“So,” Jack said, sitting beside me on the couch and putting his feet on the coffee table. “What would it take for me to convince you that Reality World is real?”
“What are you talking about?” All I’d wanted to do was come home, hum to myself or something and pretend that Queen Leah didn’t exist. Now my brother wanted to talk about Reality World, the mythical place that Mr. Disney spoke of all the time. Only the conspiracy theorists believed that he actually lived there, that was why we hardly saw him. But it was true he’d often appeared with tapes of certain people’s actions and he never seemed to age.
“Everyone wants to catch a glimpse of the real world.” He laughed. “Whatever that is.”
“Are you bored?” I asked. “You could always start jumping over candlesticks again.”
“That’s not nice!” he protested, sitting up straight and running his hand over his short brown hair.
“Where’s your wife, by the way?”
“She’s next door, talking to mom about flour or something.”
“Flour?”
“Yeah, some hen came by asking for it earlier, I guess and they got to talking about the kinds of flour for what baked goods.” He shrugged. “By the way, mom’s making chicken for dinner.”
“Oh, good. I don’t have anything planned.” Not that I ever did. Instead, I usually just threw some stuff together on a pan, tossed in some spices and hoped it was edible.
“She told me you’re working for the wrong side of the lawsuit.”
“Tell me about it.” Would it be breaking any rules to complain about the queen? I sure wanted to let loose about the obnoxious woman.
“Well, see, according to Goldi they are in the wrong and everyone else is the injured party.” Naturally he’d really tell me about it.
“What do you think?” I could always count on Jack to have a different angle on any given situation. In another family he would have been guided toward the law, or maybe politics.
I waited for him to continue. Jack always had a lot to say. Why would now be any different? “What do you mean?” I asked, when it became clear that it was all he was going to say.
He shrugged again. “Well, they were asleep for 100 years. They woke up to a completely different world. You gotta ask why.”
“But we know why!” I got up from the couch and paced in front of the coffee table. “Maleficent cursed the daughter with death and the good fairies tried to soften the spell with just sleep.”
“But why?” he asked.
“Because they didn’t invite Maleficent.” I stopped pacing and put my hands on my hips. Darn it, I needed to lose weight.
“Lots of others weren’t invited. Why was Maleficent the only one to take offense?” He leaned back on the couch, resting his head on his folded hands.
“What are you trying to say?”
“I dunno. It just seems odd to me. Even evil witches aren’t evil just for its own sake.”
“Why not?”
“Why curse the infant? And have it take effect 16 years down the road? Wouldn’t it have been more effective to give her a hair lip or a bad singing voice? Either would have been the kiss of death to a princess. Cursing her to actual death seems a bit – redundant.”
Maybe he meant “extreme” rather than redundant. Maybe he was onto something. Maybe, if we knew more about -
At that moment, the side door in the kitchen slammed and Haley the Contrary called, “Hey, what’s for dinner?”
“A little red hen and wheat bread,” Jack said.
No comments:
Post a Comment