Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales (8 page)

“I know what you’ll find there,” murmured Little Red Robin Hood. “Evil villains. I’m going to beat them up with my superpowers.” But his mother couldn’t hear what he was saying because the handle of the basket of goodies was clenched in his beak.

Off through the forest flew Little Red Robin Hood. It was a beautiful day. For a while Little Red Robin Hood flew alongside the telephone wires. He could never get lost if he just followed the phone lines from his nest to Grandma’s retirement apartment.

But after a while the basket began to seem very heavy. His mother had forgotten all about an old wormy pound cake tucked under a napkin at the bottom of the basket. It weighed
more
than a pound. Little Red Robin Hood decided to set the basket down and rest for a while.

He perched himself on the handle of the basket and tweeted to keep himself brave. After all, it was much darker down here on the ground, underneath the dense branches of the trees.

Suddenly Little Red Robin Hood heard the voice of a female chickadee. “Oh help!” cried the chickadee from the shadowy reaches of the thicket. “Oh my! Woe is me!”

“This is a job for a superhero!” said Little Red Robin Hood. “I’ll save you!” He valiantly flew into the thicket. But he could find no blushing chickadee girl.

Restlessly he fluttered from twig to twig, but the voice seemed to be farther away. “Oh goodness! What an unlucky day for me! Yikes!” twittered the hapless chickadee.

Little Red Robin Hood didn’t want to get lost. But he couldn’t leave a poor defenseless chickadee alone in the dark woods. “Keep tweeting. I’ll find you!” he called, and plunged deeper into the murky forest.

“Glory be! Is there no one to save me? I’m a goner for sure!” screeched the distant chickadee, a bit hysterically.

“Here I come to save the day!” sang Little Red Robin Hood. With cape flapping, he dove into the deepest shadowy depths of the woods.

There he came upon a cat, who had one great paw on the wing of a mockingbird.

“Thank heavens!” said the mockingbird to the cat. “Here’s something juicier than I am.

Eat
him
if you’re hungry. Let me go.”

“Have either of you seen a little chickadee, desperately in need of a superhero?” screamed Little Red Robin Hood.

The cat winked one eye slowly. The mockingbird sighed, and said in a sultry way—imitating the voice of a chickadee girl—“My hero!”

Little Red Robin Hood was stunned. He hadn’t known that mockingbirds could imitate chickadees.

“Why, you dastardly villain!” he cried. “You’ve made me lose my way in the forest! My mother will kill me! And my poor grandma will be looking for her basket of goodies! She lives all alone in a retirement apartment, and she’s left the key for me under the mat! She has the flu!

How dare you!”

“I do need saving,” the mockingbird pointed out. “This cat intends to eat me.”

“Purr,” said the cat. “Meow. Yum. Any minute now. I’m just waiting till my stomach wakes up.”

In the distance a blast of brass music sounded:
ta-ra, ta-ra
. It made Little Red Robin Hood feel as if he really
were
a superhero. “Unhand that bird, you cat! I mean
cad
!” cried Little Red Robin Hood.

“Never.” The cat sighed. “Unless you let me eat you instead. I’m almost hungry enough.” Little Red Robin Hood didn’t think
that
was such a good idea.

“I’ll go and look for my basket of goodies, and then I’ll come back and drop them on your captor’s head,” he said to the mockingbird. “There’s a whole pound cake in there. It’ll hurt like crazy.”

“We don’t have time for that,” said the mockingbird. “Can’t you think of something else?”

The trumpet music sounded again, closer this time. It stirred Little Red Robin Hood’s blood. He had another idea. “If I fly back to the phone wires,” said Little Red Robin Hood, “I can pry off the rubber casing with my beak and try to break into someone’s conversation and yell

‘nine-one-one!’”

“By then he’ll have bitten my head off and snapped my bones,” said the mockingbird.

“Quite possibly so,” said the cat. “All this interesting conversation is making me feel a bit peckish.”

“This is a tough one,” said Little Red Robin Hood. “I can’t think what to do. There’s too much music going on in the forest this afternoon. It’s hard for a superhero to concentrate.”

“What
is
that noise?” said the mockingbird. “It sounds like horns.” Suddenly Little Red Robin Hood had an idea. “It
is
horns,” he said, “and that means a hunt is going on! The humans and hounds are chasing a fox! Mockingbird, make the sound of a fox, and the hounds will come!”

“I don’t like hounds any more than I like cats,” said the mockingbird.

“Do what I say!” called Little Red Robin Hood. “We have no time to lose!” So the mockingbird cried out, in the voice of a vixen, “Oh la, I hope those nasty hounds don’t catch up with me today! I’m hiding here under this big old oak tree, safe as a bug in a rug, I
hope
!”

“Stop that,” said the cat.

“Oh, what care I for the joys of life anyway,” screamed the mockingbird in a foxy voice,

“it’s all going to end in the jaws of some hound! Here I am, boys! Come and get me!”

“Louder!” urged Little Red Robin Hood.

“Going once, going twice,” screeched the mockingbird as the hounds came bounding through the undergrowth. The cat gulped. Quick as twitched whiskers, the cat let go of the mockingbird and bounded up the trunk of the oak tree. The mockingbird and Little Red Robin Hood flew to the limbs of a nearby spruce tree. The hounds looked puzzled and then ran on.

“How can I ever thank you?” asked the mockingbird.

“This is a holdup. Stick ’em up,” said Little Red Robin Hood.

“No, really,” said the mockingbird.

“No, really,” said Little Red Robin Hood. “I rob from the rich and give to the poor. And besides, you tricked me and I’m lost. Give me all your money.”

