. Thora, the gentle Icelandic witch teaching cryptozoology and -botany, were telling the attentive apprentices about her sojourn in New Guinea, where a game of magic Mah-jong was totally ruined by Cassowaries in heat. Thora said that she would strongly advise against the use of the highly territorial, aggressive and solitary species as a pet. Unless of course you were rich enough to have a waitress cleaning the room every time they felt threatened or felt like mating.
Thora left the auditorium as the bell in the steeple struck 12, and the apprentices all hurried to the barn, where the dinner tables now stood ready.

***

After the brewing of the Sunshine potion (a story not online), the apprentices on the Green team were not as afraid of alchemy as they had been. And being afraid or not was a key to success or failure. Now they knew that even though they did not excel at alchemy like those on the blue team, they could brew a potion, whip up an antidote or mix an elixir. In the library Susan and her team mates read books with names like Core Compendium of Cordials, Elixirs Explained or Philters for Everyday Use. They all slowly learned to read Tähti and Taavi's sprawling script and the difference between gold and copper, sand and salt and a heap of other ingredients.
  One day they were tested again. They had been on an expedition to the farthest end of the island where Unicorn Farm was situated to meet the unicorns, sea serpents, which were spawns of the Midgard Serpent, the sea horses and other exotic critters hidden there. On the way they had waded through brooks, woodlands and meadows, and somehow many of them had touched the giant poison ivy growing somewhere. The challenge of saving themselves and their team mates from the gruesome rashes that broke out, was a spur to their ingenuity.
  They called on the Stockholmers from the blue team, as Helge and his cousins Harald, Bo, Lukas, and Britta were really good at alchemy. Britta and Lukas were sure the solution was somewhere in the library, and together with Susan, Veronika and Kalle they read through all the aforementioned books on alchemy, only to find the solution in a small insignificantly looking volume aptly called Infamous Shrubs. They returned to the alchemy room in the attic with the book raised in triumph as a standard in front of them, and no antidote was ever brewed faster and with more helping hands than this one. All the afflicted apprentices made sounds of gratitude and ease, as the vividly purple ointment was smeared upon rashes and sores.

***

Susan at Home and at the Unicorn Farm - a weekend in  Autumn Year one.
"Moses supposes his toeses are roses,
but Moses supposes erroneously.
For Moses he knowses his toeses aren't roses
as Moses supposes his toeses to be."

"Toeses!" Linda said "What nonsense. Why don't they speak like grown-ups?"
"Well I like the song," Susan answered. "It sounds as if they're having fun, I suppose that's the general  idea."
Linda was in bad temper today, and Susan tried to avoid her, but she liked those old, American musicals too much to get out of the living room just to get out of Linda's way. She really liked their songs and dance. Her big idol was Fred Astaire and his tap dancing, but Gene Kelly was no mean dancer either. Susan rested her chin on her knees, sitting in a heap, trying to not attract Linda's attention.
During a long, winding dialogue - is it still called a dialogue when more than two are involved, Susan wondered - her thoughts slipped back to early spring and her dreams of being a dancer. The mini series "Ballet Shoes" had run on  TV, and she had dreamed of becoming a famous ballet dancer just like Posy Fossil. She even persuaded Mom and Dad to buy her a pair of pink pointe shoes. They hung on her wall now, tied up by their pink satin bands. After buying a book on ballet and doing plies and limbering exercises for months, she realized that she was much more a kindred spirit of Petrova, who went off exploring with Gum in the end.
Her Mom's solicitude for her feet, when she and Linda grappled with the basics of standing on their toes of course made Susan's stubborn streak become rampant and made her continue her exercises and reading for over a a month more before giving in. But in the end she found the perfect excuse for quitting. She found out that female ballet dancers was limited to a height of 165 cm - even if the bar was up from 156, she was still going to be too tall within a year, and furthermore at 13 she was far too old.  At least she now had a very good understanding of how a classical ballet was choreographed, and it helped her enjoy the dancing scenes in the musicals even more.
Linda left the living room in search of more fun than Susan's absorption in Gene Kelly's and Debbbie Reynold's problems and steps in the musical, and Susan let herself be carried away by music and words.

