Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales (12 page)

“Also she’s very photogenic,” said Bubba, who was anxious to nudge his daughter’s film career along. Besides, she wasn’t much use around the mill. She never lifted a hoof to help.

“I’d love to ask you to star in my new movie,” said the king stag, “but I’m having trouble raising enough money to make it. Everyone’s jittery since
Giant Killer
was such a huge flopperoo.”

“She’s good at making money, too,” said Bubba, who was maybe a little
too
anxious to move his daughter’s career along. For next he said, “She’s a winner. She can spin straw into gold.”

“No!” said the king stag. “Really?”

“I prefer not to; it ruins my nails,” said Beauty quickly. But before she knew it, the king stag had arranged for her to come to his movie studio and spin some gold for him.

“Good-bye, honey,” said Bubba, kissing his daughter fondly. “Spin nicely for our king.”

“Are you crazy, Pops?” said Beauty. “I don’t know how to spin wool, much less straw into gold.”

“I didn’t mean it literally,” said Bubba. “I meant that any piece of trash you star in will make a bundle. But don’t worry. You’re clever, you’ll think of something. Ta ta,” said Bubba.

To tell the truth, Bubba had been getting a little fed up with Beauty’s vanity.

The king stag chattered all the way to the studio about camera angles and foreign rights and how genius usually ends up on the cutting-room floor. “You’ll be a big star one day,” he said

to Beauty. “You’ve got the looks. You’ve got the curves. I’ve got a serious case of the nerves.

Spin me some gold, sweetheart. All the world will thank you for it.” And off he went, locking the door behind him.

Now Beauty threw herself down on the floor and wept. In a corner of the room was a huge pile of straw that the king stag expected her to spin into gold. The bankers were coming in the morning to count it. “What shall I do?” she asked. “I just painted my nails this morning. I can’t spin this straw. It’s beneath my dignity as a soon-to-be movie star.” Suddenly she heard a rustle in the straw. Using her back hooves so as to protect her front nails, which were colored a delicious Popsicle red, she kicked the straw away. Waking from a deep sleep was a huge cobra with two impressive fangs right where you’d expect them to be.

“What’re you doing here?” asked Beauty.

“I fell asleep in a meadow and look where I am,” said the cobra. “Gosh, I’m starved. And you look lovely tonight, my dear.” He smiled in a hungry way.

“Well, don’t get any big ideas, buster,” said Beauty, “because if you come one inch nearer I’ll stamp your brains all over the floor. I’m not in the mood for kissing cobras. I’ve got to spin this straw into gold, and how the dickens do I do that?” The cobra said, “If I tell you how, will you give me a little kiss?”

“If you do all the work and be quick about it, I’ll give you one eensy-weensy kiss,” said Beauty. “And I don’t promise to like it.”

“What I need,” said the cobra, “is some of your beautiful golden fleece. I’ll just take a third—say from around your middle? It’ll make you look a little like a French poodle.

Emphasize your delicate waistline. They’ll go crazy about the new look. You’ll set a trend.”

“I don’t know,” said Beauty, but the cobra set to fleecing her. When he was done, she looked like a sheep who had had a run-in with a lawn mower. She spent the rest of the evening putting her wool into spit curls, trying to make the best of a bad business.

But the cobra was true to his word. He spun her fleece into gold and threw the straw out the window so nobody would know. Then he came forward and Beauty gave him a lip-smacking kiss on the head. “Va va va voom,” he said. “I could fall for you in a big way, sweetheart.”

“Get lost, you bother me, cobra,” she said. “Scramola. Vamoose.” So the cobra squeezed away through a mouse hole in the baseboard.

The king stag was delighted to see the gold. He sent it off with the bankers, and they agreed to finance the film. True to his word, he hired Beauty to star in it, and she was a vision of loveliness in the scene with the guillotine and the butcher knife. But before long they ran overbudget and the bankers—a squadron of squirrels—came round to ask the king stag for some more money.

