"So you're before this court on a charge of telling and writing fibbles.  Is that not right?" the judge asked the writer.

"It may be 'accurate,' Your Honor, " the writer said, "but it's certainly not 'right,' if I may distinguish between the meanings of the words."

"Never you mind," the judge said.  "The trial will go on."

 "But, sir, with all respect, I believe I'm entitled to a jury of my peers."

 "What?  People peering hither and yon, bunch of Peeping Toms?  That's pretty anti-social."

 "No, sir.  I mean people of my, well, ilk:  you know, people who read and write."

 The judge rapped his gavel to quiet the laughter in the court.  "You expect to find twelve jurors who can both read and write?  You'd probably want them to be able to think as well."

 "I suppose I'm not being realistic, Your Honor."

 "I should think not.  Now, let's proceed.  What, pray tell, is a fibble?"

 "Your Honor," the story-teller said, "a fibble is sort of like a fable."

 "Which is told by a flautist," the judge said.

 "No, sir.  A flautist plays a flute."

 "I would think that a flutist would play a flute and that flautists were those who were flatulent or something."

 "Logical, Your Honor.  A flutist does play a flute, but so do flautists.  I suppose that either could be flatulent."

 "Very well, so who tells a fable?"

 "A fabulist tells a fable, Your Honor."

 "That is, if it's fabulous, I suppose, as in 'a fabulous fable.'"

 "No, Your Honor.  It could even be mediocre, and a fabulist would tell it."

 "That really won't do.  In this court, a flautist does whatever I say he does."  He drummed his fingers on his bench.  "But it had better be good, and he'd better stay away from baked beans."

 "Yes, Your Honor."

 The judge eyed the writer suspiciously.  "So how is a fibble not a fable?"

 "Well, a fibble is part fable, Your Honor, but it's also part fib."

 "A fibrication?" the judge asked, raising an eyebrow and rapping his gavel vigorously. "That won't do, not in this court.  We'll have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

 "True," the writer said, "but sometimes the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth isn't the truth.  Sometimes it's only coincidence, a mere convergence of contiguous events."

 The judge glowered at the statement, mulled it over, and pronounced, "All right, continue."

 "Yes, sir.  A fable is partly true, and a fib is false, but a fibble is partly true and partly poetically true, but only false in the indefinable areas where a fact is merely inconsequential or coincidental."

 "Very well," the judge said, "call your first fibble." ©

You will no longer find the Kingdom of Quandary on a map of any of the known continents, so there's no need for you to go look for it.  However, we live in a distrustful world, so you probably have to find out everything for yourself, so go ahead and check the index of an almanac.

But you've found nothing.  Right?

Now, call the operator at the United Nations.  Strike two, correct?

Next, type in "quandary" in your search engine.  See?

You are striking out because the Kingdom of Quandary disappeared ages ago.  Back then, cartographers at Bland-MacAnnally were shooting dice about which colors to use on what kingdoms on their charts, and one of the map-makers threw snake-eyes.  That meant he had to render the Kingdom of Quandary with the same color as the Atlantic Ocean.  Today, we call that country something else whenever we go visiting.  We don't even worry about the name because we're too busy fretting more about the people driving on peculiar sides of the road, drinking room-temperature beer, and talking funnier than do folks in Waycross or Boldo.  We also read about ship captains running their ships into the shoreline since they do not expect any country to be there at all.  The captains whine that they have used their Global Positioning Systems to keep from hitting land, but scientists say the satellites won't work in the area because of bad brain cells of captains who won't look dead ahead.  One or two scientists blame the crashes on the Theory of the Vengeance of Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags, but these mavericks come from Hubba Bubba College and Bubba Lou University--places that you would never mention in the same breath as respectable colleges and universities that have ivy, endowments, and football teams with impressive bowl victories and even more impressive NCAA sanctions against them.

