Leaping Beauty

by Gregory Maguire

  Mayhem went next. Her foot spread to either side of the pie plate, but her toe and heels were short of the rim by an inch or more. Unless she applied a strong glue, there was no way this pie plate would ever stay on her foot.

  “Sorry,” said the prince. “Not that you haven’t got a lovely foot, in a ploppy sort of way.”

  Mildew went last. She had pounded her own foot with a hammer to make the arch fall and to make her foot swell with purple bruises. Her foot almost fit. Her sister and her mother held their breaths. The prince looked confused. “I don’t remember your foot so purple,” he said, trying to buy time to think.

  “I danced with you for so long last night,” said Mildew cleverly. “I have experienced a little discomfort today. Nothing serious.”

  “Shall I call the doctor?” said the prince. “I wouldn’t want my bride-to-be to suffer.”

  “No need to call, here I am,” said the kangaroo doctor, bounding through the open window with a single leap. “My, that’s a nasty foot. I’ll have to amputate.” And she took out a surgical saw from her pouch.

  Mildew withdrew her foot from the pie plate and she sat on her foot. “You’ll do no such thing, you beast!” she cried.

  Just then a smell of pumpkin pie came wafting from the kitchen. “Is there someone else in the house?” said the prince. “Someone you may have forgotten about?”

  “No,” said the stepmother. “Nobody.”

  “Some servant girl?”

  “Nope. Not a soul,” said Mayhem.

  “Some visiting friend? Some beggar woman in the kitchen, gnawing on a bone that in your charity you’ve thrown her?”

  “Fat chance,” said Mildew. “Any bones that need gnawing on, we gnaw ourselves.”

  “Then whence the smell of pumpkin pie?” cried the prince.

  “That’s your cue, dolly, if ever I heard one!” called the kangaroo doctor.

  And because Cinder-Elephant had such good ears, she had heard every word being said in the parlor above. She appeared in the doorway dressed in hospital-robe white, wearing a pie plate on one foot and carrying a pumpkin pie with her trunk. She traipsed delicately across the parlor floor and set her naked foot into the other pie plate. It fit perfectly.

  “My darling!” cried the prince.

  “And I can cook, too,” said Cinder-Elephant.

  “Let me take you away from all this!” cried the prince.

  “I have a forgiving heart,” said Cinder-Elephant as she turned to say good-bye to her stepsisters and stepmother. “I forgive you all. But I am an elephant. I never forget.”

  The prince took Cinder-Elephant off to the castle, where he introduced her to his parents. They got married and opened a bakery in the basement of the castle. Once a week Cinder-Elephant and the prince went to the symphony or the soccer matches.

  And that’s the end of the story, except that it turned out that Cinder-Elephant’s father, who had been presumed to be lost at sea when he drove his Number 72 bus off a cliff, had actually floated away to an island. When a passing tugboat agreed to tow his bus back to the mainland, he accepted the offer. After the kangaroo doctor repaired the engine, the bus driver took up his old habits again, driving his bus wherever he chose. One day, since he was still nearly blind, he accidentally drove over the feet of his former wife and Mildew and Mayhem, who were standing with their toes too far off the curb. At last their feet really did fit in glass pie plates. But by then it was too late.

  RUMPLESNAKESKIN

  Down by the old mill stream, there stood a mill. In the mill there worked a miller. He was a sheep named Bubba.

  Now Bubba had a beautiful daughter named Norma Jean. Her fleece was as yellow as a field of dandelions. Furthermore it was naturally curly. When she went for a drink in the millpond, she tossed her flaxen locks and admired herself in a mirror. “How like a movie star I am!” she said. “If only I could be discovered!”

  Norma Jean never helped her father at the mill at all. She took to sipping sodas at the local five-and-dime. She wore tight little knitted sweaters from the wool of a lesser breed. It made a nice contrast. She changed her name from Norma Jean to Beauty.

  One day the king of the country came by the mill. He was a noble stag, with a rack of antlers nine feet across. “Yes, sure, I’m king,” he said to the miller, “but I make movies in my spare time. I’m an auteur. I’m looking for locations to shoot a new film. I think I might just use your mill, if you let me. The sun on the water of the millpond would look very nice in the opening credits.”

