Once Upon a Time and Long Ago...

Leroy's Christmas

2012-12-19T11:52:00.002-05:00

I don’t expect many of you to believe this story. Most of you (up to and including my friend and editor) will probably dismiss it as nothing more than a flight of fancy or a dream brought on by an overactive imagination and/or too many Christmas cookies before bed (like some people seem to think!). All I can do is hope that my friends will believe me when I say that what you are about to read absolutely happened to me.

It was one year ago, on Christmas Eve. I was staying with my good friends, the Moss Family in their home in Kentucky, the Duck House. It was, as all Moss Family Christmases are, a wonderful holiday and I was having a terrific time with the music and the food and the seventy-eight different versions of A Christmas Carol they had on DVD…okay, maybe not that many, but it’s a lot. And I was very excited when they said I could spend the night of Christmas Eve in the living room, sleeping on the couch. It was very comfy and the decorations were the best nightlight a penguin could ask for…but I had a special reason for wanting to sleep in there.

“You won’t see Santa!” Templeton said.

“You don’t know that,” I argued. “Maybe I’ll wake up just in time and see him just as he’s going up the chimmney!”

“It just doesn’t seem likely.”

“Well…maybe there’ll be a Christmas miracle!” Hearing this, he just sort of shook his head and gave me the kind of smile I always imagined Christopher Robin giving Winnie the Pooh when he called him a “silly old bear.”

For a guy who hangs out with a talking penguin, he’s surprisingly skeptical.

Anyway, that night I was curled up all cozy and toasty warm on the couch with visions of sugarplums dancing in my head…which was a little disconcerting, since I don’t actually know what sugarplums are. But then, something happened. I’ll never know what. Something woke me up. I sat up with a start. I looked around the room. The digital display on the cable box read “12:00.” It was midnight, Christmas Eve: The most magical hour of the year. The one moment when the world holds its breath and, for an instant, nothing is impossible.

(I may have stolen that bit from someone else, if so, I’m sorry)

The world outside the window was covered in snow and lit by a beautiful silver moon. The lights on the tree sparkled like multicolored diamonds. In fact, everything was very much the way it was when I went to bed…or couch…except for the undeniable fact that I was not alone.

Someone was sitting on the couch next to where I was curled up!

He was…ya know? I had this whole thing planned where I was gonna describe him and slowly reveal who it was, but let’s not waste everyone’s time. You know who it is! It’s Santa! I woke up and Santa was sitting slumped on the sofa with his eyes shut.

I thought he had fallen asleep, for which I could hardly blame him, with all the work he has to do. Then I thought of how awful it would be if he slept through Christmas and little kids didn’t get their toys. So I poked him with a flipper and he opened his eyes right away.

“Oh! Oh, Leroy. I hope I didn’t wake you when I sat down.”

“No, sir, Mr. Santa, sir,” I said, wanting to show the proper respect to one of my all-time favorite humans. “I just thought you had fallen asleep and I…”

“No, I wasn’t sleeping. Just resting, and thinking…” his voice trailed off, and there was a strange quality in his voice.

“Are you all right, sir?”

“Well…to tell the truth Leroy, I’ve been thinking about giving it all up.”

“What? What do you mean, Mr. Santa?”

“I mean coming down here and flying around handing out gifts every year. I’ve been thinking it might be time to call the whole thing off.”

“But why?”

“I started giving out presents at Christmas…oh, more years ago than I can even count. I always thought I was doing a good deed. Being generous, charitable. I never thought it was about the things I brought, but the spirit in which I gave them. But now I think maybe I’ve just been kidding myself. Maybe I haven’t been doing anybody any good after all.”

“How can you say that, Santa?”

“Well, just look at the state of the world! Brotherhood, faith, charity, benevolence and optimism are at an all-time low, while greed, deceit, selfishness and cynicism flourish. I try to look for the good in the world, but every year things seem to get worse. With all the problems in the world today, maybe people don’t even need Santa Claus right now.”

“Santa…with all due respect…that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!”

“Beg pardon?”

“Maybe there are a lot of problems in the world. Maybe people are greedy, selfish, cynical and all that other stuff you said. Maybe we aren’t treating each other as well as we should. But the solution isn’t less Santa Claus. It’s more Santa Claus! Don’t get me wrong, we really appreciate the presents you bring us, but you do something every year that’s way more important than toys and candy: You set an example. You show us how to be better people. And I promise you, sir…it’s working! Because every Christmas, people like me, who believe in you, and who love you, follow your example. You know whose house you’re in, don’t you? These people don’t have a lot of money, they have to struggle sometimes. But they always have a good Christmas because they care about each other and they do for each other. They know that it’s not the gifts that make a merry Christmas, but the act of giving! So, for heaven’s sake, get up off your big, red butt and get out there and do what you do best!”

For a moment, Santa just looked at me, and I was beginning to regret what I had said. But just when I was starting to think I’d be getting a stocking full of coal every year for the rest of my life, he smiled, maybe the nicest smile I ever saw, and laughed. “You’re right, Leroy! You’re absolutely right. I will keep coming back every year. But only on one condition.”

“What’s that, Santa?”

“That you help me.”

“Me? Help you? How can I do that?”

“By doing your part to keep the spirit of Christmas alive all year round. Will you do that for me, Leroy?”

“I sure will, Santa!”

“Well, I guess I’d better get going. Got a lot of stops to make and…oh, I almost forgot. I haven’t given you your Christmas present yet.”

“Oh! You don’t have to give me anything, Santa! Honestly, just getting to talk to you is the best gift I could’ve gotten.”

“Come on, Leroy, isn’t there anything you’d like?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no…well, there is one thing…”

The next morning, I awoke with the sun. It was a beautiful Christmas morning. For a moment, I thought I had dreamed the whole thing…until I looked down and saw what I was holding in my flippers. It was the present I had asked Santa for! It was real! It really happened! Of course, the family didn’t believe me. They thought it was a dream, just like I did…but none of them could explain how I got that limited edition box set of Creedance Clearwater Revival autographed by John Fogerty!

Thanks Santa, and Merry Christmas!

THE END

With Special Thanks to Red Skelton

TWO BROTHERS WENT TO SEA

2012-09-25T12:40:00.002-04:00

I stumbled on this little known legend from the South Pacific and was enchanted by the first sentence: “Two brothers went to sea.” I revised some of the details, added more depth to the characters of the brothers and (as usual) made it just a little bit sillier than it probably needs to be (let’s just say it was a slightly different animal that featured so heavily in the later part of the story than the one I chose), but I think it still captures the spirit of that ancient tale from once upon a time and long ago.

Two brothers went to sea. They built their boat out of the trees that grew on their island home. They stitched the sails from old clothes and tablecloths. The rope they borrowed from their neighbor. But all their sweat, blood and borrowing paid off and their boat was ready to set sail. They cast off one morning, vowing never to return…except to give their neighbor back his rope. But other than that, never!

For three days they sailed. It was slow, it was a little dull, but at the same time exciting, not knowing where they were going or what adventures awaited them. After three more days on the water and a truly epic game of 2,020 Questions, they finally spotted land and took their little ship in to port…Well, I say “port,” but, actually, a great big wave just washed them up onto a beach. The point is they weren’t sailing anymore.

The brothers left their boat on the beach and proceeded into the dense jungle that lay before them. After a lot of walking and birdwatching (which is always fun) they came to the interesting and inescapable conclusion that they were lost in the jungle (which is hardly ever fun). The eldest brother, Vincent, thought it would be a good idea if he and his younger brother, Thomas, stood back to back and each took one hundred paces in opposite directions. That way, all they had to do to find each other again, was turn around and walk one hundred paces back. This would also double their chances of finding something…er, something…well, heck, when you’re lost in the jungle in a strange country, you’ll pretty much take anything!

And so the two brothers stood back to back and, wishing one another good luck, they set off, one hundred paces into the unknown…

Vincent set off in what he judged to be a Southern direction, based on the position of the sun in the sky, barely visible over the tops of the trees. He counted his paces carefully, but was not going as quickly as perhaps he should have because he was enjoying the scenery. After all, there are worse places to be lost than a lush, green jungle. And, anyway, there was no fear of starvation in this jungle as the trees were full of ripe, succulent fruit. Indeed, Vincent was beginning to think that he could be perfectly happy living here for the rest of his days.

Unlike his brother, Vincent longed for the quiet life. He would love to spend all his time sitting on a porch with a cold drink and a good book, no sound but the wind rustling through the trees and the songs of the birds. That’s why he had been so keen to leave their home: Too many people, too much activity, too much noise!

Just as he was wondering whether their boat could be taken apart and rebuilt as a hut on the beach, he came upon a large cave. This, thought Vincent, might make good shelter for the night, so he stepped inside and took a look around. It looked structuraly sound, not too damp or too cold and though it was dark, he could feel the back wall and judged it to be about ten feet all around (deep, wide, high). Not luxurious, but good enough to pass the night. Vincent was just about to continue on with his hundred paces when he heard a faint sound from inside the cave. He listened carefully:

“Help! Help!”

It was very, very faint, as though it were coming from very far away, but Vincent was certain it was a woman’s voice calling for help. He was quite sure of the size of the cave, but he thought perhaps there was a crack in the back wall, beyond which might be someone in need of assistance. Wasting no time, he took out some tinder and lit a fire with which he made a torch and entered the cave. He was surprised to discover that the cave was much larger than he had estimated. Indeed, with the torch in front of him, it seemed to go on forever. Finally, to test a theory, he put out the torch and felt with his hands. There was the wall, right in front of him but much, much further from the mouth of the cave than ten feet. He relit the torch and held it out where the wall had so recently been: The tunnel stretched on beyond the reach of his light.

Vincent was confused, but knew that it was his torch that was making the tunnel visible. Taking this to be an enchantment of some kind, he kept moving forward, following the calls for help, which grew ever louder the further he walked. Finally, after far more than a hundred paces, the tunnel opened up into a large, empty cavern. Now the calls for help were so loud Vincent would’ve thought they were coming from right in front of him, had it not been for the fact that there was nobody there. He was entirely alone in the cavern.

“Where are you?” Vincent cried out, his voice echoing all over the high walls of the cavern. “I want to help you, but I can’t find you!”

“Over here!” said a voice from behind him. He spun around and was face to face with a cute little old lady in a brown cloak who was smiling fondly at him.

“Are you the one who needs help?”

“No,” said the littled old lady. “But I was calling for help, if that’s what you mean. You see, I am very wealthy and somewhat magic and I like to test people. When they come to the mouth of my cave, I call for help to see if they answer. And if they do, and they get all the way to this chamber, I reward them with a sogabah! Would you like a sogabah?”

“Er…what is a sogabah?”

“It’s this!” and the little old lady held up a Sack Of Gold As Big As a Human (see?).

“Well, that’s very generous of you, ma’am, but I don’t think I really need that much gold.”

“Oh, see? That’s the kind of thing I’m talking about! That’s integrity you got there, kiddo! Here, at least take a handful of gold. After all you’ve come all this way. And, hey, if you change your mind, just rub two of the coins together and say ‘sogabah, sogabah,’ and one will appear at your feet.”

“All right. Thank you, ma’am. Now…is there a way out of here?”

“Oh, yes. Just extinguish your torch and walk back the way you came. You’ll be back in that tiny cave you started in.” Vincent thanked her again and did as he was told. Sure enough, he soon found himself outside the small cave with twenty gold pieces in his pocket. He saw how late it was getting and decided not to bother with the rest of his hundred paces and just headed back to meet his brother…

Meanwhile, Thomas had set out to the North. Unlike his brother, he was not taking in the sights nor was he eager to set up housekeeping in this beautiful jungle. He despised the quiet life his brother longed for. He wanted adventure and excitement, wealth and glory! He wanted to spend the rest of his life at sea, battling pirates, riding storms, falling for and ultimately marrying a really hot girl who was just as eager for adventure as he was. That was the life Thomas longed for.

As he was walking his hundred paces, desperate for something exciting to happen, he heard a faint voice, as though it were coming from far, far away. When he strained to hear, he could make out what sounded like a woman crying for help. Thomas followed his ears and came to the edge of a big cliff (which would’ve made finishing his hundred paces pretty tough anyway). The voice was coming from below him and he saw an opening in the side of the cliff. He climbed down carefully and proceeded into the cave.

Thomas soon found himself inside a great big cavern which seemed to descend into an inky black abyss. A steady stream of water fell from an opening high above and formed a waterfall into that selfsame abyss. He was frightened, but he knew that whoever needed help was down there somewhere, so he courageously began to climb down into the abyss. But after a very difficult descent, he found himself getting weary and his fingers couldn’t grip the rock anymore. Soon, he lost his grip entirely and fell off the side of the cliff and into the stream of the waterfall which carried him down, down, down…

When he opened his eyes, Thomas saw that he was in…well, he could only describe it as an underground city. There were houses and streets and gardens and even traffic signs. All very small, of course, because the people who lived here weren’t really, in the strictest sense, people. By which I mean, they weren’t human. Or, to be really quite accurate, they were…well…platypuses.

Yes. Platypuses…Platypi…Platypeople. Never mind, you know what I mean.

“Hi there!” said a voice from behind. Thomas turned around and was face to face with a duck-billed platypus. “I’m Oliver! Welcome to our fair city. Are you feeling any ill effects from the transformation?”

“Transformation?” Thomas asked. But as he was saying the word, it struck him that he was face to face with a platypus. A look in a conveniently located reflecting pool confirmed his suspicions: He had been turned into a platypus!

“Yeah, that’s the magic waterfall for ya,” said Oliver as though this were the most natural thing in the world. “Lemme guess, you heard someone calling for help? Yeah, I know what that’s all about. See, there are these two sisters who live on this island and they have these special powers which they like to use to, I guess, test people. You followed the voice calling for help, even though you were in danger of falling to your doom, so you passed the test.”

“I see. But why am I a platypus?”

“Oh, well that’s sort of your reward. You see this is a quiet, peaceful community where a lot of people come to retire and relax for the rest of their days. The only catch is, you have to be a platypus to live here.”

Thomas explained as patiently and politely as he could that he did not want to be a platypus, did not want to live here and most certainly was not ready to retire. So, Oliver pointed him to the exit which, he promised him, would turn him back into a human as he left. “But take this with you,” he added, handing Thomas (somehow) a small vial of water. “This is water from the magic waterfall. If you drink it, it will turn you into a platypus. You know, in case you change your mind.”

With a curt “thank you” to Oliver, Thomas was on his way out when another platypus came up behind him. “Take me with you!” she said. “I got here the same way you did and I’ve been trying to get out ever since!”

Thomas and this new platypus, who was called Ashley, proceeded to the exit. A moment later, Thomas found himself back at the cliffside where this whole mess had started, in his own human body again. Standing next to him was Ashley, in her own human body…which, it must be said, was awfully nice…very nice…quite nice…in fact, Ashley may have been the hottest ex-platypus in the world. They walked back to the brothers’ rendezvous point, talking about their mutual love of adventure…

When Vincent and Thomas were reunited, they shared their strange adventures. “It’s too bad I didn’t go South,” said Thomas. “I would’ve taken that sogabah in a heartbeat! With that much gold, I could buy a big ship, hire a crew and spend the rest of my life sailing the world looking for adventure.”

“Yes,” said Vincent. “And I wouldn’t have minded living the rest of my days in peace and quiet.”

“Even if it meant you were a platypus for the rest of your life?” asked Ashley.

“Well, maybe not if I had to live among other platypuses…platypi?...platy…whatever. I mean, platypuses can talk to each other, and I hate boring conversation. Now, if I could be a platypus but live among humans, then I could just relax, eat, be taken care of, and nobody would try to make small talk with me.”

It took the brothers a surprisingly long time to figure out the painfully obvious solution. But, curiously, it struck them both at the same time. Without having to speak a word, Thomas handed the vial of magic water to Vincent and Vincent handed the gold coins to Thomas. As Thomas rubbed two of them together and said “sogabah, sogabah,” Vincent drank every drop of the water. The Sack Of Gold As Big As a Human appeared and Vincent turned into a platypus.

Which, admittedly, might not strike the majority of you as a particularly happy ending, but trust me: Vincent was very happy as a platypus. He even went to sea with Thomas and Ashley who did indeed buy a big ship, hire a crew and spent the rest of their lives together sailing for adventure.

And that’s the story of how two brothers went to sea.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

…the knowledge that I played a little trick on you. This is not based on an ancient story from the South Pacific at all! I made the whole thing up myself! You see, one night I had a series of exciting, adventurous dreams involving, among other things, Disneyland, Doctor Who and piloting my own helicopter (though I had a hard time maintaining any kind of altitude. Cheap dream-chopper!). Also, there was apparently something about me and my brother on an island setting to sea and, at the time, I was vaguely aware that the situation was like some old story. I woke up with the phrase “Two brothers went to sea” in my head, along with the knowledge that it was the premise of some long forgotten legend. This, it turns out, was not true. I have yet to find any such story anywhere. But I liked the phrase, so I set myself a challenge: Write a new story that sounds like it’s an old story. Sorry to pull a fast one, but I’ve been doing this for almost three years now. I gotta keep myself entertained!

For More Great Stories Click HERE

THE FIVE BROTHERS

2012-09-25T12:34:00.000-04:00

Many of you may be familiar with the title under which this story was published in 1938: The Five Chinese Brothers. Since that time, the book has become somewhat controversial for its stereotypical depiction of Chinese people and the idea that they all “look alike” (though that’s not really a racist comment, that’s just the only way the story works). Believing Claire Huchett-Bishop’s story to still be an entertaining and valuable one, I have rewritten it without mentioning the brothers’ ethnicity. In your mind, they can be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Indian, Mongolian, African, French, Welsh, Martian, Mexican, Canadian, Robots…well, you get the idea.

This is a story about brothers. Or, to be more specific, it’s about five brothers. Or, to be even more specific, it’s about five identical brothers (quintuplets, that’s called). OR, to be ludicrously specific, it’s about five identical brothers named Jon, Don, Ron Han, and Larry, who caught his parents by surprise as they were expecting quadruplets, and didn’t have a name ready for him so he ended up being named after the doctor.

But the curious thing about these five brothers…well, I should say another curious thing because identical quintuplets is pretty rare to start with so that’s awfully curious right there…but not only that, each brother had a strange ability and each one was different from the others. The first brother, Jon, could swallow the sea. The second, Don, had an iron neck. Ron could not be burned. Han could hold his breath forever. And Larry could stretch his legs for almost a mile.

Why? I don’t know, it’s a story! Just go with it.

One day when Jon was out by the seaside, a little boy who knew about his special talent asked if he could help him gather oysters from the seabed. Jon was hesitant at first but he agreed. “But,” he said to the boy, “You have to do exactly what I say when I say it. When I tell you it’s time to come back, you have to come back. Agreed?”

The boy agreed and Jon swallowed the entire sea, holding it inside himself. Now the little boy was free to walk along the empty seabed and pick up oysters. After a while, Jon was straining to hold the sea in so he called out “Okay, time to come back!” But if the boy heard, he didn’t answer, and just kept gathering shells. Jon thought he might burst and he called out again for the boy, but he didn’t come back. Finally, Jon could take it no longer and he released the sea, which rushed out of his mouth and covered the seabed as it had before…the little boy was nowhere to be seen.

Jon did what he thought was the only honorable thing, and went to tell the boy’s mother. She did not entirely understand all of what Jon said, but she did understand the part about Jon and her son going to sea and only Jon coming back. She at once called for the authorities and Jon was arrested and condemned as a murderer! The judge said that on the following morning, he would have his head cut off.

“What is your last request?” said the judge, which gave Jon a great idea.

“Please allow me to go home and say goodbye to my mother,” said Jon. The judge agreed and two large guards led Jon to his home. They waited outside to escort Jon to the execution the next morning. But, what they didn’t know was that Jon lived in this house with his mother and his four identical brothers, and when he told them all what had happened, they agreed to help him.

The next morning it was not Jon, but Don who accompanied the guards to the executioner’s block. With a cheery smile, which perplexed everyone who saw it, he allowed himself to be led up to the chopping block, his head covered in a black bag and placed on the block. He whistled as the executioner raised his axe and brought it down on Don’s neck…off of which it unceremoniously bounced. Of course, they had no idea that this was Don, the brother with the iron neck, and they tried for hours to cut his head off. The executioner resharpened his axe so many times that he soon wore it down to almost nothing!

Finally, the judge decided that if they were going to execute him, they’d have to try something else and he decided that the next day, he would be burned at the stake. Once again, he was allowed a last request and, once again, he asked to go home to see his mother. So it was that the next morning, Ron was taken in place of his brothers, tied to the stake and surrounded by dry wood and straw. The fire was lit and the flames surrounded him. But Ron, you may recall, could not be burned by any fire, so he just sat there humming Irving Berlin’s “Heat Wave” as the flames licked higher.

When it became apparent that fire wasn’t going to cut it, they had to put their heads together again and ultimately decided to smother him to death. As before, his request to spend his last night with his mother was granted, and, as before, Ron traded places with one of his brothers inside the house. The next morning, Han was taken to the courthouse where he was strapped down to a table and a heavy pillow was placed over his face, completely covering his nose and mouth, making it impossible to draw any breath. Fortunately, Han was the brother who could hold his breath indefinitely, so he was quite comfortable during his execution.

The judge was beginning to get very annoyed now, so he came up with one last plan: The accused (who the Judge still thouht was Jon but was, at this point, Han, in case you’re having a hard time keeping up) would be placed in a boat, taken far out to sea. His arms would be tied behind his back and a heavy stone would be tied to his legs. Then he would be thrown overboard where he would sink to the bottom of the sea and drown! And even if he didn’t (the judge was thinking of the botched smothering), he would certainly starve or die of thirst trapped in the sea for the rest of his life.

It was with some reluctance this time that the judge granted the prisoner’s last request. But grant it he did, and Han went home and explained everything to Larry who, I’d like to remind you, was not able to hold his breath indefinitely regardless of what the Judge believed. The next morning, Larry was led to a boat, taken out to sea, had his arms tied and the stone attached to his leg, and was dropped into the ocean where he did, indeed, sink to the very bottom…at which point he stretched his legs so that they were as long as the ocean was deep and he stood there, his head above the water which only came up to his hips…though it was still very hard to walk with that heavy stone around his ankles. Larry started to think that maybe he would die of thirst or starve to death.

“Hello!” said a voice. Larry looked around and saw the little boy who had started all this rowing over to him in a little dinghy. “Sorry I didn’t listen before,” said the boy, still thinking this was Jon from the beginning of the story, “but I was having so much fun walking around in the ocean. I thought I was a goner when all that water came rushing toward me. But when you swallowed the sea you also swallowed everything in the sea, including this dinghy that capsized and sank to the bottom a couple of years ago. Since then I’ve been trying to get back to shore. Hey, when did you get so tall?”

Larry explained the situation to the boy who felt very guilty about causing Jon, Don, Ron, Han and Larry so much trouble. The boy at once untied Larry’s arms and Larry was then able to untie the stone from his feet, at which point he climbed into the boat, returned his legs to their normal length and helped the boy row to shore.

Everyone was happy that the boy was alive and they reasoned that their inability to kill his “murderer” must have been a sign that he was innocent all along. Larry was released and returned home to his family, who lived very happily ever after.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

The Five Chinese Brothers by Claire Hutchett-Bishop (1938) In this version, the brothers have no names and the little boy at the beginning actually does drown. I figured that if we were wiling to believe the incredible abilities of the brothers, there’s no reason we wouldn’t believe that the boy could survive being hit with the entire ocean.

For More Great Stories Click HERE

JOHNNY APPLESEED

2012-09-24T22:41:00.002-04:00

We all know that America was built by big, strong men. Men like John Henry, Davy Crockett, Paul Bunyan. But you don’t have to be big in stature or strong in sinew to be a great man. That’s why this story is about a little guy who was just as integral to the building of our nation as the men who swung hammers and shot rifles.

He was born John Chapman and he was a farmer. Just a humble farmer who worked on his family’s apple orchard. Johnny, as his friends called him, genuinly enjoyed his work. Planting, harvesting and tending his apple trees. It may not have been impressive or glamorous like some vocations, but Johnny always felt that everyone had something they were good at and the best thing was to do it as best you could…

At least, that’s what he thought for a while.

For, you see, while John was working at his apple trees, the big push west was on and every day more and more pioneers would pass his farm on their way to tame the wild frontier. Somehow, compared to what those men were doing, Johnny’s apple trees didn’t seem all that important. He would’ve loved to be a pioneer too and help America grow…but Johnny was a small, puny sort of guy, and he knew that only big, strong men survived out west.

One night, however, while Johnny was cooking his humble, evening meal, he had a visitor. An older man with a thick beard and a coonskin cap walked up and asked to share his meal. Johnny figured this man must be a pioneer, stopping for a rest on his way out west, so he was more than happy to welcome the old fellow. Of course, Johnny had no idea that he was really an angel, who had come down from heaven to send Johnny on his path.

“It must be exciting,” Johnny said, “going west with the pioneers.”

“Why don’t you see for yourself?” the angel replied.

“Me? Oh, no, I couldn’t go west. That’s for big strong men with guns and muscles. Besides, what could I do to help? I can’t chop down trees, I can’t hunt, I can’t build anything. All I can do is plant apple trees.”

“I think you’re selling yourself short,” said the angel with a kind smile. “There are lots of men going west to chop and hunt and build. But men need more than meat to live. Who knows? Maybe what the pioneers need more than anything else right now is a man to plant apple trees.”

“I hadn’t thought of it like that. Do you really think I could?”

