After the Tornado

Deep within a tainted castle, an innocent lass sat slumped upon bales of straw, contemplating her options. Papa’s dispensation of humiliation and her refusal to woo a despicable King had landed her upon this itchy bed. How horrible to be poor, without a dowry, without a mother to shut the Papa up. She twisted her heart-shaped locket, smearing black smudge back and forth, back and forth across her collarbone: a cheap token, but all her mother had left behind. What good was it to her, powerless as she was? She’d a mind to toss it out a window, had there been one cut into the greystone walls. Time didn’t exist within the confines of this whitewashed space.

Last she’d been bathed in light, she and Papa had bumped heads perusing a grocery shelf, commiserating over the scarcity of honey: liquid gold, she’d called it. He had laughed, “You have a way of turning darkness into light.”

Rosalyn remembered spreading honey across buttered toast; licking her fingers of its drips. The sweetness of the memory contained Mama’s bell-like laughter. Rosalyn and Papa rarely chuckled these days of environmental degradation. No honey sweetened their bread. Breathing itself had less and less appeal, inspiring coughs and hoarse throats. Many wealthy wore oxygen masks.

Suddenly, Mr. High and Mighty, Ruler of the Universe -according to himself- entered the commissary, surrounded by his constant and adoring entourage, jockeying for media attention, voices blaring fake news to impress. “My son’s stock portfolio outshines the Old Buffoon’s and he pays zero taxes!” “My daughter’s company overran Coca Cola’s plastic pollution stats!”

The Royal Dictator gazed with boredom over these bobbing heads and came to rest on Papa, whose white eyebrows and stubbly beard suggested wisdom. “What of your daughter, standing there? What claim has she to fame?”

“I promise you, I have none, Sir,” Rosalyn began. But Papa pushed her aside.

Squinting through thick glasses, his blue eyes glossed over. “My Rosalyn? She spins straw into gold!” He spoke the words as in a dream, besotted, as he was, with this empty challenge and a tightening spread across the King’s flaccid jowls at the hypnotic power of her father’s claim.

Rosalyn stood, defiant. It wasn’t enough that lush green grasses, rose red aromas and pristine lakes had disappeared as Mama did. With their departure, Papa had lost his grasp of reality, overridden by self-protective hubris. “Papa meant to claim I have straw-colored hair that shimmers gold if and when the sun ever breaks through smog.”

The King shrugged. “That is not what he said.”

She grabbed at her locket, though its pewter would not save her. “He speaks of my heart of gold, but in reality he means this paltry locket…” She offered it up to the salivating King. He ignored it. Her mind raced. “Decades refining oil has burned a black hole in his vocabularic brain, challenging his ability to discern reality.”

Mr. High and Mighty was not buying it. “Gold from straw!” His breath was foul upon her quivering nose. “Such a woman I must have for my wife.”

“I will not spin straw into gold to win your hand in marriage!” Rosalyn spat. “Even if I am able, I would not.”

“You will.” The scalawag said. “Or you will die.”

Weighed against life with this man, death was preferable, she thought, inhaling the musty scent of fresh straw. She settled in to her fate. Was it barley, rye, wheat, rice or oat stalk, she wondered, settling on oat. What use were dry stalks? Cows consumed straw as roughage. Straw hats protected one’s forehead from the blazing sun at noon. Mushrooms and cucumbers were difficult to cultivate without straw and strawberries remained safe beneath its cushion. Bales rendered with earthen plaster insulated buildings, roofs were thatched, straw was compressed into strawblocks. Straw inspired no greed. When all became gold, what would Mr. High and Mighty eat? Gold was only good for purchase. Melted down, it might contain polluted water or wilted beans.

A sudden spark and whoosh of smoke revealed a strange presence: a pocked reptile? A troll with rotted, yellow teeth? Already facing her demise, Rosalyn did not flinch, but looked with kindness upon this rogue apparition. “Have you come to decapitate me?” she asked.

He -for it was a he, she noticed- he raised his chin and howled, tongue slithering like a lizard sensing wind’s direction. “Not in the slightest. I have come to resurrect you.”

“Do I wish to be resurrected?” She wasn’t convinced. “I will not marry Mr. Despicable. That is a fate worse than death. Besides, I believe I must resurrect myself.”

His expression transformed. “Indeed. But you have little chance of that, for at dawn, capital punishment will remove your head and that of your Papa.”

“Papa?” Her chest tightened around her heart.

“He will be proved a liar and though Mr. Odious lies like a dead fish in polluted water, muckraking inspires his insanity; he will not tolerate it. I can buy you time by spinning this straw into gold. Only you must give me that which you most value.”

Rosalyn stood, paced, twisted her heart-shaped locket, rolling it across her collar bones. “My stories are what I most value,” she admitted. “And my heart. Both are contained within this necklace from my mother.”

“I will take it as down payment for your first child,” he said, tearing it from her neck. “I am lonely.”

