The Tale of the Great and Magical Lord Volpetail and his Fox tailed Servant in Boots.
Part Two. The Fox-Tailed Child�s Miraculous Plan!
That night, the child snuck to the homes of the three brothers who�s land stretched along the valley. First to the eldest brother�s vineyard, the mischievous fox rolled in the grapes until the child's tail and tunic were purple.
Second to the orchard of the next eldest brother, the purple fox tailed child ran and made an important looking crown from olive branches and squeezed the juices of some olives in to the empty wine bottle.
Third to the sheep herd of the almost youngest brother, the purple fox tailed child crowned in leaves took the bottle and milked a sheep's milk into it.
That morning, just as the town was awakening, the purple fox tailed child crowned in olive branches ran importantly through the streets of the sea side village at the foot of the castle with an important announcement: the great and magical Lord Volpetail was coming!
When questioned by knowledgeable merchants, the child scoffed at their ignorance and proceeded to explain how wonderful and wondrous this lord was. How he was surrounded by legend, killed ogres and giants for sport, stole dragon's hoards in his spare time, had a collection of magical swords, and lived in an enchanted castle far far away.
Most people mumbled in disbelief as the child left to relay the message, but some seemed to vaguely remember hearing of such a person. And soon everybody could recall the exploits of the great and magical Lord Volpetail, who else would send a fox tailed messenger after all?
The Innkeeper�s bright eyes and pink cheeks were easy to spot among the masses of gray-faced peasants, and he made his way through the crowds hearing whispers of magic and might, and came upon the herald with a purple fox tail and crown of leaves. Bright yellow eyes were gazing up at the spiralling towers of stone, watching a frowning girl lean on a window facing the sea.
�Is it true that the great and magical Lord Volpetail is coming to this very town?� the Innkeeper asked with eager eyes.
�Oh yes, it is very true, my good fellow, but tell me, who is that melancholy maiden? She looks as pretty as a princess yet as weepy as a willow,� the child with a purple fox tail asked.
�That is the king�s daughter. Her tale is as sad as any here, perhaps more so because she is young and royal. She has no prince to ever marry and no quest to ever be rescued from,� the Innkeeper explained as a hint of gray seemed to seep the cheeriness from his cheeks once more.
The fox tailed child squeezed those bright yellow eyes in thought, �That is most certainly untrue, my informative friend! A legend is awaiting her and this entire town, a valiant legend that will slay the beast of sadness plaguing her and whisk her away into a life of passion and happiness!�
�What excitement! I cannot wait!� the Innkeeper�s face was conquered by a smile which was mirrored by the hope and fun in the face of the youthful fox.
So the fox tailed child marched up to the gates once more, with the happy Innkeeper and a large audience behind, and demanded to see the king. The guards were not so quick to laugh at the child dressed all in royal purple, wearing large boots, and crowned in important looking olive leaves and followed by a parade.
So the child was led in and taken to see the king, a depressed looking man with a gray face who slumped in his throne and leaned an elbow on one knee. The child bowed very happily and very graciously and spoke in a similar tone of voice. First the child started with gleeful flattery, which worked very well, then the offering of a gift, "Gracious king sacred crown, my master the great and magical Lord Volpetail wished me to give you this humble gift for his audience, this milk of a unicorn."
The king gasped with sudden and unexpected happiness, but the advisors laughed with teasing cruelty. The king, not wanting to look foolish, asked the child how he was to know it was genuine milk of a unicorn.
The child laughed in reply and stated that noble blood could easily taste the distinction.
The gray-faced king seemed to agree and had it poured into a glass. The liquid was oily with a light pink tint which made the king stare in wonderment. Nonetheless, one servant was ordered to taste the milk for poison. The servant reported there was no poison, but that the milk was horrid and fake.
The child laughed once more, wagging that purple tail in amusement, "Of coarse it is horrid to a commoner's tongue! Should this mystical beast give it's milk for the likes of you, servant? Of coarse not! It gave milk for pure royalty alone!"
It pleased the pale king to know this and he drank the liquid quickly and enjoyed it. The finest milk a magical beast could ever give!
Soon, his cheeks took on a similar hue, suddenly filling with life.
Clapping happily, the child laughed, "So it is settled! My lord shall come and wed your daughter immediately!"
