Unsleeping Beauty: Multiple Threats

     Affretz sat up and rubbed his eyes.  Was something wrong?  He couldn’t hear Deedee talking.

     There was nothing much to see but the wagon, the sinister forest, and the horses.  He was about to call out when he heard Archels’s voice.

     “How could we let him get away?  I wanted to find out what dragon steak tastes like?”

     “Well, to judge by this dragon,” Alain answered, “It probably tastes a lot like chicken.”

     His brothers stepped out onto the path, sliding swords back into their scabbards.  “What’s new?” asked Affretz.  “Did you all go off and leave me sleeping while something exciting was going on?”

     “You looked as if you needed your sleep,” Alain said.  “It wasn’t all that exciting.  Just a little purple dragon.  Deedee wasn’t afraid of it for a second.”

     “Where is she?” asked Archels.

     “Didn’t she go with you?” Affretz demanded.

     After Alain and Archels explained the situation, they all called for their companion.  When there was no answer, the brothers drew their swords again.

     “I knew there had to be some kind of fiend behind all this,” said Alain.  “You can tell it’s that kind of forest, just by looking at it.”

      “We didn’t pass any fiends on our way from the south,” said Archels.  “Maybe if we keep going north, we’ll find the fiend.”

     “Let’s hurry,” said Affretz.  Even if Deedee was able to talk for hours on end without getting tired, she was still not the sort of person you liked to think of in the clutches of a fiend.

     The princes rode north, but before they got very far, they found the path broke into three narrower paths.  “Which way do you suppose the fiend is on?” asked Archels.

     “Well, there are three paths and three of us,” Alain replied.  “Shout if you see Deedee or any fiends.”

     Alain took the path to the right.  Not very far along it, he heard a whimper.  He didn’t think it sounded like Deedee, but since he’d never heard her whimper, he couldn’t be sure.  He hurried toward the sound.

     In a small clearing, the whimper came out again, not from Deedee but from a huge red and blue flower.  The color of each petal shifted and they were ruffled by the breeze.

     The flower was surrounded, as if imprisoned, by tall black trees, their long sharp branches reaching in at the flower.  The trees seemed to lean in and the flower trembled.

     “No, you don’t!” shouted the prince, jumping into the circle.

      A wind in the trees seemed to be whispering “Ssssstay back!  Thissss was hard work.”

     Alain knew how hard it was for trees to move: they must really hate the flower.  He swung his sword, lopping off half a dozen branches.

     “Ha!  There, fiend!  Now try to….”

     “Fallallop,” said the flower, as it swallowed him.

     “We tried to sssstop you,” said the trees, waving their shortened limbs.

     Archels took the path to the center.  Not fr north of the path, it broke into two other paths.  On the branch to the left, he saw a giant striped spider, twice as tall as the prince, completely still.  One leg was raised as if to strike Archels down, but it waited and watched.

     Archels did not charge right in.  He glanced up the other path, and saw a smaller creature, half woman and half wolf.  It too did not move, waiting and watching the prince.

     “Ah,,” said the prince to himself.  “Anyone would think a hero smart enough and strong enough to get this fae would naturally attack the big monster first, to get it out of the way.  So this is a trick, and that wolfwoman is the real dangerous fiend.”

     No one moved.  “But maybe,” he thought, “They expected a smart prince would figure out the trick.  In that case, the spider is the REAL fiend.”

     Archels looked from one creature to the other.  They stood waiting.

     Archels nodded.  “But no one could have predicted that the strongest prince in the world would come up this path.  I can pull down one of these tall trees and knock both monsters down before I go on.”

     Dozens of light brown trees, much prettier than any he’d seen so far, grew between the two paths.  Archels picked out a good tall one, and threw his arms around it to lift it free.

     “Oh!”  His hands sank into the bark.  No matter how hard he pulled, his fingers would not come free.  A sound of crying, as if from far away, came to his ears.

     Archels looked up among the leaves.  Of course!  These were the Wailing Trees he’d read about.  This brown stuff was not their bark at all.  Wailing trees produced a thick sap, the color of amber, which hardened so fast that some authors called it amber grease.  A thick heavy dollop landed on his head.

     What made matters worse was that, from this angle, he could see that neither the spider nor the wolf-woman would ever move again.  They had been alive once, but now the sun highlighted a thin, solid coat of amber grease on each, showing they were now nothing but fierce statues.  The prince twisted and pulled, but his arms sank deeper into the soft brown ooze.

     Affretz, having taken the wagon and all three horses with him, was not moving as fast as his brothers.  His path did not take long to bring him to something strange.

     A very tall and extremely ugly man was trying to fight with a fat purple dragon which kept hissing steam.  The man had only a wooden club, and wore no armor.  Looking up at the sounds from the path, the man bellowed, “Awake, are you?  How about lending me a hand here?”

     Affretz started forward, but stopped after three steps.  “You have to be careful in a haunted forest,” he thought.  “Just because this man looks like me doesn’t mean he’s right.”

     As he thought this, the big man jumped to the side, striking the dragon on the head and kicking the pale purple belly at the same time.  “Talk back to me, will you?”  The man jumped away from another cloud of steam and struck the dragon again.  “You’ll be getting no supper tonight!”