“Sure. You wouldn’t need to bring much. Here. Let me help.” The angel picked up a big bag of apple seeds, and slung it over Johnny’s shoulder. Then he took an old tin pot and told Johnny to wear it on his head like a hat. “Protect yoru head and you can cook with it!” he said. The last thing he handed Johnny was his Bible. “There. You’re all set.”

And that’s how, without truly understanding why or how, John Chapman became a pioneer and headed west that very night. When he turned around to thank the old man who had helped him, however, he found his guest had vanished.

From then on, Johnny traveled west. Everywhere he went he would find open areas of land and plant apple trees there. He left apple orchards behind him like footprints. They would grow and blossom and sprout fresh, delicious apples which the settlers would eat as they headed out west. It seemed like everywhere they went, there were apple trees waiting for them. And it would remind them of their homes in the east where they could pluck fresh fruit right off the trees, unlike in the wilderness where such trees were rare.

As Johnny traveled so did the stories about him. Everyone knew someone had to be planting these trees. Some thought it wsa an angel or some other magical, powerful being. They might’ve laughed if they’d known it was just a skinny, scrawny little man with a bag of seed over his shoulder and a pot on his head. But that’s how the legends about him grew, and how he came to be known as “Johnny Appleseed.”

For years and years, Johnny shared his bounty with the pioneers, never stopping, always traveling. Until one day, he was resting under one of his trees, when a familiar voice came to him: “Hello, Johnny. I see you’ve been busy.” Johnny looked up and there was the same old man who had convinced him to go west all those years ago. “I’ve got a job for you, Johnny,” the angel said. “I know a place that’s in dire need of your help. A wonderful place, really, but they’re missing one important thing.”

“What’s that?” asked Johnny, who was a little surprised to hear how old and raspy his voice had become. Living in the wilderness, Johnny hadn’t spoken to someone for a long time. He hadn’t noticed how much he had aged.

“Apples, Johnny,” said the angel, sharing that kind smile again. “Not nearly enough apples. Will you help?”

“Of course I will. Lead the way.”

And that’s how Johnny Appleseed left this world and followed his guardian angel into the next. But you can still see his work. Sometimes, you may look up at the sky and see the clouds all fluffy and pink. Well, those aren’t really clouds: They’re apple blossoms from Johnny’s heavenly apple orchard.

THE END

If You Liked This Story, You Might Enjoy:

Melody Time (1948) In this musical rendition of John Chapman’s story, popular Irish tenor Dennis Day provides the voices of Johnny, his angel, and the narrator. The short includes a song entitled “The Lord is Good To Me” which recently was featured in an episode of TV’s American Dad by a character who idolized Johnny Appleseed.

For More Great Stories, Click HERE

PAUL BUNYAN

2012-09-24T22:38:00.002-04:00

It has been said that America was built by big men. Generally speaking, that’s a figure of speech meaning that they had big spirits or big ambitions. Sometimes, however, they meant “big” quite literally. And they don’t come much bigger than the subject of today’s story: Paul Bunyan.

As I’m sure you all know, babies are delivered by storks. Ordinarily, one stork can bring sevearl babies at once. In Paul’s case, however, it took about ten storks just to get him to his parents’ doorstep. As a baby, he was bigger than most full grown men! Obviously, this made taking care of the boy into quite a task, and the whole town had to pitch in. Two whole herds of cattle were milked to exhaustion just to feed him. An entire forest had to be cut down to build his cradle. And it took every voice in the community singing in perfect harmony to lull him to sleep.

As he grew up, so did his problems. Being too big to fit in the schoolhouse, he had to sit outside and look in through the window. He loved playing with the other boys, but it wasn’t always easy. For one thing, you never wanted to be playing catcher when Paul came sliding into home! But even though he was (to use the term loosely) a handful, Paul’s friends, family and neighbors loved him and were more than happy to take care of him.

Now, in those days it was customary for boys to take up their fathers’ professions. In Paul’s case, his father was a lumberjack. So, every day since Paul’s birth, his father had the town save up all the scrap metal they could, so that by the time Paul was old enough, they had enough to melt down and make into a giant, double-bladed axe. Paul was a natural lumberjack and could cut down a whole forest with just a few swings of his axe.

Of course, Paul couldn’t stay in that little town all his life, and on his eighteenth birthday he decided it was time to go out into the wilderness where there were plenty of trees (and elbow room) for a big man to cut down. He traveled all over the Americas, joining logging crews and then moving on. That’s how the legends about him grew. For instance, he spent a lot of time in Minnesota right before the rainy season. It’s said that his water-filled bootprints are the reason that state is known as the “Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.”

But poor Paul could never stay in one place for very long. Once all the trees were down, cities started to spring up and he started to feel crowded by civilization. It was ironic that his great skill as a lumberjack, so integral to the forming of the country, was the very thing that kept him from being able to settle down. Paul didn’t really mind, of course. He liked traveling and everywhere he went, he always made a lot of good friends. The sad part was that, because he was so much bigger than everyone else, he never had any friendships that lasted…

Until he met Babe.

At the time, Paul was staying up north where it was so cold, even the snow was blue. The blue snow was so thick he could barely see, so it’s not surprising that Paul tripped over something which was just as blue as the snow. In falling, he caused the earth around him to rise into what, to him, were small mounds of dirt and rock. To the rest of us, however, they became known as the Canadian Rockies! In any case, Paul looked back to see what he had tripped over and was amazed to see a giant blue ox! Frozen solid in the snow. Being an outdoorsman, Paul had compassion for all living creatures and quickly started a campfire to warm the beast up. After being rescued from freezing to death, the ox became very affectionate toward Paul and snuggled him the way a babe snuggles with its mother, which is why Paul named the ox “Babe.” From then on, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Big Blue Ox were inseperable.

Just about everywhere you go in North America, you’ll see Paul’s work. One day he and Babe dug the Mississippi river so that they could float logs down from the north. They built Pike’s Peak to survey their work. And, when he felt like he needed a shower, he created what today we call Niagara Falls.

And whatever happened to Paul and his trusty blue ox, Babe? Well, no one knows for sure. Some say that when they ran out of wilderness, they just took two big steps and left the whole world. Some say they went up to Alaska, and their playful wrestling is what causes the Northern Lights in the night sky. But even though they’re gone, they’re not forgotten nor are the many marks they left on this continent.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

Paul Bunyan (1958) A Disney short in which Thurl Ravenscroft voices the big man. You may have noticed my story has very little in the way of a climax, which is why the Disney storymen created a contest between Paul and an electric saw (similar to the contest John Henry won in his own story). The difference, of course, is that Paul lost his contest and retired up North where, the story tells, the Northern Lights are created by Paul and Babe roughhousing.

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JOHN HENRY

2012-09-24T22:33:00.003-04:00

This is a story about freedom. This is a story about doing the impossible. It’s a story about faith and courage and the willingness to sacrifice everything for what you believe in. In other words, it’s the story of John Henry.

John was born a slave and, for most of his life, he and his people toiled in heavy chains for their masters. Then came the war and when the dust had settled on that terrible ordeal, John and his fellow slaves were free. Having lived so long without freedom, John knew how valuable it was, and swore he’d never be a slave again. So saying, he took the very iron chains he had worn on his wrists while in slavery and had them melted down and made into a twenty-pound hammer which he would use to make his way in the world. His hammer became his prized possesion and he was often heard to say “I’ll die with this hammer in my hand.”

After the civil war, the nation needed to be healed, rebuilt. One way that this was achieved was with the building of a railroad from coast to coast. But building a railroad takes hard work, and strong men to do it, so every man was told that if he finished the line, he’d be given fifty acres of land to settle down on. That was the good news, of course. The bad news was that the line was barely halfway done and most of the men were already worked to exhaustion.

That’s when John showed up.

For John was a big, strong man, and not just on the outside. For under his callused hands and powerful muscles, a fire was burning inside John Henry. The fire of a man who would do anything to preserve his freedom. And fifty acres of land all for himself was a kind of freedom he wasn’t about to give up on. And that’s how John started swinging that big hammer of his for the railroad company, and helped the other workers to finish the line.

But then, just when it looked like the line would be completed and every man would get his reward, the owners of the railroad decided that the men working on the line weren’t doing it fast enough and they sent in a ringer: A steam-powered drill which they said could pound in nails faster than any man…but they hadn’t reckoned with John Henry. And he wasn’t about to let his fellow workers walk away with nothing. So he challenged that steam drill to a race: Whoever could lay the most track the fastest would win.

The other workers cheered for John as the race began. With a strength that some said was greater than any human could possess, John pounded those spikes as fast as he could, and by the time he got to the foot of the big mountain, he was well ahead of the drill. The men cheered, but soon they saw that the race was not yet over. For as John leaned against the rock, exhausted from the effort, the drill was actually able to dig through the mountain itself, creating a tunnel and passing John Henry in the process.

Well, most men would’ve given up…but John Henry was not most men. He called to his fellow workers and they tossed him another hammer. And with one twenty-pound hammer in each hand, John started beating away at the mountain until both he and the drill were lost to sight. Quickly, the onlookers raced to the other side of the mountain to see who would come out first…

It was John Henry!

Again the men cheered and hailed John as their hero staggered out of the tunnel ahead of what was left of the drill. But their cheers died down when they saw John fall to his knees. The hammers fell from his hands. He lay prone on the ground. His wife, Polly, ran to him and called out for water…but it was too late. With his last ounce of strength, he reahced out a mighty hand for his hammer. And, as he always promised he would, John Henry died with his hammer in his hand.

Ever since that day, people have been telling stories about John Henry. You may have heard that, when he was a boy, he ate six dozen eggs and five loaves of bread for breakfast every morning, or that he pulled the moon down to earth so his mother would have more light to sew by. John became more than a man to the people who told his story. They shared legends and sang songs about the man who died with his hammer in his hand.

But the truth is John Henry was no god. No mythical figure. He was just a man. A man who believed no price was too high to pay for freedom. And, because of his sacrifice, his fellow workers did finish the railraod and they got their fifty acres each. And there wasn’t a one of them who didn’t thank John every day for the gift he gave them. The greatest gift of all. A gift that many of us were born with but manage to take for granted every day:

Freedom.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

John Henry (2000) In the 1940's, the Disney Company created animated shorts about Pecos Bill and Johnny Appleseed, and in the 60's there was a short about Paul Bunyan. Then, in 2000, there was a theatrically released animated short based on another American legend. Narrated by Alfre Woodard, it was animated in an old-fashioned style to make it look like a classic film from the 40's.

For more great stories, click HERE

PECOS BILL

2012-09-24T22:28:00.001-04:00

The next few stories are based on American Tall Tales and Legends. I've created my own versions of these stories based on several different retellings from several different sources. In this case, I looked at a few filmed and animated versions along with many written accounts only to find out that this story really isn't "folklore" at all, it's something else. Something called "fakelore." Fakelore is when you make up a new story and just pretend that it's an old story. Pecos Bill was originally created by a man named Edward J. O'Reilly which he claimed to have heard from old cowboys. I included it here anyway, partly because it's such a well-known example of a tall tale, but mostly because regardless of where it came from, it's just a good story.

Wellsir, seems jest ‘bout ev’ry time I see that thar full moon and hear them ky-oats a-howlin’, I think of the high-ridin’est, rootin’-tootin’est varmint ta ever rope a…er…

Yeah, no, I can’t do this. I know it’s a cowboy story, but I just can’t pull off this dialect. It just doesn’t ring true coming from me. Let’s start again, shall we?

Everytime I hear coyotes howling at the full moon as it shines over the prairie, I think about the story of the greatest cowboy to ever live. Now maybe you’ve heard tall tales about bigger-than-life men who did things you would’ve thought impossible. You might know the story of the cowboy who dug the Rio Grande with a stick, or rode a cyclone like a bucking bronco or who painted the painted desert. Well, I’m here to tell you that all those stories are about the same man:

Pecos Bill.

Bill’s story starts with a wagon train that was making its way west. Just a whole slew of good folk seeking wide open spaces and new opportunity in the new territories. Of course, when you have that many people all in one wagon train, someone’s likely to be overlooked. Especially a small someone, cuz that’s what Bill was back then. And, sure enough, his wagon hit a big rock and poor little Bill was thrown out and landed with a soft “bump” on the desert sand.

And by the time anybody noticed he was missing, the wagon train was miles away. Bill was lost.

But there’s an old saying I just made up that goes “Nothing is really lost; just waiting to be found” (catchy, huh?). And it wasn’t long before little Bill was found by a kindly mother coyote (pronounced “ky-oat”). You might think that a coyote would see a little baby like Bill as a meal, but you know how mothers are. She didn’t see Bill as being any different from her own pups. Just another scared, hungry little child who needed someone to take care of him. So, she took him home and raised him as one of her own.

Many years later, a cowboy was riding through the desert. He stopped by the Pecos River to water his horse and wet his own whistle when he happened to look up and see the strangest sight any Texan had ever seen (and if you’ve been to Texas, you know that’s saying something). It was a full grown man, with a full beard, walking around on all fours like some kind of dog.

He was also stark naked.

“What in the blue blazes do you think you’re doin’, son?” cried the cowboy. “Why ain’t you got no clothes on?”

“Clothes? You ever heard of a coyote who wears clothes?”

(And if you’re wondering how Bill learned to speak when he was raised by coyotes, then maybe you’d better stop reading the story right now cuz it’s only gonna get stranger from here)

“Coyote? Son, you ain’t no coyote.”

“The heck I’m not! My momma’s a coyote, my brothers and sisters are coyotes. What else would I be?”

“I hate to break this to you, but you’re a human being.”

“A what?”

“A human. Like me…sort of.”

“Really? You mean I’m…I’m not a coyote?”

“I’m sorry to bust yer bubble, pardner, but it’s true. You might be stinky and hairy and nekked as a jaybird, but as a real life coyote? I’m afraid you don’t quite fit the bill.”

“Bill? Why does that sound so familiar?”

“Maybe that was the name your momma gave you before the coyotes found you. Funny thing is, it’s my name too. Course, it might get confusing both of us having the same name...” Then Bill the Cowboy remembered the name of the river where they were standing. “How about we call you Pecos Bill?”

Pecos Bill caused quite a sensation when Regular Bill brought him back to town with him. But he was quickly fitted with a new suit of clothes. And the minute he got them on, you’d never have guessed he had ever been a coyote. He was just like an honest-to-goodness-gracious-gosh cowboy. And so, Regular Bill and his cowboy friends taught Pecos Bill all about being a cowboy. That took about twenty minutes because, back in those days, cowboys didn’t know very much about cows except that you put hay in one end and got milk out the other end, and that before you tried it, you had to be reeeeeal sure it was a lady cow.

I mean, let’s face it, that would be embarrassing for everyone involved.

So from then on, Pecos Bill started showing the cowboys a thing or two. Have you ever wondered why cowboys tie their handkerchieves around their necks? Well, it was Bill’s idea. Figured it made sense to keep it closer to your nose. And, back in them days, cowboys used their hats mainly for drinking out of when they had to stop by a river or a spring. But Bill had such a powerful thirst, he needed a ten-gallon hat to satisfy it. And when he tried to teach the other cowboy how to howl like a coyote, the best he could get out of them was a warbly kind of singing, which is how cowboys learned to yodel.

Being raised by coyotes, Pecos Bill was just more rugged than his new cowboy friends. So when a wild stallion came running through town, spooking the cows, Bill was the only one who wasn’t scared to death of the animal. He asked for a length of good, strong rope, and the cowboys watched as he tied a special knot in one end. They didn’t know it yet, but Bill was invinting the lariat, or lasso. He swung that rope in the air and hurled it at the horse, catching it around the neck. Then, he dug in his heels and pulled on that rope until he was close enough to the horse to climb on his back. Of course, the horse tried to throw Bill off, but the king of the cowboys would not be thrown. After riding that bucking bronco for three days and nights, Pecos Bill had finally tamed that ornery beast. From then on, Pecos Bill wouldn’t ride any other horse, and the horse wouldn’t let anyone else ride him, which is why Bill named him “Widdowmaker.”

One day, while Bill and Widdowmaker were enjoying a leisurely ride in the desert, something happened that would change not only their lives, but the entire history of cowboys in the wild west. They were coming up on the Rio Grande, the river that Bill had dug to keep a particularly nasty band of Mexican banditos out of Texas, when they saw a most unusual sight: A girl riding a giant catfish.

Now, of course, Bill had seen more giant catfish than he’d had hot dinners, but the other thing was brand new to him: A girl! See, cowboys didn’t spend a lot of time with womenfolk back in them days, so in all the time he’d been living among human beings, Bill had never looked at a real live woman before…and he never looked at any other from that day on.

Yep. Pecos Bill had fallen in love.

The girl’s name was Sluefoot Sue, and she had heard all about the famous Pecos Bill. That’s the reason she’d come to Texas in the first place. Her family wanted her to be a polite, demure, obedient little housewife who cared about things like doilies and thimbles and having babies. But Sue wanted to play in the dirt with the boys and climb trees and other stuff that girls were just not allowed to do back then. So she resolved to run away and become the first ever cowgirl.

Of course, Bill’s friends were hesitant to let a girl into their group, but when she roped six steers with one throw of her lasso, they welcomed her gladly…that is, the men welcomed her. Widdowmaker did not like that someone else was taking up all of Bill’s time and attention. That silly old horse was jealous of Sluefoot Sue.

But Bill didn’t know this, and probably wouldn’t have cared if he had. All he knew was he was in love and just about the happiest cowboy to ever live. And when the world’s greatest cowboy falls in love with the world’s greatest cowgirl, you can bet it’s going to be one heck of a courtship. The first time they kissed, Bill got so excited that he started firing his guns into the air all night and by the time he stopped, he realized that he had shot out every single star in the sky, except one. Which is why, even today, Texas is known as the “Lone Star” state.

Naturally, Bill and Sue wanted to get married and have lots of little cowbabies…not, I mean, not like baby cows. They’re not gonna have calves or anything, that’d be weird…anyway, before they could get married, Sue had one request: She wanted to ride Widdowmaker.

Even without knowing that Widdowmaker had it in for Sue, Bill knew that this was a terrible idea. And, frankly, was surprised that he had to explain that to Sue since he felt the horse’s name was enough of a warning. But Sue was convinced that she could do everything Bill could do, only backward and in high heels (look it up) and felt that his refusal to let her ride his horse was a sign that he didn’t think she was as tough as him. The last thing Sue wanted to be was coddled, so she insisted and, in the end, Bill relented.

The wedding day was a big affair, as you can probably imagine. Sue was dolled up in the prettiest wedding dress ever seen in those parts, complete with that recent invention that had swept the nature: The bustle! Don’t ask me why, but back then, women weren’t considered fashionable if they didn’t have a big wire…well, butt, frankly. It was a big wire frame that they wore under their skirts that made their butts look really big. I don’t know why, it’s part of the story. The point is that Sluefoot Sue was wearing a wire bustle under her wedding dress...a decision she would live to regret.

The deal was that Sue would actually be riding Widdowmaker during the wedding ceremony, which is why it was held in the street outside the courthouse as opposed to inside. While the minister was saying the whole “Dearly beloved” bit that you’ve heard a thousand times in movies and shows, Bill was nerously watching his bride-to-be straddle Widdowmaker (side-saddle would’ve been more appropriate for a lady in those days, but the record will indicate that Sue was no lady). Meanwhile, six of Bill’s strongest cowhands were trying to restrain Widdowmaker, but he was fighting them at every turn. He did not want anyone riding him except Bill, least of all Sluefoot Sue!

Things didn’t really start going wrong until they got to the vows. By the time Bill had said “I do,” two of his men had lost their grip on the horse. The other four soon followed and when it was Sue’s time to say it, it came out more like “I doooooooooo!” because now Widdowmaker was bucking for all he was worth, trying to throw Sue off his back. But Sue was just as tough as her new husband of about four seconds, and she refused to be thrown. And, it’s likely she would’ve ridden him out just as Bill had done…had it not been for that bustle.

Now every time Widdowmaker kicked, Sue started bouncing, thanks to all that steel and wire in her bustle. Widdomaker kept kicking harder and Sue kept bouncing higher. Finally, with one well placed kick, Sue was thrown high into the air. She came down, landing on her bustle and bounced back up. With every bounce, Widdowmaker kicked harder and Sue kept gaining altitude. Now she was bouncing up and down like a rubber ball, higher and higher every time. Even after Widdowmaker had been subdued, Sue kept landing on her bustle and kept bouncing higher! It was beginning to look like she’d never stop.

Now, I don’t know if this kind of thing is really covered by “for better or worse” or “in sickness and in health,” but Bill felt he had an obligation as her husband to do something about this. It was just lucky for her that she had married the world champion…lassoer? Lassoist? Lasso-artist? Lariateer? What would you call that. Anyway, he called for five miles of rope, tied the single biggest loop in roping history and (with the assistance of three other men) threw it to Sue…and caught her right around the middle!

That was the good news. The bad news is that Sue’s bouncing was stronger than Bill and, rather than pulling her back down to earth, she pulled him up to the sky! Now Bill and Sue were bouncing together until their last bounce took them all the way up to the moon...which is where they stayed.

The Cowboys of Texas mourned the loss of their native son, though they were comforted by the knowledge that his beloved Sluefoot Sue was with him up there on the moon. But, somehow, the loss seemed to affect the coyotes greater than the men. And every night, from that day on, the coyotes would sit in the light of the moon and howl, in mournful tribute to their beloved Bill. A tradition they continue to this day. So now you know why the sound of coyotes howling at the moon makes me think of Pecos Bill, the greatest cowboy who ever lived.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

Meldoy Time (1948) This was one of Walt Disney’s “package features” which consisted of several short subjects, among them was an animated version of Pecos Bill told and sung by Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers. The song “Pecos Bill” was used years later as the finale of the Golden Horseshoe Revue at Disneyland, when it was performed by the late, great Wally Boag and Betty Taylor. Boag recreated the number for his appearance on “The Muppet Show.”
Shelley Duvall’s Tall Tales and Legends (TV) After her acclaimed “Faerie Tale Theatre” series, Ms. Duvall produced a series of television shows honoring American folklore. Steve Gutenberg palyed the titular cowboy and was joined by Rebecca De Mornay, Martin Mull and, in one of her first television appearances, Megan Mullally.

For more great stories, visit HERE

THE HAPPY PRINCE

2012-09-24T22:04:00.000-04:00

This story was originally by one of my favorite writers, Oscar Wilde. Though best known for his novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), or his plays (such as The Importance of Being Earnest), or his tumultous and tragic personal life, he was also adept at writing fairy tales. His best known, The Selfish Giant I have published elsewhere on this blog. This is my personal favorite.

Once upon a time there was a prince who was beloved by all. His servants and subjects alike admired and respected him and he loved them right back. Under his reign, the kingdom knew happiness and that’s why he was always called “the Happy Prince.” When he died, it was decided that he should be comemorated for all time with a great statue in the center of the capitol city. It was twenty feet high, carved in stone and covered in solid gold. Two saphires were put in place of his eyes and he wore a shiny ruby in his lapel.

The years passed and the statue stood in the center of the city where it was admired by all who passed beneath it. But, by and by, a new prince rose to power who was foolish and frivolous and selfish and the country started to decline. Taxes were raised, poverty spread, unemployment hit an all time high. Within a few short years, the country had changed completely, and happiness was nowhere to be found.

Then, one night in autumn, a little swallow was flying over the city on his way south for the winter. Wanting a place to rest for a while before he continued his trip, he found the golden statue and nestled at its feet. But as he lay there, trying to fall asleep, a drop of water struck him on the head. He ignored it, but then there was another drop and another.

“That’s funny,” said the swallow. “It doesn’t look like rain.” And, indeed, it wasn’t rain. On closer investigation, the swallow discovered that the water was actually tears, dripping from the statue’s eyes. “Why are you crying?” asked the swallow.

“When I was alive,” said the statue. “I was very happy. Neither I nor any of my subjects knew tears or sorrow. But that was many, many years ago, and everything has changed. Now that I am so very high up, I can see every corner of my kingdom, and I see the misery and the sadness of my people. And even though my heart is now made of stone, I cannot help but cry.”

The swallow felt very sorry for the statue and asked if there was anything he could do to help.

“Perhaps you can,” said the Happy Prince. “Three streets from here, I can see a small home where a poor mother can barely feed her children, let alone herself. She wants to earn more money, but there is no work to be had anywhere.”

“Well, what can I do about that?” asked the swallow.

“See this ruby in my lapel? If you will take it, fly to her home and give it to her, she can sell it and then she will have money to buy food for her family.”

“You want to give them your ruby? Are you sure?”

“It will do me little good, and it could save her children’s lives. Will you do this for me? I’d do it myself, if I could only move.”

Well, the swallow was sort of anxious to join his friends in Egypt. But, then again, he could not very well turn down such a kind and selfless request, and he pried the ruby from the Happy Prince’s lapel and flew to the home of the poor woman. By the time he got there, the poor woman was weeping with despair, feeling that all hope was lost. The swallow could not help but smile as he landed on the windowsill, lay down the ruby and whistled. The woman looked up and saw the swallow bow politely and fly away, leaving the precious gem on the windowsill.

“Look how happy she is!” said the Happy Prince to the swallow when he had returned. “Oh, thank you, little friend.”

“It’s funny,” said the swallow. “But I was flying south because of how cold it was in this country. But now I feel very warm inside.”

“That’s your heart that’s warm, little friend. That’s how it feels when you do something good for someone else.”

“I like it,” said the swallow. But flying all that way with that big ruby had made him tired, so he nestled again at the feet of the Happy Prince and fell asleep, feeling much warmer on the inside than he did on the outside.

