Midnight Snack and Other Fairy Tales (3 page)

“Somebody else must be taking care of the dogs,” said the First Prince.

“They are,” said the director. “I should put in a note about that.” He pulled a pad over and scribbled on it.

“And when the Prince does remember his quest,” said the producer, “he says to himself, Oh, it’s all right, I’ve got eleven months left. Or ten. Or whatever. I’ll deal with it shortly. But he never does. And then one day at dinner, the White Cat says to him, ‘You know, Prince, in a week you’re scheduled to be back at your father’s palace with the prettiest little dog imaginable.’

“She’s right, of course. He’s horrified that he’s let things go on this long. But at the same time he hates to leave her. She just laughs at him, though, and says, ‘It’s all right. If you leave tomorrow, you’ll be back in time. And I’ve got your perfect little dog right here.’

“So the Prince is relieved. The next morning, after breakfast, the Cat tells him to get ready for his journey: and she meets him out front of the palace with some of her cat-courtiers, who lead up a white horse, all beautifully saddled and bridled. ‘This horse goes like the wind; it’ll bring you home by lunchtime,’ she says. ‘And here’s your little dog.’ And she hands him a walnut.”

The First Prince and the Second Prince snickered. “She’s got a sense of humor, I’ll give her that,” said the Youngest Prince.

“No,” said the producer. “She says, ‘Hold it up to your ear!’, and the Prince does, and he hears barking from inside. ‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘I will never steer you wrong. When your business at the court is done…come back to me.’

“And he does trust her. He bows over her paw, gets on the magic horse, and rides away, and sure enough, he’s back at his father’s palace half an hour before lunch.”

“So now finally
we
get some screen time,” said the First Prince.

“Oh, yeah,” said the director. “It’s a huge scene. The two older princes have found these gorgeous little dogs that must be worth millions. And the King can’t choose between them. And then the youngest Prince opens his walnut, and out comes a dog that you practically need a magnifying glass to see. And everyone’s amazed; and he just says to his father, ‘Well, you did say
little…’
”

The Beautiful Princess chuckled. “You have to watch what you ask for in these things,” she said.

“All too true,” said the producer. “So now the King’s in a quandary. He says that he just can’t decide, and besides, he doesn’t feel like giving up the throne right this minute—”

“The old weasel,” said the first Prince. “What did I tell you?”

“So he sends the sons off again, this time to find a piece of muslin so fine it can be drawn through the eye of a needle.”

“This guy is so passive-aggressive,” said the second Prince. “Instead of playing Textile Treasure Hunt with them, why doesn’t he just tell them, ‘I’m not done here yet, go take a gap year or something and I’ll talk to you later?’”

“I’d say rather,” said the King, “that he’s a complex man, conflicted by the stresses of his roles as ruler and father. Give him a break.”

The two older Princes rolled their eyes. The youngest Prince became very interested in pouring himself a paper cup of coffee.

“So it all happens again, doesn’t it?” said the Beautiful Princess. “He goes back to the White Cat and tells him what his father wants this time, she says to him, ‘Don’t worry about it, I handled the last thing and I can handle this next one,’ yadda yadda yadda. And he spends the next year with her.”

“More character development between the leads,” said the director. “Lots of it.”

“Maybe even a dream sequence or two?” said the Beautiful Princess. “Hinting at the reality to come?” She didn’t quite bat her eyelashes at him, but she came close.

“Hmm,” said the director, and made notes, or pretended to. “Interesting thought—”

“PG-17 for sure,” said the S&P guy, in a slightly warning tone.

“All right,” said the King. “Whatever. My character’s got to do it to the princes once more, right? That’s always where the payoff is, the third iteration.”

The producer nodded. “This time he sends them off to find and bring back the most beautiful princess in the world.”

The Beautiful Princess preened briefly—then paused and shot the producer an astonishingly hard look. “The other two,” she said. “They’re not going to be anywhere near as beautiful as
me
, are they?”

“Well,” the producer said, “they have to be
fairly
beautiful. Otherwise no one’s going to take the ending seriously. But of course, not
as
beautiful—”

I could see the trouble coming down the line—someone demanding a raise in her salary—but that was going to be long after the casting stage: it’d be the producer’s problem then.

