Copyright: Sega, Archie Comics, Ken Penders, Jim Henson and whoever wrote the original story
"Stand down!"
"Never!"
"You'll have to do better than that, hedgehog!"
"And...I've...got you both!"
Lara-Su caught little Manik and Sonia Acorn with her Chaos powers before plopping them in their bed. "Okay," she said. "Now it's time to sleep."
"No fair," the little blue hedgehog whined.
"Why do you always cheat and use Chaos powers?" asked Sonia as Lara-Su tucked her in.
"Because I'm the babysitter, and it's late."
"Well, I'm not sleeping unless you tell us a story," Manik complained.
Lara-Su groaned. "Fine." She walked over to the bookshelf. "How about-"
"Heard it." the twins said at once.
"Okay," Lara-Su put the book back. "How about this-"
"Too boring."
"Then..."
"No."
"How about..."
"No."
Lara-Su shouted, "Well, that's all I can find that is appropriate for your age!"
"Then why don't you make one up?" asked Sonia.
"Not tonight, I can't come up with any."
"Well," Manik said with a pout. "Then we won't sleep."
Lara-Su growled, "You want a story? How about the story where the echidna girl whacked the hedgehog boy with a clock!"
"Hey," Sonia said. "What about that one?"
Lara-Su looked to see a book she hadn't seen before. It looked old and worn, ancient in fact. "What? How did that get here?" She took the book out cautiously, making sure it wasn't a trap. Nothing. When she opened it, she discovered it was a book full of stories she hadn't even heard of before. "Hmm. I guess it's just an ordinary book. Hey, there's writing on the first page."
"What's it say?" asked the twins.
"'When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories, the best place by the fire was kept for The Storyteller.' Odd." She noticed the look of interest on the royal twins' faces. She looked at the book again. "And it seems there's a hedgehog story in it too."
"Oh, man!" groaned Sonia.
Manic whined, "We don't want to hear a story about dad, or Godmother Amy, or Shadow!"
Lara-Su looked the story over. "Actually, this is a different story all together. A story of a hedgehog born from a human!"
"A hedgehog born from a human?" asked Manic. "How?"
Lara-Su was happy to see the twins' interest. "Well, then, let's see how that happened." She coughed a little, scooched over to where the twins could hear better, and began to read. "'Imagine if you will, a night like this one, and a farmer is snuggling up to his wife, but he feels not a head, but a foot. For she is sleeping upside down, her head at the foot of the bed, just by the dog.'"
"What kind of dog?" asked Manic.
"Some kind, it doesn't say."
"Some kind of dog. Terrific story," Sonia muttered. "Should I bark?"
Lara-Su ignored her and continued reading.
"Oh, no!" exclaimed the farmer.
"Just for tonight," his wife said.
"You're not going to have a baby!
"This will work!"
"Sleeping backwards? How will that work?"
"Midwife says it will work."
"Enough of this. If you want company, have one of your widow friends come over. Now come on, get to sleep properly."
"But the farmer's wife didn't want some old widow or some withered seamstress for company. She wanted a baby. To the point where she couldn't stand the sight of watching the calves being born or the chickens' eggs being hatched. And she drove her husband mad with her quack charms and remedies and herbal baths."
"Why didn't they try making baby the usual way?" asked Manik. "My mom and dad say they do a 'special dance' in bed and a baby grows in the stomach."
"They tried," Lara-Su explained. "But they had nothing to show for it. And then, she said something that will change everything."
"What did she say?" asked Sonia.
"She said-"
"I want a baby," the farmer's wife said. "I don't care if it were some strange thing made from marzipan or porridge or if it were as ugly as a hedgehog!"
"Ugly?!" snapped Manik, offended.
"Shh!" hushed Sonia. "Go on, Lara-Su."
"I want a baby to wrap in a bundle and snoodle with and hug to bits!"
