Musemuggers
Title: The Clarion Call
Author: keppiehed
Word Count: 2022
Prompt: rewrite Puss in Boots
A/N: Written for musemuggers, Challenge #518, Option #3, Puss in Boots.
I’ve always been a patient man. A fair man. A man of temperate interests. No gambling for me or taking sides in games of chance that would cause me to lose my hard-earned coppers, not like some I could name. I like to think I’ve been careful with my interests. Frugal, even.
These qualities are what made me a good miller. It takes a steady hand to grind the grain. It calls for someone who can take the long view. When the shadows of winter come calling and the wolves of hunger gnaw in the belly, it takes a calm hand on the scale. Panic can flood the senses when there is naught to eat and the children are crying, but I never gave into blind fear, not even when there was nothing left in the store room save a few moldy husks. I was-I am-the man who could gather a few scattered seeds in the palm of my hand and grind them finer, finer, finer, into a dust so light it might be nothing more than wishes. But those wishes would see us through to the dawn of the springtime, to greener days, to wheat in the fields and to the next harvest. Then the one after that, and the next one after. And so go the passing of the years. It takes a patient man, and a fair one, to be a good miller. I was such a man. Or at least I tried to be.
The rumors about the miller’s sons in those days were not a secret. I’d heard them just like everyone else. I ignored them until I couldn’t afford to turn my ear from the truth any longer. I’d always had Becky to shield me from the domestic disappointments; without her gentle ways, the starkness crushed me as sure as the millstones grind the wheat into flour.
The season that Becky died had been a long and fruitless summer, one of the coldest in living memory. The springtime rains had flooded the fields, and crops were late to be planted. Standing water on the ground spawned a new fever in town that spread to the outlying villages and beyond. Fields that weren’t left fallow were half-tilled for want of healthy workers. The crops that had already been sown were abandoned to grow and wither, unharvested, as people sickened and died of the ague. I buried an infant daughter with my wife, and a son the following winter. My stone sat silent and unmoving for lack of grain to grind. Death was upon us. We merely had to await its clarion call.
What I didn’t understand then anymore than I do now is why I was spared. I opened my eyes to find the delirium had passed with my heart still beating in my chest. Becky was cold in the ground without me beside her, yet I was restored in the worst sort of miracle. I would never fully recover my strength, but I was alive. Alive and alone. I looked down to see my transformation: my hands had become the veined and flaccid members of the aged. My legs had been robbed of any vitality except that which to hold me upright. I could only survive, nothing more. I could not continue my livelihood, which required such fortitudes of physical and mental reserve. I was as the chaff now, and I longed to separate from this life and blow away in the wind.
Of my three remaining sons, none had expressed an interest in milling. I knew well their shortcomings, which were my fault and burden to bear, but it was too late to remedy the situation.
I called them to me, one night in late December.
“I have split my inheritance into the only three parcels that make sense,” I said. “One of you shall inherit from me the mill, which is the bulk of the estate. The other shall inherit the donkey, and the third shall be master of the cat.”
“What!” said Jack, the oldest son. “What sort of sense does that make?”
“What should one do with a donkey?” Peter, the middle son, inquired.
“Or worse yet,” the youngest, Petit Jean said, “a cat?”
I held up a hand. “If you will but listen, I shall explain my decision. I am unfit to continue this business any longer, and it shall pass to you. You shall draw straws for your lot of the estate: the longest straw gets the mill, the middle straw gets the donkey, and to the short straw goes the cat. But hearken to me, boys! It is not as it seems, for the running of the mill is not merely building maintenance. The donkey is needed to pull the stone to mill the grain. And so, too, must a third brother be involved in weights and measures. There is enough responsibility here for all of you, and the lots you draw will assign your share of the business. You all have a place here, and you are needed. I can help advise you in matters of finance, but no more can I run the mill alone.”
The brothers agreed to pull straws, but when Jack selected the longest, thus receiving the mill proper, he smiled. “I won!” he cried. “You’ll need to clear out by dawn.”
Peter shrugged, having pulled the middle straw. “I always wanted to see the world,” he said. Having inherited the donkey, he now had the means to accomplish his goal.
Petit Jean frowned. “But where shall I go? I have only a cat!”
“That’s not my concern,” Jack said.
“Wait,” I said, seeing the threads of my plans fall to shreds as I spoke. I had not envisioned this turn of events, though their darker natures had been hinted at in the whispers in town. I shrugged off my doubt and continued my appeal for fairness. “This was not my intent. You need help to run the mill, Jack. Without your brothers, it will be a useless endeavor. You can’t do it alone. Did you honestly think I meant to bequeath one of you a donkey and the other with nothing but a cat?”