The next morning, the swallow was determined that he would continue his flight and join the other birds in Egypt. He was particularly gratified that he had such a wonderful story to tell them when they asked why he was so late. He flew down to the river and bathed, then he allowed a nice old lady in the park to feed him, then then he went back to see the Happy Prince.

“I just wanted to say goodbye before I left.”

“Must you leave now?” said the Happy Prince. “I was hoping you could do one more thing for me.”

“I’d be happy to, but my friends are waiting for me in Egypt.”

“It won’t take long,” said the Happy Prince. “Just one more quick trip to the far end of town. I can see a clerk in an office. His employer is a hard and cruel man and he works this poor clerk too hard. He’s been working so hard that he has fallen asleep at his desk. And he has a very sick boy at home, and doctors can be very expensive.”

“Well, naturally, I’d like to help. But you seem to be all out of rubies.”

“My eyes are saphires. You can take out one of them and—”

“You want me to take one of your eyes? I couldn’t do that!”

“Please, little friend. I have another eye, so I can still see. And it will be of much greater value to the poor clerk than to me.”

“Okay, I’ll stay a little longer and help you to help that clerk. But then I really have to be going!” So, as gently as he could, the swallow removed one of the Prince’s eyes and flew it to the sleeping clerk. When he awoke, he found the gem in his hand and he was grateful. As he flew back to the statue, the swallow felt very warm inside, despite the chill in the air. “Well, I guess this is goodbye,” he said to the Happy Prince.

“I’ll understand if you refuse,” said the Prince, “but I would like to ask you one more time for your help.”

Anxious though he was to get to Egypt, he had come to like that warm feeling inside that came from helping others. “Perhaps if it doesn’t take too long. What is it?”

“While you were giving my left eye to that poor clerk, I saw with my right eye a brother and sister with no mother or father. These orphans live on the street and must rely on the generosity of strangers to sustain them.”

“You can’t ask me to give them your other eye. You will be blind.”

“I know. But I’m only a statue, and they are living. Their need is greater than mine. Please, my friend?”

The swallow could not refuse and so, though it pained him to do it, he blinded the Happy Prince and delivered the saphire to the children.

“Are you there, my little friend?” he asked as the swallow landed on his shoulder.

“Yes, yes, it’s me.”

“I want to thank you for all you’ve done for me. And now I know you are anxious to go to Egypt, so I will say goodbye.”

“Are you serious? I blind you and you think I’m going to leave you just like that? No, I’ll stay with you for another night or two, so you won’t feel too lonely.”

“I appreciate that, but you’ve done enough for me already. You should go rejoin your friends.”

“My friends can wait a few more days. Besides, you are my friend too. And I don’t want to leave you alone in the dark.”

So, the swallow stayed a little longer with the Happy Prince. Every night, he would tell the Prince stories of the wonderful things he’d seen in his travels. During the day, he would fly throughout the city and come back and tell the Prince all he had seen, in great detail, which made the Prince very happy indeed. But, then again, sometimes what the swallow saw made him very sad and he didn’t want to tell the Prince.

“Please,” said the Prince on one such occasion. “Tell me what you are trying to keep from me.”

“Well, I saw a woman weeping in the streets today. She is with child but the father has passed away and she is alone. She cannot work in her condition, but she cannot feed her baby when it comes unless she works. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to make you sad. And it’s not as if you could do anything to help. You have no more gems to offer.”

“That’s true,” said the Happy Prince. “But you forget: Every last inch of me is covered in gold. With your claws and your beak you could scrape off some of the gold and give it to her. In fact, you could scrape off enough gold to give some to all the poor of this land.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want? You will be nothing but stone if I do.”

“Little friend, if they had asked me before my death if I wanted a golden statue built of me, I would have said no. It was nice of them to want to honor me like this, but it’s not very practical. Gold is only valuable if it is used. If it stays where it is, it’s worthless. But if you give it to the poor, it can help a lot of people. So if you really want to honor my memory, you know what you must do.”

The swallow agreed and began scraping off some of the gold plating and delivering it among the poor of the kingdom. This, of course, took a very long time, and several times the Prince asked “Are you sure you don’t need to be leaving for Egypt?” and every time the swallow would say, “No, no, I can leave any time. I’ll just take a little more gold for the poor then I’ll go.” But the swallow was lying to protect his friend’s feelings. You see, unbeknowst to the blind Prince, winter had fallen. The swallow would never be able to go to Egypt now. And every day the food became scarcer, and the swallow grew weaker and collecting and distrubitng the gold became a harder and harder task. But he would never allow his friend, the Happy Prince, to know how sick and weak he had become. And at night, though his body shivered, his heart was warmed by the knowledge of all the good he was doing.

But one night, the swallow landed on the Prince’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. “My friend, it is time for me to say goodbye.”

“Oh, are you going to Egypt at last? I am glad. Without being able to see the sunrises and sunsets, I haven’t been able to keep track of the days, but I know it must be getting very cold, so I am glad that you’re finally going when you’ve wanted to for so long.”

“I’m not going to Egypt,” said the swallow.

“You’re not? Then where are you…”

“Goodbye, my Happy Prince. I love you.” And with that, the little swallow shut his eyes for the last time. And if you’d been walking under the statue at that moment, you would’ve heard a loud crack when the stone heart of the Happy Prince broke in two.

The very next morning, the new prince was walking through the city with a few of his closest advisors when they saw the statue of the Happy Prince. “Ugh!” said the prince. “Look at how rundown this thing is! The gold is all peeled off, there’s a big crack in the chest, all the precious stones have been stolen and…is that a dead bird? How disgusting! Make a note: We must have this hideous eyesore torn down. We’ll erect a new statue. Of…well, how about a statue of me?” Of course, his advisors quickly agreed that this was the best thing to do. “Yes, of course. But let’s not make it so cheap as that old one. Solid gold, diamond eyes, emeralds for buttons…”

And just like that, the Happy Prince was forgotten. His statue was torn down and broken up into rubble which was used to pave a private road for the prince’s home. As for the swallow, his body was thrown into the garbage where it burned along with the refuse of the rich and powerful, most of which could’ve been used to feed the poor and destitute.

But, listen, I don’t want you to feel too sad or angry about all this. Because even though the statue was torn down, the Prince himself had already been dead for many years. And the statue is really just stone when you think about it. Of course, the passing of the swallow is tragic, but think of the good he did in his life and how noble and selfless his sacrifices were. And it wasn’t in vain, either. Because the people of that city couldn’t help but notice the gifts of gold and jewels that seemed to come from out of nowhere and though they never fully understood what happened, they never forgot it and the people started to look out for one another and they learned the meaning of charity and kindness. I mean, there were still some selfish jerks out there who were only thinking of themselves, but for the most part the kingdom was full of happiness just as it had been when the Happy Prince had sat on the throne.

And you can take it from me that the Happy Prince and the noble sparrow met again, in a world beyond our understanding, where you can bet they are living very happily to this day.

THE END

More Great Stories HERE

THE SWORD IN THE STONE

2012-08-31T00:00:00.005-04:00

I have always wanted to include King Arthur in this collection. My first plan was to take all the stories of Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table, Guenevere, Lancelot, Mordred, Uther, Merlin, and so on and write them up as a multi-installment, all-inclusive “fairy tale-style” retelling.

It is mind-boggling to me how long it took me to give up that stupid idea.

There is just waaaaay too much material on Arthur! Too many stories, too many versions, and too many other writers who have done a far better job than I could ever do. If you want to be an Arthurian Scholar, this story ain’t gonna help. But, if you want to read a neat little fantasy about a boy who becomes king with the help of a kindly wizard? This should do just fine. I may write up some more of Arthur's adventures in the future. But for now, I'm satisfied with his first adventure.

It was a time of great turmoil in England. The good king, Uther Pendragon, had passed away and left no heir to his throne. With no king, the country fell to internal strife and every remotely rich lord or baron who could raise an army started attacking his neighbors left and right. This is what political scientists refer to as “annarchy” but which the rest of us refer to as “just being kind of a jerk.” Basically, England was wartorn and the common folk were the ones suffering for it.

Then a man came forth with a solution. Seeing his beloved country crumbling all around him, this wise and learned man did what struck him as the only logical thing: He locked himself in St. Paul’s Cathedral in the heart of London, fell to his knees and prayed fiercely for two weeks. He asked God for a miracle and, lo and behold, one was forthcoming!

When he left the cathedral and stepped out into the churchyard, he saw the miracle for which he had prayed. There, in the middle of the yard, was a great stone. Embedded in the stone was a cast iron anvil, such as a blacksmith or coyote might use. And sticking out of the anvil was a magnificent sword. The finest sword ever made, as though it came from Heaven’s own forge. And inscribed on the sword, just below the hilt, were these words:

Whosoever pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil

Is rightwise king, born of England

Of course, when word of this miraculous sword spread, every knight and nobleman in the country came to London to try to pull the sword from the stone. But though the biggest, strongest and most powerful men in the land tried, after a full week, not one had been able to successfully remove the sword. So it seemed the miracle had failed…which doesn’t really sound to me like something miracles do, but what do I know?

In any case, all the wealthy, powerful men were all in London, having each failed to budge the sword even one lousy, crummy inch, so they got together and came up with another idea: A jousting tournament! You see, it is the instinctive nature of big, strong, tough men to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem with violence rather than, say, debate or perhaps a game of chess. So it was decided that on the following New Year’s Day (that is, one year from the day they all gave up on the sword), they would hold a great big jousting tournament in London and whoever won would be crowned King of All England.

Little did they know that someone else had made other plans…

Our story now changes quite abruptly to the castle of Sir Ector who lived with his son, Kay, a big, strong, tough guy such as was described just recently, and his…his sort of…well, I guess you’d call him his ward. That is, he sort of informally adopted the boy when a mysterious stranger had left him on the doorstep twelve years ago. His name was Arthur, according to the information given by the stranger, but Kay soon took to calling him “Wart,” which was partly a misunderstanding of the word “ward” but mostly just a mean insult. The name stuck and for most of his life, Wart was more of a serving boy than a member of the family. He very much wanted to be Kay’s brother and Ector’s son, but he spent most of his time in the kitchen, scrubbing pots, or tending to Kay’s horse or doing all manner of chores for Ector and Kay, who were, of course, of “noble blood” which, in those days, meant they were just plain better than normal people.

So for twelve years, Wart served Sir Ector and Kay. Then, a rumor reached Sir Ector’s ears about some kind of sword which would make somebody king and he and Kay left to try their hands at it, leaving Wart alone in the castle…which it was his job to clean…by himself…he’s twelve. And it was while getting a particularly nasty cobweb out of a particularly hard-to-reach place that Wart heard a pounding on the castle’s mighty wooden doors. He went at once to answer it.

“Good morning, young man,” said the figure at the door. He was perhaps the strangest man Wart had ever seen. Older, wrinkled, with long silver-gray hair and beard that reached halfway down his body. He wore long, flowing blue robes with a tall, pointed hat to match. Wart felt at once as though he had never seen this man before, and yet, at the same time, as though he’d known him all his life.

“My name,” the stranger continued, “is Merlin. And I have come to be your tutor.”

“Tutor?” said Wart, incredulously. You see, things like education, being able to read and write, these were reserved for the rich and noble (I hope you’ve been paying attention to the whole class struggle thing we got going on here) and poor orphans like Wart never had tutors.

“Indeed. You have a lot to learn, Arthur.”

“Arthur?” It had been so long since he’d heard his real name, he’d almost forgotten it.

When Ector and Kay returned (in failure) they were surprised and more than a little irritated to see Merlin. But when Merlin insisted that he would work for free, he was immediatley hired as Wart’s tutor. So any time that he could spare between chores was dedicated to his lessons with Merlin who, the old man told his young pupil, was more than just a teacher. He was, in fact, a wizard! And he used his powers to teach Wart the most unusual lessons.

One day he cast a spell on Wart which turned the boy into a fish! He swam through the castle moat and saw how the big fish ate the little fish and how the bigger fish ate the big fish. He saw how much living creatures depend on each other, even if they don’t fully understand why. Another day, Wart and Merlin became squirrels and Wart was amazed at the great strength and skill of so small and insignificant a creature. Merlin even turned Wart into a bird, allowing him to fly over the whole country and see things from a whole different perspective. Wart learned a lot from these lessons, though he didn’t quite know it at the time.

After spending a year teaching Wart, Merlin announced that he was leaving. “I have taught you all I can,” he said, as he packed his few posessions. “The rest is up to you.” And despite the sad protests of Wart, Merlin left the castle. But, Wart didn’t have time to miss Merlin now, he was busier than ever helping Kay. It was almost New Year’s Day and the great tournament was at hand. Of course, Sir Ector was too old to compete, but Kay, being young and strong, was determined to win and become King of England. Wart was given the “honor” of serving as Kay’s squire and accompanying him to London.

It was a fantastic tournament. The greatest warriors in the land coming together to beat the ever-loving crud out of each other in the hopes of being crowned king. It was in the midst of the excitement that Wart realized he had left Kay’s sword at the inn! He ran back to town but found the inn locked. The innkeeper had gone to watch the tournament. Wart was very worried, for without a sword, Kay would be unable to compete. Just then, he saw something: It was a sword! And a nice one, too. The only odd thing was that it was sticking out of a stone and anvil in a churchyard. But, Kay needed a sword, so Wart went over, grabbed the sword and pulled with all his might. The sword slid out as though the anvil were made of butter and, clutching it tight, Wart ran back to the tournament.

“I’m sorry, Kay,” he said when he arrived. “Your sword is locked in the inn. But I found this one you could use instead.”

Kay looked at it a moment. He was cross with Wart for forgetting his sword, but this new one looked much nicer. In fact, it…wait…suddenly Kay spied the writing on the sword. He showed it to Sir Ector who showed it around to all the other kinghts and noblemen. None of them could believe it.

“Wart,” said Sir Ector, “tell the truth now: Where did you get this sword?”

“It was sticking out of an anvil on a stone in a churchyard.” It was the truth, but now that he said it out loud, Wart had to admit it sounded a little strange. Several of the knights laughed when they heard it, but Wart insisted that it was true and led them to the churchyard. “There, see? That’s where I got it.”

Sir Ector took the sword and put it back into the stone and anvil. Then Kay stepped forward and tried to pull it out, assuming that it would be easier now that it had been pulled out once. But, such was not the case and Kay, Ector and about a dozen other knights made enormous fools of themselves trying before a voice in the crowd said, “Let the boy try!” Soon several of the assembled crowd were saying the same thing. So, nervously, Wart stepped up to the sword for the second time that day, grabbed a hold of the hilt and pulled it out easily.

“It’s a miracle!”

“It’s incredible!”

“He’s our king!”

The men fell to their knees in reverence. To Wart’s great surprise, even Sir Ecor and Kay knelt. “Hail, King Arthur,” they said. And soon the entire town of London was saying “Hail, King Arthur! Long Live King Arthur!”

As the boy, Arthur, waited in his newly-appointed chambers for the coronation to begin, he was worried, and even thought about running away. How could I be the king? he kept asking himself. I’m nobody. I’m not even a noble. I’m just…Wart.

“Oh, you are so much more than that,” came a familiar voice. Arthur spun around and saw his old friend, Merlin, standing before him, beaming proudly at his former pupil. “You see, Arthur, your father was the great king, Uther Pendragon. And when he heard that there was a plan to kill you, he asked me to make sure you were well hidden. I left you with Sir Ector because his home was far enough away from London that you would not be found. Then, when the time was right, I came to you as a tutor so that I could teach you the ways of the world which those who are born rich and powerful can never understand, in the hopes that it would make you a better man and, therefore, a better king. All that has happened has been according to my plan and today is the first day of a new golden age of England. The age of King Arthur!”

And so it was. The reign of King Arthur is known even today as perhaps the greatest of any king of England before or since. He reigned for many years and there are many, many stories of this great king. Maybe I’ll tell you about them…some day!

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

Le Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Mallory (1470) The first real book published to chronicle the history of King Arthur and still the closest thing to a “definitive” work that exists.
The Once and Future King by T.H. White (1958) White’s interpretation is considered lighter, more accessible, with more wit and emotion than its predecesor. The first book in this volume details Arthur’s youth and education at the hands of Merlin leading up to his acquisition of Excalibur, the Sword in the Stone.
The Sword in the Stone (1963) Walt Disney’s animated adaptation of White’s book is noted for being the first Disney animatd feature to have songs written by the Sherman Brothers. Though considered one of Disney’s best, Arthurian purists have shunned it for its portrayal of Merlin as a comic bungler (purportedly inspired by Walt himself) rather than the austere wiseman he is more commonly seen as.
Camelot (Broadway/Movie) Actually, the team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe originally wanted this musical to tell the story of “The Sword in the Stone,” but when the rights proved hard to secure, they instead wrote this slightly more grownup story which, nevertheless, does chronicle the events of “The Sword in the Stone” briefly as a kind of back story.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) Graham Chapman plays the pompous and mathematically-impaired king in this satirical version of Arthurian Legend which is, sadly, where most people nowadays get their information about these stories. Don’t get me wrong, this is one of the ten funniest movies ever made, but it’s funnier if you know who Arthur really is…well, I say really, but it’s not like he…well, never mind.
King Arthur (2004) Clive Owen and Keira Knightley star in this big screen adventure depicting Arthur as a war chief who fought just before the fall of the Roman Empire, which, while it does have more physical evidence backing it up, is less magical than the story we all know.
Merlin (TV) This acclaimed BBC drama depicts Merlin as a serving boy to Arthur, who lives in Camelot under the rule of his magic-hating father, Uther. Though not exactly reliable to the source material, it is, nevertheless, an exciting and enchanting series for those who love swords and sorcery. I have often described this show as “Arthurian ‘Smallville’.”

NEXT WEEK: "The True Bride"

PERSEUS AND THE GORGON

2012-07-27T00:00:00.005-04:00

I got about halfway through writing up this particular Greek myth when I came to an important realization: This story is friggin’ nuts! I mean, as Greek myths go, it’s actually pretty tame, but it’s still pretty ridiculous. I hope to Zeus these things made more sense in Ancient Greek and we just think they’re insane cuz something was lost in translation. In any case, English is what we’re dealing with here, so I had to go over the story again and add jokes. I like the story, in spite of its ludicrous twists and turns, so I didn’t just want to throw it out, but I thought if I played it for laughs a bit more, it might work better.

There are, of course, several different versions of the myth, and, as per usual, mine takes elements from a handful of tellings. So you might not see your favorite part of the story here.

Once upon a really quite very long time ago, there was a king called Acrissius who, like many narrow-minded kings, very much wanted to have a son. Instead, he got a daughter, whom he named Danae…wait, whom? Is that right? Who he named…he named…no, whom. Whom is right. What? Oh, sorry. As I say, King Acrissius’ only child was his daughter Danae. Being of a naturally curious disposition, the king went to see the Oracle at Delphi (Ah-ah-AH! choir of small children singing) and asked it whether he would ever have a son. The Oracle said that not only would Acrissius not have a son, but his daughter would, and that son would one day, and this is a direct quote: “defeat the king and wear the crown.”

King Acrissius was horrified at the thought of being overthrown by his own hypothetical grandson. Desperate to avoid this fate, he locked Danae in a tower and refused to ever let her out, reasoning that if she never had a child, he had no reason to fear her offspring. But Zeus, the king of the gods of Greece, was not a particular fan of Acrissius, and he was especially mad at him for defying the Oracle at Delphi (Ah-ah-AH! slightly larger choir of small children singing this time), and so he did one of those things that gods get to do: He performed a miracle. He sent Danae a son, and she named him Perseus since he was “from Zeus.” For many years, Danae and Perseus lived secretly in the tower until the child’s laughter was heard by his wicked grandfather. When King Acrissius found out that Danae had, against all logic and the very laws of nature, borne a son, he was acrimonious…no, he was mad. I don’t know why I said that other word, excuse me.

Whatever word you like, Acrissius decided to get rid of the pair of them once and for all. Mother and child were sealed in a wooden box and the box was thrown into the sea. But, once again, Acrissius had not reckoned with the gods, and Zeus’s brother, Poseidon, carried the box across the ocean to a new land called Seriphos. The box washed up on shore where it was found and opened by a kindly man named Dictys. When he heard of Danae and Perseus’ plight, he took pity on them and asked them to come and live with him. So that is how Perseus grew to be a man with the love of his mother and the guiding hand of Dictys.

Now, it just so happened. that Dictys had a brother, named Polydectes (I know, the names in this one are kind of tricky). It also happened that Polydectes was the king of Seriphos. And the law of the land entiteld him to take any woman he wanted for his bride. As it further happened, he had his eye on Perseus’ mother, Danae. Perseus, however, knew the kind of man Polydectes was and knew that he would not be a good husband to his mother.

“You may be king,” said Perseus, defiantly, “but I will never call you father.”

“You will, boy,” said Polydectes. “I will have your mother for my bride or both of you will be put to death.”

The fear of death has, in the past, been referred to as “a helpful motivator.” Such was the case with Danae. Not for her own sake so much, but for her son. She agreed to marry Polydectes and asked her son to get on board with the whole thing. She asked him to go to his future stepfather and ask his forgiveness and offer his blessing. Eventually, Perseus agreed and did so the next morning. As a gesture of apology for his harsh words, Perseus asked Polydectes what gift he should bring to the wedding. “Anything under the sky is yours to request,” said Perseus, never dreaming that he’d soon live to regret it.

“Anything?” said the sinister king. “Very well: Bring me…the head of the Gorgon, Medusa!”

(GASP! Dramatic sting!!)

For those of you who aren’t from around here, the Gorgons were three horrible monsters. Of these, two were immortal. The one who was mortal was Medusa. Some said she was once a beautiful human woman who, years ago, had offended the goddess Athena who had turned her into a monster as punishment. And a monster she was! Her hair was actually live snakes, and one look in her eyes would turn a man to stone! But Perseus had (stupidly) promised to bring Polydectes any gift he asked for, so he set forth the very next day to seek out the Gorgons.

The night before his adventure was to begin, the gods appeared to him. They wanted to help him in his quest. Athena gave him a highly polished shield, the inside of which reflected like a mirror. Hermes lent Perseus his winged sandals to hasten his journey. Even Zeus himself gave him an adamani…admananium…adam…a magic sword with which to slice off Medusa’s head. Perseus was very grateful to the gods for their gifts and their advice:

“When you depart at tomorrow’s sun,” Athena said, “run to the other side of the world, where the sun has just set. There you will find the Graeae. They are cousins of the Gorgons and will help you to find your enemy.”

“Well, can’t you guys just tell me where they are?”

“No. No we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Er…do not question the ways of the gods! Just go find the Gray Ladies, okay?”

So, the next morning as the first rays of the sun shone upon him, Perseus ran with Hermes’ winged sandals to the other side of the world. Here night had just begun to fall. And on the cold, dark rocks at the edge of the sea he found the Graeae. These three old hags had only one eye that they shared between them. One would remove it and pass it to the next and they would all get a turn…yes, I agree, it’s disgusting, but it’s just a story. Anyway, as one passed it to the next, Perseus took it and held it out of their reach.

“Where is our eye?” cried the Graeae. “Who has our eye?”

“I,” said Perseus.

“Yes. Eye. Where is our eye?”

“No, I mean I as in me.”

“You? What about you?”

“No, I—never mind. I have your stupid eye and I won’t return it until you tell me how to find your cousins, the Gorgons.”

The Graeae agreed and told Perseus where he would find the Gorgons. Perseus returned their eye (gratefully, cuz it was pretty gross) and followed their directions until he came to the outskirts of the nation of Ethiopia (not the one you’re thinking of, this is a different one). It was a dark, gray place where it looked like the sun had never shone. Here is where the Gorgons lived and here is where Perseus found Medusa.

“Who seeks Medusa?” she asked, her back to her foe.

“I am Perseus. Son of Zeus and the mortal Danae. The man I will one day call ‘father’ has demanded your head and I will not leave this place without it.”

See? That’s how heroes talk in stories like this. Nobody talks like that anymore. How cool is that?

Anyway: “Then you will never leave this place!” hissed Medusa (or it might have been her hair) and she rounded on her enemy. “Look into my eyes!”

“No!” replied Perseus and he at once spun around and held up his shield. With his back to Medusa, he saw her reflection in his shield and by looking, memorizing the terrain then shutting his eyes and quickly turning around he was able to fight Medusa without ever looking directly at her. The battle raged on for many hours, and it was almost daybreak when the final blow was struck. With a mighty swipe of Zeus’ sword, Perseus sliced through Medusa’s neck and her lifeless head fell to the ground…again, pretty gross, huh?

Exhausted from his battle, Perseus used the last of his strength to put the severed head in his knapsack (very carefully, because her eyes were still open) and then he did what pretty much any demigod would do in the same situation: He collapsed to the ground and lost consciousness.

He awoke several hours later in a soft bed with maids attending him. “Where am I?” he demanded of them.

“You are in the palace of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia. The monarchs of Ethiopia.”

“How did I get here?” he asked. They explained how the sounds of the battle with Medusa had attracted the attention of some early-morning fishermen. They had seen Perseus behead Medusa and collapse on the rocks. They knew the other two Gorgons (the ones that didn’t die, remember) would soon discover him and tear him limb from limb for killing their sister, so they carried him into the city where news quickly spread of his defeat of the monster. The king and queen ordered him to be brought to their palace where, when he awoke, which was now, he would be their honored guest at a feast.