When the musical had reached it's happy ending, Mom came in and asked her to lay the table for dinner. Susan got up, she felt cold ans stiff from sitting for so long on the floor, but the thoughts of coming adventure made her get up and do her chores without complaining. Mom's perfume smelled flowery and made Susan's nose tickle. She sneezed a couple of times and Mom looked questioning at her. "It's only the perfume Mom, it makes my nose itch. But I still like the smell."
While Linda and Susan ate their early dinner, Mom and Dad sat at the table with them. Mom told them, for the 3rd or 4th time, that she and Dad would be away for the night and most of Sunday too. "I've hung the contact form on the fridge," Mom said. "You can 'phone Dana and Louis if you get into trouble, but try and use your common sense first. We're having a party tonight, to celebrate Dana's admission to courtroom duty. Tomorrow Dad has promised to show a reel or two of the films he took of her back when she was studying to became a lawyer. He'll have a squad of spectators there."
Dad loaded screen, movie projector and other equipment in the car, while Mom helped the girls clear the table. "You're big girls now," Mm said, "you do not need a baby sitter for one night any more." 
"No, Mom we don't" Susan and Linda agreed."We'd rather like the money for candy," Susan added. The girls had bought a big bag of candy for tonight for at least some of the babysitting money.
"Now it is six o'clock," Mom said. "We'll be home at the very latest this time tomorrow." Susan and Linda hugged Mom and told her not to worry.
"Now what," Linda asked, when the lights from the car could no longer be seen. "Now we eat our candy," Susan said. They turned on the TV again, and sat looking at the kid's hour and the a natural history program on zebras, all the while eating their candy and drinking milk. When the zebra program ended, they were tired and ready for bed.

***

Next morning Susan jumped out of bed. Today they were all alone. Hopefully Linda would go visit her classmate Karin as she had spoken of earlier. Susan put the kettle on for tea. Linda came into the kitchen as well and placed bread, butter and honey  on the table. For a time they just ate, then they heard somebody knocking on the door. Linda went and opened. Susan could hear her greet Karin through the open door. "Hello Karin," Linda said. "Am I late or what has happened?"
"I just woke up very early, Karin said. "And I wanted to come over and fetch you, my parents are still asleep."
"Do you want a cup of tea?" Linda asked.
"Oh, yes please. I'm hungry," Karin answered. "Yesterday we had guests, and they danced, and had a lot of loud music, candles and strange smoke, but no dinner." Susan brought a mug and a plate for Karin and cut her some generous slices of bread. Karin ate four slices of bread and drank a lot of tea.
"Linda," Susan said, "can I leave the dishes for you? I want to go for a ride on my bike before it gets too cold. Today might be my last chance to visit the woods before winter comes. I promise to be home before Mom and Dad returns."
"Yes," Linda said. "We might go to Karin's place later. We'll clear the table, no worries."  Their heads bowed over some new magazine of Linda's, giggling.

Susan grasped her blue bag, now once again containing books and wand, and set out. She was not going to the woods, at least not to the woods Linda thought of. She was off to Unicorn Farm for some extra time with Heidi. They were going to practice transforming. Heidi was adept at this. She could make a pin cushion turn into a hedgehog, while Susan's spells so far had only had the pin cushion wiggle the needles and pins and spout an occasional leg. Susan found it a bit unfair that all apprentices were supposed to be good at transformations. It was only the purple team, Heidi's lot, who were really good at it. Susan would rather make real hedgehogs come to her, than transforming them. Maybe when they'd have to practice calling animals to them she could teach Heidi something.

***

 When she arrived at the old lumber yard, she placed her new, blue bike behind the old office building and carefully locked it.  As an extra precaution she cast a Do not disturb-spell on it. It did not make the bike invisible or unstealable, but it made people unwilling to look at it, or indeed notice it at all. She looked around, and as nobody was near, she waved her wand and greenish-white sparks flew. It was the signal she and Lis had agreed upon. After a few minutes, that felt like hours to Susan, Lis materialized below the giant walnut tree. They held hands, and again Susan felt the universe stretch around her. It felt like she was falling forever down an empty space, where every star had burned out. But after a short time, lasting an eternity, they landed softly in the green grass behind the Magician's House.
"Phew," Susan said. "Do you feel the same, empty feeling inside every time you teleport?"
"Yes, I do." Lis answered. "I feels like, oh I don't know ... like a big nothing, like I'm all alone in space or something. But it gets better, or rather shorter every time I teleport. In time, I might not even feel it any more." 

