Cynical Tales for Cynical Children Read online

  Prince Eli couldn't help himself and pressed her delicate hand to his lips “Oh princess who even in sleep have stolen away with my heart. To this vow I urge all the gods themselves to look down and take note. I swear with all my heart that never again will I rest until a remedy is found to bring you back into the waking world. Today I leave the throne and all claim to it behind until that bright day when I might be seated next to you” As it happened it was at that exact moment that the hundred year enchantment came to an end and the princess awoke “oh, well that was easy”

  “Are you my prince? I was told there would be one”

  “I am, your highness”

  “Then it has really been a century?”

  “Even so”

  “and my family?”

  “All gone I'm afraid and it's actually my family in charge of the country. So technically you're not actually a princess anymore”

  We can, for the space of this paragraph, draw a discrete curtain over the increasingly intimate discussion between the two royals because the rest of the castle were waking up and taking the opportunity to properly stretch, scratch and shake away a centuries worth of pins and needles in a curious display of class division.

  15 It takes a special kind of education to know about this phrase, for the rest of us it means one is drunk. Exactly why one can't just say ‘one is drunk’ instead of couching it in colloquialisms is beyond my comprehension. Of course this is English/humanity/me in a nutshell. Never use the singular when a multitude of veracious verbiage will convey the same message in something of a more convoluted version.

  16 The entire royal accounts department were gripped by a a sudden nightmare in which all of their work of commissioning the most fantastic room in the entire world had been for nothing.

  The princess, for example, was forced to awaken regally, which meant she stretched out her hand with a swan like grace while at the other end of the scale the royal horse wrangler spent a rather satisfying ten minutes on stretching and scratching all those places which had been laying in straw for the whole time.

  By something of an odd coincidence he was the only other person to wake up next to a Prince although in his case it was the royal horse and in no way love at first sight17.

  At the extreme bottom of the social ladder was Timothy, an apprentice third class potscrubber who was technically a hundred years late for work, he was able to stretch without limitation and also enjoyed the most satisfying scratch in the castle before joining with the others in trying to figure out exactly what had happened18.

  Four hours passed just like that.

  The royal trumpeter was busy trying to coax a family of mice out of his trumpet, which meant the chief lady of honour was forced to enter the royal chambers without the usual fanfare and diplomatically let the royal couple know the rest of the castle was awaiting the presence of the princess and her paramour in order to begin the first and greatest party the castle had seen in the last hundred years.

  Ten minutes passed just like that.

  The feast was grand in every sense of the word. The servants performed their tasks while the court hautboys played all the old songs, many of which had been lost over the years19, all the wines and spirits were now suitably aged and the whole thing lasted for two days before the aforementioned apprentice pot scrubber approached the princess and mentioned the priest had quietly pressganged a group of them to clean up the vestry.

  Taking the hint the prince wasted no time in getting down on one knee to properly ask for the hand of the princess and when she accepted the entire castle cheered before returning to the celebrations.

  “It's been a full century” the priest boomed “and I'm as eager as everyone else to return to the party, which is why, with the permission of you both, I'll be doing the short version of the marriage ceremony”

  The princess nodded “I would take it as a kindness your holiness”

  “All right. Do you two want to be married?”

  “We do”

  “Good enough for me. You're now married, have a good life”

  “Is that really it?”

  “I'll square it with the boss but yeah, pretty much. Now you two go have fun being married and we'll all sit down and plan a big ceremony later on”

  For the sake of appearances the royal couple returned to the party although it wasn't long before they retired to the royal chambers for what might politely be referred to as a royal union while the lady of honour began looking for a new job.

  After almost a week of near constant partying when Prince Eli regretfully mentioned it was time for him to leave.

  “Its been five days my love. My father will be worrying about where I am and I don't want him calling out the army again”

  “Should I come with you? I should probably meet my new father-in-law after all”

  17 At least not any more love than a horse wrangler usually has for a horse.

  18 Although his contribution wasn't particularly helpful and he quickly found himself back on pot scrubbing duty.

  19 The hautboys being a kind of oboe and not a group of medieval strippers. If they had been then this would be an entirely different kind of party.

  “Ah, maybe not right now. Just turning up with a wife won't go down well with my mum. I'll be back in a few days”

  “Morning boy. I was just about to go out looking for you” the king, seated at the head of his army, greeted his son.

  “Dad, the last time you went out looking for me you annexed three of our neighbours”

  “It's called multitasking, you've got to know about these things when you're a king. Now would you care to explain where you've been?”

  “Out hunting”

  “You've been gone a week!”

  “My prey was cunning” the prince shrugged “I've been resting in a charcoal burners cottage and we dined each night on cheese and brown bread”

  “There's nothing wrong with cheese and brown bread in moderation my lad. Just try to avoid putting any buns in the oven if you get what I'm saying”

  Everyone laughed, the end credits rolled and they lived all lived happily ever after.