  “What’s the movie called?” asked the miller.

  “It’s a horror movie,” said the king stag. “It’s called Beauty Ate the Beast.”

  Just then Beauty came gamboling into the room. When she saw the king stag, she began to amble in an attractive way. “I loved your last film!” she breathed in a deep voice, as if she had the flu. “The critics didn’t know what they were talking about! It was a masterpiece of the genre!”

  “You mean Jack the Giant Killer?” said the king stag. “Nobody understood it.”

  “I lived it. I loved it. It made me laugh. It made me cry,” said Beauty. “It made me glad to be a sheep.”

  “Everybody said it was too bloody,” said the king stag. “Gee, you know a lot about films.”

  “Also she’s very photogenic,” said Bubba, who was anxious to nudge his daughter’s film career along. Besides, she wasn’t much use around the mill. She never lifted a hoof to help.

  “I’d love to ask you to star in my new movie,” said the king stag, “but I’m having trouble raising enough money to make it. Everyone’s jittery since Giant Killer was such a huge flopperoo.”

  “She’s good at making money, too,” said Bubba, who was maybe a little too anxious to move his daughter’s career along. For next he said, “She’s a winner. She can spin straw into gold.”

  “No!” said the king stag. “Really?”

  “I prefer not to; it ruins my nails,” said Beauty quickly. But before she knew it, the king stag had arranged for her to come to his movie studio and spin some gold for him.

  “Good-bye, honey,” said Bubba, kissing his daughter fondly. “Spin nicely for our king.”

  “Are you crazy, Pops?” said Beauty. “I don’t know how to spin wool, much less straw into gold.”

  “I didn’t mean it literally,” said Bubba. “I meant that any piece of trash you star in will make a bundle. But don’t worry. You’re clever, you’ll think of something. Ta ta,” said Bubba. To tell the truth, Bubba had been getting a little fed up with Beauty’s vanity.

  The king stag chattered all the way to the studio about camera angles and foreign rights and how genius usually ends up on the cutting-room floor. “You’ll be a big star one day,” he said to Beauty. “You’ve got the looks. You’ve got the curves. I’ve got a serious case of the nerves. Spin me some gold, sweetheart. All the world will thank you for it.”

  And off he went, locking the door behind him.

  Now Beauty threw herself down on the floor and wept. In a corner of the room was a huge pile of straw that the king stag expected her to spin into gold. The bankers were coming in the morning to count it. “What shall I do?” she asked. “I just painted my nails this morning. I can’t spin this straw. It’s beneath my dignity as a soon-to-be movie star.”

  Suddenly she heard a rustle in the straw. Using her back hooves so as to protect her front nails, which were colored a delicious Popsicle red, she kicked the straw away. Waking from a deep sleep was a huge cobra with two impressive fangs right where you’d expect them to be.

  “What’re you doing here?” asked Beauty.

  “I fell asleep in a meadow and look where I am,” said the cobra. “Gosh, I’m starved. And you look lovely tonight, my dear.” He smiled in a hungry way.

  “Well, don’t get any big ideas, buster,” said Beauty, “because if you come one inch nearer I’ll stamp your brains all over the floor. I’m not in the mood for kissing cobras. I’ve got to spin t
his straw into gold, and how the dickens do I do that?”

  The cobra said, “If I tell you how, will you give me a little kiss?”

  “If you do all the work and be quick about it, I’ll give you one eensy-weensy kiss,” said Beauty. “And I don’t promise to like it.”

  “What I need,” said the cobra, “is some of your beautiful golden fleece. I’ll just take a third—say from around your middle? It’ll make you look a little like a French poodle. Emphasize your delicate waistline. They’ll go crazy about the new look. You’ll set a trend.”

  “I don’t know,” said Beauty, but the cobra set to fleecing her. When he was done, she looked like a sheep who had had a run-in with a lawn mower. She spent the rest of the evening putting her wool into spit curls, trying to make the best of a bad business.

