by Tim Davys
“Unbelievable.” Callemaro sighed, as he was filled with the envy that was unavoidable in a stuffed animal with the gangster’s vanity.
Fox Antonio Ortega remained standing and let himself be observed. Without posing he turned to the left and the right, for it was essential that Octopus got to see him from all angles.
Then Fox sat down, fixing his eyes on Octopus.
“I have a proposal,” he said. “I have the most beautiful tail in Mollisan Town. I’m not saying that out of vanity, it’s a fact. I am prepared to exchange it for one of your arms.”
Octopus Callemaro thought he had heard wrong.
“I have a splitter with me,” Ortega continued, holding out a small case with sewing notions I had given him. “I have needle and thread. You have eight arms. Keep seven of them and get the most beautiful tail that has ever been produced.”
“You’re serious?”
“But only for this evening. Tomorrow I will have changed my mind,” said Ortega, exactly as I had coached.
He stood up again and let his gorgeous tail sway back and forth. Octopus was bewildered. The wine he’d drunk, the shock of the fox’s beauty, and now this crazy proposal.
“You mean you’ll sacrifice your tail?”
“For love. But it’s now or never.”
An ordinary stuffed animal would never have said yes. An ordinary stuffed animal would have laughed and rejected Fox’s proposal as idiotic. We were manufactured in a certain way for a certain reason. Simply because it was possible to tear up a seam and sew something else on was no reason to do it. But the fox’s swaying, sparkling red, bushy tail was far too enticing for the black octopus.
“You get one chance,” said Octopus Callemaro. “One chance. But if I don’t like it, I take back the arm. And keep the tail.”
Ortega nodded but did not answer.
I had been particularly clear about that: In no way could Callemaro perceive that Fox had won and gotten his way. Everything had to happen on Octopus’s terms.
Now the fairly intoxicated stuffed animal instructed the fox in how he should proceed. Octopus was not cowardly, but tearing up a seam could hurt if the work was performed by someone who didn’t know what he was doing. As long as you didn’t get at the fabric but only the threads there was no danger, and Ortega reassured the gangster that he had done this sort of thing before.
“You can stay sitting on the chair,” said Fox. “It will only take a moment.”
“But sewing on . . .”
“You won’t feel it. You have my word of honor,” Ortega assured.
Fox bent down and quickly put on the coat he had thrown on the floor, then he rounded the dining room table and dove down on the floor behind Callemaro’s back.
Ortega began ripping, and Octopus sighed; he felt the stitches being removed, but could not say that it hurt. Soon it was over. Callemaro had seven arms; the eighth one was in Fox’s coat pocket.
“That was unpleasant,” said Octopus. “I wonder if this was a good idea.”
“It’s going to feel better,” Ortega promised.
“If it hurts when you sew your tail on we no longer have an agreement,” Callemaro declared. “If it hurts I want no part of it.”
Fox did not reply, but instead continued working in silence for a few minutes, and Octopus was forced to admit that he did not feel any pain; he hardly felt anything at all.
“There now,” Fox Antonio Ortega said at last, getting up.
He went around the table again, holding up his coat to show his tailless behind.
“And me? How do I look?” Octopus asked. “I want a mirror!”
“You are very beautiful,” Ortega replied.
“I want a mirror!”
Octopus picked up a golden bell that was on the dinner table and rang it. A moment later the waiter came into the room. Octopus ordered a large mirror, and the waiter disappeared for a minute or two, returning with an oblong full-length mirror, which he placed at an angle behind Octopus. Even though the mirror was dirty and the room was in darkness, Octopus could clearly see the fox’s beautiful tail fastened between two of his own black arms.
“I don’t know . . .” he said, turning to the waiter. “What do you think?”
“I think you’re more handthome than ever,” I answered, for I was the waiter that evening.
“Is that certain?”
“Thertain? You’ve lured the tail off of Fox and at the thame time kept theven arms. You’re a geniuth, Octoputh!”
This pleased the gangster king, and he toasted with me and with Fox and took the opportunity to have a few more glasses between these toasts. Then he got very tired, which was his habit after these dinners, and fell asleep as usual on his chair with a pleased smile on his lips.
I removed the photograph of Fox’s tail that I had fastened to the mirror, and together with Antonio Ortega, who still had his own beautiful tail stuffed into his pants, we slipped out. It was only as we were climbing down the radio tower that Fox happened to think about me.
“But,” he said, “he’s going to realize you were there and tricked him!”
“Thertainly,” I said.
“But,” said Fox, “isn’t he going to be angry?”
“I have a plan.”
The Heart
Dragon Aguado Molina was counting money. He was in the office he had set up in a room directly above the restaurant kitchen. He loved the aromas from almonds baked in saffron and the garlic-rubbed spareribs as he carried out his administrative tasks. The furnishings were dull and heavy; dark red wallpaper, a brown swivel chair behind the large desk, a yellowish glow from the porcelain shade of the table lamp.
