Tales of the Peculiar Read online

  Farmer Bachelard was the first one to hit upon a solution. He would buy a big plot of land on the outskirts of the village and build a new house there, even larger than his current one (which had, incidentally, three doors that swung on hinges, two floors, a gabled roof, and a porch). This was around the time when the villagers stopped going by “Farmer this” and “Farmer that” and started calling themselves “Mister this” and “Mrs. that,” because they were no longer farmers—except for Farmer Hayworth, who kept on mucking his swamp and refused to sell any more limbs to the cannibals. He liked his simple house just fine, he insisted, and didn’t even use it that much because he still enjoyed sleeping in his swamp after a hard day’s work. His friends thought him silly and old-fashioned, and stopped coming by to see him.

  The once-humble village of Swampmuck expanded rapidly as villagers bought larger and larger tracts of land upon which they built larger and more ornate houses. To finance this, they began selling the cannibals both an arm and a leg (the leg always on the opposite side from the arm, to make balancing easier), and learned to get around on crutches. The cannibals, whose hunger and wealth both seemed inexhaustible, were very happy with this. Then Mister Pullman tore down his wooden house and replaced it with one made of brick, which touched off a race amongst the villagers to see who could build the grandest brick house. But Mister Bettelheim bested them all: he built a beautiful house made of honey-colored limestone, the sort of home only the richest merchants in Chipping Whippet lived in. He had afforded it by selling his arm and both of his legs.

  “He’s gone too far!” complained Mrs. Sally over goat-rump sandwiches in the fancy new restaurant the village had built.

  Her friends agreed.

  “How does he plan to enjoy his three-floor house,” said Mrs. Wannamaker, “if he can’t even walk up the stairs?”

  It was just at that moment that Mister Bettelheim came into the restaurant—carried by a burly man from the neighboring village. “I’ve hired a man to carry me up and down the stairs, and anywhere else I want to go,” he said proudly. “I don’t need legs!”

  The ladies were astounded. But soon they had sold their legs, too, and all across the village brick houses were being torn down and replaced by giant houses made of limestone.

  The cannibals, by this time, had abandoned the coast of Meek to live in the forest near Swampmuck. There was no point anymore in subsisting on a meager diet of hanged criminals and accident victims’ limbs when the villagers’ limbs were fresher, tastier, and more plentiful than anything available in Meek. Their forest homes were modest because they gave so much of their money to the villagers, but the cannibals were nevertheless content, much happier to live in huts with full bellies than to go hungry in mansions.

  As the villagers and the cannibals came to depend on one another, the appetites of each continued to grow. The cannibals became fat. Having exhausted every recipe they had for arms and legs, they began to wonder what the villagers’ ears tasted like. But the villagers would not sell them their ears, because ears did not grow back. That is until Mister Bachelard, carried in the arms of his burly servant, paid a secret visit to the cannibals’ forest and asked them how much they’d be willing to pay. He’d still be able to hear without his ears, he reasoned, and though it would make him a bit ugly, the fine house of white marble he’d be able to construct with the proceeds would be beautiful enough to compensate. (Now, the financially astute among you may be asking: why didn’t Mister Bachelard just save up money from the ongoing sale of his arms and legs until he could afford a marble house? It’s because he couldn’t save money, because he’d taken out a very large loan from a bank in order to buy the land upon which his limestone house was built, and now he owed the bank an arm and a leg every month just to pay interest on the loan. So, he needed to sell his ears.)

  The cannibals offered Mister Bachelard an exorbitant sum. Mister Bachelard snipped off his ears, happy to be rid of them, and replaced his limestone house with the marble home of his dreams. It was the most beautiful house in the village, and perhaps in all of Oddfordshire. Though the villagers of Swampmuck talked behind Bachelard’s back about how ugly he’d made himself and how foolish it was to sell ears that would never grow back, they all paid him visits and had their servants carry them through the marble rooms and up and down the marble staircases, and by the time they left, each was green with envy.

