Cynical Tales for Cynical Children

by Timothy Ahern

  Of course he instantly knew she was a witch and since his face was on all the coins she likewise knew he was a king5.

  "My good woman can you show me the way through these woods? I appear to be lost" the king spoke politely because those who are rude to witches in these kinds of stories seldom get a chance to try again.

  "Oh yes your majesty" the witch nodded, knowing she was speaking to a king due to the regal glow about him6 " I certainly can. However, my assistance comes with a price”

  1

  Magic is currently leading by at least one frog as science has yet to make any headway into the art of transfrogrification.

  2

  Given the amount of time, the expense of the ingredients and amount of study which is required to to turn someone into a puppy via magical means we suggest the slightly easier method of making suitable arrangements with a sympathetic werewolf.

  3

  This is one of the lesser perks available to those who get to wear the shiniest party hat in the world.

  4

  He’s so lost we’ve been forced to make up new words to describe just how lost he is. I bet he regrets cutting funding of Ye Olde Searcheth and Rescueth now.

  5

  Don't ask me exactly how he knew this as witch identification would seem to be something kings get taught, although given the amount of kings who run afoul of witches it's possible this particular class clashes with Wenching101

  6

  It's a sort of party trick among royalty. As you can see it's helpful in dealing with peasants, witches and reading in bed.

  “You already know I’m the king so I’ll remind you that subjects who try to give orders to their rulers quickly find themselves on the pointy end of his armies. You might want to take this into consideration before attempting any extortion madam”

  “The proper form of address is mistress actually, as in Mistress of the arcane and wielder of terrible powers. For my part I’d like to point out that if you don’t agree to my terms then your conversational abilities will be limited to 'ribbit'. Although not” she concluded with an air of dark triumph “for long”

  “That’s odd. Suddenly I feel an overwhelming urge to listen to your terms” the king hazarded "which, I'm certain, will prove to be entirely reasonable"

  "It's like this King Kermit. I've had a daughter for a while now but we’ve been living out in the middle of this dense forest and it’s difficult for gentlemen callers to come, well, to come calling. This is why it’s such a stroke of luck you happened to be here since my daughter is easily the equal of any beauty you care to name”

  "Snow White" the king mentioned offhandedly

  "What's that?"

  "Is your daughter the equal of Snow White? Who is well known to be the fairest in the land and, from what I understand, has rather a thing about witches"

  The witch fumed at the royal insolence "Fine, she's the equal of any beauty EXCEPT for Snow White and if you take the time to make her your queen then I'll happily show you the way out of my forest"7

  In his fear of being changed into an amazingly lifelike replica of a popular childrens show host the king agreed and followed the witch to her house where her daughter sat by the fire. Of course she didn't look surprised to see the king because any witch who lets herself be surprised by unexpected visitors doesn't stay a witch for long. They talked and it wasn't long before he brought her back to the castle where a wedding was celebrated with much rejoicing by the troupe of professional rejoicers who had been brought in especially for the occasion8.

  What the king hadn't told his new bride was the small fact of his previous marriage which had left him the loving father of six boys and girl which is kind of a big thing to leave out of an arrangement as serious as marriage. In fact he was so afraid his new wife might do the children some harm he took them out to one of his more secluded castles which stood in the middle of a forest9.

  This castle was well hidden and if one didn't have a magical ball of thread to follow then one would get quite lost and presumably remain so until one happened upon a witch with a daughter whereupon one can go back and restart the story because I'm not about to write this thing out ad infinitum10.

  The king, being the aforementioned loving father, went out to visit his children so often his queen took note of his absences and was full of curiosity to know where he went and what he did in the vast forests of his kingdom.

  After an undisclosed royal servant spilled the beans in return for an undisclosed sum of royal money she searched the castle until she found the magic thread in the bottom of the royal underwear drawer which wasn’t so much undisclosed as under-these-clothes.

  She also made, from several pairs of the royal underwear, some tight fitting silk shirts and into these shirts was sewn a spell because she was a witch after all and it had been a long while since she had done anything to make trouble for anyone. Her chance to act came when one day the king went hunting and she followed the thread in the opposite direction.

  7

  I don't think this woman has a grasp on how marriages actually work. In my experience blackmailing people into a wedding rarely works out in the long term.

  8

  They're royalty. They don't do things as we common folk might do.

  9

  Presumably a different forest than the first one he'd gotten lost in.

  10 I did try and discovered there are only so many jokes I can make before resorting to the old 'which-witch' puns and nobody wants that.

  Of course the children, having no reason to think otherwise, believed it was their father coming down the little path and ran out to meet him. Before they knew what was happening the queen had thrown the silk shirts over each of them and uttered the magic word of "Hoopla! "11

  Thinking she'd gotten rid of all her stepchildren in one fell swoop the queen went away without bothering to count the number of swans who were now flying around her head. This was a mistake on her part since there were six swans in the sky and one princess who had been missed due to the fact she hadn’t run outside with her brothers since, in deference to our modern day action princess’s who pride themselves on smashing through doors, rescuing themselves and burning their glass slippers, this wasn’t the type of behavior a properly brought up princess of the time would indulge in.

