A low-hanging prospect?
Like the ever-tempted Tantalus, I seem to be just within reach of those bare fruits ‘Fame’ and her cousin ‘Fortune’. Low they hang for some, but for others like myself they merely tease the tips of my fingers.
But Fate has played an interesting game this week: there came a call for all would-be children’s writers to submit their very best for the prestigious Children’s Chortlings Quarterly (a successful side venture of our friends at Goiter & Crawe). And since our fellows at Crawe have taken great pains to corner and capture the market for the young and impressionable, I might be a shoo-in for the Digest if I were to make my way into the Quarterly!
I abandoned my ninth attempt at an autobiography—something of a pastime of late—and proceeded to delve into my brighter side (or at least what’s left of it). Come to think of it, I can’t seem to remember ever having a bright side but Ms. Groutsnatch insists I go look for one.
I suppose it’s just as well. I’ve reduced the poor woman to tears after reciting just three chapters of A Life Lived Poorley: The Earliest Years.
Hopefully this entry will reduce all who read it to peals of uproarious laughter and merriment (or whatever it is children enjoy these days. I hear talk of some kind of ‘eggs box?’ Or a particular station for play? I can’t recall properly but it’s something quite curious…)
With that, Dear Reader, I bid you consider the tale of Daisy Dorey and the Patma Prince (in Two Parts!).
Daisy Dorey and the Patma Prince, Part One
Little Daisy Dorey skipped upon the matted straw of her twee-stringed cottage home. It was a breezy, sunniful day. Daylight spilled upon the windowsill with a plain and cheerful Yellow.
‘What luck!’ cried Daisy, leaping nearly twice her height. ‘What luck is mine to have this day!’ And in her tiny hand she shook a neatly scrawling letter she had just received from Mister Owl.
‘Luck?’ groused a hum-drumming voice from the window before a long, purple snout parted the berry blue curtains. ‘Ha! What can you know of luck, you silly girl? You haven’t got any!’
It was the peevish Johnston Peabody, a wizened old armadillo that lived not a stone’s throw away from Daisy. Out swung the door and inward he slunk, trailed by dapper white coattails as was his custom.
‘I do too, Mister Peabody!’ cried Daisy, her tiny whiskers atwitter. ‘For why else would I have received this?’
She huffed and proffered the letter with a flap. But the old and grumbly armadillo merely rolled his speckled eyes.
‘We all got one of those, you mincing little mouseling.’
His snout then snorted derisively.
‘And if you bothered to read the fine print you would know that they don’t accept entries from wee little orphans with no manners.’
Daisy’s button-pink nose twitched. Then her downy soft cheeks went quite red. She hadn’t read the fine print. And she did have no manners. But would the toothsome Prince Groopert really refuse her? Just because her parents had gone missing? It had only been four-and-a-half years ago, and they said they’d be coming right back… Surely the Prince would be more accommodating…
But now that she saw it, the writing was plain: ‘candidates of a sound parentage.’
Peabody smiled his sickly smile and sneered.
‘Did you really think a prancing ninny-minny like you could win the heart and heirlooms of the Shimmering Prince of Patma?’
Daisy crumpled and twisted the letter in her paws. She felt the tears sting at her eyes and her nose began to prickle with the tiniest little sniffs.
Peabody eyed her greedily, his smile inching higher and higher.
‘Shame,’ he tusked, staunchly. ‘Such a shame to waste an upbringing like his upon misfortune like yours.’
Daisy turned slowly, slowly, until she faced the cosy nook where she liked to comb her soft fur and braid her tufty hair. There beside the polka-dotted bows and silken yellow tassels stood a cloudy, mottled mirror wherein she stood reflected.
She looked miserable.
And in a moment’s clarity she realized her dowdy blue coveralls were mere rags when compared to the gorgeified daygowns of her peers up the lane. And that was to say nothing of the dress shops at Market whose spinsters stitched together ream after ream of the finest silks and linens into gowns that made her wet brown eyes positively pop.
‘Don’t you see, my child?’ whispered Peabody in a reedy voice.
He had crossed the room to stand beside her and placed a three-ringed claw-paw upon her shoulder in an avuncular sort of way.
‘You have no chance,’ he hummed curtly. ‘None.’
Daisy felt her head sink lower and lower until her tiny paws caught it just in time. They cradled her shuddering sobs and watery cheeks for the better part of a minute while a stoic-looking Peabody patted her back rather stiffly.
‘No, no chance at all, my dear,’ he resumed airily over the little mouse whimpers and squeaks. Then a look of vile pleasure seized his expression.
‘That is, unless-s-s-s…’
His teeth and tongue lingered on the word.
The patting stopped. Daisy pulled herself free and looked up at the armadillo with eyes that shimmered with curiosity.
‘Unless what, Mister Peabody?’ she squeaked.
He grinned all the more ghoulishly. She was in his pocket now.
‘Unless you were to agree to… to… Oh, but I mustn’t get my hopes up. You will most likely refuse. An old man like me…’
He said this all rather mawkishly, but the effect was no less potent. Daisy looked spellbound.
‘I won’t refuse it, Mister Peabody! Honest!’
His lips curled back until rows and rows of beady teeth winked their satisfaction.
‘Be my daughter, then,’ he declared with a resolute sniff of his snout.
Daisy went pale. She swallowed. The wily old armadillo had asked this many times before but always she refused, knowing full well he would only use her to slave over his considerably grottified mansion. He hadn’t been able to afford servants for years. The place would be a dreadful mess by now…
‘Be my daughter,’ he continued, eyes flashing, ‘and we might both stand a chance of inheriting the throne.’
Could it be? Would she qualify? Could she finally capture the affections of the handsome Prince of Patma?
Daisy felt a knot grip the back of her throat as she considered his offer. His jewelled fingers gripped her harder still.
‘It is the only way you will ever leave this musty, dusty old cottage,’ Peabody hissed, ‘and make something of yourself.’
Daisy bowed her head, thinking of her parents and her prospects and her handsome prince. She gripped the coarse folds of her dowdy blue coveralls and decided it would be nice, for once, to feel fine silk instead of denim.
Wiping her gummy pink nose with a sniff, she met Peabody’s eyes with determination.
‘Okay,’ she squeaked. ‘I’ll do it.’
‘Wonderful!’ said the armadillo crisply, and together they left the old cottage behind.
[ End of Part I ]
Meanwhile…
Ian was confused. Or was he, really? He thought so, but he kept forgetting what was bringing him to that conclusion. As he had been doing with compulsive regularity, he looked down at the scrap of paper in his hand. How long had that been there?
He mouthed the words appearing upon it:
Research: How it feels / how to get out / when to get out
The words were cryptic, he thought, without being totally sure whether or not that was the case.
A woman entered the corner of his field of vision. “The consultants are ready for you, Mr. Poorley,” she said. Ian stood, and thereby realized he had been sitting down up to this point. He followed the woman as she led him down a long and empty hallway, wondering what he had gotten himself into this time…
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