Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales (4 page)

“Papa, I can’t breathe either,” whispered Hamster. “The air in here smells like the dirty socks of human men.”

“Papa, I can’t grab my breath,” warbled Gerbil, who tended to be dramatic. “The lights are going out! The cruel world is fading away! It reeks of rotten diapers in here!”

“Please,” said their father to the imposing shape in the doorway. “Please let us go!”

“Not so fast,” said the voice. The shape shifted in the dusk, and a wind came in past the animal. Papa Beaver and Hamster and Gerbil all passed out. The aroma was more or less disgusting.

When Hamster and Gerbil came to their senses, their father said, “Children, I’d like you to meet your new mother. I hope you like her. She’s a real skunk. Her name is Skunk.” She
was
a real skunk, and she smelled like one too.

“She said if I didn’t marry her she would squirt us with her extra-strength industrial-action high-tech preemptive-strike joy juice,” said Papa Beaver in a defeated voice. “I couldn’t do that to you.”

“Just what I wanted, a hubby!” said Skunk. “And two annoying little children to boss around. Whoopie. My lucky day.”

Warning them not to run away, Skunk went outside and found some skunk cabbage. She brought it back and gave it to them for dinner. “Eat up, for that’s all there is,” she said. “Don’t let anyone say I don’t provide for my family.”

“I’m not eating this tripe,” said Hamster bravely.

“Are you talking to me?” said Skunk. “Are you talking to
me
?”

“I’m not eating it either,” remarked Gerbil. “Not to be rude or anything, but quite frankly, this meal
stinks
.”

“Can I believe my ears?” screamed Skunk. “Ungrateful children! After all I’ve done for you! For that, you can go to bed without any supper!” And Skunk fell on the skunk cabbage and ate it, chewing with her mouth open, which made the children even more grossed out than ever.

They crawled off to bed. Papa Beaver lowered himself next to them, letting his children sleep behind his back. Trying to breathe through their mouths so as to avoid inhaling stench, Hamster and Gerbil cried themselves to sleep.

Hamster woke up in the middle of the night because his stomach was rumbling with hunger pains. He heard his father and his new stepmother talking.

“Please don’t be cruel to them,” said Papa Beaver. “They’ve already had a hard life.”

“If you can’t provide for them, then neither can I,” said Skunk. “I think I’ll wake them up and take them out for a walk in the woods and lose them.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” cried Papa Beaver.

“Try and stop me,” said the Skunk. “If I lift my tail, you won’t know what hit you.”

“I forbid it!” cried Papa Beaver. “Over my dead body!”

“Your funeral,” said Skunk. She gave him a little zap, and Papa Beaver keeled over with his four legs straight up in the air like a table turned upside down. “Now I’m cooking with gas,” said Skunk proudly, and she kicked Gerbil to wake her up. “Yo. Gerbil. Hamster. We’re going for a little nature walk. Papa’s sound asleep so come quietly.”

“Do as she says,” whispered Hamster to his sister, “because you have asthma, and if she squirts you, you’ll be a goner.” Even though his father seemed to be in a coma, Hamster could see that he was still breathing. So it seemed safest just to do as they were told.

Skunk wandered into the forest. Hamster and Gerbil followed her. When they were far away from anyplace Hamster and Gerbil had ever seen, Skunk said, “Oh, I think I smell a rat over there. Let me go kill it and bring it to you for a little midnight snack. Wait here.” And off she went.

“How she can smell anything besides herself is hard to understand,” said Gerbil, and she wept softly, and Hamster wept too.

But Skunk disappeared. When the hours passed and she didn’t come back, it became clear that their stepmother had abandoned them to die all alone.

Clouds cloaked the moon so they couldn’t find their way home. And the woods were alive with the sounds of hooting owls and the rustling of snakes. “Hamster, I’m scared,” said Gerbil.

“Sissy,” said Hamster. “I’m not.”

They began to wander, looking for some food. The only things they could find growing on the forest floor were poison mushrooms. “Hamster, I’m hungry,” said Gerbil.

“That happens when you don’t eat,” he explained.

She bit him on the tail to show that she already knew that.

He bit her on the tail to show her that he knew that she knew.

They bit each other on the tails for quite a while and chased each other through the woods. Out of awful hunger they might have eaten each other right down to the bone, which wouldn’t have been a very brotherly or sisterly thing to do. But just when things got a little too ouchy, they stumbled out of the woods into a clearing.

The clouds obligingly parted to let in the light of the moon. Hamster and Gerbil both saw something that made them say, “Wow! Awesome!”

In front of them was a little house made out of pet food.

The house had walls made out of dog biscuits. Cunning little paths around it were strewn with hamster and gerbil food. The roof was made of a scrumptious fresh lettuce leaf, and the chimney was made of a big hollow steak bone. Out of the chimney came the delicious smell of hot stewing kitty friskies, in flavors of chicken, liver, and fish.

“Oh Hamster,” cried Gerbil, “is this heaven?”

“I think it’s a dream,” said Hamster. “But let’s go test it with our teeth.” With joy and hunger they fell upon the house. Hamster began to nibble up the front walk.

Gerbil climbed on the windowsill and munched on the edge of the roof. It was almost too delicious to be true.

A slug on the lettuce leaf above woke up and said in a bored voice, “My goodness, Granny Porky, look who’s here nibbling you out of house and home.” The door flew open. Out stepped the hugest old porcupine that Hamster and Gerbil had ever seen.

“Nibble nibble on my house, are you just a little mouse?” she cried. She was pretty shortsighted, and she’d left her glasses on the butcher-block table inside.

“No, I’m a hamster,” said Hamster. “Name of Hamster.”

