Sterling Silver Saves the Queen

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Secret Agent Sterling Silver pressed his ear against the floor to better hear the conversation beneath him.

“No one will ever find it,” said the woman’s voice.

“It won’t matter of they do,” said the man.  “They couldn’t stop it anyway.  Did you put it where we discussed?”

“Yes, it’s room 412.  But instead of putting it….I put it under the…”

Sterling strained to hear, but still some words were lost.

“That will do.  It is set for four o’clock?”

“Yes.”

“She should be…in plenty of time.”

Sterling Silver had heard enough.  It was clear there was a bomb, and it was already set.  Quietly he stood up and slipped out the door.  It was important that the conspirators did not know they had been discovered.  They might set it off early, and who knows how many people would be killed.  Four o’clock.  That was the time that the queen would be giving her speech in the lobby of the prestigious St. Anne’s Hotel.  That could only mean that Room 412 was in that same hotel.  He had just enough time to get there.

Fortunately, his top secret super speed spy car was waiting for him by the back door.  He sped along, taking the corners at high speed, using one hand to call up the the floor plan of the St. Anne.  Just as he suspected, Room 412 was directly over the lobby.  Skidding to a stop in a side alley, Sterling swung up onto the window ledge of the second floor.  He knew there would be dozens of guards around the hotel to watch over the queen, and he didn’t have time to explain to them why he needed to get to the fourth floor.  Pulling a tool from his back pocket, he pried open the window and slipped inside.  In moments he was opening the door to room 412.

Now he only had to find the bomb.  He checked his spy watch.  Ten minutes until four o’clock.  There was no time to waste.  What was it that the woman had said.  It was under something.  What could it be under?  Quickly he checked the bed, the chairs, the end tables.  Nothing.  Now it was only five minutes until four.  Sterling stood perfectly still and used all his spy senses.  Time passed, but he forced himself to be still and listen.  Was that a noise he heard?  The slightest little ticking coming from behind the curtains…under the window!  In a flash Sterling was throwing back the drapes and dropping to his knees in front of the small bomb.

A clock counted down the time until the explosion.  There was only one minute left.  Sterling pried the cover off and studied the cords underneath.  There was a red one, a black one, a green one, and a yellow one.  Every spy knows that you have to cut the correct wire if you are going to stop a bomb from exploding.  Cut the wrong one and the whole thing blows up.  But Sterling Silver did not get to be the number one secret agent in the country by cutting the wrong wire.  Without hesitation, he cut the red wire.  The countdown on the bomb stopped.

Then behind him he heard a quiet click.  Slowly he turned.

A man was standing between him and the door, holding a gun in his hand.  It was pointed at Sterling.  “Now you will turn around,” said the man.  “And you will replace that red wire with the one I am holding out to you.”

Sterling watched the man take a new red wire out of his pocket.

“Move slowly and make no sudden moves, or I will shoot you.  Do not stop, or I will shoot you.  Have the bomb working again in three minutes, or I will shoot you.  Take the cord now.”

“I don’t think so.”  Quick as lightening, Sterling grabbed the cord and yanked, causing the man to stumble forward.  There was a bang! as the gun went off, but the bullet went through the window.  Sliding forward, Sterling knocked the man’s legs from under him, then whipped around and snatched the gun from his hand.  In less than thirty seconds, the man was tied up and laying on the bed.

Downstairs the queen was beginning her speech.  No one had any idea of the catastrophe that Sterling had just averted, and they never would.  It was important that it be kept a secret how close the queen had been to danger.  He smiled to himself as he cleaned up the mess and prepared to take the gunman down to the police station.  Secret was just the way Sterling Silver liked it.

Conversation

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Said the cactus to the rose,
“How I wish I were like you.
You are pleasant for the nose
And the eyes all love you, too.
People plant you in their gardens
And they treat you with great care
Then they give you to their loved ones
Or they wear you in their hair.
No one mulches me or prunes me
No one wishes I’d grow faster
No loved one wants me for their birthday
And wearing me’d be a disaster.