     The dragon was far too slow and entirely too small to fight back in any useful way.  Affretz frowned.  The man didn’t NEED any help fighting.  “You just think it would be fun for me to beat up on that dragon!”

     The thought angered him so much, he drew his sword.  “Hey, that’s pretty,” said the man.  “Did you steal that from a prince?”

     “I AM a prince!” Affretz replied, running forward.

     “No fair!” shouted the big man.  “Princes are supposed to be good-looking!”

     “I’ll teach you what princes are supposed to be,” snarled Affretz.

     His foe swung that club up to knock away Affretz’s sword.  This took the big man’s attention away from the dragon.  Hot steam billowed along the backs of the huge legs.

    “No fair!” the big man roared again.  He stuck out one long bare foot so he could kick the dragon with the other, and Affretz jumped up to land on the long white, ogreish toes.

     “Yeow!”  The ogre-like man dropped his club and ran off up the path.  Affretz started after him, but something jerked him back.

     The purple dragon’s mouth was clamped around the prince’s right boot.

Love and Radishes

      While I was refiling some of the postcards we examined in our meditations upon romance, the idea leaped out at me that we have been passing by a fairly common romantic association on postcards of the past.  That is the connection between romance and food, the association of the stomach and the heart. The two requirements are basic and eternal, and our postcard people understood how natural was their association.

     Think of how we express these things: our romantic target is often called “sweet” or “yummy”.  We become “passionate” about a great restaurant, and I have seen more than one chef described as “creating dishes which call to your heart.”  (Better than calling to your epiglottis, I suppose.)

     Sometimes, of course, the two are seen in conflict, and a young man learns the lesson of taking his sweetness out to dinner, only to find out how much it costs to feed a relationship.  (There are plenty of these postcards, but most deal with the price of champagne and other beverages.  The link between romance and booze is a more complex topic, to be treated when we have more time on our hands.)

     And on occasion, the postcard artists admit that two hearts can be set on fire so thoroughly that they don’t see their food through the resulting smokescreen.  (Dorothy L. Sayers covers this in a scene where the hero’s mother, meeting her son’s fiancée, finds her so befuddled by the unexpected proposal that she can’t remember whether she’s eaten anything over the preceding twenty-four hours.)  Just because the heart and stomach are close friends, they DO sometimes work at cross purposes.

     Many times, though, the food directly brings on the romance.  There are dozens of postcards which show grateful diners yearning for their waitresses.  And how much milk must have been consumed by those men who pursue milkmaids!  I’m surprised the dairy industry survived at all, between the delays in getting her back to the dairy, and the amount those suitors must have drunk (at least to suggest that was all they were really after.)

     Some cartoonists were not afraid to become even more intimate in their connection of food and romance, moving on to topics where some artists would have given way to nausea.  These are the postcards which show us lovers feeding each other.  This is probably a game which goes back centuries, and the only reason we have no paintings of Cleopatra feeding Marc Antony grapes is that the painters just gave in to weak stomachs.

     Playing this goes on well into the honeymoon period, and even reaches the kitchen of the couple.

     See, our artists saved their closest associations of food and love to the couple which had set up housekeeping together.  We have the couple warm and cozy in a meal just for the two of them,

     And the newlyweds working together in the kitchen as they go through figuring out how this whole complex process really works (baking, I mean.)

     A folksinger once came forward with a song about this, called “The Hugs In the Kitchen Are the Best.”  Although the postcard folks were willing to point out they DID sometimes make the meal go wrong.  BUT folks don’t live on broth alone.

Not Getting It

     More postcards have joined my inventory, and some of them prove to be (so far) beyond my intense scholarly research on the Interwebs.  So I thought I might share some of the things I am clueless about.  No, wait!  Come back!  I said SOME of the things.  My space on this website is not infinite, so I will try to observe a reasonable limit.

     We have discussed the man at the top of this column before, but more examples of his work continue to appear.  These cards involve a man sawing wood and “saying nothing” or a variation on that sentiment.  I am steadfast in my belief that this is a bygone catchphrase (“meme” to those of you born after the Battle of Gettysburg) that I can’t trace back to the comedian or cartoonist who started it.  These cards should not be confused with those captioned “Just Tell Them That You SAW Me”.  There is still enough left above my eyebrows to figure that one out.  But no one has come forth and explained “Sayin’ Nothin’”.  Ten to one it’s another song by Bert Williams YouTube hasn’t uploaded yet.

     AND I have been forced to review again THESE kids, and similar postcards showing a group of children with the caption “Made In Germany”.  Despite a sort of doll-like deadpan expression, there’s nothing especially unpleasant about our protagonists, which means the cards aren’t meant as an outright ethnic slur (our cartoonists were never subtle about this sort of thing.)  But if it’s a celebration of the diversity offered by immigrants why have I seen no “Made In Italy” or “Made In Norway” kids?  Is it a subtle threat: a warning that all these immigrants are bringing over kids with accents?  Again: surely the cartoonists of 1907 or thereabouts would have been more blatant, more unpleasant.  I’m still missing something somewhere.

     Now with this card, I am on firmer ground.  This is another “Husband Comes Home late and Drunk” postcard.  The setting is simple: two people, a staircase, and a few props.  I can’t quite figure out what he’s grabbed for support.  A clock?  A birdcage?  It could be easier if I just knew what the caption means.  A quick glance made me think he was hallucinating a subway car, and was offering his seat to a lady by grabbing a strap hanging from the ceiling (all things which existed by the time the card was published.)  But no: the caption is clearly, “Pare My Seat”.  Prepare his seat?  This is something he’s in the habit of saying, hence the rest of the caption.  Repair his seat?  Whatever it is is out of place, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten on this line.

