Archive for the ‘Luc Reid’ Category
Cinderella Begins Dating Again After a Bitter Divorce
Monday, July 9th, 2007
“You look beautiful.”
“Don’t be charming,” she snapped.
Cinderella’s date took a swig of chianti to cover his confusion. A peasant’s idea of a nice wine; Cinderella ignored hers. Though Charming probably wasn’t drinking much better stuff these days, after the settlement. He was lucky he’d got to keep the cobwebby old chalet where he now had to live. Hell, he was lucky he got anything at all after his fling with Sleeping Beauty.
Her date smiled at her. What was his name again? Hans or Jan or something like that. He was handsome in a chunky, woodcuttery way. He smelled like ginger. That wasn’t bad, ginger. It made Cinderella think of pumpkin pie.
“So, Cinderella,” he said. “What do you do?”
“Do? Nothing. I used to scrub floors and have forest animals at my beck and call, but they’re not welcome in the palace. Or I guess they weren’t. Now they will be. If they still have any idea who I am.”
“You like animals? I like animals,” he said in a rush. Then his face grew red. “Sorry, that sounds desperate.”
“Better than charming,” she said. There was a long silence, and she tapped one foot impatiently. She grimaced. “When’s the waiter going to be here with our salads?”
Hans or Jan or something sighed and stood up, dropping a few coins on the table. “Let’s try again another time,” he said.
Cinderella stared, uncomprehending, as Hans or Jan or something bowed awkwardly and walked to the door. What was he doing? Cinderella was beautiful, obviously rich, she had a lovely singing voice … he was leaving, just like that?
Apparently he was: she waited for a long moment, and he didn’t come back. Cinderella ran out to the parking lot, not losing her shoe because she had long since taken to wearing ones with straps.
There was nothing out there but the surrounding forest.
Cinderella looked all around her, the anger draining away. He wasn’t Charming. Why had she been taking it out on him?
An ancient bluebird flapped arthritically to the ground and trilled at her, and she saw something beside it: a white stone, gleaming in the moonlight. And there was another, and another: a trail! She picked a breadcrumb off her blouse and threw it to the bird, then followed the rocks into the dark forest.
Hansel, that was his name. Hansel.
Sects with a Goat
Wednesday, June 27th, 2007
“We believe,” the man with the missing hand said, “that when the Fragments of God settle each day, one can sometimes be coaxed to settle in a goat. When our priest–that’s me–determines that this has happened, we put the goat in the shrine and bring sick and unfortunate people to it so they can bask in its divinity. Then we roast and eat the goat, and the Fragment passes through each of us.”
“Well, we don’t believe that at all,” I said. “You people are crazy.”
The priest shrugged. “You think we’re crazy, but we spend more time with God than you, so we think you people don’t understand God like we do. That’s why you keep having accidents.”
“We keep having accidents because we’ve been driven into the mountains by the River People and it’s easy to fall down in the mountains when you were raised on farmland. Your people keep having accidents, too. Why is your hand missing?”
“I stole a goat years ago, and the River People cut my hand off.”
“Because the goat had a Fragment of God in it?”
“No, because I was hungry.”
“And your people made you a priest?”
He shrugged again. “God said it was OK. Would you like a piece of goat?”
I looked at the piece of goat. It was just a dried strip, not very appetizing, but I’d lost my bread on the mountainside on the way to the village, and I hadn’t eaten anything since dawn. I took the meat.
“Does it have a Fragment of God in it?”
The priest smiled.
I tore off a bite with my teeth and chewed slowly. Then I noticed that the priest seemed to have two hands now. With the one that had been missing, he gave me a thumbs up.