  By this time, none of the villagers but Farmer Hayworth had legs, and very few had arms. For a while they all insisted on keeping one arm so that they could point at things and feed themselves, but then they realized that a servant could lift a spoon or a glass to their lips just as easily, and it was not much more trouble to say “fetch this for me” or “fetch that for me” than to point across a room at something. So arms became seen as needless luxuries, and the villagers, reduced to limbless torsos, would travel from place to place in silken sacks slung across their servants’ shoulders.

  Ears soon went the way of arms. The villagers pretended they had not called Mister Bachelard ugly.

  “He doesn’t look so bad,” said Mister Bettelheim.

  “We could wear earmuffs,” suggested Mister Anderson.

  And so their ears were snipped and sold, and marble houses were built. The village gained a reputation for its architectural beauty, and what had once been a backwater visited only by accident became a tourist destination. A hotel was built and several more restaurants. Goat-rump sandwiches were not even on the menu. The people of Swampmuck pretended they had never even heard of goat-rump sandwiches.

  Tourists sometimes lingered near Farmer Hayworth’s modest, flat-roofed house of wood, curious about the contrast between his simple home and the palaces that surrounded it. He would explain that he preferred the simple life of a four-limbed swampweed farmer and show them around his patch of swamp. His was the last bit of swamp in Swampmuck, as all the others had been filled in with dirt to make room for houses.

  The eyes of the country were on Swampmuck and its beautiful marble homes. The homes’ owners loved the attention but were desperate to stand out in some way, as every house was nearly identical. Each wanted to be known as the owner of the most beautiful house in Swampmuck, but they were already using their arms and legs every month just to pay interest on their enormous loans, and they had already sold their ears.

  They began to approach the cannibals with new ideas.

  “Would you loan me money with my nose as collateral?” asked Mrs. Sally.

  “No,” the cannibals said, “but we would happily buy your nose outright.”

  “But if I cut my nose off I’ll look like a monster!” she said.

  “You could wear a scarf around your face,” they suggested.

  Mrs. Sally refused, and from her sack she instructed her servant to take her home.

  Next Mister Bettelheim came to see the cannibals.

  “Would you buy my nephew?” he whispered, his servant pushing an eight-year-old boy before the cannibals.

  “Absolutely not!” the cannibals replied, and gave the terrified boy a candy before sending him home.

  Mrs. Sally returned a few days later. “Okay,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll sell you my nose.”

  She had it replaced with a false one made of gold and, with the money she earned, built an enormous gold dome on top of her marble house.

  You may have guessed where this is going. The whole village sold their noses and built gold domes and turrets and towers. Then they sold their eyes—just one each—and used the money to dig moats around their houses, which they filled with wine and exotic, drunken fish. They said that binocular vision was a luxury anyway and needed mainly for throwing and catching things which, lacking arms, they didn’t do anymore. And it only took one eye to appreciate the beauty of their homes.

  Now, the cannibals were civilized and law-abiding, but they weren’t saints. They were living in huts in the fo
rest and cooking their food over campfires while the villagers lived in manors and palaces, waited on by servants. So the cannibals moved into the villagers’ houses. There were so many rooms in the houses that it took the villagers some time to notice, but when they finally did, they were angry.

  “We never said you could live with us!” the villagers said. “You’re dirty cannibals who eat human flesh! Go stay in the woods!”

  “If you don’t let us live in your houses,” the cannibals replied, “we’ll stop buying your limbs and go back to Meek. Then you won’t be able to pay your loans and you’ll lose everything.”

  The villagers didn’t know what to do. They didn’t want cannibals in their houses, but neither could they imagine going back to the way they used to live. In fact, things would be worse than before: not only would they be homeless, disfigured, and half blind, but they wouldn’t even have swamps to farm because they’d filled them all in. It was unthinkable.

