John Hurt credited as playing...
The Storyteller
- The Storyteller: Sometimes people are born lucky. You imagine if they open their hands there'd be a little piece of sunshine. A personal piece. It lights them up. Everyone loves these people, they're lit up.
- [blows out the candlelight in his hands]
- The Storyteller: Cats sit on their laps.
- Storyteller's Dog: [looks up] What?
- The Storyteller: It's luck, it's a gift, it's a blessing, and therefore can't be undone. This is also true of prophesies.
- The Storyteller: And it happened in a week with two Fridays that the cruel king heard of a prophesy. A child had been born reported his spies, a luck child. Poor as penance, rich as snow, the seventh son of a seventh son. Wise men prophesied this child would one day be king.
- The Storyteller: Each one who came the same story: the Griffin, please, for love, for justice, for fame, for fortune. But always in the end for the Griffin's supper.
- Ferryman: I dare not think it possible you found the answer, but then you did come back... No one has ever come back.
- Lucky: I have come back and I have the answer: the next passenger you have, give him your oar. Then your lot will be his, his freedom yours.
- Ferryman: So simple...
- [fights back tears]
- Ferryman: so simple.
- The Storyteller: And for the first time in years, centuries, hope fires the ferryman. A smile is forming in his mind, a tiny smile growing, getting ready to be born...
- King: Come on, come on, come on, can't we go any faster?
- Ferryman: Oh, yes, sir, there is a way...
- [gestures for the king to take over the ore]
- The Storyteller: Take it, he says, take it, take it... So if you come one day to a lake and there's an island and a ferry goes back and forth rowed by an old sad man, turn around. Griffins live there, you may never get off the boat. For the ferryman was once a wicked king who ignored a prophesy, whose heart was cruel. And nature, my dears, is a wize woman who pays us back, tit for tat.
- The Storyteller: A "boo" to the king!
- Storyteller's Dog: Boo!
- The Storyteller: And a hiss!
- Storyteller's Dog: Hiss!
- Storyteller's Dog: Terrible. That's a terrible story.
- The Storyteller: What?
- Storyteller's Dog: The baby died. What do you mean, what?
- The Storyteller: Who said the baby died? *I* didn't.