Lara-Su paused dramatically before saying, "Now, to say you don't care when you want something is a dangerous thing. That woman wanted a baby so bad, she didn't care what she got. If she got a hedgehog, she would put its snout to her breast and let it suckle." Her voice lowered. "Ears twitched that shouldn't have been listening, and mischief began to work on her. She got what she wanted in a month or two; she's all swollen stomached and thinks it's the baths she took or the sleeping upside down, but we all know that's not what happened, wasn't it?"
"It was her wish wasn't it?" asked Sonia. "She didn't care what she got so she got something."
"Yep. She has her boy, and straight away, there he is: a little ball as ugly as sin with a pointed nose and sprouting hair everywhere!"
"Hey," Manik called out. "We hedgehogs don't have hair, we have quills!" He tugged on his quills to prove it.
Lara-Su adjusted her glasses as she continued reading. It was funny. It was as if the book was responding to Manik's complaint. "'But this hedgehog had quills as soft as feathers. A bundle of ticklish sweetness, perfect smile in a sea of silky quills, the brightest bluest eyes like afternoons in Arabia when there isn't a single cloud. The farmer's wife brought him to her breast and snoodled him and hugged him to bits. And she gave him the name Hans. Hans, my hedgehog, she called him.' Oh, look there's an illustration in here."
She showed them the image and both twins made an "aww!" sound.
"He looks so cute," Sonia said.
"Um...I think so too..." Manik muttered, trying to sound manly.
Lara-Su continued to read, "'Oh, yes, the woman loved her son very much. But not everybody did.'"
The farmer could not look at Hans the hedgehog. He didn't see they eyes like sky, he only saw folks giggle. He didn't feel the softness, he only felt the pitying stares on him. He didn't hear the lullabies, only the gibes, the speculations, the tittle-tattle of small minds with much to murmur of. No, he wouldn't go out, would not be seen with the child, rage and humiliation boiling in him.
Sonia and Manik frowned upon hearing that. Lara-Su continued, "'And the farmer grew to hate his son, Hans The Hedgehog. Out in the fields he chopped and scythed and bundled and milked, and all the while the shame of what had befallen him turned a knot in his heart-one moment the rage swelling, the next tears, huge tears splashing his boots. And time passed by, day following day, week following week, month following month; and the hedgehog boy grew up.
"Elsewhere the sneers and curses curled him up into a ball, the spite hurt his coat into spikes, the insults teased his quills into sharp protective needles. And if he came into a room, his father would leave it. If he crept up to touch his hand, his father would shudder. This was Hans's life, a world of light and dark. The farm, his home, full of animals who loved him, his mother's snoodling. The world of folk who loathed him, his father's brooding. Village boys would creep up to the farmyard and taunt him with their village-boy taunts, their safety-in-numbers taunts, their anything-strange-is-ugly taunts, with their terrifying normalness, their ordinary apple-red faces, their shirt-out, slow-witted, thick-tongued taunts."
"Hey, beastie!" the village boys would laugh and sneer. "You critter chops! Oi, prickleback! Hog head!" But after a while, after getting bored with the insults, they chose a nickname. One that would haunt Hans forever. One that they would paint on the walls of his house. One that made him realize somethings. He learned he was strange, and he learned he was ugly and he learned to be sad and he learned the name that was given him.
"Grovelhog," Lara-Su read.
"Why didn't Hans spin dash those bullies?" Sonia asked. "I would have knocked those brats into next week!"
"Me too!" Manik exclaimed. "No one would DARE call me 'Grovelhog' and get away with it!"
"He didn't know how to, Sonia," Lara-Su explained. "And Manik, it's nice to see you're liking this story, but please settle down." She adjusted her glasses. "Anyway..."
He retreated to the farmyard, to the animals. For every quill on his body, Hans had an animal for a friend, as many friends as he had quills. He had a special way with these creatures and they loved him. He could talk to them. If his mother was looking for him, she would always to first to the yard or the stables or the pens or the sties or to the place where the rooster strutted, a proud soldier of the hens. Hans tended to this bird, combed his comb, polished his beak, and fed and fattened him, and it wasn't long before the rooster was the biggest rooster you could imagine, a hugeness, a vast red rooster all plump and flush-feathered. Whenever the sadness came, whenever he caught his reflection in a pool, saw his strange boy beast face, Hans would run to these friends and be among them, for they found him neither odd nor strange but magnificent.