  Grudgingly, they let the cannibals stay. The cannibals spread out among all the houses in the village (except Farmer Hayworth’s—no one wanted to live in his crude wooden shack). They took the master suites and largest bedrooms and made the villagers move into their own guest rooms, some of which did not even have en-suite bathrooms! Mister Bachelard was forced to live in his chicken coop. Mister Anderson moved into his cellar. (It was very nice for a cellar, but still.)

  The villagers complained incessantly about the new arrangement. (They still had tongues, after all.)

  “Your cooking smells make me sick!” Mrs. Sally said to her cannibals.

  “The tourists keep asking about you, and it’s embarrassing!” Mister Pullman shouted at his cannibals, startling them as they read quietly in the study.

  “If you don’t move out, I’ll tell the authorities you’ve been kidnapping children and cooking them into quiches!” Mister Bettelheim threatened.

  “One doesn’t cook a quiche, one bakes a quiche,” replied his cannibal, a cultivated Spaniard named Héctor.

  “I don’t care!” shouted Mister Bettelheim, going quite red in the face.

  After some weeks of this, Héctor decided he couldn’t take it anymore. He offered Mister Bettelheim every penny he had left on earth if he would just sell Héctor his tongue.

  Mister Bettelheim did not reject the offer out of hand. He gave it careful thought and consideration. Without his tongue, he’d no longer be able to complain or make threats against Héctor. But with the money Héctor was promising, he could build a second house on his property and live there, away from Héctor, and he’d no longer have anything to complain about. And who else in the village would have not one but two golden-domed marble houses?

  Now, if Mister Bettelheim had asked Farmer Hayworth’s advice, his old friend would have told him not to take the cannibal’s deal. If the smell of Héctor’s cooking bothers you, come and live with me, Hayworth would have offered. I have more than enough room in my house. But Mister Bettelheim had shunned Farmer Hayworth, as had the rest of the village, so he didn’t ask—and even if he had, Bettelheim was too proud, and would rather live without a tongue than in Hayworth’s sad little house.

  So Bettelheim went to Héctor and said, “Okay.”

  Héctor drew his carving knife, which was always sheathed at his side. “Yes?”

  “Yes,” Bettelheim said, and stuck out his tongue.

  Héctor did the deed. He stuffed Bettelheim’s mouth with cotton to stop the bleeding. He carried the tongue into the kitchen, fried it in truffle oil with a pinch of salt, and ate it. Then he took all the money he’d promised Bettelheim, gave it to Bettelheim’s servants, and dismissed them. Limbless, tongueless, and very angry, Bettelheim grunted and wiggled around on the floor. Héctor picked him up, carried him outside, and tied him to a stake in a shady part of the back garden. He watered and fed Bettelheim twice a day, and like a fruiting vine Bettelheim grew limbs for Héctor to eat. Héctor felt a little bad about it, but not too bad. Eventually he married a nice cannibal girl and together they raised a cannibal family, all fed by the peculiar man in the back garden.

  Such was the fate of all the villagers—all but Farmer Hayworth, who kept his limbs and lived in his little house and farmed his swamp like he always had. He didn’t bother his new neighbors, and they didn’t bother him. He had everything he needed, and so did they.

  And they lived happily ever after.

  The Fork-Tongued Princess

  In the ancient kingdom of Frankenbourg there was a princess who had a peculiar secret: in her mouth hid a long, forked tongue and across her back lay shimmering, diamond-patterned scales. Because she had developed these serpentine characteristics during her teenage years and rarely opened her mouth for fear of being found out, she had been able to keep them secret from everyone but her handmaiden. Not even her father, the king, knew.