  The end… Oh wait.

  Two years passed, just like that.

  In addition to his regular courtly duties Prince Eli made certain to go out 'hunting' almost every day and visited his wife as much as he could. His father believed his stories about not being able to catch anything because he was a good man, even allowing for the fact he occasionally invaded his neighbours.

  The queen, on the other hand, did not and she began to suspect her son had gotten secretly married.

  For his part the prince kept not only his marriage a secret and also kept the fact he had a daughter, called Morning and a son called Day20 whom he doted on and loved at least a quarter of his heart21, he never dared to reveal any of this to his parents because his mother was an ogre in the most literal sense of the word there could be.

  Naturally, to you and I this is a state of affairs which seems strange, this is because at least one of us is missing a vital piece of backstory. Politics traditionally makes for strange bedfellows and it wasn't so long ago the kingdom had been faced with debts best described as crippling while the Ogres family fortune was best described as vast. After a long series of discrete meetings the kingdom was saved at the cost of a single marriage, which had always seemed happy enough.

  Except, in the royal court, if one knew where to listen, there remained whispers about the Queen and her family background. The loudest whisper of all, as loath as we are to repeat gossip, was that whenever she saw little children passing by it took a considerable amount of effort to restrain herself from leaping out and devouring them whole.

  For reasons which should be obvious it wasn't a whisper which was whispered within the royal hearing but since no royal worth his crown would allow themselves to remain ignorant of what was being whispered Prince Eli was careful to never talk about either his family secrets or, more importantly, his secret f
amily.

  Eventually the king died in his sleep. This allowed the more forward thinking members of the various court factions to quietly gloat about the fact their king had no wife and since assignations were considerably easier to arrange than assassinations it would be in their interests to ensure the beauty who 20 I would have suggested different names although it's around five hundred years too late for anyone to suggest improvements and nobody ever listens to an apprentice pot scrubber anyway.

  21 It may not sound like much until you recall another quarter of his heart was preoccupied with loving his wife which left the last quarter of his heart to worry abut the rather mundane task of pumping blood all over the place.

  caught the eye of the king was controlled by them in order to cement their place as the power behind the power behind the throne.

  As it turned out there was only one fly in the ointment. It was a fly which quite dashed the hopes of any plotters, eligible women, ineligible women, princess's secretly disguised as servants, actual servants trapped in unfortunate circumstances and a wide array of fairy godmothers across the length and breadth of the kingdom22.

  Naturally we know what it is and everyone else discovered it when the princess, who was now a queen and her children rode through the land on the back of an elephant who had been imported for this singular task.

  “Don't you worry about a thing my son” the queen mother assured the king as he left to make war on one of his particularly belligerent neighbours who had invaded on some flimsy pretext “your father never hesitated to leave the running of the kingdom in my hands when he went off and it'll give your wife and me time to really get to know each other”

  In the interests of peace the king rode off with his army and periodically sent his wife letters which were, just as periodically, intercepted by his mother who had wasted no time in bundling the queen off to a quiet house in an incredibly boring part of the country.

  Not the children though, oh no, of course not the children.

  If the children had been sent off then the queen mother would have no reason to find the time to visit to her royal cook in her royal kitchens in order to royally request the young Princess Morning be killed, butchered, cooked and served with Sauce Robert23 in that order.

  “Your majesty is pleased to joke?” the cook asked hopefully.

  “My majesty doesn't joke” the queen mother informed the cook coldly “and bear in mind if Saucy Princess is not on the table by tomorrow then I'll make do with Roast Cook”

  With no other choice the cook reached for a heavy knife and headed towards the princess's chambers with great sadness, the sight of the innocent girl quite overcame him and he made the hard decision to defy his mistress.

  At his small home the princess slept comfortably beside the warm fireplace as the royal cook discussed what to do with his wife.

  “We can't play tricks on Ogres my wife, they've all got terrible tempers, especially the royal ones”

  “You must my love. Because the alternative is to do away with this little girl and I know you don't have the heart to do it”

  “There's the lamb out the back. She'd never know the difference, not with the horrible sauce she wants. It overpowers the taste completely”

  “Better make it extra strong then. Just in case”

  The lamb was quickly cooked and prepared with an inordinate amount of skill not to mention an equally inordinate amount of sauce. Once it had been sent up he waited down in the kitchen for a long time before the queen mother sent down a note of congratulations on the meal and declaring loudly to the court that hers was the finest cook in the kingdom.

  It didn't take long before the queen mother visited the kitchens again.

  “I feel like the Prince Day would be good if he were baked into a pie. Same sauce as last time only maybe not as strong” this time she didn't have to threaten and the chef was reaching for his knife even before she left.

  22 “He might have let us know sooner” grumbled many of them although again, this was done in private and not where anyone inconvenient might overhear.

