Einstein, Fairy Tales, and Part Four of "The Locket"

Albert Einstein said, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." I think that about sums it all up.

His mom must have read a lot of fairy tales! (Photo: Arthur Sasse)

Here's the final part of "The Locket". I know I'm no Grimm, but I hope you're a little more intelligent for having read it.

The Locket: Part Four (If you want to read it from the beginning, click here)

The little girl wiggled and squirmed slowly down his throat. It was hot and cramped and she could barely breathe because of the awful stench. Along the way she had to crawl past rusting nails, a broken glass bottle, and even a garden rake, but no locket.

After what seemed like hours, moving only an inch at a time, she reached the stomach. It was full of foul, burning slime. The little girl realized that if she wanted to get her locket she was going to have to dive beneath the filthy liquid and feel around in the darkness. She paused for only a moment and then slid from the constricted opening of the throat into the frothing and filthy bile of her father’s stomach.

Her skin began to burn, but she held her breath and groped blindly for her locket. She found old bones, half digested roots and mushrooms, and the long lost pair of scissors, but no locket. She pushed back to the surface and gasped for air. Her skin was burning worse than ever and her eyes felt as if they were on fire. Before she could catch her breath, everything began to lurch around and she heard the muffled voice of her mother scream, “He’s waking up!”

“I don’t know what to do! I can’t see anything!” the girl wailed.

Her shadow said, “Close your eyes. I will help you to see in the dark.”

The little girl did as she was told and, just like in the pond, it was as if someone had lit a lantern. She could see clearly, but she almost wished that she could not. All around her strange and frightening objects were swirling around in the frothing stomach juices like someone stirring a stew. She saw the leg of a goat with the hoof still attached drift past, a rotting log bumped into her with a still living rat clinging to it like a life raft, an old leather boot surfaced for a moment, and even more horrible and unusual things.

She quickly dove beneath the surface before she could see more and looked about for her locket. There in the deepest corner of the stomach was her locket looking as polished and bright as ever. She put it around her neck and pushed back to the surface. The whole place was shaking and shifting and the slime of the stomach was tossing around like a sea in a storm. She could hear the muffled screams of her mom, but couldn’t tell what she was saying. Her father must have stood up because the opening to the throat was now directly over her head. There was no way to reach it and no way to scale the greasy walls of the stomach. There was no way out.

“What do I do now!” she yelled.

“Find the scissors,” said her shadow.

The page from my journal where I wrote the end of "The Locket" 

The little girl groped around until she felt something sharp bump her leg. “I found them!” she yelled, and she reached down to catch the scissors before they were swept away. Then she began to cut her way out. They were still razor sharp and it didn’t take long before she cut an opening big enough to fit through. Her father howled and clutched at his stomach as she spilled out and onto the floor in a wave of bile like the yoke of an egg out of its shell.

No sooner had she hit the floor than her mother grabbed her by the hand and they ran from the house. They ran and ran without looking back. They ran right out of the forest and all the way to a neighboring kingdom where they lived happily ever after.

The End