Well, I don’t know if you’ve ever beheaded a terrible monster after fighting for hours on end and then slept for more hours on more end (I don’t think that’s right, but let’s move on), but if you have you would know what Perseus knew, that what you’d really be in the mood for was a feast. He sat at the royal table between the king and queen and was called on to recount the story of his adventure which, when it was over, was met with cheers and applause the likes of which Perseus had never heard before. It was the greatest night of his life…until the end of the meal.

“Perseus,” said the King, hesitantly, “I should tell you, this feast is not just to celebrate your victory over Medusa.”

“It isn’t?”

“No,” said the Queen. “It is also to entice you to help us.”

“You see,” continued the King, “this very night, a terrible sea serpent is going to kill our daughter, Andromeda.”

“What?” said Perseus, understandably perplexed. “Why? How? Huh?”

The King explained that, some days ago, the Queen had said, only in jest, you understand, that she was more beautiful than the water nymphs of Poseidon. Poseidon (who only about ten years ago had saved Perseus and his mother, for those having a hard time keeping track) apparently took her boasts as blasphemy and said that he would send the serpent, Cetus, to destroy Ethiopia. When the King and Queen begged for mercy, Poseidon said “very well, I won’t destroy the entire city…only one…your daughter. Tie her to a stone on the edge of the city at sunset in three days’ time and I will spare the rest of your lives.”

“So you see,” the King implored, “what we really need right now is somebody who can kill a monster.”

“Please, Perseus,” begged the Queen. “You may be our only hope of saving our city and our child.”

Perseus agreed for some reason, and at sundown that very night, the princess Andromeda was brought forth. She was tied to a large stone at the very edge of the city and Perseus crouched down behind the stone, waiting for Cetus to attack. Sure enough, the tide rolled in and a huge, terrifying serpent slithered out of the sea. It was just about to attack Andromeda when…SLASH! Perseus leaped out from behind the stone and sliced off the serpent’s head. Poseidon was, of course, furious, but he had made a promise: If Andromeda was tied to the stone at sundown, he would not destroy the city. Andromeda was tied down, so, even though she wasn’t killed, he had to spare Ethiopia. In the end, however, he got his revenge on Cassiopeia: When she died, he used his power to hang her in the sky, upside down, for all eternity, as a mighty constellation of stars…but that comes later.

For now, Ethiopia was saved and the King and Queen were even more grateful to Perseus than they had been before and they asked if there was anything he wanted as a reward. And, as a matter of fact there was. To make a long story slightly less long, Perseus and Andromeda were married soon thereafter.

But, now was not the time for a honeymoon. Perseus had somewhere to be. He bid his new bride put her arms around him very, very tight. She did this and then, using Hermes’ winged sandals, he ran all the way back home to Seriphos, just in time for the wedding ceremony to begin. He entered the palace bearing the gifts from the gods, the knapsack over his shoulder and his new wife, Andromeda.

“Mom,” he said, “this is my wife, Andromeda. Andy, this is my mother.”

Danae was less than thrilled at finding out like this, but she embraced Andromeda anyway.

“Yes, yes, she seems lovely,” said Polydectes. “But I didn’t send you after a girl. Did you bring what I requested?”

“Yes, Father,” he said, possibly inventing sarcasm at that moment. “It’s right…here!” And with the kind of lightning fast reflexes that only a demigod could possess and which it would be pointless attempting if you’re not one, Perseus whipped the knapsack off his back reached in and pulled out Medusa’s head, pointing it straight at Polydectes. And the moment Polydectes eyes made contact with Medusa’s deathly gaze, he turned at once into solid stone.

So the Oracle at Delphi (The choir of small children thought they were done and left for the day) was right. Perseus grew up to defeat a king and wear his crown…just not the king Acrissius had expected. In case you’re interested, Acrissius lived a long and lonely life with no children and his very last thought before his death was sorrow at what he had done to his daughter and grandson. But why waste time worrying about that old jerk? Especially when Perseus was a hero, a husband and a king all at the same time. He had many more adventures and even founded his own kingdom, Mycenae, where he and his extended family lived very happily ever after…if you can believe that!

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

“Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Greek Myths” (1990; TV) Their version of Perseus’ story includes a cameo by Atlas who, contrary to popular belief, actually held up the sky, not the Earth. In this story, Perseus takes pity on the poor man and mercifully turns him to stone with Medusa’s head so he won’t feel the weight of the sky anymore.
Percy Jackson and the Olympians (books/movie) The title character of these modern day myths is actually named after Perseus and the first story, the Lightning Thief, features several references to his legend. Medusa (played by Uma Thurman in the movie) even makes an appearance.
Clash of the Titans (1981/2010) This is an epic story of Greek mythology based on the loose framework of Perseus' story. The original is famous for the excellent stop-motion animation of the late, great Ray Harryhausen and stars Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Ursula Andress, Burgess Meredith and Harry Hamlin as Perseus. The big budget remake features Sam Worthington as Perseus along with Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Jason Flemyng (who you’d recognize if you saw him)

NEXT WEEK: "The Return of Shelly Hobbes: Master Detective...Again!"

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

2012-07-13T00:00:00.009-04:00

Before we go ahead with today’s story, I’d like to acknowledge a milestone: In three days’ time, "Once Upon a Time and Long Ago” celebrates its second anniversary. I remember when I started this pointless project two years ago with fifty fairy tales in a Word file and no idea what I was doing. Now, two years and an additional eighty stories later…well, I still have no idea what I’m doing. The truth is I never had any specific goal with this blog. Yeah, it would be nice if it picked up and became really popular. It would been great if a publisher comes across it and offers me a book deal. I wouldn’t be at all dissapointed if some of the girls who rejectd me in the past saw how clever and talented I was and regretted not giving me the time of day. As it is, none of that crap has, as of yet, happened. What did happen is I made a few people smile every now and then, kept myself actively writing at a time in my life when I had no other creative outlet, learned a lot about fairy tales and folklore, and maybe even made a few friends along the way. I guess the truth is that I’ve been writing this blog for myself all this time. I wanted to create something. A body of work I can point to and say “I made that.” As the years pass, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that I will ever be a professional writer, and that doesn’t really bother me. Because if there’s every any doubt, I can click a link and see my words and pictures there on the internet for all the world to enjoy. And, honestly, I've loved every minute of it.

If, however, you were so inclined, you could aide my writing career by purchasing and downloading my sci-fi/fantasy novel 'Dragonfly' from the Amazon Kindle store (Remember, even if you don't have a kindle, you can download the free Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android, Windows Phone, Mac or PC). Or by buying one of my original designs at cafepress.com/GalleonsLap. I'm just sayin' is all!

Okay, now we come to the story itself: When people are talking about Shakespeare’s master works they are, almost without exception, talking about his great histories and tragedies like Richard III, Henry V, Hamlet, Othello and King Lear. But, to me, the real Shakespeare is to be found in the comedies. Here you find all the beautiful prose, the breathtaking poetry, and it has a happy ending. If I’ve made any point at all over the past two years, it’s that no writer in the history of language has ever been able to devise a better ending than “and they all lived happily ever after,” which is why I felt that this momentous occasion called for a good old-fashioned “Mega-Happy Ending.”

It’s worth noting that, according to many scholars who are pretty sure of themselves, most if not all of Shakespeare’s plays were based on older stories, so there could very easily be some ancient fairy tale, now, sadly, lost to us, about four lovers falling all over each other in the woods at night. Speaking of which, you’ll find no mention of Bottom or the “Crude Mechanicals” here. In the interest of simplicity, I have decided to relate only the story of the Athenian Lovers.

A wedding is supposed to be a happy occasion. It should be celebrated with loud music, cheap booze and people dancing up a storm who can’t actually dance even a little. Unfortunately, that was not always the case. It seems that in Athens (which is in Greece), there used to be this law that fathers got to choose who their daughters married. I know, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me and we may never know whose idea it was to enact that silly law, but it was the law and that’s the point.

You see, there was this girl called Hermia who was in love with a boy called Lysander, and he, coincidentally enough, was in love with her. All things being equal, this would’ve been very good news, but for that silly law we mentioned earlier. See, Hermia’s father wanted her to marry this guy Demetrius who was, to be fair, a pretty nice guy, and probably would’ve treated Hermia pretty well, but she didn’t love him. It was beginning to look like Hermia would have to marry a man she didn’t love, or go away to a convent and never marry anyone ever for her whole life.

But Lysander was not the type to give up on true love (and, in fact, if you give up on it, it wasn’t really true love to begin with, now was it?). And he had an aunt who lived just outside of Athens. If he and Hermia fled there that night, they could get married outside of Athens where the law couldn’t touch them. Hermia didn’t like the idea of leaving her home and family forever…but it was preferable to leaving Lysander forever, so she consented.

And, again, we might have been just a hop, skip and a jump away from our happy ending, but Hermia couldn’t leave without saying goodbye to her bestest best friend, Helena. You see, Helena actually was in love with Demetrius, but he only had eyes for Hermia (brace yourselves, it’s actually gonna get a lot more confusing before we’re done here). So when Hermia told Helena that she and Lysander were eloping, hope dawned that maybe Demetrius would look her way. She wished her friends much luck and happiness and they were away and Helena went at once to talk to Demetrius…

“Do I lead you on?” said Demetrius, firmly. “Do I compliment you, give you false hope? Have I given you even the slightest indication that we will ever be together? No, I’m pretty sure I come right out and tell you, at every given opportunity, that I do not want you!”

“Why not?” said an admittedly desperate Helena. “What’s Hermia got that I haven’t got?”

“Look, it doesn’t matter anyway. Tomorrow we’re getting married, so—”

“No you’re not! Tomorrow she’ll be married to…oops.” Hermia hadn’t counted on the fact that her bestest best friend couldn’t keep a secret to save her life. Needless to say, but apparently I’m going to, it took Demetrius all of forty-seven seconds to get Helena to spill the beans about the elopement. Knowing that the only way they could leave the city undetected was to go through the woods, Demetrius ran at once to catch them, with Helena following right behind.

Now, these particular woods, the ones just on the outskirts of Athens (what are outskirts, anyway? Are there inskirts?), were very unusual, as local legend had it that Oberon, King of the Fairies lived here with his band of magical fairies. And…he did! So, there ya go. Oberon didn’t usually get involved with human types, but every now and then when a suffering person swam into his purview, he was not above a little compassion. When, for example, two bickering young people in Athenian clothes came stomping through the forest, he took a moment to listen:

“It doesn’t matter what you do or say,” groveled Helena as she followed Demetrius closely. “Shout at me, insult me, reject me, push me away, it won’t do you any good. I’ll still love you.”

“You want me to insult you? Here: When I look at you, I feel phsically ill.”

“And I feel ill when I’m not looking at you. See how perfect we are for each other?”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“I don’t care! I love you!”

Oberon saw this and thought it was…well, embarrassing, quite frankly. But, he could tell with that special sense of these things that only very magic creatures possess that this couple deserved a shot. So he sent for his righthand man, a mischevious fairy called Puck. “There’s a flower that grows on the very other side of the world,” he told his servant. “A drop of juice from this flower, when dripped into the eye of a sleeping mortal, will cause that mortal to fall hopelessly in love with the next person he sees. I want you to go get that flower, and drip it in the eyes of the young man who is traveling through our forest.”

“Yes, sir,” said Puck. “But how will I know this man?”

“He is traveling with a young woman and both are wearing the clothing of Athens. Now go!”

Puck obeyed and was back with the flower in forty minutes (which might seem like a long time, but remember he was literally going to the other side of the world). It took him less time to find two young Athenians sleeping on a grassy knoll. “Let’s see,” he said. “Man, woman, Athenian clothes. Yep! This must be them.” With that, he dripped a single drop from the flower into the eye of the young man and scampered away to help play a prank on his master’s wife and some actors…but that’s another story.

Now, I don’t want you to blame Puck for any of this. Neither he nor Oberon had any idea that there were two pairs of young Athenians wandering the forest at night. When Puck saw their Athenian clothes, he assumed they were Helena and Demetrius…but they were, in fact, Hermia and Lysander! And it was Lysander’s eyes into which Puck had dripped the love juice! Meanwhile, Demetrius had finally lost Helena and she was wandering through the forest alone. When she stumbled (literally) upon Lysander’s sleeping form, she was overjoyed at seeing a familiar face.

“Lysander? Oh, thank heavens! Have you seen…Lysander? Are you okay?”

Lysander was not okay, not really. He was looking at Helena very strangely. As though he was seeing her for the first time. The magic flower had done its job and Lysander was now, through no fault of his own, hopelessly and totally in love with Helena.

“Transparent Helena!” he said at last. “Nature shows art, That through thy bosom makes me see thy heart.” Turns out, being in love makes you talk funny. Who knew?

“Huh? Look, whatever, I need your help.”

“Of course. Anything. I’d do anything for you. I’d walk through fire, I’d swim the ocean, I’d slay a dragon and bring back its head to win your favor, fair Helena.”

“Fair Helena? What? Lysander, what are you talking about? I’m trying to find Demetrius.”

“Demetrius?” said Hermia. All this talk had woken her up. “Is Demetrius here? In the forest?”

“Yeah, I…I kinda let it slip that you guys were running away. I’m really sorry about that! And now he’s somewhere in the woods and I need to—”

“Demetrius?!?” cried Lysander. “Here? Then I shall duel him to the death for the hand of my beloved Helena.”

“Do what now?” said Hermia.

“Where is the swine who dares to claim my own sweet Helena’s heart?”

“What the heck are you talking about?” demanded Helena.

“How can I make it any clearer? I love you, Helena. You are my own heart’s desire. I will never be happy until I have won your heart and can call you my own.” Lysander was literally down on one knee as he said this. Hermia was speechless, as I’m sure you can imagine. Helena was very confused.

“What is this?” she said at last. “Some sort of joke? That’s it, isn’t it? ‘Oh, poor Helena! She’s in love with Demetrius but everyone’s in love with Hermia!’ Well it’s not funny!” So saying she stomped off into the woods to find Demetrius.

“Wait, my love!” said Lysander running after her.

“Your love? Wait, Lysander!” said Hermia running after the pair of them.

Well, Puck saw all this happen. And, while he personally thought it hilarious, he knew his master would be mad that he screwed up. So he searched the forest until he found Demetrius, sleeping on his own in another part of the forest. And, just as before, he dropped the juice of the flower into his eye and hid himself as who should come running up but everybody else in the story. Helena running away, Lysander chasing her, Hermia chasing him, all of them waking Demetrius who, the minute he saw Helena…well, you know.

“O Helena, goddess, nymph, perfect, divine!”

“Oh, not you too!” cried Helena. “It was annoying coming from Lysander, but this is too cruel.”

“Yes, Demetrius!” said Lysander suddenly. “Stay away from my Helena!”

“Your Helena?” exclaimed Demetrius. “You love Hermia!”

“Love Hermia? No! I hate Hermia!”

“Excuse me?!?” said Hermia.

“I love Helena and we will be wed!”

“No, I love Helena, and we will be wed!”

“Nobody loves Helena!” shouted Hermia, and then immediately regretted it. “I’m so sorry, Helena, I didn’t mean that. But…look, what is wrong with you two?” It was a little confusing for the ladies. Just a few hours ago, both men had been determined to marry Hermia, now they both seemed to be in love with Helena. Hermia thought they had gone mad, Helena still thought they were all playing a mean trick on her and the boys…well, they were so addled with that love potion they didn’t know what they were doing.

“I challenge you to a duel!” declared Lysander, and would probably have slapped him with a glove, except this was the middle of summer and it was too hot for gloves.

“I accept your challenge!” said Demetrius, who didn't let the lack of handwear stop him and slapped Lysander across the face with his bare hand.

It was about this point that Puck decided his little joke had run its course and he went to go tell Oberon. The Fairy King was, understandably, annoyed at Puck. “Did you screw this up on accident because you’re a fool, or on purpose because you’re making trouble again?”

"Er...whichever one will get me in the least amount of trouble?"

Oberon did not find this funny.

“I promise, King of Shadows,” said the contrite Puck. “It was an innocent mistake. You said to look for a man and a woman wearing Athenian clothing, and I did.”

“And when you dripped the juice into the second mortal’s eyes?”

“Yes, okay, that wasn’t great, I admit. Still, you have to admit, it’s a little funny, right?”

Oberon didn't find that funny either.

“I don’t want those two killing each other!" bellowed the Fairy King. "I know where I can find an herb that will set everything straight. But you have to stop them fighting until I come back. Can you handle that?”

Puck said he could and he went at once to where Lysander was sharpening his sword and preparing for battle, while Hermia stood by him, begging him to come to his senses.

“Come out, Lysander, you coward!” said Puck, but he said it in Demetrius’ voice (which is a thing fairies can do, you know).

“You dare call me a coward? Then show yourself!”

“Follow my voice and we shall do battle this very night!” Using his magic, Puck made it sound like Demetrius’ voice was coming from deep in the woods, so Lysander tore into the trees to fight his imaginary foe, Hermia right on his heels.

Meanwhile, in Demetrius’ corner, Helena was doing some pleading of her own, when:

“Enough waiting!” came Lysander’s voice, courtesy of Puck. “Come get me and we’ll settle this right now!” And, just as Lysander had done, Demetrius followed the magical voice with Helena close behind him. Now both men, and their respective ladies, were walking further and further away from each other, convinced that they were getting closer and closer. Once they were at a safe distance, Puck cast a spell which put all four Athenians to sleep instantly.

“Lord, what fools these mortals be!” he said to himself as Oberon returned with the magic herb and worked one final spell before the dawn…

The next morning, Hermia was awakened by the bright sun shining on her face. She started to get up to draw her curtains, only to realize that she was not in her bed. She was lying on a grassy knoll in the forest. Memories of the night before came flooding back to her and her eyes quickly fell upon Lysander’s sleeping form a few feet away.

“Lysander? Lysander, wake up!” she said, shaking him gently.

“Hermia?” said Lysander, groggily. “I…I was having the strangest dream…or was it a dream?”

“I don’t know,” said Hermia. “But I think maybe we should get out of these woods.” They walked hand in hand, back the way they had come, in the hopes of finding their way to Lysander’s aunt’s home…but in retracing their steps, they found something they hadn’t expected: Another soft patch of earth in which Demetrius and Helena were asleep in each other’s arms.

“Demetrius? Helena?”

They both awoke at hearing their names and, like Hermia and Lysander, seemed to take a moment for their memories to return.

“How did…When did…Did we…Did I?” said Demetrius.

“Just what I was thinking,” said Lysander.

“I feel like I’ve been dreaming,” said Helena. “But I can’t for the life of me remember what I dreamed. Not clearly, anyway. Bits and pieces.”

“Same here,” said Hermia. “Maybe they’re right when they say these woods are enchanted.” They all agreed that it was possible. Had they seen the pair of eyes watching them and smiling before he went to sleep, they would’ve been certain.

A few hours later saw all four standing before Hermia’s father. Hermia and Lysander were hand-in-hand, as were Demetrius and Helena. They explained, as well as they could, the current state of affairs. Hermia’s father was confused, but even he had to admit that it was silly forcing two people to get married if neither one wanted to and gave his consent.

A wedding is supposed to be a happy occasion. It should be celebrated with loud music, cheap booze and people dancing up a storm who can’t actually dance even a little. And, if it’s a double wedding, there should be twice as much music, twice as much to drink, and twice as many terrible dancers taking up room on the floor from those who actually know what they’re doing. But the best part of a double wedding is that it means twice as many people are living happily ever after.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) In this adaptation, Mickey Rooney is Puck and James Cagney is Bottom. Also stars Olivia De Havilland, Dick Powell and Joe E. Brown.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1999) This more lavish, colorful version stars Stanley Tucci as Puck, Rupert Everett as Oberon and the Athenian lovers are played by Christian Bale, Dominic West, Anna Friel and Calista Flockhart.
Disney's House of Mouse (TV) One episode featured a short version of the story which, like mine, focuses on the young lovers. Goofy's Puck is more absent-minded than mischevious and the couples are, of course, Mickey and Minnie, and Donald and Daisy (admittedly it was a little weird for this long-time Disney fan to hear Mickey shout "I'm yours, baby" to Daisy Duck, but otherwise pretty cute).

NEXT WEEK: Sasha and the Other

Leroy In Time

2012-07-04T00:00:00.002-04:00

Happy Independence Day, my American friends! And to my many readers outside of America...Happy Wednesday, I guess! Then again, some of you may be over the date line so...Happy Tuesday? Or is it Thursday? I don't know how it works, but I mainly want your day to be happy.

This is a time travel story starring Leroy the Penguin and his new friend, Peter the Lemur. He met Peter at a zoo somewhere in the western part of this country, though he says, for security reasons, he can’t tell me exactly where. But, he swears that this story is absolutely true…of course, this is the same guy who swore blind that he spoke to Santa Claus last Christmas, so…whatever. Draw your own conclusions.

I like zoos. It’s just nice to see so many different kinds of animals living together in such a peaceful, civilized society. I love to go to different zoos and meet all the different kinds of creatures who live there. I meet the most interesting folk that way. That’s how I met Peter, after all, and that’s how this story begins…

“Hi, I’m Leroy.”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Peter.”

See? That’s how it begins. Now it’s begun. So next comes…what happened next!

“So, hows the whole lemur thing working out for you?”

Oh, did I not mention Peter is a lemur? Silly me, forgetting something like that. Oh! Also, he’s British.

“Oh, not bad. What about you? Life of a penguin working out okay?”

“Can’t complain. So what are you up to today?”

“Well, it’s funny you should ask. I do need a bit of help with this project I’m working on. Maybe you’d like to lend me a flipper?”

“Okay,” said me, always eager to help, so I followed Peter into his habitat where I saw what looked suspiciously like a cardboard box with the words “time machine” written on the side with a magic marker.

“This,” said Peter, dramatically, “is my time machine!”

“Really? Cuz it looks suspiciously like a cardboard box with the words ‘time machine’ written on the side with a magic marker.”

“Does it? Funny, I hadn’t noticed. At any rate, there it is and it’s almost finished. The trouble is, I can’t finish it on my own. I need someone to sit inside the machine and operate a few simple controls while I enter the final calculations on the large computer bank just to your right.”

To my surprise, I found that there was a large computer bank just to my right. Strange how I noticed the cardboard box before I noticed that. Anyway, as I said, I’m always eager to help so I climbed into the box and found the controls he was talking about (which also looked suspiciously like he had drawn them on with a magic marker). They were, as he said, quite simple. There was a large arrow pointing to the left which said “PAST,” another large arrow pointing to the right which said “FUTURE” and in between, a small square button that said “PRESENT.”

“I just need to calibrate the ‘Present’ setting,” Peter explained, “by linking it to the same thingie that automatically resets your cell phone clock when you cross time zones.”

Sorry for all the techno-babble. Hope you can keep up.

“So what do I do?” I asked.

“Just press and hold down the ‘Present’ button when I tell you and release it at the exact moment I say. Okay?”

I said okay and held my flipper eagerly over the button. Peter did a few weird things on his computer thing, while I started to think about time travel and what it could mean. I could go back into history and meet famous people. I could learn the answers to so many great mysteries about our world. I could go into the future and see the future progress of penguinkind. I could go back to that day last fall and warn myself not to eat a whole carton of ice cream in one sitting so that I wouldn’t be sick to my stomach when Mary Beth called to ask if I wanted to hang out.

Wow! That was stupid.

“All right…now!” said Peter and I held down the button. When I did, it behaved very much the way a button drawn on cardboard would behave, but the whole box started humming. Peter was monitoring the progress on his screen and I was waiting attentively for him to say to let go. The humming was getting louder and the whole box was vibrating. I was getting nervous. Finally, Peter cried, “Now! Now!” and I took my flipper off the button and everything calmed down.

“Did it work?” I asked.

“I think so,” said Peter, looking at his readouts. “If my calculations are correct, and they are 85.9% of the time, the time machine is calibrated correctly.”

“85.9% of the time?”

“Yes, I keep a record of my past calculations and worked out how often they are correct.”

“So there’s a 14.1% chance that that calculation is wrong?”

“Hmmm. I hadn’t thought of that. Never mind. Now all that remains is the maiden voyage. You can come with me if you like, but step out of the time machine first so I can—wait! No! Stop!” But it was too late. While climbing out of the box, I had accidentally hit the button marked “Past.” I took my flipper off it right away, but it was too late. There had been a blinding flash of light and the next thing I knew…well…I was somewhere else.

Or, maybe that should be, somewhen else.

In fact, on close examination I concluded that I was in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1776. The way I was able to reach this conclusion is that a man walked past me saying, “Nice day here in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1776, wouldn’t you say?”

Looking back, I guess he was oddly informative.

Anyway, there I was in 1776. I couldn’t resist taking a look around. It looked just like it did in the movies, and that bit in Disney World with the Hall of Presidents. People had on knickers and tri-cornered hats and I was almost stepped on by three different horses, a personal record for me.

“Be careful, small one,” said a voice behind me. “You’d do well to watch where you’re going.”

I looked up and saw a tall, thin man with red hair smiling down at me. I knew enough about history to know who this was: Thomas Jefferson!

“Perhaps you should come with me. The streets of Philadelphia are not safe for one so small.”

So, taking me up in his arms, Mr. Jefferson carried me to his rooms at the inn where he was staying. I knew that his home was in Virginia, but he was here in Philadelphia as part of the Second Continental Congress which was in the process of debating the difficult question of independence.

“You see, small one,” said Mr. Jefferson, “many of us believe our relationship with Great Britain has grown intolerable and think we should break away and start a new nation.”

“That makes sense to me, Mr. Jefferson.”