     The oldest and most widespread meaning of a “full hand” deals with cards.  (Sorry.)  It is another term for a full house: a five card hand with three of one card and two of another.  What I am not sure about is what’s going on in the picture.  I’m pretty sure she’s holding a “growler”, the tin pail one took to the bar to get a family’s daily supply of beer.  If she has just drunk up the entire supply, though, which would explain her expression, the growler is no longer full, so how can she have a full hand?  Am I overthinking a mediocre joke, or would the joke be much better if I understood some detail that’s eluding me so far?

     Similarly, the basics of this gag are obvious.  Somebody is making an infusion of some basic ingredient, and the aroma is intensely unpleasant.  I am at least ahead of the person who listed a card like this as “Man Making Coffee”.  This is NOT the expression of someone smelling fresh coffee, nor do we make coffee by letting it drip into a clear glass jug.  (That’s the wrong color for coffee, too.)  But I’m not doing any better.  I assumed at first this was some home remedy involving asafetida, a cold and flu preventative which I had read about for years, the children forced to wear it complaining of its vile odor.  Unfortunately, one does NOT distill asafetida; one just wraps it in a bag and ties it around the neck of children too small to defend themselves.  And, anyway, the odor of asafetida (which is generally agreed upon: the word “fetid” is not in the name by accident) dissipates when it is cooked.  So what IS he making? Is it medicine or is it something like floor polish or rodent repellent? 

     Maybe I could use these to illustrate a story: the man cooked something “Made In Germany” that the lady drank from her “Full Hand”, as did the man who was so spifflicated he told his wife to get a paring knife and then fell into a deep slumber, so his snoring was like sawing wood, and…..

     All right, all right.  I’m sayin’ nothin’.

Unsleeping Beauty: Stranger Meetings

      What they were moving toward was, in fact, another castle.  It was quite as large as the castle Dimity had grown up in, and even the larger one where her uncle had been kind.  It could not be seen above the trees of the grisly grove, however because unlike the majority of castles, which lift towers high enough to cast shadows across whole countries, this was built to extend down into the ground.  It had been dug more than built, and it was the home and castle of Gelvander.

     Gelvander was a large and ancient ogre who entertained himself by kidnapping fairies, stealing babies, locking princes in deep dungeons, and so forth.  He slept on a bed of rotting moss which stretched across a layer of sharp stones.  It was his belief that if you got up in the morning feeling bad and smelling bad, this made it all the easier for you to BE bad.

     Today when he woke up, his back hurt, his stomach hurt, and he had an earache.  He marched across a floor strewn with broken dishes to fetch his breakfast: stale pond water from a cracked jug.  It was terrible.  With a smack of his lips, he said, “What a perfect day to do horrible things!”

      A sound like all the thunder of a thousand storms rolled through the room, making his slap his hands over his ears and squinch his eyes shut.  Growling, he stomped back across the room to his bed and knelt to pull a heavy iron chest from under a broken chair with no seat.  This chest was making the noise.

     Bringing one hand in front of his face, he used to other to unlatch the rusty hasp which held the chest shut.  The lid popped up at once.  Burning white light shot out and filled the room.

      “Oooooh,” said Gelvander, pressing both hands against his eyes now.  Then, leaning forward, he spread the fingers of one hand the tiniest bit and looked down into the light.

     This came from a glowing ball which had the power to show the ogre everything that happened in his forest, when he cared to look.  The light hurt his eyes so much that he did not do this often.  But that thunderous alarm had warned him the someone or something was approaching the doors of his castle.

      The globe showed him a woman driving a wagon.  A fine-looking man rode on either side of him, while a ferociously ugly creature was lying unconscious in the wagon.

     Gelvander considered the intruders.  “A princess, without a doubt,” he growled.  “And two princes!  No doubt they rescued her from one of my brother ogres, and tossed his dead body in the cart.  Hmmmm.  And the princess has…long hair.  She can help me floss.”

     Grimacing to show long and untidy teeth, he marched back across the littered floor, hurting his feet some more, and kicked a covered metal cage.  “Wake up in there!” he roared.

     A pale purple head came up to the bars of the cage, only to have Gelvander swat it back.  “Wait until I get the door open!” the ogre roared.  “There now!”

     The purple head eased forward as the door creaked open.  Gelvander reached down, grabbed the bulbous purple nose, and pulled the purple body out onto the floor.  Steamy tears rolled down the creature’s face.

      “There are princes in my forest!” Gelvander bellowed at the balloonish purple dragon.  “I wan them led astray.  Get to it, you worthless firepig!”

      One heavy ogre foot came up hard against the soft purple stomach.  The dragon grunted and, uttering “meep meep mumble”, shuffled from the room.

     Meanwhile, Dimity was listening to Sir Bee tell a story he had read in an old book at his college.  The princess was listening politely: she liked old stories, but at this point she had been listening to the story for nearly five hours.