 In the olden days, historians said that everyone referred to Quandary as "a peaceable kingdom."  They note that it was against the law in Quandary to point out, or cause, any breaches of the peace.  Moreover, the historians say that extant documents from the period proudly boasted that the king was just and that the prisons were empty.  That was true, to some extent, since, whenever constables arrested anyone, they promptly dragged the miscreants to a rope and tree or to a chopping block and axe.  Quandarians praised the chopping block for being an absolutely painless way of execution.  If you were skeptical about that assertion, you could ask the four Talking Heads at Hogmoor Castle:  Ned the Head, Ed the Head, Ted the Head, and Fred the Head.  They all met the chopper after creating a rhyming disturbance by congregating to play seven-handed poker one afternoon.  (Fred only had one hand in those days since he misinterpreted the hyperbolic connotations of a cleric's admonition to cut off his left hand if it offended him.)  Quandarians back then noticed bodies hanging from gibbets and the heads on pikes and spikes at the Hogmoor Castle and knew that all was right with the world, at least with their part of the earth.

 While the rest of Europe was hanging, torturing, and burning witches, historians reveal that the kings of Quandary bragged, "Ours is a kingdom without any magic or witchcraft.  In fact, there's not a witch in Hogmoor or the entire kingdom."

 Of course, a few people pointed out that, when Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags came to Hogmoor from her hovel in Goatmoor, Sir Bull started jitter-bugging in his pasture, and then Fred, Ted, Ed, and Ned the Heads began yodeling and singing:
 

  Heidy-ho-ho-ho and heidy-hey,
  A very sharp axe got us this way.
  Heidy-hey-hey-hey and heidy-ho,
  Sweet Margaret bids you a mellow hello.

 The serfs, peasants, and freedmen used to ask the clerics about Maggie.  For instance, when the ugly crone walked past windows or mirrors, they saw that, oddly enough, her reflection was of the most beautiful woman in the kingdom.

 "Not surprising," Cardinal Woopsy said in front of the great cathedral one day.  "Beauty is only skin deep, so it's obvious she has a lovely spirit."

 "What about the Talking Heads and that dancing bull?" asked Paul the Peasant.  "If that isn't witchcraft or magic, what is it?"

 Cardinal Woopsy yawned and announced, "John, the bull is clearly dancing about to avoid some bees in the pasture, and, as for these so-called Talking Heads, the tones clearly come from the wind blowing through the open mouths."

 "What breeze?" the serfs would ask on days when banners and pennants hung limp.
 Cardinal Woopsy made brusk noises and motioned for them to quit loitering.  "Oh, and take some twine or something and close those mouths, John."

 The cleric didn't seem to know that the village was filled with Johns and everyone had a tag of some sort to distinguish, say, John the Smith, from John the Fletcher, from John the Village Idiot.  The system meant that names were used a lot.  Even the Talking Heads once had tags, but "the Butcher, the Baker, the Black Smith, and the Belcher" weren't necessary once each became "the Head."

 The Kingdom of Quandary had lots of Geoffreys, most of them being kings or princes.  There was "Geoffrey the First through Tenth," then "Geoffrey the Eleventy-fourteenth," since mathematics wasn't the strong suit of royal lines back then.  The most famous Geoffrey was King Geoffrey the Fourth, who acquired the name "Geoffrey the Grouch" from the Talking Heads of Hogmoor Castle.  Our Geoffrey disliked inside straights and dead man's hands, so, when he saw how sharp Fred, Ted, Ed, and Ned were with cards, they saw how sharp his constables were with axes.

But when the heads started talking, Geoffrey the Grouch fumed at their insults.  He also hated their singing of "Ninety-nine Bottles of Ale on the Shelf" or "Heidy-Hey-Hey-Hey."

When the Talking Heads were crooning to the Hogmoorons, Geoffrey the Grouch often leaned out of a palace window and shouted down, "Stop singing that curséd 'Heidy-ho-ho-ho and heidy-hey' song.  I hate it, and I won't have it.  I'll chop your silly heads off again!"

"Oh, you're such a grouch!" Fred, Ted, Ed, and Ned the Heads would sing.  They never were quite in unison in the singing since each was trying to get ahead, as it were.

If Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags was around, Geoffrey the Grouch only leaned out the window and growled, "Maggie!"  He never said anything else, like "quit putting spells on to make them talk and sing," because, after all, there was no magic or witchcraft in Quandary.

At other times, Fred, Ted, Ed, and Ned the Heads just hummed the tune, especially whenever Geoffrey the Grouch had ordered the constables to stick a sock in each of their mouths.  Geoffrey the Grouch hated muffled humming, too.

The king did like other things in Hogmoor and Quandary.  For example, he was delighted the day that Reuben the Raven flew down next to the Talking Heads and taunted them.  Fred the Head would say, "One day I'll travel and see the world."

