Rhyme Stew - A cautionary tale
by mittfh
 
Copyright © 2010 Ben Norwood.

This one's even shorter than usual(!)
It's another cautionary (and potentially disturbing) tale set in nursery rhyme land,
but how many rhymes inspired this?

Warning: this tale contains a scene of mollusc genocide!

Mary Muffet had just finished decorating her garden with silver bells and cockle shells. The work had tired her out, so after a quick trip to the nearby paddock to pat her pet lamb, she sat on a nearby tuffet to eat her lunch of cottage cheese. Unfortunately, Tom Piperson was prowling around, looking for an opportunity to create more mischief. Amongst his many misdemeanours was stealing a leg of ham from the market the previous week. He'd received a beating from his father as a result, but that had evidently not deterred him.

On this occasion, he'd prepared a fake spider from some black material lying around the house, and had fixed it to the end of a fishing line. Spying Mary calmly eating her cottage cheese, he decided she'd be an ideal victim. Creeping up behind her, he dangled his "spider" to within her eyesight, which caused her to shriek and run away.

Now don't think Mary was a completely innocent party - although she could be very, very good on occasions (like today), she was just as adept as Tom as being horrid to others when she felt like it.

Seeing the latest round of mischief, the village elders had an emergency meeting and decided there was only one thing for it - hiring the local witch. Upon hearing the evidence presented against the two children, she proclaimed that the children were misbehaving because they weren't made of enough "nice stuff". Due to the severity of Tom's problems, she suggested that the only cure was a complete transformation into a sweet, innocent girl - and the same spell would do likewise to Mary. The elders were initially a little shocked at the suggestion, but when the witch mentioned they'd have similar temperaments to Polly and Suki (famed for their dolls' tea parties), as well as the twins Jane and Jill, the elders realised the transformations would make their lives a lot easier.

Just then, Jack Spratt piped up - "What about Georgie? I've heard he's been known to chase after the girls. Can you change him, too?"

The witch replied, "Only if you've got enough ingredients!"

"What do we need?"

"The spell is activated when they eat a special batch of sweets I'll prepare. So I'll need plenty of sugar, as much spice as you can spare, and a selection of the nicest, tastiest ingredients in your store cupboards."

Three hours later, the elders returned with the ingredients. Meanwhile the witch had scrubbed out her cauldron (her sister, who lived a few villages away, never bothered to clean hers and couldn't work out why her spells always failed...), half filled it with fresh stream water, and had brought it to the boil over a fire. She added the ingredients, then after stirring some more and reciting a few mystical incantations, ladled out the viscous mixture into bite-sized drops on a large sheet of paper. Once the drops had cooled, she divided them up into three bags - a large one for George, a medium sized one for Tom, and a significantly smaller sized one for Mary. She then instructed the parents to place the bags in the children's bedrooms - they would find consuming the contents irresistable - and in the morning collect up every unusual item they found in the children's bedrooms and bring them to the village centre. The reasons would be explained when they met.

The parents duly did as instructed, and sure enough the three children eagerly consumed the sweets, unaware of the drastic changes the sweets would cause overnight.

Tamsin, Mary and Gina all woke up in the morning, unaware of their previous identity or character. After breakfast, they quickly found each other and spent the morning braiding each other's hair before inviting themselves to one of Polly's tea parties. To the amazement of the adults (who were sceptical that the children's attitudes would change alongside their appearance), the two newly-minted girls and one reformed girl were the epitome of politeness.

Meanwhile, each of the mothers were examining their children's bedrooms and extracting various quantities of slugs, snails and what appeared to be non-human hair. They very gingerly picked up each of the 'intruders' and placed them in a bucket, before hauling their buckets (1/2 in the case of Mary, a full one in the cast of Tamsin, and nearly 2 in the case of Gina) to the village centre. The witch greeted them and explained that these slugs, snails, and dog hair tails were what had previously formed their nasty, boyish children. To prevent a return to their former character, the buckets contents would have to be burned on a fire, and any subsequent slugs or snails found in the village must be destroyed in the same way.

Epilogue: Just in case any other village children became tearaways, the witch's mixture had produced plenty of leftover sweets. In fact, So many, that seven village elders each had seven churns, each containing seven large bags, each containing seven small bags, each containing seven sweets...