Rating : NC-17-from some sexual talk
Disclaimer: This story was written solely to kill time at work, not for filthy lucre to line the greedy pockets of the author or anyone else. The Star Wars galaxy, with its characters, situations and worlds are the property of George Lucas and his Oompa-Loompas in Marin County and have been used without permission.
Summary: Pull on your Dr. Dentons, kiddies, grab a mug of cocoa with mini-marshmallows, and settle down while Mother Krispies retells a familiar old story with a Star Wars twist.
Note: Although this story is technically set in the alternate history I call “Contingency” in which the Duel of the Fates was interrupted before anyone was killed, it is a stand-alone and does not require that any of the prior stories be read to understand the action.
Acknowledgments: Professor Fate for beta reading, encouragement, and great sex (oh so helpful for that nasty writer’s block), and The Brothers Grimm (soon to be a major motion picture!) for source material.
Feedback: Please send feedback to Darth Krispies
Initial posting: On dmeb2.

Contingency #4 : Fairy Tale.

“And is it a new story you want, little man, or one you already know?” She asked, blue eyes twinkling in a smiling face that appeared quite ancient to the boy, but was really not very old at all, barely into it’s prime.

“A new one. Tell me a new story.”

“Very well, a new one. Once upon a time on a world far away from here there lived a handsome king who fell in love with a beautiful young woman and she with him. He begged her to run away from her responsibilities and marry him, saying that he would love only her forever, and after only a little persuasion, she did. They were very happy together for a while, and even more so when the young queen gave birth to a child.”

The boy looked up “Was it a boy, like me?”

“No my dear, it was a little girl, the most beautiful little girl ever, with hair as black as night, eyes as blue as the sky at twilight, lips as red as blood, skin as white as snow…”

“What’s snow?”

“Ah, you would never have seen any of that, so lets say her skin was as white as the sparkling white sands over by the Black Dune Sea. You remember when you saw them?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you do. So, her skin was as white as sparkling white sand, and that is why her parents decided to call her Sand White.”

Her daughter’s voice called out from the kitchen “Mother, what nonsense are you putting in his head?”

“It’s just a story dear. Like the sort I used to tell you when you were his age. Now where were we? Oh yes, well, the king and queen were very happy for a time, but eventually the king began to grow tired of his queen, and one day he broke his word and after the manner of his people he took a second wife, a very beautiful but very wicked woman. This woman hated the queen and her daughter, and tried many times to kill them, but the queen was far too clever for her rival.”

“How did she try an’ kill them?” The boy asked, wide-eyed.

His grandmother smiled. Young children were so innocently bloodthirsty. “Oh, let me see. Well, once, when she was newly married, the wicked woman invited the Queen and her daughter to a feast, pretending to be their friend, but the clever queen suspected her husband’s second wife and told her daughter not to eat anything. When one of the new wife’s friends was looking away, the queen exchanged her own wine glass for his, and the friend took one drink and fell down dead on the floor! The queen took her daughter away, declaring that the new wife should be more careful about what she served up to others in case she found herself poisoned one day. Another time the wicked wife was going to try and make the king believe that the queen had been unfaithful with a courtier, but the queen stopped her by presenting her privately with proofs of the second wife’s own infidelities.

“So the second wife stopped trying to kill the queen and her daughter and had to be content with disposing of the king’s third and fourth wives and their children instead. In time, however, she had a new reason to hate the queen’s daughter. On her fifteenth birthday, Sand White was presented to the court where she was declared to be the most beautiful woman on that world, displacing the king’s second wife who had always been regarded so. Oh, the wicked woman was so jealous she could hardly stop herself from striking down the princess on the spot, and instead had to stay and smile and pretend to love her rival’s daughter as much as everyone else at court did. But later, when she was alone, she made plans to rid herself of the girl as soon as possible.”

“Now the second wife had a young lover, a spacer who often visited that world and who was there secretly that very night. The wicked woman used her all of her wiles and a great deal of her money to convince the young man to kidnap the princess and take her far out into space, there to push her out an airlock, leaving no evidence of the crime to bring suspicion upon them. She knew the queen would be gone for several days, accompanying the king on a good-will visit to a neighboring world where he hoped to arrange a marriage between his daughter and a very powerful prince. She needed to move against the princess before the queen came back. As he had been paid to do, the spacer lured the princess onto his ship secretly and stole her away from the world of her birth, but when it came time for him to do away with Sand White he hesitated.”

