“Happy?” the old witch hissed in her ear, and oh, her breath was cold on the back of Ruby’s naked neck! “Was it worth it, what you did, what you threw away? Don’t tell me your answer now, little girl; not just yet. We’re going home. You can wait to tell me then, after you’ve taken any job you can find, waiting tables at the diner, standing on your feet all day at the Wal-Mart, packing boxes full of car parts at the factory. Or maybe what you’ll have to do is spread your legs again and land a man who’ll stuff you full of his brats and slap you around when you won’t mind him just the way he wants. And you can all come visit dear old Granny at Christmastime. Oh yes, that’ll do for me if you wait til then to tell was it worth it tonight.”
And she kept on like that at Ruby until …
In all the fuss, in all the screaming and running and calling for the police to come, no one thought to call Room Service back and have them take away the cart. There were two steaks on that cart, two steak knives. Ruby didn’t have any trouble laying her hands to the second one when Mama turned her back on her and had herself a good, long laugh.
That, too, happened fast.
Ruby’s man got himself all bailed out in time to hear the story come in to Police HQ; he stuck around to see them bring her in. He was waiting for her there, threw himself into her arms so quick that the arresting officers couldn’t shoulder him off before he whispered urgently in her ear for her to shut up, say nothing, hold on until his paper scared her up a lawyer. Crime of passion, that’s what it was, and they played up that angle big at the trial. Provocation more than any human soul could bear. All it took was one look into those big, teary eyes of hers, one glance at the sawed-off ruin of her hair, and the jury was at her feet. It didn’t hurt any that she still knew how to work a crowd.
They let her off with a light sentence, and she married her man before she went through the prison doors. It wasn’t the kind of prison a mama’d fear to let her daughter go in, not that Ruby had anything like that to worry about anymore. She got her high school diploma while she was inside, and she got an agent to book her on all the right talk shows when she got out and her husband got a book out of it and her hair grew back — maybe not as long or thick, but still pretty as you please. She thought it was pretty enough, anyhow.
When it was halfway down to her ass again, she went back on the pageant circuit, took the Mrs. America crown like it’d been waiting for her in a bus station locker all that time. Then she retired, sold Mary Kay, had kids — Bobby, Jim, and Angel — lived happily ever after even if her man sometimes did stare at her hair and say how it’s too bad it never did grow back all the way to how it was. Ruby was kind of sad that she couldn’t please her man as much as she’d done that first time. Mama never did think she was too smart, but Ruby knew that if she put her mind to it, she’d think of something.
Angel’s got her mama’s hair; Angel’s three. Angel goes to all the pageants, Daddy keeps the boys away. Ruby runs a brush through Angel’s hair and tells her daughter that if she’s beautiful, everything will be just fine.
Esther Friesner says that “Big Hair” is the product of the fairy tale “Rapunzel” and one too many attacks of being extremely fed up with stage mamas and beauty pageants. And oddly enough, she was not thinking of the JonBenet Ramsey murder when she wrote the story.
The King with Three Daughters
RUSSELL BLACKFORD
Australian writer Russell Blackford works as a senior lawyer in the international firm Phillips Fox. He has published numerous stories, articles, essays, and reviews, mainly in Australia, but also in Great Britain and the U.S. His work has appeared in collections, anthologies, and reference books, and in a diverse range of journals and magazines that includes Aurealis, Australian Book Review, Australian Law Journal, Eidolon, Foundation, Journal of Popular Culture, Metascience, and many others. His longer publications include a fantasy novel, The Tempting of the Witch King, Hyperdreams: The Space/ Time Fiction of Damien Broderick, and Strange Constellations: A History of Australian Science Fiction (with Van Ikin and Sean McMullen).
Trolls are dreadful things, and I am a troll-slayer. What I have seen and done, you can only imagine.
My name is Jorgen. On a spring afternoon I entered the town of Tromsdal, which stood above cold Atlantic breakers. Here, a King maintained his citadel on a sheer promontory, exposed to the sea’s icy winds.
I’d become a wanderer. I thought myself seasoned — a veteran — and there was some truth in that. My hunting bow and broadsword, my strong right arm, had provided me with kings and chieftains to accept my service.
Before dark I reconnoitered the town, checking the narrow, zigzag path to the stony citadel, then found an inn called the Wolf’s Get, built on a low piece of land beside a crossroads. Here I spent my copper coins prudently, for I had no surety that any lord or chieftain of the place would care to employ me.
My supper was a fish stew, accompanied by tough-skinned apples, rindy cheese, and three grainy pieces of black bread. As I finished, the innkeeper approached. Close by my side he stood, a fussy man with gray hair and a stubbly beard. His fat thighs pressed against the edge of the table. Finally, he spoke in a conspirator’s tones. “Are you seeking an audience?”
“Eh?”
“With the King?” He refilled the wine in my goblet, pouring it out from a long-necked clay flagon, then sat beside me on my bench, appraising me unashamedly. What he saw was a windburnt man with glossy brown hair, becoming matted. My face was bony under an ill-trimmed beard — I’d grown wild on the long road. “Perhaps you can settle here.”
My resigned sigh gave away my feelings. “Here, in this town? In Tromsdal?”
“Why not? What more are you seeking?”
So I told him my name — and, with it, the truth. “Tomorrow, I’ll go up to the citadel, and crave audience of the King’s officials.”
There was no reason for a prosperous ruler, one whose kingdom embraced miles of sea and fjord, mountain and forest, to speak with me in person, but wise officials could discern my worth. The wine made me more garrulous, though I was far from drunk on the watery stuff.
“I spent this winter in the battles on the other side of the mountains.” I hesitated for a moment, remembering. “The campaign ended in peace — in peace and disgrace. Can you understand that? I had to move on. The chieftains I served fought and lost. They don’t want me anymore, not me, nor any who did their bloody work.” I silenced my tongue. A trained warrior, I thought, was always worth his keep. I finished the last of my bread. It was grainy in my mouth, but sweet with butter.
“Have you heard about the King’s daughters?” the innkeeper said, still speaking softly, and scratching his beard. “A man like you may be useful.”
As I listened, I had no thought of trolls, of their kingdoms in dark woods, the deep earth, the high mountain ice. I had no thought, as yet, of the blood-feud between trolls and the Bright Ones.
The innkeeper gave me the sparse details of King and Queen, which he seemed to deliver by rote, then the arbitrary prophecy and the magical births, the oddities of enchantment and loss. How many times did I hear this story? Next day, I had it from the King’s chamberlain, a powerful official whom I dared not interrogate, then a briefer version from the King himself, and still other variants from underlings within the citadel. Of course, it piqued my curiosity, this story of a proud and handsome king with three missing daughters, blasted from his sight on an enchanted snowdrift when, by inadvertence, he disobeyed a crone’s prophecy. It made me want to know more — about the daughters, the land, about a king whom such events might befall.