The prince gulped, descended from his royal steed, and ran back to his room to cower under his bed. What he didn’t realize in his terror was that he had dropped the book – which mysteriously remained sealed shut – directly in front of his evil mother.

Evil mothers are usually possessed of a keen sense of what most people (including myself) call curiosity, and this one (mostly because I didn’t have the imagination or desire to create her otherwise) was no different. She picked up the book, read the cover, and tried to open it, but ornery as books are, it refused to budge. Someday you will have this too if you decide to read; there are some books you just can’t get into.

Her evil brow furrowed into an evil scowl in a veritable earthquake of fury. “To the workshop!” she cried (again, loudly, because she was evil), as she ran from the stables to the secret set of musty steps that lead down to the bowels of her evil workshop. (Please note the word choice: “bowels” of her “workshop”. Not the “heart” of her “powder room”.)

She set the book down on a table next to a rather nasty-looking mixture of exotic ingredient boiling on a brass stand (even though there was no fire underneath, which is a sign to most people: “Do Not Drink!”), and went up to her crystal ball. It wasn’t actually crystal, because the crystal model cost a little bit more than she could safely embezzle from the palace grocery fund, but made from a sort of obsidian-black substance. She whipped off the handkerchief covering in a dramatinc sort of gesture, and placed her hand over it. “Crystal ball!” she commanded, loudly. “Tell me how to open this book.”

Nothing happened, because after all, she didn’t have a crystal ball.

She frowned again. “Obsidian-black substance ball!” she shouted, loudly. “How do I open this book?”

The obsidian-black ball awoke and looked at her. It was sort of picture of a flaming blue eye, seeing in all directions. A deep voice came from it: “You have found the book of power,” it entoned gravely. “With it you can conquer all of mankind.”

“But how do I open it?” she asked.

“It must be opened by a prince of the line of Thebes!”

She raised an eyebrow in a particularly evilish sort of way. “My son?”

“Your son.”

Smiling evilly, she ran up the steps to find him.

In the meanwhile, on the egde of the forest, the girl sat near the window of her little house, spinning cotton into thread, something that her aunt had asked her to do minutes before. She saw immense value in doing such household chores, because after all, she was a sensible girl.

Suddenly, she heard the sound of galloping hooves approaching, and looking out the window saw a little cloud of dust in the distance. She continued her spinning until she saw a young boy on a horse. Her aunt had taught her well in the art of entertainings strangers (which she almost never did, as the country was a quiet place with only the odd mistral coming through, and it was no use entertaining them, because they always insisted on entertaining you), so she – regretfully, because spinning cotton into thread is always a useful endeavor – stopped her spinning and went out to meet the young man.

“Hullo,” she said, stepping up behind him as he descended his horse.
“Oh!” he cried, suddenly falling to the ground and bruising a knee for his trouble. He looked up at her from his prostrate position. “Who are you?”

“That’s a rude question,” she told him, helping him up with one hand. “Hasn’t your mother taught you anything about entertaining people?”

“I can play the lyre,” he said dubiously, “and when I dance, people laugh, but I’m not very good at entertaining.”

She giggled. “No you silly boy!” she said. “I mean entertaining, not entertaining!” Because after all, the difference was so abundantly clear.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever done it, then,” he replied. “How does one entertain someone else, and by ‘entertain’ I mean ‘entertain’, not ‘entertain’?” He was dusting himself off.

“Well,” she said sensibly, “I must introduce myself to you.”

“Introduce?”

“I am Mackenzie,” she told him, offering her hand to him.

“Isn’t that what I asked you before?” he said, shaking her hand. “Seems a rather roundabout way to do things.”

“All polite things are roundabout,” Mackenzie replied primly. “How else would one waste time otherwise?”

“So you’re polite to waste time?”

“Quite so.”

“So you discuss trivialities at length to avoid having to talk of anything meaningful?” he said incredulously.

She looked at him strangely. “There you go trying to be impolite again!” she said. “You should have told me your name.”

He bowed. “I am prince Roderick the Seventy-Third of the line of Thebes, heir-apparent of all that you see, soon to be ruler of the world.”

She nodded, slowly and politely. “How is the weather around your place this time of year?”

The prince frowned, greatly puzzled. “I tell you that I will soon rule the known world, and you want to discuss the weather?”

“Certainly,” she said. “If it were otherwise, I would give the impression that I cared, which would be impolite.”

He shook his head in frustration. “I was like you, once,” he said. “Then I opened a book –” suddenly he realized that he no longer had the book “Imagination” in his posession…

* * *

Tags: fiction