Tales from the Brothers Grimm and the Sisters Weird (5 page)

...just as he stepped into Little Red's basket of goodies.

The bullet missed the wolf and shattered the bowl of oatmeal on the night table.

"What idiot's shooting guns off in my house?" Granny yelled, but nobody could hear her because of Little Red's screaming.

Bob dropped the musket, which was only good for one shot before it needed to be reloaded, and switched the ax back to his right hand, all the while trying to shake the basket off his foot at the same time he was approaching the bed. Dragging Little Red out of the way, he swung his ax at the wolf...

...just as Granny heaved herself against the closet door, scraping the fallen chair across the floor.

The ax embedded itself in the edge of the door.

Granny looked from the ax head, three inches away from her nose, to Bob.

There was a moment of stunned silence. The wolf stopped struggling against the tangled bed-sheets. Even Little Red stopped screaming.

"What in the world did you do that for?" Granny demanded.

"I thought the wolf ate you," Bob said. "I was trying to rescue your granddaughter."

Too shocked for words, the wolf shook his head to indicate he'd never eat Granny.

"Well!" Little Red said. "Some rescue! First you barge in here, tracking your muddy boots all over the floor"—Bob opened his mouth to apologize, but Little Red continued—"which I know wasn't in very good shape to begin with, Granny being the indifferent housekeeper she is—I know she doesn't mind my saying that because I only mention it for her own good, and believe me, when I'm a famous actress I'll hire a maid to give her a hand, because, heaven knows, she isn't getting any younger." The wolf saw that Bob's eyes were beginning to bulge as his hand slipped from the handle of his ax, but Little Red continued: "But even leaving Granny's messy habits out of it, you come in here trailing big globs of mud and grass, shoot a hole through the bowl, which
my family
bought Granny for Christmas last year, gouge a perfectly fine door with your ax, not to mention pulling my hair, and look at this—
look at this!
" Everybody looked. "You are stepping in the goodies my mother made and which I brought here for my sick granny, never mind that I had to walk for hours to get here and that I'm even now missing a class with Madame Yvette to be here, inhaling wolf dander and catching a chill from sitting on this floor, which no doubt will ruin my stunning speaking voice. And you call this a rescue?"

Bob shook the basket off his foot.

The wolf saw that the azaleas were crunched, but the food was surprisingly undamaged. He straightened the nightcap, which had fallen to cover one eye. He, Granny, and Bob looked at one another. They looked at the basket of goodies. They looked at Little Red.

There was only one thing they could do.

They locked Little Red in the closet, then they went out in the backyard and had a picnic.

Where did the children of Hamlin go,
following the piper's song,
across the patterned fields
and through the woods
and into a crack in the mountain
that wasn't there before
and will never be there again?

If he truly meant them ill,
he might have drowned them with the rats.
But if he truly meant them well,
he might have forgiven their families.

And did he have a family of his own,
demanding explanations for
a townful of children trailing along behind?
And what does a magical piper say
in such a case:
"Look what followed me home—
can I keep them?"

Once upon a time, after the invention of teenagers but before there were shopping malls for teenagers to hang around in, there lived a young man named Jack.

Jack was a lazy boy. When his mother asked him to help around the house, he always said, "I'm too tired," and when his mother asked him when he was going to get a job, he always said, "Tomorrow." Until, one day, Jack's mother told him that—unless he started looking for a job—the next time he left the house to visit his friends, she was going to change the locks on the doors so he couldn't get back in.

Jack decided this would be a good time to go to the village to see what sorts of jobs there were. But being the lazy boy he was, he didn't want to walk. And being the lazy boy he was, he hadn't earned any money to buy a horse. So Jack rode his mother's cow into the village.

"That's a fine cow," the tavern keeper said when he saw Jack ride up the street. "I was just telling my wife that we should get a cow of our own since we have so many children."

"A cow is a very nice thing to have," said Jack. This looking-for-a-job was not as hard as he had thought it would be, he decided. He could get a job in the cow-selling business. "How much would you give me for this cow?" he asked.

"Ah, well," said the tavern keeper. "Times are tight. I don't have any spare cash. But I could give you a free meal and all the beer you can drink. There's a party going on in the tavern right now. Feel free to join in."

So Jack handed the tavern keeper the rope that was tied to the cow's halter. As far as Jack was concerned, he didn't have much choice: What other job was he likely to find besides cow salesman? And where else was he going to find someone who wanted to buy a cow?

In the tavern, the tavern keeper's wife thanked Jack for the cow and brought him a bowl of bean soup and a mug of beer. Beer after beer Jack drank. The people in the tavern talked and laughed and sang, and the afternoon became evening, and the evening became night, and the night became earliest morning.

"It's time for the tavern to close," the tavern keeper said to Jack, who was spread facedown on the bean-soup-and-beer-splattered table.

Jack just snored.

"Everybody else has gone home," the tavern keeper's wife said. "It's time for you to go home, too."

Jack just snored.

They tipped Jack off the table, but still he did not wake up.

The tavern keeper's oldest son, who was not a lazy boy, rolled Jack out into the street and closed the door behind him.

At the sound of the
thump
so close to his head, Jack woke up. All the other shops in the village had closed hours earlier, so there were no lights flickering in windows. Jack was lying flat on his back in a totally dark street, looking up at the stars.

