Tag: fairytales

The Little Read Story

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Once upon a time, there was a short story that bravely set out to change the world. It was certain that it had something important to say. The story knew there was a reader waiting for it, all it needed to do was find its way there.

Its lines were carefully packed with goodies sure to delight. There were silly puns and thoughtful metaphors and underneath it all there was an enduring message of hope. It was not too sweet and not too sour. It was just right.

Unfortunately, the story had to cross the dark forest of the editorial process in order to reach the reader. The author sent the story on its way with a word of caution. “Be careful who you listen to in the woods. Not everyone has your best interests at heart.”

“I’ll be fine,” the story said. “The woods don’t scare me.”

But the woods were scarier than the story thought. It was dark in the woods, and very confusing. Sometimes the story wasn’t sure which way to go. The story remembered hearing rumors that stories could be lost in the editorial process forever, never reaching any readers at all. Suddenly, the short story was terrified.

Just then, a friendly amateur editor greeted the story. “Little story, what are you doing in the woods?”

“I’ve come to deliver goodies to my reader. She’s waiting for me at the other end of the woods.”

The editor smiled a wide smile, “That’s wonderful. But did you know that you have a comma out of place right there? And are you sure that’s the right word choice? It implies entirely the wrong thing for the context. In fact, I think you are headed in entirely the wrong direction. Let me give you a few pointers, or you’ll never make it out of here.”

The little story took notes. Then, just as it looked down to check the comma, the amateur editor slipped away, and changed all the road signs as he went. The short story quickly lost its way.

It got stuck in unexpected swamps of indecision, and second guessed all its metaphors. Thorny bushes of self-criticism tore up the silly puns. The story clung desperately to its hope and trudged its way through the long paths of grammar and spelling checks.

It was not the same story once it emerged from the woods. And the little house on the other side of the woods was not the house that the short story expected to see. Had the reader moved?

The short story straightened its lines and knocked on the door. “Hello?” it called. “Were you expecting a story?”

“Come in,” called a strange voice.

The story hesitantly entered the not-quite-familiar house. “Where are you?” the story asked.

“Just in here, dear.”

The story followed the voice and found the reader tucked away in bed, already wearing her reading glasses. But she didn’t look quite right. In fact, everything about her seemed a little bit off.

“Reader, what big eyes you have,” the story said nervously.

“That’s just the glasses. They magnify things, you know.”

“Reader, did you always have pointy ears on top of your head?”

“Silly story, how could I keep my reading glasses on without ears?”

The story looked at the reader again. Something was really wrong here. “Reader, why are your teeth so sharp?”

“The better to criticize you unfairly,” the reader roared, and sprang out of the bed. But it wasn’t the reader at all. It was the friendly amateur editor. But the editor wasn’t looking so friendly any longer.

The story gasped. “What did you do to the reader?”

“What reader?” The amateur editor laughed. “I think you need to be set aside. You just don’t really have the potential you used to have. Maybe someday the writer can figure out what went wrong. For now, there aren’t any readers waiting for you at all. You are just a terrible story.”

With a cry of dismay, the short story prepared itself to be shut away in a drawer, little read and little remembered. And that’s just what happened. Fortunately, the story still had its message of hope to keep it company in the dark drawer.

A long time later, the writer came across the story again. “Oh, dear. This little story certainly met an unfriendly editor. Look at all the changes. It’s hardly the same story at all. And it had so much potential. Its heart is still good. I think I can revive it.”

The little read story was rescued from the dark drawer and set on its feet. Its goodies were restored, better than before. The next time through the woods, it stayed focused and didn’t get distracted or lost. The short story found its reader and delivered its metaphors and puns and message of hope. It was no longer little read or little remembered. It was loved. The story and the reader lived happily ever after, and the world was just a little bit better.

A Scrambled Conversation

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The fairy tale village doctor hurried to Humpty Dumpty’s door. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men had failed out of medical school yet again, and the doctor was still the only one qualified to put everyone back together again. Unfortunately, there were a lot of emergencies in the fairy tale village, so the doctor was very busy.