Jack shrugged. “I care not. Father, you can stay or go as you please, but the others must away on the morrow.”
By the laws of the land, the bargain had been struck in fairness and in fairness it would hold. I cursed myself a fool, but nothing could be done. I watched my youngest sons depart the following day with only the clothes on their backs and the wretched animals they had been given to serve whatever needs they might find useful. I despaired of ever seeing them alive again.
The winter passed in cold days of decline, with darkness and hunger our ever-present companions. We had no donkey to turn the millstone, but neither had we grain to mill. By the breaking of the season, we had turned to boiling shoe leather into a broth to survive. My dreams were haunted by the specters of my absent sons, who had been sent down the beaten path with nothing to shield them from the pangs of starvation I now suffered. I saw no future at the mill, so I said my goodbyes to Jack and set out on my own enfeebled legs to find whatever shreds were left of my missing sons. Appetite cut sharp, but conscience bit even more deeply, and I could not rest until I found them. Or what was left of them.
The road west was a fair one, and it offered more stable lodgings than the town I had left behind. Villagers had been spared the worst of last year’s summer sickness, and they had a better store of food set by as a result. Folks were willing to share, and I regained a bit of strength as I made my journey, though no one had heard of my sons.
I walked through the spring and into the summer months. There had been frequent mentions on the road of a certain Lord Marquis de Carabas, but no one had seen anyone of my sons’ description. “They might be in the employ of the Marquis,” people said. “He has an enormous estate. Inquire at the castle.”
After failing to find sign of them anywhere else, I decided to try the palace. It seemed unlikely, but I had no other ideas about their whereabouts. As I headed north, the tales of the marquis grew more and more outrageous: “I heard that he sleeps in a bed made entirely of diamonds and padded with eiderdown from golden geese that are fed with only the tenderest sweetmeats.” “I heard that when the princess saw him, she fell instantly in love with him because of his handsomeness.” “He was naked when they met because someone stole his clothes while he was bathing! Although I don’t believe that. I’m not one to gossip about such things. The princess has always been nothing but proper, I’m sure. I mean, it’s only natural to want to look at a man with no clothes on. I don’t blame her at all for that.” “He beat an ogre in a game of wits and that’s how he became the marquis. He wasn’t always a nobleman, you know.” “He was raised as a pauper. I don’t know how, but I heard it was true.” “He has a cat what talks!” “His cat wears boots and has a throne next to his! Can you believe such a thing?”
At the gates, I gave my name and stated my business. It was, indeed, a vast estate, encompassing thousands of acres of land. I was admitted entrance and taken to the kitchens, where I was given a bowl of stew. The castle was thriving, and I hoped that my boys had made their way to such a stable environment. Times here were good.
A cat twined through my legs while I ate. I reached down to pet it and felt no bones. It was a sign of prosperity that even the animals were well cared for. “Have you found what you sought here, sir?”
I looked around for the voice, but found no one in the vicinity. The cat jumped up on the bench next to me and pressed close, eager to be stroked. “You look a bit like Petit Jean’s old cat,” I said to myself. The markings on the sides were similar, though they might have belonged to any barn cat. I remembered the distinct tortoiseshell stripes that seemed to form a little coat on the body. I petted him and peered around the kitchen. “Could it be that Petit Jean is here?”
“Indeed he is, though he goes by a much different name now.”
I looked around for the voice, but there was no one in the kitchen with me. Even the woman who had ladled the stew into my bowl had left to attend her chores. Yet someone had spoken, and the sound had been very close. A prickle of unease crawled up my spine. “Who’s there?”
“We can’t have you upsetting our new life,” the voice said.
It almost sounded as if the cat were speaking. I startled, a little spooked. It couldn’t be. Perhaps my fever was returning?
The cat purred. “My master has made a home here and you are just a remnant of an old life. I will untie you before the tapestry unravels, old man.”
It was the cat! My heart hammered as I realized that the feline was speaking in a man’s voice. Before I could shout or jump from my place, he pressed ever closer with his sinuous body and slid a blade across my throat, quick as breathing. Before I could blink, my lifeblood was spilling into the soup and mixing with the juices that had, just a moment before, nourished me and given me hope.
“Your loyalty is repaid,” the cat said. “Be at peace.”
I died on the floor, just another beggar at the hearth of the Lord Marquis de Carabas, my son.