His father would come home from the fields and see the boy sitting amongst them, pigs nudging his cheeks, the cows caressing him, the dogs licking his hands, and he was disgusted. And if Hans spoke like a boy, he ate like an animal, snout dipped into the plate, lap-lap-lapping, slurp-slurp-slurping, unable to use a knife or fork. Until one day his father snatched the plate from his lips and cast it out into the yard, dragging his son by the ear, then driving him into the trough. "That's enough!" he cried. "Get out! Get out! From now on you'll eat outside with the other beasts!" And with that he returned to the kitchen and slammed the door shut on his son.
Darkness fell and the house was quite silent. Hans had not returned. In one chair the wife sat, her face caught by the firelight, the tears glistening. In the other was the farmer, thick brows knitted, face set, saying nothing, but sighing often, head bowed to the floor. At length, he stood up, took a coat and a lamp, and walked out into the thick black owl-hoot night. "Hans!" he called, swinging the lamp through the fields. "Hans!" he cried, picking his way through the woods. His son heard him, but he did not answer. He lay all night among the animal in the wet grass, under the sky's black velvet, and he thought and thought until he thought a hole in the ground. He did not answer his father's cries, did not return to his mother's tears, just lay there silently counting the stars.
His father wandered the dark hours, a great needle in his heart, one moment the rage welling up in him, the next tears, huge tears splashing his boots as he tramped and tramped and called and called. Until, come the morning, wretched, the farmer returned, damp through and weary. There by the step, asleep, was his son, the Govelhog, who had never once answered back or complained or ever been anything other than the best son a man could wish for. And the farmer wanted to pick up his boy in his arms and hug him and snoodle him and love him to bits. But he couldn't. He looked down at his pointy nose and his short arms and his quills and hair and he couldn't.
"I've trudged all night for you," he barked, kicking the sleeping child awake. "And now you'll not eat for a week off my food." Hans stood up, quills rippling up and down his back. "Father," he said in his flute voice, "I want you to do some things for me." The farmer was outraged. "You what?" he barked. "I want you to go to the village and have a saddle made for my rooster so I can ride him," Hans said. "And I want some sheep and some cattle and some pigs." Furious came the farmer's reply. "Oh, do you now! Fancy fine!" Hans nodded, undeterred. "I know which ones I'd like. And they would be happy to come with me."
"Come with you where?" demanded his father. "To where I go," replied his son. "Which is away. Which is to somewhere. Where I can't hurt no one and no one can hurt me." Tears and anger fought in the farmer. "You can't go nowhere. What'll your mum say who dotes on you?" Hans did not reply but rubbed the tears from his blue blue eyes. Finally, he looked up and curled his mouth into a brave smile. "Father, all night I lay outside to understand why you don't love me. I've thought and thought until I've thought a hole in the grass. And now it's all right. When I have the saddle, I'll go. I shall fashion myself some pipes and play a song for the two of you, one that begins in hello and ends in good bye. Fear not, father. Never again will you be ashamed to have a Grovelhog for a son."
And the farmer felt ashamed. He went to the saddle man and brought home a saddle for the rooster and he herded up the animals his son had asked for and he told his wife to pack a packed lunch, and all the while the Grovelhog sat on the stoop and waited until all was ready. Then he went to his mother and she hugged him and snoodled him and loved him to bits, then to his father, who wanted so much to but couldn't, and said goodbye and, before the farmer could stop him, hugged him with all his might, and his father knew for the first time how soft he was, all honey and sweetness.
"'Then he was away, the Grovelhog,'" Lara-Su read. "'Flinging on the saddle and riding off, the strangest steed, the strangest rider, the strangest army of hens and sheep and pigs and cattle. His parents watched him until he was a faint smudge in the distance, the farmer stroking the quill he'd shed in goodbying, while his mother felt a crack faulting her heart, like a tiny pencil line. And with each hour line grew thicker and thicker until one day, not long after, her heart split in half and she died.'" She paused in the strange story, taking note at how Manik and Sonia were crying their eyes out. "Oh, don't cry."
