Leaping Beauty

by Gregory Maguire

  But Skunk disappeared. When the hours passed and she didn’t come back, it became clear that their stepmother had abandoned them to die all alone.

  Clouds cloaked the moon so they couldn’t find their way home. And the woods were alive with the sounds of hooting owls and the rustling of snakes. “Hamster, I’m scared,” said Gerbil.

  “Sissy,” said Hamster. “I’m not.”

  They began to wander, looking for some food. The only things they could find growing on the forest floor were poison mushrooms. “Hamster, I’m hungry,” said Gerbil.

  “That happens when you don’t eat,” he explained.

  She bit him on the tail to show that she already knew that.

  He bit her on the tail to show her that he knew that she knew.

  They bit each other on the tails for quite a while and chased each other through the woods. Out of awful hunger they might have eaten each other right down to the bone, which wouldn’t have been a very brotherly or sisterly thing to do. But just when things got a little too ouchy, they stumbled out of the woods into a clearing.

  The clouds obligingly parted to let in the light of the moon. Hamster and Gerbil both saw something that made them say, “Wow! Awesome!”

  In front of them was a little house made out of pet food.

  The house had walls made out of dog biscuits. Cunning little paths around it were strewn with hamster and gerbil food. The roof was made of a scrumptious fresh lettuce leaf, and the chimney was made of a big hollow steak bone. Out of the chimney came the delicious smell of hot stewing kitty friskies, in flavors of chicken, liver, and fish.

  “Oh Hamster,” cried Gerbil, “is this heaven?”

  “I think it’s a dream,” said Hamster. “But let’s go test it with our teeth.”

  With joy and hunger they fell upon the house. Hamster began to nibble up the front walk. Gerbil climbed on the windowsill and munched on the edge of the roof. It was almost too delicious to be true.

  A slug on the lettuce leaf above woke up and said in a bored voice, “My goodness, Granny Porky, look who’s here nibbling you out of house and home.”

  The door flew open. Out stepped the hugest old porcupine that Hamster and Gerbil had ever seen.

  “Nibble nibble on my house, are you just a little mouse?” she cried. She was pretty shortsighted, and she’d left her glasses on the butcher-block table inside.

  “No, I’m a hamster,” said Hamster. “Name of Hamster.”

  She had caught him by the tail. “A skinny little thing,” she said. “You want fattening up.”

  “Don’t forget the munching on the roof, Granny Porky,” droned the slug.

  Granny Porky reached up and gripped Gerbil’s tail. “Nibble nibble on my house, are you just a little mouse?” she said again.

  “I’m a gerbil, and proud of it!” cried Gerbil.

  “You’re a trespasser and I ought to charge you with assault and peppery,” said Granny Porky. “But then again, I need a maid. My eyes are going. I can’t read the cookbooks anymore. I can’t open the spice jars. You can be my sous chef and I’ll drop the charges. What’s your name?”

  “Gerbil,” said Gerbil. “Will you feed us if I work for you?”

  “They don’t call me Granny Porky for nothing,” said the porcupine. She hustled the brother and sister into her house. It smelled even more delicious inside than outside. Bread was baking in the oven, garlic was sizzling in butter on the range, and a pile of fresh basil leaves were heaped redolently on a cutting board.

  They had little time to take in the well-planned gourmet kitchen. With a strength surprising in one so old and feeble, Granny Porky lifted Hamster by the scruff of the neck. She tossed him into a cage shaped like a metal hamster wheel that she happened to have in the corner of the room. With a key that she kept on a string around her neck, she locked the door.

  “Now, dearie,” she said to Gerbil, “do what I tell you when I tell you to do it, and you and your brother will have plenty to eat.”

  “I would rather not be locked in this hamster wheel,” said Hamster.

  “Run,” said Granny Porky. “I like a hamster with a good rump on it. You have to build up those muscles if you’re going to be of use to me.” She gave the wheel a turn. “It’s the wheel of fortune! Ha-ha-ha!”

  “That’s not funny,” said Gerbil.