He knocked on the door. The neighbors had called him about the emergency, and he hoped they’d be here to let him in. He was surprised when Humpty answered the door himself.

“Humpty Dumpty, I heard you had a great fall,” the doctor said.

Humpty smiled. “It was nice. The leaves were great colors, and I was invited over to eat tarts with the king and queen twice. The winter was terrible. The knave of hearts stole the tarts, and there was a long trial, and this giant girl knocked everyone over…”

“I thought that happened last summer.” The doctor was confused.

“Winter, summer, what’s the difference? It wasn’t fall, was it?”

The doctor opened his mouth to reply, and then closed it again. He narrowed his eyes. “Wait, I meant to say that I heard you’d been sitting on a wall and fell off.”

“Well it was more like a fence.” Humpty held his palms out, and mimed weighing things on scales. “I was trying to decide whether to wear a belt or a tie. I can’t wear both, you know.” He let one hand drop. “The tie won today.”

“I’m a doctor and don’t really care about fashion. I just need to know if you were injured.”

“I’m sad that you haven’t complimented the tie, but not offended.” Humpty smiled. “It is rather understated, so I suppose you hadn’t noticed it yet. Now that you have, you have to tell me your opinion.” The bow tie was plain and black.

“It’s lovely.” The doctor managed not to roll his eyes, but it was a close call. “So you haven’t broken anything?”

“Well, I promised myself that I’d be rich and famous by this age, but I’ve obviously broken that promise. I’ll probably never trust myself again. It’s a terrible thing. Why, just the other day, I said that the sky was blue, and I still had to go outside to check and see if it really was.”

The doctor sighed. “Your neighbors called and said that you’d fallen from a wall and broken into tiny pieces.”

Humpty frowned. “Which neighbors? The wooden puppet people with the long, long noses? Or that boy who watches the sheep and keeps being overrun by wolves?”

The doctor thought for a moment. “I think I see the problem. You need new neighbors.”

“They’re not so bad. They’re always complimenting my ties. And my belts. They say the nicest things.” Humpty smoothed his tie. “Would you like to come in? Someone left a basket of lemons on my front steps, so I made lemonade. Unfortunately, they didn’t leave sugar, so it’s a little sour.”

“No, I have to go visit the twins down the street. I received an urgent call that said that they’d fallen down and broken their crowns.” The doctor paused.

“Did my neighbors make the call?” Humpty asked, guessing his thoughts.

“Yes. They said Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water and then fell.”

“But there isn’t a hill anywhere near here,” Humpty said.

The doctor sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that. Still, I need to go check to be sure.”

“Tell them hi for me. Oh, and invite them over for lemonade. A basket of lemons makes rather a lot of lemonade. Maybe I should invite the neighbors. I’m sure they’d love it.”

“If they don’t, I’m sure they’re too polite to say so,” the doctor said. Humpty laughed.

The doctor drove to check on Jack and Jill. They were fine. He went back to his car, ready to visit Jack Sprat and his wife. They’d mixed up their meal plans and were suffering from a touch of indigestion.

Before he could drive away, his phone rang. He answered it. “Hello, this is the fairy tale village doctor. Do you have an emergency?”

“You have to help me, doctor,” a young voice said. “I was watching the sheep when a wolf came and…”

“Ate the sheep?” the doctor asked.

“No, it knocked me over and broke my arm. Then it ate my sheep. Can you help me?”

The doctor was tempted to ignore the call after the two false calls that had wasted his morning. But, as a doctor, he couldn’t ignore someone in need. “I’ll be right there,” he promised.

Maybe it was time to help tutor the king’s horses and the king’s men when he had some time off. The village really did need a few more doctors. Fairy tale people seemed to have lots of emergencies.

Snakeylocks

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Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had snakes instead of hair, just like her mother and father and grandparents and great-grandparents did. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce her real name, and my computer doesn’t have the right symbols to spell it out anyway, so for the purposes of this story we’ll call her Snakeylocks.

