ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A SNAKE

There once was a snake. He was a beautiful, fluffy, sweet snake, with large, twinkling, brown eyes. And above his twinkling brown eyes he had two large, furry brown ears, with soft, rounded edges.

And when the snake looked down at his feet, they were broad and brown too, with shiny, strong and useful claws.

“Oh, where is my lovely, shiny, silvery body?” the snake asked himself. “Well, at least I should still have my wonderful, long silver tail which goes on and on forever, with which I nestle myself down into the warm sand?” And he looked over his shoulder at his long shimmering, scaly tail – and there it was: short and stumpy, brown and fluffy. “Well then, I should still have that sleek, forked tongue of mine, which can slither in and out of my mouth with a melodic hiss…. And he stuck it out. It was dark pink, thick and glossy. The snake could detect a faint taste of sweet honey on it.

The snake waded out into the rushing river on his strong hind legs. He had seen a sloth of woolly bears fishing for fat trout in the oxbow. He sniffed the air and pondered to himself. As he stood there pondering he noticed his soft, brown front paws, which were just as powerful and useful as his hind feet. He then shook his great heavy rugged head free of his majestic shoulders, and uttered a deep, bellowing yawn. “Well, I suppose I’ll just be a bear, then,” he said. And he began to fish.

ACN

October, 2010.

There once was a man not particularly handsome, who was in bad need of a wife. Indeed, he was unbecoming to look at, and his many teeth and broad forehead had scared off many potential candidates over the years. A pity, for he had little else to go by other than the strength in his arms, and his unfailing spirit: rich he was not, but strong.

One day, as he trudged, grunting a little across his dirty field while deciding where to enter the plough, he came across a helpless female thing, sobbing a little to herself. The thick old man held his breath for not knowing what to do. But the girl, now on second thoughts older than he had thought at first, was obliging to the rubbery grip he had on her, as he lugged her across the field by the shortest and most bumpy way.

Many years passed, and two lived happily in their little cottage. For all their joy, there were moments of sadness, too: for they could have no children. Maybe this was because the wife slept in the bed of rags in the bedroom facing east, and her husband in the stable – the good man could not part with the cows for the night. And so she brought him his breakfast of oats cooked in water with half a pound of butter melting on top, together with the animals’ feed: Alas, no one had told them how it was done. Nonetheless, their happiness in the face of being childless was great.

And then something happened that works well in storytelling: the woman fell ill. She lay in the bed, panting and swooning. Her husband busied about her with a wet rag, knowing not what else he could do, when all of a sudden he had an idea accompanied by a plan, all at once: on the market he had once heard talk of a wonderful river of healing water which sprouted out of the mountains just north of the city. The powers of this magical water were so great that the king’s brother had built a palace around the spring, so to conserve it for his own use. The king’s brother was a spiteful man, and there was no end to the bickering and troubles between him and the royal family, which led to him living an isolated life in his palace, his only company the sound of the trickling spring of youth and health. Continue reading →