Said the rose, “You must be kidding.
I’m the one who wants to be
like a cactus in the desert
Standing tall and strong and free.
You don’t need a hand to tend you.
You don’t droop in too much sun.
No one cuts you up and steals you.
They take pictures, then they’re done.
I’m at the mercy of all people.
I have thorns, but still they pick me.
While you are left alone, defended
By your skin so tough and prickly.”

Said the bee to both, “Oh, zip it!
All you flowers are so funny.
All that matters are your blossoms,
and both work fine for making honey.”

The Slowest Elephant on Earth

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Edward the elephant was slow.  He was very slow.  He was very, very, very, very, very, very, very slow.  He was so slow that he was regularly passed by snails and tortoises.  He was so slow that he would often only get halfway to where he was going when it would be time to turn around and go home again.   He was so slow that in all the time it has taken me to write these words, he would only have taken one step.  At the most.

Edward’s mother was always trying to make him hurry up.  She wanted him to keep up with the rest of the herd.  The other mothers offered her advice about how to make him go faster.  But nothing she tried worked.  If she nagged him, he just put his head down and kept. moving. slowly.  If she punished him for arriving late, he just took the punishment and kept. moving. slowly.  If she promised him rewards for moving more quickly, he never earned them because he kept. moving. slowly.  Finally, Edward’s mother gave up and let him be.

All of Edward’s friends made fun of him for being so slow.  They made jokes and called him names and did all the mean things friends do when they aren’t really being friends.  Only once did anyone ever actually ask Edward why he moved so slowly.  But he talked so slowly that no one stayed around to listen to the whole answer.  Edward just shrugged and kept. moving. slowly.

It wasn’t easy being slow.  Edward had to find his own place to eat because if he went grazing with the herd all the good leaves would be gone long before he could get to them.  He had to find his own watering hole because he was always the last to arrive and the water was all muddy by the time it was his turn.  And of course, Edward missed out on all the elephant parties because he could never get there before they were over.  Being slow got a bit lonely at times.

The one really good thing about moving so slowly, though, was that Edward had plenty of time to look around him.  And he noticed everything.  He noticed that there were over three hundred shades of green in the trees and grass around him.  He noticed that the birds flew in certain formations depending on the weather that was coming.  He noticed that some elephants always stayed close to the group and others liked to wander off on their own.

Naturally, then, he was the first to notice that the river was drying up.  First he noticed that the level of water was a tiny hair lower each day.  Then he noticed that the air was more dusty than before.  Then he noticed that the leaves were a little more crispy than before.  These changes were so small that no one else had time to notice them at all.

Edward tried to warn the herd leader that the river was drying up and soon there would be no water.  But the herd leader got impatient with how long it took Edward to say things, and he sent him home without listening.  Edward tried to warn his mother and his friends, but they just laughed at the idea that he might know something they did not.  Finally Edward knew he was going to have to take matters into his own hands.

The next day, Edward slowly gathered up a pile of leaves.  It took him all day to get as many as he needed.  The day after that, Edward went to the river and gathered water in jugs to carry on his back.  He was so slow at scooping water that it took him the whole second day just to fill two water jugs.  Finally, on the third day, Edward set off alone to walk upstream and find out what was wrong with the river.  Everyone laughed when they saw Edward preparing for a long journey.  They said he would need three weeks just to get out of their camp. Ignoring them all, Edward moved slowly along.

Every day, Edward walked along the river, looking around him for signs of what had gone wrong.  He traveled many, many days before he saw what he was looking for.  Up in the hills, where the river flowed down out of the mountains, Edward saw a place where a landslide had thrown many tiny rocks into the river.  The river was choked down to a narrow stream coming through that place and every day more pebbles slid down the mess and choked the river more.  It would be an enormous job to clean away all those pebbles and free up the stream.  It would also have to be done very slowly or it would only cause another avalanche that would make things worse.  Fortunately, Edward was used to things taking a very long time to accomplish, and he certainly had no intention of being reckless or quick.

