It Takes a Princess to be a Queen

Poor little thing, feet bare, bedraggled dress, beleaguered, and common. The prince says to me, “I’ve found a wife.”

More like a wet kit.

I could say, “She’s a sly one.” He would never listen. He has too good a heart.

So, I tell my maid, “Find her a gown. Let her sup in the kitchen. And lastly, make up the softest bed with the hardest pebbles inside as a test.” Maid’s done this many times.

The ungrateful girl eats nothing. The satin is not fine enough, the slippers too stiff. By morning, I know she’s a princess most uncommon.

A Mother’s Quandary

My only daughter, a kind one her. Didn’t she bake a cake, ripe with almond scent, to bring her grandmother? To visit my mother is arduous, more than one day’s journey. Should I caution her? Could my daughter understand if I warned her about the treacherous nature of the beast we women become by the light of the moon? And as fate would have it, the moon is full tonight.

I must trust my precious girl. I tell her, “Stay on the path, avoid strangers, clean yourself in the river along the way if you must. My love to Grandma.”

Cut Before the Chase

Photo by Maria Fernanda Fotografia on Pexels.com

Yeasty fresh rolls wrapped in rough textured linen, unpolished like the girl who carried the basket. Mist rose from woody ground to fill the heavy air. The young girl parked herself to rest under a tree.

Behind her, a rank smell rose. A wild laugh accompanied the odor’s owner, a creature of the forest who embodied all that tangled in trees and clung to rocks. “Tired? I have a shortcut for you.”

“Where am I going, then?”

“Give something, get something.”

“I’ll give you what for.” She pulled out an ax from her red riding cape and cut things short.

Opossum on the Move

Our fence, her highway, three times that we know of. Once struggling in thick ivy, an ashen color, a naked tail that made us mistake her for a white rat disturbing the leaves. Next, she cased the neighbor’s vegetables. Finally, she came with two juveniles following in a line.

It was daylight, an unusual time for them to be about. Overcast, so that might have helped. The mother was scruffy, the youngest sleek with soft fur. We didn’t see them after that.

Maybe the camera scared them off.

Or is it that they change hunting grounds every few days?

Death, Natural and Not

“The moment you accept your own death, something in you changes.”* Words spoken by a Ukrainian refugee slumped on a shelter bed, phone in hand. Resigned. Her words resonate, a reminder of my mother’s decline.

Mom has changed. She says very little, sleeps a lot. No more raging temper tantrums over how much butter there is on the toast. Little things matter little, big things less. Nothing big like Russian planes threaten Mom. Nothing external. Nothing like this Ukrainian woman faces. And yet she is upended. Shuttling from hospital to rehab, death has crept inside my mother, weighing her down.

* From The Economist April 30, 2022 “The Wreckage Within.”

Ode to Post-Pandemic Gophers

The last time we met you was before Zoom was the go-to way to say “Hello.” A long time ago, but we remember.

Your three year old was a baby. She’s distant, no interest in meeting strangers. As long as you hold my phone for her, she likes the photo of the lizard camouflaged in the dirt.

“The ground is moving.” Enough to entice a child to get acquainted. It’s a tuft of dried grass, to be precise. A nose pushes up, sniffing the air, reluctant, the way we were when we took the risk to picnic in the park.

Never Try to Outsmart a Comedian

Priest asks Jester to amuse him. In an elaborate ruse, Jester collects 300 roubles from Priest’s wife to buy 1200 pounds of fish. No fish. Priest doesn’t much like that trick. He can’t catch Jester, so he’s out the money.

Jester tricks Merchant by substituting a goat for himself. He tricks seven greedy jesters three times. The change ups are funny, as is staying one step ahead of a powerful adversary who’s not up to speed.

Abused by the jesters, Jester lures them into sacks to drown in the lake. An early grave to those who can’t outsmart a comedian.

From The Jester in Russian Fairy Tales by Aleksandr Afanas’ev

Migrants

They flew in shield shape, banking together. Not a bird was out of formation. The fluid group landed in a mulberry where they plucked juicy fruit, bringing the tree to life with their acrobatics and mid-air high jinx.

Such handsome fellows, masked like robbers, with subtle rusty red and muted yellow highlights on their mourning dove grey cigar bodies.

My camera disrupts them, but not before I have a picture. A silent order travels through the troupe, wings flutter together, they move with one mind. They will be back; they have no choice. It’s how they earn a living.

To Catch a Curse

“She won’t wake up.” A harried looking Queen sat on the edge of her daughter’s bed while the royal physician poked, prodded and tested the Princess.

“Anything unusual to report,” he asked.

“Her birthday. Yesterday. She had a lie down after she’d opened her presents.”

“I see.” He peered at the child’s finger. “Something sharp, a sewing kit? Knitting needles?”

“She got a spindle from her godmother. And merino wool.”

“Tried it right away?”

The queen nodded.

“A witch practitioner is what you need.”

The queen frowned. “Magic, what kind of medicine is that?”

“Only a spell cures a spell.”

Siren’s Song

Sherlock Wolff tracked the notorious hacker, Lorelei, to the Rhine Club. Concealing himself at the back, he scoped out the exits. She sang. Too late, he noticed his cocoa turning wolfsbane blue. The arrest warrant in his hand wavered like a timepiece in a Dali painting. He found himself on stage.

Instead of serving the warrant, he was served. Instead of arresting Lorelei, she handcuffed him. Wolff’s supervisor appeared. “Good work, Detective Wolff.” He shook Lorelei’s hand.

Wolff couldn’t find his tongue.

He woke up in a Bavarian jail. The woodcutter in the next cell said, “Don’t I know you?”

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