  “I’ll show you funny,” said Granny Porky, and she shot out a quill. It pinned Gerbil against the wall like an arrow. “Now are you going to be my slave, or do I have gerbil giblets for supper?”

  “At your beck and call, my queen,” said Gerbil in a small voice.

  “The thing is,” said Granny Porky, releasing the quill, “I want to have a big party. The do of the season. All the creepiest creatures of the woods will be coming. Owls and spiders and snakes and rats and vampire bats and the like. I need to serve a very special meal. I’ve been combing through my back issues of Gourmet magazine. I thought maybe a platter of hamster chops. What do you think?”

  “Yuck,” said Gerbil.

  “Yikes!” said Hamster, and ran faster, but he couldn’t get away because hamster wheels just turn around and around in one place. And he couldn’t knock it over because the pin around which the wheel rotated was hammered into the wall.

  “You may begin by scrubbing last night’s dishes,” said Granny Porky to Gerbil, and she pointed to a heap of high-quality copper pans and ceramic baking dishes, all encrusted with the kind of cheesy-eggy mixture that never comes off.

  Granny Porky slumped into a rocker and fell asleep by the hearth. Gerbil put some wooden spoons to soak for a minute, and then she ran over to her brother.

  “I’ll save you,” she said. “Be brave.”

  “How?” he said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think of something.”

  “Do,” he said, “if you don’t mind.” And he ran as fast as he could, tears streaming out of his eyes and pooling up on the floor.

  For a whole week Hamster ran. Every once in a while Granny Porky would come by and stop the wheel with her gnarled old paw, and she reached in to feel Hamster’s thighs to see if he was ready for butchering yet. But Gerbil had given Hamster a straw from the broom, and he held this forward when Granny Porky asked to feel his arm. “You’re thinner than ever!” Granny Porky roared. “With all I feed you? I don’t get it!”

  One day the slug had chewed up so much of the roof that he fell through onto the sofa. In a lazy voice he said, “Granny Porky, that’s a broom straw you’re testing for meat. You’d better get yourself some new glasses.”

  “Why, you little hamster,” screamed the porcupine. “I’ll roast you up tonight for that! Gerbil, build up the fire! We’re going to have shake-and-bake hamster cutlets!”

  “No!” screamed Gerbil.

  “How about Hamster Helper?” asked the porcupine, drooling at the thought.

  “Gross!” said Gerbil.

  “Little cocktail snacks, then,” said the porcupine decisively. “If I blow out all my quills, we could use them for toothpicks. We could put a chunk of Hamster, a chunk of pineapple, a chunk of Hamster, a chunk of onion, and round it off with a cherry tomato. What do you think?”

  “You make me sick to my stomach,” said Gerbil.

  “At least you still have a stomach,” said Hamster, and cried all the harder.

  But Granny Porky was decided. She blew out all her quills and put them in a pile on the floor. Then she opened up a can of pineapple chunks. She made Gerbil stoke the fire in the oven until it was five hundred degrees. All the while she sang to herself. “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling porcupine,” she crooned. “Little critters fried like fritters come out crunchy and divine.”

  “Watch the gerbil,” said the slug. “She’s smarter than she looks.”

  “Shouldn’t you send the slug off to invite the guests?” said Gerbil.

  “Good idea,” said Granny Porky. “Slug, make tracks.”

  The slug crawled away, si
ghing.

  Granny Porky poked all her quills into a pincushion for easy handling. Then she washed some cherry tomatoes. “All we need is the meat,” she said. “Gerbil, my dear, would you crawl into the oven and see if it’s hot enough?”

  Gerbil went over to the oven and opened the door. “I can’t tell, Granny Porky,” she said.

  “What do you mean, you can’t tell?” said Granny Porky. “You dolt. Feel it with your hand.”

  “My hand is too tired from housework to feel heat anymore,” said Gerbil.

  “Well, for the love of nothing,” snapped Granny Porky. “Do I have to do everything?”

  “Beware that smart little gerbil,” called the slug from the front walk. He couldn’t move very fast and he was watching through the door. Gerbil ran over and slammed the door shut.

  “Show me how to tell if it’s hot enough,” said Gerbil.

