THE CRYSTAL BALL(Charles E.J. Moulton) THE CRYSTAL BALL

Short story by Charles E.J. Moulton

Minnie sat on the blue chair by her play room desk again, looking into the crystal ball. There was something inside it. She was just unsure of what. It kept flying back and forth as if it were alive.
Aunt Bertha had been babysitting again, nagging at her to brush her teeth. Only if she did brush her teeth would she receive the gift she had brought with her. So, she brushed her teeth.
When mum and dad arrived back from the opera, Bertha had told them that she had been an angel.
Okay, seven years old and so obedient. Yawn, big time.
However, this crystal ball was cool. Minnie would give Bertha that much. Actually, Bertha could be quite cool. She sang songs with her and told her how to belch the Lord’s Prayer.
And then this crystal ball thingie. It wasn’t that this thing was so beautiful. It wasn’t. It was just a glass ball on a black stand. But it was cool. Something was in it and that something was moving.
“Minnie,” her mum called out, “turn off the lights. School tomorrow. Don’t want to sleep through home room, honey,”
Dad opened the door and peeked through the crack.
He smiled. Minnie liked dad’s smile.
It was friendly. He didn’t yell. Mom was just more strict, but dad would smile at her and then things would be okay. Mom was right, though. She did sleep through the first class, her chosen first lesson: music. Yeah, she liked it. But mornings were not her cup of tea. Mornings were like sleeping pills. A long snore.
“Ms. Richards at school told me that you keep missing what she says in class,” her daddy said.
“Ms. Richards is boring,” Minnie spat. “How is she supposed to tell us about music? You know more than her! I know more than her.”
Dad nodded. “Yeah, well. Ms.Richards doesn’t sing for a living. Now, scoot off or mum will blow us into smithereens.”
Minnie giggled and nodded, but she couldn’t help thinking about the crystal ball.
She kissed her SPY KIDS poster of Antonio Banderas good night and went to bed. She dreamt of fortune tellers.
Next morning after waking up, Minnie looked into the insides of that thing again and it was still glowing. So, she ate her breakfast fast and waited on the doorstep for her best friend Veronica to come and pick her up.
All the while, Minnie was holding the ball. The two girlfriends were steps away from school and Aunt Bertha lived on the way to school.
So, Veronica would probably not protest if Minnie said she would want to go by there.
She was in luck.
Veronica said it was okay, as long as they didn’t wake Bertha up.
Minnie just had to ask her aunt what was inside the ball.
When Bertha opened the door, her aunt was still in her slippers and curlers. Rubbing her eyes, she asked Minnie three times to repeat her question.
Then, Bertha took a step away from her door onto the terrace and told Minnie that the crystal ball was a gateway between worlds. An old Hindu priest had given her the ball when she was seven and it had changed her life. All that Minnie had to do was just find the clue to opening the gateway into the ball.
Into the ball? Like walking into the ball itself? Wierd.
Well, Veronica and Minnie talked all about this all through school. They rushed home and in to Minnie’s play room after school and tried to rub the ball. Without result. Rub the lamp? Veronica remarked that rubbing it was useless. After all, it wasn’t a magic lamp. Maybe there was magic chant or something that could open the gate.
Their mummies and daddies thought they were doing their homework together and their milk and cookies were long since gobbled down.
It was awfully quiet in there, mum thought.
“We need more food,” Minnie said, “I’m starved. You check the crystal ball for the gateway.”
Veronica looked up.”Huh?”
“Check on the gateway.”
Minnie had no idea what made her say these words, but as she did say them the light that was in there flickered and sparked and now the creature that obviously lived in there popped out with a flicker.
“What did we say?” Minnie said as if in a trance.
“You said: Check on the gateway.”
The something that had been inside the ball now came out and flew around. It was awfully pretty little fairy and no bigger than a hand. It danced around in the air and its’ white wings fluttered.
It was completely white, a silvery white color.
The fairy smiled.
“Hi,” the fairy said and giggled. “I am the fairy godmother.”
The girls were too stunned to speak.
It giggled. “Aren’t you going to say hello?”
“Hell- Hello!” Minnie stuttered. “Did Aunt Bertha send you?”
The fairy cocked her head. “Well, child, not that I know who this Aunt-Bertha-what’s-her-name is. But I do tell you that you have scored big tonight.”
“Do we get a lollipop?” Veronica sang.
