As Old As Time (Disney Twisted Tales) - Liz Braswell Page 0,1

she has misbehaved and chafes under the inevitability of the sentences hurled at her.

Turn of the key in the lock.

Door creaking open.

A hideous face, hideous only in its familiarity, the same look of surprise as always and every day since forever began. The face’s owner carried a tray with her in the hand that didn’t have the keys. Behind her, in the hall, stood the woman with the mop. And behind her stood a large and silent man who was ready to subdue any of the prisoners not tied down.

The prisoner found herself opening her eyes, curiosity getting the better of her survival instinct. Today’s tray had four bowls of broth. Sometimes it was five, sometimes it was three. Sometimes there was only one.

“Lucky for you I got an extra,” the one with the tray said, settling herself down in a filthy tuffet of skirts and aprons.

This line never changed. Ever.

The prisoner screamed, unable to contain herself, unable to keep herself from looking forward to that one thing each day—the thin gruel that passed for nourishment.

The woman with the mop muttered indignantly.

“I didn’t hear nuffink about a new one, I can tell you that. Thought they done a right good job clearing these sorts out of the world.”

“Well, there’s one now. There you go, finish up now.”

The woman said it with the same false tenderness she expressed every time. The bowl tipped faster, broth trickled down the sides of the prisoner’s neck and, despite herself, she got desperate, straining against the chains and sticking her tongue out to get every last drop before the bowl was removed.

“This one is old enough to be a mother,” the gruel woman said without a trace of emotion or sentiment. “Think of that, them having children and raising them and all.”

“Like animals, all of them. Animals raise their children, too. I don’t know why they keep them around. Kill ’em and be done with it.”

“Oh, soon enough, soon enough, no doubt,” the broth hag said philosophically, getting up. “They don’t last long around here.”

Except, of course, it had been ten years now.

This time the hag didn’t bother to toss some platitude over her shoulder as she left; the prisoner’s existence was forgotten the moment she touched the door and was on her way out.

It would be all new again for her and her horrible companion tomorrow…and the next day…and the day after that….

The prisoner screamed one last time, finally and uncontrollably, as the darkness closed in.

She had to start the story again. If she just started the story and played it through, everything would be all right.

Once upon a time in a faraway land, a young prince lived in a shining castle…

Once upon a time, slightly longer ago than before, there was a kingdom whose name and very existence have long since been forgotten. While the rest of the world was fighting for control of new lands across the seas, inventing ever more deadly weapons, and generously gifting their own religion to foreign people who didn’t want it, this kingdom just splendidly was.

It had fertile croplands, dense hunting forests, a neat little hamlet, and the prettiest postcard castle anyone had ever seen.

In happier years, because of its removed location in an out-of-the way valley, it was a lodestone for the artistic, the different, the clever: les charmantes. They fled there as the modern world closed in on the rest of Europe. The little kingdom passed the Dark Ages and the Renaissance peacefully and uneventfully. Only now were the diseases of civilized man finally catching up.

Even so, here there were still fortune-tellers who could actually tell your fortune, farmers who could pull water from stone during a dry season, and performers who could really turn boys into doves. And sometimes back.

The kingdom also drew those who didn’t have powers, precisely, but their own unusual natural talents and quirks—those who felt comfortable among the other folk. Misfits and dreamers. Poets and musicians. Nice oddballs, finding refuge there in a world that didn’t want them.

One was a young man named Maurice. The son of a tinker, he had both the will to wander and the skill to fix and invent. Unlike his father, however, he felt a change in the ancient air of Europe. Wonderful, mechanical change: a future filled with weaving mills powered by steam, balloons that could carry people to far-off lands, and stoves that could cook meals all by themselves.

Determined to be part of all this, Maurice looked to both the past—the steam engines