“Yes, and to me, and Mr. Adams, and Dr. Franklin and many others. But there are some who disagree. These are the wealthy, conservative set who benefit from their association with the mother country and are concerned that a seperation will jeopardize their status and power. They would rather live comfortably in the past than face the challenge and promise of the future.”

“So, it’s nice to know that hasn’t changed,” I said, but too softly for Mr. Jefferson to hear me.

“That’s what I’m working on here, you see,” Mr. Jefferson continued, showing me to his writing desk. “I am on a committee whose purpose is to write out, in plain, simple terms, the reasons why this seperation is not only justified, but necessary.”

Again, my knowledge of history was enough to tell me that he was talking about the Declaration of Independence. I was pretty excited, I don’t mind telling you. Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence a few feet away from me! How cool is that?

“It hasn’t been easy,” he went on. “Every member of the congress seems to want their own interests represented in this document. They quibble over the slightest detail and ignore the purpose of the paper itself. Besides, the words have to be just right.”

“I understand, sir,” I said. “I happen to be good friends with a writer, and he’s always telling me how important it is to get the words just right.”

“I think I’m nearly there. If only I could think of a good beginning. That’s the most important bit, you know. The beginning. Grab the reader’s attention right away.”

“So my friend has said. May I hear what you have so far?”

“It’s not much I’m afraid.” Mr. Jefferson took up the sheet of paper he was working from and read, “‘There are times when men must pursue the goals of his people and face the…’” that’s as far as he got before he crumpled it up and threw it in the corner, where it landed on a large pile of papers which had met a similar fate. I resisted the temptation to pick one up and pocket it to take back with me…of course, that’s mainly because I had no pockets.

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, Mr. Jefferson, I think you’re trying to make it too fancy. You said yourself that it should be in plain, simple words.”

“This is not a grocery list, my small friend. It is an important document.”

“It certainly is. But that doesn’t mean it has to be Shakespeare. What about something like, ‘When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary…’”

“‘…it becomes necessary,’” continued Mr. Jefferson, a bright gleam in his eye, “‘for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…’” Suddenly excited, a look which I’ve come to know through my association with the selfsame friend I mentioned to Mr. Jefferson earlier, he sat down at his desk and resumed his writing. I was fascinated as I saw him scribble away with his quill pen. I glanced at the paper he was writing on and smiled. He was at my favorite part:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” I thought about how simple an idea that was and, yet, what a revolutionary one it was back then. I thought about how that simple idea would change the world. I thought about the countless people in my time who still didn’t understand that self-evident truth…all men are created equal. Part of me wanted to suggest that he add “and women” to that sentence, or even “regardless of the color of their skin or what country they come from or who they want to marry or if they’re a penguin or how much money they’ve got in their pockets or what religion they are…” but I didn’t want to disturb history too much. Plus, you have to admit, it wouldn’t have sounded quite so good.

Suddenly there came a light tapping sound from the window. Someone was throwing small stones at it to get our attention. Mr. Jefferson got up to see who it was and I was nervous that he might “lose his flow” as my friend puts it and not be able to finish. As he looked out the window he smiled and turned to me. “I believe it’s for you.”

Confused, I went to window and there was Peter the Lemur standing in the street. I said my goodbyes to Mr. Jefferson and ran downstairs to meet him.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” said Peter when he saw me. “I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find you.”

“But how did you get here?” I asked.

“Oh, that. I built another time machine. But it got run over by a horse, so we’ll have to take the first one back. C’mon then.” Luckily, the original time machine had not been run over by a horse so we got in and Peter hit the ‘Present’ button and, with another flash of light, we were back in the good ole 21^st Century, exactly where we were when the whole ordeal started.

“It’s good to be back,” I said, being slightly more careful as I climbed out of the box this time.

“Yes, I think I still have a few more adjustments to make. So, how did you enjoy your trip to the past? Anything interesting happen?”

“Same thing that happens everywhere I go,” I said. “I made a new friend.”

THE END

Prince Darling

2012-06-29T00:00:00.006-04:00

This one is another that I first heard through “Fractured Fairy Tales” and was astounded to find was an actual, real fairy tale. This one also comes to us from Andrew Lang, though there’s no telling where he heard it. Halfway through writing my version, I realized it made a pretty good practical demonstration of “irony,” which some people (I’m talkin’ to you, Ma!) still have a hard time with.

A lot of people are confused about irony. Basically, it means to use words to mean something other than their literal meaning or when things are the oposite of what you’d expect. So, for instance, if a professional woodcutter found himself with nothing to build a fire, that would be ironic. If a hairdresser was bald, that would be pretty ironic. If it rains on your wedding day, that’s not ironic, just unfortunate. Or, if, for example, a man’s name was Darling but he was actually cruel, selfish and unkind, that would be very ironic. It would also be what this story is about: Prince Darling.

Prince Darling’s father was, as you may have been able to deduce for yourselves, a king and he was known to be an honest, benevolent, merciful king who gave a care. In fact, he actually was darling (which, if his name had been something like “Meanie” or “Jerkface” would have been ironic, but since his name was Dennis, it wasn’t. Are we pretty clear on irony as a concept? Good. On we go). One day King Dennis was out walking in the woods, thinking about all the nice things in his life.

“I like my castle…I like my court jester…I like spaghetti…I like sitting in the big, comfy throne…I like rabbits. Like that one!” And sure enough a little white rabbit ran straight up to him, terrified by something and leapt right into the king’s arms. “There, there, little bunny,” said the king. “You can come home with me. I’ll take care of you.” So the king took the bunny home and saw to it that she was well taken care of.

That night the king was awoken (awakened? Awokened? How the heck do you say this?) by a strange visitation. A beautiful woman in a white gown appeared to him. “Good King Dennis,” she said in a voice that was nothing short of angelic. “I am the Good Fairy, Melisande. I heard that you were very kind, so I disguised myself as a cuddly bunny, knowing that only a real jerk could be mean to a cuddly bunny. Because you have proved yourself worthy, I will grant you a wish.”

Well, the king thought about it for a moment, but in the end it was clear what he should wish for. “Nothing in my life is more precious to me than my son, Prince Darling. Unfortunately, I’m worried that he might be on the wrong path. For my wish, I would like you to look after my son and do what you can to make him a good man and a good king.” The fairy agreed to do this and, a few years later, when the king passed away, she set to work.

Prince Darling loved his father very much and missed him terribly. Other than that, he was super-psyched to be the king! It’s worth mentioning at this point that kings in those days didn’t usually take a very active role in their kids’ upbringing. Darling had been raised by a governess (which is like a nanny) who was not very strict with him. She gave in to his every tantrum, his every slightest whim was granted. As a result, Prince Darling as a young man was very, very spoiled and selfish. And his idea of a king’s duties basically involved doing whatever he wanted all the time and arresting anyone who tried to stop him.

Clearly, Melisande had her work cut out for her.

She appeared to King Darling as she had appeared to his father: as a cute, cuddly bunny. When Darling drew his crossbow, however, she knew this wasn’t gonna work, so she turned back into a lady. “I promised your late father that I’d look out for you,” she said, sternly. “Now I can’t force you to be a good person, but maybe I can help you to realize when you’re being bad.” With that, she slipped a gold ring onto Darling’s finger. “Everytime you do or say anything you shouldn’t, that ring will prick your finger like a needle. Hopefully, that will teach you the difference between right and wrong.”

And, really, that should’ve worked. When Darling did something small, like get into a temper for not getting his way, he felt a small pinprick on the ringed finger. When he did something worse, like shouting at the servants, it was more like the tip of a knife pricking him. And when he did something really awful, like kicking a puppy (seriously, who kicks a puppy?) the ring actually made his finger bleed. At first, when he felt the pain, he stopped what he was doing and tried to do the right thing. But after a while he got really sick of it.

“I’m the King!” he shouted to no one in particular. “Why should I let some stupid fairy tell me what to do?” So he pulled the ring off his finger and hurled it into the lake. There it was promptly swallowed by a fish who, two days later, was caught by a fisherman who found the ring and gave it to his wife who had an unfortunate habit of judging her neighbors and gossiping about them. But now, every time she did, the ring pricked her finger and she learned to be kinder to others, which just goes to prove that the ring bit would’ve worked on anyone but Darling.

At any rate, the now un-ringed king was riding through his country one day, when he saw a beautiful shepherdess by the side of the road. Captivated by her great beauty, he rode up to her and announced that she would marry him.

“No, sire,” said the shepherdess. “I am in love with another. A young man from my village. I will marry none but him.”

“But I am your king and I have great love for you.”

“If you truly loved me, sire, you would want me to be happy and marry the man I choose.”

“Nonsense!” said King Darling. “I’m the king, I want you, so I get to have you. That’s how this works! Now marry me or be put to death.”

“I think…neither!” And in a flash, the shepherdess had turned into Melisande, glaring angrily at King Darling. “I thought I would give you one last chance to do something right. But, I daresay, after all these years of thinking only of yourself, you’ve forgotten how to do anything right. You may look like a man on the outside, but on the inside you are a monster! And I think it’s about time you looked the part!” The fairy waved her hands and cast a spell on King Darling. Another flash and she was gone, and the king was transformed into…into a…a sort of…he was. Well, he looked kinda like this:

Not so much pretty, huh?

Melisande had made it so that Darling looked as nasty on the outside as he was on the inside. He couldn’t even talk anymore. All anyone heard was a horrible snarling sound. He couldn’t go home in this state, so he ran deep into the forest, to hide from all the world.

At first, Darling simply cursed Melisande's name and blamed her, and his father, for everything that had happened to him. But solitude is great for self-reflection, and after a few weeks of living in the woods, hiding from all other living beings (except, I guess, trees and stuff), Darling began to understand that some of the fault was his…a few weeks later, it occurred to him that most of the fault was his…after six full months, he accepted that it was all his fault. He had thought only of himself and treated others with cruelty and what had happened to him was all he deserved.

As luck would have it, it was on this day that Darling, feeling so sorry for himself that he didn’t look where he was going, fell into a deep, dark pit that hunters had dug to catch bears and the like. When the hunters saw Darling in the pit, however, they didn’t know what to make of him. Or even what to call him. In the end, they decided that he would make a great addition to the royal menagerie, so they packed him in a cage and took him to the palace.

Darling was apprehensive at the thought of returning to his palace after all this time. True, he’d only been gone three months, but he didn’t know what to expect when he got back. He thought maybe his people would still be looking for him, wondering what had become of him. Maybe they took him for dead and were still in mourning over their lost monarch. He certainly didn’t expect a coronation to be going on.

“WHAT?!?!” he shouted, though it sounded like a horrible growl to everyone around him.

“Yes,” repeated one of the hunters to the palace guard. “A brand new kind of animal, just discovered in the forest. We’d like to give it as a gift to the new king.”

Darling’s cage was taken into the throne room and presented to the man who would soon be crowned king. To Darling’s surprise, it was his old tutor, a kindly old man who had always loved Darling like a father. From the conversations he’d overheard upon his arrival, Darling surmised that he had been made steward of the throne once he, Darling, had gone missing all those months ago. As steward, his job was to keep the kingdom running in the absence of her rightful monarch. But, as it turned out, he was a much better king than Darling. He cared about other people, he was unselfish, he was generous, merciful, compassionate. He was very much like the late, great King Dennis, in fact. So the people of the kingdom had decided to make it official and crown the steward king. None of them even seemed to care what had happened to Darling!

“Please, please, my people,” said the steward as he addressed the assembled. “I accept the throne of this kingdom only because you demand it, and as king, I am nothing if not a servant to my people.” This struck Darling as odd, but he kept listening. “In my heart, however, I know I am only filling in for our true king, young Darling, who went missing only three months ago. I know he wasn’t perfect.”

“That’s for dang sure!” cried someone in the crowd.

“But I knew him all his life,” continued the steward, unperterbed by this interruption, “and I knew his father before him. And I saw in Darling the potential to be a great king. I would give my very life to see him in his rightful place on this throne.”

“Works for me!” growled Darling and with the great animal strength he now possessed, he tore his way out of the cage and lunged straight for the steward. But before he could strike a killing blow, he looked into the old man’s eyes. And he saw the eyes of the kindly tutor who had patiently taught him for all those years. And the eyes of the good, wise fairy who had given him so many chances to change, each of which he had ignored. And the eyes of his dear, departed father who had one wish, and used it to make his only son a better man.

Darling realized that he couldn’t do it. The country was better off without him. He wanted to be a good king, but the first step was putting the needs of his people ahead of his own. So he went back into his cage and covered his face with his paws.

“Darling,” came a familiar voice. “You have finally proved yourself worthy of the crown. Now get up. Your people are waiting for you.”

As Melisande’s voice faded away, Darling looked up. The first thing he saw were his hands. Not paws, mind you, but hands. He was still in the cage but he had turned back into his old self. All the guests at the coronation were shocked at what they had seen, but they knew their long lost king when they saw him…and they also remembered what a jerk he was so, fearful for their lives, they all started to cheer.

“No!” cried Darling. “I don’t deserve applause or cheers. I have not been the king you deserve. The king my father wanted me to be. But I have learned a lot recently, and I want a second chance to serve you all better, even though I know I don’t deserve it.”

“If that’s how you feel,” said the steward. “You do deserve it. Hail, King Darling! Long live the King!” And so, the coronation went ahead as planned, with only one slight change: It was our old friend Darling who was re-crowned king. Only by giving up the throne could he prove himself worthy of it, and only by becoming a monster could he learn what it was to be a man.

And it doesn’t get much more ironic than that!

THE END

NEXT WEEK: "The Enchanted Bridegroom"

The Velveteen Rabbit

2012-06-22T00:00:00.005-04:00

This story comes to us from a book by Margery Williams, which bears the alternate title “How Toys Become Real.” It is interesting to think about how many stories there are out there that concern toys becoming real. It seems that as long as children have played with toys, they have fantasized about their being really alive. From Colloddi’s Pinocchio to Milne’s Winnie the Pooh all the way through to Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes and the phenomenally successful Toy Story films of Pixar. Only a few months ago, I shared a story of live toys (and a certain penguin of which I know of) with you all. What sets this story apart from so many of these others is that, in this story, the titular rabbit is destined to become real not merely a living toy.

Velveteen, before you ask, is a kind of fabric usually made from cotton which is designed to look and feel somewhat like velvet. It was this material that a toymaker once used to make a lovely little rabbit which was bought by a nice lady and subsequently given to her son as a Christmas gift. The boy was very happy and absolutely loved his new Velveteen Rabbit…for about two hours. By then, he had unwrapped other gifts. Clockwork trains, electric soldiers, and the very latest in video games: 8-Bit graphics and everything!

Okay, that last one’s not right, but I think you get the idea. The rabbit was just velveteen stuffed with sawdust, he didn’t make a noise or move on his own or light up or anything. So, after the Christmas festivities were over, the rabbit was tossed carelessly into the toy chest with all the other toys the boy hardly ever played with but would throw a tantrum if you even suggested giving them away.

Of course, the other toys looked down on the rabbit for being so old-fashioned. They had moving parts and wind-up keys and could move and walk and talk. Some of the fancier toys even pretended to be real.

“And look at you,” said one particularly nasty toy boat. “Have you ever even seen a real rabbit?”

“Real rabbit?” asked our velveteen friend. “What is that?”

“Sort of like you,” said a kind voice from outside the chest. “Only very, very different.” The Velveteen Rabbit looked out of the chest and saw that he was being addressed by a rocking horse, who was perhaps the oldest toy in the room and was very kind and clever. “Don’t let those fancy toys get to you,” he said with a friendly smile. “I’ve seen hundreds of toys come and go in this place. They’re top of the heap one day and the maid is picking up their gears and springs the next.”

“What is real?” asked the Rabbit.

“Not like those toys, I can tell you that. It’s difficult to explain, but when you are real you can move and think on your own. You can live and breathe and eat just like live animals do. There are no toy chests if you’re real, no little boys poking and pawing at you. It means you’re alive and that’s the best thing to be.”

The Velveteen Rabbit wasn’t sure he understood the Rocking Horse’s words, but they did excite him. He thought he’d like to try being real. “How can I be real?” he asked.

“For toys, it’s not easy. It takes love. The love of a child. And I mean a great love. You must be real in his eyes, and then you’ll be real in everyone’s eyes.”

“You’re crazy!” chimed in a toy car. “That’s just an old toys’ tale. Toys don’t become real. We’re built, we’re played with, we wear out, we’re thrown away. That’s the best any of us can hope for!”

Now the Velveteen Rabbit was very confused and he didn’t know who to believe.

The next night, the boy was throwing a fit because he had lost his china dog. This was a little toy dog that he always took to bed with him and he couldn’t sleep without it. The woman called “Nanny” didn’t know what had become of the dog but knew she had to get the boy to sleep soon. So she looked through the toy chest and there she found the Velveteen Rabbit. “Here,” she said. “Remember your bunny? I’m sure he’d like to spend the night with you.”

The boy was hesitant at first, but he gave in eventually and from then on, it was not the china dog, but the Velveteen Rabbit the boy called for when bedtime came. Of course, the fancy, wind-up, clockwork, electric, etcetera toys were shocked and appalled at the Rabbit becoming the boy’s favorite toy, but the Rocking Horse was very proud of his little friend. “You may turn real yet,” he said one night.

But in the meantime, the Rabbit was having so much fun playing with the boy that he hadn’t noticed he was changing. His pretty brown coat was getting duller and shabbier. The pink paint from his nose was almost rubbed off. A few of his seams were getting loose and stuffing began to peek out. He was beginning to wear out, just as the toy car had said he would. One day, the boy had been playing with the Rabbit out in the garden and left him there, so when bedtime came, Nanny had to go get him, clean him off (as best she could) and hand him to the boy.

“I don’t see why you make such a fuss over this toy,” she said as she handed the Rabbit over.

“He’s not a toy!” insisted the boy. “He’s real!”

Real? Thought the Rabbit to himself. Am I real? The boy said so, and the Rocking Horse did say that a child’s love could make me real. If he says I’m real…I must be! I’m real!

That summer, when he and the boy were playing as they always did, the Rabbit found himself left temporarily alone on the lawn. As he sat there, patiently waiting for the boy to return, two very strange creatures hopped over to him. The Velveteen Rabbit didn’t know what they were, but they were, in fact, rabbits. Real rabbits. They stared at the Velveteen Rabbit, who stared back at them, trying to figure out where the wind-up key was.

“Hello,” said the rabbits.

“Hello,” said the Rabbit.

“Would you like to run and play with us?”

“I can’t until my boy comes back.”

“Can’t you move on your own?”

“No. Why can you?”

“Certainly. Because we are real rabbits, whereas you are just a toy rabbit.”

The Velveteen Rabbit was taken aback. “But…but the boy said…he said I was real.”

“Well, look,” said the rabbits patiently, “this is very easy to settle. Can you jump?”

“Not unless the boy tosses me in the air.”

“Can you run?”

“Not unless the boy is holding me.”

“Can you wiggle your nose?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never tried.” He tried. “No, I can’t.”

“Then, I’m sorry, but you’re not a real rabbit like us.” And with that, the rabbits hopped away as the boy came back to play with his now crestfallen toy.

The boy went on loving the Velveteen Rabbit for quite some time. He loved him so hard that he was now quite worn out. He was more gray than brown, he had been repaired by Nanny seven or eight times, and his stuffing was so bent out of shape that he hardly even looked like a rabbit anymore, except to the eyes of the boy, and that’s all that mattered to the Rabbit. No matter what anybody else said, the boy said he was real so real he must be…but that’s when the boy got sick. Very sick.

The Velveteen Rabbit heard snatches of grown-up conversation. Words like “fever” and “scarlet” and “deathly ill.” It was decided that the boy would be taken to the sea-side for some fresh air. But on the day he left, something terrible happened: He left the Velveteen Rabbit behind. And once the boy was well out of the house, in came Nanny and a few maids, all wearing white handkerchiefs over their mouths.

“Okay, you heard the doctor. Everything must be destroyed so the virus can’t spread.” The Velveteen Rabbit, unable to move, watched as they gathered up the boy’s clothes, his bedsheets, his blankets…and his toys! “That rabbit especially,” said Nanny. “He played with that thing morning, noon and night. It must be infected.”

And so the Rabbit, along with many of the boy’s other possessions, were taken outside, far from the house and thrown onto a big pile. Some kind of smelly liquid was poured over it all and then the matches were struck and the fire set.

This is it, thought the Velveteen Rabbit. The toy car was right all along. I was made, played with, I wore out and now I must be destroyed. I shall never be the real rabbit I was when the boy held me close. And as he thought about his horrible fate, a most remarkable thing happened: A single tear, a real tear, rolled down the Rabbit’s cheek and onto the earth below. Suddenly, he couldn’t feel the heat from the flames. And all he could see was a bright, white light, that seemed to be surrounding him. A moment later, he felt that he was not on the bonfire after all, but in a warm, safe place, like when his boy used to cuddle him at night. He didn’t feel quite so shabby anymore, either…

When the next springtime came, the boy went out to play. His scarlet fever was quite gone and he carried with him a fine, new toy rabbit he had been given when he was sick. As he was playing, he saw two real rabbits, one of which looked like any old ordinary brown rabbit. The other, however, looked…familiar.

“That looks just like my old velveteen rabbit,” the boy said. “The one I lost when I got sick.”

The Rabbit smiled in his heart as he looked at the new toy rabbit being held by the boy who had helped bring him to life. But that was the last he ever saw of the boy. He went off with the other real rabbits like himself, and lived very happily ever after.

THE END

NEXT WEEK: "Prince Darling"

The Selfish Giant

2012-06-15T00:00:00.004-04:00

Last week, I looked at the stats for this blog and discovered that I do have quite a few more readers than I expected in quite a few more countries than I would've imagined. But I don't know how many of you are really reading the blog, or if you just browse here by accident and close the window almost immediately. So if you are a loyal reader, let me know. Post some comments on the blog, send me an email or a Tweet, find me on Facebook. I'm mainly doing this for myself, but it would be nice to know that there are a few people out there who dig what I'm doing here. So, c'mon, internet. Let's hear from you every once in a while!

There are three kinds of people in the world: The ones who know Oscar Wilde for his most famous play, The Importance of Being Earnest; the ones who know him best for his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray; and, sadly, the ones who don’t know him at all or, at best, know only the (shall we say) controversial elements of his all-too-tragic life story. Putting aside for the moment the fact that he was considered criminally perverse by many people during his lifetime (it was Victorian England; it was almost impossible not to be criminally perverse in those prudish days), Oscar Wilde was one of the greatest writers ever to bless the English language with his custom. His marvelous, imminently quotable plays and stories have been tickling audiences for generations and will continue to do so for many years more.

Though best known for the works listed above, Wilde proved himself a master at writng fairy tales with his book “The Happy Prince and Other Stories.” I have, therefore, taken on the task of adapting what might be his best known short story, which I for one find enchanting in its simple beauty. Thanks for everything, Oscar.

The bell rang and the chidren were released from school. Of course, all children look forward to getting out of school, but the children of this community looked forward to the final bell more than most. Because once school was out, they all went to play in the garden. It was a huge, beautiful garden, full of the most remarkable flowers and trees you ever saw. The children would run through the grass, chase each other around the flowerbeds, wade in the pond and climb the trees for hours on end, until they finally had to go home at the behest of their parents.

So it went for many months, until the owner of the garden returned. He was a giant! And he had been away for the winter but had returned home now that the weather was getting warmer. And when he saw that his garden was crawling with children he was furious. He roared at them to get out and scolded them for being there in the first place. Terrified of the giant, the children all ran away.

The giant felt he was perfectly in the right demanding that the children leave. After all, he said to himself as he prepared bricks and mortar for a wall, it is my garden. It’s my property. I have the right to protect what’s mine, don’t I? Of course I do. So he built a wall around his garden which, while small by his standards, was more than sufficient to keep the children from coming back. He also hung a sign on the front gate which read “Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.”

There, he thought. Now I can enjoy my garden in peace.

The weeks passed and the wall was having its effect. No children came to play in the giant’s garden anymore. The giant himself was free to look out his front window at the garden whenever he wanted, without having his view obstructed by a laughing child in a tree. Indeed, he was quite content, except for one thing: It still seemed to be winter in the garden. By all accounts, it should have been spring by this time, but spring refused to come to the giant’s garden. Looking beyond the wall, the giant saw that spring had sprung outside his property.

So why is it still winter in here?

The giant pondered this for many days until that fateful afternoon when he looked out his window and saw that his garden had changed. It had transformed overnight. It was spring! The trees were green and full of beautiful blossoms and there was no snow or ice anywhere. And playing under or in each and every tree were the children! He saw a large hole in the wall thorugh which the children had crept in order to play in the garden without being seen by the giant. That’s why it had remained winter for so long. The garden was lonely for the children. And, after all, what good is a garden if there’s no one to enjoy it.

Just as the giant was beginning to think he had behaved rashly, he looked out and saw one tree that was still shrouded in winter. A chill north wind shook its branches and its bare trunk was covered in snow. Then he saw a very small boy at the base of the tree, who was too small to climb up into it like the others were doing. It was the only tree without a child playing in it, and the only tree which had not yet bloomed.

The giant made up his mind and walked straight outside to his garden. The other children saw him and immediatley ran away through the hole in the wall. But the little boy who couldn’t get up into the tree was crying too hard to even notice the giant. The children watched through the hole in the wall, certain that something terrible was about to befall the poor boy…but instead, to their utter amazement, the giant gently lifted the boy up into the branches of the tree. The little boy was so grateful that he flung his arms around the giant’s neck and gave him a big kiss on the cheek.

