Debbie Banna - Shattered Dreams, New Beginnings
Tony stretched, scratched and rolled over. His back felt stiff and his clothes were damp. Slowly he opened one eye. Startled by the sight of a woodchuck munching happily on a dandelion only inches from his nose, he screamed and jumped to his feet. The woodchuck, just as surprised, dropped the flower and waddled as quickly as his legs would take him back into the tall grass at the edge of the clearing. Tony looked around to be sure no one had witnessed his performance then brushed himself off. He was wet. Had it rained? If it had, Tony thought, he would have woken up. Strange. And was he ever hungry! It felt like he hadn’t eaten in days. Well, it seemed that he’d slept enough and now he needed to get into town before nightfall. Funny but it seemed like the sun should be in the west by now instead of almost overhead.
Gathering up his pack, Tony took a rest stop behind a tree and then regained the road to continue on his journey. That was once heck of a nap, he thought to himself. I feel like I slept for days. The sun was warm on his back and his clothing soon was dry. “All alone,” Tony muttered to no one in particular. “My baby’s gone. Now what do I do?”
Keeping to the road, it wasn’t more than an hour or so before Tony saw signs of human life. A house was visible at the end of a long dirt road leading into a wood. A little further, he narrowly missed stepping in the droppings of a horse, scattered in the road in front of him. “Crap!” Tony uttered as he double stepped to avoid it. Ten minutes later, he entered the town but there was something strange going on. Or…not going on.
Tony entered town and walked until he reached the City Square. He was the only one there. He was greeted with by eerie silence. “Hello!” he shouted. “Anyone home? Aw, where the heck could everybody be? This is a city not some backwater farmland. Hello!” he yelled, becoming irritated. “What the bejeebers is going on?” He dropped his pack beside a bench on the square and walked to the nearest store. “Store closed,” he read on a sign posted in the window. Crossing the street, he grabbed the knob of a door to a casino. Locked! Walking down the street he tried a bakery, a hotel and a jewelry store where a sale on engagement rings was advertised. All were locked and empty. “Great! Just my luck to decide to stay in a town with no people,” he griped. Shrugging his shoulders and throwing up his hands in defeat, he returned to the bench where he left his pack and sat down to wait.
Two hours later, he was still waiting and growing hungrier by the minute. “Okay. So now what do I do?" he asked himself. "There has to be something to eat around here.”
“Cockadoodledoo,” came a reply form somewhere down the road.
“Aha! Where there’s a rooster, there’s a barn. Where there’s a barn there are animals. Where there’re animals there’s food,” said Tony, jumping to his feet. With determination, he set off down the road to find a meal.
The line stretched for almost a mile and, as the sun began to set, Rose despaired of ever being able to leave her place in the royal box where she had sat since early morning. The crowds of people waiting to pay their respects to Princess Virginia had not thinned, though many of the visitors’ patience had in the long hours of waiting. The royal guards had been called at least ten times today to quell disturbances in the courtyard, and with night drawing near and many people deciding to make this a holiday and camp near the castle, it looked to be a long night for the soldiers.
It seemed to Rose that every man, woman and child in the Fourth Kingdom had walked past Virginia’s glass shrine today along with half the citizens of every other kingdom. She had never realized how many people made their home within her husband’s kingdom. Since most of her life she had lived within the confines of the forest, her knowledge of the abundance of folk who lived within the cities of the realm was limited. At times like this, she wistfully longed for the simplicity of the forest again. If it were not for the chance to encounter her faithful friends from her past (some part wolf, some full wolf) who had also come to pay their respects, Rose would be tempted to leap from her chair and flee to the safety and security the woods would offer her. And then there was Wendell…sitting by her side with patient endurance and a regal bearing, stroking her hand, and whispering encouragement when no one was listening. How proud she was to be the queen of such a tender and loving man. As she turned to Wendell and looked into his clear blue eyes, she found the strength to smile and hold her head up higher as the next wave of mourners paraded before them and slowly passed by.
Following his instincts and the sound of animal noises, Tony found his way to the old, rundown farm on the far side of Kissingtown. And, sure enough, he was rewarded with the sight of a decaying, white barn leaning to one side behind the farmhouse. “Now, we’re getting somewhere,” he muttered as he crossed the barnyard, carefully placing his feet in areas unoccupied by manure. He grasped the crosspiece barring the barn door, threw it to one side and entered the fragrant darkness. With a flapping of feathers a startled hen collided with Tony’s face. “G...e…e…e…t out of here, stupid bird!” he shouted as he stepped back and flailed his arms in the air. Then, remembering his purpose for being here, Tony whirled in the direction toward which the chicken had fled. “Oh, here chicky chicky chicky. Nice chicky. Tasty chicky. Come to daddy!” Tony started after the nervous bird, arms opened wide, making little clucking sounds as he went. For the next few minutes, a challenging battle of wits took place, with the chicken showing more proficiency in the contest than Tony. Then, finding himself winded and no closer to dinner than before, Tony stopped his chase and sat down in the straw.
“How in tarnation did Wolf ever catch one of these stupid birds?” he grumbled. “All right. Let’s think. There has to be something else here.” A sudden slapping sting to the face and a mouth full of hair interrupted Tony’s reverie. He grabbed for the object of his annoyance and found it attached to the backside of a docile bovine in a stall to his right. “Aha! Milk! There’s an idea,” he shouted, dropping the tail and getting to his feet. “I need something to put this in,” he said as he searched the immediate area for a pail. He was rewarded for his effort with a bump to the head as he leaned under a low beam to pull a bucket from a nearby nail. “Ow!” he said, rubbing the bruise with his free hand as he worked his way back under the beam and made for the cow. “Nice bossy,” he crooned, edging himself and the pail close to the drooping udder of the beast. “Now how do you work these things?”
Tony dropped to his knees in the straw and positioned the bucket, then gingerly grabbed a teat. “Moo!” the cow bawled, turning to give Tony a disgusted look.
“Hey! Shut up! I’m doing the best I can,” he said as he gave the udder a tug. A pleasing tinny sound rang from the bucket as a stream of creamy milk hit the pail. “This isn’t so tough. What are you complaining about?” he asked the old bovine. He continued to tug and squirt for a moment or two, then decided to sample the fruits of his labor. But as his hand dropped the pap, old bossy raised a hoof and gave the bucket a kick. The pail flew out from under the cow in the direction of Tony, splashing its contents in the hay, the floor, and mostly on his shirt. Tony hopped to his feet fussing and muttering, “ Ah, you stupid…they should have traded you in for a milkman years ago. He brushed at his shirt, then licked his hand, hoping for a taste of the milk. He bent over to pick up the bucket and ‘bossy’ chose that moment to flick her tail his way again. This time he ignored the whipping tail, which caught him on the cheek, as he peered hopefully into the pail. The smallest puddle of warm, creamy froth swirled around the bottom so Tony tipped it to his lips to salvage the remains. Then, tossing the bucket into the corner, and with a final glare at the cow, Tony stalked from the barn.
He approached the farmhouse, crossed the porch and grasped the doorknob, twisting it left and right. “What kind of people lock their doors in fairyland?” he asked with disgust. “What are they afraid of? The big bad wolf?” he laughed at his joke. Then reaching over to a stack of bricks piled on the porch, he looked over his shoulder, then turned back and tossed it through the window of the house. Deftly and without a bit of hesitation, he reached in, unlocked the window, pushed up the sash and climbed in.