     The way the three knights travelled, with one sleeping and two riding, struck her as perfectly ingenious, especially as they stopped now and again to let the horses rest.  For one thing, there was someone for her to talk to all the time.  She had talked with Ae and Ceee while Bee slept, and with Bee and Ceee while Ae slept.  Now she was talking with Ae and Bee while Ceee slept.

      Each knight seemed happy to have an audience, and never once mentioned the fact tht “Deedee” never seemed to need to sleep herself.  Dimity didn’t refer to it herself.  She was feeling a little better, now that she got to ride at the front of the wagon instead of walking all the way.  And each knight had different things to talk to her about, all of which were new and interesting.

      Sir Ae told her about the people in the castle where he lived, what they looked like, and how they talked.  It did not surprise her or bore her to learn that they generally talked most about how handsome and how brave Sir Ae was.

     Sir Bee liked to talk about the things he’d read about.  He did seem to have a rather low opinion of people who had n’t read as many books as HE had.  Dimity had of course read quite a lot of books herself, but nowhere near as many as Sir Bee.

     She could not look for long at Sir Ceee, but she found she could talk to him.  He knew nearly as many stories as the other two, and he liked to discuss them with her.  He and Dimity had discussed such burning topics as why Mother Hubbard kept bones in her cupboard and how Miss Muffet could have run anywhere with a spider in her whey.  They did have to keep assuring each other they were listening, though, as both kept yawning all the time they talked.

      Sir Ceee was sleeping now, of course, and Sir Bee was explaining, “Of course, this is completely contradicted by St. Gregory of Tours in his sixth book, where he claims….”

      “Hold, brother.”  Sir Ae raised a hand.  “What was that?”

     Sir Bee fell silent and, after a look at his brother, frowned at the forest.  Dimity tried to listen, too, but the brothers must have had the best hearing in the world, for each was already drawing long steel blades before the princess heard the first footstep.

     “A dragon!” whispered Sir Ae as a purple body the size of a horse appeared between two trees.  The dragon saw them at the same time, and released a stream of steam from a potato-shaped snout.

     “I’ve always wanted to find a dragon!” Sir Bee whispered back.

     “Ne too!” said Dimity.

     The purple dragon hissed again and then backed away, its head bobbing as if to say “You go your way and I’ll go mine and maybe nobody will get broken.”

     “Since none of us is really going anywhere,” said Sir Ae, jumping down from his horse, “It doesn’t matter what time we get there.  So I think we should take some time to go look this dragon over.”

      “Wait here,” Sir Bee told Dimity.

     “Wait here?” the princess demanded.  She had been getting ready to jump down and go study the dragon herself.

      “Somebody has to watch the horses and stuff,” Sir Bee told her.  “And Aff…Sir Ceee needs his sleep.  He missed his nap yesterday.”

      “We’ll tell you all about it when we get back,” Sir Ae promised.  “And if the dragon is agreeable—or dead—we’ll bring it back with us.”  The dragon was almost invisible now among the trees, so he hurried after Sir Bee to follow.

     Dimity thought about waiting a few minutes and then slipping quietly after them, but, looking around, she thought this would be a terrible place to leave the horses unguarded.  And she was the last person in the world to be waking someone like Sir Ceee up.  People needed, she knew very well, their sleep.

     So she took out her map and drew the dragon n on it.  Then, flipping the map over, she started to sketch Sir Ceee’s face, stopping only once or twice to shudder.  When she simply couldn’t take any more, she flipped the map over again and looked at the dragon she had drawn.

     ”I don’t know for sure that it WAS a dragon,” she said, starting a note under the picture.  “It could be a prince under a spell.”

     “He is,” growled something behind her, just before the bag came down over her head.

Obstacle Course Love

     With the onset of spring (inch of snow last Friday) we have been discussing postcard representations of romance.  It is important to remember, however, that the course of true love runs never smooth.  This is, in fact, the basis of a LOT of postcards, not to mention books, poems, plays, movies, soap operas, and comic books.

     A long line of postcards, for example, show us the interruption of a romantic interlude by the arrival of a rival.  It doesn’t need to be a serious suitor: the point is the interruption of the cozy chat.

     Or the outright prevention of that cozy chat.

     Relatives are a frequent source of this interruption.  Little brothers and sisters are important comic foils, but no one can beat the sudden intrusion of one or more of her parents.  (Is the young lady hanging onto him so he can’t take flight?)

     Although the sudden appearance of a spouse can accomplish equally aggravating results.

     Sometimes the interruption is not caused by a third party at all.

     At other times, the interruption is caused by non-human forces.  Two lovers may be in a condition where they do not regard the outside world as important, or even existing at all.  But this is not the way the world sees it.

     Intruders do not see the joke, or even understand that they are intruding.  Your presence may have been interrupting THEIR day.

     Or they may just be doing their jobs.  Gravity was at this long before you realized you could use that improvised platform to steal a kiss.

     Or hung up that hammock.

     Or strolled out on the dock.

     The only thing poor lovers can do in the face of an uncaring world is carry on the best they can.  And isn’t spring made for couples carrying on?

Beating About The Bushes

     A fantasy artist once submitted an amazing illustration showing a skull-headed demon glaring hungrily at the viewer from in front of a complex and twisted grove of obviously cursed trees.  The editor loved the drawing, but said “You’re not fooling me, you know.  You just wanted to draw those interesting trees and added the demon so somebody would actually buy the picture.”