“ ‘Oh captain!’ the girl cried when she understood that he meant to kill her, ‘Why would you wish to do such a thing to me? What have I done to offend you?’ And she wept so bitterly and was so young and beautiful that he could not quite bring himself to do her harm directly, so instead he took her far from her home and left her on a horrible, dry desert world with only a bottle of water and a warning. ‘Listen to me, princess’ he said, ‘your father’s second wife means to see you dead and if you are wise, you’ll never go back there. I’ll not kill you myself but this world itself will if you do not find shelter. That is all I can in conscience do for you seeing as how I’ve already taken her jewelry and cash to do you in.’ And so saying, he flew away and left poor Sand White all alone in the middle of nowhere.”

The grandmother paused and looked down to see if the boy was still listening. He gazed back up at her, rapt, probably not understanding more than one word in five, bless his little heart, but following the emotion and the gist of the story. Once again her daughter’s voice floated in from the kitchen. “Mother, I swear if you give him nightmares you’re sitting up with him.”

“Nonsense, he’ll take no harm. When has he ever had a bad dream from one of my tales then? What do you think, my lad? Should I stop now and tell you a nicer story?”

He shook his head vigorously. “Uh-uh. I want to hear ‘bout the princess and the queen and the bad lady some more.”

“There we are then. So, poor pretty Sandy was all alone. Not knowing what else to do she ran and she ran for the rest of the day and long into the night until her water was all gone and she could run no more. Just as she was about to give up and lay down to die, what do you think she found? Why, it was a tiny, junky little transport sitting all by itself with no one around. At first Sandy did not know what it could be, having been brought up in a magnificent palace where there was nothing poor or shabby, but when she peeked in the door and saw that it was shelter of a sort, she called in ‘halloo, halloo, is anyone at home?’. When nobody answered, she screwed up all her courage and went inside.

“My, such a mess it was, with pieces of ‘droids and tools and speeders and whatnot lying everywhere. In one compartment, however, she found seven slobby little bedrolls that smelled so awful she pinched her nose shut and went right back into the main room. She was very tired, but she was also a tidy girl and couldn’t bear to think of sitting down until she had cleaned things up a bit. Before two hours had passed, she had organized the tools, stacked spare parts in a logical fashion, cleaned up all manner of spilled liquids, and put some of the half-repaired ‘droids back together so they worked almost as good as new. By then she was so tired she ignored the odor and lay down across some of the nasty little beds and fell deeply asleep. She was still asleep a few hours later when the transport’s owners trooped in from a long night of scavenging. Can you guess who they were?”

The boy wrinkled his nose “They was Jawas, wasn’t they, grandma. Yucky.”

“Indeed, that’s just what they were. Well, you can imagine how surprised they were coming in to their transport and seeing it all cleaned up like it had never been before. They gabbled to each other in their horrid little language, first alarmed, then excited when they saw how well the ‘droids had been repaired and found tools that they thought had been lost years before. They didn’t even think about where their good fortune came from until one of them looked and saw lovely Sandy sleeping soundly. At his call of alarm, all his brothers, or sisters, it’s so hard to tell with Jawas but we’ll just call them all boys for now, all of them came piling into the compartment and stood gazing in amazement at the girl, wondering how much they could get for her.

“As they whispered to themselves, Sandy woke suddenly and sat up, startling them as badly as they startled her. She looked at them, not know what they were, thinking perhaps they were messy little children. They looked harmless enough, so she tried to speak to them. ‘Little children’ she said, ‘I’m sorry I fell asleep in your, er, house, but I was all alone and lost in the desert and did not know where else to go.’ She waited expectantly, but they said no words she could understand. So she tried again. ‘I don’t have anywhere else to go and you seem to need a housekeeper, so why don’t we help each other out?’