At last the giant saw how selfish he had been to try to keep this garden all to himself. How much grander it was when he shared it wih the children. He took down the trespassers sign and knocked down the stone wall he had built. Then he turned to the children and said, “This is your garden now!”

And so, for the rest of his days, the giant let it be known that all children were welcome to play in his garden. And even when he passed away, he left the garden as a gift to all the children of the world, to come and play among its beautiful trees and flowers and to use their incredible gift for bringing springtime to the bleakest winter.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

Wilde (1997) This biopic of the author’s life (starring the incomparable [except perhaps to Wilde himself] Stephen Fry) uses this fairy tale as a storytelling device, and it is heard throughout the movie, which also stars a very young Jude Law.

NEXT WEEK:

"The Velveteen Rabbit"

Leroy Goes To Disneyland

2012-06-08T00:00:00.016-04:00

After last week’s somewhat macabre offering, I thought this week we all needed something a little lighter. To that end, I present this adventure of my good friend and frequent collaborator, Leroy the Penguin. About this time last year, he went on his first trip to my favorite place on the planet, Disneyland. And, true to form, he got into trouble.

(I should mention here, just for legal reasons, that I claim no ownership of any of the copyrighted images, names, places and so on contained herein. Disney owns Disneyland, and I hope they don't sue me or Leroy over this silly little story)

Enjoy!

Oh my gosh, you guys! Disneyland is so great! There’s so much awesome stuff there! I could go every single day for ever and ever and also ever!

Of course, the first time I went things didn’t exactly go the way I had hoped.

The adventure started out promising enough. I went through the front gate and saw the big Mickey Mouse floral arrangement. I went through the archway and saw the cool posters for the rides. And then I was in another world! Specifically, Main Street, USA, circa 1900. There were horse-drawn carriages and a barbershop quartet and lots of old-tyme stuff everywhere I looked. And Donald Duck was there! I went to see Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln and was moved to tears.

I will admit that it wasn’t easy making my way down Main Street. There were a lot of people there and I am sort of on the small side. But I’ve gotten used to moving through crowds without getting stepped on…much…so all things considered, everything was going swell.

The next thing I saw was what they call “The Hub” where they have this big statue of Walt Disney holding hands with Mickey Mouse. I was looking at the statue thinking about how all this wonderful stuff around me was all born in the imagination of this man, when a voice behind me said, “Hey, what are you doing here?”

I turned around and there was a Disney cast member looking at me. “You’re a long way from home, aren’t you, little guy?”

“Er…what?” was all I could think to say. Apparently, he didn’t hear me because the next thing I knew he had picked me up and was taking me somewhere! I tried to shout but he was holding me funny so I couldn’t even talk. He carried me through Sleeping Beauty’s Castle into Fantasyland. My first glimpse of King Arthur’s Carousel and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride was in the arms of what was essentially a kidnapper! Before long, we had gone through Fantasyland and were going into a sort of access door in “It’s a Small World.”

“Here you go! Home sweet home,” said the cast member as he plunked me down among a lot of other penguins. “I don’t know how you got to Main Street, but this is where you belong.” Satisfied in a job well done, the cast member left before I even thought to read his nametag so I could complain.

It was clear to me now what had happened: this guy thought I was one of the animatronic penguins in the ride and had brought me back. I was surrounded by penguins and children singing a very cheery song which I liked, but got the sense I would like less if I had to listen to it all the livelong day.

“Excuse me!” I called out. “Not a robot! Real penguin right here! Hello!”

“Here,” said a little girl in a passing boat. “Jump in!” I did and rode the rest of the way with Susie and her parents. As we got out of the boat and I was saying thank you to Susie, another cast member came and picked me up.

“Did you get this inside the ride?” she asked Susie and her parents very sternly. She thought they had stolen me!

“He doesn’t belong in there,” said Susie.

“Hmmm. You’re right,” said the cast member, looking me over. “This is a bird. He belongs in Adventureland.” This time the reason I couldn’t protest was because I was kind of exhausted from the ordeal. So I was brought to Adventureland and sat on a perch in the Enchanted Tiki Room. I wanted to just walk out right away…but the show was about to start and I didn’t want to ruin it. So I sat in with the bird glee club for a few choruses of “The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room” and when the show ended, I took my bows and snuck out with the audience.

It looked like I was free…until another cast member came and saw me, picked me up (my throat was sore from all the singing, so I still couldn’t explain) and carried me to Critter Country where I was deposited among some birds and frogs and turtles on Splash Mountain.

As you can probably guess, I was getting pretty tired of all this by now and was determined to put a stop to it once and for all. So, just like when I was in “It’s a Small World,” I jumped into a passing boat (or, rather, log) and resolved to ride my way out…had I know what kind of ride Splash Mountain is, I might have thought of a different plan.

But, in the end, I emerged, however soggy, and marched up to the first cast member I could find and tugged on her pants leg. “Now listen here, Missy!” I said, uncharacteristically rude, but I was fed up. “I have been dragged all over this park today by you people. First I was in ‘It’s a Small World,’ then I was in the Tiki Room and then I was on Splash Mountain and I don’t belong on any of those rides!”

“No, of course you don’t,” she said. “You’re that penguin from Toy Story 2, aren’t you? Maybe you belong on the Buzz Lightyear ride?”

“No, no,” said another cast member, joining her. “He’s a Muppet penguin. He should be in Muppet-Vision 3-D.”

“Is he one of the ‘Mary Poppins’ penguins? The parade should be starting soon.”

“Maybe we’re doing a promotion for Club Penguin.”

“Maybe he got here all the way from SeaWorld.”

“Maybe—”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!” It’s likely I would’ve had a genuine, bona fide, coniption fit right at that moment, but luckily someone overheard and came over. He was a sort of rolly-polly someone with yellow fur and a red shirt. As it happens, we knew each other through a mutual friend, so he recognized me at once. I explained the situation to him and he picked me up in his paws and took me to see the only person who could help me get everything straight: The Big Cheese himself! So, I had a talk with the Big Cheese and everything was sorted out. I was given a special badge to wear indicating that I was a guest of the park and not part of any attraction.

But apart from that, my first trip to Disneyland was a complete success. I liked the park so much I never wanted to leave...but, of course, that's another story.

THE END

Next Week:

"The Selfish Giant"

Bluebeard

2012-06-01T00:00:00.007-04:00

This is another one that I went back and forth on for some time. Despite my misgivings, I’m going ahead with it for what might seem to others like a stupid reason: It’s the only story from Charles Perrault’s original book which I have not adapted in any form. Those who are unfamiliar with this title might wonder why I held off for so long. Before those people read the story, let me make this abundantly clear: THIS ONE IS NOT FOR LITTLE KIDS!!! It is scary and bloody and served as the partial inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula! Read on only if you can take it. Otherwise, I apologize, and next week will give you something about a bunny or a piggie or maybe Leroy. For now, you have been warned.

The lesson of today’s story is to be very careful when entering into a marriage. You are being told this at the outset so that you can benefit from the lesson even if you don’t read the story. Consider yourself warned that this is a scary tale full of terrible secrets and tragic deaths. If you feel strong enough to continue, we shall begin:

In a faraway land, there lived a nobleman who was very wealthy and had many homes in town and the country. His grandest home was his country estate, a mansion that rivaled even the grandeur of the king’s palace. This was the house in which he felt, above all others, that he was truly “at home.” He hunted in the adjacent forest, fished in the river and frequented the nearby village where he never failed to buy a round of drinks for all the men present.

Yes, he was generous, but he was not well-liked. The reason for people’s mistrust of him was his beard. It was long and bright blue, a most unnatural color. It was grotesque to look at so nobody really got too close to the man, and everyone just called him “Bluebeard.”

But Bluebeard longed for the company of a young woman, to brighten his home and liven his heart. He let it be known throughout the land that he was seeking a bride, but no mother or father would consent to let their daughters marry a man with such a frighteningly blue beard. Bluebeard decided to hold a dance at his mansion and invite everyone in the village to come and celebrate. It was a most successful party, and everyone enjoyed themselves immensely. But none moreso than a young woman named Kala, who had always heard that Bluebeard was a terrifying figure, but now saw that he was really quite kind, despite his odd appearance. Bluebeard talked it over with the girl’s parents, and in no time the match was made.

The wedding itself was a brief affair held the following afternoon. Very few of the invited villagers attended, out of fear of Bluebeard. Kala’s family was, of course, in attendance. Her mother and father and her three brothers, who were woodcutters by trade. They were very protective of their baby sister and this marriage to this strange, odd-looking man did not sit right with them. But, they kept their mouths shut since Kala seemed so happy.

After the wedding, Bluebeard showed his new bride all around her new home. Every room of the mansion was full of gold, jewels, silver and riches Kala had never dreamed of. She rejoiced to think that her life would be full of such decadance and wealth. She was so excited, she ran to open the next door without her new husband inviting her to.

“Stop!” he cried as her hand went for the knob. “You must never go into that room. Everything else that I own is yours and you may wander this mansion freely. But that door must never be opened. Do you understand?”

Kala said she did, and put the door from her mind.

For the next several weeks, life was good for all concerned. Bluebeard was happy with his beautiful, charming new wife. Kala was happy to be living in so grand a home with so kind a man and to possess such wealth. And her family was happy when Bluebeard and Kala came to visit them and gave them gold and silver. Her parents were then able to repair and even improve their humble home and her hard-working brothers bought new, very sharp axes with which to ply their trade. They began to think they were wrong to mistrust Bluebeard just because of his appearance and were vey grateful to him for his generosity.

Then, one day, about two months after their marriage, Bluebeard told Kala that he was going on a long trip, taking stock of his holdings throughout the land, and that she was in charge of the mansion in his absence. Before he left, he handed her a ring of keys, saying, “These keys open every door in this mansion,” (This pleased Kala because, even after all this time, there were still quite a few rooms she had never been inside), “and you can use them as you see fit. But this key,” he added, holding up a very small, solid gold key, “opens the door I once told you never to open. I remind you that I forbid you from every entering that room. Can I trust you to hold this key and not use it until I return?” Kala said he could and took the keys before saying goodbye to her husband.

Kala spent the next few days exploring the house. She opened doors she had never opened before and saw treasures even greater than the ones she had come to know. Before long, she had opened and explored every single room in the mansion…except one. The more time she spent in wandering through her new home, the more the thought of that forbidden door ate away at her imagination. She tried to imagine what could be so precious and valuable that Bluebeard would protect is so fiercely. Why could she go into every other room, but not that one? He trusted her with his gold, jewels, silver, silks. What prize lay behind that door with which she could not be trusted?

Curiosity is no sin, but it should be exercised with great caution, and the greater the curiosity, the greater should be the caution. Poor Kala was curious but none too cautious, and she decided to open the door. I’ll just peek my head in for a minute, she told herself, turning the key in the lock she had twice promised never to open. After all, he’ll never know what I’ve done. With this thought firmly in her mind, she turned the knob and opened the door.

The room within was very dark and cold. It had no windows and only one door, the door through which Kala had just entered. Dimly, she could see the outline of a candleabra in front of her, so she stepped inside and felt her way toward it. The door was very heavy and, as soon as Kala had let go of it, it swung shut, plunging the room into complete blackness. But greater than the darkness was the smell. It was the most horrific, putrid smell Kala had ever experienced. Between being disoriented in the dark and taken aback by the stench, it is not surprising that a moment later she tripped and fell over something lying on the floor, causing her to drop her keys. She was now close enough to the candle holder to light it with a match from her pocket and she held it up to see what she had tripped over…and what she saw almost made her heart stop with terror.

It was a woman. Once she had been young and dressed in a silk gown, similar to Kala’s, but now she lay dead on the cold stone floor. Kala threw the candlelight all over the room. Corpses piled on top of each other. Hung up on the walls. Some with great, festering wounds, some still with nooses around their necks. Some faces frozen in horrified screams, some with eyes closed who had no doubt died peacefully in their sleep. Some were decayed beyond all recognition, some were merely skeletons, but a few were fresh enough that you might have thought they were only sleeping. But each and every one definitely and unmistakably murdered.

The next moment saw Kala scrabbling wildly for the keys. As soon as she had them in her hands she ran for the door, forced it open and locked it tight behind her. Then she ran to her room, took off her gown, which was covered in the filth of death, and ordered the servants to burn it at once. She bathed and spent a good hour scrubbing every inch of her skin. All the while her mind was racing, trying to make sense of what she had seen.

“Ma’am?” came the voice of a maid at her door. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine!” she yelled with uncharacteristic force. “Everything is fine.”

“Please, ma’am, you are not well.”

“I tell you I’m fine, now leave me!”

But the maid refused to listen. She entered her mistress’s room. “Have you seen it?” she asked.

“Seen what?” asked Kala, although she knew only too well to what the maid was referring.

“The Secret Room, of course.”

“You know about that room?”

“I have served the master for many years. You are not the first bride to give in to curiosity. It’s happened before. The master says he has to leave for a few days and gives his wife the same keys he gave you. Sooner or later she decides it can do no harm to peek into that room. And when she does, she finds the remains of the master’s wives. The women he trusted with his secret and who broke their promise. And soon, they join the others in that secret room.”

It was a horrible story, but Kala knew that every word of it was absolutely true. She was not even surprised when the maid went on to say that Bluebeard had been doing this for almost a hundred years. “Years ago he made a wicked pact,” she explained. “He doesn’t age, he doesn’t change. Only he has to wear that blue beard. That’s the mark of his curse, ma’am. That’s why everyone who looks at it feels so uneasy.”

“What do I do?” asked Kala.

“I don’t know, ma’am. But you’ll have to do it fast. You see, this whole thing is a test. Master isn’t really in another county like he claims. He’ll be back tonight, to make sure you haven’t unlocked that door!”

Sure enough, a moment later, Kala heard the heavy footfalls which she knew belonged to her husband. She was terrified, but she tried to keep a clear head. “Get out,” she said to the maid. “You and all the servants. Take the night off. Go into the village. Don’t let him see you leave. And,” she added as the maid turned to go, “go to my brothers. The house at the end of town, just past the blacksmith. Tell them to come for me at once!” The maid curtsied and left the room quickly. Kala took a moment to steal herself for what was to come and went to greet her husband.

“Darling, you’re home so soon!” she said, trying to act surprised.

“Well, I found I couldn’t stay away from you,” replied Bluebeard. “Everything went well in my absence, I take it?”

“Very well.”

“I’m glad to hear it. And do you still have those keys I gave you?”

Kala was startled for a moment, but shook it off and said, “Yes. I have them right here.” She handed the ring to Bluebeard who inspected them carefully. Kala could not imagine why he was examining the keys until she suddenly remembered that she had dropped them in the forbidden room. Her fears were realized a second later, when her husband asked her, “What is this all over the golden key?”

“I don’t know,” Kala lied. Of course she knew exactly what it was: Blood. She had dropped the keys in a pool of blood and had been so distressed that it had not occurred to her to wipe it off.

“I know,” said Bluebeard, all pretense dropped. “And what’s more, I know how it got there. You broke your promise. You betrayed me. And since you were so keen to get inside that room, I will oblige you and see to it that you never leave it again!”

With a roar of fury, Bluebeard drew his dagger and lunged at Kala, who ran faster than she had ever run before. Bluebeard tore after her, more animal than man, now, fueled by rage and blood lust, knocking over decorations, furniture, and candles as he ran after his wife. Kala led the chase all through the house. Luckily, she had come to know it well since coming to live here and found it easy to stay at least one room ahead of Bluebeard. But, in the end, she found herself in the corner of the dining room, backed against the stained glass window by her ravenous husband who stalked toward her slowly, looking even more inhuman in the light of the flames that were rising up all over the mansion.

“Say your prayers, ungrateful wretch!” growled Bluebeard.

Kala shut her eyes tight…until she heard a loud crash from above her. She looked up and saw the stained glass window was in shards and climbing into the room were her three brothers, armed with their new axes. Without a word or even a thought they advanced on Bluebeard and, within moments, had hacked him to pieces with the same axes they had bought with Bluebeard’s gold only a few weeks ago. Then they took hold of their sister and ran from the burning mansion with all their might, not stopping until they were well out of harm’s way. Only then did Kala dare to look back at the mansion she had once called home as it smoldered into nothing but ash.

Bluebeard was dead. All of his possessions, his wealth and treasures, were destroyed. And even if they hadn’t been, Kala, though by all right their legal owner, would not have wanted them. Nothing that reminded her of the terrible man she had been only too eager to marry would be allowed within her sight from then on. And perhaps she grew stronger for this experience and overcame the nightmares that plagued her well after Bluebeard’s death. And perhaps she one day married another, a man with whom she shared a genuine bond of love and friendship. Perhaps she even managed to live happily ever after. History does not relate what happened to Kala after Bluebeard’s death, so we are forced to draw our own conclusions.

Whatever the rest of Kala’s life had in store, you can be sure that she learned to be more cautious than curious, to put her trust in the right people, and to be very careful when entering into a marriage. In which case, I think it’s safe to assume that she did live happily ever after…but, that’s just what I think. How about you?

THE END

If You Liked My Story, You Might Enjoy:

Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics (1987)(TV) This anime series’ title is a slight misnomer as it featured some stories (this one included) which are not attributed to the Brothers Grimm (although there are a few Grimm stories which are similar, such as “The Robber Bridegroom”). But still, a pretty good show, typical of the kind of 80’s fare we used to call “Japanimation.”
The Tales of Beedle the Bard by J. K. Rowling. One story, entitled “The Warlock’s Hairy Heart” reminds me of Bluebeard, and, in the “Wizarding World,” carries the same infamous reputation according to Albus Dumbledore, who, apropos to this story, once told Mr. Potter, “Curiosity is no sin, Harry.”

For More Great Stories, Click HERE

The Missing Unicorn

2012-05-18T00:00:00.015-04:00

The phrase “The Missing Unicorn” came into my head one night and I immediately wrote it down. The next morning I read the words and started thinking about a story that would go with them. I also thought, having mercilessly cut unicorns from my version of “The Brave Little Tailor,” that it would be nice to write a story about them. What started out as a simple children’s story turned into an educational experience for me as I learned a lot more about this majestic beast than I ever expected to.

For those interested in such things, when I sat down to write this story, I opened a blank Word file and, without even thinking, typed the sentence “Luke loved animals.” I don’t know why the name Luke occurred to me, but I’m just glad it did.

Luke loved animals. His favorite lessons in school were always about animals. He loved them all from aardvarks to zebras and everything in between. He loved big, scary dinosaurs and cute little bunnies. He loved lions and tigers, deer and antelope, foxes and hounds, snakes and spiders and…well, he liked all the animals, let’s just leave it at that.

But one day, Luke noticed something that got him sort of worried. Whenever he looked through his books of animals or went to the zoo or learned about animals in school, there was one kind of animal no one ever mentioned. One animal that he’d never seen so much as a photograph of: A unicorn!

Luke was worried. Why wasn’t the unicorn in any of these books? Why did his teacher never mention unicorns? Why, when he asked the zookeeper which way to the unicorns, did she just look at him all mean and walk away, muttering under her breath about “smart aleck kids?”

When he asked his dad about it, his dad said that it was because there weren’t any unicorns. That they were just made up. But that didn’t make any sense to Luke. With all the amazing animals in the world, why would someone make one up? It just seemed silly. Besides, if you were gonna make up an animal, why make up something as simple as “a horse with a horn?” Nope. It didn’t add up.

Now, in Luke’s whole, entire life (and that’s a whole six years) he had never asked his dad a question he couldn’t answer, because Luke had one of those smart-type dads. So if his dad didn’t know, he reasoned that probably nobody knew about unicorns. So, he decided it was up to him to solve this mystery.

Luke’s Grammy and Pop-Pop lived on a farm and Luke would visit them sometimes. He was particularly looking forward to it this time, because he had some investigating to do. As soon as he arrived, he began interrogating all the animals to find out what they knew about unicorns. None of them told him anything, which didn’t really surprise Luke, since they were animals. It was about this point that he began to feel he hadn’t throught this plan through very well.

“Why were you talking to those pigs earlier?” asked Luke’s Pop-Pop that evening.

“I wanted to find out if they knew anything about unicorns.”

“Unicorns, eh?” Luke told Pop-Pop all about his investigation. Pop-Pop was one of those neat old people who likes to play games and go on adventures, so he said, “I’ve got an idea how we can bust this case wide open!” So he took Luke into his home office and they went onto the internet and searched for “unicorn.”

According to the information Pop-Pop found on the web, unicorns were first written about in Greece before being mentioned throughout Europe and Asia. They appear in Arthurian legend and the Bible. Though the creature changes in appearance depending on the culture, his basic shape is always the same: A horse, or horse-like beast with at least one long, pointy horn on his forehead. Even the British Royal Family uses a unicorn on its family crest. But, fascinating though all this was, it didn’t tell Luke why he couldn’t find any unicorns!

By bedtime, Luke had learned a lot about the mythology of unicorns, but nothing to help him find a real one. He was very dissapointed as Grammy tucked him in. He was beginning to think unicorns really were made up as he closed his eyes and fell asleep…

“Luke? Oh Luke? Are you awake?”

Luke opened his eyes and there, standing next to his bed, was a unicorn! With fur so white it seemed to glow and a long, shiny tail, and eyes that sparkled and a golden horn in the center of his forehead.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” said the unicorn.

“I thought you were pretend!” said Luke in an awestruck whisper.

“Oh, no, not at all. The truth, Luke, is that we unicorns prefer to be left alone. So when the Ancient Greeks discovered us and started telling the world about us, we tried to leave and find another secret place to live. But everywhere we went, people had heard of unicorns and were hunting us. We ran through Europe, India, China, all across the world just trying to find someplace where we could be by ourselves.”

“But why do you want to be alone?”

“It’s just our way, Luke. Everyone is different and likes different things. Some animals, like humans, like to mix with lots of different animals. Some, like we unicorns, prefer a quiet, peaceful life of solitary reflection among our own people. Do you understand?”

“I think so.”

“Anyway, after all these centuries, we finally found a place where we can live safely and peacefully, without being disturbed by humans or an other animal.”

“Where?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you. It’s been a secret all these years, and I can’t tell anyone for fear of it getting out.” Luke begged and pleaded with the unicorn to tell and even made the biggest promise in the world, saying he’d never tell anyone, man, woman, child or animal ever as long as he lived. “Very well, then,” said the unicorn and he leaned in and whispered into Luke’s ear.

“Ohhh!” said Luke. Now it all made sense to him.

“But you must never try to find us, Luke. You must respect our wishes and leave us alone. You promise?”

“Cross my heart. Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Unicorn. I feel better now that I know you guys are okay.”

“Thank you, Luke. For caring so much about us. Now you had better get back to sleep, and I had better get home. Good night, my friend.” And Luke closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

Luke kept his promise, and never mentioned unicorns again as long as he lived. And even though he now knew exactly where to find them, he never tried to go there and see for himself. He was the only human being in a hundred years to see a real-live unicorn, and that was enough for him. And even when he grew to be very, very old, he remembered his promise to the unicorns. Which is why they are safe to this day in their secret hiding place in—ah! Sorry. No telling!

THE END

Next Week: "The Water-Lily"

The Big Ole' Tree

2012-05-10T23:57:00.002-04:00

Firstly, my apologies. What with one thing and another, I haven't had a chance to illustrate this week's story.

Anyway, this story marks the first time that I have written a story specifically in response to a request. My mother decided one day that I simply had to write a story about the big ole’ fir tree in the backyard. So...I did. And I'm running it today to celebrate Mother's Day. I might as well, she remains my most loyal reader.

For those unfamiliar with the titular tree, you should know that it is entirely true that a wide variety of animals do indeed make their home in it, as it is also a fact that the geese that frequent the yard are jerks. The rest I made up.

It was that time of day again. A frightened hush fell over the various creatures who were out foraging on the lawn. Two squirrels, a rabbit and a whole flock of birds all pricked up their ears (metaphorically, in some cases) for the sound of the encroachers.

“Here they come!” cried the rabbit.

Yes, the geese had come to the backyard. Big, tough, and none too bright, they were the bullies of the area. Waddling and squawking all over the place with no regard for any of their fellow animals. Even the ducks had all but vanished from the neighborhood when the geese moved in, having decided almost unanimously to feed elsewhere and simply avoid dealing with the geese.

And this was a real shame, because the owners of the yard were very fond of ducks. One of the humans had even gotten into the habit of putting out seed and crack corn for his various feathered friends. This is why his home was known as the “Duck House.” That is, until the geese started coming and bullying all the ducks so they could get the corn for themselves. Now the ducks had fled, the animals who remained lived in panic, and the geese held indomitable dominion over all.

Therefore, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the animals fled for home when the geese appeared. It might, however, surprise you to learn that they did not all flee for different places. For, you see, one of the most striking features of this particular yard was the enormous fir tree which stood right in the middle of the lawn. Some people might consider it overgrown, ugly or otherwise in desperate need of a tree surgeon. The people who lived in the Duck House, however, thought it was beautiful the way it was and let it be. Which is just as well for the animals I mentioned earlier, because they all lived there.

The matriarch of this unconventional extended family was a lady turtle called Beatrice, who seldom ventured beyond the safety of the trees branches. The rabbit was called Josh and he was excitable even by bunny standards. The squirrels were brother and sister, but there the similarities between them ended. Also in the tree were a family of mice, a raccoon who visited occasionally and countless birds. The point is there was a whole mess o’ critters living in this big ole’ fir tree.

“Those darn gooses!” muttered Josh. “Why’d they have to come here and ruin everything?”

“Patience, Josh,” said Beatrice in her usual slow, deliberate way…cuz, ya know…she’s a turtle.

