Septimus Septimusson

Septimus Septimusson by Edith Nesbit

Septimus Septimusson is the seventh son of a seventh son, living with his fisherman father and his mother in a cottage by a marsh, and the wind speaks to him because he once built it a toy weather-cock to play with. Sep is at first too frightened of the wind's voice to answer it, but when a rock-blasting at the new harbour traps a colony of mussels and threatens to kill them, their pleading shames him into calling on the wind for help; the wind floods the rocks and saves them, and afterward Sep and the wind become friends, able to talk "man to man." The wind then reminds Sep that, as the seventh son of a seventh son, he owes it to his poor parents to go out and seek his fortune for the whole family's sake. Sep leaves a note on his slate, sails across the water in his father's boat (the *Septimus and Susie*) with the wind's help, and is set down alone in a strange country. The wind returns the boat empty and capsized, so his parents believe him drowned and mourn him, deaf to the wind's attempts to reassure them. Walking the foreign road, Sep frees a lion pinned to a tree by a javelin, earning its lasting gratitude and an offer of future help. He picks up a lost axe to return to its owner, and shares nuts with a pair of squirrels in a chestnut tree after proving himself an honest seventh son; in return he trims the tree's lower branches so other boys can't disturb the squirrels' home. He then meets an old lord on a grey horse, who has sought an honest seventh son of a seventh son for seven years; the lord takes Sep in, raises and educates him at his castle, and in exchange learns from Sep the speech of birds and beasts, which the lord publishes to fame. The lord bears a hump fixed on him by an enchanter, which he says only Sep can someday remove. At twenty-one, the lord sends Sep out again to find not treasure but "his heart's lady," lending him a red horse. Sep rides to a golden city in mourning: a wicked magician, spiteful toward the King, has struck the Princess blind, deaf, and dumb while she played ball, and she will not eat. The King has offered her hand to whoever cures her, but doctors and suitors have failed. Sep goes to the palace, and on touching and kissing the Princess's hand she recognizes him as her heart's lord even though she cannot see or hear; he calms and feeds her, and the city rejoices that she has eaten. The wind, who travels widely, locates the magician disguised first as a mole in the forest; Sep's squirrel friends hunt it down, but killing it does not restore the Princess, since it flees at the last moment into a wild boar. Sep fights the huge boar himself and is nearly killed, but the lion he once freed arrives and kills the boar — yet the magician escapes again, this time into an unidentified fish. Sep marries the Princess so he can keep feeding her, and they set out together to hunt down the magician for good, journeying home first to Sep's parents, who are overjoyed to find him alive and welcome his blind bride. Wandering the shore, Sep learns from a mussel that it has seized the magic pearl the magician dropped, without which he cannot transform again; the mussel and the wind help Sep row to mid-sea, where uncounted mussels pile themselves into a reef, draining the sea around them and cornering the magician-fish in a last pool. Sep nets the fish, is instructed to spare it until the mussels give the word, and once ashore—where the mussels have likewise carpeted the whole beach—kills it on their command. Instantly the enchantment breaks: the mussels become a whole nation of people, ruled by a King and Queen who reveal themselves as the King and Queen Mussel, freed from their doom by the fish's death. Having no son, they adopt Sep as heir. He introduces his own father, whom the Mussel King invites to fish in the palace lake, and the Mussel Queen embraces Sep's mother, who agrees to go with them. The company travels back by way of the old lord's country and collects him — his hump now gone — and he chooses to become the Mussel King's librarian rather than help rule. They then call on the Princess's father, who is tempted to join them but instead decides to let his kingdom become a republic with a president so he can devote himself to catching butterflies, which he does contentedly ever after. The story closes with Sep and his Princess living as happily as they deserve — though the narrator adds that not everyone is sure people always get the happiness they deserve.

By Edith Nesbit · First published 1922 · Genre: Fantasy, Adventure, Children's Literature · 6,464 words

First lines

The wind was screaming over the marsh. It shook the shutters and rattled / the windows, and the little boy lay awake in the bare attic. His mother / came softly up the ladder stairs shading the flame of the tallow candle / with her hand.

'I'm not asleep, mother,' said he. And she heard the tears in his voice.

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Septimus Septimusson is listed on Textopian as a novel by Edith Nesbit, dated 1922 CE.

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Fantasy · Adventure · Children's Literature · Humor · Satire · Social Commentary · Family · Friendship · Growing Up · Imagination · Magic Realism · Quirky

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