The pink-cheeked king quickly pointed out that he had agreed to no such thing.
"But milord, my master lives so far far away, surrounded day to day by beautiful nymphs and merwomen and after so long he has grown tired of them and wishes for a true wife, a human one!"
The king had to think very hard about this and his advisors demanded more proof of this lord's mystical lifestyle.
The child agreed and vowed to return at the end of the week with the proof if the king's daughter would at least consider Lord Volpetail's hand in marriage; and the child departed.
That night, the king's daughter dreamt with a smile of the great and magical Lord Volpetail and his exploits.
Meanwhile, the child went hunting until the heads of the arrows fell off and the bow broke in half then exchanged the fur and meat at an in land town on the lip of the valley for a small hoard of money. There, the child bought the youngest, most slender slave of the town's tavern. Then, on the way to a travelling circus's camp, the child explained that she was now a merwoman who used magic to trade fins for feet. She giggled and liked the idea and confessed that she'd always wanted to be one and was tired of men touching her. At the circus, the child paid to have her body tattooed; her upper body would consist of flowers and stars and her waist down would be covered in a fish-scale design. This would take several days, and the child bought a circus performer's fancy cloak and departed. Then the child returned to that nearby town and dropped off the leather boots and belt to have a trim of bells put on the rim of the boots and a new buckle put onto the belt and the small hoard of money was no more.
The rest of the night and into the next day was spent along the beach where the child combed the sand, collecting sea shells, stringing them together, carving the bones of the animals previously caught, making arrangements with pheasant tails, and dying the bone beads in rotten grapes and berries. Finally, a wonderful prize upon the beach was found at long last, the washed up horn of a narwhale and that twilight, the night before the deadline, the child returned to the Inn.
An exhausted, bare foot, beltless, half purple, sand coated fox tailed child dragged into the room with a tray of food, sat down, and began to eat with out a word.
The young man leapt up from the bed, which he had hardly left while the child was gone, and shouted, "There you are, you silly fox tailed child! You have been gone for days, I have worried myself sick thinking you had left me alone with this room and it's bill! Where have you been?"
The child looked up with droopy eyes and spoke through a mouth full of food, "I'm tired and I'm hungry. Please let me eat then sleep in peace. All is taken care of. Trust me."
"All what is taken care of? Where are my boots and my belt? You have gone lost them, haven't you? And you smell of wine, yes, I can see you have spilt it all over yourself! You've gone and drank the town dry this whole time, haven't you, and now you've returned hung-over and hungry, I can see it in your eyes!" the young man scolded, seizing the child by the tail once more and shaking all the food out of those clawed fingers.
Both ears peeled back and those eyes narrowed and flared with yellow lightening. The child viciously struck at the man's hand with clawed fingers and caused the hand to jerk back and bleed, "Unhand me, you ungrateful child! You have some nerve, biting the hand that feeds you! If this is how you treated your father, it is no wonder you ended up with boots! If you do not let me finish this meal and sleep in that bed tonight in peace, then I shall leave you forever. I shall go away and take that happily ever after for myself, do you understand me?"
The young man cringed back to nurse his wounded hand and sulk at the child's shockingly hurtful words. He sat at the corner of the rug and watched from the shadows as the child gobbled down every last crumb of food, drank every last drop of wine, and slept all sprawled out in the bed snoring very loudly.
The next morning, the young man barely had time to realize the painful crick in his neck as the fox tailed child woke him in a hurry and dragged him out the door and into the woods before the sun rose. There, the half asleep man was stripped naked and the child began the transformation of the penniless ungrateful boy to the great and magical Lord Volpetail.
From there, the fox tailed child renewed the coating of grape juice for a purple appearance and then ran dragging the Lord Volpetail by the hand to the next town, hopped down the street putting on each jingling boot and the shortened belt with a new brass buckle and scampered with a confused Lord Volpetail to the circus. There, the gracious and very amused gypsies lent the child, the merwoman, and the lord a white Arabian horse in it's full circus dress with the promise that it should be returned. The horse carried the three with miraculous speed through the wooded trail while the child perched balancedly upon it's neck and fitted the narwhale's horn onto it's forehead with the decorative bridal that was already there.