“One of the Jawas, the apparently the leader, said something to the others. All seven turned and looked at Sandy expectantly, then three of them went into the next room and came back leading the three repaired ‘droids. The leader gestured at them, then at the girl. She smiled and said ‘Yes, I repaired your ‘droids for you. If you have more, I’m certain I can fix them as well. I’ve always been a whiz at machinery.’” And so, since the Jawas knew a good thing when they saw one, it was agreed that she would stay to cook and clean and repair whatever they could scavenge for resale in exchange for room and board.”

The boy asked, “Was she a slave? She sounds like a slave.”

“Of course not dear. You know that Jawas aren’t allowed to keep slaves. No, she stayed because she didn’t know what else to do and she felt useful and needed for the first time in her life.”

His brow wrinkling in concern, her asked “What about her mom? Didn’t her mom miss her?”

"Oh, we’ll get back to her mother in just a moment. Let me tell the story in the proper order. So, Sand White stayed with the Jawas a little more than a year, learning their language and finding out their names. Yes, it’s true, Jawas do have names that they don’t usually tell to outsiders, but after a while they came think of Sandy as one of their own. The leader was called Tokk, and the others were named Snuuz, K’chu, Zhai, Gla’ad, Krankii, and Abelard. Sand White was mostly content, although she daydreamed a lot about the prince she was supposed to have married and sometimes she worried about her mother.

“And well she should worry about her mother, for her mother did nothing but worry about her. Upon returning to find her daughter gone, the queen flew into a rage. At first she went to the king, but he was too busy making treaties, and deals with multi-system corporations, and all the other business kings get up to. He would do no more than order a general search for his daughter. He refused to listen to the Queen when she insisted that his second wife was to blame. So, the Queen took matters into her own hands. Going at once to her rival’s rooms, the Queen proceeded to kick seven kinds of holy hell out of the wicked woman, finally forcing her to admit what she had done in order to save her own life. But the Queen knew in her heart that her daughter was not dead. You see, before she had left it behind her to follow her heart and marry the unworthy king, the Queen had been in training to become a Jedi, and although she had put all that aside many years before, now she sought to retrain herself to take vengeance on her rival and seek out her daughter. She told her husband she was in mourning for their Sand White, and went into seclusion to revive her old arts, this time seeking the darker paths because they are quicker and more certain.”

The boy’s eyes were huge. “So the Queen was bad now?”

“No, darling, not really bad, just ready to do things that looked bad to other people in order to find her darling Sand White. It’s not the same thing at all. Well, meanwhile of course, Sand White knew nothing of this. She merely passed the days working and dreaming of her prince. All was well with her until one day she met with an old Toydarian peddler who convinced the girl that if she ever wanted her prince to not only come but stick around afterwards, she would have to spruce herself up a bit and sold Sandy on the idea of metal-boned corset, not that she needed it of course, with her slim waist and lush curves. No sooner had the peddler laced it up tightly over her loose practical dress than Sandy found she could scarcely breathe or move. The peddler, money safely in hand, simply said ‘Breathe from lower down and don’t rush about so, deary, you’ll soon get used to it’ and flew off. In a few minutes, unable to untie the knot at the back, Sand White fell down senseless, where the seven little Jawas found her that night. Eventually they worked out that the corset was a bad idea and cut the laces, but Sandy showed no signs of coming back to life.

“Grieved at the loss of future income, the Jawas debated what to do with her apparently dead body. Burning was customary, but attracted unwanted attention. Burial was not practical because of the constantly shifting sands. At last, they decided to pull out an old crate with a transparent top and tuck her inside, then leave her for someone else to find and deal with, and that would have certainly been the end of Sand White except for the arrival of an unexpected off-worlder.

“Was it a prince?” the boy asked solemnly.

“Not precisely, although he had been known to kill the odd prince now and again. No, this visitor was called Darth Maul. I told you another story about him once, do you remember?”

The boy nodded. “He’s a bad guy, huh grandma?”

