Cynical Tales for Cynical Children

by Timothy Ahern

  The pain was so agonizing she blacked out and when she awoke she saw the Prince smiling down at her. Although this might seem like the largest of coincidences even by fairytale standards it was actually the witches magic bringing them together which was nice of her. The Prince draped his cloak over the exmermaid while making small talk about how he’d been washed ashore on this exact beach not too long ago, Sirenetta wasn’t able to let him know about her part in his adventures due to the whole lack of voice thing and it wasn’t long before she was transported to the royal castle as a guest of the royal owner.

  Just as the witch of the seas had made a point of mentioning each step Sirenetta took brought forth a new aria in what was fast becoming an unending symphony of agony.9

  Despite the deep friendship between the two it was well known that the heart of the Prince belonged to the woman who had rescued him from the beach. Sirenetta, knowing she was not his true love, suffered even more because clearly more suffering is exactly what this story needs.

  From the castle ramparts one day a huge ship was sighted sailing into the harbor and the prince and Sirenetta went down to meet it. When the prince saw the woman who had rescued him from the beach was on board he ran to greet her while Sirenetta felt a painful crack run through her heart and turned to stone, although this time the transformation was entirely metaphorical.

  Naturally there was a royal wedding which was held, with only a trace of irony, on board a ship that was safely moored inside the harbor.

  As the wedding party slowly wound to a close the exmermaid remembered the conditions of the magic placed upon her. Specifically the part about the Prince marrying someone else and with no hope left she prepared to throw herself overboard.

  "Hold Princess!" the cry came from the waters where her sisters bobbed among the waves “it's us, your sisters. We've all being searching the oceans for you and it wasn't until yesterday we came across the witch of the seas who told us everything. In exchange for our hair she gave us this magic knife10. I realize it doesn't sound like much and if you use it to kill the so called Prince and that floozy of a new wife of his before dawn you'll return to your proper form as a Princess and mermaid without any troubles or worries just like before!”

  9

  Although the fantastic dresses, fine horses and all night balls were of some comfort.

  10 “Can't you see we're suffering in support of you?”

  She tried, she really did but ultimately couldn't bring herself to kill someone who's only mistake had been to marry the woman he loved rather than the princess who couldn't talk and had no way of taking credit for getting him to the beach in the first place.

  With the rising of the sun she threw the knife into the sea then took one last look at the surface world before diving into the ocean and becoming nothing more than the foam on the ocean wave.

  THE END

  Oh, wait.

  Sirenetta never felt her body hit the water because she was drawn up into the sky by a strange force.

  “Where am I? Who are you? What's happening to me?”

  “We're the fairies of the air, we want you to join us” the leader of the fairies explained “Like you mermaids we've got no souls like humans but in our case we've been given the eternal task of helping them”

  “Really?”

  “You saved a human, sacrificed everything to be with him and then stood aside when he married someone else you're practically one of us already”

  “You've been watching me?”

  “We watch everyone! All the time!”

  “Is that it? I'd just be watching them? Even when they went to the bathroom?”

  “You'd be helping them whenever you can. There are a few rules and some guidelines which are, quite frankly, unrealistic but if you manage to achieve them then you can get into heaven”

  “Wow! Sign me up!” Sirenetta completely forgot that in order to have a ghost you first have to have a soul and on the strength of this technicality she would have been able to pass through the pearly gates without incident.

  EXCOGITATION

  •

  What's with all the warnings?

  “Keep away from the humans”, “They're nothing but trouble”, “They're not like us” and assorted dire warnings.

  If I've got this right then the king of the mermaids is telling his daughter their entire race are soulless monsters who can only lurk on the outskirts peering in at humanity. I am not going to be surprised if we happen to discover dear old dad is really Cthulhu.

  •

  Seriously, how cool was this party?

  This was a celebration that so fantastically wonderful actual sailors didn't realize an actual storm was actually happening until it was actually too late. It kind of puts Cinderella and her foot fetishists ball to shame really.

  •

  All right so the mermaid princess saved the Prince. What more could she have done?

  Perhaps she could have stayed under the ocean and rallied the other mermaids into becoming more proactive in saving the lives of drowning sailors11. The king wouldn't like it and she would have had a difficult time convincing anyone else to help which would have added a whole new level of drama and conflict to the story.

  Then again Hans Christian Anderson never listens to me, largely because I don't speak Dutch and also because he's dead which does tend to make conversations slightly one sided.

  •

  Exactly who is the villain in this version?

  It's not the witch who, for all her potential, is relegated to a minor supporting role and neither is it the woman who actually marries the prince. If anyone has to be the villain in this story then it's the mermaid princess if only because she's such a Mary Sue character she has to be everything.