"How can't I?" asked Sonia. "He left them! And after the father finally loved him!"
"I don't want to leave my parents if I were a human!" Manik wailed.
Lara-Su hugged the two children and dried their eyes. "The story isn't over yet. We can stop if it's too emotional."
"No," they said at once. "We want to know how it ends!"
"Very well." She snuggled up to the twins and continued, "'Twenty years later, a King got lost in a great forest. And after he got lost, he got more lost until he was so lost he began to tug his ear, which was a sign for great trouble.'"
He was well on the way when he heard a sound that was a bitter sound and a sweet sound all at once, a music that began like hello and ended like goodbye. So, tugging his ear the billy-o, the King followed that sound through glade and thicket until he came at length to a clearing where animals roamed-sheep, cows, pigs, and hens. Huge, these creatures, and content, looking for all the world like what animals on holiday must look like. And behind them was a palace. A most extraordinary sight, a fabulous affair of glass and jewels and waterfalls. The King approached the great doors and knocked.
The thing that answered the door resembled a thing that was both hedgehog and man. Which in this case, it was. The King cleared his throat. "I'm very lost. And very hungry. And, uh, somewhere, back there, I was a king a long time ago."
"And now so lost and so hungry, you would knock at a beast's house?" asked the hedgehog man. "You are welcome at my house, and at my table." And the King sat at the Grovelhog's table and ate the greenest greens, the sweetest sweets and juiciest juices. And the host took some bagpipes, and played old songs that ended in hello and ended in goodbye. And before he could say, "I'm full now and found," the King was asleep.
"Well," Lara-Su said. "this King woke up the next morning after dreaming the dreams you could only dream about and discovered that his pillow was a tree and was sleeping somewhere where he wasn't. The King realized the place where he was was the edge of the forest and there is his castle! And the King danced a dance only a happy King would, a jig, a jiggle-joggle and a leap! Then he heard the familiar pipes playing those songs again."
"Getting bored now," Manik yawned.
"Do you want to hear the story or not?" asked Lara-Su.
"Sorry."
"What happened?" asked Sonia.
"Well, the King wants to give the Grovelhog a reward for saving him and the King says, 'Name anything.' And the hog thing says, 'Give me the first thing that greets you when you arrive home.' And the King nods, knowing right away that the first thing to greet him would always be his faithful flop-eared, woof-woof! Wagger, the royal dog. And the Grovelhog says, 'I'll collect my reward in a year and a day.' The King and hedgehog go their separate ways. However," Lara-Su paused for drama again. "Fate has a different plan in mind. And it's not the dog that greets him."
"What was it?" asked the twins.
"His daughter, the red haired Princess of Sweetness and Cherry Pie." Lara-Su nodded at the twins' gasp. "Yes. And upon realizing she was the first to greet him, the King realized what a horrible mistake he had just made.
"A year passed. Now of course, the King had been counting the days of his calendar since he'd made his rash promise to the Grovelhog. And he knew that tomorrow would be the day his promise was to be met. A messenger told him a day later that there was an army at the gate. An army not of men, but of animals."
"Do you remember me?" asked Hans my hedgehog, his voice half-pipe, half-drum. The King nodded. "A year and a day have passed since we last met," continued the creature, his coat of quills alert and dangerous. "Will you keep your promise to me?" The King's face set in a grim mask. "I will," he said. "I will."
Should I tell you of the Princess's tears, their torrents, her sighs, her lament? Should I tell you of the pain, how it hurt the King to say what had been unsaid, explain what was inexplicable? Let it suffice that for an hour, two, after Hans came to the palace, father and daughter were alone in her chamber, and that he finally emerged, the King could not raise his eyes but stared, bleak, at the ground beneath him. He led Hans my hedgehog to the chamber, then went himself-sorrow his crown sadness his scepter-to his wife, the Queen, to tell all, to console and be consoled.