For two weeks, Edward moved those pebbles, one at a time, out of the river.  When he finally finished, the river ran free and clear again and was back up to its normal height.  Edward wondered if anyone back home would notice the difference.   He figured they wouldn’t.  He figured they would never know what he had done and how he had saved them all.  Edward smiled to himself.  He knew, and that was enough.  With his head held high, Edward turned downstream and kept moving slowly toward home.

Time Out Tuesday – Bringing the SASS

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That’s right, I decided to officially name this experiment SASS. Super Awesome Story September. Because that’s my idea of a catchy acronym. Of course, my idea of a cute thumbnail picture of myself was me wearing this princess hat at a little tea party we had with the girl cousins during our big visit last month. I thought it would be so cute and fairy tale and mommy-ish. Instead, every time I look at it now it just says sad medieval fair. And I can’t replace it until I get a better picture, and that is unlikely to ever happen. My point? A week from now I will probably be looking back at this acronym with shame. And yet it stands. I’ve already come to grips with the humiliation that comes along with attempting to create. Sort of.

So here’s what SASS is all about:

1. Every day in September I’m going to post a new story or poem.
2. I’ll be trying to keep all the stories under a thousand words so you don’t get too bored while reading them day after day.
3. I have a preset list of prompts that tells me what I have to write each day. I did make the list myself (though many of the ideas came from my kids), but I haven’t prewritten any of the stories.

Here is the list of prompts:
1. The slowest elephant on earth
2. Talking flowers
3. A spy and a bomb
4. A giant alligator
5. The tree that holds up the world
6. The case of the disappearing socks
7. The yellow dog
8. What’s happening inside the fridge
9. My best friend the robot
10. Dust riders
11. Super hero duck
12. The mysterious dancing pants
13. The camel who wished he was a dog
14. Madam Mango’s Moonbeam Machine
15. A dolphin and some lava
16. A duck wins a trophy
17. A train and a pony racing
18. A farmer and his goats
19. The birthday wishes
20. On safari
21. The princess who hated her bath
22. Polite Pirates
23. Hamster heaven
24. The teeny tiny monster
25. A superhero’s cape
26. To the moon
27. The mermaid’s hair
28. Grumpy Gracie
29. Snow angels
30. Seeing the future

So that’s the plan. I’ll see you back here tomorrow with that first story. I’m off to spend the next 24 hours thinking about elephants.

Blueberry

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a bowl full of berries helps the medicine go down

Image by Darwin Bell via Flickr

For a thing so seemingly small
Your taste is a hundred miles tall
As juicy as you are round
You’re the sweetest thing I have found
Without you it couldn’t be summer
And life would be such a bummer
You’re my favorite food that is blue
Oh blueberry, I love you

The Gurgle of the Burblemarsh

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Claire walked along the edge of the burblemarsh, listening to the zangers creak out their painful melodies. She had always hated this place, with its greenish-orangish mud, its drab weeping trees, its irritating insects, and its foul mustardy smell.

Every year her father made her come and spend three weeks at her grandmother’s house, right in the middle of the burbliest part of the burblemarsh. Every year she promised herself that she would stay inside the house the whole time and read books and pretend that she was someplace beautiful for the summer. Every year, after a week or so alone in the house with her grandmother’s non-stop nagging, Claire finally escaped outside to take a walk. Every year, she regretted that decision as soon as she laid eyes once more on the burblemarsh.

What a thoroughly nasty place, she thought. Why would her grandmother want to live here?

A few steps ahead she could see a scraggly tree bending down over the bubbling marsh mud. The tree was quite ugly, but it was slightly less repellent than the rest of the scenery, so Claire decided to go and sit in its shade for a while, close her eyes, and try to imagine that it was really a lovely Laurelash tree like they had back home. When she reached the tree, however, she found that she did not want to close her eyes. Growing out of the muck at the base of the sad little tree were seven gorgeous blossoms. Each one was a different color: riotous red, eye-popping pink, spectacular scarlet, outrageous orange, sunny yellow, sparkling violet, and beautiful buttercup.