“Ow!” she cried. The chain cut like a blade before it popped the clasp. “You have drawn blood. You have your payment; I shall be forever scarred.”

“Very well,” he said. “For now.” And he spun the bales of straw into gold.

At dawn, Papa led a band of groupies to where Rosalyn slept. Noting the baskets of gold, all but Papa raced up stairs to spread the news.

“Miracles happen,” Papa whispered, his tears wetting her hair. “As Queen you will save the Earth from this monster; you will have influence! You will see.”

“Papa, you cannot ask this of me. I have no such power to change the Earth. Again, you manipulate my future with your braggadocio. Listen carefully: I will not marry the King!”

A deep silence swept across the cellar room. It was the High and Mighty Narcissist, come to claim his bride. Out of the silence rose an all-encompassing rage. “I heard that.” His words were thunderous and echoed wall to wall. Rosalyn covered her ears to block the sound. She felt him tower above her and covered her face with her flowing yellow locks.

He spoke like a thundercloud; imagining himself as Thor. “You will spin a penitent night of straw to gold, while I contemplate forgiving you an attempted humiliation. Meditate on this: should you again begrime me, your father will be trapped inside a cage, covered in honey. At my command, you will toss in a nest of angry German Yellowjackets.”

Papa fainted as the door slammed shut behind the Cruel One with a decisive clang.

Rosalyn shrunk to the floor, hugging her shoulders. “I will have to marry him.” Papa’s hair shrouded his glasses. She leaned forward and brushed them aside. How did he deserve this? He had spoken a lie of delusion; he had always believed she could do anything if she set her mind to it. Torture was undeserved. “I will marry him, Papa. There is no other way out.”

Bales of straw were hauled into the room. So many bales, Rosalyn and Papa were forced into the far corners. Once the door gave a final clang, Rosalyn scaled mountains and valleys to where the spinning wheel stood., but Papa remained like a dunce in his corner, shrunken, aged.

“How did you do it?” he asked. “Last night. You spun straw into gold last night. How?”

She inhaled the scent of fresh straw; barley this lot, she supposed.

“I had a helper,” she said. “I cannot determine how to do it, even though I watched this little companion spin through the night.”

“Perhaps he will come again?” Papa’s voice sounded hopeful.

“Perhaps.” The consequences of his appearance this night was beyond her comprehension. A friend, indeed, but one who took advantage of a friend in need. She had no necklace. That left his request for her first-born child. Should she marry the King- Brute Force, she named him- she might have a child, through a similar coercion. Hadn’t Shakespeare said something like, Woe, what a life we weave, when we start a relationship aiming to deceive?

How might she turn this alchemical situation around? The Rumpled Little Man had spun for her, buying another day that made Papa’s and her situation worse. What might she do for this strange creature, to satisfy his …emptiness? He had access to all the money in the world. He had no family. She could give herself to him; become his wife. But the King would kill them both- and Papa- upon learning he had been deceived. Perhaps the strange reptilian man could change the King into gold. Or she could, through story?

There was a mystical thought; she could weave a golden story from the straw surrounding her. Straw was part of something more sustainable than gold. Gold held value when it was exchanged, but in truth, it was simply a shiny mineral that did not tarnish. Straw bore grain to feed the world. And the world needed sustenance. Why must it be purchased with gold? Why did those who shored up paper claimed to define wealth hold more value than an actual food source? She racked her brain. She was running out of time. Where was the friend who rattled straw into gold? She felt for her necklace, realizing it was in his hands even as her life and Papa’s life remained there.

She was dreaming if she thought for one second the Despicable Man might be persuaded from torturing her -or marrying her. What did that man want? Love?

It always boiled down to love, didn’t it? She thought back to Mama, how they had argued on the very day Mama disappeared. “You ungrateful child!” Mama had burst into tears moments before she was sucked out of the kitchen, tossed back and forth in that black hole Roselyn later discovered was a tornado.

Mama had cooked and sewed and dried tears and mended socks, without a “thank you” all those years. Amazing what a girl realized, when it was too late. Well, here she was, smothered in straw. Might she be grateful for bale upon bale of straw? Surely that might please her disappeared Mama, swept from her in a moment of rage?

Roslyn placed her hands upon the straw. “I thank the Universe for this most humble straw,” she said with great solemnity. “For our Dictator, my future husband, who believes gold will transform his humiliation. For the Rumpelstiltskin willing to rattle dry stalks to discover family. For Papa, who brags I can do anything. And Mama? You longed to hear the simplest murmur of gratitude, but I could not say the words. Not then, but it’s never too late. You taught me this. It’s never too late, you once said. So Mama, I am grateful for these black streaks of love, forever tattooed across my collar bones by your disappeared locket. I long for a daughter, named after you. A daughter who will hear stories of you and express appreciation, where I could not. And so it is, and so it shall be done.”

A crack and poof of smoke: Earth rotated a new orbit.