Now, Minnie gave her friend a shove and shook her head.
“I was just asking,” Veronica said.
The fairy smiled. “We have lollipops in heaven.”
“Heaven?” Minnie said, startled.
“It’s not heaven, really,” the fairy said grinning. “I like to call it the land of milk and honey, only because that is our king’s favourite drink.”
“Can we visit?”
The fairy shrugged. “Do you have an open mind?”
The girlfriends looked at each other and nodded.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Then, come along, girls,” the fairy said, streching out her hand.
Apprehensively, the girlfriends took the fairy’s hand and – whoosh – were abducted, nay - sucked, into the ball of magic.
They flew through a white tunnel that seemed to glitter with lights for longer than they could remember. Finally, the plopped down on the chequered marble floor of a palace. They were in middle of a costume ball. The costumes were extravagant to say the least. Three-colored feather boas, large plumed white hats, silk jackets, red buttons and gigantic green and blue pants. Half meter high shoes.
The music was familiar. It sounded like something from an opera dad had sung a while back. He had been performing an opera by Händel called “Semele” and this was a dance from that show.
Quickly and really out of nowhere, the fairy came scuttering along from behind a big pink clad behind.
“Come, I want you to meet the king.”
Veronica and Minnie stood up from where they were sitting and criss-crossed between the dancing people until they reached a man dressed in a huge white and black, well starched coat with a green collar.
The man turned around and said: “Yes, fairy godmother?”
Minnie couldn’t believe her eyes.
Was this her father? No, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. And yet, it looked like him.
“This is Veronica and Minnie,” the fairy said, “they are new to the Land of Hjeojeouel. Would your highness care to introduce them to our wishes.”
The king smiled. “It would be a pleasure.”
“You look like my dad,” Minnie said.
The king nodded. “That is what is peculiar about this place. What about you, Veronica? Do I look like your dad, too?”
Veronica said: “Yes, you do.”
The king kneeled down and gave her nose a peck.
“That is the crystal ball. It is only given to special children. We like to invite some kids once in a while to see what it is we do.”
The king chuckled. “Bertha gave you the ball, didn’t she?”
Minnie nodded.
The king bellowed with laughter.
“Ah, she had a good time here. We didn’t even recognize the place after she left. She has spent all her life waiting for the children that are imaginative enough to change this place.”
“You mean you can change it?”
The king sang his words now, just as the dancers danced to a tune by Mozart.
Minnie believed it was a tune from “The Magic Flute”.
“Honey, you are the change. You can make this place anything you want. So, make a wish and change the change and thereby remain what you really are! Change yourself and meet your heart of hearts at the other end of the spectrum.”
Veronica stood up and made a pirouette.
“I wish I was on a lollipop boat in a sea of chocolate under a sky of marshmellow ice cream.”
“That is possible, isn’t it, fairy godmother?”
The fairy nodded. “Indeed.”
Nothing happened.
“Ah-uh-oh,” the king tut-tutted and raised his finger, “First the magic phrase.”
“Magic phrase?” Minnie spat and though for a second. “Oh, I see.”
Both girls exclaimed. “Check on the gateway!”
The king smiled. “Then sail away!”
As soon as they said this, the two girls were under a white-orange universe of floating marshmellow clouds on a blue sky of fudge, sailing on a lollipop boat with sugarcane sails on a sea of chocolate ice cream.
The girls started laughing.
“This is so cool!”
“Yeah, Minnie. Think of it. We can be anything we like.”
They sat on the boat drinking fluid chocolate and eating lollipops until they fell asleep. When they awoke an hour later, Minnie asked.
“What do you wanna be, Veronica?”
“Thin,” Veronica asked, “Your turn now, Minnie!”
Minnie thought for a moment and then exclaimed:
“I want a dashing prince to arrive on a tiger. He should look like Antonio Banderas and battle a fierce dragon. I want him to battle the beast and see the dragon’s home.”
“Okay!” Veronica exclaimed, forgetting her aching stomach.
“Check on the gateway.”
As soon as this was said, the prince actually rode in a purple tiger and landed on the deck of the boat.
He took of his hat, bowed and said:
“You charming prrincesses should not be eating sssso mmmuch candy. You will rrrruin those dainty fffigures! Pleasure to meet you. Prince Antonio at your service!”
The girls blushed as he kneeled and kissed their hands.
A lute was hanging by a ribbon across the price’s back. He grabbed it, tuned it began singing a song.