Heidi came running out of the house: "Oh you arrived, finally. I've been waiting since sunrise!"
"Dear Heidi," Susan smiled, "it is November after all. Sunrise was less then an hour ago. It's only half past 8."
"But I have so much to show and tell you." Heidi said, grasping Susan's hand and pulling her towards the trees hiding the Unicorn Farm.
"I've been practicing transformation every day since the Autumn holidays," Heidi said, breathlessly, when they reached the big bales of hay. She was fairly bursting with her accomplishments.
"Do show!" Susan said. Heidi needed no encouragement, she pulled out her wand and a pincushion. There were almost no needles and pins left in the cushion, and Susan wondered where they had gone. But when Heidi concentrated and swished her wand, she stopped wondering. The pincushion was no more. In it's place a perfect hedgehog lay, curled up and sleeping. "Hush, don't disturb it. It's hibernating," Heidi whispered. Susan felt bedazzled. Not only was the transformation complete, the hedgehog even followed the annual cycles. "Wow!" she whispered.
Heidi concentrated, her wand went swish, and the hedgehog was once more only a worn pincushion. "Now it's your turn, have you been practicing?"
"Yes, loads" Susan answered, "But I cannot get the hang of it." She opened her bag and pulled out her pincushion. It still had all of its pins and needles and looked brand new. She placed it on the ground, imagined a hedgehog in her mind, not sleeping, but standing on all four legs.Then she swished her wand saying the Icelandic words for hedgehog. Some of the needles twitched, a pin fell out and a snout momentarily showed on the pincushion. "See," Susan said. "That is what happens, every time I try."
"Let me think." Heidi said. "You're saying the right words at least, let me see you swish once again."
Susan picked up the wayward pin and put it back, then she grasped her wand.
"Stop," Heidi said. "You're squashing that poor wand, hold it loosely, with soft, easy movements. That's what you need."
Susan loosened her tight grip on the wand, started swishing again, and the wand flew from her fingers. "I think I need to hold it a bit tighter, though." Susan grinned, picking it up again.
"Imagine you're holding on to a live hedgie," Heidi said. "Tight enough that it won't wiggle and prick you, loose enough not to harm it." Susan tried to imagine that both her wand and the pincushion were hedgehogs, then she said the words and swished the wand. This time the pins on the pincushion turned more spinelike and four legs sprouted in the corners of the pincushion.
"See!" Heidi said, "You're getting the hang of it."
Susan kept on practicing, Heidi moved her fingers to the right places on the wand, corrected her swishing and generally cheered her on. When it was time to go home for lunch, Susan was able to make the pincushion look like a real hedgehog for more than seconds at a time.
"This sure is hard work," Susan said. "I am ravenous, I hope your parents will forgive my eating them out of house and home."
"You forget we're wizards all of us, they're used to it." Mom and Dad are the best cooks ever, I'm not sure, they do not use magic when cooking too."
Magical or not, the lunch was tasty and there were more than enough of everything.

When Susan helped Heidi clear the table, the twins protesting that it was unfair to have her helping, even though they had laid the table together, Cassandra suggested that Heidi and Susan did practice changing clothes pegs into swallows in the afternoon.
"I'm sure the hedgies are tired of being disturbed, and as the swallows have all migrated, you won't disturb them at all."

Heidi grasped a handful of clothes pegs from the bag and called at Lis and Tage. "Hey you two lazy bones. Don't you think you need to practice a bit transformation as well?"
Lis arose at once, "Actually yes," she said. "I think we're going to get tested when we return. There's no real exams, at least not yet, but we'll be tested in lots of subjects this winter. I'll come. Tage, you should as well. I know you're good, but practice never hurts."
"Oh, OK then." Tage said stretching and yawning. "Mom, are you going to bake one of your glorious cakes for afternoon tea?"
"If you can turn those clothes pegs into swallows by tea time, there'll be cake." Sandra said smiling.
The four children hurried down to the farm. Tage said: "Oh bugger, I don't remember the word for swallow in Icelandic.
Lis and Heidi hung their heads as they realized that they too did indeed miss this essential bit of knowledge.