“He certainly is, my lad. Well, Lord Maul, as he was sometimes called, came to the desert planet one day on business of his own, but before he found what he was looking for, he came upon the seven little Jawas preparing to seal up poor Sandy in the crate. Seeing that she was not in fact dead, Lord Maul prepared to take her away, but the Jawas made a terrible fuss, asking what they considered a fair price for the princess’ body. Lord Maul said, ‘Why do you ask for payment? You were only going to throw her away’ and Tokk answered in his own language ‘Yes, but that’s before we knew anyone would want her.’ Lord Maul merely turned away, the girl in his arms but K’Chu ran after him and caught hold of his cloak saying, “Okay, for you, we’ll call it fifty and throw in this nearly-new protocol ‘droid.” Lord Maul stopped then, and handed over the money, for he did have a sense of honor in his own way, after which he spent the next hour littering the desert for several miles around with the scattered pieces of the seven foolish, greedy Jawas. Then he picked up Sand White, retrieved his money, and returned to his ship.

The boy chortled at this. He hated stinky Jawas and besides, they treated Sand White like a slave. His mother raised an eyebrow at him as she set the table for dinner and he subsided, not wanting her to tell grandmother to stop.

“Well, Lord Maul had plenty of time on his hands while he waited for his probe ‘droids to bring back information on the people he had come to find, and he was attracted by Sandy’s beauty and innocence, so he set about awakening her…”

“With a kiss” cried the boy, knowing how these stories went.

“No dear, with two ampoules of Revivex and another of adrenaline. Then, as soon as she showed signs of life again, he tied her up and blindfolded her, quick as a wink.”

The boy was mystified. This was not how it was supposed to go. “How come? Didn’t he want to marry her and live happily ever after?”

“I’m afraid that Lord Maul is not the marrying type, my boy, nor the happily ever after type if it comes to that. No, the truth is he is a very wicked man who only rescued Sand White in order to have his way with her.”

“What’s that mean?”

Her daughter came to the doorway, arms crossed, with a stern look on her face. “Mother, if you are going tell him these sorts of things at all, speak plainly. You know I despise mealy-mouthed euphemisms.” Then she turned and went back to the kitchen.

“All right, dear, whatever you say,” the grandmother called after her, then lowered her voice and spoke only to the boy. “Just between us, your mother doesn’t have a romantic bone in her body. But don’t tell her I said so. It will be our secret.” She put one finger to her lips, and the boy imitated her, not know what she was talking about but delighted by his grandmother’s conspiratorial air.

“To satisfy your mother, then, when I said he had his way with her what I really meant is that he spent the better part of the next two days using her body for brutal, inventive, and often painful sexual congress. Do you know what that means?”

“Huh? Um, uh-uh.”

“Good. You will someday. Lets just say for now that he was not very nice at all to the poor girl and hurt her quite a lot. When his business was finished on this planet, he left her at a nasty, vile brothel in Mos Espa in exchange for a great deal of money and flew far away, forgetting all about poor distressed Sandy.

“Now meanwhile, her mother had come out of seclusion and sought out the spacer who had kidnapped her daughter more than a year before. It did not take long for her to convince him to confess the whole story, whereupon the Queen left his body where it lay and immediately set off for the desert planet where he had left Sandy. It took some time, but she found her daughter at the brothel where she had been abandoned some weeks before, and took her away, stopping only to slaughter the brothel-keeper, his bouncers, and several unsavory customers who got in her way. Then she went back to the world where she had ruled as Queen and saw to the slow, painful deaths of her faithless husband and his wicked second wife. After this was done, she took her daughter far away and they settled down to live together in peace.”

The boy was upset. “But grandma, that’s not how it goes. All the bad guys have to die and Sand White should live happily ever after.”

“Dinner’s ready. Come along you two and eat before it gets cold,” said the boy’s mother, setting the hot stew she’d prepared on the table.

The grandmother looked fondly at her daughter, still very beautiful in spite of the scarring and the mad look that came and went in her azure eyes. She seemed quite normal today, and it had been weeks since she had last wandered away and been brought back screaming and weeping. Then she smiled down at her distressed grandson and ran her fingers through the thick blue-black hair he had inherited from his mother, feeling the ring of small bumps crowning his skull that had started to become noticeable in the last year.

“Oh, I’m sure in time some brave, strong young man will find and kill the last bad guy, and then Sand White and the Queen will be very happy indeed. Now, before you wash your hands for dinner, why don’t you show Grandma that you remember what she taught you today and make that chair over there jump up and down all by itself.”

Feedback to the author

END