She had caught him by the tail. “A skinny little thing,” she said. “You want fattening up.”

“Don’t forget the munching on the roof, Granny Porky,” droned the slug.

Granny Porky reached up and gripped Gerbil’s tail. “Nibble nibble on my house, are you just a little mouse?” she said again.

“I’m a gerbil, and proud of it!” cried Gerbil.

“You’re a trespasser and I ought to charge you with assault and peppery,” said Granny Porky. “But then again, I need a maid. My eyes are going. I can’t read the cookbooks anymore. I can’t open the spice jars. You can be my sous chef and I’ll drop the charges. What’s your name?”

“Gerbil,” said Gerbil. “Will you feed us if I work for you?”

“They don’t call me Granny Porky for nothing,” said the porcupine. She hustled the brother and sister into her house. It smelled even more delicious inside than outside. Bread was baking in the oven, garlic was sizzling in butter on the range, and a pile of fresh basil leaves were heaped redolently on a cutting board.

They had little time to take in the well-planned gourmet kitchen. With a strength surprising in one so old and feeble, Granny Porky lifted Hamster by the scruff of the neck. She tossed him into a cage shaped like a metal hamster wheel that she happened to have in the corner of the room. With a key that she kept on a string around her neck, she locked the door.

“Now, dearie,” she said to Gerbil, “do what I tell you when I tell you to do it, and you and your brother will have plenty to eat.”

“I would rather not be locked in this hamster wheel,” said Hamster.

“Run,” said Granny Porky. “I like a hamster with a good rump on it. You have to build up those muscles if you’re going to be of use to me.” She gave the wheel a turn. “It’s the wheel of fortune! Ha-ha-ha!”

“That’s not funny,” said Gerbil.

“I’ll show you funny,” said Granny Porky, and she shot out a quill. It pinned Gerbil against the wall like an arrow. “Now are you going to be my slave, or do I have gerbil giblets for supper?”

“At your beck and call, my queen,” said Gerbil in a small voice.

“The thing is,” said Granny Porky, releasing the quill, “I want to have a big party. The do of the season. All the creepiest creatures of the woods will be coming. Owls and spiders and snakes and rats and vampire bats and the like. I need to serve a very special meal. I’ve been combing through my back issues of
Gourmet
magazine. I thought maybe a platter of hamster chops. What do you think?”

“Yuck,” said Gerbil.

“Yikes!” said Hamster, and ran faster, but he couldn’t get away because hamster wheels just turn around and around in one place. And he couldn’t knock it over because the pin around which the wheel rotated was hammered into the wall.

“You may begin by scrubbing last night’s dishes,” said Granny Porky to Gerbil, and she pointed to a heap of high-quality copper pans and ceramic baking dishes, all encrusted with the kind of cheesy-eggy mixture that never comes off.

Granny Porky slumped into a rocker and fell asleep by the hearth. Gerbil put some wooden spoons to soak for a minute, and then she ran over to her brother.

“I’ll save you,” she said. “Be brave.”

“How?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll think of something.”

“Do,” he said, “if you don’t mind.” And he ran as fast as he could, tears streaming out of his eyes and pooling up on the floor.

For a whole week Hamster ran. Every once in a while Granny Porky would come by and stop the wheel with her gnarled old paw, and she reached in to feel Hamster’s thighs to see if he was ready for butchering yet. But Gerbil had given Hamster a straw from the broom, and he held this forward when Granny Porky asked to feel his arm. “You’re thinner than ever!” Granny Porky roared. “With all I feed you? I don’t get it!”

One day the slug had chewed up so much of the roof that he fell through onto the sofa. In a lazy voice he said, “Granny Porky, that’s a broom straw you’re testing for meat. You’d better get yourself some new glasses.”

“Why, you little hamster,” screamed the porcupine. “I’ll roast you up tonight for that!

Gerbil, build up the fire! We’re going to have shake-and-bake hamster cutlets!”

“No!” screamed Gerbil.

“How about Hamster Helper?” asked the porcupine, drooling at the thought.

“Gross!” said Gerbil.

“Little cocktail snacks, then,” said the porcupine decisively. “If I blow out all my quills, we could use them for toothpicks. We could put a chunk of Hamster, a chunk of pineapple, a chunk of Hamster, a chunk of onion, and round it off with a cherry tomato. What do you think?”

“You make me sick to my stomach,” said Gerbil.

“At least you still have a stomach,” said Hamster, and cried all the harder.

But Granny Porky was decided. She blew out all her quills and put them in a pile on the floor. Then she opened up a can of pineapple chunks. She made Gerbil stoke the fire in the oven until it was five hundred degrees. All the while she sang to herself. “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling porcupine,” she crooned. “Little critters fried like fritters come out crunchy and divine.”

“Watch the gerbil,” said the slug. “She’s smarter than she looks.”

“Shouldn’t you send the slug off to invite the guests?” said Gerbil.

“Good idea,” said Granny Porky. “Slug, make tracks.”

The slug crawled away, sighing.

Granny Porky poked all her quills into a pincushion for easy handling. Then she washed some cherry tomatoes. “All we need is the meat,” she said. “Gerbil, my dear, would you crawl into the oven and see if it’s hot enough?”

Gerbil went over to the oven and opened the door. “I can’t tell, Granny Porky,” she said.

“What do you mean, you can’t tell?” said Granny Porky. “You dolt. Feel it with your hand.”

“My hand is too tired from housework to feel heat anymore,” said Gerbil.

“Well, for the love of nothing,” snapped Granny Porky. “Do I have to do everything?”

“Beware that smart little gerbil,” called the slug from the front walk. He couldn’t move very fast and he was watching through the door. Gerbil ran over and slammed the door shut.