“Yeah,” said Rose the Squirrel, “we all know why you hate the gooses!”

“Shut up!” said Josh, who would’ve been blushing if he weren’t covered in fur.

“Leave him alone, sis,” said Jack the Squirrel. “He can’t help it if he’s in lo-ove.”

“I am not!”

“Quiet!” said Beatrice, who did not want to spend the rest of the afternoon listening to this childish bickering. “Let’s just sit quietly and wait for the gooses to move on.”

(The word “geese” does not exist in the animal language; neither do words like “mice” or “sleeth,” which is the plural of “sloth,” which wouldn’t have come up in this case anyway since there are no sleeth in the vicinity of this story.)

And that was life for the residents of the big ole’ fir tree. But backtracking ever-so-slightly, what did Jack mean by Josh being in love? Well, a while back Josh made friends with a girl he met in the backyard of the Duck House. They hit it off right away and got very close. Despite his insistence that it was just platonic, however, the other animals loved to tease Josh about his “girlfriend.” However, recently, Daphne (which was Josh’s friend’s name) hadn’t been coming to the Duck House very often. Neither had any of her species, thanks to the geese.

That’s right, Daphne was a duck.

But every now and then, Daphne did return to the Duck House to hang out with her good friend, Josh. She usually came alone, and at night where they would sit and chat under the light of the moon. Considering these intimate rendezvouses (??) it’s not surprising that Josh’s friends teased him.

“I hate that this is the only way we can see each other,” said Josh to Daphne one night.

“I know,” said Daphne. “But until those gooses stop coming around and bothering everyone, what can we do?”

Something had been building up inside Josh for quite some time.

“It’s just not fair.”

“What did you say, Josh?”

“I said it’s just not fair! Why should you and your flock have to move on just because those horrible gooses decided they were in charge?”

“Josh, calm down.”

“No! I don’t think we should put up with it anymore. Daphne, come with me. I’m taking you to the Big Ole Tree.”

The animals were, of course, asleep at this point, and they were very cross when Josh woke them, though they were sort of excited that he brought Daphne for the first time.

“Why have you woken us at this late hour, Josh the Bunny Rabbit?” said Beatrice.

“Because, I don’t know about all of you, but I am sick and tired.”

“Yeah, we’re all tired!” said a starling with a yawn. “So why’d you wake us up?”

“I mean I am sick and tired of living like this. Being afraid of the gooses. Not being able to call our own home our own. We have as much right to this yard as they do. Maybe more, since we were here first. Just because they’re bigger than us they think they can do whatever they like.”

“They’re kind of right, Josh,” said Rose. “I mean what can we do about it?”

“We can fight back!” said Josh. “All of us. Tomorrow when they show up to feed, we take ‘em all on!”

“Ridiculous,” said Jack. “We can’t fight all those gooses by ourselves.”

“We won’t be by ourselves. Don’t forget, we’re not the only animals around here.”

“You don’t mean…”

“I do! I say it’s time we went to see…the pets!”

This was quite a radical suggestion. True, there were a few other animals in the area, but they were domesticated animals. Dogs and cats who belonged to the neighbors of the humans who lived in the Duck House (if you need a minute to reread that last sentence, feel free, I’ll wait). And traditionally, pets did not get along with wild animals.

“Maybe,” Josh continued, responding to one of his housemates who had expressed basically the same thing I just said in the above paragraph. “But I bet they’re none too fond of the gooses either. Now’s the time for an alliance. Daphne,” he said, turning around and facing his friend, “you should stay here with my friends. I’m going to go talk to the pets. I’ll be back!” With that, he turned and hopped away, to talk to the neighborhood pets.

Daphne was terrified, not only because she didn’t know whether Josh would come back alive, but also because she was now in the Big Ole Tree surrounded by animals she barely knew, which is always uncomfortable.

“Er…hi,” she said.

“It’s nice to finally meet you, Daphne,” said Beatrice. “Josh has been keeping you sort of to himself, you know.”

“Well, it’s silly, but my flock seems to think he’s my boyfriend and they’re not too pleased about that. That’s why we have to meet in secret.”

“So…” said Jack, timidly, “he’s not your boyfriend?”

“What? No! Of course not! I’m a duck and he’s a rabbit! That doesn’t even make sense!”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

“No, Josh and I are just good friends. But I certainly didn’t want him to do all this just to help me.”

“You have to understand,” said Beatrice, “that Josh is not like other rabbits. You know that people cave where the nice man who feeds the birds lives?”

“Yeah.”

“Josh was born in that house. One of the people had two pet rabbits and they had a litter. Of course, a people cave in no place for bunnies, so most of them died. But Josh survived and when his parents were released into this yard, he went with them. By then, of course, his parents were too used to living in a people cave to survive, and they died soon after. But Josh is a survivor. He’s a fighter. He never gives up.”

“Not only that,” added a cardinal, “but since he spent time with the people, he knows of their kindness and love for us all. And they put that food out for ducks, not gooses!”

“And us birds, too!” said a blackbird.

“And they never shoo us away when we squirrels want a bite either,” said Rose. The animals were getting more and more riled up. The more they talked about Josh’s courage and the people’s kindness and the geese’s…er…bulliness? Anyway, the more they talked the more excited they got, so that by the time Josh returned, they were ready.

It was that time of day again. The geese arrived as they had on countless mornings before. But today, something was different. Normally the yard was full of other animals who ran away when they saw the geese coming. Today, the yard was almost entirely empty…except for one little girl duck, standing between the geese and the food.

“What’s this?” said the lead goose. “I thought we scared you puny ducks away for good.”

“I thought so, too,” said Daphne, as bravely as she could. “But last night I learned something. I have power over you. I am stronger than you. Because I may not be big and tough and rude, but I have something birds like you will never have.”

Through their derisive laughter, the geese asked, “And what’s that?”

“Friends!” said Daphne and she quacked loudly. It was the signal. From within the Big Ole Tree, Beatrice shouted commands. A flock of birds, all species and sizes, burst from the tree like fireworks and began swooping down on the geese. The confused geese tried batting the little birds away with their wings, but they were outnumbered. That’s when Josh burst forth and starting pawing and scratching at the geese. As Jack and Rose climbed the back porch to get into position, Daphne quacked again, twice this time, to signal the reserve troops.

The two dogs from down the road knew the people from the Duck House as the ones who always waved to them as they drove past in their car. The cat from next door remembered the people from the Duck House leaving her milk and stroking her fur on more than one occasion. Even the raccoons and possums who ate out of the family’s trash and usually only came out at night had stayed up early in order to be part of the assault.

They pawed and scratched and bit as Jack and Rose took hold of one of the large bird feeders hanging from the porch. “You want seed?” said Jack. “Here ya go!” And they dropped the feeder on the heads of the terrified geese who had finally had enough and flew away never to be seen again.

When the people returned to their house later that day, they were shocked to see the state of the yard. Feathers everywhere, bird feeder toppled over and not a goose in sight. But, to their great delight, they saw that the ducks had returned! Once again, the Duck House was surrounded by the happy quacks of Daphne and her brethren. And not only the ducks, but the rabbits and birds and even old Beatrice were now free to do as they pleased without being afraid of gooses pushing them around.

And Josh and Daphne remained good friends for the rest of their lives. And even though she still lived with her flock, Daphne was always welcomed by the other animals who made her an honorary citizen of the Big Ole’ Tree By the Duck House.

THE END

"The Missing Unicorn"

The Faeries, The Ogres and the Three Curses

2012-05-04T00:00:00.004-04:00

As tomorrow is Cinco de Mayo, I thought it would be appropriate to share a traditional Mexican fairy tale. This one is known to the people of Mexico as “Domingo Siete,” or “Sunday Seven.” I have tried to remain as reliable as possible to the original while imbuing it with my own style. I have named the two central characters after two renowned Mexican filmmakers. Feliz Cinco de Mayo, Amigos!

Also, don't forget my still readily available sci-fi/fantasy/comic/romance/adventure novel which can be downloaded here at a very reasonable price.

Once, and only once, upon a time, there lived two hunchbacks named Alonso and Guillermo. Despite sharing a deformity, you couldn’t find two more different people if you tried. For while Guillermo cursed the world for his misshapen body and outcast status, Alonso remained cheerful and optimistic in the face of adversity. Hunchbacked as they were, they could not live among other people without being ridiculed, tormented and abused, so they lived in the forest and earned their Daily Bread (which is a special variety of bread available only in certain parts of the world) as woodcutters…

Or, rather, Alonso earned his bread as a woodcutter. Guillermo, however, was lazy, selfish and not really all that nice a guy, so he would often make excuses as to why he couldn’t work. Alonso, being kind and good natured, would consent and do all the work for the pair of them. He wasn’t what you might call enthusiastic about this arrangement, but kind people are always kind, so he spent most of the day chopping away for the sake of his lazy associate.

By the time he was done with the day’s work, it was very late. Too late to head for home. So he set up camp in the forest for the night. But as he was drifitng off to sleep, he heard a strange sound. It sounded like singing. But no human voice could be that lovely. He decided to investigate. Treading carefully, so as not to give himself away, he followed the sound of the singing to a small, secluded glade. Alonso’s suspicion about the voices not being human was quite right. Here he saw a band of faeries dancing and frolicking and singing:

Lunes y martes y miércoles tres...

Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday three…

Alonso recognized the old song at once, but the faeries were only singing the first line over and over again. It was as if they simply didn’t know the rest of the song. Alonso was so moved by their beautiful voices, he wanted to help, so the next time they sang “Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday three…” Alonso came out of hiding and sang, “Thursday and Friday and Saturday six!”

The faeries were initially shocked that a mortal had found their hiding place, but when they realized he had told them the rest of the lyrics to their song they were delighted. I mean, you know how frustrating that can be when you have a song in your head but you don’t know all the words. At the moment, for example, I have “You Can Do Magic” by America in my head and all I know is the bit that goes “You know darn well/When you cast your spell/You can get your way/When you hypnotize/With your…”

But, I digress.

The faeries invited Alonso to join the party and they sang and danced together into the night. And the curious thing was that, even though he had worked hard all day and hadn’t yet slept, he didn’t feel tired. He felt wide awake and full of joy, thanks to the faeries’ magic.

And that wasn’t all! The faeries grew so fond of Alonso that they wanted to pay him a kindness. They all flew around him and bathed him in their magical light and when they were done, the hump was gone from Alonso’s back! He was whole and healthy and strong! He was about to say how grateful he was to his new friends when a terrible rumbling was heard getting closer and closer. “It’s the ogres!” the faeries cried. “Quick, get up in the trees or they’ll see you!” Alonso didn’t need to be told twice and he scurried up the nearest tree (much easier to do now that his deformity was gone) and hid in its branches. Once he was settled, he looked down but the faeries had all vanished, as had all evidence of their party, and three huge, ugly ogres settled down in the clearing to rest and talk about the mischief they had caused.

“Well, amigos,” said the first ogre. “As we are all here, I can now call this annual meeting of the Evil Ogres Society to order.” And so the meeting began and, as with all formal society meetings like this, the first twenty minutes or so were pretty uneventful. Just the minutes from last year’s meeting, points of order, old business, procedural things like that which are the cornerstone of a well-run society, but which are murder for storytellers. Finally, just as Alonso was about to nod off from boredom, they got to the good stuff. “Now the chair will hear reports on the evil deeds performed in the previous year. The chair recognizes Brother Diego.”

The ogre, evidently called Diego, stood and addressed the others. “This has been a good year for me,” he began. “I found a small, unspoiled village full of good, hard-working, honest, pious, happy people. So, naturally, I had to do something about that.” The other ogres laughed, but Alonso listened with rapt attention. “I’ll spare you the details, but the upshot is…they are all blind! Every man, woman and child in the village is blind as a bat! Thank you.” The other ogres clapped and Diego sat. The chair then reconized the next ogre, name of Garcia.

“I too found a village of no-account do-gooders, as did Brother Diego, and I too felt the need to make them suffer for their innocence. Every single citizen of that village is now deaf and can’t even hear the thunder!” This report was also met with warm and appreciative applause. Alonso couldn’t help but admire how formal and polite these horrible monsters were...but only briefly before getting back to the business of loathing them for their evil deeds.

“As for me,” said the Chair-Ogre, “I had some fun with the village I found as well: I struck them all mute! No one can talk or laugh or cry or shout. They are silent!” Alonso was disgusted by the glee with which these monsters talked about punishing innocent people. He was all set to leap from the tree and attack them all, which would likely have gotten him killed almost instantly, when he heard something that made him stop at once.

“The thing that makes it all so funny,” said Diego, “is how easy it would be to cure them, if we wanted to!”

“Oh, yes,” agreed Garcia. “It would be the work of but a moment to release these pitiful people from these curses…but we won’t!”

“Gentlemen, please,” said the Chair-Ogre, trying to restore order. “For the sake of posterity, let us all say how we can cure our victims. In my case, all they would have to do is go to the fields and pick flowers from the cenizo plant. A tea brewed from this flower will cure muteness.”

“My village,” began Garcia, “is in the shadow of the Hill of the Bells which is covered in giant stones, but one of them is actually a bell in disguise. Strike that stone with a heavy hammer and the sound will echo throughout the village, curing everyone’s deafness.”

“If my victims wanted to cure their blindness,” said Diego, “they would have to wait until the first week of April and collect all the dew from the grass in the morning. Rub that dew into their eyes, and they’d all be able to see at once!”

“Well," said the Chair-Ogre, "I don’t think there’s any fear of our curses being undone any time soon! I mean even if these people were to somehow find out how to cure their various afflictions, it would take some kind of superman, or perhaps a man who has worked hard all his life, become strong and accustomed to hard work and who has, possibly, recently undergone some kind of physical change making it easier for him to move his body." The laughter of the ogres rang through the trees like dramatic irony. "So, if there’s no more business, I hereby adjourn the meeting. We will meet back here in one year.” The ogres disbanded and wandered off into the woods.

Alonso climbed down his tree. The faeries paid me a great kindness by removing my hump, he said to himself. I should try and help others the way they helped me. Starting with curing these poor, unfortunate villagers. So resolved, Alonso set forth on his adventure.

He didn’t know where any of the villages were, but it turns out it’s not that hard to find a village entirely peopled by the blind, deaf or mute and before long he was standing at the outskirts of the Mute Village. Though unable to speak, the people heard quite well and understood Alonso when he explained how they could be cured. The villagers wasted no time, but rushed out into the fields and picked every cenizo flower they could find. The tea was brewed and served to everyone in the town, and they could all speak once again! They were so grateful to Alonso that they gave him a burro laden with silver.

Next he went to the Village of the Deaf where he used some of his silver to buy a heavy sledgehammer with which he climbed the Hill of the Bells. He found the place the ogre had spoken of and began pounding every stone he could find. After striking one hundred and thirty-six stones and just before collapsing in utter exhaustion, he swung his hammer one last time and when it collided with the one hundred and thirty-seventh stone, the sound of a great bronze bell echoed across the village and all were cured of their deafness. Alonso was rewarded with a second burro, this one loaded with gold.

By now, it was the first week of April, and Alonso carefully gathered up each and every single drop of dew from each and every single blade of grass. Then he dipped his fingers in it, ran up to the first person he saw, and rubbed her eyes gently with the dew.

“Hey! Just what do you think you’re—” But the senorita was not angry anymore, since her blindness was cured…by a very handsome stranger. Alonso explained the situation to her, and the two of them spent the rest of the day curing each and every villager so that by sundown, there wasn’t a blind eye in the village. They even cured an old beggar who had actually been blind since birth and was, therefore, not affected by the ogre’s curse, but who was, nevertheless, grateful.

Unlike the first two villages, this one was not rich and they didn’t have any silver or gold to give him. As it happened, they did have something far more precious to offer him as a reward and when Alonso left for home, it was with a burro loaded with silver, a burro loaded with gold, and the beautiful girl he had cured first who had fallen in love with our hero which is, let's face it, always a nice thing to happen in a fairy tale.

It was, indeed, a joyous homecoming for Alonso and his new love. When he had last set foot in his home village a year ago, he was a misshapen woodcutter without two coins to rub together (which was actually a pretty common practice back then...no, no it wasn't, I'm just being silly). Now he was strong, handsome, rich and engaged. Not to mention famous for his heroic deeds. He was welcomed with open arms by everyone…except Guillermo, who was jealous of Alonso’s good fortune.

“Why should he get all this, but I have to remain a hunchback?” Guillermo thought. “I know! I’ll go into the woods and find those faeries. That should do it!”

So that night, Guillermo crept into the woods just as Alonso had done the previous year. And, sure enough, he did hear voices which he followed to that same clearing. Unfortunately, these were the voices of the ogres, who were meeting slightly earlier this year because they had a serious problem to discuss:

“It seems all of our curses have been cured,” said the Chair-Ogre. “And I thought we were the only ones who knew how to do that.”

“It wasn’t us,” said the other two. “Apparently, some woodcutter came and cured everyone. He must’ve been spying on us last year.”

It was at this moment that the faeries came out to play, not knowing the ogres were already here. Fearlessly, they began to sing:

Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday three…

Thursday and Friday and Saturday six…

Seeing his opportunity to share his friend’s good fortune, Guillermo leapt out of his hiding place and cried out:

“And Sunday seven!”

Which was a mistake because, not only was that not the next line of the song, but now the ogres thought he was the traitor who had eavesdropped on them the year before. That was the last anybody ever heard of Guillermo and even I don’t know exactly what happened to him, though there were rumors in a neighboring village of a horrible monster that lived in the forest with not one, but two ugly humps on his back.

And that’s the story of the two hunchbacks who lived in the woods and how the one who was kind, friendly and hard-working had great adventures and great reward, and how the one who was mean, cold and lazy suffered …which makes for a pretty good moral to any story, if you ask me.

THE END

Next Week: "The Big Ole' Tree"

The Wishing Ring

2012-04-20T00:00:00.013-04:00

Last week, as you may recall, I told you all about my novel 'Dragonfly.' Well, it is now available for purchase on the Amazon Kindle store. If you don't own a Kindle, that's all right, because the free Kindle app is available for iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone 7, Blackberry, PC and Mac. If you still don't have any of those...then how are you reading this blog? In any case, I hope you will buy my book and enjoy it as much as I continue to hope you enjoy my fairy tales.

This story was originally put down by Germany’s Richard Leander. I think it says a lot about the value we put in objects and how arbitrary it seems at times.

You ever know someone who couldn’t stop complaining about how rotten his life was? The kind of guy who played the martyr and thought the whole world was against him and, rather than take steps to change things, just kept feeling sorry for himself and talking the ears off anybody who would listen about what a victim he was? Well, if you happened to know a farmer calld Johan, then the answer to my questions would be yes because that was Johan to a tee. He worked all his life but never had much success and his response was simply to whine about it.

One day, a withered old crone came to Johan’s home and begged food and shelter for the night. This Johan and his wife, Hilda, were only too happy to give and the old woman slept comfortably in a warm bed with her belly full of Hilda’s fine cooking. As she prepared to depart after breakfast the following morning she said, “Because you have been so kind to me, I will repay you as best I can. If you walk due west for two days, you will come to a great, tall fir tree, taller than all the others that surround. Chop that tree down and you will have your reward.” With that, she made her way.

So Johan set out on his journey, making sure to keep moving due west. For two whole days he walked until, at last, he came to the tree the old woman had mentioned. He struck it once with his axe, and the whole tree shook. Then, from the tallest branches, Johan saw two large, brightly colored eggs fall to the ground. They broke, of course, and Johan saw that one contained a small, brass ring and the other an eagle who, once free of the eggshell, grew to an enormous height.

“You have set me free!” said the eagle. “Thank you, sir. You may keep the ring that came from the other egg. It is a magic wishing ring and is sure to bring you and yours wealth and happiness. Wear it and make any wish you like and it will instantly be granted. But, be warned, it is good for one wish only.” So saying, the eagle flapped its wings and took off.

Johan took the ring and slipped it on. At last, he thought, my life of hard work will finally pay off. If I make the right wish, me and Hilda will be set for life! In very high spirits, he started on the long journey home. After nearly two days, he stopped at a tavern to rest for the night. He was the only customer, so he ate with the tavern keeper, and told him of his amazing adventure. He even showed him the magic ring and explained how it would grant any wish. Envious, the tavern keeper resolved to steal the ring for himself.

Johan went to sleep and the tavern keeper snuck into his room and removed the magic ring, repalcing it with an ordinary brass ring. Then he left his tavern and ran to the forest, to a cave which he sealed up behind him so that nobody would see him. Alone in the cave, he slipped the ring onto his finger and said, “I wish I had a hundred thousand gold coins!” The wish was granted and it began to rain gold coins inside the cave…unfortunately, it wouldn’t stop raining and the tavern keeper couldn’t open the entrance in time. Soon the entire cave filled with coins and the greedy tavern keeper was crushed to death by a hundred thousand gold coins which, for all I know, are still sealed up in that cave along with what remains of the greedy tavern keeper.

The next morning, Johan awoke but couldn’t find the tavern keeper. Assuming he was busy with something else, Johan left his payment on the front desk and went home where he showed Hilda the ring on his finger—which we know to be an ordinary brass ring but which, to Johan’s knowledge, was the magic wishing ring the eagle had given him—and told her that they could have any wish they so desired.

“Oh, darling!” cried Hilda. “Wish for more land!”

“No, Hilda. With this ring we can have anything. Something big and valuable. We shouldn’t waste it on something we can get through normal means. If I work a little harder, we can make more money and buy more land. That way we’ll have the land and still have a wish!”

So Johan went back to work and worked harder than he ever had in his life. And, more astonishing than that, he did so without complaint. In fact, he was happy at the thought of his future prosperity, all thanks to the magic ring. And, in less than a year, he had earned enough to add several acres to his farm.

“Now we can make the wish,” said Hilda. “What if we wish for more cattle?”

“No, that’s a waste of a wish. I can get us more cattle easily.” So Johan worked hard, whistling merrily as he did so, and within a few months, he had the largest herd of cattle in the country. His farm was growing, his profits booming and his fame spreading. The king himself was among his customers and he was paid handsomely for providing his royal highness with his wheat and cattle.

“So are we going to make the wish now?” asked Hilda.

“Don’t be so impatient,” said Johan. “We’re young, healthy and rich. We don’t need the wish right now. Better that we save it and use it only when we really need it.”

It was agreed. Johan and Hilda lived very happily for the rest of their lives. And, many, many years later, when they both did finally pass away, they still had not used the “magic” ring. Johan was buried with the ring on his finger. And never once in his long life did he suspect that the ring had no magic in it whatsoever…although, it did bring he and his wife wealth and happiness...in a way.

THE END

NEXT WEEK: "The Three Pixies in the Well"

King Thrushbeard

2012-04-06T00:00:00.012-04:00

I took a couple of passes at this story before I found one I liked. Versions of this story exist all throughout Europe, including one version by the Brothers Grimm. Though the title of the story, the cruel name given to the king and the exact nature of the trick played on the princess are different, they generally end with the princess learning her lesson and living happily ever after. As the story does fall into the "Taming of the Shrew" category of story, however, I am forced to cross my fingers and hope that my readers understand that the deception played upon our princess is due to her being a genuinely unpleasant and mean person, and not just because "a woman needs to know her place" or some other such sexist nonsense.

Let’s face it, kids n’ people: Times have changed. We have cars instead of horses, horses instead of bicycles, bicycles instead of unicycles, polar bears instead of—

(NOTE: This introduction has been abandoned as it was clearly nonsense)

Times have changed. Especially for you lady-types who may or probably not be reading this. Today, you can do whatever you want. Do any job, use any last name, live anywhere, marry whoever you want, marry no one, have babies, don’t have babies. The world is your oyster…unless you don’t like oysters, in which case the world can be, like, your linguini or something. Maybe with some shrimp in there. Or is it shellfish you don’t like?

(This is your last warning!)

Okay, sorry. What I’m trying to say is that being a woman has changed a lot since this story took place. Back then, a young girl had only one job in life: Marry well and bear many sons. This was true of all girls, be they poor or really quite wealthy. Common or ever-so-royal. So whether you were Gwen, the nice girl whose dad was the village smithy, or Princess Caroline, when you reached that certain age (18, in this case) it was time to get engaged.

So Princess Caroline knew that she would have to marry and be beholden to her husband and do what he said and keep his house and raise his children. But Princess Caroline wasn’t just a rich, beautiful princess…she was also selfish, haughty, vain and good-old-fashioned spoiled rotten! She thought she was the most wonderful and important person in all the world, and she refused to marry anybody who wasn’t good enough for her. Suitors came from miles around to seek her hand in marriage, but she invariably found something wrong with each and every one.

“I’m not marrying you! You look like you’re already in love…with pastries!” she said to a slightly overweight prince.

“That nose of yours would put out my eye if I tried to kiss you!” she chortled to a very nice nobleman who had a slightly big nose.

“And you…” she started to say to another suitor, but stopped once she got a look at him. This man, a king from a neighboring country, was actually very handsome. But still not quite perfect in Caroline’s eyes. “Is that your beard,” she asked pointing at the king’s chin, “or did a thrush fly into your face and get stuck there?”

This was too much for her father. Insulting another king to his face like that! He scolded her most violently and vowed then and there that, whether she liked it or not, she would be married to the next poor beggar who came to the castle.

As it turned out, the king didn’t have to wait very long to make good on his promise. The very next day a poor beggar man with a dirty face and a long, slightly frightening beard came knocking at the back door asking for something to eat. “He’ll get more than that!” declared the king, and within an hour, the deed was done: Caroline and the beggar were married!