***

"I think,"  Susan began.
"Don't think. Know!" Tage and Lis said as one, then they all began laughing. "That's what Birgitta  and Jon has been drumming into our heads ever since the very first lesson in transformation. But do tell what you think anyway, Susan," Heidi said still giggling.
"You know, I can't practice magic as much as I like to, but I can study Icelandic," Susan said, "and I think swallow is Svalur in Icelandic, I just don't remember the declension."
"Bother the declension," Tage said. "At least it sounds right. He grasped the biggest clothes peg, swung his wand in an elegant swish and said "Svalur!" The clothes peg twisted and turned on the bale of straw, growing wings, changing to a small man in red clothes, growing a cleft tail that shortened and turned red with golden buttons and finally it exploded.
"What .. who was that little man?" Lis asked.
"I don't think that was the right word, Susan." Tage said nursing his arm, where the broken spring from the exploding clothes peg had hit him.
"Now I know!" Susan exclaimed. "Svala! That's the right word. Svalur is Spirou, the bell-hop from the Marsupilami-comics. It was him, your clothes peg tried to turn into!"
"Yes," Heidi said, giggling. "I recognized him. Him and Fantasio are two undercover journalists in the Fart & Tempo* magazine Tage is always reading."
Lis stopped giggling and said with a very serious expression: "Don't you see. This is exactly why  Birgitta  and Jon have been warning us to KNOW the word, not guess. We were lucky it was nothing worse than a character from a comic strip and a clothes peg that turned awry. What if it had been a bale of straw and a dragon for instance?. We'd have been burnt to death most probably."
"I think we learned the lesson. Tage said. Let's just not tell Mom."
"Now let's try to do it right." Lis said. She concentrated for a short while before she let action follow words. "Svala!" she said earnestly to the new clothes peg on the bale.  The clothes peg shivered, spouted wings, tails, and claws. Then it turned back to the clothes peg.
"Oh bother, Lis said. "I'm not that good at zoology. How does a swallow look?"
"I know," Heidi said. "And now we know that the word is the right one. Let me try."
Lis stepped aside, Heidi closed her eyes in concentration, then she swished her wand just so, and said "Svala!"
A sleek, black bird with a cleft tail, white breast and black pearly eyes sat where the peg had been. It tilted its head and looked at the children one  by one. Then it stretched its wings, preened its feathers, and sat still for a while. Heidi stood still, concentrating on the swallow, while Tage, Lis and Susan studied the bird to get an intimate knowledge of a swallow's anatomy.
When Heidi was tired, and her concentration failed, Tage and Lis were immediately able to reproduce her feat, and to her own surprise Susan did fairly well, making her peg look more like a swallow, and even stretch its wings on her first try.
"Let's get home and show Mom our proceedings. My heart will not be content, unless we provide Susan with tea and cake before she ventures forth on her voyage home."
"Stop it, Tage!" Lis said, "you're sounding like a pompous nincompoop talking like that."
Heidi ducked, gathered the pegs, and grabbed Susan¨'s hand: "Let's get away before these two explode."

                                                                                                


* Fart og Tempo (Speed and Tempo) was a Danish magazine (1966-1976) containing installments of several comics in each issue. For instance Asterix, Flash Gordon, Lucky Luke, and Michel Vaillant.(I'm not sure Spirou and Fantasio was ever featured there). I read my cousin's issues avidly - only not Michel Vaillant ;) 