“Come, come, now, my mistress of beauty
Bestow me magnificent ice.
If only you’d but grant me sweet duty
Your kiss and your sigh’d still suffice.
No need for any break through promises.
Just grant me your dearest love’s kiss.
For within your cotton clad bosom
Lays love making, heart shaping bliss.”

“I saw Evita, I love you,” Minnie moaned.
The girls sighed as Antonio kissed their cheeks.
It was pure bliss, candy, princes and furry animals.
As the tiger paced the deck, the small speck of black dust in the sky turned bigger and it was Veronica that noticed it growing bigger.
“A dragon,” Veronica yelled. “Prince Antonio, please hurry quick. Save us!”
The prince with the strapping Spanish consonants leaped up and drew his sword, waved the sword four times and grunted, jumped up on the railing and did a jig, jumped down and pushed the sabre into the dragon, but too late.
The prince pierced and screamed and slew and jumped and turned.
The dragon yelled and hissed and munched and spat and hollared and attacked the boat, leaving nothing but a small raft left bobbing on a chocolate sea.
“Nice going!” the prince spat. “I am sorry,” the prince said, sounding like Puss-in-boots.
As the dragon slowly disappeared only to become a small speck of dust in the sky, the tiger found himself dipping his head into the ocean and drinking as much of the chocolate he could manage.
“Don’t be,” Minnie said. “It was fun to watch you fight. You are so handsome.”
“Wait a minute,” Veronica said, “we are in the land of Hjeojeouel, right?”
“Betcha!”
“So, we just make up a rescue,”
Antonio smiled.
“You are the real heroes here.”
“I want a flying zeppelin to come and save us and take us to a land of talking animals.”
The prince chuckled and looked up.
“The imagination of children knows no bounds.”
Minnie exclaimed: “Check on the gateway!”
The buzzing of the zeppelin made the three adventurers hold their ears. It was like the sound of a giant bumble bee.
Finally, the blue vehicle stopped right above them.
A white beam literally sucked them up into the bowels of the steel tummy of this thing.
Getting lost on the way to the cockpit, the prince remarked that having taken another sip of chocolate would not have been a bad idea to strengthen their spirits.
Soon enough, though, they reached the control centre and who sat there if not Aunt Bertha.
“Sit down,” she screamed. “We are flying into a storm.”
They did sit down, but could not help but wonder if this really was Aunt Bertha.
“Are you really my babysitter?”
The woman shook her head: “I am her guardian angel. Now hold still. We are flying into the madness of King Opera.”
Veronica giggled. “What is King Opera?”
It is a giant that conjurs up hurricanes by singing loud music.
“Loud music?” Prince Antonio inquired. “He is not the only one that can sing loud music.”
“Prove it,” Minnie spat.
“All right,” Antonio cried, rolling his r’s. “Here we go.”
“This better be good,” Veronica said.
“Trust me, sister. It will be,” Antonio sang in his Hispanic lilt.
Antonio stood up and as he did he fumbled with his red cape and adjusted his hair. He positioned himself a foot away from the girls in order not to scare them with his loudness.
Then, he started singing a tune in his best opera voice, one that he didn’t know he had.