     The world works that way, and it was no less true in the world of postcard illustration.  In romance postcards particularly, where pretty much the same loving glances and warm embraces were repeated endlessly, being timeless, it is obvious that the photographer was really interested in something else.  I don’t mean those cards where the joke is so big it needs to take up space from the lovers just for emphasis.

     This one, say, where we’re spending a lot of space on that picturesque stone wall but we HAVE to, to make the joke about his “stile” more obvious.

      And sometimes it’s apparent that the scenery was the inspiration for the whole picture, and you HAVE to emphasize the natural scenery.

     Here, though, we have a joke which could have been told in a ballroom, on a boat, or even in a broken tree.  But we have it being told while our protagonists lean on a stump because the photographer realized that stump was probably the only thing new about a pair of lovers or the gag.

     Other postcards, like the illustration mentioned above, look as if the forest was what the photographer wanted to record, and the lovers and their dialogue were an afterthought.  People sell better than trees, you see.  There were more lovers than nature lovers in the postcard audience.

     There’s the question of definition, too, a matter of making something more obvious (always a good thing when dealing with the buying public.)  You can call a scene romantic, but why not emphasize it by showing someone conducting a romance in one corner of the scene (where they won’t block the view)?

     It’s a simple compromise: some customers will want to buy a card for the lovers and others for the tree.  (Though this can backfire: some will pass the card up because they wanted a closer look at the kiss, and others will spurn it since you have those ruddy people in front of that interesting tree.)

     It doesn’t have to be trees, of course.  Any really interesting scene, fun to photograph, can have a couple of hand-holders added.  (Yes, I see the bridge joke.  But they thought of it BECAUSE they wanted to take a picture of the bridge and needed the excuse.)

     The result is interesting for all kinds of viewer to this day.  Some of us will be interested in the fashions worn by the lovers, or the design of that umbrella, while others will say, “Wow!  Where would I need to go nowadays to lie down in a field of giant flowers?”  (This blog not responsible for heartache or hay fever if you try this at home.)

UNSLEEPING BEAUTY: Strangers Meet

     “That was a sneeze!” said Archels, sitting up in the wagon, awake at once.

     “It was,” said Alain.  “You don’t need to be the acutest prince in the world to know that.”

     A young woman stepped out from among the trees.  The princes stared, for this was the first person they had seen since they left the old man, the day before.

     The hand she held up was empty.  “Greetings,” she said.  “This way or that way is the quickest way out of the forest.”  She pointed at the road behind them and the road ahead of them.  “But I was thinking it might be more interesting to go that way.”  And she pointed to the road that branched off to the north.

     “Is it a fairy of the forest?” asked Affretz, who had put his helmet back on, though it was a warm day.

     “More likely someone’s servant.”  Alain gestured toward the small pack on her back.  “She stole her master’s things and ran into the forest.”

     This seemed to offend the lady, who set her hands on her hips and replied, “I did not steal them.  They are mine.  They were…given to me.”

     Archels noticed a small crown on one corner of the pack.  He knew gold when he saw it, and this was not the sort of thing people gave away.  “I think we should take her to the nearest sheriff,” he said, starting to climb out of the wagon.

     “It’s true!”  The woman stamped a foot.  “I’m under a curse, and I’m looking for someone to help me break it.”

     “That could be true,” said Affretz.  “If there’s a curse on her, people might give her things to get her to go away.”

    “Yes, yes.”  Archels thought this over.  “We might be able to help break the curse.  What kind is it?”

     “Not the kind just anybody could break,” said the woman, who still seemed to be offended.

     This did not sound right to the princes.  A real damsel in distress would, of course, have asked for their help right away.  “Maybe she’s not allowed to tell what it is,” Affretz suggested.  “She could be a princess in disguise, who can’t ask for help.”

     “A princess?”  Alain’s handsome nose wrinkled.  “Looking like that?”

     “In disguise,” Affretz said again.

     “What’s the matter with the way I look?” the lady demanded, stamping that foot again.

     The brothers were too polite to point out the dark rings under her eyes, her flyabout mess of a hairdo, the clothes that seemed about a size too big for her, and the general air of someone who hadn’t slept for a week.  Just the fact that she did not seem to realize any of this convinced them that she must truly be under a curse.  They looked to each other, nodding.

     “Of course, she could be a wicked forest fairy in disguise, too,” said Alain.

     “So we don’t dare ask her to go with us, then,” said Affretz.

     “What don’t we dare?”  Being as courageous as he was, Alain was the most daring prince in the world.  “I’d ask a couple of trolls to come with us, if I wanted.”

     “I’ve wrestled three wild bears at once,” said Archels.  “Don’t tell me what I’d dare!”

     “Then we should all be safe.”  Affretz extended a hand toward the lady.  “You could come with us and seek a cure for your curse, if you wish.”

     “I’m not sure,” said the difficult young woman.  “It seems to me that this truly is a grove of nasty knights.  Who are you, if it isn’t too much trouble to ask?”

     The brothers looked at each other again.  If they told this young wanderer they were princes, she might try to marry one of them.

     “We’re no one important,” said Alain.  “Call me Sir Ae.”

     “And I am Sir Bee,” said Archels.

     “And you may know me as Sir Ceee,” said Affretz.

