And Other Stories (13 page)

“That would be a
sorry thing,” said the princess. “I want you to stop crying, and
your family to be well. Here, I shall give you my dog, who
understands speech. Tell her to round up all your sheep and help
you drive them to market, and she’ll do just as you
say.”

The little girl called to the dog,
which bounded up to her. As the princess set off again, she heard
the sheep maaa-ing and baaa-ing as the dog drove them out of the
woods.

“I’ve miles to go
yet,” the princess said to herself, and went on down the road with
her cat, her crow, and her cloak.

She was growing hungry, so when she
came to a cottage she decided to stop and ask if anyone there could
spare her a bit of bread. When she knocked on the door there was no
answer. But she thought she heard a noise inside, so she opened the
door and stepped in.

An old woman sat on a stool there,
weeping into her apron.

“Why do you weep so,
Grandmother?” asked the princess.

“It’s the rats!”
wailed the old woman. “They’ve eaten my corn and my oats and my
wheat, and tonight they’ll finish my barley. And that’s all I have
to keep me from starving.”

“Then dry your
tears,” the princess bid her. “I want you to be merry, and your
larder to be full. So you may have my cat. There’s no rat in all
the world can outrun or outsmart him. And when I return home, I’ll
send you corn and oats and wheat to replace what you’ve lost, and a
cow to milk besides.”

The old woman leaped up with a
shout and threw her arms around the princess. Before she could say
“Farewell,” the cat had killed three rats and was hunting a
fourth.

“One foot in front of
the other,” the princess said, and went on down the road with her
crow and her cloak.

In a little while, she came to a
house that stood all alone. There she saw a man sitting on the
front step. Tears streamed down his face, but he never made a
sound.

“Heavens, what’s
amiss?” asked the princess.

He shook his head and beckoned her
closer. When she put her face down next to his, he whispered, “My
poor daughter has fallen under an enchantment. She can neither move
nor speak, and the only way to break the spell is to talk to her
for three days and three nights. I’ve talked for a day and a night
and half a day, and now I’m so hoarse I cannot talk at all. What
can I do to help my girl?”

“I’ve just the
thing,” said the princess. “I want your daughter to go free and you
to get your voice back, so I’ll give you my crow who can recite
every verse in the world. Just let him perch by your daughter’s
right hand, and she’ll have poems and songs until she can sing them
herself.”

At that the man flung his hat into
the air and took the crow with great delight.

“The path to home’s
not easy yet,” the princess said, and went on down the road,
carrying the case that held her cloak that could turn its wearer
invisible.

At last she came to a place where
the land was hilly, and great boulders stood all around. It was a
strange place, and smelled of magic. As she rounded a bend in the
road, she came upon a little boy sitting on the ground with his
face hidden in his arms.

“Are you not well?”
asked the princess, but cautiously, because she knew one should be
cautious in such a place.

The boy looked up, and she saw it
wasn’t a boy at all, but a very small brown man with long pointed
ears, and a long, long moustache that reached to his waist, and
sharp black eyes in a face as wrinkled as a raisin. “Why do you
ask?” he said.

“Because I will help
if I can,” the princess said.

“No one can help,”
said the little brown man. “The Lord of Night has stolen away my
magic in a box of elder wood, and set a beast to guard it. The
beast has six eyes on each side of its head. It never eats and it
never sleeps. What can you do about that?”

“I’ve a score of my
own to settle with the Lord of Night,” the princess told him, “but
if I didn’t, I would still give you my cloak, because I want you to
have justice. Wrap it around you, and you’ll be as invisible as
air. Then you may walk past the beast as you please, and take your
magic back.”

The little man gathered up the
velvet cloak and looked long at her with his fierce black eyes.
“This is a good favor you’ve done me,” he said, “and I would do one
for you. But without my magic, I haven’t much.”

He pulled a fine gold ring with a
blue stone off his thumb. “Still, you may have this from me,” said
the little brown man. “If you keep the stone turned in, what people
tell you will come true. But if you turn the stone out, then
promise what they will, everything they say will end up
false.”

“Thank you very
much,” the princess replied, “and I’ll take care with
it.”

She blinked, and the little man was
gone, because he’d wrapped himself in her cloak.

“Journey’s end,” the
princess said. She put the little man’s ring in her pocket and set
out home again by the shortest way.

When she reached the palace, her
mother and father ran out to meet her.

“Daughter, tell me
quickly. Is there anything you want?” the queen asked, full of
fear.

“Why do you want to
know?” said the princess.

“Because the Lord of
Night is here,” answered her father the king, “and he says we must
give up our kingdom and our lives because the curse has come to
pass.”

“Oh,” said the
princess. “Well, tell him if he’d like to know what I want, he’ll
have to ask me himself. Bring him to me.”

The king and queen hurried back to
the palace. In a moment, the Lord of Night himself, dressed all in
black and with eyes like little flames, came out to meet her. The
king and queen followed behind him, their faces pale as
milk.

“I think there is
something you want,” he said, in a voice like wind hissing through
dead leaves.

“And what would that
be?” said the princess, as bravely as she could, though she was
terrified. She had never before been face to face with the Lord of
Night.

“Your horse and your
dog are gone, and your cat and your crow.”