BEDROOM ROSES
Gigue Estampie Real for Quill Plucked Lute in the key of C-Major

In the chambers of a nuptial abode
There stood some bedroom roses,
Red as cherries
Or boysenberries
Or red as two virginal maid’s noses.

In these chambers a girl she lived
A maid of two-and twenty,
She lived a dream,
So it would seem,
With a man of assets a-plenty.

In these chambers a girl she lived,
Courted by not only her true love,
Whilst her man was away,
O horrid hooray,
She found each bright day a new love.

In these chambers the roses of magic,
That had blossomed for years, so tragic,
They faded away,
Until the bright day
When someone restored their magic.

To these chambers she never returned,
Until the day when her new castle burned,
Three years then hence,
She built a new fence,
Came back to her man, wise and learned.
In these chambers she swore him her new love,
And he swore him homely and true love,
When together they merged
Floral magic it surged
“Bedroom roses bloom only when but two love.”





“That wasn’t loud,” Veronica said.
Minnie sighed. “But pretty.”
Yes, the sweetness of that song made them forget the rocking of that flying machine. Now they knew what Bertha’s angel meant. A man appeared above a cloud in a red tuxedo, wearing a huge fake moustache. He opened his mouth and sang the loudest tone they had ever heard. Bertha’s angel leaned forward and steered right into the mouth of the opera singer.
Once they were inside the mouth, they realized that were not in a mouth anymore. They were in a cave, but not any cave. It was the cave of the original sin.
The vehicle parked on a cliff inside the cave and the entourage walked about the cave.
“But we didn’t choose this place?”
Bertha’s angel shrugged. “Maybe you did.”
“Tell us about it,” Antonio said.
The cave had been empty now for exactly 6537 years. Ever since he had escaped his cage in 5107 B.C. he had been on the run. When mankind already had been around for a while, rats doing his work and the white one sleeping his eternity away, mankind’s destiny was determined only within the grasp of its own venture. And the road that he had walked and rode, crawled and ran more like it, now for quite a long time had led him to an underground lake whose white child lay, head lolled back against the stone, golden brown hair swimming in the water like it had now for exactly 7540 years, a non-existent angel lurking in the corner of the evil eye.
Right opposite it hung a cage from the cave roof. It was long, rusty and only bent open in two places. The place where evil had resided once for one-thousand years. Minnie looked around and was amazed at how much of all this she could see in spite of how deep below the earth she was. There was the blue moss and there was that strange light coming from the end of the tunnel river.
It seemed to part in two directions at the end and a light seemed to be shining from above it. Was that a hum she heard? What was that hum? From where did it come? She did not know that.
That was the real thing, was it not? The first archangel’s real prison. The sound of the iron chain creaking from where it hung by the cave ceiling was only accompanied by another sound: the dropping of melting ice water from the walls. In that famous cave that was created as an oasis, but that in the end became what he saw it as today: a twilight zone gateway between heaven and hell.
It all made him realize that this was a very long journey.
The cage hung from one large iron chain that seemed to steady every one of its movements. They looked at the cage and found it quite hard to imagine anyone, even a demon, living there for a thousand years, let alone with a rat as a companion.
There was a dragon in the corner and he was snoring.
The assembly stepped into the vehicle again and sat there for a while thinking. The Bertha’s angel said:
“You want to go somewhere fun?”
The girls nodded: “Sure!”
Veronica said: “I want to witness a parade in a fairytale city!”
Once inside the vehicle, Minnie asked: “Why did you show us this? To tell us that we should be thankful for the good things in life?”
The angel nodded.
“I understand.”
Veronica thought for a moment. Her expression was one of wonder and awe, but also mixed with confusion. As they flew over a calm sea, she scooted closer to the angel flying the aircraft.
