Category: Fairy Tales and Other Stories Remix

The Art of Happily Ever After

Once upon a time, a group of knights received a distress call. “It’s another princess in trouble,” the leader of the knights said. “Who wants to deal with this one?”

“I helped with the last one,” Sir Cadmium said. “The one who turned herself into a goldfish somehow. It took me forever to find the right fish in that fountain. It had fourteen basins, and every single one was filled with goldfish. I had to hold them up one at a time for the prince to kiss, and it made him really grumpy.”

“I helped with the princess stuck in a tree. Why on earth she wished for wings, I don’t know,” Sir Ultramarine said. “The wings were all tangled in the branches and they didn’t want me to snap a single twig of the tree because it was some rare ancient important tree. I was there for twenty hours, and she complained every minute.”

“Don’t look at me,” Sir Ochre said. “I just got back from rescuing those twin princesses last week. The ones lost in the cave looking for some sort of fairyland ball, you remember? They didn’t want to be rescued, not matter what their parents said. They kept ordering me to leave, and the king would order me right back in. In the end, they gave up, but by then my feet hurt from running back and forth and fetching them things so they wouldn’t starve to death out of stubbornness. I still have blisters on my blisters.”

The leader looked around the circle. “Sir Umber is still tracking down the princess who ran away with the unicorns, and Sir Viridian is rescuing the princess who wished to be a mermaid. That leaves you, Sir Sap.”

“Why do I have to be Sir Sap. Can’t I be Sir Thalo or Sir Payne?”

The leader shrugged. “It’s the King who knights us. He picks the names.”

“Fine.”

“You’ll take the assignment? Great. Here’s the folder.”

Sir Sap jumped out of his seat. “That’s not what I meant. I helped the princess who got turned into a baby and crawled into a cupboard and fell asleep and no one could find her and…”

It was too late. Everyone had already left. Sir Sap sighed and picked up the folder. As always, the king had written the details in an awful scrawl that was nearly impossible to read. The hand painted map was lovely, but impractical. Sir Sap sighed. Was it too late to go back to dental school?

Hours later, he was following the map, hoping to rescue a princess who was maybe stuck in a well or writing a will. It was a little confusing. The woods he was passing through were dark and scary, and there wasn’t really much of a path.

But, Sir Sap was a brave knight who wasn’t scared of the dark at all. And if he was, he wouldn’t tell anyone. He pulled out his lunch and decided to eat while he walked. He always felt braver when he was eating. It was a good thing being a knight had so many opportunities for exercise, or he’d probably weigh a thousand pounds.

Just then, he heard growling off to his left. He looked down. Perhaps eating a roast beef sandwich in a forest filled with who-knows-what was a bad idea. Something started crashing though the bushes, and it sounded like it was getting closer.

A bear crashed onto the path. Sir Sap threw his sandwich as hard as he could to the right. After the bear ran past, chasing the sandwich, Sir Sap ran to the left. He stopped to catch his breath under a tree. “Is the bear gone?” a voice asked from above.

Sir Sap looked up. A lady dressed in black was sitting up in the branches of the tree. A witch? “It’s gone,” he said. “Couldn’t you have magicked it away?”

“I’m an herbalist,” she said. She began to climb down. “I make potions. It’s a different kind of magic. It doesn’t work right away. You have to be patient. But it works better because I tailor the potions to the individual, so it’s just what you need and works just right for you.” She jumped from the lowest branches.

“It is good to meet you, Madam Herbalist. I have great respecct for your craft. Could you tell me the way out of the forest? My map isn’t very clear.”

She pointed the way, and soon Sir Sap was able to rescue the princess stuck inside a rosebush on a hill. It was a massive, enchanted rosebush, and he ended up needing to find a prince to cut the whole thing down with tiny enchanted silver scissors. Organizing the witches and wizards and silversmiths and the very confused prince to find the solution took days.