  It was a lonely life for the princess, as she rarely spoke to anyone for fear they’d catch a glimpse of her forked tongue. But her real trouble was this: she was to be married to a prince from Galatia.4 They’d never seen each other, but her beauty was so renowned that he’d agreed to the match anyway, and they were to meet for the first time on their wedding day, which was fast approaching. Their union would cement relations between Frankenbourg and Galatia, ensure prosperity for both regions, and create a pact of defense against their hated mutual enemy, the warlike principality of Frisia. The princess knew the marriage was politically necessary, but she was terrified the prince would reject her once he discovered her secret.

  “Don’t worry,” counseled her handmaiden. “He’ll see your beautiful face, come to know your beautiful heart, and forgive the rest.”

  “And if he doesn’t?” the princess replied. “Our best hope for peace will be ruined, and I’ll live the rest of my days a spinster!”

  The kingdom prepared for a royal wedding. The palace was hung with golden silks, and chefs from across the land came to prepare a lavish feast. Finally, the prince arrived with his royal entourage. He climbed out of his carriage and greeted the king warmly.

  “And where is my bride-to-be?” he asked.

  He was shown into a reception hall where the princess was waiting.

  “Princess!” cried the prince. “You’re even lovelier than your reputation had me believe.”

  The princess smiled and bowed, but would not open her mouth to speak.

  “What’s the matter?” said the prince. “Have I struck you dumb with my good looks?”

  The princess blushed and shook her head.

  “Ah,” the prince replied, “then you don’t find me handsome, is that it?”

  Alarmed, the princess shook her head again—that wasn’t what she’d meant at all!—but she could see she was only making things worse.

  “Say something, girl, this is no time to be tongue-tied!” hissed the king.

  “Pardon me, sire,” said the handmaiden, “but perhaps the princess would be more comfortable speaking with the prince for the first time in private.”

  The princess nodded gratefully.

  “It isn’t proper,” the king grumbled, “but I suppose under the circumstances . . .”

  His guards showed the prince and princess to a room where they could be alone.

  “Well?” said the prince once the guards had gone. “What do you think of me?”

  Covering her mouth with her hand, the princess said, “I think you’re very handsome.”

  “Why do you hide your mouth when you speak?” the prince asked.

  “It’s my habit,” the princess replied. “I’m sorry if you find it strange.”

  “You are strange. But I could learn to live with it, given your beauty!”

  The princess’s heart soared, but then crashed back to earth just as quickly. It would only be a matter of time before the prince discovered her secret. Though she could have waited until they married to reveal it, she kn
ew it wasn’t right to deceive him.

  “I have something to confess,” she said, still speaking with her mouth covered, “and I’m afraid that when you learn what it is, you won’t want to marry me.”

  “Nonsense,” said the prince. “What is it? Oh no—we’re cousins, aren’t we?”

  “It isn’t that,” she said.

  “Well,” the prince said confidently, “there’s nothing that could stop me wanting to marry you.”

  “I hope you’re a man of your word,” said the princess, and then she took away her hand and showed him her forked tongue.

  “Stars above!” cried the prince, recoiling.

  “That’s not all,” said the princess, and slipping one arm out of her dress, she showed him the scales that covered her back.

  The prince was flabbergasted, then furious. “I could never marry a monster like you!” he cried. “I can’t believe you and your father tried to trick me!”

  “He didn’t!” she said. “My father doesn’t know anything about it!”

  “Well, he’s going to!” the prince fumed. “This is an outrage!”

  He stormed out of the room to go tell the king, and the princess chased after, begging him not to.

  It was just then that five Frisian assassins, who had disguised themselves as chefs, pulled daggers from their cakes and ran from the kitchens toward the king’s room. The prince was just about to reveal the princess’s secret when they broke down the door. While the assassins killed his guards, the cowardly king dove into a wardrobe and hid himself beneath a pile of clothes.

  The assassins turned on the prince and princess.

  “Don’t kill me!” the prince cried. “I’m just an errand boy from another land!”

  “Nice try,” said the lead assassin. “You’re the prince of Galatia, and you’re here to marry the princess and form an alliance against us. Prepare to die!”