  It was particularly early on the morrow when the royal father came to visit his royal children and, to his horror, he found nobody home except for the royal daughter.

  "What's happened? Where are your brothers?"

  "They've gone father, all gone and I am alone. It is so tragic, thus even now I die" as she spoke the princess moved with practiced ease from one sad pose to another and despite the gravity of the situation the king was gratified to see her acting lessons had indeed been money well spent.

  After she had finished dying the princess revealed the swan feathers, explained how her brothers had all run outside and the next thing she knew six swans were flying over the castle which logically meant her brothers had all been turned into swans.

  In his grief at this magically tragic turn of events the king overlooked the fact his wife was not only the daughter of a witch, one by her own merits and also an individual whom he had actively taken pains to limit access to his children, the majority of whom were now flying about the place This is mentioned if only to prove a surplus of brains are not required for one to sit upon the throne12.

  For the rest of the day the king made plans for his daughter to return to the main castle. The princess, being clever and rather sensible, had other plans. "I can't remain with my father when my brothers are out in the wild world" she thought as she escaped into the densest part of the wood to where the wild things went only when they had to and even then they went in pairs. After a long night of wild rumpusing of a variety sadly lost to us she came across a little house with six beds.

  Unlike Snow White her first thought upon coming across this house was not to clean the house in a vague hope of the people livi
ng there would take care of a princess who was all alone in the world and maybe sing the Hi-ho song from time to time, rather her first thought was “I don't know who lived here and there's every possibility in the world they might not be friendly. Since there's at least six of them it might be best if I sleep underneath the beds for tonight and then I'll make a decision about these people based on observational evidence”

  She was in the middle of getting as comfortable as the dusty, cold, damp and splintery floor would allow when the six swans flew in through the window. As if this wasn't surprising enough they arranged themselves in a circle, honked several times and blew at one another in a special way until their feathers blew off like an extreme case of dandruff13. Once the air was clear the six enchanted princes were standing in human form and trying to take off the silken shirt which had caused so much trouble.

  Thus, they were reunited and everyone went home to jam, scones and lashings of ginger beer or, to be more accurate, the exact opposite happened.

  11 As an aside we note "Hoopla!" wasn't necessary for the spell to work. Although we continue to note there's such a thing as showmanship.

  12 However they are essential for the continuation of your reign. Better stay in school if you know what’s good for you.

  13 which, rather ironically, is something traditionally curable by the hand of a king.

  It was after everyone had finished rejoicing her brothers told their sister not to hang around this little house in the woods because it belonged to robbers "They're all out robbering right now and if they were to come back and find you they'd kill you just like that”

  "What, without even singing the Hi-ho song?" Princess Sensible asked, in a shocked tone

  "They're truly evil" her brothers assured her "This is why we'll never get a movie deal. We've got plenty of villains and none of them have catchy musical numbers"

  "You guys are my brothers. Aren't you supposed to protect me?”

  "We can't at all. We're only able to take human form for quarter of an hour ever evening and then we change into swans again. There's only one way to break the spell, you've got six years to make six shirts out of stitchweed and you can't laugh, speak or sing while you're doing it. We're not even joking a little bit about that part, if a single sound comes from your mouth before six years has passed then all your work will be of no use and you'd have to start all over again"

  "That's a highly specific spell"

  "Don't look at us, we didn't write the rules on magic"14

  After her brothers time in humanity had expired the brave princess left the robbers house with the silverware since the ironic karma had been too great to resist and ended up living in a tree right in the middle of the forest because, once again, royalty doesn't do things the way the common people do which is how you know they're royal. Every morning she would descend to the ground and gather the stitchweed in total silence and every night she would sit and sew until she fell asleep.

  Now as it happened the king of this particular country happened to be hunting in this particular wood and his hunters happened upon the particular tree where the princess was sewing the stitchweed shirts.

  "Hello up there. Who are you?" high up in the branches the princess shook her head and tried to hide in the branches

  "What are you doing up there? Come down to us" the princess moved into the highest branches and tried to continue working

  "This is the kings forest you know, technically you're poaching that stitchweed" Once again she had no response and, in a somewhat misguided effort to satisfy the hunters she threw down her golden necklace and when it didn't work her sash floated down, followed by her garters and everything else she had on in a sort of terribly unerotic striptease. Unsurprisingly the sight of a naked woman in a tree didn't make anyone go away and one of them eventually climbed up, brought the young lady from Terra-Aboria to Terra-Firma and presented her to their king as a kind of exotic bird.

  "Who are you?" the king asked kindly "what were you doing up in the tree?"

  The princess couldn't answer even though he asked in all the languages he knew and at least one he'd made up on the spur of the moment. Despite her silence her beauty and clearly regal nature moved the king's heart to the point where he'd fallen deeply in love.