     The woman curtsied.  “In that case,” she said, walking over to the wagon and climbing up without asking permission, “Just call me Deedee.”

     Realizing they had not fooled her for a moment, the brothers began to laugh.  The woman called Deedee laughed with them, and then they all turned off onto the northern road, heading for no one knew what.

Madnesses of the Month

     Well, here it is spring and, ignoring a few random blizzards to kill the sprouting tulips, we are prepared for spring pursuits: basketball tournaments, baseball games, and, of course, what we are told our hearts turn lightly to even though we know very well we’ve been pondering it all winter.  So I thought we’d consider the sport of flirting.

     Etymologists are not as certain where this word came from as they would like to be.  Some derive it from small flowers—fleurettes—given by young men while courting in France, while others derive it from flit: that word for the way butterflies dance near flowers.  Which brings us to the birds and bees, suggesting we’re on the right track.

     Anthropologists have been studying the whole principle for years, discussing two essential types of flirting: that which is indulged in as a means to an end, and that which is played as a sport in its own right.  There are many words to describe the professional flirter, who is only in it to pass a few boring hours without planning anything more intimate, the most frequent one being “useless”.  Flirting, according to most anthropologists, is a serious pursuit, like that basketball tournament, with rules and qualifying rounds.

     Guides to how flirting should be done go back centuries.  Variants of these can be found now on the Interwebs, with videos attached to make it clear how and when to flirt properly.  Fashions change in this as in all human matters.

     Somehow, though, basic gameplay has changed only by adding new technologies.  There is still the Opening Line (“Do let me help you with those hat boxes”), the Misleading Conversation Topic (“The next phase of the basketball tournament has some interesting match-ups”), and, of course, the movements of the hands, head, and especially eyes.  (Anthropologists have found flirting females from cultures separated by continents exhibiting exactly the same head and eye movements while having a conversation with an interesting and unattached male.  The men in all these societies either learn these moves right away or fail to pick up on them into old age, still wondering what just happened.)

     There HAVE been societies, of course, which found flirting random and dangerous.  Relations between the sexes are matters for serious discussion and consideration of social and financial requirements.  Communities have tried banning it altogether.  (Shakespeare covered this in Elizabethan days, an era of enthusiastic flirting.)  You might think, since flirting relies so heavily of body language and eye signals, that it would be impossible to regulate.  Nonsense.  If you’re determined enough to forbid something, you will find a way.  (Ban anything that seems slightly  suspicious and you’re bound to get all the villains.)

     One of the worst things you could call a woman (in public) was a “flirt”, while men who were known as “flirts” were distrusted by all men who were pillars of society (whose wives made sure to invite a few flirts to a party to guarantee its success: that double standard again.)  After all, such arid souls point out, flirting could “lead to misunderstanding between sexes” (what doesn’t?) and contribute to “pre-determination” (an obsolete term college administrations used to refer to young people choosing sexual partners before graduation.)  It could result in SPOONING, as one generation put it.

     Or petting, as the next generation spoke of it.

     One result of the battle to suppress flirting is that for generations we have simply assumed that two people conversing with their heads too close together, or their eyes moving in directions which have nothing to do with conversation are flirting.  We go so far as to assure them, if they deny it, that they either don’t REALIZE they’re flirting, or that they are just fibbing.  And we are correct just often enough to make us supreme in our knowledge of the world and its ways.

     Which brings us, and the flirters,  back to the old admonition to “gather ye fleurettes while ye may” or something like that.  At present, it IS spring, and as long as you’re not living somewhere with a zero tolerance code on the books, run outside and organize a quick pick-up game.  There’s bound to be SOMEONE who’s willing to play a round.  (If you find out it’s still all about basketball, after all, you can always call for Shirts Vs. Skins.)

Talk the Talk, Crawl the Crawl

     Once upon a time, I lived in a town which had a large number of residents who claimed Irish heritage.  But a vocal minority was of Bohemian ancestry, with the result that at this time of year, the greeting card racks were evenly divided between green cards for those who wanted to send a note to someone for St. Patrick’s Day, and red cards, for those who wanted to do the same thing on St. Joseph’s Day (March 19.)  The Bohemians DID have to share St. Joseph with the Italians, but we did not have enough descendants of Italian foreparents to make a difference in sales.

     I don’t see that where I live now (though there are far more Italians around here) but I suspect it has less to do with heritage these days than with those sales.  Greeting card companies do not like to try to do too many holidays at once: it dilutes customer interest.  (I learned this when I tried to do a line of St. Andrew’s Day cards, for the Scottish, and was told straight out by one card company “We do not need another card holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas”.)  However, those of you who celebrated St. Patrick’s Day a bit too much can take a few St. Joseph aspirin and thus continue to honor the saints.  (Nod to the regular reader who tossed me this joke.)

     I was eating out on March 16 (or St. Patrick’s Day II, as it is known where I live now.  Friday night, you see, was St. Patrick’s Day I, and…you should see what happens when St. Patrick’s falls on a Wednesday, and TWO weekends need to be turned over to the saint.  Is green beer really that addictive?  In Milwaukee, green bagels were at one time the big thing to HAVE with green beer, and over here we have green egg rolls filled with corned beef and cabbage—only in America–but I have yet to see green eggs and ham offered…where were we?)

     Eating out on March 16, I asked, in the name of nothing much, “How come people bar HOP but pub CRAWL?”