***

First year - Winter holidays
  Lis and Tage ran off before Heidi and Susan were done dressing, as both Susan and Heidi were looking for, but not finding, their hairbands.
  "Bugger it!" Susan said with rancor. "We're not supposed to have our hair tied up at The Farm anyway, let's get going already." She un-braided her hair, brushed it cursorily, and wound the shawl around her head. Heidi followed her example and they hurried out into the semidark winter morning. They followed the dark asphalt road down to its end, and turned onto the path, now covered in snow, where only the ghostlike footprints of Tage and Lis showed the two girls where to go. It took forever they soon found out, making a path in the fluffy, still falling snow. And they had to hurry, they were late. And today was the first day in the Christmas holiday. The first day of formal education at The Farm. But now they could see the line of trees separating The Farm's grounds from the rest of the isle, They hurried under the snow laden branches, they started several branch-loads of snow tumbling down, but passed the fence without incidents.
   When Susan and Heidi finally arrived and hurriedly shed several layers of clothes to dress in their apprentice uniforms, they noticed that the barn was decorated with holly and spruce.
When everybody was seated behind small tables, Torben arose and began talking. "Welcome to this Christmas' educational period. We have decided to begin this term, if this is the right word, with a quiz to see how much you remember from the Autumn holidays. "What did I say!" Heidi whispered to Susan, who smiled. They had been practicing, and reading and writing letters to one another since Susan's visit at The Magician's House in November and felt quite well prepared for a testing of their skills.
But with a sinking feeling in her stomach Susan read through the quiz. She had no idea how many phials of love serum you could produce from one kilogram of sequins, she sorely doubted sequins were an ingredient she had ever read about anywhere. And the colour of a lactating unicorn's eyes? Or how many fir needles should optimally be used for the binding of evasive kelpies? Whoever made a quiz like this? Susan looked at Heidi who also shook her head in resignation.
  "Sorry, we were only joking. At least now we have your undivided attention!" That was golden haired Martine. "Just a second," she continued. "Let me see. This should do it." She drew her wand from somewhere inside her kimono and waved it in the air. "Now the questions should be more to your liking."
  Susan looked at the paper once again. Yes this looked like what she and Heidi had been preparing for. Questions like: "Do you need a glass or a metal stirring rod for a growth potion, and what would happen if you used the wrong kind?" Susan smiled at Heidi, who smiled back, and they both began writing the answers to the diverse questions.

***


Second Earter Holiday - interlude
"Today is the last Thursday before Midsummer," Gylfi said after casting the Mál sameinast, so that everyone could understand what he said. "And in the wizarding world this means Tongue Twister Thursday. So today, after the last lesson, which will be shorter than normal, we all meet in the barn, or," Gylfi said looking out through the window: "Make that in the meadow."

None of the apprentices could really concentrate on the lessons for the rest of the Thursday. Now and then the professors had to call out a name loudly to make the apprentice answer. Heidi almost walked into the pump in the yard and Terje fell over his own legs twice on the way back to their classroom. Susan was for once the least affected of the apprentices. She had always loved tongue twisters and knew several in different languages. Of course worries got the better of her, in the exact moment Thora asked her a question:
"Susan, did you not hear me?" Thora asked.
Susan stopped trying to remember how to say a quite nasty row of words in Czech and shook her head: "Sorry, no I was inattentive. Would you please repeat?"
Thora looked at the apprentices, decided against praising Susan for her honesty and polite answer and instead just asked her: "The elemental of fire is characterised by which properties?"
Susan drew a deep breath, and answered Thora's question: "The efreet is the archetype of the element of fire. He is playful, volatile, and bent on getting bigger. You cannot command or convince an efreet, but you can trick him, a dare would probably be a good way to do this. But never forget. Fire is dangerous."
 "Fine answer," Thora sad, but you forgot ..."
What Susan forgot had to wait for next lesson. The bell in the small belfry stroke, and every apprentice an professor hurried out into the meadow.

