Once upon a time there was a boy in hospital. He didn’t much like it and would rather have been at home. One morning he was woken by a rat-a-tat-tat on the window.
“What could that be?” he wondered.
Rat-a-tat-tat. He heard it again, and got up to have a look. To his surprise, it was a pair of elephant tusks. The boy opened the window. It was his friend the elephant!
“Come on,” said the elephant. “Wouldn’t you like to come with me to an elephant dance?”
“Oh yes,” said the boy whose name began with F. The elephant wound his long trunk round the boy’s waist, and lifted him through the window.
“I can’t dance,” said the boy, “and I’m not an elephant.”
“You’re my guest,” said the elephant “so it doesn’t matter. Now sit on me and hang on tight, like you did last time. But this time we’re going to fly.”
“I can’t fly either,” said the boy, “but I can hang on tight.”
It was a good thing he did. In a moment the boy saw that the elephant’s feet had left the ground, and that they were high above the buildings. He felt a bit scared. But there was nothing he could do but hang on tight.
The view was lovely, he could see for miles. Far below him, people were hurrying to work and to school. Some of them were pointing up at him and the elephant.
“You’ll be famous,” said the elephant.
“Where are we going?” said the boy.
“I told you, to the elephant dance. In Africa.”
“Africa’s a big place…”
“Well, we’re not going to the desert,” said the elephant. “Elephants don’t like the desert. Anyway, we are nearly there.”
The boy looked down – it scared him, so he stopped looking. But he had seen a lot of trees.
“Won’t we bump into the trees when we come down?” asked the boy.
“No,” said the elephant. “There’s a gap in the trees.” The boy looked, and there was a gap. Gently the boy and the elephant floated down.
“Now I’m going to call the others,” said the elephant, and he trumpeted through his trunk. It was a splendid sound and very attractive. Soon elephants were coming from all over, and the space was filling up.
“What will we do if they don’t stop coming?” said the boy.
“They will,” said the elephant, “Look!”
There were some paths which led into the clearing, and by each entrance, two elephants stood and twisted their trunks round each other, as a sign they no more could come in.
Then all the elephants began to trumpet, with different rhythms, so it was really exciting. And the dancing started! Some elephants danced to one beat, and some to another, and another and another….! All over the clearing the elephants were bouncing up and down to a different beat. The boy was dancing up and down on his elephant too! He had never seen anything like it! The monkeys were all watching mesmerized from the trees. They stayed, swinging from one branch to another, for they would be trampled to death if they jumped down.
This carried on for some time. In the middle, there was one elephant who was larger than the rest. He gave a very long trumpet and waved his trunk in the air.
This was a sign. The elephants all stopped and began to leave. “We can’t dance for too long,” said the elephant, “the rhythm is bad for us if it’s too intense.”
“Oh,” said the boy. “I was enjoying it.”
“Yes,” said the elephant. “Dancing’s like that.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Where do you think?” said the elephant. “Back to the Hospital.”
The boy hoped that no-one had shut his window. It was still open, and soon the elephant reached through it with his trunk holding the boy safe, and put him down gently on the floor.
“Oh, thank you,” said the boy. “Thank you very much.”
If you want to listen to the audio version, the link is here:
https://charlotteswonderfulstories.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/the-elephant-dance.wav
