Unnatural Creatures

“No,” said Matilda; “but let me whisper—he’s listening—Pridmore could! She’s often told me she’d do it to me. But she never has. Oh, Princess, I’ve got an idea!”

The two were whispering so low that the Cockatoucan could not hear, though he tried his hardest. Matilda and the Princess left him listening.

Presently he heard a sound of wheels. Four men came into the rose garden, wheeling a great red thing in a barrow. They set it down in front of the Cockatoucan, who danced on this perch with rage.

“Oh,” he said, “if only someone would make me laugh—that horrible thing would be the one to change. I know it would. It would change into something much horrider than it is now. I feel it in all my feathers.”

The Princess opened the cage door with the Prime Minister’s key, which a tenor singer had found at the beginning of his music. It was also the key of the comic opera. She crept up behind the Cockatoucan and tickled him under both wings. He fixed his baleful eye on the red Automatic Machine and laughed long and loud, and he saw the red iron and glass change before his eyes into the form of Pridmore. Her cheeks were red with rage, and her eyes shone like glass with fury.

“Nice manners,” said she; “what are you laughing at, I should like to know? I’ll make you laugh on the wrong side of your mouth, my fine fellow!”

She sprang into the cage, and then and there, before the astonished Court, she shook that Cockatoucan till he really and truly did laugh on the wrong side of his mouth. It was a terrible sight to witness, and the sound of that wrong-sided laughter was horrible to hear.

But—instantly—all the things changed back, as if by magic, to what they had been before: the laundry became a nurse; the villa became a King; the other people were just what they had been before—and all Matilda’s wonderful cleverness went out like the snuff of a candle.

The Cockatoucan himself fell in two—one half of him became a common ordinary toucan, such as you may have seen a hundred times at the zoo—unless you are unworthy to visit that happy place—and the other half became a weathercock, which, as you know, is always changing, and makes the wind change, too. So he has not quite lost his old power. Only, now that he is in halves, any power he may have has to be used without laughing. The poor, broken Cockatoucan, like King You-know-who in English history, has never, since that sad day, smiled again.

The grateful King sent an escort of the whole army—now no longer dressed in sausage skins, but in uniforms of dazzling beauty, with drums and banners—to see Matilda and Pridmore home. But Matilda was very sleepy; she had been clever for so long that she was quite tired out. It is, indeed, a very fatiguing thing, as no doubt you know. And the soldiers must have been sleepy, too, for one by one the whole army disappeared, and by the time Pridmore and Matilda reached home there was only one man in uniform left, and he was the policeman at the corner.

The next day Matilda began to talk to Pridmore about the Green Land, and the Cockatoucan, and the villa- residence King, but Pridmore only said:

“Pack of nonsense! Hold your tongue, do.”

So, of course, Matilda understood that Pridmore did not wish to be reminded of the time when she was an Automatic Nagging Machine, and at once, like a kind and polite little girl, she let the subject drop.

Matilda did not mention her adventures to the others at home, because she saw that they believed her to have spent the time with her Great-Aunt Willoughby.

And she knew if she had said that she has not been there, she would be sent at once, and she did not wish this.

She has often tried to get Pridmore to take the wrong omnibus again, which is the only way she knows of getting to the Green Land, but only once has she been successful, and then the omnibus did not go to the Green Land at all, but to the Elephant and Castle.

But no little girl ought to expect to go to the Green Land more than once in a lifetime. Many of us, indeed, are not even so fortunate as to go there once.

9

MARIA DAHVANA HEADLEY was once a non-fiction writer, and then she shifted her career and started making things up instead. I loved her recent novel, Queen of Kings, about a very scary Cleopatra. She was the assistant editor on this book and did everything that I couldn’t do.

And here she tells a story about a Beast in a forest.

There’s a Beast in the mini-forest, and everyone knows it, especially Angela, whose father hunts it full-time. She has no interest in anything to do with the Beast, until a collector arrives in town, attempting to use her as bait….

IT’S LATE ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON when I meet the guy who turns out to be the Beast collector. I’m not expecting anything life changing from anyone walking in the door of the Bastardville Dreamy Creamy. I got over Possibility when I was seven, right along with Santa Claus and Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. All I’ve got left is Suspicion.

Then Billy Beecham shows up at my job and changes everything. I work in an ice-cream shoppe. The two p’s are on purpose. It looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, but it’s well known in these parts as the worst ice-cream shoppe in the history of the world. Not that the ice cream is bad. It comes from the same delivery truck that every other town’s ice cream comes from. It’s frozen. It’s quiescent. The bad isn’t in the ice cream. It’s in the attitude. Just like every other ice-cream shoppe employee anywhere, I wear a pink smock and a visor, and I scoop as though my life depends on it. Then I hand over the ice cream, and say, “Have a miserable day.”

Tourists get a huge charge out of it. They want me to say it again and again, but unless they order something else, it’s not in my job description. On the day in question, the guy in question comes up to my counter and orders vanilla, which is already against my rules. Then he continues.

“I bet you have a nice smile,” he says.

“Do you know how many people have died trying that?” I ask him, and adjust my visor. The answer is very zero.

“Only takes one,” he says. “You look like you want to.” I do not.

“Come on,” he says. “It’s been a hell of an afternoon, hunting out there in the mini-forest. I just need to see a pretty girl smile.” He checks my name badge. “Angela. I’m Billy Beecham. I’m a Beast collector, with the—”

“Have a miserable day,” I tell him, except that miserable is not the word I use. I use a rather more explosive word, a word we all know is a breach of protocol, but he’s breaching too. Billy Beecham leans over the Plexiglas barrier, and tries to kiss me.