But Reuben the Raven only replied, "O really really, Reilly."

Ned the Head would declare, "After we've finished our mission, we'll be normal again."

But again and always Reuben the Raven critiqued the remark with "O really really, Reilly."

"Peculiar bird," Geoffrey the Grouch would say from his window. "But it is irritating those capital pests."

King Geoffrey wasn't always grouchy.  For example, he found great favor in his nine daughters and six sons. . .or was it nine sons and six daughters?  "I can't keep them straight,"
King Geoffrey would say.

Queen Isabello would respond, "Whether they're straight or choose an alternate lifestyle, Husband, it's their life."

Geoffrey and his irritable queen long ago ran out of decent names for the babies.  Once they had used up "James," "Henry," "Elizabeth," they were hit by twins and triplets.  After Queen Isabello named the triplets "Patricia, Maxine, and Levine," she turned the rest of her names over to her husband, though she told him not to mess that up like he did everything else.  King Geoffrey grumbled and borrowed names as he commanded that the children be christened as "Ethelred the Unready," "Ethel the Virtuous" (who came to be known as "Ethel the Ready But Remember She's the King's Daughter"), "Tommy Short Legs," "Harold the Fat," "Charles the Bold," and the oldest, "Eddie the Confessor." At each christening, Cardinal Woopsy had the giggles and almost dropped the babies into the baptismal fount.

King Geoffrey the Grouch especially loved one daughter, and he tightened her toes and kissed her fingers and simply named this beautiful baby princess "Esmerelda."  He loved her more when she grew to be a little girl and then a young lady.  He noted with satisfaction that, whenever she passed the Talking Heads, they would say in a bashful sing-song, "Good morning, Princess Esmerelda."  Each loved her dearly but knew that she was way above their station.  In fact, they knew that, if they were taken off their spikes, they would be lucky to come up a little past her ankle, but not to her knee--and certainly not to her station.

That pleased Geoffrey the Grouch, too.  However, his sweet Princess Esmerelda shocked him on the day after her eighteenth birthday when she announced that she loved Sir Jonathan d'Klutz, a clumsy knight with a heart of gold.

King Geoffrey fumed and fretted, and stomped and ranted, whenever she expressed her love for this bumbling knight with a heart of gold.  "Knights don't have hearts of gold," he growled.  "Cut one open sometime."  But his logic didn't dissuade her.  "Isn't that true, Isabello?" he would ask his belovéd but irritable queen.  However, she was skittish and danced out of reach whenever her husband came near.  If that didn't work, she would sing under her breath:
 

  Heidelburg-ho-ho and Heidelburg-ho-hey,
  A very big snack got us this way.
  Heidelburg-hey-heys and Heidelburg-hey-hos,
   Sing loud and muffle the royal bellows.

 "You regal cow," Geoffrey the Grouch would bray at his queen, "can't you get the lyrics right to anything?"  He went into a deep funk thinking of the way she sang "God Shave the King" or "The Star Spangled Banana."

 Then the king's thoughts went back to Princess Esmerelda and the loathsome piece of filth who was courting her.  "He's a bit too friendly with Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags, if you ask me," the king grumbled, supposedly to no one in particular, but in reality to Princess Esmerelda.

 She ignored the complaint until he had repeated it for the thirteenth time.

 "Father," Princess Esmerelda said sternly, "there's nothing wrong with Sweet Margaret.  You don't think she's a witch or something, do you?"

 King Geoffrey fidgeted nervously as he muttered, "Of course not.  She's no witch, but she might be, ah, something."

 "She's a very caring person," the princess said.  "She treats Sir Jonathan like he's her only son."

 "Hah!" Geoffrey scoffed.  "Then he gets his looks from her."

 "But you haven't seen her reflection," Esmerelda said.  "She's the loveliest woman in Quandary."

 King Geoffrey snapped his fingers and called to his sons, "Boys, how many of you would like to court Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags, whom one of your sisters calls the 'loveliest woman in Quandary'?"

 The princes shuddered and pretended to be busy until the topic changed. Esmerelda continued, "Sweet Margaret, I'll have you know, has promised that Sir Jonathan d'Klutz and his true love will find happiness one day."