     I got one of those looks which changed the subject at once.  I thought, “Okay, Blogsy, take this question into the Greater Interweb Community, where they appreciate you.”  As sometimes happens, though, my dining companions were right.

     Apparently, NOBODY bar hops any more.  People in this time and place pub crawl.  If not, they bar crawl, a term I had not heard until I looked up the question.  The term “pub crawl” originated across the pond, as you might expect from the word “pub”.  Bar crawling came about in the United States, where people who run pubs are considered unnecessarily picturesque.

     I was also unaware that bar crawling is one of the sociopolitical questions that divides American voters today.  A number of communities organize special bar crawls, as do several colleges.  On these days (frequently March 17), people join a tour group which moves from bar to bar, drinking in the history and heritage of each.  That drinking is what put the “crawl” in “pub crawl”, as one’s ability to walk upright slips away after the seventh or eighth establishment.

     But this has led other communities to forbid bar crawling.  How they regulate this is not made clear to me (does the host check your hand for bar stamps from previous places?) but these communities insist that if you are going to drink too  much, you should do it in just one bar and not become a menace to navigation crawling hither and yon.  Of course, what worries these communities is that some people have no respect for tradition, and instead of crawling will try to DRIVE from bar to bar.  (It’s not a “bar drive”, people.  Get with the program.)

     This is why some such communities have also banned “happy hour”, which, since it suggests drinking just before Rush Hour, becomes a bad idea as well.  I would discuss the history of rush hours and happy hours in this space as well, but I’ve run out of space.  I must now go and make a corned beef sandwich for lunch, something which I believe most states and saints would approve, and, having washed it down with something carbonated but not fermented, will crawl to MY version of happy hour, which I call “Nap Time”.

UNSLEEPING BEAUTY: The Grove

      Not far from the castle where Dimity had grown up, and somewhat to the east of the silent, thorn-guarded castle where her uncle’s court slept, there stood a great, dark forest that stretched for miles.  It was known by many names in the different ands whose borders touched it, but in the land of Dimity’s people it was called the Grove of Nasty Nights.  No one lived anywhere near the forest: the sounds which came from among gloomy trees after dark made it impossible to sleep.

     Since it was impossible for Dimity to sleep anyhow, this was the first place she’d thought of going.  Naturally, she didn’t mention this to the king or queen.  Her parents would not have liked the idea of their daughter going into the grove at all.

     Now Dimity stood before the forest trying to decide whether SHE liked the idea at all.

     “You are supposed to be finding a prince,” she told herself.  “Most princes are not likely to be waiting around in such a place as this.  On the other hand, if there are really monsters in here, it could be that one of them has captured a prince, whom you could rescue.  This will mean he owes you a favor, and can tell you how to get some sleep.  So you’d be even, without any nonsense about marrying the prince, and like that.”

      She unrolled her map of the Grove of Nasty Nights.  This was mainly blank: hardly anyone ever went more than a foot or two inside, no matter how much they needed firewood, or shelter from a storm.  If she didn’t meet any princes, she thought it would be useful for her to at least draw a few landmarks on the map, and take it back to the royal archives.

     A little path led her between grey tree trunks.  About half the leaves she could see were still green, and many of those were draped with dry brown moss.  The moss rustled like whispers as the princess passed among them.  Dimity looked around to see if anybody was actually whispering, and tied her hair up in back so it wouldn’t catch on any low branches.

     She could see the path in what sunlight came in among the leaves, but these leaves moved in a breeze Dimity couldn’t feel, shifting the shadows and the useful spots of light.  This made it impossible for her to be sure whether anything among the trees was moving.  When she tripped, but did not fall, on a rough spot in the path, the moss rustled faster, like rain falling on the leaves.

     Dimity glanced up to make sure the sun was still shining above the rapidly sliding shadows.  “How do they tell around here when night comes?” she grumbled.  She tripped again, and reached out for a trailing strand of moss to hold herself up.  She jerked her hand away before she touched it, and moved along.

     The shadows did make seeing the path difficult, but Dimity did not realize the true reason she stumbled twice more.  She was getting tired.  People need to sleep, whether they can or not, and though it was so gradual she did not notice it, Dimity was growing weaker and weaker.  She had lost weight, too.  In spite of getting four meals a day at home, she had been working too hard and resting not at all.

     The path was dusty from disuse and lack of rain.  Dimity had to keep reminding herself not to cough; someone or something might be listening.  She felt in her pocket for the charms and amulets the king had given her to keep monsters away, and thought about where she was walking.

     “If there is a troll or an ogre in this forest,” she told herself, “It would know right where to look for a traveler like you: right on this road.  Maybe it would be better to walk next to the path, and hide among the trees.”

     But were the trees something to hide in, or hide from?  She blinked at the dusty branches above her.  Were those all dead leaves, or did some of the branches have teeth?

     She wrinkled her nose, and stepped off the path.  Nothing bit her.

     Always glancing back at the path, Dimity took a few steps into the grove.  Alarming sounds of something rustling among the dead leaves made her stop.  When the sound stopped, she realized it was the noise of her own feet moving through the clutter on the forest floor.  She moved on.

     Every ten steps, though, she paused to listen, to look back at the path, and to make a little line on her map.  “Maybe you’ll be the first person to explore a safe way through this wretched old forest,” she told herself.  “Not that anyone would want to know: there isn’t much to see.  Oh!”