  “Just climb inside,” said Granny Porky nastily. She thought she could fling the oven door closed and have juicy gerbil legs for her party, too.

  “I can’t climb,” said Gerbil. “My limbs are aching from all the housework. I have a pinched nerve in my spine.”

  “You simpleton,” snapped Granny Porky. “It isn’t hard! Just lean over and crawl in!”

  “Show me,” said Gerbil.

  “Beware,” called the slug, but Hamster started singing the national anthem just then to drown out the slug’s warning. Granny Porky hobbled across the kitchen floor, naked of all her bristles and wearing nothing but a filthy old apron. She climbed into the oven and said, “See, you foolish animal, now do you see what I mean?”

  “Now I see what you mean, you old beast,” shouted Gerbil, and she slammed the oven door shut and locked it.

  And that was the end of Granny Porky. Except for her quills.

  Unfortunately, the key to the hamster wheel had burned up and melted down inside the oven, and Gerbil didn’t know how to open the cage. But after three days of chewing, she managed at least to break the wheel free from the wall. Then she opened the door and gave the wheel a push.

  Hamster raced the cage proudly out the door and down the path. With a glorious crunch, he ran over the slug, who in three whole days of traveling had only made it to the bottom of the garden.

  Gerbil took up Granny Porky’s pincushion—very gently, very carefully. She also helped herself to several of the better cookbooks, the reading of which she had grown fond.

  With Hamster rolling in his wheel beside her, they set off through the woods. After many mishaps and wrong turns, they finally made it back to the riverbank where they had last seen their father.

  And there he was! He hadn’t died of the stink attack! However, Skunk had fed him on nothing but bits of predigested skunk cabbage, and he’d lost a lot of weight. So he wasn’t looking his best.

  But he was so delighted to see his children again that he felt better at once. With his strong beaver teeth he gnawed through the lock of the hamster cage.

  Then Hamster and Gerbil told him how Skunk had tried to lose them in the forest, hoping they would starve to death. “She’s an evil thing,” said Papa Beaver. “The world would be better rid of her.”

  So they devised a plan. They found some choice bits of skunk cabbage and marinated it in a paste made of mold, mildew, and mayonnaise. They worked on it in secret, and when it was ready, they rolled it like a ball, like a special cocktail snack, and put it in the hamster wheel. Then they rolled the hamster wheel onto the top of the bluff overlooking the river.

  When it was all ready, Hamster and Gerbil hid behind a clump of dandelions. “Oh darling,” Papa Beaver called, “I’ve made you a special treat.”

  “It better be good, you worthless lump of beaver!” screamed Skunk, coming out of the cave. “I don’t know why I ever bothered to marry you anyway! You’ve been nothing but trouble since the moment we met! Marry in haste, repent in leisure! At least those annoying little kids of yours are dead! That’s the only fun I ever got out of this marriage!”

  “I put your food in that private little dining room,” said Papa Beaver. “That way no one else will steal it.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” said Skunk. “This meal stinks to high heaven. You’re finally learning to cook the way I like it.”

  “I hope you like this,” said Papa Beaver.

  Skunk climbed into the hamster wheel. It was a tight fit, but she settled down to nibble at her meal. When her back was turned, Papa Beaver slammed the door of the hamster wheel behind her.

  “What did you do that for, you buck-toothed bozo?” yelled Skunk.

  “A little more privacy,” said Papa Beaver.

  She ate a little more. Suddenly she began to scream. Her mouth was filled with porcupine quills, because the smelly food was wrapped around the pincushion bristly with Granny Porky’s spikes.

  “Doctor! Dentist! Yowza-dowza!” she wailed. “Will no one help me?”

  Just then Hamster and Gerbil scampered up and gave the hamster wheel a little push.

  “You are still alive! You twerps!” cried Skunk. She tried to hose them with her worst chemical-weapon spray, but her aim was poor. Her tail was curled around herself, and she ended up spritzing herself.

  The hamster wheel picked up speed and pitched over the bluff into the river. Skunk was never seen again, but a cloud of skunk-smog hung over the riverbank for a month.