"Oh," he said, because he was very, very drunk from all that beer, "I must be in the sky. I must be in a city in the sky."

As exciting as this thought was, Jack went back to sleep.

Now at about this same time, Effie, the potter's daughter, was coming home from a church dance. Her father had told her she could stay till midnight, and here it was just about dawn, so she was hurrying along the street trying to think of good excuses. When you're six hours late and you've already been warned once and you don't have
any
excuse—much less a good one—it's hard to think of much else.

Effie wasn't watching where she was going and she tripped over Jack.

Which woke Jack up yet again.

"Oh my," Effie said. "Are you all right? I hope you're all right. You are, aren't you?" She took a few more steps, but Jack didn't get up. Since Effie would never lie down in the middle of the street—dark hours of the morning or not—
she assumed there was something wrong with Jack; and since she held just tripped over him, she was afraid she was the cause of whatever was wrong with him. She walked back and leaned over him. "Please say you're all right," she said. "I really
have
to be getting home or my father will kill me."

Jack focused his eyes on Effie leaning over him. "Whoa!" he said. "You're a tall one, aren't you?"

Effie, who wasn't tall but
was
in a rush said, "Yes. Fine. Whatever you say. Are you all right?"

Jack said, "Are all the people who live in the city in the sky so tall?"

Which didn't sound at all to Effie as though he were all right. "Oh dear," she said, "what am I going to do with you?"

"Good night," Jack said, and went back to sleep yet again.

Well, Effie told herself, if he was going to be like that, there really wasn't much she could do.

Home was just a few houses away, and once again she started walking.

But then she stopped again.

It really isn't any of my business,
she told herself. She took another step.

It's not like I even know him,
she told herself. She took yet another step.

It makes no difference to me if the next person to come by trips over him,
she told herself. And she took three more steps, one after the other.

But the next person to come by might be in a horse-drawn cart, which would prove disastrous for anyone lying in the street talking about cities in the sky.

What are you going to do?
Effie asked herself.
He's obviously in no condition to walk, and you certainly can't carry him.

By this time Effie had reached the gate to her yard. She couldn't see any candlelight leaking out from around the shutters, which probably meant that her father had gone to bed rather than waiting up for her. Good news for her, bad news for Jack.

Maybe she could find a rope, Effie thought. She could tie it to Jack's legs and drag him out of harm's way. Not that bouncing his head along the cobblestones was likely to improve his thinking.

But then, even better than a rope, Effie spotted her father's wheelbarrow in the garden. She had been weeding before stopping to get ready for the dance, and now here it was: still half full of weeds, but at least not locked up in the shed.

Effie tipped the wheelbarrow up on its one big wheel and pushed it, jostling and bumping against the cobblestones, back to where Jack lay. She nudged Jack with her foot. "Get up," she said. "I've come to rescue you from early-morning milk deliveries and from Wilbur Stillmanson bringing his pigs to market."

Jack opened his eyes and looked all that distance up to Effie's face. "Oh," he said. "It's the lady giant again."

"Yes," Effie said, to get him moving. "Come on. Get up. Get in here."

Shakily, Jack managed to get to his feet.

For about two seconds.

He stumbled and fell facedown into the wheelbarrow, which wobbled but did not tip over.

With Jack's legs hanging over the edge, Effie started pushing the wheelbarrow back to her house.

Jack's nose was being tickled by the mattress of vines and leaves he was lying on. He didn't like to complain about the bumpy ride, since the lady giant was helping him, but he asked, "Do I need rescuing?"

"Yes," Effie said. "Keep your voice down. If you wake up my father, we'll both need rescuing."

Ah,
Jack told himself.
The lady giant's father is an ogre.
He passed out again.

Effie considered leaving Jack in the wheelbarrow out in the garden. But it was already getting light out, and if her father came outside, he'd be sure to see him Which would leave her with a lot of questions to answer. So she decided it would be better to wheel Jack around to the workshop door and bring him into the house the back way.

After pushing him all the way up the hill and over the door jamb, when she realized Jack was asleep again, she tipped him out onto the floor.

"Ow," Jack said, shaking twigs and leaves out of his hair. "Where are we, lady giant?"

"
Shh,
" Effie warned.

But it was too late.

"Effie?" her father's voice called from his bedroom, down the hall. "Effie, is that you?"

Effie motioned for Jack to keep still. "Yes, Father," she answered in her sweetest, most innocent voice.

Which, of course, made her father suspicious. "Are you just now getting back home?" he asked.

"No, I've been home for hours," Effie answered. "I've been to bed and now I'm up getting breakfast."

But she could hear the door to her father's room open and she realized he was coming to check.

"If he finds us here together, he's going to kill both of us!" she whispered frantically to Jack. But where could she hide him? She had a suspicion Jack couldn't make it the five whole steps to the door. She cast a hurried look around her father's workshop. Under the table that held the potter's wheel? Too open. Behind the drying racks? Only if Jack could stand still and not tip over. She couldn't count on that. Effie touched the side of the kiln to see if it was hot. It wasn't. "Quick!" she whispered to Jack. "Get in the oven. Father won't be using it today."