Story Week 13

"Storybooks are like portals to other worlds,"  said little Julie to her dolls.  "They create another reality.  Maybe they ARE another reality!  Maybe the characters live inside the story.  Oooooh, it is so much fun to read."

Julie walked across her room to get another book from her bookshelf.  Her fingers ran over the various books until she stopped on one that read Nursery Rhymes.  

"I will read this one again!"  Julie sat down in her favorite chair, arranged her dolls around her, and opened the book.  

"There was a crooked man, and he went a crooked mile. He found a crooked sixpense against a crooked stile...."  Julie's head began to nod.  She jolted upright and continued, "He bought a crooked cat, which caught a crooked mouse....."  

Julie's eyes fluttered shut and a when she opened them she was falling through the air!  Julie scrambled for something to hold onto, but found nothing.  Suddenly she landed with a thud on a dirt road.

She sat up and looked around.  She was sitting on a crooked dirt road, next to a crooked fence.  She got up and started walking along the crooked fence.  She came along to a crooked house, and outside the house was a crooked man tending to a garden.  She walked inside his crooked gate.  She tried to ask him a question, but as soon as she spoke he ran into his house.

"How odd, I was only trying to say hello," said Julie.

"Don't pay any attention to him," said a man who appeared to her right, "he is a crook."  

"What makes you say that?" asked Julie.  "Why, because everything around him is crooked.  That does not happen merely by coincidence."

"That is not fair of you to assume," said Julie, "if you would just talk to him, you might find him different."

"Well, That doesn't matter to me,"  said the man, "I am very busy anyway.  I was going to go see the battle for the crown.  Want to come?"

"Sure, why not.  I have nothing else to do.  I'm Julie, by the way."  

"My name is Tom.  Do you mind if I play the pipes while we walk?  It is always good for drawing a crowd."  

"Not at all,"  said Julie.  As they walked, Tom played his pipes, and children started dancing behind him.  They danced all the way into town.  

When they got to town, Tom stopped playing, and walked up to a man who had a pig.  

"Hello Simon, I have a riddle for you.  What is that over there?!"  Tom pointed frantically behind Simon.  When Simon turned around to see what it was, Tom grabbed Simon's pig and ran out of town.

"Well that was very rude," said Julie to Simon, "Tom just stole your pig."  

"Never mind that," said Simon, "help me figure out the riddle.  What IS that over there?"  

After several minutes of trying to convince Simon of what happened, Julie gave up.  She walked toward the main square of the town, where she heard a great commotion.  In the center of the town there was a lion and a unicorn, fighting like their lives depended on it.  

"That crown is mine!"  cried the unicorn.  "You never win, I always have and always will beat you all about this town!"  replied the lion with a mighty roar.  Everyone in the town was throwing bread at them, trying to drive them away.  

Thinking that this looked like great fun, Julie walked up to a bread stand and asked for some bread to throw.  The baker said she could have whatever she wanted if she would answer this riddle:

"Flour of England, fruit of Spain, Met together in a shower of rain; Put in a bag tied round with a string, If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you a ring."

Julie thought long and hard about this strange riddle, before she realized that she had heard it before.

"The answer is a plum-pudding," said Julie, feeling rather pleased with herself.  

"Right you are!"  said the baker, who handed her a plum-cake as a prize.  

As Julie walked back toward the fight, both the lion and the unicorn stopped fighting and sniffed the air.  

"Do you smell plum-cake?" asked the lion to the unicorn.  "I do," said the unicorn, "let's go find it." The lion and the unicorn worked their way through the crowd, until they found Julie holding her plum-cake.  

"Give it to us!" roared the lion.  Julie, realizing that this was an opportunity, said, "I will exchange the plum-cake for the crown."  The lion and the unicorn discussed this for a moment, until they begrudgingly agreed.

Julie joyously placed he crown on her head, and decreed that the lion and the unicorn should be sent out of town, because she would not tolerate fighting.

"And for my next decree,"  Julie cried, pumping her fist in the air, "is that there will always be ice cream for dinner!"  

"Is that so?"  said her mother's voice.  Julie lifted her head up from her book of nursery rhymes and wiped the drool from her mouth.  "Well your mother decrees that ice cream can be enjoyed AFTER dinner."  

Nursery Rhymes, Source: Wikimedia Commons

Author's Notes:  This story was inspired by Alice Through the Looking Glass, as well as the book of Nursery Rhymes.  The overall theme of having a little girl visit another land with familiar characters came from Alice's adventures, as did the theory of different worlds, which Julie thought could exist inside books, and Alice thought could exist inside mirrors. Julie dreamed the entire series of events, like many assume Alice did. The various characters in my story came from different nursery rhymes.  These rhymes include: the Crooked Man; Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son; Simple Simon; and the Lion and the Unicorn.  Tom can play the pipes and stole a pig.  I thought it would be easy to steal the pig if it belonged to Simple Simon, who is not the brightest.  The lion and the unicorn fight for the crown, and they get kicked out of town when people give them plum cake. The riddle told in the story is a nursery rhyme riddle; I thought that the answer, plum-pudding, tied in decently with the plum-cake from the lion and the unicorn rhyme.  I recognize that there is a difference between plum-pudding and plum cake, but they were similar enough for it to be a logical prize for someone who guesses the riddle.  Julie is named my own younger sister Julia, who loves discussing books.  

The Nursery Rhyme Book by Andrew Lang

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, by Lewis Carrol