Claire could not stop staring. It was hard to believe that such radiant flowers could be growing out of that sticky, oozy goo. In fact, Claire didn’t believe it at all. In all the years she had been coming here, she had never seen anything bright and cheery in the burblemarsh, much less the loveliest flowers she had ever imagined. Someone must be playing a trick on her. Claire reached down to touch the flowers.

“No, no! You musn’t touch!” squealed a little voice. “They aren’t ready yet!”

Claire jerked back and hit her head on a branch. “Ouch!”

“Don’t touch the branch either!” warned the voice. “It’s just about to catch on.”

Completely confused, Claire looked around to see who was talking to her. After a couple of minutes, she finally noticed a very short, lumpy creature with blotchy red and brown fur and strange forked ears. She’d never seen anything like it.

“Don’t mean to be rude,” squeaked the creature, “but look!”

Claire looked where spindly finger was pointing. The branch she’d just hit her head on was slowly beginning to glow. The glow spread up the tree, and soon it looked as if the whole tree were burning from the inside. Blossoms pushed up out of the glow, blossoms that looked exactly like the ones in the mud below. After a few minutes, the glow faded, leaving behind a tree that no longer drooped, but shone with golden bark and a load of spectacular blooms. Without even meaning to, Claire reached out a hand to touch it. She had completely forgotten about the strange creature.

“Not yet! Not yet! Wait til it has the chance to spread!”

Claire turned her stare back to the creature. “Who are you?”

“Me? I’m Urd. I’m the gurgle of the burblemarsh.”

None of that made any sense to Claire. “Did you say you’re the…gurgle?”

Urd nodded. “I’m the gurgle of the burblemarsh.”

“You live here then?” Claire couldn’t keep the note of pity out her voice.

“You don’t like it here,” observed the gurgle.

“How could anyone like it here? It’s so horrible and ugly.”

“Is it?” asked the gurgle, gesturing at the glorious blossoms in the muck, at the tree, and at the grass which was currently undergoing the same transformation that the tree had.

“Did you do this?” asked Claire.

“I gave it the tip. It looks especially wonderful this time, don’t you think?”

“It is wonderful,” said Claire. “I’ve never seen anything wonderful here before.”

“Naturally not,” said Urd. “This hasn’t happened in eighteen years.”

“Eighteen years!”

“Of course. It takes that long for the burblemarsh to be ready.”

Claire was speechless as she watched the glow spread from grass to trees to ragged shrubs to oozing mud. Soon she was surrounded by glittering gold and extravagant color. It was like the best dream in the world. Claire wanted to look and look forever. She wished she didn’t have to blink. She was so enraptured with the world around her that she didn’t even notice that Urd gave a little chuckle as he disappeared through the thick grass, now waving in a happy little breeze.

When the transformation was complete, Claire walked slowly home, finding new wonders as every turn. It wasn’t until she reached the garden gate that she saw her grandmother standing outside her front door with a radiant smile, looking twenty years younger.

“So now you know,” Grandmother said.

“You wait eighteen years for this?” asked Claire quietly.

“It’s worth the wait,” said Grandmother. “Don’t you think?”

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What did the rest of you come up with? Click the icon below and fill in your name and URL to link up. Can’t wait to read what you’ve got!

Three

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Once upon a time there was a three-headed monster, and he was the only one of his kind.  He did not look at all like what you would expect a three-headed monster to look like.  His three heads didn’t sit next to each other on giant broad shoulders.  Oh no, his three heads sat one upon the other upon the other on top of very normal man-sized shoulders.  As you might imagine, this made him extremely tall, so tall that he was always hitting his top  head on doorways as he walked through them.  For that reason, the top head was convinced that he had the hardest lot in life.

“The two of you are so lucky that you are not on top,” he said to the other heads.  “I’m always getting bashed on things.  I have a permanent lump right here on my forehead.  When it rains, I’m the one who gets the wettest.  When it’s hot out, I’m the one who gets sunburned.  And when we walk under the trees, the branches get caught in my hair.”