Author: keppiehed
Word Count: 2022
Prompt: rewrite Puss in Boots
A/N: Written for musemuggers, Challenge #518, Option #3, Puss in Boots.
I’ve always been a patient man. A fair man. A man of temperate interests. No gambling for me or taking sides in games of chance that would cause me to lose my hard-earned coppers, not like some I could name. I like to think I’ve been careful with my interests. Frugal, even.
These qualities are what made me a good miller. It takes a steady hand to grind the grain. It calls for someone who can take the long view. When the shadows of winter come calling and the wolves of hunger gnaw in the belly, it takes a calm hand on the scale. Panic can flood the senses when there is naught to eat and the children are crying, but I never gave into blind fear, not even when there was nothing left in the store room save a few moldy husks. I was-I am-the man who could gather a few scattered seeds in the palm of my hand and grind them finer, finer, finer, into a dust so light it might be nothing more than wishes. But those wishes would see us through to the dawn of the springtime, to greener days, to wheat in the fields and to the next harvest. Then the one after that, and the next one after. And so go the passing of the years. It takes a patient man, and a fair one, to be a good miller. I was such a man. Or at least I tried to be.
The rumors about the miller’s sons in those days were not a secret. I’d heard them just like everyone else. I ignored them until I couldn’t afford to turn my ear from the truth any longer. I’d always had Becky to shield me from the domestic disappointments; without her gentle ways, the starkness crushed me as sure as the millstones grind the wheat into flour.
The season that Becky died had been a long and fruitless summer, one of the coldest in living memory. The springtime rains had flooded the fields, and crops were late to be planted. Standing water on the ground spawned a new fever in town that spread to the outlying villages and beyond. Fields that weren’t left fallow were half-tilled for want of healthy workers. The crops that had already been sown were abandoned to grow and wither, unharvested, as people sickened and died of the ague. I buried an infant daughter with my wife, and a son the following winter. My stone sat silent and unmoving for lack of grain to grind. Death was upon us. We merely had to await its clarion call.
What I didn’t understand then anymore than I do now is why I was spared. I opened my eyes to find the delirium had passed with my heart still beating in my chest. Becky was cold in the ground without me beside her, yet I was restored in the worst sort of miracle. I would never fully recover my strength, but I was alive. Alive and alone. I looked down to see my transformation: my hands had become the veined and flaccid members of the aged. My legs had been robbed of any vitality except that which to hold me upright. I could only survive, nothing more. I could not continue my livelihood, which required such fortitudes of physical and mental reserve. I was as the chaff now, and I longed to separate from this life and blow away in the wind.
Of my three remaining sons, none had expressed an interest in milling. I knew well their shortcomings, which were my fault and burden to bear, but it was too late to remedy the situation.
I called them to me, one night in late December.
“I have split my inheritance into the only three parcels that make sense,” I said. “One of you shall inherit from me the mill, which is the bulk of the estate. The other shall inherit the donkey, and the third shall be master of the cat.”
“What!” said Jack, the oldest son. “What sort of sense does that make?”
“What should one do with a donkey?” Peter, the middle son, inquired.
“Or worse yet,” the youngest, Petit Jean said, “a cat?”
I held up a hand. “If you will but listen, I shall explain my decision. I am unfit to continue this business any longer, and it shall pass to you. You shall draw straws for your lot of the estate: the longest straw gets the mill, the middle straw gets the donkey, and to the short straw goes the cat. But hearken to me, boys! It is not as it seems, for the running of the mill is not merely building maintenance. The donkey is needed to pull the stone to mill the grain. And so, too, must a third brother be involved in weights and measures. There is enough responsibility here for all of you, and the lots you draw will assign your share of the business. You all have a place here, and you are needed. I can help advise you in matters of finance, but no more can I run the mill alone.”
The brothers agreed to pull straws, but when Jack selected the longest, thus receiving the mill proper, he smiled. “I won!” he cried. “You’ll need to clear out by dawn.”
Peter shrugged, having pulled the middle straw. “I always wanted to see the world,” he said. Having inherited the donkey, he now had the means to accomplish his goal.
Petit Jean frowned. “But where shall I go? I have only a cat!”
“That’s not my concern,” Jack said.
“Wait,” I said, seeing the threads of my plans fall to shreds as I spoke. I had not envisioned this turn of events, though their darker natures had been hinted at in the whispers in town. I shrugged off my doubt and continued my appeal for fairness. “This was not my intent. You need help to run the mill, Jack. Without your brothers, it will be a useless endeavor. You can’t do it alone. Did you honestly think I meant to bequeath one of you a donkey and the other with nothing but a cat?”