  But the cobra was true to his word. He spun her fleece into gold and threw the straw out the window so nobody would know. Then he came forward and Beauty gave him a lip-smacking kiss on the head. “Va va va voom,” he said. “I could fall for you in a big way, sweetheart.”

  “Get lost, you bother me, cobra,” she said. “Scramola. Vamoose.” So the cobra squeezed away through a mouse hole in the baseboard.

  The king stag was delighted to see the gold. He sent it off with the bankers, and they agreed to finance the film. True to his word, he hired Beauty to star in it, and she was a vision of loveliness in the scene with the guillotine and the butcher knife. But before long they ran overbudget and the bankers—a squadron of squirrels—came round to ask the king stag for some more money.

  The king stag put the problem to Beauty. She told him that spinning straw into gold wasn’t in her contract, and if he wasn’t careful she’d walk out and leave him with unusable footage. But he locked her in a room with a heap of straw, promised her a percentage of the profits, and said he’d come back in the morning.

  Beauty sat down and wept again, but after a while she kicked aside the straw just in case the cobra happened to be napping there. And what do you know, he was.

  “Hello, cupcake,” he said, yawning. “Do you have a feeling we are meant to be together? It’s in the stars.”

  “Cut the baloney,” she said. “I need your help.”

  “What will you give me?” he asked. “A little hug?”

  “One little hug,” she said, “a little sisterly hug, that’s all. And no hugging back. I don’t want to be the first nine-foot-tall sheep. The world’s not ready for that.”

  “I’m a cobra, not a boa constrictor,” he said, hurt. But he gave her a once-over and said, “This time, sweetie, it’s the back legs. The fleece has got to go. Trust me. You’ll thank me for it.”

  “You were right the last time,” she said. “There isn’t a ewe in the kingdom who hasn’t had her midriff shaved. Slaves to fashion, the lot of them. Sheep! And I do have particularly shapely legs, if I do say so myself. Well, all right, I suppose it can’t be helped. But be gentle, please; I’m a bit ticklish.”

  So the cobra fleeced the sheep from her waistline to her little bobbed tail, and then he sat and spun the fleece into straw. It might have been smart of Beauty to watch and see how it was done in case this problem happened again. But she was too busy chewing the horny parts off her fetlocks in order to display a more delicate ankle.

  The cobra threw the straw out the window again and departed through the mouse hole in the baseboard. When the king stag came to collect the gold, he was delighted to find Beauty looking more splendid than ever. “A hard night’s work, and you look fresh as a daisy!” he said. “And your hair, you’ve done something to your hair. Don’t tell me. Highlights?”

  “I’m half naked, boss,” she said.

  He was scandalized. But times were changing, so he went on with the film. The advance reports on the daily rushes were ecstatic. “Cutie Beauty Almost Nudie,” cried the trade journals. Beauty could hardly go out shopping without a mob forming all around her. She took to wearing dark glasses and a huge veil made out of a flowered tablecloth.

  The film was almost done. A thousand theaters across the land were eager to book it. The scenes with Beauty and the chain saw were said to reach new heights of postmodern excellence. But then there was a backlash. A crowd of concerned citizens—mostly wombats—began to protest violence and nakedness in the movies. The squirrels returned and told the king stag he’d have to reshoot some key scenes and turn it into a musical with a happy ending. The king stag stomped around for a while and ran his antlers into a few trees to release a little tension. But his career was on the line. He came to Beauty.

  “The very last time, I promise,” he said. “We need to shoot some extra footage and I’m out of cash. Please. Please.”

  “Oh, don’t beg, don’t ever beg. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it is directors who beg,” said Beauty. “I could walk right out of here, you know. I’ve got a little mill and a loving father waiting for me. I don’t need this. I don’t need you.”

  “Actually, you do,” said the king stag, “because your father has sold the mill and moved to Tahiti. I just got a postcard.”

  So the king stag locked Beauty in the room one more time and sent in a load of straw. This time Beauty wasted no time trampling down the straw looking for the cobra. He was not there. She was beside herself with fright and worry. “My career is going down the drain!” she cried. “I’m too young to peak this early!”

