Why the Fish Laughed

One day a queen was walking through the market when she stopped at a fish-seller’s stall. Among the catch lay one especially large and silvery fish, and as the queen leaned in to look at it, the fish opened its mouth and laughed. Right out loud. A laughing fish.

The queen was so startled, and so unsettled, that she went straight home to the king. “A fish laughed at me in the market today,” she said. “And I shall not rest until I know why.”

The king did not think it a small thing either. He summoned his chief minister, his wazir, and set him a hard task. “Find out why the fish laughed,” he said. “You have six weeks. If you cannot give me the answer, you will lose your high office.”

The poor wazir had not the faintest idea where to begin. He went to every scholar, every astrologer, every learned man in the land, and not one of them could tell him why on earth a fish would laugh. The weeks slid past, and the wazir grew greyer with worry by the day.

Now, the wazir had a son, and the young man, seeing his father so troubled, set out to look for an answer himself. One evening he stopped at a farmer’s cottage and asked for a night’s shelter. The farmer welcomed him in, and the whole family sat down to supper.

Over the meal the young man sighed, half to himself, “Such a long road today. And not one soul on it to carry me.”

The farmer stared at him. Carry him? A grown young man, on a good horse? But the farmer’s daughter, a quick, watchful girl, only smiled as she set down the bread. “He means a companion, father,” she said. “A friend with a good story shortens any road. A tale can carry a tired traveller the last mile better than any horse.”

The young man sat up, because that was exactly what he had meant. Here, at last, was somebody who heard not just what words said, but what they meant. So he told her the whole strange business of the laughing fish.

The girl thought quietly for a moment. “A fish laughs at what is absurd,” she said. “And what would seem absurd to a simple fish? That it should see a thing, plain as daylight, that a king with all his wise men cannot. Now, where could a secret hide, year after year, right under a king’s nose? Only in the one place nobody is allowed to look. In the women’s quarters of the palace, where no man may enter, somebody is not what she seems. A stranger, hiding in disguise.”

“But do not ask the king to take a farm girl’s word for it,” she went on. “Words are easily said. Let him test it. Gather every maid of the palace in the courtyard, and have each one leap across the well. A woman raised in skirts will gather them up, step carefully, and hop across, small and neat. But a man forgets himself when he jumps. He will clear it in one great soldier’s bound, and the king will have his answer.”

The wazir’s son rode back to the palace with the girl’s answer, and the king, though he raised an eyebrow at the strangeness of it, ordered the test. One by one the palace maids stepped up to the well, gathered their skirts, and hopped across, small and neat. Until one of them took a running start and sailed over it in a single easy bound, like a soldier crossing a ditch.

And there, beneath the veil, was exactly what the farmer’s daughter had said they would find. A stranger in disguise, who had crept into the palace meaning mischief. The danger was undone, the wazir kept his office, and the whole court was left to marvel.

For the riddle that had defeated every learned man in the kingdom had been untangled, in a single evening, by a sharp-eyed farmer’s daughter who had never worn a fine robe in her life.