The king stag put the problem to Beauty. She told him that spinning straw into gold wasn’t in her contract, and if he wasn’t careful she’d walk out and leave him with unusable footage. But he locked her in a room with a heap of straw, promised her a percentage of the profits, and said he’d come back in the morning.

Beauty sat down and wept again, but after a while she kicked aside the straw just in case the cobra happened to be napping there. And what do you know, he was.

“Hello, cupcake,” he said, yawning. “Do you have a feeling we are meant to be together?

It’s in the stars.”

“Cut the baloney,” she said. “I need your help.”

“What will you give me?” he asked. “A little hug?”

“One little hug,” she said, “a little sisterly hug, that’s all. And no hugging back. I don’t want to be the first nine-foot-tall sheep. The world’s not ready for that.”

“I’m a cobra, not a boa constrictor,” he said, hurt. But he gave her a once-over and said,

“This time, sweetie, it’s the back legs. The fleece has got to go. Trust me. You’ll thank me for it.”

“You were right the last time,” she said. “There isn’t a ewe in the kingdom who hasn’t had her midriff shaved. Slaves to fashion, the lot of them.
Sheep!
And I do have particularly shapely legs, if I do say so myself. Well, all right, I suppose it can’t be helped. But be gentle, please; I’m a bit ticklish.”

So the cobra fleeced the sheep from her waistline to her little bobbed tail, and then he sat and spun the fleece into straw. It might have been smart of Beauty to watch and see how it was done in case this problem happened again. But she was too busy chewing the horny parts off her fetlocks in order to display a more delicate ankle.

The cobra threw the straw out the window again and departed through the mouse hole in the baseboard. When the king stag came to collect the gold, he was delighted to find Beauty looking more splendid than ever. “A hard night’s work, and you look fresh as a daisy!” he said.

“And your hair, you’ve done something to your hair. Don’t tell me. Highlights?”

“I’m half naked, boss,” she said.

He was scandalized. But times were changing, so he went on with the film. The advance reports on the daily rushes were ecstatic. “Cutie Beauty Almost Nudie,” cried the trade journals.

Beauty could hardly go out shopping without a mob forming all around her. She took to wearing dark glasses and a huge veil made out of a flowered tablecloth.

The film was almost done. A thousand theaters across the land were eager to book it. The scenes with Beauty and the chain saw were said to reach new heights of postmodern excellence.

But then there was a backlash. A crowd of concerned citizens—mostly wombats—began to protest violence and nakedness in the movies. The squirrels returned and told the king stag he’d have to reshoot some key scenes and turn it into a musical with a happy ending. The king stag stomped around for a while and ran his antlers into a few trees to release a little tension. But his career was on the line. He came to Beauty.

“The very last time, I promise,” he said. “We need to shoot some extra footage and I’m out of cash. Please. Please.”

“Oh, don’t beg, don’t ever beg. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it is directors who beg,” said Beauty. “I could walk right out of here, you know. I’ve got a little mill and a loving father waiting for me. I don’t need this. I don’t need you.”

“Actually, you do,” said the king stag, “because your father has sold the mill and moved to Tahiti. I just got a postcard.”

So the king stag locked Beauty in the room one more time and sent in a load of straw.

This time Beauty wasted no time trampling down the straw looking for the cobra. He was not there. She was beside herself with fright and worry. “My career is going down the drain!” she cried. “I’m too young to peak this early!”

There was a rustle—not in the straw, but in the baseboard. The cobra stuck his head out of the mouse hole.

“I actually live here now,” he said. “Since the harvesters keep raking me up and dragging me here anyway.”

“You’ve got to help me!” she cried.

“Honeypot, you
need
help,” said the cobra. “Have you seen those bags under your eyes?

You could fit a week’s shopping in them. Not a pretty sight. If I spin your last fleece into gold, what’ll you give me?”

“Oh, what do you want?” she asked. “A toaster oven? A set of encyclopedias?”

“To marry you and take you away from all this.”

“Get a grip. Get real. Not in your lifetime. No way.”

