(A tragic tale of human desire)
This is by Toby Fredrickson who tells us, “This was a story I wrote as an entry into a Renaissance Fair story telling contest several years ago. The rules: Period piece involving a slinky, a chicken, and a man named Scott. The tale is based on a concept, a story line, and many fits of pummeling for getting it wrong, from Tanya Montoya-Fredrickson.
In the Beginning, there was the heavens and earth, and there were the fairies. The fairies played grabsies and dibsies on all of the various parts of the heavens and earth and began manipulating things in their own interests so that things have become the total chaos of reality that we know today.
This is a tale of one of the fairies that was napping on the day the jobs got passed out…
Once upon a time, the Pluckbottom family received an unexpected visitor in their modest shire home. The visitor was none other than a fairie. The fairie was known as Doss. It seemed that he had been badgered and prodded by his fellow fairies to actually get out of bed and perform some of his magik.
“(Yawn), I am Doss, I have come to place my blessings upon your family.”
“Oh great fairie, we are not worthy. We are but simple peasants scratching the hard earth for our meager existence. Why have we been chosen for so great a gift?” Asked the Elder Pluckbottom.
“I know not (yawn) why you were chosen, but I have been sent to do my magik upon you, and so I will. Calm yourself and listen intently to my words, for the spell I cast is strong indeed, and cannot be challenged. If you violate the gift I give, it will turn against you and the consequences will be grievous. Do you understand?”
The entire Pluckbottom clan nodded as one, and Doss began his incantation and his spell was cast.
“From this day forward, the Pluckbottom women shall be known for having the most beauteous hair. It shall be long and flowing, vivid of color unlike that of any other human. It shall be soft as air and shine with the glow of the harvest moon. People will travel from far and wide for naught but a glance, and to perhaps be allowed to stroke a single strand, for to touch the hair of the Pluckbottom women will bestow the most wondrous of dreams for many a night that follow. But beware, for if ever the hair of a Pluckbottom woman be cut or shorn, the price will be extreme!”
With this proclamation, a toss of his fairie dust, and a yawn of great magnitude and greater duration, Doss made his parting with a comment about wanting to return to his slumbers.
As he floated out the doorway, the Pluckbottom clan began to rise from their knees and waved a stupefied good-bye to the drowsy little guest. With amazement, they gazed upon each other in awe of the previous moments. It had all happened so fast, and ended so quickly.
Just then another fairie showed up. “Hello! I am Gold Toe, the tooth sock fairie. I am the fairie that comes to you in your sleep and puts those little socks of goo on your teeth. I really get to do some of my fancywork if you had too much of the ale or mead. Anyway, I be looking for my brother. He was to be here. Have you seen him? His name is Doss, the leg hair fairie.”
Mother Pluckbottom stood horrified, and the little daughter, Kimber, hiked up her skirts, looked, screamed, and ran wildly from the house.
“I guess you have. I should take leave now. Bye” and the little fairie made most haste.
As the years passed, the Pluckbottoms dealt well with their little dilemma. In time, the Pluckbottom women began to enjoy the notoriety of the magnificent manes upon their legs, and the extraordinary amount of attention it got them from appropriate men. They began to like it so much, that the elder Pluckbottoms decided to have another child, and hoped for a girl.
The child was born, legs covered with hair, and was named Penelopy. She grew graceful and beauteous and was well loved and protected by her sister Kimber. So beautiful was the hair upon the legs of Penelopy, that Kimber feared to let her from her sight. Some said that Kimber stayed with Penelopy because she attracted the finest hindquartered men in the shires, and the rumor were well believed due to the hand marks left on so many britches.
One day, a fine gentleman, a Scott, named Scott, came upon the little shire of the Pluckbottom women. His breath was taken away by the beauty of the fair Penelopy. He was in complete awe of the hair upon her legs. He was determined to take her as his wife.
Being a respectable gentleman, Kimber allowed him to speak with the young Penelopy, who was quite smitten by this charming young man. Scott the Scott spoke long and softly with Penelopy, and never did he utter a thing inproprietous. Kimber found that she could trust this man and began leaving little Penelopy in his care whilst she did frolic and play with the firm smooth round ends of the other men that seemed to flock near her sister.
Alas, the time came when Scott the Scott would have to leave, and he knew that he could not take fair Penelopy with him, for she was too young. He could not leave empty handed though.
He took a pouch of the finest silk, and begged for a bit of her leg hair, so that he may make a pillow so that his dreams might always be of her. In pledging his truth, to marry only her, should she still want him when she came of marrying age, he offered her a coil of flattened golden wire, that shimmered when poured from hand to hand in a motion that could only be deemed “slinky”, and a prize chicken that he had bought all the way from Scotland, was offered as a gift for the Pluckbottom family as a token of his commitment to little Penelopy.
Penelopy agreed, and pulling the knife she kept in her bodice, began cutting the hair from her legs, exposing the softest, fairest skin, that Scott the Scott had ever seen. With each deft movement of the blade, another luscious lock of the hair was removed, handed to Scott the Scott, which he did place in the pillow with tender reverent pleasure.
Kimber returned as the last lock was removed, and with horror she did witness what did befall her dear sister. Penelopy did fall to the ground, quivering in a painful spastic death. Kimber pulled her own dagger and Scott the Scott ran. He ran so fast, the trail of excrement gave proof to the rumored reason why Scotts wore kilts into battle.
Kimber took the dead body of Penelopy and placed her in the funeral pyre herself, for she felt much grief for trusting the man that caused Penelopy’s death. The ashes of Penelopy were placed in a magnificent vase that was given a shelf of it’s own in the house of the Pluckbottoms. Upon the shelf was a single feather from the chicken given to her family and the coil of slinky gold wire that convinced Penelopy the cut the hair from her legs.
Doss, the leg hair fairie returned when he heard of this.
“I warned you! And now you shall always know and believe a fairie’s warning! The lesson is hard, and one no Pluckbottom shall ever forget. Ask any one of them and they shall tell you, with a tear in their eye…
‘A Penny shaved, is a Penny urned.'”