Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales Read online

  Leaping Beauty

  And Other Animal Fairy Tales

  Gregory Maguire

  Illustrated by Chris L. Demarest

  This book is for

  Luke, Alex, and Helen—

  my own leaping beauties.

  Contents

  Leaping Beauty

  Goldiefox and the Three Chickens

  Hamster and Gerbil

  So What and the Seven Giraffes

  Little Red Robin Hood

  The Three Little Penguins and the Big Bad Walrus

  Cinder-Elephant

  Rumplesnakeskin

  About the Author and the Illustrator

  Other Books by Gregory Maguire

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  LEAPING BEAUTY

  The king and queen of the frogs gave birth to a baby. They were delighted, for they had long wanted a child. The tadpole was as green as the slime in a vernal pond, and the bumps on her skin had bumps of their own. The king and queen decided to call her Beauty, as she was the most beautiful thing they had ever seen.

  When the time came to have a party to celebrate her birth, the royal parents invited all the fairies in the kingdom, including bumblebees, butterflies, and an airborne brotherhood of beetles.

  The party started out swell. The bumblebees brought their bagpipes, the butterflies brought their banjos, and the beetles brought their bassoons. The queen frog set up the guests in a summerhouse so that their hootenanny music could carry across the pond. (You’d be surprised how much music is written for bagpipe, banjo, and bassoon trios.)

  The king frog kept a watch fondly over his little Beauty.

  The bumblebees ate the biscuits, the butterflies ate the butter and bread, and the beetles ate the beets. The queen frog kept putting out more, for it was her fondest hope that the fairies would feel like bestowing precious gifts on her beloved, wide-smiled daughter.

  When dinner was through, the music struck up again. Many of the fairies danced the hootchy-cootchy. As the lights began to dim and evening chill settled in the air, one by one the fairies stopped their dancing and playing and came forward to look lovingly upon the newborn frog.

  “On behalf of the bumblebees, I have a gift,” said the boss of the bumblebees, chomping on his cigar. “We bees like to hum a lot. We love songs. So let this little cutie hum and sing songs whenever she likes. She will have a beautiful voice for all to hear and enjoy. Her ribbit will be as loud as a foghorn.”

  “Thank you,” murmured the queen frog. “Thank you all, my darling bees.”

  The baron of the butterflies fluttered forward. “On behalf of all the butterflies, I should like to give her a gift,” he said. “I should like her to move with the grace of a butterfly. Her froggy progress through a pond shall be as moonlight through a glade.”

  “Bravo,” chortled the king frog. “Dear butterflies—our unending thanks!”

  Just then there was a buzz at the end of the field. Who should come droning along but the wickedest fairy of the meadows—a huge, ancient hornet, with a stinger as long as a candy cane.

  “Who invited her?” muttered the queen frog.

  “Croaked if I know,” her husband muttered back. “Thinks she can just crash any party she wants? I’ll give her a piece of my mind!” He opened his mouth and unrolled his long, sticky tongue, flexing it threateningly.

  “Careful, my dear,” said his wife. “She is the most powerful fairy in the field. She stings you, you’ll be croaking the Last Big Croak. I suppose we ought to give her a piece of cake or something.” She put on her brightest face. “Well, look who’s here to grace our little party! Old Dame Hornet, what a surprise!”

  “You rude things,” cried Old Dame Hornet in a rage. “You have a party and invite all these simpering bugs, and you forget to invite me? I’m rocking with fury! I’m rolling with rage! I’ll give your daughter a little present to remember this insult by!”

  With a speed surprising for one so old and frail, Old Dame Hornet flung herself to the cradle and looked down into the face of the pretty little baby frog. “Before your first birthday,” she cried, “you shall bite down on a stray explosive from some stupid human engineering project, and you shall blow yourself to smithereens!” And she gave a fiendish cackle.

  “Oh, anything but that!” shrieked the queen frog. She fell into a dead faint, which made a loud slapping noise in the water, like a belly flop.