“Well then,” he said, hurt, “how about your firstborn child?”

“Oh, anything,” she said. “Just get to work.”

“Now, I’ll have to crop you from your lovely little chin right down to your waist,” he said. “That’ll leave you pretty much exposed. I hope you’re ready for this.”

“The climate isn’t right for sheep to do nude scenes,” said Beauty, “but what choice do I have? I’ll get a muumuu and do character parts. Just close your eyes while you work, will you? I do have a shred of modesty left.”

So the cobra fleeced the sheep, keeping his eyes closed as he promised. When he was done, he sat in a corner of the room and spun the fleece into gold. Beauty sat in the other corner and made herself a coat out of straw, as she didn’t want the king stag to see her entirely naked.

“So when’s your firstborn child due?” said the cobra as morning broke.

“I’m not even married yet, so don’t hold your breath,” said Beauty. “Now go back to your mouse hole. I’m finished with you.”

“I think you’re finished, period,” said the cobra. “If you only knew how I loved you, you’d let me take you away from all this.”

“For one thing,” said Beauty, “even without a coat of golden wool, I can’t fit in that mouse hole. For another thing, you bug me. Beat it.
Hasta la vista
.” The cobra left in a bad mood. He bit his tongue and almost died of his own poison.

When the king stag came, he collected the gold and blinked several times when he saw Beauty.

“You’ve changed,” he said. “Film life doesn’t agree with you. I think it’s a no go, dolly.

It was great fun, but it was just one of those flings. Find a job, settle down, get out of this rat race. It’s killing you. You look a hundred years older. You’re washed up in this town, darling.

By the way, thanks for the gold.”

He left and hired a new star, a blushing pig with platinum tresses.

Beauty was ashamed of herself. Now she had lost her good looks, she had lost her father, and her only friend, the cobra, had disappeared down a mouse hole. She wandered off and got a job as a supermarket cashier.

After a while Beauty met a shelf stocker and married him. He was sweet, but he was not brilliant. He was no cobra. He was rather a boar.

A year later, when Beauty had just given birth to her first child, the king stag showed up in her supermarket.

“Cuddles!” he said. “Angel! The time is right for a comeback! I’ve got the financing, I’ve got a script. It’s called
The Ugly Duckling’s Revenge
. A high-concept film. Sweetheart, it’s you.

You’ve got to do it. The world needs this movie. Your public needs you. I need you.”

“You’re holding up the line,” she said. “This is ten items only, and I think you’ve just handed me a dozen slices of phoney baloney. Push off before I call the manager.” But in a year her fleece had grown back in, and she was now highlighting it with silvery streaks. She had a mature look, and a little of her old vanity came back.

“Hubby, I’m off to have a career,” she called to the boar, who was piling cans of tuna fish in the back of the store. “Mind the baby for me till I get back! Love you lots!” Off she gamboled.

She spent a day or two learning her lines, and an hour in front of the cameras. The king stag gushed and gushed. Then he pushed her in a room with some straw. “Do what you do best,” he said, and locked the door.

But the mouse hole was boarded up, and the straw was empty of cobras, and her dull old boar was too far away. “In Hollywood,” Beauty said to herself, “no one can hear you scream.

What a life I lead. Maybe I can just learn to spin my own fleece into gold. How hard can it be?

That stupid cobra could do it.”

Just then she heard a scrabbling sound at the boarded-up mouse hole. She bit the wood away and saw the head of the cobra poke through. “We meet again,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, “and I was a beast last time. Sorry about that. There’s this pile of straw; would you mind—?”

“For one thing, your fleece is no longer golden; it’s more silvery,” he said. “A kind of devaluing of the currency. But anyway, I haven’t come to work,” he continued coldly. “I came to collect on my debt.”

“Which was…?” she said. “You’ll have to remind me. I’m not good with details.”

“Your firstborn child,” he said.

“Not Boar Junior!” she gasped.

“The same,” he said.

“Over my dead body,” she snapped.