Leaping Beauty: And Other Animal Fairy Tales by Gregory Maguire, Chris L. Demarest Page A

But before long they ran overbudget and the bankers—a squadron of squirrels—came round to ask the king stag for some more money.

    The king stag put the problem to Beauty. She told him that spinning straw into gold wasn’t in her contract, and if he wasn’t careful she’d walk out and leave him with unusable footage. But he locked her in a room with a heap of straw, promised her a percentage of the profits, and said he’d come back in the morning.

    Beauty sat down and wept again, but after a while she kicked aside the straw just in case the cobra happened to be napping there. And what do you know, he was.

    “Hello, cupcake,” he said, yawning. “Do you have a feeling we are meant to be together?
    It’s in the stars.”

    “Cut the baloney,” she said. “I need your help.”

    “What will you give me?” he asked. “A little hug?”

    “One little hug,” she said, “a little sisterly hug, that’s all. And no hugging back. I don’t want to be the first nine-foot-tall sheep. The world’s not ready for that.”

    “I’m a cobra, not a boa constrictor,” he said, hurt. But he gave her a once-over and said,
    “This time, sweetie, it’s the back legs. The fleece has got to go. Trust me. You’ll thank me for it.”

    “You were right the last time,” she said. “There isn’t a ewe in the kingdom who hasn’t had her midriff shaved. Slaves to fashion, the lot of them. Sheep! And I do have particularly shapely legs, if I do say so myself. Well, all right, I suppose it can’t be helped. But be gentle, please; I’m a bit ticklish.”

    So the cobra fleeced the sheep from her waistline to her little bobbed tail, and then he sat and spun the fleece into straw. It might have been smart of Beauty to watch and see how it was done in case this problem happened again. But she was too busy chewing the horny parts off her fetlocks in order to display a more delicate ankle.

    The cobra threw the straw out the window again and departed through the mouse hole in the baseboard. When the king stag came to collect the gold, he was delighted to find Beauty looking more splendid than ever. “A hard night’s work, and you look fresh as a daisy!” he said.
    “And your hair, you’ve done something to your hair. Don’t tell me. Highlights?”

    “I’m half naked, boss,” she said.

    He was scandalized. But times were changing, so he went on with the film. The advance reports on the daily rushes were ecstatic. “Cutie Beauty Almost Nudie,” cried the trade journals.
    Beauty could hardly go out shopping without a mob forming all around her. She took to wearing dark glasses and a huge veil made out of a flowered tablecloth.

    The film was almost done. A thousand theaters across the land were eager to book it. The scenes with Beauty and the chain saw were said to reach new heights of postmodern excellence.
    But then there was a backlash. A crowd of concerned citizens—mostly wombats—began to protest violence and nakedness in the movies. The squirrels returned and told the king stag he’d have to reshoot some key scenes and turn it into a musical with a happy ending. The king stag stomped around for a while and ran his antlers into a few trees to release a little tension. But his career was on the line. He came to Beauty.

    “The very last time, I promise,” he said. “We need to shoot some extra footage and I’m out of cash. Please. Please.”

    “Oh, don’t beg, don’t ever beg. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it is directors who beg,” said Beauty. “I could walk right out of here, you know. I’ve got a little mill and a loving father waiting for me. I don’t need this. I don’t need you.”

    “Actually, you do,” said the king stag, “because your father has sold the mill and moved to Tahiti. I just got a postcard.”

    So the king stag locked Beauty in the room one more time and sent in a load of straw.
    This time Beauty wasted no time trampling down the straw looking for the cobra.