Luckily, the princess and prince fell in love over the whole ordeal, and looked like they’d probably live happily ever after. This was always the best possible scenario, because it meant one less princess getting into trouble. Sir Sap went home, happy with the knowledge that all went well, and he wouldn’t have to rescue the next princess in trouble. It was probably Sir Ultramarine’s turn.

When he reached the forest, the herbalist was out picking leaves off of some harmless looking weeds. Suddenly, Sir Sap was struck by how normal it was. Here was someone who climbed a tree when she was chased by a bear, and didn’t ask her fairy godmother to change her into a bird or a dragon or a snowman in the middle of the summer.

Sir Sap realized he was tired of being a knight. He was tired of trying to help people who kept misusing powerful magic and never learning their lesson. He was tired of princesses. “Is it hard to learn to be an herbalist?” he asked.

“Well, it takes patience. You don’t learn everything all at once. But, if you like helping people and are good at figuring things out, it might be just right for you.” She smiled and picked up her basket. “I wouldn’t mind having an apprentice to help out at the shop. I have more business than I can deal with right now.”

“I’ll return within the week. I just need to hand paint a letter of resignation,” Sir Sap said. He was already mentally composing the letter. He was thinking of using one-point perspective to draw attention to the words “I quit” in the center of the page. He would sign it John, and be Sir Sap no more. And maybe, if things worked out just right, he’d find his own happily ever after.

The Safest and the Bestest House

Stewart was determined to stay safe. He designed an underground fortress guarded by layers of traps and a fiendishly difficult maze. Of course there were problems with the plans, right from the start.

“How will you breathe down there?” the architect asked when Stewart showed him a modified version of part of the plans. He had a separate piece to show to an unrelated architect in another country once he perfected his newest disguise and fake ID.

Stewart snatched away the plan and looked at it. Right. Breathing was important. Not breathing wasn’t safe at all. Perhaps he could invest in a self-contained underground breathing apparatus? But air tanks could be tampered with.

Air shafts might work, but that was how all the robbers and spies got in. Well, he could set traps for them. He was good at designing traps. “I’ll be back,” he told the architect. “Maybe.”

Instead, a week later, he visited a different architect, far, far away, while dressed as a popular celebrity. Reluctantly, he handed over a modified version of part of the revised plans. The new architect looked them over.

“I don’t know, Santa,” the architect said. “Won’t these traps be dangerous for all your elves? And where will you keep the reindeer?”

“Ho ho hum,” Stewart-in-disguise said. “The elves don’t live in my house, of course.”

“This is a house?”

“Yes,” Stewart admitted reluctantly.

Why was the architect asking all of these personal questions? It was very suspicious. He considered snatching the plans and searching for recording devices.

“But how will you get in and out? It seems very inconvenient.”

“Why would I want to leave? Look how safe I would be.” And these plans didn’t even show half of the traps.

The architect laughed. “Besides delivering all those presents, of course, you may want to get food and check your mail. Pay taxes. Take out the trash.”

It all sounded terrible and completely unsafe. Stewart snatched his plans and left. On the trip home, dressed as the grim reaper so that people would keep their distance, Stewart reviewed his plans and thought about what the latest architect said. Did he need to leave the house for food?

He didn’t eat much. That shouldn’t be a problem.

Taxes? If he hid well enough, he could avoid that, but the government wouldn’t be pleased. That wasn’t safe. Besides, hiding his house meant it would be discovered the moment someone dug deep enough not knowing he was there.

Hiding might seem safer, because if they didn’t know you were there, they wouldn’t come looking. However, the traps and maze would keep everyone out. Including the mail carrier. Did he need mail? It would be nice to order in, but if he had to leave the house to get the mail, he might as well go to the store.

But were stores safe? All those people and germs and potential hazards? Maybe he needed a mail chute and a good list of places to order from. He could order in groceries. There were probably traps he could add to the mail chute that wouldn’t harm the mail, right? And he could reverse that for a garbage chute of some sort.

