Hot Feet

Time was, walkin barefoot was easy.  Little dust between your toes maybe an edge of oyster shell roughin you up some, but the grass was always cool. I especially liked fresh, dewy grass at night, so you didn't have to wait till morning.  Nowadays, some mother is yellin about hookworms and lockjaw from rusty nails.  The roads are blacktop, the heat waves on them causing mirage on down the way.  Blacktop so hot it'll melt the skin right off you feet.  My Grams knows a lady worked up the plantation road when it was just a foot path.  She saw it go from dust to oyster shell, then concrete and blacktop, all in the span of the forty years she worked the Palmetto Plantation.  Bare footed she was, all her life, said it made her closer to God's creation to go round without shoes.  Truth was she probably had none, cept a sandal or two.  We used to follow her to the main house and step inside onto the cold hardwood floors, then dig our toes into the heavy silk oriental rugs Doc Riordan brought back for his wife from the war.  I see her now and again on her porch, feet up on a pillowed milk crate, cussing her feet.  They burn all the time she says, sure that she's not long for the underworld.  That the devil is preparin her feet for the fires of damnation and purgatory.  Old Doc says its just her rheumatism and damage from never having no shoes on her feet.  She says shoes feel like standin all day on the blacktop.  I think we spent alot of time in the wilderness before someone thought of shoes.  The Bible starts out with no shoes being the state of things as God wanted it to be.   I move off her grass and dangle my toes off the curb in a gesture of solidarity.  I step down onto the road and my feet are enveloped in fire, like I stepped into a fire ant nest.  I square my chin and give her a smile, I walk fast cause I'm not long for this road.  There is a jumpin bridge not 40yards away and I am determined to make it, with or without the souls of my feet.  I remember how much my feet burned, remember how cold the water felt, the cloying sweet coolness of the mud and grass on the bank of the Atchafalya.  So much so, that I can still feel it now, heat waves rollin off the blacktop, hot feet the normal state of affairs in a Louisiana summer.

On Being a Princess

     From  an  early age, Wilhamena Distemptia Analov Krisinavitch, had been sheltered, doted upon and given all the trappings of a future Queen.  But until that day came, she was just Princess Wilhamena, or Willy for short.  Willy was always the center of attention.  Even on days of state business, Willy was fond of interrupting her Father and Mother during an audience with locals seeking favor, justice or advice.  It was just such a day when Willy came twirling into the audience chamber, fully-frocked and  heady with mischief.  All eyes turned to watch as she danced into their midst, not because of her beauty or her endless ability to pirouette, but because she was also singing at the top of her lungs.  Through the throng of onlookers she twirled and sang, ever closer to the dais where her parents were enthroned.  The way parted as Willy spun willy-nilly into the front of the crowd, almost careening with a short little man at the foot of the throne dais.  She opened her eyes, because she always spun with her eyes closed so she wouldn't get dizzy.  The room tilted slightly then came into focus.  The little man had a modest paunch overlapping his bright green breeches and velvet blue boots.  His topcoat was also bright green and his shirt was a mass of ruffles that collared great tufts of chest hair that seamlessly joined his beard.  His hat was in his hands and he was twisting the brim in impatience, brow furrowed from way up on his bald pate.  Bushy eye brows came to a vee above a round cherry of a nose and he looked sternly at Willy for interrupting his audience.   She could tell he wanted to say something but held his tongue.  This was usually the way of things since she was never scolded for interrupting.  She climbed the steps, giving her parents the most regal smile she could muster.  Her Father beckoned with open arms.  Willy jumped into his waiting grasp where he spun her up and around to place her gently on his and the Queens adjoining arm rests.  She was now perched in the middle of her parents and a full head taller.  The whole room was in her view and she felt very lordly.  She looked quizzically to her Father.  He gave her a gentle nod. 
     At the top of her lungs, Willy said in a cutesy, sing song voice, "Today's audience is over.  We thank you for coming.  We look forward to your homage again on the morrow."
     With this, the crowd started an about face to mill towards the door, all except the little man at the head of the line.  He gave a stern look at Willy, slapped his hat against his stubby little leg and turned to leave.  Abruptly he stopped and turned back to the dais.
     He said, "Sire, I beg your pardon, but I am three days ride to the castle and two days in line to be cut short of my business by your daughter.  As my matter is pressing, may I please be aloud to finish."
     The king said, "My daughter has concluded the audiences for the day.  I will hear you tomorrow."
     "But tomorrow will be too late, Sire, there are lives at stake," he said.
     The King angered at the little man's petulance.  How dare he make demands!  "If you must be heard, then my Daughter shall hear you," the King said.
     "but Sire, she is a child," he said!  "You would let matters of life and death be settled by a child?"
     Willy jumped up onto the throne put her hands on her hips and said, "I am a Princess!"
     "You are a spoiled little girl, given free reign..."  The little man was abruptly cut off by the bellow of the King, "How dare you speak to my daughter that way!  Guards!  Guards, take this man to the dungeon."

