Chapter 1 – The making

Once, or possibly even twice upon a time, there lived a cheese-maker. Her name was Magda Melick and she lived with her husband Marek Melick in a flat above her cheese shop in the Dutch city of Delft. She made the very finest cheeses of all kinds and was a very successful businesswoman who had become very rich on the proceeds of all her delicious cheeses. Magda and Marek Melick had everything they desired. Their flat had every modern convenience. They had a lovely sailing boat which they took out on the surrounding canals and lakes on Sundays when the cheese shop was closed. Their lives were very comfortable and happy. However, Magda and Marek lacked one thing which, they believed, would have made their happiness complete: they had no children of their own and were now too old to start a family.

One day, Magda told Marek that she had a plan. “I have far too much milk today. Wim the dairyman delivered far too much this morning. I was thinking that, since we cannot have a child of our own, I could make us a daughter out of Edam cheese with the spare milk.”
Marek knew better than to question the judgement of his clever, cheese-making wife and so nodded politely, adding “Sounds wonderful, my dear.”, though privately he wondered whether to book them both a long holiday as his wife seemed to be going a bit doolally and in need of a break. Magda Melick set to work immediately. She worked through the night and the following day creating a new mould in which to pour the cheese as well as a special pulley system for lifting the unusually large and heavy child-sized cheese she had in mind, then started on the cheese-making itself. Having prepared the cheese in a huge, wooden bath and poured it into the girl-shaped mould, Magda pressed it (twice) and left it to float in brine, then let the cheese dry before coating it in bright red paraffin wax. She then locked it away in a special room of its own in the cellar. All this had taken place over the course of several days alongside Magda’s usual cheese-making, so she was absolutely exhausted by the end of the process. She slept well that night. All that was left was to leave the cheese-child to mature in the cellar.

* * *

Two months passed by. Then, quite early one morning, Marek Melick was woken from a deep sleep (featuring a vivid dream about a salami sandwich) by a dull, thudding noise coming from downstairs. He was frightened so he woke his wife up. “I think there is someone downstairs in the shop!” he hissed.
Magda shot out of bed, her nightie (with pictures of gherkins on) whirling around her legs as she grabbed her shotgun from under the bed, then ran downstairs. Marek put on his dressing gown (with pictures of giraffes on) and followed her. Down in the shop there was no sign of anyone, nor in the cheese-making room out the back, but the thudding was much, much louder now and was clearly coming from the cellar. Magda Melick opened the cellar door, turned the light on, cocked her shotgun and set off down the stairs. Marek grabbed a large soup ladle and followed his wife.

Chapter 2 – The meeting

Once in the cellar, Magda and Marek could hear and see exactly the source of the noise. The door to Magda’s special section of the cheese-cellar (the room which currently housed her experimental cheese-child) was juddering and quaking as something persistent and evidently either very heavy or very strong was thumping against it from the other side.
“Wait!” shouted Magda. The thudding stopped. “I’m opening the door.” Magda put her shotgun down and lifted the latch.

The door opened slowly, revealing a shiny-skinned, bright red woman as tall as Marek but far less hairy. And stark naked. Marek blushed and didn’t know where to look. As I am sure you know, Edam takes two months to mature in order to be ready to eat, and so it was that, over the two months in the cheese-cellar, Magda’s cheese-child had also matured into a fully-grown young woman as well as a perfectly mature Edam.

“Hello,” said Magda, “My name is Magda Melick and I am your mother. I made you. This is your father, Marek.”
“And what is my name?” asked the young lady made out of Edam.
“Ellen.” said Marek who had given this some thought over the previous two months. “Yes, Ellen is your name.” agreed Magda.
They led Ellen Melick out of the cellar and into their kitchen. She sat at the kitchen table with Magda as Marek mashed a pot of tea. “So, what is this place?” asked Ellen.
“It’s the kitchen where we make and eat our meals.” explained Magda.
“What are those things over there?” Ellen enquired.
“Those are pans which we use to heat things in on the stove.” said Marek.
“And those?” Ellen indicated the hanging utensils.
“Ladles and serving spoons to serve soups, stew and casseroles with, tongs to turn sausages and chops with, that kind of thing.” said Magda. Marek, reminded by this, replaced the largest ladle he had armed himself with earlier.
Ellen got up from the table and walked around the kitchen, picking up or pointing out various objects inquisitively.

“This?”
“A food mixer.”
“These?”
“Glasses to drink from.”
“And this?”
“A cheese-grater.”
“This thing?”
“A fondue to melt cheese with so you can dip things into it to eat.”
“What’s this for?”
“It’s a cheese knife.”
“And this?”
“A cheese board – it’s a wooden board for cutting cheese on.”

