Now it was the demons’ turn to be stunned.
“Grrr…Great dance!”
The old man’s dance looked like so much fun that the demons began imitating his moves and dancing even more merrily than before.
Soon the head demon took the old man’s hand and danced beside him as the tooting of the flutes and the pounding of the drums grew ever louder and wilder. What a party it was! The happy-go-lucky old man and merry demons lost all track of time as they danced the night away.
Slowly the eastern sky began to brighten. Uh-oh! Dawn!
Cock-a-doodle-doo!
“Yikes! The first rooster!”
When morning comes, as you probably know, demons have to return to their dens. But the old man and the head demon didn’t notice even when the second rooster crowed.
“It’s morning, Chief!” one of the demons called out.
And only then did the head demon stop dancing and look up the sky. Then he turned to the old man and said:
“Come back and dance again tonight, Old man. Grrr. Or are you afraid?”
Now that the dance had ended, the old man realized how scary these demons were, and suddenly he was trembling with fear.
“Grrr. In that case. I’ll just hold on to that wen of yours,” the head demon said, plucking the wen from the old man’s cheek.
“You’ll get it back only if you return here tonight. Grrr.”
The old man rubbed his cheek. It was flat and smooth – the wen was gone without a trace! He was sp overjoyed that he ran back to his village and told his neighbor, the grumpy old man with the other wen, all that had happened.
“What! The demons took away your wen?”
The grumpy old man was burning with envy. All right, then, he told himself, I’ll have them take my wen too! And that night he set out for the mountain forest. He walked and walked, and was deep in the woods before he finally heard the sound of music.