Now, I know that, ordinarily, the part of the story right after the wedding is the part where I say “And they all lived happily ever after,” but that’s not really how it went down this time. Caroline was horrified at being forcibly married to this beggar man with a dirty face and a long, slightly frightening beard (sometimes it looked like something might be living in it). She begged her father to relent, but he was immovable. He told her it was her own fault for being so haughty and cruel and that it would teach her a much needed lesson in humility. But all Caroline felt was sorry for herself as she rode with her new husband to his shack.

On the long trip away from her home in the castle to the home of this weird little beggar man, they passed through a rich, beautiful forest. “This is a rich, beautiful forest,” said Caroline. “I wonder who owns this land?”

“This is the forest of King Thrushbeard,” said the beggar man, referring to the suitor Caroline had slighted the night before. “And it might have been yours.”

Caroline thought about this and fell into silent despair. After they left the forest, they came to a quaint, fertile stretch of prosperous farmland. “What beautiful farms,” said Caroline. “I wonder whose they are?”

“This is the farmland of King Thrushbeard,” said the beggar man. “And it might have been yours.”

Again, the realization of all her vanity had cost her struck Caroline mute. Until they came to a village which sat next to a beautiful castle, perhaps even more extravagant than her own. “What a beautiful place this is,” she said. “I wonder whose—”

“King Thrushbeard!” said the irritated beggar man. “Might’ve been yours. Well, here we are! Home sweet home!”

The look of horror and disgust on Caroline’s face would be pointless attempting to describe, so I’ll just describe the shack she was looking at…actually “shack” might be a little too generous. Maybe hovel…or cave…actually, it could’ve passed for a large mouse hole it was so shabby and rundown. But, Caroline knew it was her home now and there was nothing she could do about it.

The first days of Caroline’s new life were curious and more than a little depressing. Her husband woke her with the sun so she could start on the housework and the chores while he was out all day doing who knows what (well, I do, but I can’t tell you yet). You wouldn’t think a house so small would have kept Caroline as busy as it did, but being unaccustomed to labor of any kind, it did take her most of the day to get the place clean. Then her husband returned and they shared a meager meal of bread and stale cheese with a small bottle of really bad wine (or really good vinegar, neither was quite sure). After dinner, they were both so tired that they went straight to bed--or rather, straight to cot--and before they fell asleep, Caroline’s poor, oddly-bearded husband whispered in her ear: “I love you.” She didn’t say it back.

So it was from then on. Up in the morning, husband gone, lots of housework, terrible dinner, bedtime, “I love you,” and she still never said it back. As the days wore on and Caroline grew more accustomed to the housework, it took her less time and she had a chance to go out into the village. She didn’t have as much money as she was used to, but she was able to buy a few little tinkets to make her life slightly more bearable. A few new things to wear, some good wine, sofa pillows, candles, and other things which pass for "necessities" if you're a girl.

Don't deny it, you know it's true.

Her husband was, of course, quick to notice the improvements and complimented her on what a good homemaker she had become. She found she felt good when her husband complimented her. And that’s when it struck her. People had been complimenting her all her life. For her grace and beauty and other princessly attributes. Before she had just said something like “Yes, I know,” and ignored the person who had said it. But when her husband complimented her, she actually liked it. She said thank you. It took her a while before she realized that it was because he really meant it. What she did really mattered to him. What she was doing was actually for him. And she got tremendous satisfaction doing something for someone else, which she had little-to-no experience with before her marriage.

That night, they went to bed, and before faling asleep, our beggar man whispered into Caroline’s ear, “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” said Caroline and fell into a peaceful sleep.

The next morning Caroline awoke to a shock. She was not lying on the straw mat she had been when she went to sleep. She was not wearing the cheap nightgown she had put on after dinner. She was, in short, not in the shack. She was lying on a big, soft (but not too soft) bed with satin sheets, exquisite curtains, goosedown pillows and it was all in a big, lavish bedroom, even grander than the one she had known in her father’s palace.

“Good morning, darling,” said a voice. Caroline looked up and just imagine her surprise when she saw…King Thrushbeard? “I hope you slept well. In fact, I’m sure you did or you would’ve woken up when I was carrying you here from our shack.”

“Our…shack?” was all Caroline could manage to say.

The King laughed. Then, in answer to her question, reached into his coat pocket and removed the long, frightening beard which he'd been wearing as a disguise. “I’m sorry to say that I’ve been deceiving you. Your father and I felt that you should be taught a lesson after that comment you made about my beard, so we hatched this little plan. I dressed up as a beggar with a really scary beard and took you away to that awful, rundown hovel where we’ve lived for the past several weeks.”

“You mean, all this time…you’ve been the king?”

“That’s where I was all day. Running the country. My advisors probably thought I’d gone mad when they saw me putting on this awful beard and sneaking down to that shack every evening for dinner.”

“You could’ve been in the castle, having banquets with the finest food in the—”

“I promise you, I was much happier having bread and wine with you,” said the King. “Or vinegar, I guess. We never did figure that one out.” He took Caroline’s hand, a sorrowful expression crossing his face. “I am sorry to play such a trick on you. It hurt me every day to lie to you. But I knew the day would come when you would answer me when I said ‘I love you,’ and it did. So now, the choice is yours.”

“What choice?”

“The truth is, we were never really married. Not legally. Which means now you have a choice. You can go back to your father’s castle and marry some other suitor…or you can stay with me. Marry me all over again.”

Now, you might think that Caroline would be furious at the King for playing this insanely elaborate, beard-related hoax on her. And maybe, somewhere inside, she was a little mad. But more than that, she was grateful. She looked back at the person she was when this whole thing started and she felt sick. How could she have thought so highly of herself that she didn’t think anyone would ever be good enough for her? How could she have been so cruel to such nice people? But living with King Thrushbeard all this time had taught her a lesson she would not soon forget.

And, so, there was a royal wedding. And this time I do get to say that they lived happily ever after…you know, cuz, before I didn’t get to say that and this time I do. Cuz they did, this time. I mean, they didn’t really get married last time, but this time they did and they wed and wedded and welded and were as happy as a penguin on a pogo stick on his way to the—

(Okay, you were warned!)

THE END

Next Week: Shelly Hobbes returns!

Leroy's Great Escape

2012-03-16T00:00:00.011-04:00

Being sort of small and mostly black, Leroy is often overlooked when he ventures out into the world. For all you know, you may have passed him on the street of your own home town and not seen him. This comes in handy, as you can imagine, but it also gets my friend into a lot of trouble. A while back, he told me this story which should illustrate that point quite nicely.

Leroy is different from some other penguins you might know. For one thing, he doesn’t care for fish. For another, he’s not a strong swimmer. He also doesn’t like the cold. So, when the weather started to change, he decided he needed to buy some nice warm socks. Thus resulved, he strapped on his fannypack-backpack and went to the mall. Not surprisingly, none of the clothing stores he visited carried socks that would fit over his webbed penguin feet.

He was on his way out of the mall, wondering if he could order penguin socks on-line, when he passed a toy store. He thought checking out the toys would be a great way to cheer himself up after his sadly blunderous attempt to acquire socks so in he went. He walked down the aisles of Transformers, Barbie dolls, board games, drawing toys, Play-Doh, those things with the plastic rings that get bigger and bigger and little babies put them on a stick into a kind of a cone shape…what the heck are those things called? Oh, sorry, I’m digressing.

At length, he came upon a Tickle-Me Elmo doll. Having been in Antarctica when the last craze for this toy swept America, he missed out and wanted to give it a try. Unfortunately, once he had turned the doll on, it wouldn’t turn off. He tried shoving it back on the shelf and hoping no one would notice. This might’ve worked except the doll shook the entire shelving structure and an Elefun game, carelessly tossed in the overstock section by an employee, fell and hit Leroy right on the head, knocking him unconscious…

When he came to, several hours later, he found, to his horror, that he was on a shelf, surrounded by plush toys in a closed and locked toy store in an even more closed and locked mall! It took him no time to figure out what had happened: In his unconscious state, he must’ve looked like a toy and was shelved by a well meaning worker and left there when the store closed for business. At first, he was grateful that he hadn’t been sold…then he was annoyed by that fact and wondered why he hadn’t been sold. Then he came to his senses and started thinking of a way out. The iron shutters were down, the lights were out and for all he knew he was the only living creature in the mall.

“How do I get out of here?” he said out loud. He had no idea why he said it out loud, knowing that there was no one around to hear him.

“You get sold or stolen,” said a voice from behind him. “That’s about it.” Leroy spun around and saw that he was being addressed by a teddy bear with a red muffler. This didn’t surprise Leroy as much as you might think because, being an avid movie buff (which, come to think of it, might be a redundant phrase), he was well aware of the scientific fact that toys come to life when there are no people around. “You don’t look familiar,” the bear continued. “Are you part of a new shipment? Cuz we got some Disney merch just this morning that—”

“No, I’m not a toy! I’m a real penguin!” said Leroy.

“Oh, great!” said the bear, with an exasperated sigh. “Another Buzz Lightyear wannabe!”

“No, really. I’m a real live, honest-to-gosh penguin. See? I have a heartbeat and everything.”

“So you do!” said the bear, after listening to Leroy’s heart. “Well, welcome to **************!” (Yeah, Leroy and I have been asked to withhold the name of the store for legal reasons. Sufficed to say, it’s not the one you’re thinking of.) “I’m Colin.”

“Leroy. Look, I don’t belong here. How do I get out?”

“Nobody gets out,” said another voice and a remote control car rolled into view. “Not after that gate’s been lowered.”

“I can’t stay here all night! I’m alive. I need food and water and warm milk and my dehumidifier and my Comfy-Cozy-Quilt!” (Yeah, don’t tell him I put that part in. He doesn’t like people to know about his Comfy-Cozy-Quilt…I don’t know why, he’s just sensitive like that.)

“Okay, Leroy, calm down!” said Colin. “Would you like to give me a hug? I’ve been told I’m very snuggly.”

“Yes, that would help.” So Leroy gave Colin a hug and he was, indeed, snuggly. Then, so as not to appear rude, he tried to hug the R/C car, but it didn’t work so well…ya know, cuz he’s a car. After the subsequent Fergusonesque awkward pause (I'm trying to get that to catch on; spread the word), the problem of getting Leroy out of the store was addressed in earnest.

“We should burn the place to the ground!!!”

“Okay,” said Colin in a firm voice. “Bad guy toys are not allowed to suggest ideas!” Voldemort, The Joker and a few Decepticons grumbled angrily amongst themselves, but said no more on the subject.

“I have a ridiculously elaborate plan involving multiple operatives working a complex series of—”

“Also none of the good guys from Toy Story 3! That’s not what this is!”

After the stupid ideas had been filtered out, a real plan was settled on. Stretch Armstrong squeezed through the holes in the gate, then Colin handed him a bag of marbles. Stretch ran out into the middle of the floor and dropped the marbles. The plan was that the security guard would see the movement on his monitors and run down to investigate, at which point Leroy could get his attention and get out. The plan was executed perfectly…unfortunately, there was no security guard on duty, just security cameras and motion sensors on the doors of the high end stores which, sadly, didn’t include the toy store.

The next plan was suggested by Barbie Dressed As Lucille Ball For Some Reason. It involved using suction cup toys to climb up the gate and Erector set tools to deactivate the locking mechanism…it should be pretty obvious why this plan failed.

There were a few more misfires. A pirate action figure tried to pick the lock with his sword. G.I. Joe wanted to use artillery. Winnie the Pooh got all zen and suggested they try to not help Leroy, see if that might work. Hours passed and it was looking increasingly like Leroy would spend the night in the toy store. Until...

“I got out!”

Well, yeah, I know you did. But how?

“I…escaped…cleverly.”

Leroy, c’mon, we’re telling a story here. You gotta give me more than that.

“It was a triumph of…imagination and…innovation and…intervention and—”

Leroy!

“Okay fine! I remembered that I had a cell phone in my fannypack-backpack, but I’d turned it off while I was talking to the sales help at Penneys, so I turned it back on, called my friend Carla and she came and got me. Happy?”

Very. Because you told the truth.

“Shut up!”

So, yeah, it turns out this wasn’t a very exciting story after all and, honestly, I don’t think we learned much of a lesson from this one. Except maybe to keep your cellphone turned on in case of emergencies, don’t listen to plans suggested by plastic persons and if you’re working retail, be careful with the inventory so that penguins don’t get knocked out and mistaken for plush toys…so, no, not much of a payoff on this one. But, we got some good toy jokes and Leroy made friends with a teddy bear. And, after all this, Carla knitted Leroy a pair of warm socks, so he’s all set…that plus his Comfy-Cozy-Quilt should be—

“Hey!”

Sorry.

THE END

Next Week: "The Wit and Wisdom of Nasreddin Hodja"

The Prince Frog

2012-02-17T00:00:00.011-05:00

This is another one from ‘Fractured Fairy Tales.’ They ran it under the title “The Frog Prince,” but I think my title is more fitting. I think the reason this story has stayed with me for so many years is that under the jokes and the funny voices (courtesy of Daws Butler, who also voiced Yogi Bear and Huckleberry Hound) there is a genuine love story here. Falling in love means you’re willing to do anything to be with someone. Being in love means you’re willing to do anything for someone. As you’ll see:

There was once upon a time a country that was entirely overrun with witches. They were everywhere, you couldn’t move for witches back then. It finally got so bad that there were more witches than there were people to bewitch. It was perfectly common to see two witches literally fighting over a peasant saying:

“Let go! I want to put him to sleep for a thousand years!”

“No, you let go! I want to turn him into a chair!”

“Well I want…a chair? That’s a weird thing to turn somebody into.”

“I’m running out of ideas! So sue me!”

One day a little witch was walking through the woods, desperate to cast a spell on someone when she came upon a little pond where she saw a frog sitting on a lily pad.

“Good morning!” said the frog, with the customary friendliness for which frogs are known.

“Not so good for you, dearie,” said the witch. “Because I’m going to cast a spell on you.”

But the frog just laughed. “I’m already a frog! What are you gonna do? Turn me into a handsome prince?”

“Say! That’s an idea!” With that the witch waved her wand and the frog became a handsome young prince…a human prince, in case that wasn’t clear…not that frogs have monarchies so…never mind.

“What?” cried the frog…I mean prince. “No! I don’t want to be a prince! Change me back into a frog!”

“Never! You are doomed to be a handsome prince forever!” And with a wicked cackle, she was gone.

The poor frog…that is the poor prince…well, he was really a frog but…looked, let’s just call him Filbert, okay? So, poor Filbert was very depressed and even though he tried to adjust to being a prince, he found his life just wasn’t the same. He couldn’t croak, he couldn’t catch flies, he couldn’t sit on lily pads (he almost drowned three times before he gave that up). In the end he realized he was just going to have to find a witch to turn him back into a frog and he set forth.

But he didn’t meet any witches on his travels (which was sort of surprising, come to think of it). Instead he met a beautiful princess who, despite his insistence that he was a frog, fell in love with Filbert. Feeling it would be impolite to refuse a princess, Filbert agreed to marry Princess Sylvia and they moved into a beautiful home together. Knowing that her eccentric husband was fond of nature, the princess had a beautiful back garden added to the house and Prince Filbert would walk through it for hours every day, dreaming of the days when he was a frog.

One day while he was out walking, a witch passed by. Imagine her surprise at seeing a genuine, honest-to-goodness prince! And not even under a spell! So, without any further ado, she announced that she was going to turn the prince into…a chair!

“No, a frog!”

“Good idea! A frog’s much better!” And Filbert was a frog once again.

Princess Sylvia tried to understand, but it wasn’t easy being married to a prince in the morning and a frog in the evening. Nevertheless she had come to love her husband very much and so she had a big, beautiful pond added to the garden where she could go visit her frog-prince-husband-guy whenever she wanted.

Well, as fate would have it, that same witch who started this whole silly business came by one day and recognized Filbert from the first spell. That’s funny, she thought. Normally my spells last longer than that. Oh well, we’ll just have to try something else. And with a wave of her wand, Filbert became…a chicken?

“Okay! That does it!” said Filbert and he marched…or whatever chickens do that’s most like marching…straight into the forest where he found the SHCOW meeting place: That’s Secret High Council of Witches. They were the group that sort of oversaw all witchcraft in the area. Sort of a Witches’ Union, you might say. Filbert went straight to the Head Witch, Griselda, and said, “Now look: First I was a frog, and I was happy. Then I was a prince, then I was almost a chair, then I was a frog again, and now I’m a chicken! I’m getting tired of this. Tell your witches to leave me alone!”

“Sorry, sir,” said Griselda. “We normally make it a point not to persecute any one person like this, but times are hard for us witches. Anyway, I’ll put you on the official ‘no-curse’ list, if you like and I’ll even change you back to your preferred form right now. So, what’ll it be?”

Of course, Filbert’s first thought was that he wanted to be a frog again. But then he thought about Sylvia. How she had humored him in his belief that he was a frog, how she had been so patient with his long walks in the garden, how she had let him live in the pond because she thought it would make him happy. She had done so much to make him happy; now, it was his turn. He knew what he had to do:

“I wanna be a prince!”

“Sure thing,” said Griselda and with a wave of her wand, the chicken was gone, and in its place was…a big, shaggy sheepdog? “Here, Prince. Good boy, Prince.”

“Not this kind of prince!”

“Oh, sorry.” So, Griselda waved her magic wand again and this time Filbert was a cat. Then a parakeet. Then a garden snail. Then a buffalo. Then a chair. And, finally, the frog he was at the start of all this nonsense. “Sorry, sir,” said the exhausted witch. “All that bewitching has rewritten your internal biology. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll never be able to make you a prince again.”

Filbert was confused and very unhappy as he thanked Griselda for trying and hopped on home. He didn’t know what he was going to say to his wife. But when he got back home, he found the house was empty. Sylvia was nowhere to be seen. Then he thought perhaps she was looking for him back in the pond so he hopped to the garden and when he reached the pond…there, sitting on his favorite lily pad, was the most beautiful girl-frog Filbert had ever seen. And, somehow, though he didn’t know how, he knew exactly who she was.

“Sylvia?”

Yes, it was! It turns out that while Filbert had been thinking of becoming a prince to make her happy, she had decided that the only way she could be happy was to be with Filbert. And if Filbert needed to be a frog to be happy, then a frog is just what she’d be, too. She marched straight out into the woods and ordered the first witch she met to turn her into a frog. The confused witch obliged and Sylvia hopped back to the pond to wait for Filbert.

No one ever knew what happened to the prince and princess. Their house soon feel into disrepair and another couple moved in and rebuilt it about two years later. By now the witch crisis was over and they felt it was once again safe to bring up children in the neighborhood and, before long, two beautiful little kids joined the family. And every day after their lessons, they would come straight home and run right out to the back where there was a little lilly pond which was very cozy and inviting and, in residence, two friendly frogs and a whole lot of little pollywogs living very happily ever after.

THE END

NEXT WEEK: Something short, I promise!

The Story of Chanticleer

2012-02-03T00:00:00.012-05:00

Today’s story is indeed old as it appears throughout English folklore in various forms. The original story of Chanticleer and the Fox is comparable to Aesop’s “The Fox and the Crow” and has been retold as a fable for years. Then there was the Nun’s Priest’s Tale from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” which retold the story in verse. French author Edmond Rostand (best remembered for “Cyrano de Bergerac”) wrote a play telling a new version of the story which was then translated by a Ms. Florence Yates Hann into a novella for children.

Tragically, the closest thing most people have to an understanding of this fable is the Don Bluth film Rock-A-Doodle which is, let’s face it, pretty much unwatchable and has about as much to do with the real Chanticleer story as the poop of a mouse who shook hands with another mouse who ate a nice piece of cheese in the home of a dentist has to do with dentistry…anyway, here’s how I think the story should go:

The rooster flapped his wings as he lit on the top of the fence. He gazed across at the horizon, waiting for just the right moment. Then, as though he could feel it in his bones, he knew his time had come. He filled his lungs with cool, early morning air and with all his strength he crowed. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” The tiniest glimmer of light danced on the edge of the world. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” Faint rays of sunlight shone from the east. “Cock-a-doodle-doo!!!” And just as it had a million times before, and would a million times again, the sun came up. And Chanticleer’s duty was fulfilled for another day.

Yes, Chanticleer was the king of the farmyard. He made sure the hens stayed on their nests, he saw to it that the animals had everything they needed, he kept things running smoothly. Everyone treated him with great respect and reverence. The young cockrels wanted to grow up to be just like him, all the hens wanted him for their husband, even the barnyard dog, Patou, counted himself among the rooster’s loyal subjects. And why was Chanticleer so admired and famous? His voice. For, you see, everyone on the farm, from the dog and the cat all the way down to the chicks and the goslings knew that it was Chanticleer’s crow that told the sun when to come up every morning. Without him, everything would be shrouded in darkness all the time. So it’s no wonder that Chanticleer was the most important and beloved figure in the farmyard…

Though not to everyone.

Some of the animals in the forest just beyond the farm resented Chanticleer for singing his song and waking the sun every day. The bats hunted by night. The mole worked at night, but his eyes were too sensitive for the bright sunlight. Even the barnyard cat preferred to sneak about in the dark and tended to sleep most of the day. And the owls, of course, lived in the darkness, worshipped the darkness. The only thing they didn’t like about nighttime was the moon and the stars, but they preferred that to the bright, piercing, inescapable sunlight. For several nights in a row, these animals would hold meetings in an old hollow tree where they conceived a plan to get rid of Chanticleer and his song once and for all.

They were the ones who sent the fox.

One morning, as Chanticleer was preparing himself for his morning duty he heard a voice calling his name from beyond the fence. He looked down and saw a fox looking up at him.

“Excuse me, sir,” said the fox, “but my name is Reynard, and I am a great admirer of your singing.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Chanticleer. He was proud, as who wouldn’t be, but humble.

“But may I make one suggestion? The best singers always close their eyes before they begin.”

Willing to try anything once, Chanticleer shut his eyes. This proved to be a mistake as the fox leapt up the fence, grabbed Chanticleer in his jaws and ran into the woods. Luckily, Patou saw the whole thing and started barking, waking the farmer, who took his shotgun and, with Patou at his side, chased the fox. A gunshot went off a few feet from Reynard’s path.

“They can’t do that to you!” said Chanticleer to the fleeing fox. “Tell them they’ll regret shooting at you!” The proud fox did so, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Chanticleer slipped out and ran madly for home. The fox cursed himself for his stupidity, then ran into the woods never to be seen again, at least not by anybody in this story.

So, Chanticleer escpaed being eaten by the fox. But, as he returned to the farmyard, he realized something was wrong. He sensed light on the horizon, the first dancing rays of the sun. Chanticleer stared with wide, incredulous eyes as the sun rose…without his having sung a single note.

Poor Chanticleer. He had really believed that it was his singing which woke the sun every morning. Now he saw that it wasn’t true. And to make matters worse, all the other animals in the farmyard starting laughing and mocking him for thinking he made the sun rise (though they had all believed it, too) and began asking, rather loudly, what they even needed him for, anyway.

Defeated, dejected and despondent, Chanticleer hung his head in shame and did what he thought was the only thing he could do and left. He went to the forest, vowing never to return to the farmyard as long as he lived.

Without Chanticleer, things on the farm were going quite smoothly…for the first few days. But running a farmyard is not as easy as Chanticleer made it look. Patou tried running things, but being an old hound dog, he didn’t quite have the strength for command. The hens found the pressure overwhelming and none of the other birds felt up to the challenge, either. Things began to fall apart pretty quickly. But the worst part was the mornings. The sun came up without Chanticleer’s crowing, that much was true, but the sun wasn’t the only thing that needed to rise every morning. The farmer, his sons and the animals all needed waking. And without the encouraging, inspiring song of the rooster, they rose, but did so without any great enthusiasm. It’s like their bodies woke up, but their hearts never did. A general malaise settled over the farm as, one by one, every animal came to realize how much they missed—

“Chanticleer!”

Yes, the rooster had returned and he was welcomed as a hero. They asked him what had happened to him after he left. “I went into the woods,” he said, “where I stayed with a very nice pheasant. At first I wept when I saw the sun rise without my song, but then I came to accept it. I didn’t sing at all anymore. I thought, what was the point? Until I met a nightingale.

“The nightingale knew me and asked, ‘Aren’t you Chanticleer, the rooster with the famous voice?’

“‘Not anymore,’ I said.

“‘Yes, I heard about the incident with the fox. But you can’t let that stop you from singing. Look at me. I know that my singing doesn’t make the moon rise, nor does it make the stars shine. But without my song, the night would seem empty and incomplete. There is more to daybreak than light, just as there is more to nighttime than darkness.’

“And so, this very morning, I crowed with the sunrise. And even though I know I didn’t cause it to rise, I got the same feeling of joy and fulfilment that I always used to. From now on, I’ll sing for the joy of singing and I’ll praise the dawn with my song every morning.”

From that day on, Chanticleer returned to his job on the farm, and every morning he crowed, just as he always had, which is why he, and all the other animals on the farm, lived happily ever after.

THE END

If You Liked My Story, Then, For Pete's Sake, Do NOT Ever See:

Rock-A-Doodle (1991) I really can't think of enough bad things to say about this movie. It's interesting to note that the Disney Company had worked on this story for years before it was suddenly shot down and abandoned. Don Bluth, the director of this awful movie, worked at Disney during that time. Sadly, the closest thing Disney ever made to an animated version of this story was the Silly Symphony Farmyard Symphony which Walt introduced on TV with a short history of Chanticleer.
If, however, you are interested in the story as written by Rostand and Yates, it can be read for free right here

NEXT WEEK:

"Don Demonio"