| the land of broken tales |
[Jan. 23rd, 2012|05:04 pm] |
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| | the book of lost things [ab] | ] |
Sarkangalvīte un vilks
Once upon a time there was a girl who lived on the outskirts of the forest. She was lively and bright, and she wore a red cloak, for that way if she ever went astray she could easily be found, since a red cloak would always stand out against the trees and bushes. As the years went by, and she became more woman than girl, she grew more and more beautiful. Many men wanted her or their bride, but she turned them all down. None was good enough for her, for she was cleverer than every man she met and they presented no challenge to her.
Her grandmother lived in a cottage in the forest, and the girl would visit her often, bringing her baskets of bread and meat and staying with her for a time. While her grandmother slept, the girl in red would wander among the trees, tasting the wild berries and strange fruits of the woods. One day, as she walked in a dark grove, a wolf came. It was wary of her and tried to pass without being seen, but the girl’s senses were too acute. She saw the wolf and she looked into its eyes and fell in love with the strangeness of it. When it turned away, she followed it, traveling deeper into the forest than she had ever done before. The wolf tried to lose her in places where there were no trails to follow, no paths to be seen, but the girl was too quick for it, and mile after mile the chase continued. At last, the wolf grew weary of the pursuit, and it turned to face her. It bared its fangs and growled a warning, but she was not afraid.
"Lovely wolf,‘ " she whispered. "You have nothing to fear from me. ”
She reached out her hand and placed it upon the wolf’s head. She ran her fingers through its fur and calmed it. And the wolf saw what beautiful eyes she had (all the better to see him with), and what gentle hands (all the better to stroke him with), and what soft, red lips (all the better to taste him with). The girl leaned forward, and she kissed the wolf. She cast off her red cloak and put her basket of flowers aside, and she lay with the animal. From their union came a creature that was more human than wolf. He was the first of the Loups, the one called Leroi, and more followed after him. Other women mute, lured by the girl in the red cloak. She would wander the forest paths, enticing those who passed her way with promises of ripe, juicy berries and spring water so pure that it could make skin look young again. Sometimes she traveled to the edge of a town or village, and there she would wait until a girl walked by and she would draw her into the woods with false cries for help.
But some went with her willingly, for there are women who dream of lying with wolves.
None was ever seen again, for in time the Loups turned on those who had created them and they fed upon them in the moonlight.
And that is how the Loups tame into being.
Sniegbaltīte un septiņi rūķīši
"Er, her name wouldn’t be Snow White, would it?"
Comrade Brother Number One stopped suddenly, causing a minor pileup of comrades behind him.
"She’s not a Friend of yours. Is she?" he asked suspiciously.
"Oh no, not at all," said David. "I’ve never met the lady. I might have heard about her, that’s all."
"Huh," said the dwarf, apparently satisfied, and started walking again. "Everybody’s heard of her: ‘Ooooh, Snow White who lives with the dwarfs, eats them out of house and home. They couldn't even kill her right.’ Oh yes, everybody knows about Snow White."
"Er, kill her?" asked David.
"Poisoned apple," said the dwarf "Didn’t go too well. We underestimated the dose."
"l thought it was her wicked stepmother who poisoned her," said David.
"You don’t read the papers," said the dwarf "Turned out the wicked stepmother had an alibi."
"We should really have checked first," said Brother Number Five. "Seems she was off poisoning someone else at the time. Chance in a million, really. It was just bad luck."
Now it was David’s turn to pause. "So you mean you tried to poison Snow White?"
"We just wanted her to nod off for a while," said Brother Number Two.
"A very long while," said Number Three.
"But why?" said David.
"You’ll see," said Brother Number One. "Anyway, we feed her an apple: chomp-chomp, snooze-snooze, weep-weep, ‘poor Snow White. We-will-miss-her-so-but-life-goes-on.’ We lay her out on a slab, surround her with flowers and little weeping bunny rabbits. You know, all the trimmings, then along comes a bloody prince and kisses her. We d0n’t even have a prince around here. He just appeared out of nowhere on a bleeding white horse. Next thing you know he’s climbed off and he’s onto Snow White like a whippet down a rabbit hole. Don’t know what he thought he was doing, gadding about randomly kissing strange women who happened to be sleeping at the time."
"Pervert," said Brother Number Three. "Ought to be locked up."
"Anyway, so he bounces in on his white horse like a big perfumed tea cozy, getting involved in affairs that are none of his business, and next thing you know she wakes up and — ooooh! — was she in a bad mood. The prince didn’t half get an earful, and that was after she clocked him one first for ‘taking liberties.’ Five minutes of listening to that and, instead of marrying her, the prince gets hack on his horse and rides off into the sunset. Never saw him again. We blamed the local wicked stepmother for the whole apple business, but, well, if there's a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s to make sure that the person you’re going to wrongfully blame for doing something bad is actually available for selection, as it were. There was a trial, we got suspended sentences on the grounds of provocation combined with lack of sufficient evidence, and we were told that if anything ever happened to Snow White again, if she even chipped a nail, we'd be for it."
Comrade Brother Number One did an impression of choking on a noose, just in case David didn't understand what “it” meant.
"Oh," said David. "But that’s not the story I heard."
"Story!" The dwarf snorted. "You’ll be talking about 'happily ever after' next. Do we look happy? There's no happily ever after for us. Miserably ever after, more like."
"We should have left her for the bears," said Brother Number Five, glumly. "They know how to do a good killing, do the bears."
"Goldilocks," said Brother Number One, nodding approvingly. "Classic that, just classic."
"Oh, she was awful," said Brother Number Five. "You couldn't blame them, really."
"Hang on," said David. "Goldilocks ran away from the bears’ house and never went back there again."
He stopped talking. The dwarfs were now looking at him as if he might have been a little slow.
"Er, didn’t she?" he added.
"She got a taste for their porridge," said Brother Number One, tapping the side of his nose gently as though he were confiding a great secret to David. "Couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually, the bears just got tired of her, and, well. That was that. ‘She ran away into the woods and never went back to the bears’ house again.‘ A likely story!"
"You mean... they killed her?" asked David.
"They ate her," said Brother Number One. "With porridge. That’s what 'ran away and was never seen again' means in these parts. It means 'eaten.'"
"Um, and what about 'happily ever after'?" asked David, a little uncertainly. "What does that mean?"
"Eaten quickly!" said Brother Number One. |
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