Jack shrugged. “I care not. Father, you can stay or go as you please, but the others must away on the morrow.”
By the laws of the land, the bargain had been struck in fairness and in fairness it would hold. I cursed myself a fool, but nothing could be done. I watched my youngest sons depart the following day with only the clothes on their backs and the wretched animals they had been given to serve whatever needs they might find useful. I despaired of ever seeing them alive again.
The winter passed in cold days of decline, with darkness and hunger our ever-present companions. We had no donkey to turn the millstone, but neither had we grain to mill. By the breaking of the season, we had turned to boiling shoe leather into a broth to survive. My dreams were haunted by the specters of my absent sons, who had been sent down the beaten path with nothing to shield them from the pangs of starvation I now suffered. I saw no future at the mill, so I said my goodbyes to Jack and set out on my own enfeebled legs to find whatever shreds were left of my missing sons. Appetite cut sharp, but conscience bit even more deeply, and I could not rest until I found them. Or what was left of them.
The road west was a fair one, and it offered more stable lodgings than the town I had left behind. Villagers had been spared the worst of last year’s summer sickness, and they had a better store of food set by as a result. Folks were willing to share, and I regained a bit of strength as I made my journey, though no one had heard of my sons.
I walked through the spring and into the summer months. There had been frequent mentions on the road of a certain Lord Marquis de Carabas, but no one had seen anyone of my sons’ description. “They might be in the employ of the Marquis,” people said. “He has an enormous estate. Inquire at the castle.”
After failing to find sign of them anywhere else, I decided to try the palace. It seemed unlikely, but I had no other ideas about their whereabouts. As I headed north, the tales of the marquis grew more and more outrageous: “I heard that he sleeps in a bed made entirely of diamonds and padded with eiderdown from golden geese that are fed with only the tenderest sweetmeats.” “I heard that when the princess saw him, she fell instantly in love with him because of his handsomeness.” “He was naked when they met because someone stole his clothes while he was bathing! Although I don’t believe that. I’m not one to gossip about such things. The princess has always been nothing but proper, I’m sure. I mean, it’s only natural to want to look at a man with no clothes on. I don’t blame her at all for that.” “He beat an ogre in a game of wits and that’s how he became the marquis. He wasn’t always a nobleman, you know.” “He was raised as a pauper. I don’t know how, but I heard it was true.” “He has a cat what talks!” “His cat wears boots and has a throne next to his! Can you believe such a thing?”
At the gates, I gave my name and stated my business. It was, indeed, a vast estate, encompassing thousands of acres of land. I was admitted entrance and taken to the kitchens, where I was given a bowl of stew. The castle was thriving, and I hoped that my boys had made their way to such a stable environment. Times here were good.
A cat twined through my legs while I ate. I reached down to pet it and felt no bones. It was a sign of prosperity that even the animals were well cared for. “Have you found what you sought here, sir?”
I looked around for the voice, but found no one in the vicinity. The cat jumped up on the bench next to me and pressed close, eager to be stroked. “You look a bit like Petit Jean’s old cat,” I said to myself. The markings on the sides were similar, though they might have belonged to any barn cat. I remembered the distinct tortoiseshell stripes that seemed to form a little coat on the body. I petted him and peered around the kitchen. “Could it be that Petit Jean is here?”
“Indeed he is, though he goes by a much different name now.”
I looked around for the voice, but there was no one in the kitchen with me. Even the woman who had ladled the stew into my bowl had left to attend her chores. Yet someone had spoken, and the sound had been very close. A prickle of unease crawled up my spine. “Who’s there?”
“We can’t have you upsetting our new life,” the voice said.
It almost sounded as if the cat were speaking. I startled, a little spooked. It couldn’t be. Perhaps my fever was returning?
The cat purred. “My master has made a home here and you are just a remnant of an old life. I will untie you before the tapestry unravels, old man.”
It was the cat! My heart hammered as I realized that the feline was speaking in a man’s voice. Before I could shout or jump from my place, he pressed ever closer with his sinuous body and slid a blade across my throat, quick as breathing. Before I could blink, my lifeblood was spilling into the soup and mixing with the juices that had, just a moment before, nourished me and given me hope.
“Your loyalty is repaid,” the cat said. “Be at peace.”
I died on the floor, just another beggar at the hearth of the Lord Marquis de Carabas, my son.