Joan Aiken’s Necklace of Raindrops stories famously illustrated by Jan Pienkowski have been bedtime reading favourites for years. In this story – A Bed for the Night – four travelling musicians with wonderfully tongue in cheek names are wandering in search of a home:
In classic fable format, the friends ask various animals and people they meet if they can offer them a bed for the night, but everyone turns them down…
Finally they meet an old lady, who has a house like Baba Yaga’s – standing on its one chicken leg – which has just laid an egg!
But this time the story ends happily, although not in the way we expect – the brothers hunt for the egg and bring it back, but by the time they do it has cracked – it’s hatching, into another one legged house, and so the old lady rather crossly gives it to them – because now she can’t boil it for her supper…
So now they have a little chicken-leg house of their own!
Joan Aiken 
I’ve been meaning to review this for ever such a long time, just haven’t got my finger out. Love the closet reference to a well-known beat combo from the swinging sixties in this tale, individually recognisable from their names or instruments! Really must reread these…
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