Hans found the Princess sitting at the window of her chamber, hair streaming down, coiling through the open shutters, as if her soul were contained in the auburn tresses and sought to escape. He walked into the room and she jumped up. Jumped up before her betrothed. Her father had not exaggerated. She was promised to a monster. And yet, when the creature spoke, his voice was the voice she had always imagined her husband would possess, a voice of woodwind, of dark notes, a true voice.
"Do you know me, Princess?" the voice asked. "I do, sir," she replied. "You saved my father and he owes you his life." Hans nodded. "But do you know of his promise to me?" he demanded. "He promised you the first thing to greet him on his return," she said, looking at the blue blue eyes, the pointy nose, the carpet of quills. "I am yours, sir, to do with what you will." The quills bristled, the blue eyes sparked and flinted. "Then I claim you for my bride," he said. "I want you to come and live with me in the forest. I want you for my Princess of Sweetness and Cherry Pie. I want to catch you up and sing to you and snoodle you and hug you to bits. I want you to love me." A single tear crept down the Princess's sweet cheek. "Then so be it," she whispered. "Do you find me very ugly?" asked her husband-to-be. "Not so ugly as going back on a promise," she declared, and felt the tear slide from her face to the floor.
"The wedding was more like a funeral," Lara-Su read. "No one smiled, everyone cried at the feast, and the music was plum dreary. Nobody said a word save for the wedding vows."
"Why would they be sad?" asked Sonia. "Shouldn't they be happy at weddings?"
"Would you want your husband to be an ugly hedgehog monster? No offense, Manik."
"None taken," the blue hedgehog boy snorted.
"And that night in the bedchamber, there was a terrified princess awaiting her new husband to join her," Lara-Su read. "He played his pipes. And when he approached her, put a gentle hand on her shoulder...and walked back." Lara-Su paused. "What woke the Princess she could not say. A rustle, perhaps. Or perhaps the terror of her dreams, but when she opened her eyes she was astonished. For there, barely illuminated by the fire's farewell, was her Lord, the hedgehog man, peeling off his coat of quills, splendid man, the quills settling like a rug on the ground. She watched, dumbfounded, as the man slipped quietly from the room and disappeared. And lying there, half-Sweetness, half-Cherry Pie, the Princess could hardly credit what she'd seen and couldn't have, saw and shouldn't have. But, creeping to the window, she looked down and there, sure enough, was a man, all shadows, moving among his friends, the animals, in the night's quiet rain. And she found herself going to the abandoned coat of hair and quills and touching it, soft and warm and remarkable."
Sonia and Manik were wide eyed. "A man?" they asked.
Lara-Su nodded.
The first rays of morning woke her from dreams of waterfalls and ice cream and there she was in her bed, and by the ashes and dust in the grate lay her husband, back again, beast again. So had she dreamed this peeling off of skin? Surely she must have. But that night, the same scene: the creature standing over her as she pretended to sleep, the tender touch on her cheek, not prickly but so smooth she felt an ache when he left her.
And she went to the coat of quills and lay down against it, and how comfortable she found it, how luxuriant! It made her drowsy, lying there by the fire; it made her eyelids heavy. She sighed, wrapping herself in her husband's skin, drifting off, drifting off. She knew she shouldn't, knew she mustn't, but really couldn't help herself, really couldn't stay awake another minute.
"I think I know this story," Manik said. "It sounds like another Beauty And The Beast ripoff."
Lara-Su chuckled. "Actually this story came first." She adjusted her glasses. "Well, you can imagine her shock when she found her husband looming over her the next morning. She explained, 'I woke and you had gone! And left behind you coat of quills.'"
Sonia quivered, "Was he mad?"
Lara-Su shook her head. "He just said, 'Which would you have as husband? The man or the creature?' And his wife says, 'I have a husband. Nothing more and nothing less.' The man says..."