  Papa Beaver and his beloved children began immediately to build themselves a new beaver dam. Even though they still missed Mama Beaver, they were happy being back together. And when Papa Beaver eventually fell in love with a cute vixen from across the valley, Hamster and Gerbil liked her quite a bit too.

  They got together and combed through the cookbooks and settled on some fancy items to prepare for the wedding feast. At first they were sorely tempted to try a huge roast of porcupine, but that seemed a bit too mean, even under the circumstances. They settled on a board of very fancy stinky cheeses. The aroma made everyone think of Skunk, and how nice it was that she had floated far away.

  SO WHAT AND THE SEVEN GIRAFFES

  One day the king of the baboons said, “I want a child.”

  “And how does that make you feel?” asked the queen.

  “I am so sad,” said the king.

  “I feel your pain,” said the queen.

  “Thank you for caring,” said the king.

  “Thank you for sharing,” said the queen.

  Yes, the king and queen were sad, and they heard what each other was saying, and they knew where each other was coming from. They had a perfect marriage, in fact. When the queen filled out a questionnaire called “How Is Your Marriage?” in the back of Baboons’ Home Journal, her score was great. Her marriage was healthy. It was in such perfect health that she wrote a letter to the editor to ask, “So why am I not pregnant?”

  “Sew yourself a little cross-stitch motto,” the editor wrote back. “If you prick your finger on the needle and the blood comes out, make a wish.”

  The queen didn’t care much for sewing. But dutifully she got a needle and thread and began to stitch a motto on a piece of cloth. She was going to make a little sign saying BABY ON BOARD and wear it like an apron if she got pregnant. Then she pricked her thumb and a drop of blood came out. “I wish I could have a baby,” she cried. “I wish my thumb didn’t hurt so much! I hope I don’t get blood poisoning! Just because I have to sew this thing!”

  “Sew what?” said the king, coming in.

  She showed him the sampler, but all it said so far was BABY.

  A couple of weeks later, the queen realized that she was pregnant.

  “You look radiant,” said the king fondly.

  “I have got a whoopsy tummy,” said the queen, and proved it.

  “I feel your pain,” said the king.

  “That’s what you think,” said the queen. “Can you get blood poisoning from a needle?”

  “Maybe,” said the king. “I’m here for you. Let me share.”

  “I would if I could,”
said the queen. “My blue behind, can this monster in here kick or what?”

  “Try being sweet and understanding to it,” said the king.

  The queen put her hand on her swelling stomach and patted it. “I’m there for you,” she said to the baby inside.

  From inside, the baby kicked so hard that the queen got a lump on her palm the size of a meatball.

  The king put his ear to the queen’s stomach. “I’ll spend a little quality time with my child,” he said. “Hi there, child of mine. I hear where you’re coming from.” Inside the queen the baby began to screech and fuss so loudly that the king went almost completely deaf. “How can you stand that noise, my dear?” he asked his wife.

  But his wife didn’t hear what he was saying because she had put earplugs in her ears.

  Finally the queen gave birth to a cunning little boy chimpanzee. The chimp wriggled in her arms like a wrinkling piece of bacon. “I love you,” said the queen fondly.

  “So what?” said the chimp.

  The queen took her earplugs out. “Did I see your lips move? Can you talk? King, come listen to this!”

  But the king didn’t hear her. He was in the royal garage, busy making a hearing trumpet out of a conch shell.

  The queen didn’t feel so hot. “I hoped and prayed for you my whole life long,” she murmured to her baby. “I’m so thrilled you’re here.”

  “So what?” said the chimp.

  The queen was so surprised that her newborn baby could talk that she died of happiness. Or maybe it was shock. Or blood poisoning.

  The king mourned and vowed to raise his son in the paths of niceness. But everybody called the chimp by the name of So What, because that was the main thing that he said.

  So What was a little devil. He jumped on his father’s hearing trumpets and smashed them. So his father the king wandered around in a constant state of baboon deafness. He couldn’t hear how rude his son was. He loved his son.

  Eventually the king got married again, this time to a body-building gorilla from the suburbs. The new queen was fond of So What for about two minutes. Then she got over it.