     At this critical juncture in the story, the Princess makes some magical creature upset, and is relegated to some sort of lasting living arrangement in the castle tower.  And of course, if this was a normal Princess story, it would be ended with the requisite rescue by a handsome Prince and happily ever after, yada yada yada.  However,.....

     In the vice like grip of the palace guards, the little man began a most curious humming sound.  It echoed in the great arched audience room, flowing from pillar to plated window.  The humming became a keening and the whole room started to shake violently.  Willy felt like she was in a large jar and somebody was banging on it from without.  A cracking could be heard and the paned windows began to fall.  Like great sheets of colored ice they fell, exploding on impact with the marble floor.  Then a swarm  of insects billowed into the chamber, as if they had been beckoned by the little man and were waiting just outside for this moment. 
     "Quick," said the King!  "Silence him!"
     One of the guards took off a heavy glove and shoved it into the little man's mouth.  Immediately, the cloud of insects went into a holding pattern, circling the room.  In the excitement, the audience chamber had been cleared.  All who remained were guards, a few attendants and the royal family.  The little man threw off the grip of his guards, pulled the glove from his mouth and walked to the throne dais.
     "My village was ravaged by this cloud of insects until we figured out a way of controlling them.  My fear was, that they would leave and ravage other villages as they had ours.  I came to give you the secret of this control so you might save others from our misfortune.  It is clear to me now that you have no love for your subjects and an abiding blindness for the future of the kingdom."  He said this last part with a pointed stare at Willy.  Willy was not a grown-up but did understand many topics beyond her years.  She could understand his frustration but not the violent attack on the castle.
     One of the larger insects separated from the rest of the swarm and flitted down to the dais.  It landed hard with a audible clap to its carapace.  Long of limb, short of wing and shimmering with a green tinted iridescence, it was a beetle of sort, though not of the like seen in these parts before.  While having an initial gross-factor, Willy steeled herself and hopped down to take a better look at this mini-monstrosity.  The multifaceted eyes followed willy on swivels.  Soon she was mesmerized by the pretty colors and reflections dancing across the myriad of lenses.  Staring back was a collective intelligence, old, ancient, from early in the evolution of insects.  All this Willy was able to glean from its fixed gaze on her.  She could sense that it needed something, that pure wanton destruction was not on its mind nor just the voracious feasting of a blind horde.  This creature was majestic and proud.  She reached out with her hand to the insect and it scuttled onto her palm.  She could feel the little knives that were its grasping limbs and it made a sensation climb up her spine. 
     "How is it that you can communicate with this creature," she said to the little man?
     He said, "if you must know it taught me, in a manner of speaking."
     "Well, you are wrong.  It does not need to be controlled.  It wished to be led.  It needs a Queen," Willy said.
     "Again, the impudence of youth, what do you know of the creature.  It is a plague upon our land," he said.
     By this time, the King was not really sure what was happening, but he was sure that his daughter, young and not experienced in the ways of the world beyond the castle walls, lost what little sense she had.  He looked to his Queen and put his hand on hers.
     "Willy dear, please put down that creature and come over here with us," the King said.  "This has been truly enough excitement for today.  You sir, will disperse these creatures or take them back from whence you came.  This is not the stuff of royal decision making and is in fact beneath us," the King said.
     With this, the beetle in Willy's hand produced a stinger from under the hard casement held over the wings and plunged it deep into Willy's hand.  She screamed and tried to throw off the beetle.  It only release when it had completed its mission then with great speed, launched itself into the air and back into the swarm.  Willy felt instantly sick, tried to say so as she looked to her parents but the room swam and she fell into oblivion.
     Over the next three days and nights Willy's body began a mutation that abandoned her human form for that of the insect.  All of the most famous apothecaries were called to the castle, physicians, alchemists and even a necromancer but to no improvement.  One the fourth day, Willy flipped over onto her stomach and awoke.  She was dazed by what she saw.  All of the room was in her view, even the part that was behind here.  Like little window all around, she was able to survey the whole scene.  One of the windows encompassed her looking glass.  She scurried off the bed to face the mirror.  She was a huge, iridescent beetle.  She turned to say something to her parents but no word came forth from her mouth or what used to be her mouth.  She could see that her parents were distraught, even scared, the those feelings washed over her like a wave.  She was beginning to sense how they felt.  She echoed these feeling, hoping they would understand and sensed that they did.  Just then, a large beetle flew into the room through the window and a loud droning could be heard from outside.  Willy experience this as waves of emotion, need, reverence, satisfaction.  The  beetle hung in the air before Willy, communicating through a wave of emotion for her. 
     As Willy flew over the castle then away with her cloud of subjects, she was happy.  She was their Queen and they were her family.  The Princess child had been shed in those three days and an adult had emerged like a butterfly from a cocoon.  Her sense of responsibility was overwhelming when just three days ago her only concern was her own ego and entertainment.  She still had a sense of that life but was losing it fast to the mounting efforts of keeping her cloud of subjects fed, safe and ever growing.