Ellen Datlow - Tails of Wonder and Imagination

I know the donkey nudged the door with its muzzle and it swung open, I remember that, but the next moments are unclear. Somehow I went from riding on a hard hairy back to being carried bride-style, in a man’s arms, over the threshold. I got deposited in a hearthside chair, and there followed a flurry of movement, as a fire was lit. I pulled off my wet boots, set them on the ashy hearthstone to dry. The fire caught, streaks of orange shooting up the chimney, and I slid onto the hearthrug. It was littered with straw and pet hair, but I lay on it, luxuriating in the warmth. The dog settled beside me, sighed, and went to sleep. After a moment I closed my eyes too.

Hours later I woke after the first proper sleep in a week. The early winter dusk had come, and with it had come Christmas, celebrated on the Eve in Germany. The fire illuminated a table, set for the feast, and a Christmas tree laden with bling. I couldn’t see the fan anywhere, but the dog still snoozed beside me, paws twitching. In the chair on the other side of the hearth sat the Rathaus guide.

“You are Esel,” I said.

A smile and nod.

“Tell me what happened next with the story,” I said. “So the Bremen musicians drove the robbers out?”

“And the four animals ate their feast and took over the house.”

“Did the robbers ever come back?”

“They sent a scout, to reconnoiter. In the dark, only to get scratched by the cat, kicked by the donkey, bit by the dog, and near deafened by the rooster. So he ran off wailing of witches with long talons, men armed with knives and clubs, whatever his fears made believable.”

“Unlike an animal insurrection,” I said. The fire was furnace-warm now, too much for my woolens. I sat up, and as I did saw perched in the rafters a rooster, with—surely not—what looked like a band-aid on its comb.

“Donkey, hund, hahn… Vo sind die katz?”

“She has nine lives. She might go and live in another one for a while, but always comes back.”

Reader, we spent Christmas together, snowed completely in till almost the New Year, in freak winter weather conditions for that part of the country. We talked, prepared excellent meals with Esel, drank glühwein, got to know each other. Nothing more, I wasn’t leaping into anything rash again. We listened right through a large collection of vinyl and DVD, then the musical instruments emerged. Esel, could he play slide guitar! And I plunked away cautiously on bass. Hahn hung from the rafters and sang football songs in a mean imitation of Robert Plant. Hund was shy, some drummers are like that, but every now and then he would pad down to the cellar studio, from which would arise the sound of drums, played like a fury.

Just when all the food in the house was exhausted except for a box of chocolate mice, the villagers arrived with a snowmobile and dug us out. And, because I could leave then, cat-contrary, I didn’t.

One upon a time the Grimm brothers collected an oral story, tidied it up for print consumption, but left the message intact. Strip it down, and the story is about finding a haven, or of being diverted from your path, most fruitfully. I went to marry a classical musician, and ended up living with a rock band. Nothing I hadn’t done before, in my wild youth, an old life of mine, to which I had inevitably returned.

“How does the story end?” I asked Esel, as we watched the New Year’s sunrise, coiled up together, under a geological strata of blankets. “So they lived happily ever after?”

“No, that’s not what the story says.”

“What, then?”

He lay back, thinking. “Everything prospered so well with the quartet.”

“That’s good!”

“That they did not forsake their situation.”

“How very formal those Grimms were!”

“Not the very last line. It ends with: ‘And there they are to this day for anything I know’.”

There are two ways to write what happened. First is a romantic tale: on the way to what I thought was the love of my life, but in reality was a flingette, I met on the plane a gent more congenial to my tastes, musical and otherwise. Then I encountered him again, while he was doing emergency tour guide work, and found that I could survive a snowed-in Christmas with him and his band-mates. They could even use an experienced rock promoter.

Second is something stranger: life in a continuous Grimm’s tale, with a bunch of musical shape-shifters.

It could even be both.

For anything I know.

Christine Lucas lives in Greece with an assortment of spoiled cats. A retired Air Force officer and self-taught in English, she likes to explore in her writing overlooked parts of fantasy worlds, especially the lives of the animals that dwell in them. Her work has appeared in several print and online magazines, including Renard’s Menagerie, the Footprints anthology, Expanded Horizons, Murky Depths , and Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine . She is currently working on her first novel.

Of her story, Lucas says: “A few years ago, I was doing some research on the history of cats for a related article, when I stumbled across a Hebrew myth. According to it, there were no cats in the Garden of Eden. They were created later, aboard Noah’s Ark, to help control the vermin population that threatened to overrun the vessel. To me, the obvious conclusion was this: when God gave Man dominion over animals, cats were not included in the deal.

“Furthermore, close observation of any cat will make it clear that cats possess Knowledge of Good and Evil. Just watch them when they shred the toilet paper or knock over your potted plant. They know they’re not supposed to do that. They just don’t care. And then the pieces clicked together. Man has no dominion over them, and they come with the forbidden knowledge. Their creator could only be a trickster, shaping them after its own image. And my kitty Spitha swears that every word is true.”

On the morning of the Seventh Day, the Garden of Eden was calm and peaceful. The Serpent stretched. She had to fix that. Perfection was very, very boring.

She crawled through the tall grass to the pride of lions sunning their fur in a clearing by the Euphrates’ bank.

“Hey, did you know what lambs are made of? Meat. Fresh and juicy meat. Why would they be made of meat if you weren’t supposed to eat them? Go on, give it a try,” she whispered to a lioness, her scaly tail pointing at a herd grazing close by. She had never liked lambs.

The lioness rolled over, her amber eyes half-closed. “Too hot to run. The lambs don’t bother me, so I don’t bother them.” She yawned and continued her nap.

Disappointed, the Serpent moved on to a brown bear eating berries by the river.

“There are fat fish swimming in the water,” she told him. “Juicy, writhing salmons and carp, filled with nutrients for great fur. And they taste much better than berries.”

The bear looked up, his muzzle smeared with juice. “But I like berries. Why should I get wet and harass the carp?”

By noon, the Serpent was annoyed. None of the Garden’s animals had humored her. God’s last creations, the furless bipeds, seemed promising, but she hadn’t dared to approach them. According to the sparrows’ gossip, He had made the male after His own image. And judging by His blatant preference for lambs, the outcome couldn’t be good. Curled around the Tree of Life, the Serpent decided that Creation needed fun—mischievous—creatures. She had watched Him do it from clay with the humans. How hard could it be, especially with the aid of the forbidden fruit? Across the grove, the man scratched his crotch, watching the clouds. It couldn’t get any worse than that .