  But the bishop of the beetles, who had been sneaking a little extra nectar at the refreshment table, now came forward. “I haven’t given our gift to the little princess yet,” he said. “On behalf of the beetles, I declare that you shan’t blow yourself up when you bite down on a stray explosive. You’ll just begin to cry, because it will hurt. You will wail, you will moan, you will splash yourself with tears. We will all call you Weeping Beauty. It will be dreadfully sad, but at least you’ll still be alive.”

  “Curses!” shrieked the hornet. “Well, crying all the time, that’s pretty bad too. I liked the exploding frog idea better, but you can’t win them all. Ta ta, everybody. And next time,” she hissed, “invite me to the party.”

  Recovering from her fit of vapors, the queen joined the king in saying good-bye to the bumblebees and butterflies and beetles. Then hired bedbugs came in to turn down the sheets so the king and queen could go to sleep. Worried to distraction, though, the frog parents couldn’t sleep.

  “Our Beauty will have a voice,” said the king, trying to be consoling. “She’ll have grace in motion.”

  “She’ll weep—that’s her fate!” said the queen, who began to weep herself, in sympathy.

  The queen and king did their best to protect little Beauty. They watched over her night and day. Beauty seemed such a pretty little thing, gifted at singing and dancing. She was always happy. Everyone around her was cheered up by the crooning of her second contralto voice, by her impromptu tap dancing and soft-shoe routines.

  But though show business was gratifying, Beauty longed to be alone from time to time. She didn’t want always to be the solo act in frog society. She wanted a break.

  So one evening a week or two later, Beauty slipped away through the grass when no one was looking. She had never paddled in the river by herself, and she enjoyed what she saw: the beetles in their holes, the bees in their trees, the butterflies fluttering by in the wind.

  Then she saw a metal box drifting in the strong current in the middle of the river. It looked a little bit like an iron sandwich, with cables and cords trailing out of the middle like stringy bits of raw onion.

  Beauty felt a powerful hunger. She swam over and took a huge bite.

  Ow! It felt like a volcano in her mouth. It tasted like lava lasagna. It seared the roof of her tongue and made her teeth ache.

  Naturally enough, Beauty began to cry. Huge tears formed in her eyes and rolled down her nose. She was only barely able to make it to the riverbank. She tried to call out for her mother and father, but all she could do was weep—loudly. Since her voice was strong from all that singing, her parents heard the racket, and they came hopping as quickly as their old quaking legs could propel them.

  Now, her parents weren’t king and queen of the frogs for nothing. They were intelligent frogs. They picked up their ailing, flailing, wailing baby Beauty and brought her to the base of the oak tree where Old Dame Hornet had a little nest.

  There, Beauty cried. Morning, noon, and night. Her parents took turns feeding her, but she cried even when she was being fed. She was noisy, and she got noisier with practice. She made a sound like a fire engine going past, going past, going past, but never going away.
r />   Old Dame Hornet was furious. She flew out of her nest and came down to yell at the baby to shut up. “Can’t you rock that little pollywog to sleep or something?” she said.

  “I’m afraid not,” said the king frog. “She’s crying so hard she can’t fall asleep.”

  Old Dame Hornet liked her little nest too much to move. She had fixed it up just right, with a picture of her first-grade teacher on the wall and a braided rug on the floor. So she flew off to see the bishop of the beetles. The bishop’s secretary saw her into the bishop’s study.

  “You gave a gift to that pollywog—that she would not die when she bit on an explosive, but that she would weep and weep. Now you must take that gift away from the child,” cried Old Dame Hornet. “She’s making an unholy racket.”

  “I’m not an unreasonable beetle,” said the bishop. “But you’re far too quick to the sting, Old Dame Hornet. If you get over your anger and apologize to little Beauty and promise never to hurt her again, I’ll say a blessing over her. Maybe she’ll stop crying.”

  “Her parents didn’t invite me to the party,” said Old Dame Hornet. “I never get invited anywhere. It makes me mad all over again just to think about it. I’m not going to promise anything, Your Eminence. I don’t bargain with clergy. Besides, I like to be mean. It’s fun.”

  Off she flew to interfere with the baron of the butterflies.