“That they are,” the
princess answered. “A young man has the horse, a little girl has
the dog, an old woman has the cat, and a man and his daughter have
the crow.” But the princess said nothing about her cloak, because
the Lord of Night hadn’t.

“I gave the wasting
sickness to the young man’s mother,” the Lord of Night said,
cracking his fingers one by one. “I frightened the little girl’s
sheep, so that they would all be lost in the forest. I sent the
rats to eat the old woman’s grain, and I laid the enchantment on
the man’s daughter so that she could neither move nor speak. I did
all that to trap you. I made you give up the things you
want.”

“That’s not true,”
the princess replied. “I gave away my horse to the young man
because I wanted him to save his mother. I gave my dog to the
little girl because I wanted her to get her sheep to market. I gave
my cat to the old woman because I wanted her to have enough to eat.
I gave my crow to the man because I wanted his daughter to move and
speak again. And I wanted all of them to be happy. I got just what
I wanted.”

“It’s not so!” cried
the Lord of Night. “You want something. You’ve wanted something
since this morning, and haven’t got it. I know, I can smell it all
around you!”

“Now that,” said the
princess, “is a fact, and I’ll tell you what it is. I want to be
free of your curse.” And she slipped her hand in her pocket, where
she’d put the ring the little brown man had given her.

“Never!” the Lord of
Night shrieked. “You’ll bear that curse until the end of your
life.”

But as he spoke, the princess
popped the fine gold ring on her finger and turned the blue stone
to face out. Then she took her hand out of her pocket and showed
the ring to the Lord of Night.

He stared in dread at the ring with
its blue stone sparkling at him like laughter. “Where did you get
that ring? Where?” he screamed.

“I think you know
where,” said the princess, “and I think you know this ring. A
little brown man gave it to me, and told me that if I turned it so
that the stone faced out, anything said to me would be made false.
And that’s what I did when you spoke. Now my curse is gone, for you
did the uncursing yourself.”

“Then the little
brown man shall pay for it,” vowed the Lord of Night in a
fury.

“Will he? But he gave
me the ring in return for my cloak that makes its wearer invisible,
and if he hasn’t used it by now, I’d be surprised.”

“No! No!” the Lord of
Night howled, and disappeared in a burst of green smoke.

The king and queen were overjoyed.
They announced a great celebration to be held the very next night
in the palace. The princess invited the young man, the little girl,
the old woman, and the man and his daughter.

The young man brought his mother,
who was as hale and rosy as if she’d never been sick in her life.
The little girl brought her parents and her brothers and sisters,
all dressed in handsome new clothes they’d bought with money from
selling their sheep. The old woman brought a sweet, spicy cake
she’d made from her flour. The man and his daughter danced the
night away, and the daughter sang like a flute as she
danced.

The princess invited the little
brown man, too, but if he was there, no one saw him. Everyone who
came said there had never been a better party or a better reason to
have one, and all of them lived happily ever after.

Man of
Action

Emma Bull

My therapist had quite a lot to
say

When I explained I was unmoved by
chocolates and bouquets.

“What are you looking
for in love,” she asked, “that you can’t find?”

I said, “The smell of cordite would
brighten up my day.”

Does he wear his jacket loose to
hide the holster?

Does he keep his schedule free to
cut and run?

I’m the girl dressed in black in
the Lotus Elan

And I’m looking for a man of
action.

She says I long to nurture
secretly,

But sensitive and sweet gives me a
case of ennui.

See, I want a hero from a Hong Kong
action flick

With a brand new Smith & Wesson
and a taste for irony

Does his hair smell like the smoke
from burning buildings?

Does he have a dragon tattoo on his
arm?

I’m the girl on the train with the
timer for the bomb

And I’m looking for a man of
action.

I could be happy with a man who’s
built for speed

A heat trace like an F-16, a
ruthless sense of style

Strange clicking on his phone line,
scars he can’t explain

Who never takes the first cab and
who doesn’t often smile.

Afraid I’m gonna have to miss our
session

Hope you’ve got another patient due
to make confession

I’ll be at the airport in my
trenchcoat and my shades

Looking for a long-legged
dark-haired indiscretion.

Does he drive like hell-hounds know
his license number?

Does he always sit where he can see
the door?

I’m the girl on the bridge with the
bag full of money

I’m the girl at the stick of the
black helicopter

And I’m looking for a man of
action.

The Last of
John Ringo

Emma Bull

You were dead, all but the
bullet.

Was there a shining, sober
moment,

A choice, a rightness,

Like the one between the trigger
pulled

And the target struck,

When the end seemed the only,
perfect one?

Last waltz, last chord, and home in
the moonlight?

Or was it disarray on
discord—

One thing forgotten, another
misplaced,

A third mishandled, a fourth
dropped unheeded—

Until your life,
continued,

Would have been bootless,
horseless,

A cartridge belt upside
down:

Fool’s motley for a dying
boomtown?

There was water in the
mines.

There was no next town,

No next good game.

The sunset only day’s
end,

Not a curtain before the next grand
act,

Not a promise to ride on
toward.

So you chose, or the gods chose for
you.

Untidy life, snagged to knots with
other lives,

Gives way at last to one smooth
course of myth.

From your black-oak wayside
seat

It was a snarl beyond your
picking-out.