 "One day?" the king asked.  "No particular day, just one day."

 "Quite soon, I'm sure," Esmerelda said, being quite in error, as we shall see.

 As King Geoffrey sat on his throne with his family around him the next day, he gritted his teeth as he thought about it and then had to listen to Patricia, Maxine, and Levine whine, "Father, you can't let her be seen with him.  He's icky, and he's common as dirt.  Isn't that true, Ethelred?"

 Their brother Ethelred stammered, "I'm not prepared to answer that right now."

 Eddie the Confessor confided, "Just between you and me, he is an embarrassment.  You never see him do any brave deeds."

 Esmerelda wailed, "But none of you have done anything brave."

 Eddie looked sheepish, which was quite a feat for someone essentially having a horseface.  "Well, that's true, I confess."

 Sir Jonathan d'Klutz did try to perform valiant deeds throughout the Kingdom of Quandary, but the bucolic Hogmoorons could only think of "cow tipping" if they tried to name something that might require a small degree of valor.  As he had since he was a boy, Jonathan went for advice to the Talking Heads of Quandary.  He could chit-chat to them about things and not worry about them running off to tell someone, especially since each would have to leave his spike to do so.

 "I must do something splendid," he told the Talking Heads.  "Put your heads together and help me out."  He glanced at Reuben the Raven and added, "You help too."

 "I got it!" Fred the Head said, licking the tips of his handlebar moustache.  "You could go on a quest."

 Reuben the Raven said, "O really really, Reilly," but Sir Jonathan exclaimed, "Right, a quest!  To where?"

 "To the Holy Land--you know, Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Palestine."

 "But I've been there, when I was a squire to Sir Leland."  At the mention of Sir Leland, Jonathan crossed himself reverentially, while the Talking Heads looked about for their arms and then crossed themselves with their tongues.

 "Poor fellow," Ned the Head said, leaning forward his bald head with its angry sore that looked like a nipple.

 "Horrible," Ted the Head agreed, shaking himself so that his ear-ring looked like an ornament on his Santa Claus beard.

 "O really really, Reilly," said the raven.

 No one ever said anything more about the horrible thing that happened to that poor fellow, Sir Leland.

 Ed the Head pondered and scrunched up his face as he squeezed out a thought.  Whenever he had a powerful thought, he managed to dislodge his toupee, and this time the hair-piece slipped off and landed on the head of Reuben the Raven.  "You could fight a giant," he said with triumph.

 "I certainly could," Jonathan said, as he blanched at the sight of a black bird with a bad hair-piece.  He hurriedly put the hair-piece back on Ed the Head.  "Yes, I could give a good thrashing to a giant.  Cheeky creatures, every one of them."  He smiled and almost closed his eyes as he saw himself standing over the defeated giant.  "However, I'm not certain where I'd find a giant.  If the kingdom had one, I'm sure the tourists would be coming here to look at him."

 "Ah," said the Talking Heads, who also detected a flaw in the plan.

 Ned the Head didn't have any fingers to snap when he got an idea, but, to the irritation of the raven, he did pop his tongue after a few moments.

 "What is it?" Sir Jonathan asked.

 "It's simple," Ned the Head said.  "You fight someone who is going to become a giant."

 "Clever," Fred the Head said.  "That's using the old bean."

 "Brilliant," said Ed the Head.

 "O really really, Reilly," Reuben the Raven announced.

 "However," Ted the Head interrupted, "how do you tell when someone is going to become a giant?"

 Ned the Head wet his lips with his tongue and grinned conspiratorially.  "Look out there."

 They all cut their eyes toward the people going to the Hogmoor market.  Everyone was laughing, except for Geoffrey the Grouch's glum guards and an eight-year-old boy who was busy tying a knot in the tail of a cat.

 "There is your future giant," Ned the Head said.

 "That poor cat?" Jonathan asked.

 "No, the boy!" Ned the Head said.  "The eight-year-old."

 Jonathan exchanged looks with Fred the Head, Ed the Head, and Ted the Head.  "I'm not going to impress the king or the princess if I beat up a little boy."