“So that’s why you wear a mask,” said the mockingbird. “Well, all I have is a small stock of grubs in a nearby tree. I guess I can show you where they are. I owe it to you.” The mockingbird showed Little Red Robin Hood where the grubs were. Then the mockingbird led Little Red Robin Hood back to the telephone wires, where they found the basket of goodies on the ground. Little Red Robin Hood gave the mockingbird the wormy pound cake in exchange. “So I’m not
really
robbing you,” he said. “My mama would wallop me and send me to bed without any worms if she thought I was being a
real
thief.”

“I hate wormy pound cake,” said the mockingbird.

“Go drop it on the head of that cat then,” said Little Red Robin Hood, and he picked up his basket. It was much lighter since the cake was gone; grubs hardly weigh anything.

The sun was sinking, and Little Red Robin Hood was afraid that his grandmother would be worrying about him. He hurried along. But his grandmother wasn’t worrying about
anything
.

No siree. That was because the cat, in a rage at having lost the mockingbird, had streaked ahead to the apartment house where Grandma Robin lived. The cat had found the key under the mat and let himself in. He had gobbled up Grandma Robin in one big gulp. Then he dressed himself as best he could in Grandma Robin’s nightie and nightcap, climbed in her bed, and used the channel changer to click off the soaps. He preferred talk shows.

When Little Red Robin Hood got to his grandmother’s retirement apartment, he was surprised that the key wasn’t under the mat. But he could hear the TV blaring away, and he saw that the door was unlocked. He came in and set the basket of goodies down on the kitchen table.

“Yoo-hoo, Grandma,” he called. “I’m here.”

“Who is that?” called the cat, who had picked up a little from the mockingbird about imitating voices. “Is that the mailman?”

“No, it’s your favorite superhero,” cried Little Red Robin Hood, and flew through the doorway into his grandmother’s bedroom.

There he stopped. “My word, Grandma,” he said, “you’re really
not
feeling well, are you?”

“No,” said the cat, “I’m quite poorly, bless my whiskers.”

“I never noticed you had whiskers before,” said Little Red Robin Hood.

“It’s a symptom of this dreadful flu,” said the cat. “Instant whiskers. Most embarrassing for a bird of downy cheek, as I have always prided myself to be.” Little Red Robin Hood came a little closer. “My, Grandma,” he said, “this must be a
very
bad flu. What great big pointy ears with little tufts of fur in them you have.”

“The better to hear you with, my child,” said the cat. “You know, your hearing goes when you get old, so the bigger ears are a help.”

“Grandma,” said Little Red Robin Hood, “what great big slanted eyes you have!”

“The better to see you with, my dear,” said the cat, “especially when I’ve misplaced my bifocals again. I think I left them on the bus last week, coming back from my senior citizens’

support group meeting.”

“Grandma,” said Little Red Robin Hood, “what a great big tail you have poking out from under the bedsheets!”

“Surprise,” said the cat. “That’s not a tail; it’s a furry snake puppet, but the eyes fell off.

Doesn’t it move realistically?” And that cat twitched his tail in a lifelike way, which wasn’t hard.

“Grandma,” said Little Red Robin Hood, “would you like some grubs or some wormy cheese?”

“Bless your heart, you guessed exactly!” said the cat. “But I’m too weak to feed myself.

Could you just get some and put it in my mouth?”

Little Red Robin Hood obliged. He unwrapped the wormy cheese and piled some grubs on top, and flew onto the bed. “Open your mouth and close your eyes, and you shall get a big surprise,” he said.

“
Someone
will get a big surprise,” muttered the cat. He opened his mouth.

“My word, Grandma, what great big teeth you have!” cried Little Red Robin Hood. “Hey, wait a minute! Birds don’t have teeth! Did you get dentures? I don’t
think
so! I smell a scam!

Help! Police! I never saw such huge teeth!”

“The better to eat you with, my fine little feathered friend!” yowled the cat, and gulped up Little Red Robin Hood, all but the mask, which he put on himself.

Then he burped a little bit and patted himself on the back. He slinked out of Grandma’s apartment, taking the TV with him.

“What a noisy little twerp!” he said as he went. “It was a pleasure to eat him!” Just then something very solid, shaped like a brick and weighing a little more than a pound, came plummeting out of the air onto the cat’s head. It was the wormy pound cake.

“Bull’s-eye!” chuckled the mockingbird. “Take that, you miserable creature!” But the mockingbird was surprised to see the cat belch like a gluttonous rhino. And even more surprised when Grandma Robin and Little Red Robin Hood popped out of the cat’s mouth.

“Oh, Grandma,” cried Little Red Robin Hood, “are you okay?”

“Okay? I’m awful,” said Grandma. “I’m hungry, I’m confused, and I’m missing my soaps. But I’m alive again. Surprise, surprise. And I need a birdbath like nobody’s business.

Come on, let’s go home and call your mother to tell her you arrived safely. She’s apt to worry.” The mockingbird flew away and took up a career doing comic impersonations on TV.

Eventually he starred in his own sitcom, but it bombed in the first season and wasn’t renewed.

The cat recovered. On his way home, however, he was discovered by the hounds returning from the hunt. The hounds chased the cat so far away that he never came back.

After a little wormy treat, Grandma Robin called Mother Robin on the telephone and said, “All is well, dearie.”

“I had a terrible feeling something was going wrong, old darling,” said Mother Robin over the phone.

“Mothers, they always worry,” said Grandma. “Dearie, you have to learn to let go. Your boy is a very brave and obedient little bird, and he will do just fine. He’s going to stay overnight and keep me company.”

Then Grandma and Little Red Robin Hood watched the soaps and had some wormy soup and crackers, and in the evening they rented a video. It was called
Super Robin Ninja Heroes
.