Finally, just as the sun was lifting over the tops of the distant trees, the villagers lifted their heads to the sound of a conch. They stopped their work and stared wide eyed at the most mystical sight they had been promised. There was the familiar, charming purple child dancing through the streets and blowing on a conch waving that fox tail like a banner and stomping those freshly polished, jingle bell boots. A most beautiful woman with scaled legs, dressed all in veils, dancing behind the child singing of her home in the sea and how lovely it was. And, the sight they had all been waiting for, the sight already familiar to their minds, was the great and magical Lord Volpetail who was not at all unlike their wildest dreams! He was with out a shirt but instead a bright, wild looking cloak, he was crowned in sea shells and bright feathers upon his fair locks, wore strings of strangely designed purple beads and rode upon the most beautiful unicorn the town had seen, indeed the Only unicorn the town had ever seen! Every person in town had to drop their tasks, young and old, men and women, all to run and cheer after their great hero who had come to grace the town with his presence.
So the grand parade marched up to the bridge and the guards bowed in expectancy and opened the gates. The fox tailed servant led the Lord off his mount and abruptly ripped the horn from the unicorn's head which sent it bucking in the air and running off in all it's grace as a gasp ran through the crowd. But with a calm wave of those clawed fingers in the air, the child assured the people that the beast's horn would grow back in a matter of days, it was, after all, a magical beast; so the people were relieved.
The king and his daughter had witnessed this display from their balcony, and the two clapped their hands and giggled with anticipation before quickly running to their thrones to greet their flamboyant guests.
So, the colourful cast marched into the throne room to be presented to the King and princess and the familiar purple child slid jingling across the floor on both knees and stopped kneeling before them with head bowed and a unicorn's horn outstretched in both hands in presentation, "Gracious King sacred crown, I present to you, my most great and magical master the Lord Volpetail!"
The Lord Volpetail stood in mysterious silence with a distant look in his eyes as he held the arm of the most exotic looking maiden.
The king clapped in delight, but his daughter leaned closer to him and whispered, jealous that the Lord Volpetail had a girl on his arm.
Those keen fox ears picking up the princess's words, the child rose and held the horn out to the king and spoke very loudly, "The Lord Volpetail has instructed me to present you with two wonderful gifts, this magical unicorn's horn and this mystical merwoman! Yes, one of his merwomen has transformed her fins into feet just to come visit you, milord! Is she not a specimen? We trust you will care for these gifts with the most respect, especially the delicate merwoman for her care is the most fragile, if a man should dare touch her with out her permission, her feet would change back into fins and she would drown upon the very air we land dwellers breath with!"
The king examined this woman who danced graciously up to him and fell into a twirling curtsy with much grace as she giggled. Most of her skin was extremely visible through the thin veils, and it was covered in exotic stars and flowers, her legs appeared to be of scale, and she had a crescent moon upon her forehead and a twinkling star below one eye. He was so very pleased with his gifts that he immediately proclaimed it punishable by death to lay a hand upon the fragile merwoman.
This pleased the princess as well, who realized that the girl on the Lord Volpetail's arm was just a gift for her father and was not in competition with her for the great and magical Lord Volpetail's affections. She leaned over and whispered to her father that the Lord Volpetail was very dashing and mysterious and she knew she loved him very much.
So the king announced that there would be a wedding immediately and it was to be very public, in the town's square for all to see!
The advisors watched with tear filled eyes and blushing cheeks, not sure whether they should be embarrassed for their king's foolishness or for their own doubts.
And the purple child with the fox tail exclaimed that it was a fabulous idea, and that the king was very brilliant and very wise, and lied about how amazingly beautiful his daughter was to even rival the merwomen and nymphs back at the enchanted palace.
For the rest of the day, the merwoman danced around the town square singing tales of the sea and how she would never return while the purple child with the fox tail played upon the conch to urge the working villagers on as they prepared a festival unlike any the town had known before or since. All of the day's normal work was forgotten and pushed aside, even the local Innkeeper forgot all about the poor lad and his dusty fox tailed servant who were due to pay for their week's stay that evening.
And that night, the king called to his new favorite pet, the merwoman, and announced for the ceremony of marriage between his daughter and the great and magical Lord Volpetail to commence.
