• cuento en Español

“The best man in the whole tribe is Manute the brave”, everyone would say. You could see for yourself, at any time of the day, just how brave he was. He would jump to the ground from amazing heights, he would fight poisonous snakes, he would catch scorpions with his bare hands, and could cut the palm of his own hand with a knife – without even a flinch. They said the exact opposite about Pontoma. No one had seen him catch even a monkey.

One day, they happened upon each other in the forest, and Manute was showing Pontoma a coral snake he had just caught, when there began a downpour, the likes of which no one had ever seen. They both ran to shelter themselves under some thick foliage, and there they stayed until the rain had stopped.

However, when they were about to leave the shelter, they heard the roar of a tiger, at a distance of only a couple of metres. The foliage was very thick and dense, and the tiger wouldn’t be able to get through it to attack them. However, the tiger was almost at the entrance hole. If it happened to come in and find the two tribesmen there, they certainly wouldn’t get out alive. Manute was getting restless. He wanted to get out of that tight hole, and confront the tiger in open space, where he could fully use his great hunting skills. Pontoma was gesturing at him to keep still and be quiet, but Manute, tired of being stuck with a coward, leapt out of the thicket, surprising the tiger.

The tiger suffered a couple of deep wounds, but soon recovered, and hurt Manute with two swipes of its paw, throwing him to the ground. The tiger took the initiative, and leapt upon Manute, but Manute’s spear, in the hands of Pontoma, interrupted the tiger’s attack. The tiger turned away, wounded, but the spear moved as fast as a beam of light, and with incredible precision, hurting the animal again and again, until it fell to the ground, lifeless.

Manute, shocked, and bleeding freely from his injuries, witnessed all this while lying flat on his back on the ground. Never before had he seen anyone take on a tiger, and use the spear with such calmness and strength, as he had seen Pontoma do just now.

Neither of them said a thing. Manute’s grateful expression needed no words to be understood. Nor did they need words to know about Pontoma’s wounded hand, or the fact that they were leaving a tiger skin there in the forest.

From that day on, people gradually remarked less on Manute’s braveness. They thought maybe he was less courageous than before. The strangest thing was that they now noticed that Manute’s old spear was among Pontoma’s things.

But Manute just smiled, and remembered the day he learned that true bravery lay not in seeking out danger, but in controlling one’s fear when danger crosses your path.

According to legend, Stickybeard was the most sweet-toothed pirate who ever existed. He spent years raiding and pillaging sweetshops, and, so they say, he buried the greatest hoard of treasure any child could imagine, in some forgotten place. So when Tony and his friends found a strange old wooden chest, along with what seemed to be a treasure map for children, they were understandably excited. They readied themselves for the Great Stickybeard Treasure Hunt.

Off they went, and, following clues from the map, they arrived at a dark cave next to a lake. There they found another, smaller, chest. In it they found a few sweets, a big sign containing just the letter D, and another map with further instructions for finding the treasure. This helped the children get over the initial disappointment of realising they hadn’t yet found the great treasure of Stickybeard. Tony and his friends took several days to decode the map, and had to consult quite a few books to manage it. It led them to a great big hollow tree, where, again, they found another chest containing some sweets, a new map, and a big letter O written on a piece of paper. And so they carried on, finding two similar chests with some sweets and the letters C and B. However, the last map they found was really strange. Rather than a map, it seemed more like a list of incomprehensible instructions.

“You have the treasure in your mind,
It’s something that you’ll need to find,
A portrait painting once was done,
In which you see your granny’s son,
And then I really think you ought to,
Place it by your granny’s daughter,
Then you need to add the letters,
Collected by you letter getters,
The secret will then be revealed,
That secret for so long concealed,
The one that brings your dreams much nearer,
The way to achieve them made much clearer.”

They spent a long time arguing about the meaning of this puzzle, and the only thing they could agree on was that the riddle was talking about some paintings of a couple of parents. The rest remained a mystery. The discussions went on until, one day, they were talking about it in Tony’s living room, staring quizzically at the letters they had collected. Alex, one of Tony’s friends, looked at the portrait of Tony’s parents on the table, and suddenly he jumped up:

“I’ve got it!”

Everyone looked at him, quizzically, but instead of speaking, Alex went to the table. He rearranged the pieces of paper with the letters on them.

O…B…D…C

“Hey, Tony,” said Alex, “Stickybeard was a Spanish pirate, wasn’t he?”
“Yeah, he was….. And?”
“Well, my mother is Spanish, and here’s how they say those letters in Spanish…” everyone was looking at Alex with confused expressions, “Oh – Bay – Day – Say!”
“What?” asked Tony
“In Spanish when you say the letters O,B,D, C it sounds like Oh-Bay-Day-Say… and that’s the word ‘obedece’, which is Spanish for ‘obey’. What Stickybeard was trying to say in his own language was ‘Obey your parents’!”
“Obey your parents!” everyone shouted.

And even though there was no treasure chest filled with thousands of sweets, they were all willing to follow that great piece of advice. How could they not do so, when it came from someone like the famous Stickybeard?