The lovely, grass-green snakes of her hair had an extra special talent. If anything met their eyes, it was turned to stone. This meant that as she went skipping through the forest, birds dropped out of the sky, butterflies stopped fluttering, and squirrels fell out of trees.

Snakeylocks was used to this, of course, and ignored all the little woodland creature statues as she picked flowers. Flowers have no eyes, and so they remained nice and soft and colorful. She gathered an extra large bouquet and was just looking for somewhere to put it, when she saw a house in a clearing further along the path. “Perfect,” she said.

Without even knocking once, she opened the door and stepped inside. You might think that she should know better than to enter someone’s home uninvited, but you’d be wrong. Any house she’d ever entered had been inhabited by the usual boring statues that she always saw everywhere, so she just assumed that houses were part of the usual natural terrain of the world. Do you knock on the trees when you enter a forest? Neither did she.

Once inside the house, she saw a table set for breakfast. How convenient. She was feeling hungry. She left the bouquet of flowers in the orange juice jug, because orange juice tastes terrible and needs to make itself useful somehow. And then she washed her hands, said a blessing on the food, and took a bite.

As you may have guessed, the first bowl was too hot, the second too cold, and the third just right. So, she mixed them all together in a big bowl she found in the cupboard and shared the meal with her snakey hair. It was lovely.

Full and empty-handed, she decided to explore the rest of the house. Houses were always so different from the cave she lived in with her family. They were so fragile and temporary, like the flowers she liked to pick. In fact, if they were a bit smaller, she’d pick a few to take home and leave around the cave to play in when she was bored.

Speaking of playing, Snakeylocks was pleased to find rocking chairs in the living room. Perfect! She jumped onto the first one feet first. It rocked back and forth, but wasn’t really springy. It was too hard. She leaped over the arms onto the next rocking chair. She sank right away into the cushions as it rocked back and forth. Too soft. She leaped onto the last and bounced up a little into the air. It was just right.

She jumped and jumped on the rocking chair as it rocked wildly back and forth. Eventually the whole thing collapsed into a satisfying heap on the floor. Her snakey hair hissed in complaint about feeling seasick and Snakeylocks sighed. She was feeling a little tired. Maybe they’d all feel better after a nap.

She climbed the stairs and found the usual bedrooms. There were no sensible nests in houses, but you have to make do with what you have sometimes. She entered the first room and made a nest of the blankets and pillows on the bed.

It was terrible. Some of them were too rough and some were too slippery. She and her snakes hissed in displeasure. She went to the next bedroom. The bed was smaller, but the blankets and pillow felt just right. She pushed them around until the nest was perfect and settled in to sleep as her snakey hair hissed lovely lullabies about caves and the ocean and lots and lots of statues.

She woke when her snakes hissed a warning. There were sounds downstairs. That meant that it was time to find the statues. Statues were boring. She sat up and stretched. Outside the window there was a tree with a convenient branch. It looked like she could jump to the branch from the window. That sounded fun.

Within moments, Snakeylocks was out the window, leaping from branch to branch and shrieking in delight as her snakey hair hissed complaints, and squirrels, birds and butterflies fell from the treetops to the forest floor.

Behind her, a confused family of bears opened the door to the bedroom she’d left behind and examined the nest of blankets. “I think it went out the window,” the baby bear said. “It was closed when we left. If we make more oatmeal, can we stay here while it cools?”

And they did, cleaning up the mess while they waited and ordering a new little rocking chair online. It wasn’t until they sat down for their very late breakfast that they noticed the odd bouquet of flowers in the orange juice. It was the strangest morning they ever had, and they still talk about it today.

Snakeylocks is still out there, picking flowers and visiting houses. So, if you hear something go bump in the night, maybe it’s not a good idea to check it out. You never know who might be jumping in your rocking chairs and eating your oatmeal, after all.