The Farthest Away Mountain. Lynne Banks Reid

       A Preface

      Once upon a time, in a little village which lay in a mountain valley, there lived with her family a girl calle Dakin.

      Her country was beautiful. The air there was so clear that it sparkled in the sunshine as if it were made of diamond-dust. Every morning, winter or summer, Dakin could look out of her bedroom window and see the farthest-away mountain, its black peak standing up clear of the thick shawl of pine woods it wore on its lower slopes. Between the peak and the woods was a narrower shawl of snow. This snow changed colour in a most odd way. Sometimes it was a sharp blue, and sometimes purple, or pink, or even yellow or green. Dakin would watch this snow in great puzzlement, for snow, after all, is supposed to be white.

      She looked at the pine woods, too. Forests always gave Dakin a shivery feeling, half unease and half excitement. There was no knowing what lay beneath those close-together branches, and no one could tell her, because no one in the town – not even her father, who had visited the city and the ocean – had ever been to the farthest-away mountain.

      Old Deegle, the ballad-singer and storyteller who came once a year to bring them news and tales from all over the country, said that the reason no one had ever been to the farthest-away mountain was because however long you travelled towards it, it always stayed in the distance. This, he said, was due to a spell which had been placed on it by a magician from their very own village, whose wicked son had disappeared into the mountain long, long ago.

      But now that you know as much as anyone then knew about the farthest-away mountain, I must tell you about Dakin. She is the most important person in the story.

      Dakin was small and dainty and wore full skirts to her ankles over lots of petticoats, but no shoes except when it was very cold, and then she wore lace-up boots. She had long hair, so fair as to be almost white. She was supposed to keep it in plaits, but usually she didn’t, and it blew out behind her and got tangled; then her mother would have to brush and comb it for hours to get all the knots out. She had a turned-up nose and eyes the colour of the blue mountain flowers which grew in spring, and small brown hands and feet. She was fourteen.

      In those days a girl was quite old enough to get married by that age. Dakin was the prettiest girl in the village; she could sing like a thrush and dance like a leaf in the wind, and besides, she was a marvellous cook. So that, until you know certain other things about her, it’s difficult to understand why her parents were so very anxious about her chances of getting married.

      It had begun four years earlier, when she was ten, and had announced to her mother and father and two sisters and two brothers that she was not going to marry until she had seen some of the things she wanted to see, and done some of the things she wanted to do. She went on to tell them that there were three main things, which were these: she wanted to visit the farthest-away mountain; she wanted to meet a gargoyle; and she wanted to find a prince for her husband.

      The family was at supper at the time. Her father and mother had looked at each other, and so had her brothers and sisters. Then they all looked at Dakin who was calmly drinking her soup.

      “But Dakin, you can’t go to the farthest-away mountain,” said her father. “No one’s ever been there, not even me, and I’m the most travelled man in the village.”