Once upon a time, in a small village to the far north of a distant country, there lived a cheesemonger and his wife.

The husband, Bernard Ethan Roquefort, had been mongering cheese since he was a young boy, following in the footsteps of his father, and his father before him, and his father before that, and so on. The Roqueforts were widely believed to be the first professional cheesemongers in the entire country, if not the world.

Bernard and his wife, Alicia, were well known for their expertise in the world of cheese. People would travel great distances to revel in the Roqueforts’ unparalleled wisdom, to gaze at the myriad wheels, truckles, wedges, blocks and bowls, and to envelop themselves in an ever-changing fragrance of fromagery.

One day, in the morning of the day, a stranger arrived.

‘Good morning,’ he said, impertinently. ‘I understand you are the Roqueforts of Rindland, and that you are the keepers of the knowledge of all cheeses.’

‘And good morning to you, stranger,’ replied Bernard, with a nod, ‘you are very welcome. My family has been running an emporium on this site since before I was born, or even longer. The knowledge of cheeses has been handed down through generations, and grows ever richer and riper. What brings you here today, if I may be so bold?’

The stranger smiled and coughed a little. ‘I have a cheese that you may find interesting,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you will have ever seen a cheese like it.’

It was then that Bernard noticed that the stranger was carrying a thing that was covered with a sheet. The stranger held the thing by a large hook that poked out of the sheet at the top. He removed the sheet to reveal a bird cage.

‘Ta da!’ said the stranger.

Bernard moved forward for a closer look. In the cage, there was a small lump of wood, and on that lump stood a bright yellow bird. It looked at Bernard and said ‘peep’.

‘That’s a canary,’ said Bernard.

‘It might look like a canary,’ said the stranger, ‘but it’s actually a piece of cheese. It is a rare example of a living, sentient type of cheese.’

‘I think you’ll find it’s a canary,’ repeated Bernard.

‘Explain this then,’ said the stranger. He took a cracker from his pocket and held it up to the bars of the cage. The creature hopped over to the cracker and snapped a bit off with its beak.

‘Everybody knows that cheese can’t resist a cracker.’

Alicia came into the shop from the storeroom, carrying a tray of cheese samples. ‘Oh, what a lovely canary,’ she said. ‘Can it sing?’

‘It’s a cheese,’ said the stranger, ‘and yes, it sings beautifully.’

The Roqueforts looked at each other quizzically. Bernard shrugged his shoulders, his wife raised one eyebrow and tilted her head jauntily.

‘I’ve been teaching it Offenbach,’ continued the stranger. ‘It does a wonderful can-can. Perhaps another bit of cracker will persuade it to sing and dance for you.’

He held a cracker up to the cage, shaking it slightly to indicate that he expected a performance in return. The creature shook from side to side in time with the cracker, took a bite, and stepped up onto the small log. It stretched its wings, lifted its head up and, after two little hops, started whistling Offenbach’s Galop Infernal whilst kicking its little legs and flapping its wings – sometimes one at a time, sometimes together.

Alicia turned to Bernard and whispered ‘it’s a canary’. Bernard nodded, ‘a very well trained canary’.

Bernard turned to the stranger. ‘Very impressive,’ he said, ‘but why have you brought it here?’

‘I have a business proposition,’ came the reply.

The Proposition

‘This is not the only sentient cheese I have seen,’ said the stranger. ‘There are many wild cheeses of varying sizes, timbres and dance styles in a natural cheesery on the edge of my cracker farm. I’ve kept them secret until now because I didn’t believe anyone existed that might appreciate their uniqueness. When I heard of the Roqueforts of Rindland, I knew I should come and see you.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Bernard, and made a signal to his wife to begin security procedures.

‘Excuse me a moment,’ said Alicia, ‘I need to go and attend to the curd whisks. I’ll come back as soon as I can.’ She bowed or curtsied, it was difficult to tell which, and left the gentlemen to continue their negotiations.