At this point, Marek poured the tea. “So,” asked Ellen, “why do I look different to you two if you’re my parents?”
“Well,” explained Magda, “Marek and I are humans and you were made by me. You weren’t born like a human child. We’re made differently to you.”
“Right,” wondered Ellen, “so… what are you made out of?”
Magda thought for a moment, “I suppose humans are made out of bones, blood, skin and meat.”
“And did you use those things to make me, too?” asked Ellen.
“No,” said Magda, “You are made out of cheese. The finest Edam cheese with skin of paraffin wax.”
“I see.” said Ellen.

After they had all had a cup of tea, Ellen told her parents that she was feeling tired and needed a nap. She was led up to the flat where Marek prepared their guest bedroom. Ellen put on one of Magda’s nighties (one with pictures of windmills on) and went to bed for a sleep.

Chapter 3 – The realisation

Marek was in the shop serving a customer when a piercing scream came from the flat upstairs. It was so loud and piercing that he dropped the fine lump of Gouda he’d been showing the customer. Magda in the cheese cellar also heard the scream. They almost bumped into each other at the foot of the stairs as they ran to find out why Ellen was distressed. They arrived in Ellen’s room to find her sitting bolt upright in bed. As Magda approached Ellen, arms outstretched to give her cheese-daughter a comforting hug, Ellen shrank away from her and scuttled off the bed into a corner of the room, grabbing a chair and holding it up with the legs pointing at Marek and Magda to ward them off.

“What on earth is the matter, my darling?” asked Magda, her voice trembling in alarm, “There’s no need to be afraid: we’re here now.”
“It’s you I’m afraid of!” sobbed Ellen. “I had a dream where I was peeled of my lovely, red, shiny skin and then grated and cut up on your wooden cheese-board, then melted in a fondue. It was horrible! And now I’m awake I’ve realised the truth: you created me to eat me. That’s why you made me out of cheese. All those things in the kitchen make sense now: the grater, the knife, the cheese-board, the fondue – you are going to use them all on me. You’re going to torture and eat me!”

And with that, Ellen hurled the chair at the bedroom window, smashing it completely, then leapt after it, falling two storeys onto the street below. She ripped off the windmill-emblazoned nightie and stood, defiantly in the street and sang:

“I shall never be fondue
I shall never be in you.
I roll faster than you’ll chase me,
I will out-roll all who race me.”

As soon as her song had ended, Ellen curled up into a shiny, red ball and rolled at lightning speed along the side of the canal and off into the side-streets of Delft. Her parents looked on, dumbstruck, from the bedroom window.

Chapter 4 – The nibblers

In Delft market square, a cat was licking its bottom. Out of the corner of its eye it saw a blur of red whizzing across the cobbles.
“Oi!” yelled the cat.
The red blur came to a stop and stood up. It was, of course, Ellen.
“What’s up, kitty?” she asked.
“I was just curious as to what you were,” purred the cat, “and my nose tells me you are made of Edam. Delicious, creamy Edam to which I am quite partial. Might I have a finger or toe to nibble on, do you think?”
“Certainly not!” replied Ellen, running away and, as she curled up into a ball once again, singing:

“I shall never be fondue
I shall never be in you.
I roll faster than you’ll chase me,
I will out-roll all who race me.”

as she zipped off out of the market place.

***

A rat was hiding beneath one of Delft’s many canal bridges when it heard a curious rumbling unlike any bicycle or pedestrian it had ever heard cross the bridge before.
“Hey!” exclaimed the rat, “what’s that?” as it scampered up onto the bridge itself. Ellen, whose rolling was the source of the curious rumbling, stopped and uncurled herself. “May I help you?” she asked the rat.
“Well I was just wondering what the noise was,” explained the rat, “but looking at you I can see that you are simply a huge truckle of cheese which explains it. Occasionally cheese does get rolled across my bridge, but never one as magnificent as yourself. Might I have a quick nibble of you, now I know what you are?”
Ellen was, naturally, affronted by this suggestion and, as quick as single cream drips down a strawberry, she curled up into a ball once more, singing:

“I shall never be fondue
I shall never be in you.
I roll faster than you’ll chase me,
I will out-roll all who race me.”

and swooshed off towards the edge of the city.

* * *

On the verge of a road just outside Delft, a hedgehog was chomping on a slug. The slug was not desperately happy about this but could not be bothered to complain as he was, as usual, feeling quite sluggish. Up the road trundled Ellen, whizzing along as a red blur, past the hedgehog and slug and into a huge field of orange tulips.
“Er…. um…. ‘Scuse me…” said the slug, lethargically.
But he was too late to attract Ellen’s attention and the hedgehog carried on eating him. Take note, dear reader: one does tend to miss out on all sorts of interesting things if one is too sluggish.