“All right,” said the Beautiful Princess, with the air of someone reserving judgment. “So the youngest Prince goes back to her, and tells her what his father wants this time, and she says, ‘No problem!’”

“That’s right. And another year goes by. And the day before it’s time for him to go back, the White Cat has dinner with him, and then they go out on the terrace by themselves…”

“And he kisses her, and she turns into me!” said the Beautiful Princess.

“No,” said the producer.

“Oh. He has to fight something, then. A monster, maybe.”

“Not as such,” said the producer.

The director was doodling desperate squiggles on his notepad: he wouldn’t look up. “Oh,” said the Princess, sounding a little disappointed. “This is going to be one of those
symbolic
endings.”

“Not as such,” said the producer. “The White Cat tells him that if he wants a beautiful princess to take home, he has to cut off her head.”

The Beautiful Princess’s jaw dropped.

“She. Does.
What??”

“It was worse in the first draft,” said the producer, rather casually. “He had to cut off her head and her tail and throw them in the fire. Seemed a little excessive.”

“Uh, I have to agree with B.P. here,” said the youngest prince. “It
does
seem like the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I mean, come on!” said the Beautiful Princess. “These two are in a relationship! I mean, nothing kinky, you know that, this is strictly platonic with these two at this point—”

“Except maybe for the dream sequence,” said the First Prince.

“Never mind the dream sequence! No
way
is he ever going to chop off her head! What a terrible, dumbass idea! You should fire the writer!”

“We can’t. She has script veto.”

“You have to!
She’s a fruitcake!”

“She’s a countess.”

“Fine, then she’s a fruitcake with royal icing, but she’s
still a fruitcake!
No one is ever going to believe that. I mean, look at this!” She nailed one perfectly-laminated fingernail to the open page in her script. “‘No matter what he says, he cannot convince her. And so—’ So what does he do? Does he walk out of that castle and say ‘No, sorry, I don’t care what you say, you’re delusional to think I would ever hurt you?’ Of course not. Instead he wimps so far out that he actually agrees with her, he chops off her
head!
It’s just too, too—”

“Gross,” said the youngest Prince.

“Inappropriate,” said the Beautiful Princess.

“Unsuitable for children under twelve,” said the S&P guy, scribbling. “Imitable behavior—”

“Listen,” said the director, starting to sound annoyed, “you can’t have a love story without some sacrifice!” His sudden intensity made me suspect that he could already see his production bonus winging its way out the window.

“Yeah, but a
sane
sacrifice,” said the youngest Prince, “a sacrifice that doesn’t mean that
both
the principals are psycho!”

The argument started to fill the room. The director was getting red in the face. The youngest Prince’s handsomeness had gone chilly without him seeming to have moved a muscle in his face: it was an effect I looked forward to seeing in performance some time, but right now it scared me, and I wondered if were had just lost
both
our leads—

Something went
WHAM!,
and everyone fell silent and turned, shocked. It was the producer’s reading copy of the script, which he had slammed onto the table. And he was looking at me.

“You’re the story consultant,” he said. “Perhaps at this point you would consult.”

I swallowed.

“It’s not about being psycho,” I said at last, pretty softly. “It’s about trust. It’s about, at the end of the day, so completely trusting another being that if they tell you something in all seriousness, then you
believe
them, even when the experience of your senses and all the ‘sensible’ stuff you’ve ever heard flies in the face of what that person is saying. It’s literally the life-or-death test; it says that what the other person says is so reliable, to you, that you’ll bet your own life on it—your life as a non-murderer. That’s love. That’s the real thing. Yeah, it’s shocking. But sometimes, so is the realization that you’d expect that kind of trust from somebody. Or give it.”

The room was quiet for the moment. “And the prince,” the producer said. “That’s the test for
him
, finally. He knows, or he thinks he knows, that something huge lies on the other side of this action. And he knows, in his heart, that if she doesn’t live…neither will he. This is more than your ordinary sacrifice: more than your usual love. But that should be obvious at this point. Shouldn’t it?”