 During the week, Sir Jonathan tried to perform several feats of bravery, daring, and valor.  For example, he tied ropes together and climbed to the top of the bell-tower of Hogmoor Cathedral.  He fastened the ropes to his ankles and then to the bells and, with the whole town watching, dived toward the ground.  As he plummeted, the rope pulled the bells, and Sir Jonathan was delighted with his melodious success and impending acrobatic spectacle, until he realized that his addition was off and he had thirteen feet too much rope.  His head would be driven into his body somewhere near his gall bladder.

 Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags had been passing by, and (as she hid her magical finger motions) she made a great wind come up and blow her bags to the spot where Sir Jonathan would kiss the flagstones.  Then a stronger wind caught him a bit and settled him onto the bags with grace.

 Sir Jonathan blew her a kiss of thanks, but had regained his composure enough to stand up like a trapeze artist, kick the ropes away from his ankles, and step forward to take a bow.  However, he stepped into some horse droppings, lost his balance, and somersaulted face first into another small mound of equine plop.

 "Hah!" King Geoffrey exclaimed later at the dinner table, as he repeated the reports told to him by the other knights.  "Into manure!"

 Princess Esmerelda had far too much aplomb and dignity to respond and jabbed away with knitting needles at a wad of twine she was creating for that poor cat whose tail that she had had to untie again.

 Next, Sir Jonathan decided that he could not hope to impress the crude folk of Quandary with musical feats from cathedrals.  He risked treason by telling the Talking Heads, "And the crudest of the Quandarians wears a crown."

 "Let's see," Fred the Head said.  "Ah, we have tournaments, so why not joust with the bravest knights at court?"

 "Name one," Ted the Head said.

 "Well, there's Sir Rufus," Fred the Head said and winced.

 "Nope," Ted the Head said.  "Got his head snicked off for boasting that he could whip all the princes with one hand tied behind his back."   They all glanced at Sir Rufus' head, eyes all glazed and mouth open.  "Sir Rufus is too stuck up to say anything," Ted lamented.

 "Too lazy to flick the flies away with his tongue," Ed observed.

 Sir Jonathan snapped his fingers.  "I've got it.  The king is having military maneuvers, the Army of the Red Rose against the Army of the Yellow Rose."

 "That's a big waste of military-monarchial funds," grumbled Fred the Head.

 "No, it's not," Sir Jonathan said.  "He wants to keep us in readiness in case we're ever attacked by the King's Republic of Miasmort."  He looked proudly at the Talking Heads and added modestly, "I'm Yellow."

 They exchanged worried looks.

 "What I can do," Sir Jonathan said, "is figure out how to alert the Yellow Army to the sneak attack of the Army of the Red Rose."

 So Sir Jonathan went to a shop, worked busily on a contraption, then again climbed the stairs to the bell tower of Hogmoor Cathedral.  Then he reached over and pulled up a device that he called an "air catcher."  It had long wings, and a spot for him to line down in the middle.

 The Yellow Rose army was delighted to learn that he wanted to be on the cathedral tower during the exercise.

 He looked for hours and was about to give up when he detected the pennants of the Red Rose army.  At that point, he jumped from the tower with his air catcher, intending to float gracefully over the pasture to the command headquarters' tent.

 Part of his plan worked.  He was able to sling out his air catcher, to leap, to catch the air as he dropped toward the ground.  He smiled when he rose fifteen feet, lost his smile at thirty feet, and then began to panic at fifty feet, until he was zooming away from the Yellow Rose HQ tent toward a pasture.  And down in the pasture was the king's pride and joy, Sir Bull, the most powerful collection of muscles and beef on four feet in all of Europe.

 Sir Bull was speaking in bovine French to a couple of lady friends, and he realized he had never been more virile and well-bred in his life.  He was waiting for the ideal moment to ask, "Speaking of 'well-bred,' may I suggest something that would be fun for both of us, and improve your blood-line, mon ami?"

 Just as he was stepping forward to nibble a heifer on the ear, some diabolical force struck him from behind and knocked him forward.  It threw him off balance and thumped him from dignity to embarrassment.  And that damnéd low-born heifer actually giggled at Sir Bull's mortification.  Before Sir Bull regained his footing, Sir Jonathan had hurried over the fence.

 Sir Jonathan was able to give the Yellow Rose army a fifteen-minute warning about the sneak attack of the Red Rose army, but his success didn't work out.  He had forgotten that King Geoffrey commanded the Army of the Red Rose, while the nine or six princes mucked about with the Yellow Rose army.