"Then forgive him, madam, if he returns to his skin," said her husband as he stepped toward the quills and assumed them, restoring the beast's silhouette. "For I am enchanted," he continued, "and cannot leave it. But if you say nothing of this for one more night, then loyal love will break this spell forever." His blue eyes settled on her, yearning, imploring. Her heart reached out to him. "I promise," she whispered. "I promise."
Lara-Su chuckled. "But we all know about promises, don't we? And secrets. What use are they when no one knows about them?"
"I know what you mean," Manik said. He yawned and said, "What good is a secret if you keep it to yourself? It's bound to explode out of your mouth like a bad zit."
"And sometimes," Lara-Su said. "There are those with keen senses who know when your keeping a secret."
Sonia yawned. "Like the time mom knew Manik was the one who showed off her underwear to his friends at school?"
"HEY!"
Lara-Su giggled. "Yep. And funny you should mention that, my dear Sonia. It was the Princess' mother who knew something was up."
"Hungry?" she inquired, raising an eyebrow. "Very," replied her daughter, all Sweetness, all Cherry Pie. "Good," her mother said, smiling. "Sleep well?" The Princess ate heartily. "Yes, thank you." "Good," repeated her mother, eyebrow twitching, her voice casting its hook into the conversation. "Not troubled by the creature?" The Princess frowned. "No, mother," she said, defensive. "And please don't speak of him as a creature." Her mother looked at her carefully, the hook dangling. "Listen, daughter," she began. "Last night you father and I went to a wise woman and told her of you tragedy. She knows of these creatures, these Grovelhogs, and knows the remedy. He is enchanted, you see."
"I know," the Princess blurted out, the invisible hook snagged her lips. Her mother pulled sharply on the line. "Oh?" The Princess felt her face flush flustered. "I mean, I knew he must be," she cried wriggling away from the question. "Yes, I see," she pretended. "He's enchanted." The Queen reeled in, trumphant: "He's told you, hasn't he?" Her daughter denied it, all the while wriggling. "Does he take off his skin?" her mother demanded. "No!" she insisted. "No, he doesn't! He doesn't!" The Queen grasped her hand. "The only way to break the spell is to throw the skin into the fire. It he sleeps or leaves the room, cast the skin into the flames and he will be free of it." The Princess shook her head, confused, miserable. "That's not the way!" she cried, her betrayal exposed. The Queen settled back into her seat, the fish landed. "So he has told you!"
That night, the same story: the Princess settling to sleep, the creature stretched out by the fire. But when, at length, he stood and shed his skin and slipped from the room, the Princess rose from the sheets. Before she could stop herself, before the warring voices in her head could plead with her, she took up the skin and threw it into the fire's greedy flames. How it burned! A thousand colors, a brilliant firework! Suddenly, terribly, a cry of pain and rage curdled the air. There, below the window stood her husband, the Grovelhog, beast again, smoke and flames consuming him, his head thrown up roaring out his betrayal, screaming his anguish. He threw himself to the ground smothering flames, rolled over and over on the earth, while in the palace the Princess ran, ran along passage, ran down winding stair, until she was outside, running to him, tears scalding her, tears choking her. She reached him as he leapt up onto the rooster, as the animals stampeded for the gates. "Husband!" she wept. "Please! Please don't go!" But the creature snarled and turned away from her, his quills sharp and smoking. The Princess clutched at him and was pricked terribly, falling pierced and bleeding, while the Grovelhog rode off into the night in a confusion of smoke and dust, the air thick with clamor and alarm, the bells tolling their solemn knell: betrayal and betrayal and betrayal.
"Oh, why did she tell her mother?" Sonia asked with sadness.
"If only her mother let her stay married to the Grovelhog," Manik sniffed.
"Some people can't stand ugliness, Manik," Lara-Su explained. "And Sonia, a secret is something you can't keep forever. Eventually, someone will find out." Lara-Su wiped her own tears away from her face as she continued reading. "But it was the Princess who took it the hardest. For seven days and nights, she locked herself in her room and never let anyone in and never let anyone talk to her. Instead, she thought and thought until she thought a hole in the hearth and she knew what she must do."