  11 Rather than the few lucky ones who rate more than a seven on the attractiveness scale.

  RATIOCINATION

  Looking back at the original version it's not exactly surprising Disney decided to change a few of the details and by changed I mean rewrote the majority of the work by putting in a villain, giving the whole thing a happier ending12 and stuffing it full of catchy musical numbers with a wide variety of singing fish.

  All things considered this is actually one of the darker stories. We’re reminded several times only humans have souls, the mermaid princess mopes about the place with a gloomy intensity and, quite frankly, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover this thing was written after the author had suffered a bad breakup13. Taking everything into consideration I question whether there is really a lesson in this story and really the more I think about it the more I think it's something along the lines of

  "If you can't be with the one you love then clearly suicide is the only answer, or

  possibly murder. Heck, if you've got the time then why not both?14”

  12 “What do you mean dying and finding out you've got the a tiny sliver of hope you'll be eligible to get into heaven doesn't actually count as a happy ending?”

  13 The kind where it seems every other person on the planet has found someone special and are going out of their way to make certain you know about it. That kind of breakup.

  14 “Yet” his publisher looked up from the manuscript “both murder and suicide just bring everyone down. So, yeah, we're going to need a rewrite of the ending”

  THE LITTLE PEAR GIRL

  In which the worlds of crime and government work hand in hand.

  Taxes. Those annual payments that, whether you love them or hate them there is no escaping them. It is also impossible to escape their terrible necessity when it comes to the proper running of your country and when one examines the extraordinarily ridiculous lengths to which people will go to avoid paying them one could, perhaps, be forgiven for thinking they were constantly in training for a kind of criminal Olympics.

  Whatever an individuals individual thoughts on the payment or non payment of their taxes the one thing all concerned have agreed upon is that while they are an evil they are a necessary e
vil required for the smooth running of the country and their providing for essential services to be used by essential citizens in the course of doing their essential duties.

  This story, being set in the distant past, differs from our more enlightened modern times because any taxes paid would go towards the various kings, princes, barons dukes1 and an assortment of people who weren’t elected by the will of the people but rather received their positions through nepotism, inheritance and favoritism2. With these people in power it should be no surprise that any money incoming stayed incoming rather than being transferred into outgoing where it might flow out into the local community where it might do some good3.

  here was once, a long time ago a peasant. Since the entire system of monarchy falls apart if there's only one we can safely assume there were more hanging around off camera.

  Anyway, it's this individual peasant person who had spent his entire life working hard on Tthe land. I'll grant you that this may not be the most surprising fact in the world since the entire reason for peasants is to work hard on the land.4.

  This particular peasant was a mildly successful pear rancher5 who was required to pay a seasonal tax of four buckets of pears to his king, a man who was largely regarded as a person who had grown fat, rich and lazy at the expense of the humble peasant class.

  The royal character flaws weren't talked about too loudly by the peasants due to their aforementioned humbleness and the fact that the kind of king who is fat, rich and lazy at the expense of the humble peasant class is certainly able to afford a well trained and highly effective discussion squad who were only too happy to knock on peoples doors to discuss their concerns and work together for the betterment of all concerned6.

  1

  The fact some provinces paid their taxes to Kongs, Prancers, Boron’s and Ducks perfectly illustrates the direct consequences of keeping the income from taxes at the top rather than spending them on such trivialities as education.

  2

  So nothing like our modern governments then?

  3

  Nope, no resemblance to our modern governments at all.

  4

  Those peasants who don’t work hard enough generally end up being compost so technically they’re still working the land just not so proactively as their above ground counterparts.

  5

  He wasn't successful enough to have a name though. You've got to be a really big deal in the peasant world before you're considered to be important enough to be known as anything more than “Hey You!”

  6

  In the interests of the protection of the innocent it should be noted that the word ‘discussion’ is currently being used as something of a euphemism.

  One fateful year tragedy struck when the harvest went bad 7 and the trees were only able to produce enough pears to fill three and a half baskets.

  The pear wrangler gnawed at his knuckles in worry due to the fact the taxmen were in the process of comething. If they thought they and, by extension, the king were not receiving what was properly owed to them then it wasn't unknown for people to receive a visit from the royal discussion squad8.

  Finally, in an act of utter desperation he grabbed his youngest daughter “You’re just the right size for this. Get in the basket and whatever you do don’t make a sound. I’ll figure something out later”

  There was no time for anything now because, with a narrative inevitability, the taxmen cameth and knockethed upon the door while the girl was being covered in fruit.

  “Tax collection! Bring out your pears”

  “They’re in here” the pear farmer opened his door with the same forced smile everyone wears when dealing with the tax collectors “four baskets ready and waiting, only”

  “Only what?”

  “Only it was a difficult winter and a great deal of the fruit are undersized. I mean I wouldn't the king to think inferior fruit, so what are the chances of letting me keep that last basket?”