 "We'd have captured the whole lot," Geoffrey fumed later, "except for that air-head."  He didn't mention the humiliation of Sir Bull since he didn't want the court to see him burst into tears.

 So nothing that Sir Jonathan d'Klutz did convinced King Geoffrey that he was worthy to wed the daughter of a swineherder, much less the favorite child of a king.

 Prince Harold the Fat shook his head as he contemplated Esmerelda's champion.  "He's skinny as a rail.  A good wind would blow him away."

 Princess Ethel the Ready, But-- licked her lips and announced, "He's not a fit prospect to be a prince, Essie.  But--"  She took a deep breath, got all excited, and ran her hands over her bodice.  "--he might do for an afternoon's diversion."

 Princess Esmerelda cried about her father's bull-headedness and about the "complete, one hundred percent wrongness of life itself."

 "Oh, right, Es," blustered Prince Charles the Bold, "you're only like a princess of the realm, you know, and all that stuff."

 Esmerelda also wept, "It's not fair.  If I was in a fairy tale, everything would be wonderful.  You'd see!"

 "I've often felt that way," confessed Prince Eddie the Confessor, "except horrible things happen to people in fairy tales."

 Esmerelda declared, "But not to true lovers, and, as sweet Margaret says, Sir Jonathan and I are true, really true, lovers.  You'll see!"

 Ethelred the Unready turned an awful shade of white as he remembered all the catastrophes that happened to true lovers.  He covered his ears and wailed, "I'm not ready to hear this.  Go away!"

 However, Esmerelda told them about the stories about princesses whose champions killed giants.

 "Giants, my eye," scoffed Ethel the Ready, But.  "They all disappoint you by and by."

 "My Jonathan can save the kingdom from invasions of two-headed infidels," Esmerelda insisted, fighting away her tears.

 "That'd do the trick," Eddie the Confessor conceded.  "But I do seem to recall the haberdasher going on a crusade to the Holy Land and lamenting that, whether Christian or infidel, everyone has only one head."

 "Wasn't that Sir Leland?" Harold the Fat asked.  "The one who had to surrender his knighthood to open a shop?"

 "Horrible," Eddie the Confessor said.  "Absolutely horrible."

 Esmerelda drowned out the idiocy of her family by taking herself away to sing sad songs about herself.  She hoped that, if she sang plaintively enough, her wondrous music would mix together all of the ingredients needed for a fairy tale--especially one that would end happily ever after.

 "Oh, Fairy Godmother," she sighed to a rose, to a puppy, and even to a snaggle-toothed servant (these pleas embarrassed all servants and most puppies).  "Please answer my cry and let me live happily ever after."  She even flagged down Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags and asked her help in enabling her and Jonathan to live happily ever after.

 Mag the Sag smiled sadly.  "My princess, 'ever after' you will live happily, but you will not live happily ever after."

 When Esmerelda looked puzzled, Mag the Hag explained, "It's an adverbial dilemma."

 But in the next weeks neither adverbs nor prepositional phrases kept Esmerelda from asking again and again to live happily ever after.

 Between chomps on potatoes and drum-sticks, Prince Harold the Fat shouted, "Will you stop that infernal pleading with the universe in an open-ended manner?"

 "You silly girl," cried Charles the Bold, "be careful what you ask for.  You might get it!"

 Harold the Fat tapped his bold brother on the shoulder.  "Well, I'm asking for more drum-sticks, if you don't mind."

 Esmerelda twanged on a lyre that a jester had lent her and imagined that she could actually play the thing, but, of course, it only split her fingernails.  Then, despite her voice being flat, though pleasant at least to one clumsy knight, she sang "The Song of Esmerelda":
 

  Black was her hair --

 Patricia, Maxine, and Levine hollered, "It's light brown, Essie!"

 Esmerelda decided that light brown didn't sound woeful enough.  Ignoring them, she continued with her song:
 

  And black was her soul,
  and black was her rainbow,
  and black was her tiddly-winks --

 Ethelred the Unready covered his ears and hummed loud enough to drown out her singing.  "Not today, Es, maybe tomorrow, but not today!"

 Esmerelda faltered and tried to figure out what she had that really was black and would rhyme with soul or with anything.  She tried singing fast and saying soul and gold, hoping that her family wouldn't notice that she was both babbling.  She even sang:
 

  Love, you bind me like tight corsets,
  and grab my heart like a doctor's forceps.