  23 I think we can take it as read that we're not talking about the traditional Sauce Robert. It is far more more likely the Robert in question made the fatal mistake of whispering you know what about you know who.

  “This is getting beyond a joke my husband” his wife frowned as he entered with the prince “I know we've talked about having children before but I at least thought we'd try a bit harder before we considered adoption”

  “Where else can I go? The kings away, the queens been sent off and anyone I talk to might well bring the story to the queen mother herself. You know she's got spies everywhere”

  “As it happens we're in luck. I managed to get some venison today and you can probably make something which tastes like a boy with it”

  “Venison? Why would you think a boy tastes of venison?”

  “Because he's such a dear little child”

  The cook groaned and hugged his wife “You're the worst jester ever and I love you”

  The most powerful woman in the kingdom dined once again on what she thought were tasty slices of the young prince and again complimented her cook on both his cooking and the sauce, which were both perfect.

  A few days after all this the queen returned from the country estate and began asking all sorts of difficult and inconvenient questions about where her children had gotten too. Thanks to her spy network the queen mother was able to issue a quick series of orders which ended with the queen herself being imprisoned in her royal chambers and the queen mother holding the only key.

  “You know what I want?” she slid the aforementioned key across the table.

  “It'll take time to properly prepare your majesty”

  “The queen will be both my guest and my main course at dinner tonight”

  “As long as you don't mind dinner being late” the cook mentioned offhandedly “there's more of her to prepare after all”

  “Dinner will be at my usual time!” it was rare the queen mother was questioned and even rarer she felt the need to raise her voice. However the cook refused to back down.

  “Then you can eat her raw for all I care! You might run the kingdom in your sons absence but at your own admission I am the kingdoms foremost chef and if I say the queen will take more time to cook then my kitchen will take the time to cook her properly rather than daring to offer something substandard”

  There was stunned silence throughout the royal kitchen as the various cooks, bakers and apprentice pot scrubbers listened furiously to the sound of someone putting the fancy pink frosting on his own death warrant and there was nobody in those giant rooms who was more stunned than the queen mother herself.

  “Your passion in this matter is a good sign in a servant” she made certain to emphasize the word servant “so tell me. By how long must my dinner be delayed?”

  “I've not seen the queen up close maybe a few hours. We might send up something sweet beforehand, nothing heavy though it would quite slay your appetite”

  “Do what to my appetite?”

  “Slake. I meant slake, a slip of the tongue I assure you”

  “It's the slip of the knife which should concern you. Leave the tongues to me and send up some ladies fingers in an hour or so”

  Trudging through the castle on his dark mission the cook despaired of being able to deceive the queens mother a third time. For the longest time he hovered outside her chambers until he'd steeled himself to the dark task ahead and once he'd entered he quickly confessed his part in the plans of the queen mother.

  “Do it then I'll show you how a queen can die and the harridan can choke on me for all I care. I'll be with my children again”

  “Wait, what? Your majesty the prince and princess are alive”

  “Wait. They are?”

  “I've been able to fool the queen mother so far and the children are being looked after by my wife”

  “You might have told me that before you lovely ma
n”

  “It doesn't change anything. From the kitchens to your chambers I've been trying to think of what I might use to deceive her and nothing would work. For your daughter I used lamb, for your son I used venison. Were I to try either of those again she would surely know I've played her false and we'd all be for the chop”

  “Bull!” the queen cried defiantly and in direct contravention of the accepted etiquette of socially acceptable things to declaim when one is about to be murdered by a member of the lower classes.

  “Bull? No it wouldn't work”

  “Then you're not as skilled as she's claimed” the queen flattered desperately. “A young bull cooked to perfection with this necklace inside” she undid a particularly fine turquoise necklace her father had given her over a hundred years ago.

  “If it means not murdering anyone then I'll take the challenge. Come back to my home and meet my wife since I fancy you already know your children”

  Acting under royal dispensation the cook wrapped her majesty in the rough cloth, slung her over his shoulder and as he went through the castle he noted the large number of people who deliberately looked the other way while taking pains to remember their names.

  “Don't tell me you're bringing your work home with you. I thought… Oh my God it's the bloody queen” the cooks wife trailed off into silence as the royal personage struggled out of the cloth

  “No, the bloody queen sits on my throne and if not for the courage of you and your husband I would be gracing her table tonight”

  “I've told everyone your children are my sisters who has been ill. If you'd care to play the part I'll welcome you to the family”

  Dinner was just as late as the cook had predicted it would be and his culinary skills meant the unlucky bull was passed off as a queen who had been equally unlucky. In fact the queen mother was so happy with her dinner that she summoned the cook to the royal presence in order to praise his work loudly and in person.

  “I did my best with what I had your highness. A few herbs, a touch of spice and your favorite sauce combined to make this dish unmistakably royal”