o • "An easy way to start your story is with the magical words 'Once upon a time,' and then let your myth unfold." -- Patricia Montgomery, Mythmaking (1994) • "'My shadow may be having coffee across the road from the library, but I am really here, like a worm in the library's heart,' [Mr. Mephistiana] shouted. 'I'll feast on words and wonders. I'll eat every single song, every single story.' 'How will we stop him?' cried Sam. 'We need a magic word or a good spell.' 'We need the books,' whispered Daisy. Her whisper ran around the mysterious forest like a secret wind. Something heard her whisper. Something moved in the trees around them. From out of the leaves came flocks of white parrots . . . thousands of them . . . millions of them. 'Say the magic spell!' they screamed. 'Call on the book-birds.' 'What spell?' asked Daisy. A parrot flew around her. 'Read me!' it cried, turning a flip in the air. There were black words on the white feathers across its back and over its wings. As it flew away, that parrot turned into an open book. Its wings became flickering pages. . . . 'Let's say it aloud.' . . . Then, together, Sam and Daisy shouted the magic words. 'once upon a time . . .' The whole forest sang a huge chorus around them. 'once upon a time . . .' White parrots came flying towards them. No! They were books, flapping their wonderful pages. From between those pages . . . from the leaves of the forest trees . . . words fluttered like black moths. The air was filled with little black wings as well as great white ones. Mr. Mephistiana's face twisted with horror as words flew into his eyes and ears. He flailed his arms trying to beat away the books set free by the spell. . . . [T]he books flapped and Mr. Mephistiana flopped and faded. White pages beat him to nothing." -- Margaret Mahy, "The Word Eater" (1998) • "[W]hen they would tell their own children the tale by candlelight in the warmth of their homes, on the streets where lamps burned under stars that still stirred the power to dream, they would always begin the tale with the same magic words: 'Once upon a time . . .'" -- Robert McCammon, Swan Song (1987) One-ery Two-ery Ickery Ann Origins: This children's counting-out rhyme has been traced directly back to "a gypsy magic spell in the Romany language." Children's rhymes are "a survival of incantations" and charms of priests and sorcerers from ancient times, vestiges of "divination by lot."24 Variations and Incantations: • One-ry two-ery dickery Davy -- Notes and Queries (1854) 24 Charles Godfrey Leland, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling (1891)