The Vampire Story I promised

I told Sroon on Saturday night that I would write up a vampire story. I'll get around to writing the back story eventually, but for now I'm just writing the new one.

Once upon a time, after Rupert and Griselda got married, they had four children. I think that I might have already named the children, but I've forgotten what I named them, so I'm just going to rename them and you guys can remind me of what the real names are when I get back (or in a comment on this posting). The little boy vampire that I am going to tell this story about was named Alexander.

Alexander was seven years old, and he loved to help his mother. One day, his mother, Griselda, decided to send him on an errand to her mother, whose name was Hildegaard. Hildegaard was an avid gardener (that means that she liked to garden a lot), and Alexander's mom was trying to grow a very particular kind of plant, called Dragon's Tongue, but her plant was turning brown on the edges and purple in the middle of the leaves. She asked Alexander if he could take a leaf to his Grandma Hildegaard so that she could tell them what was wrong with it, and Alexander immediately said yes. Not only was he a helpful boy, he also liked to visit his grandmother.

His mother packed a lunch for him, gave him a couple of levitation spells and invisibility spells and things like that in case he ran in to any trouble, and sent him on his way. He walked past the castle where Robert the vampire and Tatyana the ice skater lived with their children, past the lake where Tatyana and the children ice skated in the winter, and in to the deep, dark woods.

Almost as soon as he stepped on the path, he heard someone crying. It was another little vampire boy; in fact, it was his friend Robbie, who was Robert and Tatyana's son.

"Why are you crying?" he asked. Robert said that he had some magic locusts that his mother had packed for him as a treat in his lunch, but he had lost them in the woods and he was sad that he wasn't going to get to eat them. Alexander knew that his own mother had packed some magic locusts in his lunch, so he offered Robbie a few. Robbie smiled and said yes, and they decided to eat them together. There was one left over after they had both eaten what they wanted, so Alexander decided to save it for later.

After they ate, Alexander went on his way. As he was walking, he saw a Big Bad Wolf coming towards him on the path! Big Bad Wolves think that vampires are some of the yummiest things they can eat, but they don't get to eat them very often. They only eat little vampires, when they can catch them alone.

Alexander didn't want to be seen or caught or eaten, so he quickly took out some vanishing powder and sprinkled it over his head and the leaf he was carrying. Alexander tiptoed a little to the side of the path as he walked past. The wolf put up his head and sniffed. "Mmm, that's a good smell!" he said. "That smells like a little vampire to me!" and he started sniffing closer and closer to Alexander. Alexander knew that any second now, the wolf would sniff him out, so he wasted no time in pulling out a speedy-spell miniature broom from his pocket. It was one of the things his mother had sent with him in case he got in to trouble.

"Speedy spell, speedy spell, make me go fast!" he said, and held on tight to the little whisk broom. The broom would have jumped out of his hands, because it went so fast, but he held on tight and it did make him go fast. The wolf was also going fast, and almost caught him, but then he came to a fork in the path and went to the right (which was towards his grandmother's house), and luckily the wolf went left. Unfortunately, as he was rushing down the path to get away from the wolf, he accidentally ran into a gorgon!

"What is that?! Watch where you're going!" said the gorgon. Alexander didn't turn to stone when he looked at her because he was invisible, and that is one of the effects of invisibility. However, he didn't want to be rude, so he pulled out some visibility powder and sprinkled it on himself (but he put on some sunglasses first, so that he wouldn't be turned to stone after he became visible).

"I'm so very sorry, Miss Gorgon. I wasn't watching where I was going. I was running from a Big Bad Wolf."

"Harrumph. That's no good reason to be running into delicate old ladies!"

"I'm very sorry," he said, even though he wasn't sure if he really could have avoided it. As I mentioned, he was trying to be polite, and he knew that sometimes being polite means listening to someone say something that you don't think is true, without correcting the person. Besides which, it was true that he was sorry to have run into her, whether or not it could have been avoided.

"Could I do anything to help you feel better?" he asked.

"Not really," she said. She really was very grumpy. "Not unless you can make my lunch of sour slug soup reappear. It spilled all over the ground when you bumped in to me." He looked down and saw that this was true; a little kettle of soup was tipped over on its side on the ground. Only about a tablespoon of soup was left in it.

"Oh! I would feel sad if my soup spilled, too. You know, I still have one magic locust left from my lunch," he said. "Would you like to eat it?" He had kind of wanted to eat that locust, but he felt that it was better to not offend the gorgon than to eat the locust.

"Hmm... maybe," she said. She took the locust from his hand and sniffed it. Her eyes grew big as she noticed how tasty it smelled, and then she popped it into her mouth and swallowed it in one gulp. "Do you have any more?" she asked, because she was not polite.

"Um, no, I'm very sorry, I don't," said Alexander.

"OK. Well, I guess that I'll be on my way then," said the Gorgon, and then she whistled, and that big bad wolf came right to her side! But she didn't let the wolf eat Alexander, so he was especially glad that he had been polite to her.

A little further down the path was his grandmother's house, and he stepped inside and gave her a hug. "Grandmother! You wouldn't believe what happened! I met a Big Bad Wolf, and then I met a Gorgon, and I gave her my last magic locust, but she didn't even say thank you, and the wolf was her pet, and it was scary!"

His grandmother smiled at him. "It's sometimes hard when other people aren't polite even when you are. I am proud of you. Now, did I hear you say that you gave my friend the Gorgon your last magic locust? I saved some from the last batch I caught, especially for you. Would you like to eat them now?"

"Yes."

And so Alexander sat down at his grandmother's kitchen table, and ate the magic locust she had saved for him and watched her perform tests on the leaf he had brought, and wondered why his grandmother was friends with a rude Gorgon. I know the answers to these questions, but that is a story that I will tell another day.