A Real Fairy-Tale, Part 2

Per her usual style, Yvonne plopped down on the sofa. She had the dusty old book of fairy-tales in her paws. Angelica, sitting on another sofa across from her, wielding a laptop which was duct-taped all over, did not protest. She accepted her fate: she would just have to listen to boring fairy-tales. She shut the laptop (as best she could what with all the tape) and sighed. 

She did not object exactly, but she did have a question to ask, per her usual style. "You said last week that you were going to tell the story in your own words. So what do you need that book for?"

Yvonne gave her such a look of indignation that Savio, who previously had been happily and completely cluelessly (per his usual style) chewing on furniture, slunk under said furniture. It was quite easy for him to squeeze under the furniture considering he had chewed several huge dog-sized holes in it, not that he needed any huge holes to squeeze into: in Savio's family he was shamed for being what his parents called a "bantam". But that was because the rest of Savio's family was huge, especially old Uncle Bosco. Savio himself was around 90 pounds. 

Angelica, seeing this amazing gaze of Yvonne's, retracted her statement, and sat quietly and, not per her usual style, politely, with her little paws crossed in her lap. In contrast to her previous look, Yvonne smiled and opened her dusty old book which had been the cause of the indignation.

"Now where was I?" (Yvonne liked to put on an air of senility, because she thought it made her seem more wise) "Ah! Yes! So, after stopping at the castle of his youngest brother, the bull, and the lady, rode on, and on, and on. At last they came to a dark and terrible glen. Then the bull let the lady down off his back, and said to her, 'You must stay here while I go fight the Old One. Sit on that stone, and move neither hand nor foot, or I'll never be able to find you again. If everything around you turns blue, you'll know I've beaten the Old One. But if it all turns red, then the Old One will have beaten me.' So she sat down on the stone, and after a while, everything turned blue. She was so happy that her friend had won, she lifted one of her feet and crossed it over the other. The bull came back and looked for her, but he could never find her.

She sat there a long time, and cried, but at last she got up and went away. Where, she did not know. She wandered until she came to a hill of glass. She tried to climb it, but couldn't. She went around the hill, crying, until she came to a smith's house. The smith promised to make her iron shoes, with which she could climb the hill, if she served him seven years. After seven years, she got her shoes, climbed the hill, and at the top of the hill, found the old witch washer's house. Then she heard about a knight who had given some bloody clothes to wash, saying that whoever washed them was to be his wife. The old washer tried washing the clothes, and then her daughter, and then both of them, but they couldn't get them clean. So they got the lady to wash the clothes for them, and she got them clean, but the old witch made the knight think it was her own daughter who had cleaned them. Thus, her daughter and the knight were to be married.

Upset by this, the lady, who was in love with the knight, took her apple, and broke it. Inside of it was gold and jewellry. So the lady said to the washer's daughter, 'I will give this to you if you put your marriage off for a day, and let me go into the knight's room alone at night.' The daughter accepted, but meanwhile, her mother the washer prepared a sleeping drink and gave it to the knight. He slept all night, so that the lady sobbed and sang to him:

'Seven long years I served for thee,
The glassy hill I climbed for thee,
Thy bloody clothes I wrang for thee;
And wilt thou not waken and turn to me?'

But he slept all night. The next day she broke open her pear, and found jewellry richer than what had been in the apple. Again she bargained with the daughter that her marriage be postponed, but again the old washer gave the knight a sleeping drink. All night the lady sighed and sang as she had the night before. Yet he slept on. The next day, when the knight went out hunting, he was asked what all that noise last night in his room was. Telling them he did not hear any noise, he resolved to stay awake the next night and hear what he could. 

The lady broke open her plum, and found the richest jewellry she had yet seen, and she bargained with it again. The old washer, once more, took the sleeping drink to the knight. But he told her that he would not drink it unless she sweetened it. So while she went to get some honey for it, he poured it out, and made the washer think he drank it. That night, the lady sang her song to him again, but this time, he heard it, and turned to her. 

She told him everything that happened to him. He told her everything that happened to him. So he... um... he had the washer and her daughter... punished... and the lady and the knight got married, and lived happily ever after."

"Why did you hesitate at the end?" asked Angelica.

"Because it's... it's violent," replied Yvonne. 

"You let Snowball into this house and you let him speak to us," said Angelica. "Do you know what sorts of things he said?"

"Well, I guess you've got a point. Do you really want to know?" asked Yvonne. Angelica nodded. So Yvonne told her: "Actually, the knight had the washer and her daughter burnt."

"Ew! Why would you tell us something like that?" exclaimed Angelica. 

Yvonne rolled her eyes.

"Yvonne! Yvonne! Yvonne!" barked Savio, per his usual style. "Come outside and see the dinosaur skeleton I found!"

When Yvonne had seen it, and it was really quite impressive, she pondered it, and said, "I don't believe in dinosaurs."

"You're stupid," said Angelica, storming off.

Yvonne rolled her eyes. Then she turned to Savio. "Don't tell anyone about this, okay? I don't want people bothering me about it. So... you can go ahead and chew on it."

Never has any dog been happier than that dog chewing on the sixty-million year old giant reptile/dragon, the sight of which would have caused any paleontologist to be more distraught than any paleontologist ever, and paleontologists are wont to be distraught, while dogs are wont to be happy.