The Story of the Liar and the Berry Bush

Once upon a time, in a little town in the hills beyond the city, there lived a family. The father was a carpenter and made all the furniture for all the people that lived in the little town. He was well-liked by everybody, and almost every night he was thanked by someone whom he had helped. The mother was a seamstress and made all the dresses for all the women that lived in the little town. She too was well-liked by everybody, and almost every morning she was thanked by someone whom she had helped. The son was a student and made all the trouble for all the people that lived in the little town. His name was Johnathan, and he loved to tell lies to everybody, from his teacher to his parents to the pigherd who lived up the road and never bothered anybody except to ask if the market was held in the city this month or next.

One day, Johnathan was in school, and the teacher asked the class if anybody had anything they needed to share with the class.

“Miss Mary, Miss Mary!” Johnathan cried. “I saw a little bird outside during play, and it had hurt its wing.”

Miss Mary knew that Johnathan loved to lie, but she was a kind and caring woman, who would make a good wife one day, and she did not want an innocent bird to suffer if there truly was one. “Are you lying, Johnathan,” she asked, very shrewdly. “It is bad to lie.”

“There’s a bird outside, on my father’s carpentry shop,” Johnathan said and puffed out his chest.

“Very well. Lead the way for the class outside, and we shall help this little bird with its hurt wing.”

When they arrived outside, there was no bird to be seen, and Johnathan laughed at them all and pointed his finger and performed all manner of merriment at their expense.

“Johnathan,” Miss Mary said, “you were not to lie, and now we have all been worried sick about a hurt bird that was never here to begin with.” And she took Johnathan inside the schoolhouse and spanked him until he cried, for even a kind woman must know when to spank.

Johnathan was sent home with a note from Miss Mary, and he was to read it aloud to his mother and father. When he had done so, they both looked at him with disapproving looks, for this was not the first nor the second nor the tenth time Johnathan had been sent home with a note from Miss Mary.

“You are quite ill-natured,” said his father. “I do not know how a man as hard-working and honest as I could have begot such a troublesome child.”

“Yes, Father,” agreed Johnathan’s mother. “He is in trouble nigh every day, and nothing seems to work. Tonight, you shall go to your room without supper.”

“I shan’t!, I shan’t!” cried Johnathan, and he ran out of the house and away from the town and into the hills where the pigherd kept his hogs. He ran through the hills until he reached the forest where he knew he could say all the lies he wanted with no one to stop him.

“Miss Mary has the Chicken-Pox!” he shouted to the squirrels in the oak tree.

“Wednesday comes after Thursday!” he cried to the birds in the mulberry bush.

“My name is Thomas!” he yelled at the worms crawling through the dirt.

He presently grew so tired and hungry from all his yelling and lying that he began to cry, for he was far from home and he did not know which of the berries were safe to eat and which would cause harm (but that is another story for another time.)

His cries ran all through the forest and woke a Spirit, a tiny fairy with glittering purple wings and hair that was as black as pitch. She yawned and flew out into the forest to find what had woken her from her nap. She followed the crying until she found Johnathan all alone, and she flew down next to him.

“Why are you crying, child?” she asked, for Spirits too can be kind and caring. But Spirits can also be devious and tricky, and Johnathan did not know this about them.

“My mother and father have scolded me,” he said. “I have lied again at school, and not one person in the town likes it when I lie.”

“Then why do you simply cease your lying?” the fairy asked, and it was a good question. If one gets in trouble for doing something wicked, it is well-reasoned to no longer do that thing.

“I like lying!” Johnathan said, and he stamped his little foot in the dirt. “The real world is quite boring, and my lies make it much more fun.”

When the fairy heard this, a cunning plan began hatching in her little head, for not only was she devious and tricky, but she was a Mischievous Spirit who delighted in tormenting any human who came into her woods. She thought and thought and decided what she would do with Johnathan. She said, “I can make it so that no one will ever scold you for lying again.”

“How is that?” asked Johnathan.

“It is very simple,” explained the fairy. “Whenever you tell a lie, I shall make it such that you have told the truth instead!”

“That’s not fun at all!” Johnathan complained, and he stamped his foot again like a petulant child. “I still want to lie!”

“Let me show you what I mean,” said the fairy, and she pointed at a nearby oak tree. “Do you see that tree? What color is its bark?”

“It’s brown,” said Johnathan. “Anybody can see that.”

“That’s true. Could you tell me a lie about the color of the tree?”

Johnathan was uncertain what he was meant to do, but he loved to lie indeed. “The bark is yellow,” he said. He blinked his eyes and gasped in delight when he saw that the bark of the tree had turned as yellow as a daffodil! “Coo! It’s yellow!”

“And now you have not spoken a lie,” the fairy said, “And you will not be in trouble.”

“Can I do this forever?”

The Mischievous Spirit thought about this. It was fun to turn lies into truths, but it was also tiring, and the Spirit did not want to sleep for a hundred years simply to have fun with the little boy. She said, after another few minutes of thought, “Do you see this berry bush that grows beside us? For every lie that turns into a truth, a berry will fall from the bush and be eaten. When the last berry falls, the spell will be broken, and your lies will be naught but lies once again.”

“How many berries is that?”

The Spirit laughed and flew up into the air. “How should I know? I care not for the counting of berries. Now return to your home, little liar, and have the fun that you have been denied your whole life. I shan’t see you again.” And with a shrill like the cry of the last bird of summer, the Spirit returned back into the forest and settled down into her den to enjoy the lies.

So Johnathan ran home as fast as his legs would carry him. When he arrived at his house, his mother and father were standing in the kitchen and looking very cross indeed.

“Where have you been?” his father asked. “You oughtn’t run away when you are in trouble.”