 Patricia, Maxine, and Levine screamed horribly for King Geoffrey.  "Omigawd, Father!  She's forcing a rhyme!  Isn't that a hanging offense?  Couldn't you at least rack her?  Stretch her until her wicked little spine snaps!"

 Eddie the Confessor admitted, "She's tall enough, but I wouldn't mind if you at least cut out her tongue."

 Esmerelda was now horribly discouraged and put down the lyre and sighed deeply.  Her whole family hated her, she knew, and she ignored her mother's encouragement:  "Your rhymes really aren't so pathetic, dear, and your voice is hardly flat at all, and it's not fair for your excitable brothers and sisters to say your beautiful playing is inept.  With lots of practice, I'm sure you'll do wonderfully."  Her mother kissed her on the head and pointed outside.  "Why not practice out there in the garden. . . at the far end, where your singing can, well, brighten the ears and lives of our wretched peasants?  They have almost no fun at all, as God intended, of course."

 Except for the royal court, everyone in the kingdom gave their blessings to the courtship of Princess Esmerelda and Sir Jonathan.  Actually, the handsome young men in the kingdom hated Sir Jonathan.  If Esmerelda was going to marry anyone, it should be one of them.

 The Talking Heads helped out by singing a ballad whenever she rode past:
 

  Look in his eyes,
  And you'll soon realize,
  That's he's madly in love with you.

 They had a fine refrain worked up, but the handsome young men in town almost always interrupted with:
 

  Don't believe it,
  Don't believe it.
  He's only a clumsy,
  only a dumbsy, low knight.

 And Reuben the Raven, to the irritation of Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags, would proclaim, "O really really, Reilly."

 One afternoon when Esmerelda rode far from the castle with her belovéd Jonathan, she said, "Oh, Good Sir Knight, if you could only slay a dragon, that would impress my father."

Sir Jonathan beamed at his lady, who had graced him both with her words and her gaze.  "My belovéd princess, I slew one yesternight, in Hogmoor Lane, and it fought me mightily before I vanquished it."

 Esmerelda's heart burned red with love.  "Are you certain, Jonathan?"

 "Pretty sure.  It was night, my belovéd, and it is hard to see through your visor when you're fighting something mightily."

 Alas, with the evening meal, King Geoffrey observed, "I hope the morrow is better.  Today I've had to listen to yammering, nothing but yammering, from the good freedmen of Hogmoor Lane."

 "About the dragon?" Esmerelda asked.

 "'Zounds no, child. About the sheets and clothes that some fool went at during the night with a sword and lance.  The peasants had all their tatters and rags out drying on shrubs and bushes.  Some villain transformed them into even worse tatters and rags.  Yeoman Tom even has a hole through his best britches--the ones that Goodwife Jenny the Spinner washes once a year."

 "Oh," Esmerelda said with despair.

 "I'll not stand for breaches of the peace or rogues' creating pieces of breeches," King Geoffrey growled.  "I won't!"

 Esmerelda slumped in her chair and could not eat the rest of her food.  Well, she did have a couple of pork chops, a scoop or two of the potatoes, and a smidgen or two, or three, of the baked apples, but everyone could clearly see that poor Esmerelda was off her feed.  Patricia, Maxine, and Levine hated her as they looked at her trim little figure.  It wasn't fair.  They put on weight simply by inhaling the aromas from the kitchen.

 Real life can be so sad.  It would be joyful to tell how Sir Jonathan eventually proved himself as a brave, noble, and triumphant knight.  But that victory was not to be because of the incident with the crazed bull.  Sir Bull became agitated every time Sir Jonathan passed by, and then he became maddened just thinking of Jonathan humiliating him again.

 "He's going to hurt someone," Sir Jonathan said to Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags.

 "I don't think so, Good Sir Knight."  She pointed to the stone fence around the pasture.  "He's far too heavy to try to climb over the fence, and it is far too thick for him to push through."

 "He needs to be dealt with," he said.

 Mag the Hag smiled at his impulsiveness.  "Would you wait until I take a potion into town and come back?" she asked.  "Once you figure out a sensible plan, I'd like to watch your valor."

 "Certainly, I'll wait."

