“You had them thrown in the dungeon,” the king said, waving his hands in exasperation.
The princess narrowed her eyes and everyone froze, bowing their heads meekly. Someday, the princess would make an excellent mother, school principal, or dictator. Maybe all three. “Very well. I’m having your entire kingdom thrown in the dungeon.”
Jack couldn’t figure out how that would work. “Are you actually throwing people into the dungeon? Who do you have to do it? They’d have to be pretty strong to toss around so many people. And nobody could lift a whole kingdom! Do you mean everyone in the kingdom, or the kingdom itself? Because there’s no way the actual kingdom with all the buildings and animals and dirt would fit in the dungeon.”
“I don’t mean I’ll put the kingdom in the actual dungeon, you idiot! I mean a metaphorical dungeon!”
Jack scratched his head. “I don’t think you can make bars out of metaphors.”
“Argh!” the princess screamed, stomping one tiny, terrible foot. “I will go to every kingdom in the land and tell them all what you have done. No one—NO ONE—will ever visit here again. And no one will ever be allowed to leave! You are all GROUNDED FOREVER!”
With that she turned and thundered from the castle.
“All over one little pea.” The king took off his crown and rubbed his bald head. “I thought we were sensitive, but apparently princesses these days are even harder to please.”
“You did put just one pea under the mattress, right?” the queen asked.
Jack scrunched up his face in confusion. “I don’t know that you could say ‘just one.’ You can’t really measure it that way.”
“What do you mean? Of course you can measure a single pea.”
“I guess, but it all depends on how much I had to drink that afternoon.”
The king frowned. “What does you drinking have to do with putting a pea under a mattress?”
“Well, I can’t very well do it if I don’t have to go to the bathroom.”
The queen’s eyes widened as the full, horrible truth descended on her in a flush. I mean, a rush.
No. I mean a flush.
“Jack,” she said. “Spell pea.”
“Well, that’s easy. There’s only one way. P-E-E.”
(I told you spelling matters.)
The queen pointed a trembling finger at the door. “You’ve ruined everything, you disgusting, vile creature! Go to the dungeon!”
“But I did what you told me! And the dungeon is full!”
“GET OUT!” the queen screamed. “JUST GET OUT.”
Jack, confused and disappointed at once again being kicked out of a castle, ran as fast as he could.
“But who will make the pease porridge now?” the king asked. “Jack has been cooking it for all the servants!”
“Oh no,” the queen whispered. “Pease porridge. He didn’t …”
Oh NO.
Once upon that same time, a little girl went into the woods.
Little girls go into the woods all the time. They go there to pick berries or to dangle their feet in cool, clear streams. They go there to play hide-and-seek, though they can’t say who they are hiding from or what they are seeking. They go there to make a burrow for themselves and find special hidden places where they think they could maybe live forever. Little girls go into the woods because the woods are wild places, and little girls are told they must never be wild.
But the woods like wild things, and so little girls like the woods. Woods keep the secrets that adults force little girls to have. And many little girls know, deep in their darkest heart space where no one else can ever see, something no one else does:
They are actually monsters.