She went to the the blacksmith and got from him three pairs of iron shoes, and that same night, while all slept, slipped out of the palace and set off to walk the world in search of her husband, half-man, half-hedgehog.
She walked and walked until she wore out the first pair of shoes, and still no one had set eyes on the creature. Such a walk she walked that her hair faded from red to brown. And she put on the second pair of shoes wore out while her hair faded from brown to gray, but still she walked, always searching, always praying to hear a music both bitter and sweet, beginning in hello and ending in goodbye, but nothing, no clue, no news. Until one day, weary and wretched, she came to a stream and lay down by it. The last pair of shoes had worn away to nothing, and she pulled them from her, rubbing her poor sore feet, and saw in the water's mirror that her hair was now quiet white. And the Princess of Sweetness and Cherry Pie wept for her red hair and her husband, both lost forever. Night was falling and the mist settling in, as it does in that season in that place, three pairs of iron shoes from anywhere. What could she do?
Lara-Su noted the twins' eyes were drooping, but they were determined to hear the ending.
"Well, what happened?" asked Sonia.
"She came onto a cottage," Lara-Su said. "An old abandoned one."
"His father and mother's cottage?" asked Manik with a yawn.
"Yep. Only this time, there was fresh food on the table. She knew she had found him. Only, where was he? She gasped and hid in a corner when a huge black raven flew in, not noticing her, and perched on the chair in front of the table. She watched in amazement as the bird transformed into a half man-half hedgehog thing and gave a toast. 'To the health of that most beautiful woman who could not keep her promise for one more day', he said mournfully. Then she stepped out. 'Husband, how long have you toasted to a woman as ugly as her broken promise?'"
The creature swung round, his voice filling with anger. "How did you find me?" he demanded, the quills spiking. "I have walked the world to find you," his wife replied. "I have worn out the soles of three pairs of iron shoes and my hair is no longer red. I come to claim you and catch you up and snoodle you and hug you to bits." And with that she flung herself at his mercy, risking the spikes of his rage. She clung to him as he struggled, clung to him as his body trembled into a transformation, wings unfolding and shuttering, clung to him as the shape of a man emerged, disappeared, reappeared, all the while declaring her love and loyalty. She would not be thrown off, would not give in to the wings, to the spikes, to the violent shuddering, but held fast to her husband, until finally the shaking stopped and man and wife stood embracing, the spell broken. And they laughed and snoodled and hugged each other to bits, pain falling from them like feathers, like quills.
"'And so the Princess who could not keep her promise won back her husband through looking without hope of finding, and in time her hair grew red again and there was another wedding all over, and this time the feasting went on for forty days and forty nights and I myself was there to tell the best story there is to tell, a story that begins in hello and ends in goodbye, and or a gift they gave me a shoe worn to nothing. And here it is.'" Lara-Su held up an imaginary shoe worn to nothing. She laughed, but no one laughed with her. As soon as she said those final words, the royal twins plopped to bed with happy snores.
"That was a wonderful story," an aged voice said.
Lara-Su spun around. "Oh, your majesties!" She shook hands with King Sonic and Queen Sally.
"You sure do have a better knack at telling stories than I do," Sonic said with a laugh.
"Actually, it wasn't me. It was this book." She showed them the book. Sally smiled at the sight of the snoring twins. "Well, there will be another story for another time, don't you agree dear?"
"Yep."
"Don't you agree, Lara-Su?" No response. "Lara-Su?"
The echidna had fallen asleep with her head and arms resting on the twins' bed. Sonic and Sally chuckled. "Better inform Knuckles and Julie-Su their daughter is staying over."
"I'm sure they won't mind."
Before the royal couple could turn in for the night, Sally took an interest to the words written on the first page of the book. And she knew right there and then that it would become the introduction to new stories from this book. "'When people told themselves their past with stories, explained their present with stories, foretold the future with stories, the best place by the fire was kept for The Storyteller.'"