Stewart revised his plans, modified them to hide most of the traps, and recopied part of the revised, modified plans. He found a new architect that did video conferencing. With a little bit of programming, he presented himself as a cartoon character. He emailed the plans in an email that would delete itself five minutes after being viewed.

“Hello,” the architect said. “I don’t meet many roadrunners in my line of work. Looking at these plans, I can tell that you are concerned for your safety. Is there any particular threat you are concerned about? It may be easier to defend against something specific. It seems like you think the world is out to get you.”

Stewart thought about the last time he’d left the house. The little old woman, the little old man, the dog, the cat, the fox… everyone he met had tried to eat him. He’d had to run, run as fast as he could to get to safety. “The world is out to get me,” he said.

“Well, you would be safe from the world in a house like this,” the architect replied.

“Good,” Stewart said. It was time to start building.

A Love of Numbers

Have you ever heard about the sculptor that fell in love with one of his creations? It’s perhaps more common than you’d guess. For example, there was a baker who fell in love with her gingerbread recipe. She built an entire house out of gingerbread so that she would never be separated from her dearest love. It didn’t turn out well.

Luckily, this story is not about her. Instead, this is the story of a mathematician who fell in love with a math problem. It wasn’t a particularly lovely equation. It wasn’t the theory of relativity or the Pythagorean theorem, or even Euler’s equation.

But it was a fun problem to spend time with. Sometimes it made him laugh out loud. He’d sit on the couch with a pencil and paper, pick a random number and start computing. If it was even, divide it in half. If it was odd, multiply it by three and add one. Repeat with the new number. Eventually, you always, always return to one.

His colleagues didn’t understand. “Isn’t it a little odd to spend all your free time with that one problem? You aren’t going anywhere or learning anything new.”

“And yet no one knows if there’s an exception to the rule. Isn’t that mysterious? Maybe I’ll stumble across it someday. It would be like the discovery of penicillin. I wouldn’t want to miss out on that because I stopped looking.”

His friends didn’t understand. “Why are you spending so much time writing down that whatever-it-is? You should spend time with us. We’re your real friends, not that stuff.”

“The Collatz conjecture has never let me down,” he protested. “It’s always there for me. It’s dependable and loyal, and yet it still surprises me along the way. What else would I want from a friend?”

“But can the Collatz conjecture make you chicken noodle soup when you’re sick?” they asked.

“No, but I can buy soup at the store. Where can you buy loyalty?”

His mother didn’t understand. “But darling, numbers can’t listen to your problems. Aren’t you lonely?”

The mathematician sighed. “Numbers are excellent listeners. They never interrupt, and they are very reassuring. The Collatz conjecture constantly tells me that everything will work out in the end. It’s always there for me. How could I be lonely?”

His dog didn’t understand. It was jealous of the numbers and tried to eat them up. He didn’t have a dog for long. Luckily, it was much happier living with his mother, anyway.

And while the mathematician grew old, his beloved Collatz conjecture remained timeless and constant. One day, the mathematician had to face the facts. Someday, he would die, and his favorite math problem would go on without him, and it wouldn’t miss him at all.

He looked down at his most recent string of numbers and sighed. How loyal was something that didn’t really recognize your existence to begin with? His love for the Collatz conjecture was one-sided.

The mathematician looked around at his empty house. He contemplated his empty calendar. He looked down at the page full of numbers. “Collatz conjecture,” he said sadly. “I will always love you, but I don’t think this is going to work. Can we remain friends?”

And the mathematician, older and wiser, learned that being friends with people was rewarding in ways that being friends with a math problem was not. Even if sometimes it was more difficult and confusing. Luckily, the Collatz conjecture was still there to reassure and console him when times were tough.

He lived happily ever after. Unlike that poor baker. I won’t say that math is always superior to baking, but in this case, maybe it is.

Flashback Video: Little Peter Bluecoat

This story was originally posted on August 10, 2017. It has some references to a few of my favorite Beatrix Potter stories. I really love her stories and illustrations! However, this story has people as the main characters, instead of animals. It seemed to fit the story better.