     She had stubbed her toe again.  This time, instead of a wooden horse trough, she had stubbed it against something made of stone.  Brushing away dead leaves, Dimity found a statue of a squirrel.  It had been lying on the ground for a long time, apparently, and had broken off a leg and part of its nose when it fell.

     “Not bad,” she said, scraping away a little dirt from behind one ear.  “Kind of cute, really.”  She marked it on her map and started to move on.  But something rustled that was not any foot of hers.  The sound was followed by a thud.

     Looking around her, Dimity spotted another squirrel statue she had not seen when she was cleaning the first one.  This one was still sitting up.  Its nose, though, looked just as bad as the one on the fallen squirrel.

     Dimity looked from one statue to the other.  “Oh!” she said again.

     The first statue was gone.  Dimity realized it was still around, though.  There was no second squirrel statue.  The first one had simply decided to sit up after the princess had decided to move on.

     When the squirrel decided to walk forward, then, Dimity began to walk backward.  That big stone tail waved back and forth.  The squirrel moved faster.  Dimity backtracked faster, glancing behind her but quickly returning her gaze to the squirrel statue.

      “I hope I didn’t disturb your nap, Friend Squirrel, brushing away those leaves,” she said.  The squirrel said nothing.

     Even as she ran, Dimity wondered A) where she was running, and B) what she was afraid of.  “It’s only a squirrel, right?” she told herself.  “Nothing but a big stone squirrel in a haunted forest.  Why, it might even be friendly!”

     She studied the squirrel, trying to smile in a cheerful way.  Its eyes were glowing red now.  Dimity kept running.

     This was dangerous in such uncertain light.  One foot caught under a root and Dimity rtumbled toes over top.  Her head bounced against a tree trunk, dropping dust and dead leaves on her.  She grabbed the trunk to pull herself up the rough bark.  When she looked down, the squirrel appeared to be smiling.

     “Squirrels climb trees,” she told herself, and reached into her pocket for an amulet or charm.

     With a leap and a lurch, the squirrel came on, not as fast as real squirrel, perhaps, because of its chipped feet, but faster than a princess.  Dimity, with no time to choose a charm, drew out a crystal key on a silver chain.  She dropped this over the squirrel’s head so it hung round the stone neck.

     A snarl turned into a hiss, and the squirrel tipped over, lost in a pile of leaves.

     Dimity kept her eyes on the pile of leaves, listening for rustles, watching for something else to happen.  Nothing moved until she let herself down the trunk and set her feet on the ground again  Neither tooth nor claw came out of the leaves.  Dimity decided not to reclaim her crystal key.

     Backing her way around the tree and away from where she was sure the stone squirrel was lying, she started off again, dry, dusty, but cheerful, too.  “There!  You’ve had a bit of an adventure without help from Mom or Dad, or any prince, too.”

     Once she felt far enough away to feel comfortable, she sketched the squirrel onto her map, and ate a little of the bread and cheese she’d brought along.  This was refreshing, if not as good as a nap might have been, and she was able to walk on for another hour or so without noticing anything new about the glum, grey grove.  When she did notice something, it was the last thing she had expected.

     The path she had been keeping an eye on as she walked went straight on, but here a second path branched away from it.

     “No one makes paths except to go somewhere.  Who has anyplace to go in this place except out?”

      Setting one hand on one hip, she considered both paths, the one she had been following east, and this new one which turned north.  East, if her map was anything like correct, would be the quickest way out of the forest; this northward path might involve days and days of travel to noplace in particular.  Or someplace unpleasant.  She shrugged.  OR hidden treasure tucked away here for the first person brave enough to find it.  Trolls, treasures, ogres, or princes: anything might be waiting.

     “So what do you want?” she asked herself.  “A short, easy road to sunlight, or a long, dusty one with trolls and treasure?”

     She jumped and looked around when she heard a faint voice say, “This way.”

     Her eyes went back in the direction of the treacherous squirrel statue first, but the voices—she heard several now—were coming from the other direction, from the east, and under the voices was the definite sound of hoofbeats.  She hurried to the side of the path that went east, taking up a position behind a tree to spot any trolls or treasure coming her way.

     Treasure seemed more likely.  The man riding at the front of the group was so good-looking Dimity wondered at first if it was the sun himself, coming down to walk in the shade.  Her eyes slid quickly past a man riding in the first man’s shade, carrying a helmet, to what she thought at first was someone’s prize bull being transported in a wagon.  But this was really a third man, with more muscles than she’d seen on one human being before.  Were these three human?

     The four horses were good ones: Dimity had spent time enough in the stables to recognize that.  The men wore armor that was expensive, and highly polished.  No doubt they were knights, and important ones at that.  And they were obviously looking for adventure, much as she was, for when the man in the lead spotted the fork in the road, he stopped, frowning, much as she had.

     “That’s the short way,” said the man riding in the first man’s shadow.  He raised a hand to point out the path Dimity had followed this far.

     “Ohm I can see that,” said the man in front.  The voices of the two men were very similar, and their accent was that of the east.  “You don’t need to be the wisest prince in the world to see that.  But do we want the shortest way?”

     The horses had kicked up a lot of dust along the path.  Dimity was finding it hard not to….