  After she had been brought back to the castle, bathed and dressed in a manner befitting a proper princess her beauty shone forth like a bright sunshine15 and it was obvious to anyone with half an eye exactly how much the pair loved each other even after such a short time which meant nobody was surprised when the king announced an upcoming royal wedding.

  So finally the story ends happily for everyone. Princess Sensible is married and no doubt her brothers found they enjoyed being swans so much they all lived happily ever after. Or, as might be expected, once again the exact opposite happened.

  The king had a mother who was as bad as he was good and what made it worse was she wasn't the

  'minions and twirly mustache' kind of bad, rather the 'all smiles on the outside' version which is worse 14 If you want to blame anyone blame Gygax.

  15 It's the regal glow again.

  because they can do so much more damage and are difficult to spot.

  In truth she hated to see anyone happy for any reason and with her sons marriage to a beautiful, unknown although unquestionably regal woman he'd found in the forest she was seeing a great many happy people which meant something had to be done.

  "Quite apart from the danger of her being a witch she can't speak and certainly isn't good enough for my son. It's my high standards I suppose" she would remark casually and carefully watch every other mother as they took pains to agree with her because they all had terribly high standards for their own sons and if they didn't then, as loath as I am to stoop to word play, their aforementioned sons would start taking terrible pains.

  It was in this manner a year passed and the Princess Sensible, now known, somewhat theatrically, as

  'The Silent Queen', sewed the stitchweed shirts, remained silent and brought her first child into the world. Not all was sunshine and happiness because it was on a dark night when the kings mother, being unable to bear the sight of the happiest new mother in the kingdom, finally snapped and stole the child, taking pains to smear her daughter in laws mouth with blood while she was asleep. Then she went to her son and accused her daughter in law of eating the child16. The king, being just as sensible as his wife, refused to believe it and took pains to make certain nobody would do his wife any harm.

  The next time the Queen gave birth the old woman waited for another dark night and did the same as before except with more blood, again the king refused to believe his wife had eaten her second child.

  "Mum you're completely mistaken. My wife is much too pious and good to do such a thing. If she were not mute then she would defend herself and her innocence would be made clear. I don't know what happened to the children and you can bet I'm going to find out. Until then I'll stand by my love no matter what"

  It is a commonly accepted fact that one doesn't get to survive at the royal court without guile and only slightly less known is that one doesn't survive as the power behind the throne without guile, a double helping of cunning and an optional twirly mustache. When the third child suffered a 'mysterious disappearance in the night' the queen mother made certain to give full voice to her accusation of royal cannibalism in front of the entire royal court where it would cause the most uproar and this time her planning paid off because, by the law of the land, the king was forced to give his wife up to the court of justice. In a remarkably short amount of time and after a bit of judicious prodding in the due process the Silent Queen was declared to be guilty and condemned to suffer death by fire on the morrow.

  The morning of the morrow dawned and it should be noted this particular morrow was exactly the last day of the six years which was part one of the conditions required for the lifting of the curse, last mentioned in the house of the robbers17. The silent queen walked bravely past the
equally silent crowd with her head held high and carried the six stitchweed shirts which just so happened to be part two of the aforementioned requirements for curse lifting.

  Part three of these requirements arrived just as the fires were about to lit and as the crowd watched in awe as the six powerful swans surrounded their silent sister.

  “What did I tell you my boy?” the queen mother broke the silence of the crowd “she's clearly a witch and we must burn her right now! It's the only way we'll be safe”

  Thankfully the magic worked quickly and almost as soon as the queen had thrown the shirts over them the swans began to change and soon her brothers, human once again, stood by the side of their sister.

  Each of them had grown strong and handsome although it must be said her youngest brother retained 16 Aside from a generic and rather vague reference to 'cravings' the cannibalistic tendencies of new mothers is something which is largely glossed over in these modern times. Clearly a failing of the medical profession.

  17 With everything else going on since then you can be forgiven for forgetting about it.

  a swans wing instead of his left arm because his sister hadn't been able to gather enough stitchweed what with dealing with baseless accusations of infant cannibalism. However he took this well enough and later remarked that at least the important parts of him were human.

  After the group had gotten to the ground and the princes had formed an honour guard around their sister she went to her husband. "At last I may speak to you my king and I declare my innocence to you.

  Oh and I love you, I've wanted to say that for a long time"

  Of course the king accepted her statement as truth since he'd always believed in her innocence and the prospect of having his hands tied had been eating away at his heart. After she'd filled him in on the deceitful tactics of his mother, who had hidden the children in yet another forest, he shook with a royal rage.18

  To the great joy of the sensible king, the silent queen, assorted princes and the crowd of onlookers the youngest princess were quickly found and returned to their parents. The king passed judgment on his mad mother and, for her crimes, she was tied to the stake quickly immolated in a method usually reserved for cannibals and witches. This was something of an irony since she was neither.