  “You’ve managed to fill the required four baskets” the taxman commented as the appropriate paperwork was filled out “that’s all I care about. Quality control is an entirely different department”

  “It’s just possible” the peasant commented as the tax wagon rolled away with his best pears, good baskets and his youngest daughter “that I didn’t think this all the way through”

  A few days later the royal pastry chef went into the royal pantries in search of some royal pears for the royal dessert and, to his upper-middle-lowerclass surprise, discovered a distinctly unroyal peasant girl who smelled suspiciously of pears. Once she had been given a good scrubbing, some clean clothes and permission to visit the royal necessary.9 Violette, as she was now being called due to the colour of her eyes and with a complete lack of regard of her actual name, proved to have a sweet disposition and was eager to please.

  “It’s just possible Dad didn’t think this all the way through” Violette commented as she finished recounting the events of the first three paragraphs to the head of staff.

  “However it happened you’re here now and the castle always needs another maid so grab a mop and welcome to the workforce”

  Over the course of the next few months Violette found herself thrown into a wide range of duties around the castle grounds where she quickly gained a reputation for working hard with exactly the kind of good attitude which gets one noticed by upper management.

  The other servants, however, weren’t as happy with this hard working peasant girl because her willingness to work hard meant they also had to work hard or, at least harder than they had been.

  Much of their initial bitterness faded over time however since these other servants also had jobs to do and at the end of the day Violette wasn’t important enough to worry about.

  “After all” the fourth floor butler held court around a table filled with his friends “if you would care to think about it surely you would be able to see that the castle is big enough for rich and poor alike. It can surely survive the addition of one more small servant”

  “You can’t like everyone in the world but she’s done nuffink to hurt me so I ain’t gonna do nuffink to hurt her” insisted a scullery maid who was swiftly marked down for improper language.

  “Don’t forget that whatshername has gone through a difficult time as well so it’s better to simply live and let live” one of the cooks mentioned.

  7

  Either due to global warming or the nastier kind of goblins. Scientific opinion is divided as to the existence of at least one of these.

  8

  If you were under the impression that being a peasant in this economy was a difficult position to be in then let's just say the life of a homeless ex-peasant wasn't generally considered to be a bed of roses either.

  9

  Because after being left by herself in the royal pantries all those pears were fighting to come out the other end.

  “There you go. Not happy to live with her my left foot! Surely this shows we’re fully prepared to make the effort to get along with the dear little thing”

  One day, as Violette was watering the plants in one of the highest royal gardens she encountered Kevin, the young prince, who had wandered out in search of some flowers for his mother. Despite the marked difference in their social and political stations the pair hit it off and got along so well that two hours later they were still talking while the royal flowers remained unpicked.

  “Wait” the fourth floor butler's monocle dropped in surprise “with whom has she been observed?

  Someone go check if the rumor mill has been fixed yet”

  “We hear” the imposing figure of the much discussed King loomed over Violette “you have been boasting to the other servants about how you and you alone can steal the treasure of the Witchqueen.

  Is this true?”

  “Not at all your highness” Violette insisted “I don’t know where the Witchqueen lives or how to steal anything from her. Truth be told I didn’t even know we had a Witchqueen. Aren’t you
the King? How can she be a queen if she’s not married to you?”

  “That kind of disassembling is exactly what we would say if we were planning to steal the treasure of the Witchqueen. Clearly the second part of your plan was to have our kingdom bear her wrath while you relaxed on some sunny beach. It is for this reason we task you with bringing the treasure of the Witchqueen to us or suffer our kingdoms traditional punishment for liars”

  “Which is?”

  “Banishment” The king concluded “now begone or you'll rue the day you thought to scheme against the crown”

  Faced with someone who was able to use the phrase 'rue the day' without even a hint of irony Violette wandered somewhat aimlessly through a huge forest until it was far too dark to see anything and the only comfort she found was in the familiar branches of an ancient pear tree where she could spend the rest of the night dreaming of her old, considerably less complicated, life.

  When the warm sunlight woke her she climbed down to the earth, much to the surprise of an old woman who had been gathering fruit for her breakfast.

  “Who are you? Where did you come from? Did you spend all night in my pear tree?”

  “I'm on a mission for the king” Violette explained “I didn't know the tree was yours”

  “I think this is the sort of thing which needs to be discussed over a good meal. Come on, my house is just up the hill”

  “You see it all started when my father hid me in a pear basket so he wouldn’t get in trouble with the tax collectors” Violette began to, once again, sum up what can only be described as the story so far10.

  “You know, it’s possible this plan hasn’t been thought all the way through. I mean why bother going back to the castle? If there’s one thing life has taught me it’s that there’s always another kingdom”

  “Well there’s this sort of boy” Violette admitted sheepishly

  “Ah, well say no more. I’ve heard the ‘there’s sort of this boy’ story more than once” the old woman paused to take a large drink of pear cider “young lady I have to say this is your lucky day”11