Saturday's Storyteller: "In the old wooden desk was a small talking elephant."
by Belinda Roddie In the old wooden desk was a small talking elephant. Fernando didn't think it was alive at first, what with its resplendent brass glaze and its jewel-tattooed eyes. But it did indeed move, and it did indeed speak, albeit at a slow pace and in a very low voice. "What's the matter?" the boy asked the little elephant. "You seem frightened." "You get a little claustrophobic," it mumbled, "when you are locked inside a tiny space for so long." The desk had not been Fernando's first. It was a rare specimen of artisanship and craft, carved meticulously from a redwood deep within the towering California forests. His father had been the first to own it, but it had not been built within his own family. It was not of the Alvarez ancestry, nor close to it. The only thing the two of them knew for sure was that Fernando's mother had desired it above all else. Yes, his mother, days before her imminent death to things