  “Can you do me a favor, Your Excellency?” she said. “That little Beauty is weeping too hard. I can’t stand it. Can you say a spell of your own and make her stop weeping?”

  “I don’t know much about weeping,” said the baron. “Butterflies don’t weep. But we spend a lot of time sleeping in our cocoons before we become so gorgeous. Maybe I could change the spell from weeping to sleeping. It’s simply a spelling change, after all, from w to sl. Weeping to sleeping.”

  “Do it,” said Old Dame Hornet.

  “What’ll you pay me?” he said.

  “Your Excellency, I’ll sting you if you don’t,” she said. “Excellently.”

  The baron of the butterflies knew that her stinger would puncture his beautiful wing and cripple him for life. He was a good fairy, but he was a little vain. So he meandered over to Weeping Beauty in as direct a route as he could manage, being a butterfly.

  “Maybe it’ll be better if she sleeps a little,” he said to the king and the queen of the frogs. “You need some rest too.”

  “We’ll never rest till this spell is lifted off our one and only child,” they said.

  The baron of the butterflies said a spell and changed Weeping to Sleeping. Instantly the little frog stopped wailing and sobbing and began to sleep. Boy, did she sleep. She snored so loudly that it sounded like a chain saw buzzing through the oak tree.

  When Old Dame Hornet came along and saw what had happened, she was relieved—at first. She took herself to bed with a hot toddy and a copy of TV Guide. But she couldn’t concentrate. Little Sleeping Beauty snored like thunder, louder than ever. Old Dame Hornet tried to sleep. But little Sleeping Beauty snored like competing kettledrum quartets having a battle of the bands during a thunderstorm. Thunder and landslides and rock bands and kettledrums. It was just awful. Old Dame Hornet pulled her braided rug up over her head.

  Soon the wicked old fairy could stand it no longer. Off she zizzed to see the boss of the bumblebees.

  “That Weeping Beauty has become Sleeping Beauty, and it’s worse than ever!” she cried. “I can get no rest, neither day nor night! You’re a bumblebee. Are you a spelling bee? Can you change the spell, Your Effervescence?”

  “No can do, tootsie,” said the boss of the bumblebees, who had a little sting of his own and therefore wasn’t so scared of Old Dame Hornet.

  “Please,” said Old Dame Hornet.

  “What’s the payoff if I do?” said the boss of the bumblebees.

  “What do you want as a payment?” asked Old Dame Hornet, in as fetching a manner as she could manage given she was quivering with exhaustion and rage.

  The boss of the bumblebees buzzed in thought. At last he said, “Listen, you Old Dame, this is my fee. You aren’t to put any more evil spells on little babies. You know why you never get invited to birthday parties? Because you’re a nasty piece of work. Try being a little nicer. Maybe you’ll get asked out more often.”

  “I like being a crank,” screamed Old Dame Hornet, but she thought some more about what the boss of the bumblebees was saying. She said in a quieter voice, “Are you asking me on a date?”

  “That’s my payment,” said the boss of the bumblebees. “For an old dried-up hornet, you’ve kept your looks pretty well, honeypot.”

  Old Dame Hornet wanted to sting him to death on the spot, but she needed his help. She simply gulped and said, “Well, maybe I’ll go out for a stroll with you some evening. But if you try whispering sweet nothings in my ear, you’ll be a sweet nothing sooner than you can say concrete boots.”

  “Fair’s fair,” said the boss of the bumblebees, chomping on the end of his cheroot. And he navigated over to see Sleeping Beauty. He could tell where she was because the entire oak tree above her was trembling with the force of her colossal snores.

  Old Dame Hornet followed. At the door of her nest she turned and waited.

  “Pick you up at eight P.M. sharp,” the boss of the bumblebees said to the hornet. “Wear your red dancing shoes, darling.”

  “Humph!” buzzed Old Dame Hornet.

  The boss of the bumblebees said a spell. He changed the frog from Sleeping Beauty to Leaping Beauty. “There,” he said to her doting parents, who were looking pretty bleary eyed by now, “this is as close to her normal self as she’s likely to get.”