“Your hair!” exclaimed the middle head.  “Your hair is exactly why it’s so much harder to be me.  You keep growing your hair so long and it tickles the top of my head.  And the hair on the bottom head tickles my chin.  You don’t know what I suffer from tickles all day long.  And when the wind blows, it’s even worse.  All that hair from above and below gets in my eyes so that I can’t see and in my nose and makes me sneeze terribly.”

“Your sneezes!” snorted the bottom head.  “Don’t tell me about your sneezes.  They are exactly why it’s so much worse to be me.  Every time either one of you sneezes or coughs, it flies all over me.  Nothing could be more disgusting.  Plus I can’t see anything from down here, and I’m forced to carry around the weight of the two of you all day.  It’s very hard on my neck.”

Three headed monster

This sort of bickering and fighting is how the three heads spent all their free time.  The arguments tended to get repeated a lot because the they never had anyone to talk to but themselves.    A three headed monster is quite terrifying to look at, so no one ever came around just to chat.  It didn’t help that the monster got his food by hiding behind trees along the road and jumping out at passing travelers, scaring the lights out of them and then stealing their food.  That was not the sort of behavior likely to make friends.  And worse, it was starting to get harder and harder to get enough food that way, due to the fact that no one wanted to travel on a road known to be guarded by a three-headed monster.

Fewer and fewer travelers passed that way, and the three-headed monster got hungrier and hungrier, and the three heads fought more than ever.  They knew they needed a new way to find food, but they couldn’t agree on the plan.  The top head thought they should travel to the other side of the mountain where there was a different road and there might still be many travelers to scare.  The middle head thought they should join a traveling circus and earn money as a circus act.   The bottom head thought they should make a huge hat to cover the top two heads and then go and find a regular job in the village.  Round and round and round they went.

“You really should listen to me,” said the top head.  “I’m so much higher up, I can see farther and hear better.  I’ve heard all about how busy the road is on the other side of the mountain.  We’d live like a king.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the middle head.  “There may be travelers there now, but after a few weeks of us scaring them all, they’d soon go another way and we’d be right back where we started.  My idea is the best.  The circus is full of people like us.  They would take us in a minute because we’d be sure to draw a crowd.”

“A crowd who would only be coming to make fun of us,” said the bottom head.  “I do not intend to spend my life being laughed at by children eating popcorn.  I would have thought you’d have had more pride than that.  It would be no trouble at all to get a nice comfy hat to cover you both, and we could get a respectable job in no time.”

Naturally, the top two heads wouldn’t hear of being covered up like that, so the argument went on and on.  Probably they would still be arguing to this day if a very brave hunter hadn’t come by while they were fighting.

The hunter had heard the rumors that a three-headed monster lived along this road, but he was too brave to be put off by that.  He wasn’t even sure he believed it.  But as he came through the woods, he heard the three voices raised in anger and soon he saw them, perched on top of each other and all talking as loud as they could.  They were talking so loudly, in fact, that they didn’t hear him get out a bow and arrow and aim it just at their one heart.  They were so distracted by their quibbling that they barely even felt the arrow go straight through, and the middle head was still making a very good point when the whole monster toppled over dead.

The hunter carried the three-headed monster all the way back to the village, so that everyone could see it before it was buried.  And the three heads who could never agree on anything all ended up in the same grave.

Time Out Tuesday – Can We Try This?

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Sick kids = Fried Brain

And that’s about where we’re at this week.  I apologize in advance for any oddly manic and/or inappropriately depressive things I may be about to write.

I have three kids, and they did that thing that kids do where one gets sick just as the other is getting better and then the other other one gets sick just as that one gets better. Yeah, it’s been an awesome week nine days, and we’re still going strong.  So we’re not talking any more about the past few days of creativity-killing, hope-stifling, mind-numbing, back spasm-inducing blahdom.  (I know, I should have been a nurse, right?)