“I have been upstairs in my room all this time,” Johnathan lied. And he was all of a sudden struck by the thought that he had been in his room. He remembered going upstairs without supper and his bottom began to feel sore from where he had been hit a second time over by his father for his lies. He remembered being in the forest, but he remembered being in his room. It was really a quite curious thing.

His mother and father appeared puzzled, and they looked up the stairs as if trying to recall the truth of the thing. Finally, his mother said, “Yes, that is what happened. I cannot think how we could have forgotten.” And they went into the other room to sit by the fire and do all the things that mothers and fathers do after supper when they busy themselves in their chairs.

Johnathan grinned a silly grin and ran up to his bedroom where he began planning all the fun lies he was going to tell.

In the forest, a single berry fell from a bush.

For weeks and weeks, Johnathan lied to the good people of the town. At first, it was small lies that Johnathan found funny. Some days, he would lie about a pig running loose in a funny building where a pig ought not to be. Other days, he would go somewhere a child had no business and lie that he had not been there. On one memorable night, he even lied that he had one dozen cherry pies waiting for him in his bedroom, and he found just that waiting for him when he got there. The pies were warm and tasty, and he ate them all that night and then lied that he did not have a tummy ache.

And for weeks and weeks, the berries fell from the bush and the Mischievous Spirit kept silent watch and enjoyed the lies, for she knew that they could not last. But not once did Johnathan return to the forest to see how many berries remained or to speak to the little fairy, for he too enjoyed the lies and did not want to waste one moment of time in which he could be lying.

It came to pass that one day, Johnathan was in school once more and had been called up to the blackboard to write a simple sentence. It was so easy that even Jeremiah, the pigherd’s son, could have written it, but Johnathan was feeling especially lazy, and he did not want to do it.

“Miss Mary,” he said with a big yawn, “I can’t write it. I don’t know how to write.” At first he was content with his lie, but he soon felt himself remembering sad, bad memories. His hands tingled, and when he looked down at his school paper on the desk, it was covered with unreadable mess that a little toddler would have been ashamed of.

Miss Mary tutted. “Of course you are correct, Johnathan. Everyone knows you are unable to write due to your especially smooth brain. Why, how you ended up in school without anybody noticing is quite beyond me to understand. Go home to your mother and father and help them with their tasks, for you will never be needed in this school for as long as you live.” And with a wave of her hand, she dismissed Johnathan.

Johnathan felt very sick indeed, and as soon as he left the schoolhouse, he told a very quick lie. “I do know how to write.” He felt his bad memories disappear, and his hands tingled again, and he took a stick and wrote his name in the dirt outside the schoolhouse. It looked very much like his name, and Johnathan was satisfied that the lie was truth again. “That was far too dangerous,” he said to himself. “I must be careful not to tell lies about myself.”

He did not care to return to the class, so he decided to return home and spend the rest of the afternoon in play. However, when he opened the door, he found his mother and father waiting for him just inside the threshold.

“See, Father, just as I told you. He has been at trouble with Miss Mary again, and now he comes home in shame!” Johnathan’s mother said with a deep sigh.

“You are correct, Mother. Come here, Johnathan, that I may punish you.”

“No!” shouted Johnathan, and he ran past his parents before they could grab him. “I shan’t be punished any longer!” He ran up the stairs and into his bedroom and hid himself beneath the blankets. “I haven’t got any parents! I haven’t got any at all, and they shan’t punish me!”

Below him, the sounds of angry conversation faded away. Inside Johnathan’s head, though he could not have guessed this, the earliest memories of his parents began to fade as well. All he could think about, however, was how grand it was that he had no parents to yell at him and spank him and tell him to eat supper before dessert.

He went downstairs and opened the pantry door to get himself a pot of treacle, but when he looked inside, he jumped as though bitten by a snake! There was nothing inside the pantry, not even the smallest crumb that would have been too small for a mouse.

“How could this be?” asked Johnathan, and he was very confused. His head was so full of lies that he could not understand the truth, being that without any parents, he hadn’t anybody to buy food. “Perhaps I will jump on my bed instead.” And he went back upstairs but when he opened his door, he found that all the furnishings had vanished!

“This is very curious,” said Johnathan, and his lying little brain was too wicked to understand that he had no father to create furniture nor mother to create clothes and blankets. Indeed, he had no earthly possessions left without his two parents to provide for him.

“I shall go ask the town council what has happened to all our things,” Johnathan decided, and he went outside. No sooner had he put both feet outside his front door than he heard a soft WHOOOOOOSHing sound behind him. When he turned around, his house had gone completely, and there was never a sign that anybody had ever lived there.

At last, Johnathan realized the consequences of his lie, and he dropped to his knees in a panic. “I have parents!” he lied. “I have parents who love me and who built this house and bought me food and will only punish me when I’ve been naughty! I have parents!” He sat in the dirt for some time, but the house did not return and his memories continued to fade. “I have parents!” he lied again, and now he almost had tears in his eyes, he was worried so.

“I shall go see the fairy in the woods,” he said. “And she shall know what has happened to my lies.” He ran to the woods and called for the fairy, but she did not come.

Then, he got to the clearing where he had first seen her, and there a terrible sight met his eyes. In the middle of the clearing sat a bare, green bush with not a single berry left among its branches. He had lied them all away, and now his lies were just as they always were: the products of a wicked mind.

And Johnathan was very sad for the rest of his days, for the only thing more miserable than a liar is a liar with no parents and no memory of his parents besides. But you can avoid Johnathan’s fate by listening to your parents and your teachers and telling no lies and praying to God every night and thanking him for all the blessings you have gotten, Amen.