The Lost Happy Endings

Every night a 12-fingered child called Jub empties a sack full of happy endings from her perch in a tree top, freeing them for the wind to distribute amongst all of the stories being told throughout the world. One night she is mugged by a bark-faced, green-gobbing witch who steals the happy endings, and soon the world is a-wail with the sobs of children distressed by stories whose terrors and sorrows are now incurable. Jub struggles to sleep against a backdrop of weeping, and dreams of a golden pen with which she can write on the sky a story that will change the one that she’s locked within.

The intensity of vision and conciseness of language that characterises Carol Ann Duffy’s poetry ensure that this short tale provides, haiku-like, a lingering experience. Its combination of wistfulness and horrible brutality recalls the grimmest of the Grimm tales, yet the artfully abrupt ending is subtle and intriguing. Jane Ray’s pictures similarly combine delicacy and ferocity. Full page tableaux confront 16 pages of embellished text, each of them combining the darkness of forest and nightmare with the richer colours of fire, fabrics and starlight. The witch is treated very luridly in words, deeds and pictures, but Jub is a sprite both warm and fey, and the image of her balancing amongst twigs as she inscribes the sky is spectacular.

This is a very powerful story about the power of story.