 However, when Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags turned the corner, Sir Jonathan detected an insult to his honor in the snorting of Sir Bull.

 "This can't wait," he said as he dismounted to deal with this recalcitrant bull. It was terrorizing the pasture by snorting, stomping, and charging from one end to the other.  No other creature was in the pasture, but, to Sir Jonathan's mind, a terrifying bull ought to be dealt with, even though it was only terrifying dandelions and daylilies.  On the other hand, Sir Bull figured that it was minding its own business, since it was his part of his instinctive job  description to stomp and charge about the pasture.  In fact, Sir Bull was quite certain about this responsibility.

 High up in her tower apartment, Princess Esmerelda was watching from her window as Sir Jonathan adjusted his armor.  Down below at the castle, Mag the Hag with the Sagging Bags was giving sips of the potion to the Talking Heads.

 "Bloody hell," they exclaimed and rocked about as they tried to nod toward the pasture.
 Mag the Hag gasped as she saw Sir Jonathan clamber and clank over the stone fence into the pasture.  She began running toward the pasture faster than any little old lady in the kingdom.

 Like someone jousting at a tournament, Sir Jonathan, on foot, his lance dancing in the wind, stood facing off the very angry Sir Bull, on four feet, his horns quivering with outrage.  They charged at each other, and, as Mag the Hag reached the stone fence, Sir Bull made short work of Esmerelda's champion.

 Quicker than you could say, "hey nonny nonny," Sir Bull mortally wounded Sir Jonathan as he sent him flying twenty feet through the air into a clanging junk heap of erstwhile knight.  From her distant window, Princess Esmerelda gasped in wonder when she thought she saw his spirit fly from his armor-encaséd body and waft away in search of another earthly container.  Mag the Hag was also following the spirit and waved her hands until it swan-dived into the belly of a woman who was great with child.  Mag the Hag sagged to the ground in grief and did not notice that the little princess was racing toward the pasture from the castle.  Sad to say, Esmerelda ran out to the pasture, and threw herself on the mountain of armor wherein her clumsy knight had perished.  She lifted his visor and despaired at his blank stare, and, in a quavering voice, she sang:
 

  Look in my eyes,
  And you'll then realize
  That's I'm madly in love with you.

 Before she could sob any of the refrain, Sir Bull came charging out and made short work of her, too.

 You would think that she would have remembered the bull, or that somebody would have warned her, but real life is often like that.  Serfs simply don't tell great ladies about such obvious dangers.  Consequently, grand ladies and gentlemen then demonstrate to serfs the comforting fact that the laws of physics apply equally to all people in a kingdom.  The whole event also made people re-think the old adage, "Music calms the savage beast."  Esmerelda's little song hadn't calmed Sir Bull at all.

 The old king was heart-broken.  King Geoffrey had lost his favorite daughter, and he only had eight more daughters and six sons, or whatever.  Patricia, Maxine, and Levine comforted him and urged him to bury Princess Esmerelda and Sir Jonathan d'Klutz side by side in the Royal Crypt in the Great Cathedral of Hogmoor, but King Geoffrey was a stubborn old soul.

 He said, "I'm the father of fifteen ninnies.  One gets herself killed by a bull and the other fourteen are crazy enough to think I'd bury her next to an idiot who'd get himself dispatched while he's in full armor."

 The triplets mulled that statement over with Charles the Bold, Ethelred the Unready, Harold the Fat, Ethel the Ready But Remember She's the King's Daughter, and the other siblings.
 "I confess he doesn't like the idea," said Eddie.

 "True, maybe if we ask him later," said Ethelred the Unready, "you know, when he's prepared himself for the idea."

 So the spirit of Princess Esmerelda floated around a bit.  Her spirit hoped to be united with Sir Jonathan, but finally gave up and sank deep into the earth where Sir Jonathan had been killed.  The spirit found a vein of iron and settled in for the long haul, wondering all the while if her guardian angel or fairy godmother had just been gossiping with the Fates or off on some all-expenses-paid vacation to Gay Paree.

 And that's what happened in the halcyon days when one knight was bold enough to face a ton of charging bull.  However, our story is not over because we are actually more concerned about the spirits of Princess Esmerelda and Sir Jonathan d'Klutz.  The centuries passed for these true lovers, and, regardless of what transpired, it was always something horrible and often ghastly. ©

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