  There was a rustle—not in the straw, but in the baseboard. The cobra stuck his head out of the mouse hole.

  “I actually live here now,” he said. “Since the harvesters keep raking me up and dragging me here anyway.”

  “You’ve got to help me!” she cried.

  “Honeypot, you need help,” said the cobra. “Have you seen those bags under your eyes? You could fit a week’s shopping in them. Not a pretty sight. If I spin your last fleece into gold, what’ll you give me?”

  “Oh, what do you want?” she asked. “A toaster oven? A set of encyclopedias?”

  “To marry you and take you away from all this.”

  “Get a grip. Get real. Not in your lifetime. No way.”

  “Well then,” he said, hurt, “how about your firstborn child?”

  “Oh, anything,” she said. “Just get to work.”

  “Now, I’ll have to crop you from your lovely little chin right down to your waist,” he said. “That’ll leave you pretty much exposed. I hope you’re ready for this.”

  “The climate isn’t right for sheep to do nude scenes,” said Beauty, “but what choice do I have? I’ll get a muumuu and do character parts. Just close your eyes while you work, will you? I do have a shred of modesty left.”

  So the cobra fleeced the sheep, keeping his eyes closed as he promised. When he was done, he sat in a corner of the room and spun the fleece into gold. Beauty sat in the other corner and made herself a coat out of straw, as she didn’t want the king stag to see her entirely naked.

  “So when’s your firstborn child due?” said the cobra as morning broke.

  “I’m not even married yet, so don’t hold your breath,” said Beauty. “Now go back to your mouse hole. I’m finished with you.”

  “I think you’re finished, period,” said the cobra. “If you only knew how I loved you, you’d let me take you away from all this.”

  “For one thing,” said Beauty, “even without a coat of golden wool, I can’t fit in that mouse hole. For another thing, you bug me. Beat it. Hasta la vista.”

  The cobra left in a bad mood. He bit his tongue and almost died of his own poison.

  When the king stag came, he collected the gold and blinked several times when he saw Beauty.

  “You’ve changed,” he said. “Film life doesn’t agree with you. I think it’s a no go, dolly. It was great fun, but it was just one of those flings. Find a job, settle down, get out of this rat race. It’s killing you. You look a hundred years older. You’re washed up in this town, darling. By the way, thanks for the gold.”

  He left and h
ired a new star, a blushing pig with platinum tresses.

  Beauty was ashamed of herself. Now she had lost her good looks, she had lost her father, and her only friend, the cobra, had disappeared down a mouse hole. She wandered off and got a job as a supermarket cashier.

  After a while Beauty met a shelf stocker and married him. He was sweet, but he was not brilliant. He was no cobra. He was rather a boar.

  A year later, when Beauty had just given birth to her first child, the king stag showed up in her supermarket.

  “Cuddles!” he said. “Angel! The time is right for a comeback! I’ve got the financing, I’ve got a script. It’s called The Ugly Duckling’s Revenge. A high-concept film. Sweetheart, it’s you. You’ve got to do it. The world needs this movie. Your public needs you. I need you.”

  “You’re holding up the line,” she said. “This is ten items only, and I think you’ve just handed me a dozen slices of phoney baloney. Push off before I call the manager.”

  But in a year her fleece had grown back in, and she was now highlighting it with silvery streaks. She had a mature look, and a little of her old vanity came back.

  “Hubby, I’m off to have a career,” she called to the boar, who was piling cans of tuna fish in the back of the store. “Mind the baby for me till I get back! Love you lots!” Off she gamboled.

  She spent a day or two learning her lines, and an hour in front of the cameras. The king stag gushed and gushed. Then he pushed her in a room with some straw. “Do what you do best,” he said, and locked the door.

  But the mouse hole was boarded up, and the straw was empty of cobras, and her dull old boar was too far away. “In Hollywood,” Beauty said to herself, “no one can hear you scream. What a life I lead. Maybe I can just learn to spin my own fleece into gold. How hard can it be? That stupid cobra could do it.”

  Just then she heard a scrabbling sound at the boarded-up mouse hole. She bit the wood away and saw the head of the cobra poke through. “We meet again,” he said.