  Sleeping Beauty woke up and became Leaping Beauty. She bounded up in the air like a rubber ball, just about as high as the door to Old Dame Hornet’s home.

  Sadly, when the boss of the bumblebees broke the spell of the baron of the butterflies, the old spell of the bishop of the beetles kicked in again. So as Leaping Beauty leapt, she wept. She screamed like any baby who has just woken up from a nap. The sound came right up to Old Dame Hornet’s doorway and went away again, like an ambulance driving by, and driving right back. Like an ambulance going up and down the street, hour after hour.

  “I can’t bear this!” cried Old Dame Hornet. “Weeping Beauty, Sleeping Beauty, Leaping Beauty! Get this little pollywog out of my life! Besides, every time she goes leaping by, her tears splash over my threshold and my braided rug is getting drenched!”

  The boss of the bumblebees flew by holding a bunch of black-eyed Susans. “Flowers for Old Dame Hornet,” he said. “Come on, sugarlips, let’s paint this town black and yellow.”

  “Not till I settle this matter,” she said. “I’ve seen the error of my ways. I’ve been a bad old hornet.” She zizzed down to where the king and the queen of the frogs were waiting, with a dizzy look in their glazed eyes. “I give up, you win,” she cried. “I’ll never harm the child! I don’t care if I never get invited to another birthday party! Take her away and let her grow up to be a normal frog! With my blessing.”

  “We thought you might agree, sooner or later,” said the king and queen of the frogs. “Your Eminence, come here.”

  The bishop of the beetles, who had been hiding behind a fern, came forward. He said, “So do you agree never to pester this little froglet again?”

  “I never want to see her again!” cried Old Dame Hornet.

  “Cross your stinger and hope to die?”

  “Honest promise and keep the change!” screeched the hornet.

  So the bishop of the beetles took the weeping spell off Beauty. And the sleeping spell of the baron of the butterflies had already been revoked. But the boss of the bumblebees said, “She might as well stay Leaping Beauty. Leaping well never hurt a frog.”

  The pretty little tadpole kept her gorgeous looks for her whole life. She was always as green as slime, and the bumps on her bumps developed their own bumps. Furthermore, with her lovely long legs, she b
ecame a renowned hoofer and was a great success.

  Once the boss of the bumblebees and Old Dame Hornet went on a date to see the fabulous star perform in a ballet. Old Dame Hornet was so moved by Leaping Beauty’s talent that she tossed a bunch of roses on the stage.

  Leaping Beauty bowed most graciously. Then she leaped all the way from the stage into the second balcony and gave Old Dame Hornet a kiss.

  The ancient thing melted into happy tears and said, “You’d never be so good if I hadn’t blessed you when you were born, my dear. I’m so proud of you I could sting myself to death!”

  The king and queen of the frogs, applauding from the royal box across the theater, murmured fondly, “Oh, don’t do that!” Then they invited Old Dame Hornet back to the Lily Pad Palace for a light refreshment. But the old fairy declined, and the boss of the bumblebees flew her home.

  There she said good night and went inside to write in her journal. The silence at the bottom of the oak tree was gratifying, and so were her memories of the evening.

  GOLDIEFOX AND THE THREE CHICKENS

  There were once three chickens who lived in a house in the forest.

  Papa Rooster was vain and short-tempered. Mama Hen was soothing and patient. Baby Chick was tired of being the littlest one all the time. “Why don’t you go to the store?” he used to say to Mama Hen. “Can’t you buy me a new little brother or sister?”

  One morning all three chickens woke up in a bad mood.

  Papa Rooster said, “My bed is so high, I almost fell on my beak jumping off the mattress this morning.”

  Mama Hen said, “Poor thing. My bed is so low, while I was asleep I rolled right off it and smack into my knitting needles.”

  Baby Chick said, “You think you have troubles! My bed is too small! I’m bumping into the headboard and the footboard! I need a new one! I know: Why don’t we look in a catalog and order a new baby? Then we could give my little baby bed to my new brother or sister.”