There was a long pause…and then slowly, heads all around the table began to nod, as if the point had indeed always been obvious.

“I can do it,” the youngest Prince said, “if you can.”

The Beautiful Princess looked at him for a moment, and then said, “Are you kidding? I can do it standing on my head.”

The producer let out a breath I hadn’t noticed him holding. “All right,” he said. “So he goes home with the former White Cat, the King declares her the most beautiful princess…and then she tells everybody that she has something like six kingdoms of her own and she doesn’t need them all, so nobody has to fight over the old King’s territory: he gets to keep it, there are two extra kingdoms for the Heir and the Spare, and everybody’s Happy Ever After.” He glanced around the table. “Can we all live with that? Can you be in this story?”

There was much more nodding.

“Great,” said the producer. “You’ll all have your agreements by end of business. Signatures by tomorrow end of business, please, so we can get started. Detailed readthrough on Monday.”

“I can’t do Monday,” said the King. “I’m in ‘King Thrushbeard’ Monday.”

“Tuesday, then?” The King nodded. “ Fine. And after that,” the producer said, “there’s just one thing left.” He turned his head. “Rating?”

The S&P guy ran his pencil down his notes as if he was doing a sum. He sighed. “Rated PG-16,” he finally said, “for scenes of implied bestiality, familial dysfunction, partial nudity, and language.”

“Language?” the producer said, stung.
“What
language?”

“French,” said the S&P guy…and then his face split in a smile.

The talent all laughed and stood up. Congratulating each other on what was certainly going to be a hit, one of the famous ones, they headed out. The director glanced over at me. “Nice save,” he said.

I smiled. It’s always good to work with professionals.

He went out too. The producer rubbed his hands over his face, looked up, and smiled for the first time. “Okay,” he said. “What’s next?”

“’The Juniper Tree.’”

“Oy,” said the producer. “Child abuse, murder
and
cannibalism. …Well, let’s see what we can do. But I want my lunch first. Come on.”

Together we headed for the commissary to get a sandwich, and figure out a way to tell the next story…

Some stories are so perfect that when it comes adaptation time, there’s nothing to do but tweak the language a little bit. “The Dovrefell Cat” was one of these.

Jane Yolen gave me the opportunity to adapt this one, an old favorite of mine: for which I’m endlessly grateful.

In the mid-morning of the world, when the dragons still flew, there lived a hunter who hunted the steep fjord-forests of the west of Norway. That was a wild, lonely country, where one could stand under pines a thousand years old and look out over the hundred thousand isles scattered toward the Norwegian Sea; and the valleys and shadowy woods of that country were full of beasts, strange and otherwise.

The hunter was not afraid of most of the creatures living there. He knew them well, Arctic fox and snowshoe hare and ptarmigan and sable, ermine and snow lion; and he knew something of how to deal with goblins and trolls, and how to avoid the dark things that laired in the places in the wood where fir needles crowded so close that no snow ever fell.

The hunter was a silent sort, and used to being alone. But he intended not to be that way forever. His idea was to find some strange beast in the wood, and tame it. Then he would take it down south to the King of Denmark, and sell it to him for a great price, and so make his fortune; buy a house, and settle down, and have friends who would come to call.

The hunter kept his grey eyes open, and traveled far and wide. Once late in the year his wanderlust took him far out of the woods, closer to the seashore, where the snow fell fierce and bergs climbed the beach on the backs of bitter waves. And it was on such a beach, white with sand and snow, that the hunter found the white bearcub, all alone and crying for its lost mother.

It was very small. That was as well for the hunter, for a polar bear much older than a cub sees only one use for man—food—and cannot be tamed. But this one was hardly weaned as yet. The hunter caught it without hurting it, and fed it his own dried meat soaked in water, and (when he could get it from the farmers he guested with) he gave it milk from farmstead cows. The milk made the little bear glad, and the hunter was pleased. He thought that when spring and summer and fall had come and gone again, the bear would be big enough to sell. Then he would take it south to the King’s great seaport market-city—the Cheaping-haven, as it was called—and offer the bear to the King. He would make his fortune, and be famous, and settle somewhere far from the white wastes.