The dragon pretended to loathe bookkeeping. From Tuesday to Saturday he carelessly threw money into the center desk drawer, and on Sunday morning he sighed heavily.
“Now it’s time to dirty yourself again,” he would say. “You really ought to hire a bookkeeper to take care of this. But then wouldn’t you lose half of it?”
Then he would laugh, but was careful to sound suitably resigned and went up the stairs with heavy steps.
If he was not interrupted—and he hated being interrupted—it took him about fifteen minutes to count and recount the amount. He then made a packet of bundles of cash and sent a courier to the bank’s deposit slot. Even if the following morning he could see that the account had increased, the aching sense of uncertainty appeared: Would he be able to convince the bank that it was really his account? What did they do with the money? Were there large piles of bills sitting in a bank vault? Perhaps it was all a fraud and he was deceived?
It was only when he sat at the desk with his neat piles in front of him that he felt completely satisfied.
“Daddy?” said Beatrice, cracking open the door to the office.
Two thousand three hundred seventy-six, thought Aguado Molina.
“Daddy, am I disturbing you?”
She was dressed in a charming white dress with short puff sleeves and lacing in the belt, which emphasized her dainty midriff. In the rich plumage her figure was otherwise hard to see.
“Two thousand three hundred eighty-two,” Dragon mumbled so that she would hear he was counting.
“May I come in?” she asked, opening the door.
“Two thousand three hundred ninety-five,” Dragon answered.
Beatrice stepped into the office and closed the door. She went up to one of the dark brown leather armchairs i
n front of the desk and sat down.
“Two thousand four hundred,” said Dragon.
With that, he had rescued the moment. The stack in front of him was complete, and he used a rubber band to secure the even amount.
“My beloved daughter,” he said, slipping the bundle into the desk drawer and directing his concentration at Beatrice. “My sweet cockatoo. My only love.”
He discreetly placed a couple of envelopes over the uncounted cash still on the desk.
“What’s on your mind?”
She looked at him and tipped her head. She tried to imagine how terrifying those sharp teeth and that spiky tail were to his enemies, but it was impossible. He was her father.
“Daddy, I haven’t heard a word, and now it’s been almost a month.”
“That’s how they can behave, these suitors,” Dragon teased.
“But, Daddy, I’m serious. Why hasn’t he contacted us?”
“I don’t know, honey,” Dragon replied.
“I know that he loves me.”
“Darling, there is not a stuffed animal in all of Sors who does not worship the ground you walk on.”
“Stop it, Daddy,” she asked. “He loves me. I know that I love him.”
“You’re still so young,” Dragon replied, looking a little embarrassed. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Love is a . . . something else. You will probably live to experience it someday.”
The noise from below in La Cueva interrupted him. It sounded like a stack of dishes falling to the ground, or perhaps a tray of silverware. And it continued. Rattling and crashing, followed by the sound of broken china. What was going on?
Dragon Aguado Molina stood halfway up, opened the right-hand desk drawer and took out a pistol. It was the heaviest caliber money could buy, a weapon as much to hit someone in the head with as to shoot.
Beatrice Cockatoo started panting.
“Daddy, what is that?”
But Dragon did not reply. Beatrice’s question was rhetorical. She knew exactly what it was. Dragon Aguado Molina’s daughter must be able to defend herself, and he had seen to it that she could. He had personally trained her when she was little, albeit with a smaller weapon.
He went around the desk with the pistol in his little hand. On the lower floor the noise had ceased, and it was silent. Much too silent.
“You stay here,” he whispered to Beatrice.
But before she could answer, the door swung open. The dragon raised his weapon. Beatrice screamed.
Fox Antonio Ortega stood on the threshold.
“Fox!” Beatrice Cockatoo exclaimed, pushing her father aside and throwing herself right in the surprised Ortega’s arms.
She pressed herself tight to him and threw her wings around him in a way that could not be misinterpreted. Without being directly brusque, Fox freed himself from the love of his heart. Cockatoo sighed contentedly, and took a step back to better enjoy the sight of him. Not even her most intense fantasies did him justice. She wanted to be his. Forever.
The fox was confused.
The reception had been contradictory, to say the least.
To make his way up to the second floor, he had been forced to fight with Dragon’s henchmen all the way through the bar and up the stairs. Now here inside waited the love of his life and Dragon himself with a drawn weapon.
Fox Antonio Ortega did not know whether he should be overjoyed or scared to death.
“It’s you,” said Dragon, ignoring his hypersensitive daughter. “You’re back. What do you want now?”
Dragon lowered his weapon just as Vasko Manatee and his brother, Luciano Hyena, showed up in the doorway behind Fox.