Chapter 5 – The tulip

Meanwhile, in the tulip field, an orange tulip began to sing, “E-llen! E-llen! Co-me to meeeee! E-llen!” in a lovely, rich, low-bass voice. Unlike the slug, the tulip did succeed in attracting Ellen’s attention. She slowed down and rolled over towards the part of the field the singing seemed to be coming from.
“Who’s that?” enquired Ellen.
“I’m a magic, orange tulip.” explained the magic, orange tulip.
“Er… I’m not being funny, but which one are you?” asked Ellen. Being in a field of nine hundred and eighty thousand, five hundred and sixty four apparently identical, orange tulips didn’t make identifying the source of the voice at all easy.
“I’m the one with the shimmering, sparkling, magic sort of stuff coming out of my flower and the yellow halo hovering above me” boomed the tulip in his gruff, fruity voice.
Now she knew this, it was embarrassingly obvious to Ellen which tulip was the enchanted one. The flickering, sky-blue wings halfway down the tulip’s stem were a dead give-away too.
“How do you know my name?” wondered Ellen.
“You are a magical creature like me – I sensed you,” explained the tulip, “and I wish to help you fulfil your true destiny.”
“My destiny?”
“Yes, the purpose of your life. The meaning of your existence. I can use magic to make your destiny come true right away, but I need you to stand quite still while I say the spell which will make everything clear to you. And you will have to ask me to do the spell or the magic won’t work. I can’t do it without your permission. Do you want me to do this?”

Ellen thought. She couldn’t just keep rolling on forever. And, so far as she knew, there were no other Edam-people like her anywhere in the world. The tulip’s offer did seem to make sense…
“OK, do the spell.” she said.

The magic, orange tulip fluttered his wings and uprooted himself from the ground, his magical, sparkly aura shimmering all around him. He rose until he hovered above Ellen Melick’s head then started his magical incantation:

“Fanakapan, Fanakapan!
Lia-moggle-binkle-bonk!”
Suddenly, Ellen was whisked up in a tornado and shrouded in purple clouds. Out of the sky flew hundreds of small, brown circles and squares. A ladybird perched on a nearby tulip noticed that these circles and squares appeared to be crackers – the biscuity kind of cracker, that is, not the sort you pull at Christmas. These swirled around then were sucked into the swirling vortex of purple smoke. There was a blue flash and a sudden explosion from within the tornado. The purple cloud dispersed as quickly as it had formed and, from within the tornado, cheese and biscuits cascaded to form a huge, delicious hill in the middle of the field, crushing about two hundred and eighty two thousand, nine hundred and fifty three orange tulips beneath it. The magic, orange tulip had also undergone a sudden transformation, revealing its true identity.

The orange tulip had been merely a cunning disguise for Wouter the troll who loved cheese and biscuits for tea and who now had the most massive pile of Edam on crackers there had ever been. The ladybird thought he was a greedy, wicked, cruel and dishonourable creature for playing such a trick on Ellen. And Wouter would not only have agreed with the ladybird, he would have taken this opinion as a massive compliment as trolls pride themselves on being greedy, wicked, cruel and dishonourable.

So that was the end of Ellen.

Epilogue – The confession

Baldric and Barbara Bakker were entertaining two of their oldest friends. They had known Magda and Marek Melick since childhood and had invited them around for a meal that evening. Magda had seemed rather upset on arriving at the Bakkers’ home and Barbara had soon persuaded Magda to tell them what was bothering her. Magda told the Bakkers everything: all about creating Ellen, Magda’s delight in seeing her come to life and then the awful experience of seeing Ellen’s terror of her and her kitchen utensils and her dramatic exit from their flat into the streets of Delft. Magda and Marek had scoured the streets for hours afterwards seeking Ellen but to no avail. They still had no idea what had become of their cheese-daughter and had found the whole business very dispiriting.

Barbara and Baldric were very kind and sympathetic. Baldric uncorked a nice, old bottle of red wine and poured them all a glass.
“I do know how hard this must be for you,” said Baldric as he handed Marek and Magda their glasses of wine, “and I can imagine that having a cheese-child so briefly and then losing her must be even worse than having never had her at all.”
“Yes,” smiled Magda, “that’s it exactly. Oh, I’m so glad we told you Baldric! To have such wise friends… I thought nobody else in the world would believe us, much less understand how we feel.”
“Well,” continued Baldric, “Barbara and I, as you know, we also have never had children of our own. But…”
Baldric faltered as he spoke and looked across at Barbara. Barbara reached out and squeezed Baldric’s hand.
“But,” continued Barbara, “these enchanted children made out of foodstuffs… they never really work out for the best. You know that, before he retired, Baldric was a baker, just like his father before him? We had that shop on the corner of the market square – you remember? Well, Baldric’s biscuits were particularly popular, something of a speciality of which he was, rightly, proud. And one day, Baldric had a batch of gingerbread left over, and so…”

THE END

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