In the corner of the meadows as usual tree trunks lay and slices of trees stood as couches, benches and stools. All the apprentices and professors sat down on their favourite piece of wood, and the Nisser gathered shyly in a corner a bit off from the rest. Gylfi steered a fairly thin slice of a big trunk to the front,m and cast a spell on it, Then he stepped upon it and spoke. His voice, magically augmented,, reached everybody.
"Whoever thinks he or she can pull off a tongue twister with a straight face steps upon this slab of wood. Any who cannot find any more to say, who stumbles or begin laughing is out, and go sit on the unused logs right and left. Whoever is still standing after one round, can try again. Winner is the last man, woman, girl or boy standing.
"I begin," Gylfi said. "How do you like this one: 'Stebbi stood on the beach and was treading straws. Straws will not be tread unless Stebbi tread straws. Once treads Stebbi straws, twice treads Stebbi straws, thrice treads Stebbi straws' ..."
All the apprentices and professors looked at him in wonder, then he and Thora looked at one another and began laughing.
Thora shook her head, clasped her wand firmly, and said: "It is no good trying tongue twisters under the language spell:" Then she swished her wand just so, saying: "Mál skiljas hver frá öðrum!"
Gylfi drew a long breath and repeated the tongue twister. Only this time his words came out in Icelandic: "Stebbi stóð á ströndu, var að troða strý. Strý var ekki troðið nema Stebbi træði strý. Eintreður Stebbi strý, tvítreður Stebbi strý, þrítreður Stebbi strý ..."
Thora stopped laughing long enough to say her part: "Rómverskur riddari réðist inn í Rómarborg. Rændi og ruplaði rabbarbara og rófum."
Susan began laughing as did some of the apprentices, mostly the Icelandic ones.  
"What did she say?" Heidi asked, "I think I have come to rely too much on the language spell to be cast every morning. I only understood a few words words."
"It is a crazy sentence," Susan said, still smiling. It means: A Roman knight went charging into Rome. Ran around and robbed rhubarbs and beets."
Tähti og Taavi stepped on the wooden slab and spoke in unison: "Vesihiisi sihisi hississä." (A water troll was hissing in the elevator).
Then Jon took a turn: "Ibsens ripsbærbusker og andre buskevekster." (The redcurrant bushes and other bushy growths of Ibsen's).
Torben was next. With a flourish he stepped up and said: "Bissens gibsbisp gisper bistert." (Bissen's plaster-bishop gasps gruffly.)
ML tried her luck repeating Stativ, stakit, kasket (tripod, fence, cap - not a sentence, only very hard to say) three times without error and failed.
Birgitta impressed everybody with her sentence: "Knut stod vid en knut och knöt en knut, så knöt Knut knuten och så var knuten knuten." (Knut stood by a corner and knotted a knot, then Knut knotted the knot and the knot was knotted).
Martine tackled a Swedish one: Sorry, Norwegian is not a good language for tongue twisters, and I'm sure you all appreciate this one: "Kvistfritt kvastskaft." (Knot-free broomstick)
Almost everybody began laughing and tried repeating it. The words were some they all knew in other languages from flying lessons, from working around The Farm, and most of all from arriving too late, after the Mál sameinast had been spoken over the apprentices and professors on The Farm.

One ingenious tongue twister after another rang over the meadow, professors and apprentices mixed up sentences, languages and words, and had to go sit on the logs, where friendly compensations in strange words and even stranger languages played out.

In the end only five were left. Tähti, Taavi, Susan, Lis and and much to her own surprise, Aamu

Tähti said: "Mustan kissan paksut posket," (Black cats' fat cheeks) whereupon Taavi admitted defeat, he had run out of ideas.
Lis still had it in her and gasped out: "Fem flade flødeboller på et fladt flødebollefad" (Five flat cream puffs on a flat cream puff dish)
Aamu held her own with "She sells sea shells down by the sea shore."
Susan retaliated with the worst one she knew in Danish: "Jeg plukker frugt med en brugt frugtplukker," (I pick fruit with a second-hand fruit picker). And only much practise let her say this sentence correctly.
Tähti dug through her brain, and came up with an Icelandic one: "Barbara Ara bar Ara Araba bara rabbarbara" (Barbara Ara only gave Ari the Arab rhubarb). This one made Lis laugh so much, that she could not say her sentence, and was forced to go sit on the logs.
Aamu showed off her spunk by continuing in German: "Wenn nach Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach" (When flies fly after flies the flies fly after flies).
And this made Susan say the Czech sentence she had been thinking off when Thora asked her about efreets: "Strč prst skrz krk," she said (Stick a finger through your throat). "And as far as I know only in Czech can you make sentences totally without vowels!"
Tähti stepped to the slab and drew a deep breath. Then she said: "Ringeren i Ringe ringer ringere end ringeren i Ringsted" and began laughing. (The toller in Ringe, is ringing worse than the toller in Ringsted -Danish, not Finnish). She went to the logs and sat down next to Taavi.
Aamu climbed up the slab, closed her eyes and said: "Zwei Schwalben zwitschern zwischen zwei Zwetschgenzweigen ," (Two swallows twitter between two plum branches).
Susan went to the slab, but all words had suddenly drained out of her head: "I surrender," she said. "Aamu knows more, and better tongue twisters than I do."

Everybody applauded Aamu, and Gylfi hung a big medal around her neck. Tea and cake magically appeared on tables near where they sat, and while the sun set between clouds to the west, good times were had by all.

***