We’re going to talk about the awesome stuff that’s coming up, instead!  I’m slowly working on redesigning things a little around here, trying to tighten things down and hopefully add a bit of the visual.  I’m totally design challenged, so don’t expect any miracles, but I will be trying to get that done this week, BECAUSE….

I’ve decided to set a challenge for myself for the month of September.  A challenge to write something new every single day for thirty days.  It’s my birthday present to myself.  One of the reasons I started this blog was to push myself to write more regularly, and since I just had a long vacation, this seems like a good time to step it up.  I already have the list of writing prompts all ready to go, and I’ll post them next Tuesday right before we get started. I feel like I should have some kind of snappy name for this September project, but I’m terrible at titling things.  So far all I could come up with is All Storytelling September, but I’m afraid the acronym doesn’t fit in with our family-friendly atmosphere.  I’ll take any suggestions you might have.

For this week, though, I want to offer up my first challenge to you.  I’m not even sure how many of you are out there, so this is my test run to see if anyone feels like getting creative with me.  I’d like to maybe do this a few times during my yet-to-be-named September storytelling extravaganza, but I thought I should do a warm up, just in case I find out I’m the only one who is crazy enough to spend all my free time writing silly stories and posting them on the internet for no one to read.  I’d rather make that sort of discovery now than while I’m in the midst of Write Hard All Month (WHAM, baby!  No?  Yeah, I didn’t think so.)  I don’t want it to break my stride.  Because I’m totally doing this even if no one is listening.

Okay, so here’s the challenge:  Write a story, 800 words or less, that has the line below in it somewhere.  It can start with the prompt, end with the prompt, or just use it wherever it fits in.  The 800 words is to keep it from taking TOO much of that valuable free time to write.   Write it sometime this week.   Then come back on Friday and link up.  That’s when I’m going to post my story.  This will be fun, right?  You know you want to do it!  Here’s the prompt:

It was hard to believe that such radiant flowers could be growing out of that sticky, oozy goo.

And that’s it!  I’ll hopefully see all three four of you (Thanks, Mom!) back here on Friday.

A Good Idea

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I absolutely think
You should sit up on the sink
Rub your food all through your hair
Yell and scream loud as you dare
Go in the kitchen, crack some eggs
Tip your chair back on two legs
Sneak the phone to make a call
Write with crayon on the wall
Close each door with a big slam
Never ever say “Yes, ma’am”
Try to pester your big brother
Most of all ignore your mother

‘Cause you’ll love without a doubt
To spend an hour in time out
It will be absolutely ripping
To bend over for a whipping
And nothing could be funner
Than being grounded for the summer
So won’t you listen now to me
And be as bad as you can be?

Whew. I really needed to vent some of that pent up sarcasm. Not that I’m that good at holding it in. Hey, I never claimed I was a GOOD mother.

The Red-headed Step-sister

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After looking at all those fables yesterday, I’m inspired to be more concise. So, as an experiment, I’m holding myself to a two hundred word limit today.

Once a woman with a flame-haired daughter married a man with two raven-haired daughters. Wishing to unite their new family, the parents made a rule that the three girls could never leave the house unless they were all together. The raven-haired daughters bitterly hated this rule because everywhere they went, no one looked at them but only at their flame-haired step-sister. Many suitors came to ask the flame-haired daughter’s hand in marriage, but none sought after the raven-haired daughters. Full of jealous rage, the raven-haired daughters swore a vow to never leave their house again and so confine their step-sister with them. When the parents asked why they never went out any more, the daughters sweetly said that they were so happy with their family that they had no need of others. In this way time passed, the suitors dwindled to none, and the daughters were left to age in bitter solitude.

Moral: You cannot force a friendship.

Yes, I know, I twisted around the meaning of this phrase. I’m red-headed, what can I say? BTW, does anyone know where this phrase came from? I’ve been trying to dig it up, but I can’t. Just a reference to Anastasia from Cinderella? I’m all curious now.