“The question is legitimate,” Antonio said,
“Huh?”
The prince smiled and shrugged, closing his eyes.
“I just know what you gonna say, kid,” he said in his Malaga idiom and blew her a kiss, “It is a good one.”
Veronica raised her eyebrows and pushed forward her head in an arrogant gesture. “You know that I’m, like, seven, right? I mean, I know you are a famous movie star, but ask me in ten years if we wanna date, capice?”
Antonio threw up her head and laughed, “I’ll keep that in mind if Melanie gets tired of me. Besides, I’m Antonio’s angel. The real fellah is filming in San Fransisco at the moment.”
“Whatever,” Veronica said and turned to the pilot. “My question is: why did we experience this? It wasn’t your choice, so whose was it.”
Bertha’s angel grinned. “Okay, you’ve called my bluff. It was in the wish, kid.”
Minnie raised her eyebrows. “I wished to see the gateway to hell? When on God’s green Earth did I do that?”
“When you summoned the dragon!”
“No way!”
“Way,” Bertha’s angel said. “You said: I want him to battle the beast and see the dragon’s home.”
“Oh, crap!”
Bertha’s angel laughed. “Be careful what you wish for. It might come true. Now, do you want that parade?”
“Yes-sir-ee-bob!”
“Then, be specific!”
Minnie closed her eyes and made a wish.
“I want to witness a peaceful parade in a fairytale kingdom with famous storybook characters dancing and singing to their heart’s delight.”
“And we three are the star attraction,” Veronica added.
“Good idea,” Antonio concluded.
With a loud whoosh, the three explorers left a trail of dust behind as they exploded out from the aircraft. In a second, they were back in the tunnel again.
Soon enough, the two girlfriends and their cute gentleman caller ended up on a large pink wagon pulled by fifty green elephants. It was a large train of animals so long that the eye really couldn’t comprehend its’ scope.
Veronica was now wearing a long pink dress with a golden belt and blue transparant slippers. Her hair was blond now, a welcome difference to her usual red color. She held a fan and was waving to a crowd of over one hundred thousand people that were cheering under a sky of thirty different aurora borealis-like colours. The buildings that aligned the avenue were all in gold and were studded with rubies and diamonds. Behind her on various other wagons only drawn by one elephant each were Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio. She, herself, was obviously Cinderella.
Minnie held a mirror up to her face and saw her own reflection. She was Snow White. In between them, Antonio was dressed in green. He smiled at the thought of actually being Peter Pan.
A Spanish Peter Pan.
“Well, there is a first time for everything!”
It was Prince Antonio who remarked, a moment later, that Snow White should actually be holding a red, shiny apple.
With the crowds cheering, throwing flowers and bestowing the three with admiration, Veronica Cinderella forgot that she only had one shoe on. She took a step toward the edge. As she ventured to greet her audience, she took a wrong turn and slipped off the edge. Minnie Snow White grabbed her by the arm and fall off the edge, as well.
Now, the two of them were only holding on to the edge of the wagon. Under them was silver oblivion. Above them only the prince, who did his best to try to save them.
Well, soon enough, the lost their grip and rushed down the tunnel of white light again. They bumped, scratched and fluttered down every nook and cranny and soon bumped down on the floor of Minnie’s play room floor.
As they awoke, they realized they were no longer in the space-time continuum. They were home in reality. The crystal ball was next to them on the desk and the little white light was again fluttering back and forth inside.
A blue, transparant shoe was on the floor next to Veronica and a red, shiny apple was in Minnie’s hand.
The sounds of Minnie’s parents preparing supper gave them a familiar sound of comfort, but they knew they wanted to go back in to the ball. They made a wish and then broke into fits of giggles.
After all, supper was still a half hour away.
Plenty of time to travel back into the land of fairytales.

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