“Sorry, boss,” panted Manatee, who had a tear on his chest out of which beige cotton was protruding. “We tried to stop him.”
Dragon cast a worried glance at Beatrice, and silenced his shamefaced bodyguards with a wave.
“Almost as if you didn’t want me here,” said Fox Antonio Ortega.
“Nonsense,” said Aguado Molina. “We have an agreement, after all.”
He went back to the desk, sat down on his comfortable chair, and set the pistol on the envelopes that concealed the money.
“And what brings us this honor?” he asked.
Fox Antonio Ortega took a few quick steps up toward the multifanged imaginary animal, whereupon Manatee and Hyena crossed the threshold into the office. Dragon stopped them with another wave.
“Here it is,” said Fox proudly.
From his inside pocket he pulled out a black arm and gave it to the astonished Dragon Aguado Molina.
“From Octopus Callemaro?”
“A vain stuffed animal,” Fox replied.
“And he gave this to you?”
“For Beatrice’s sake, I will succeed at anything whatsoever,” Fox Antonio Ortega replied, turning his head and meeting the admiring gaze of the beautiful cockatoo.
Dragon nodded thoughtfully.
“Sit down,” he asked.
Fox sat down on one of the armchairs in front of the desk. Beatrice Cockatoo immediately sat down in the armchair next to him, and in that way they sat like a married couple before the dragon. He looked from the one to the other.
“Two out of three,” he stated. “That’s not bad. Only the last challenge remains. Perhaps the easiest? I’ve got an octopus’s arm. A hawk’s feather. Now I want a heart. A fox’s heart.”
“A fox?” asked Fox.
“Fox Antonio Ortega’s heart,” said Dragon.
“My heart?”
Beatrice Cockatoo flew up from the chair. She fluttered her wings excitedly. The happiness she experienced knew no bounds.
“Oh, Daddy. Daddy! Thank you!”
She threw herself around the desk and gave him a hug. At the next moment she ran over to Fox—who, without understanding, remained seated—and bent down over him.
“Your heart, my darling, you’ve already given it to me!”
“That’s true,” answered Fox Antonio Ortega, who finally thought he understood the symbolism of what Molina had said. “My heart is yours forever, my darling.”
Beatrice Cockatoo was beaming with happiness. Her yellow cheeks blushed, her black eyes sparkled.
“My child . . .” Dragon began, but did not know how he should continue, for he, too, was taken by the emotional intensity of the moment.
“Daddy, I never thought . . .” Beatrice began, and a single, lovely tear fell from her eye. “Sometimes I thought that . . .”
But she was not able to complete the sentence.
Fox had also stood up alongside his betrothed, and he, too, fumbled for words to thank Dragon Aguado Molina.
But then the dragon raised the pistol and aimed it right at Ortega’s head.
“My children,” he said quietly, “you misunderstand me. I meant that more literally than you understood. I want his heart, Beatrice. Literally.”
With a curt nod from Dragon, Manatee and Hyena lined up behind Fox. Antonio Ortega made an effort to defend himself.
“Try,” said Dragon with a muted voice. “Simply make an attempt, and I’ll show you what this caliber can do with you and your fast legs.”
Fox Antonio Ortega froze. And while the manatee and hyena bound Fox’s feet and hands, Beatrice finally realized what was really about to happen.
“But . . .” she exclaimed.
Anxiety and terror tied a knot around her vocal cords.<
br />
The single tear of joy was now followed by a river of tears of sorrow.
“Daddy!” she screamed.
“Get her out of here,” Dragon ordered. “Lock her up in her room.”
Manatee shoved the bound fox so that he fell to the ground, and then dragged him out of the room. After them followed Hyena, who gingerly pushed the uncontrollably sobbing Beatrice Cockatoo ahead of him.
Molina sat behind the desk and watched them disappear. Later, when the fox had suffered all the torments that Manatee and Hyena could think of down in the cellar, Dragon himself intended to go down and carve out the cursed fox heart. He would see to it that this Ortega never threatened the peace of his household again.
Dragon Aguado Molina removed the envelopes and looked down at the money. He opened the center desk drawer to continue his work, but became uncertain.
Was it two thousand four hundred or two thousand three hundred?
With a sigh he pulled off the rubber band from the piles on the table and started over from the beginning. A deep sense of satisfaction filled him.
The End
The room stank of sweet perfume and the odor made me nauseated. It was the smell that made me realize this was Beatrice Cockatoo’s room; I knew she lived on the top floor. I carefully placed my paw over her beak. With my other paw I turned on the lamp on her nightstand. She opened her eyes when she felt my paw, and stared in terror up into my eyes.
“I am Gary Vole,” I whispered. “I am Fox Antonio Ortega’th friend. Where ith he?”
I waited until the words had penetrated her awareness and the fear disappeared from her eyes, and then I let her reply.