Rated G. Contains whimsy.
God cocked his thumb and aimed his index finger at the firmament.
Ka-pow! Pow! Pow! A line of three perfect glowing pinpoints of light appeared in the black void. He squeezed his eyes almost shut and let off a single shot. Ping! The pinprick of light at the far edge of the firmament, just where it touched the rim of the earth, glowed faintly red.
Rated G. Contains the pressing of lips against frogskin.
The thought of kissing a frog disgusted her. Yet she knew she would never kiss a prince unless she set about the kissing of frogs. So with sovereign ambition she steeled herself to the daily horrors of amphibian osculation. She kissed wood frogs and leopard frogs. Pickerels and tree toads and bull frogs. Ancient croakers and adolescent squeakers that were nothing more than tadpoles at heart.
Rated G. Contains three princesses.
In his vegetable garden, Old Kwaku planted collard and okra and cowpeas. He showed the second princess how to cut the weeds down with a sharpened stick.
“I don’t think I’m learning any wisdom,” she said. “And look at my hands! Imagine what they’ll look like at the end of the summer!”
“Here is part of wisdom,” Old Kwaku said, and he began to rearrange some okra pods while they were still on their mother plants. He pulled one and nudged another and coaxed a third. He moved this one and that one together and tied the pods together in the shape of a little green person.
“That doesn’t look like wisdom to me,” the princess said. “Oh, I’m going to go home and die in my father’s house, an old maid!”
Rated G. Contains objects and animals that refuse to remain in their platonic categories.
As she opened the door, Hisa was surprised to see an iron kettle sitting on her step. It had a large, round belly and four stumpy legs. The spout was wide and curved like a fox’s mouth with two round, black eyes above it. And most curious, a pair of pointed triangles jutted from the top, exactly like a pair of ears.
“What an unusual teakettle.” Hisa looked, but there was no one about.
She set aside her broken pot and brought the new, iron one inside. She poured sweet, cool water into it. Where her old kettle took eight dippers of water, this new one required a full twelve to fill.
Hisa stoked the fire high and lifted the kettle to the hook.
“Mistress, I thank you for the drink, but please don’t put me on the fire.”
Hisa spun around, sloshing water on the floor. “Who said that?”
“It was I, mistress. The teakettle.”
Hisa stared at the iron pot in her hands. “Teakettles do not talk.”
“I’m only pretending to be a teakettle.”
Rated G. Contains philosophical meanderings.
Once, deep down under the sea, down with the starfish and the sting rays and the conger eels, there lived an octopus who wanted to see God.
Octopi are among the most intelligent creatures in the sea, and shyly thoughtful as well, and this particular octopus spent a great deal of time in profound pondering and wondering. Often, curled on the deck of the sunken ship where he laired, he would allow perfectly edible prey to swim or scuttle by, while he silently questioned the here and the now, the if and the then, and — most especially — the may and the mightwhy. Even among his family and friends, such rumination was considered somewhat excessive, but it was his way, and it suited him. He planned eventually to write a book of some sort, employing his own ink for the purpose. It was to be called Concerns of a Cephalopod, or possibly Mollusc Meditations.
Rated G. Hakuna matata. (Except for ostriches.)
Once upon a time, in a remote corner of Africa, there was a young ostrich who refused to put his head in the sand at the slightest sign of danger. He strolled around unafraid, even when lions were near, cheerfully mocking his parents, his relations, and all his friends, every one of whom believed absolutely that their only safety lay in blind immobility. “It makes you invisible, foolish boy!” his father was forever shouting at him in vain. “You can’t see the lion — the lion can’t see you! What part of Q.E.D. don’t you understand?”
Rated G. Contains philosophical meanderings.
Once there was a young moth who did not believe that the proper end for all mothkind was a zish and a frizzle. Whenever he saw a friend or a cousin or a total stranger rushing to a rendezvous with a menorah or a Coleman stove, he could feel a bit of his heart blacken and crumble. One evening, he called all the moths of the world together and preached to them. “Consider the sweetness of the world,” he cried passionately. “Consider the moon, consider wet grass, consider company. Consider glove linings, camel’s hair coats, fur stoles, feather boas, consider the heartbreaking, lost-innocence flavor of cashmere. Life is good, and love is all that matters. Why will we seek death, why do we truly hunger for nothing but the hateful hug of the candle, the bitter kiss of the filament? Accidents of the universe we may be, but we are beautiful accidents and we must not live as though we were ugly. The flame is a cheat, and love is the only.”
Rated G. Contains love between a rat and a girl five thousand years dead.
“The Physician came with eager steps, for new cases were few and far between. He insisted on examining Zuleika from head to toe, and would have had her disrobe, save for her father’s protest.
“She seems well enough to me,” the Physician said in a disappointed tone.
“She believes she wishes to marry.”
“Tut, tut,” the Physician said in astonishment. “Well now. Love. And you wish this cured?”
“Before the contagion spreads any further or drives her to actions imperiling us all.”
Rated G. Contains quarters in unexpected places.
“I’ve been practicing.”
Kenya nods her head. “It takes a lot of practice.”
“How long did it take you?”
“Forever!” Kenya claps her hands and makes two more quarters appear. At lunch she buys two chocolate milks with her quarters and gives one to Maria. It is sweet and thick and better than the wheat bread and yellow rubber-cheese sandwich her Mom packed for her.
They have a test in long division after lunch and Maria feels mad that Kenya can just get an ‘A’ with magic but she has to work hard. She knows how to do it but keeps forgetting to carry the ones and the twos and the only thing that matters to the teacher is getting the answer right. I believe I’ll get an A, Maria thinks as hard as she can. D into A, D into A!
“Can you do more magic?” Maria asks Kenya at recess.
“Yes.”
“Will you show me?”
“Maybe tomorrow. I have to believe more first.”
Rated G. Warning: contains mythical creatures such as dragons and mermaids. May be illegal in some jurisdictions.
The neatly lettered sign hung askew. Shards of glass spilled out from the front window, and scraps of charred paper blew around the front door, which hung crookedly from one hinge. Rafe came closer and, shaking, peered into his shop.
Shredded papers lay everywhere, in drifts on the floor and the worktable. Any representation of human or animal, Rafe knew, had been hacked out and burnt; the hearth was choked with ash and half-charred pages. Across one wall was a splash of vivid vermilion. The other colors had been tipped onto the floor and ground underfoot. Rafe crept further in, shards of the broken window crunching underfoot. With trembling hands, Rafe opened the book.
The bestiary was missing from its wooden stand in the corner. Rafe fell to his knees, pushing tattered papers aside, searching for it. A shard of glass cut his hand, and he left bloody fingerprints on every page that he touched. At last he found the book underneath his worktable, and for a moment his heart leapt; it seemed to be unharmed. With trembling hands, Rafe opened the book. He looked at it for a long moment, then closed it and laid it gently on the floor.
Most of the destruction in the shop had been done by unsubtle thinkers, typical Men of Truth, all brutality and swagger and the knowledge that they were, absolutely and rationally, Right.
But someone else had done the book. Someone subtle, surgical. The pages were nearly untouched. Except that every illuminated picture, every dragon, pard, gryphon, or mermaid, had been carefully and neatly excised.