A Likely Story: How an Innocent Walk in the Woods Became a Showdown with the Forest’S Prime Evil

By Ross Drake

When young William the millers son leaves home to make his way in the world, his sage sheepdog companion Barney warns that the unexpected must be expected. Shrewd advice, it turns out, in this comic, engaging account of life after happily-ever-after.
Entering the forest of the tyrannical Friedrich the Enormous (Big Freddie) to his downtrodden subjects), William is startled to find a gallery of storybook stars from his childhood, older now and fallen on hard times.
The Three Bears are homeless, evicted from their woodland bungalow and unceremoniously forced to live in the wild. Fearing for their own safety, the Three Little Pigs have turned their cozy brick cottage into a fortress. And poor Goldilocks has caught the eye of Big Freddie, who plans on making her his own and wont take no for an answer.
Enter William and the invisible Barney, seeking a higher purpose for their travels than just passing through. Smitten with Ms. Locks himself, William plots a spectacular rescue, assisted by the acclaimed porcine architect Terzo; Aldo, a supremely self-assured housecat; and the irrepressible Mr. Toad.
To accomplish their mission, the conspirators must deal first with Freddies army of lowlife mice, recruited from the backstreets of Europe, and then with the tyrant himself, defended by a cadre of homesick penguins and a menacing pride of battle-scarred lions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781491735954

Ross Drake

Ross Drake is a former assistant managing editor of People magazine. He has written for People, TV Guide, and Smithsonian. A Likely Story is his first book. He lives in Connecticut with his wife, Enes.

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 Ross Drake.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any

information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher

except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in

this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3598-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-3595-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014941566

iUniverse rev. date: 06/10/2014

For Enes, Shana and, now and forever, Ross

L ONG AGO, IN A LAND OF CONTENTED cows and oblivious poultry, there lived a miller with three sons. Unlike the animals, he had a feeling there was room for improvement. It’s dusty work, this milling, he liked to tell travelers who stopped by his millstream, but where would we all be without it? There’d be no dough for our bread, no grist for our gruel. No muffins, no pies—I could go on forever. Fearing he might, the footsore pilgrims would murmur politely, then shoulder their baggage and sidle back to the high road. The miller, a sensitive man, thought he detected a lack of respect.

Nobody wants to be a miller anymore, he grumbled one morning, spying his eldest son asleep in the shrubbery and prodding him awake with a flour-whitened toe. Everybody wants to be a duke or a prince or a plucky little tailor. Well, who puts three meals a day on the table, I ask you. Honest toilers in the food trades, that’s who. The butcher, the baker, the miller—none of your la-di-da royalty or your fancy-pants clothing designers.

H is spirited defense of millers to the contrary, the old man had not become one by choice. As a young man he had traveled the world, or all that he knew of it, finding work and romance here and there and enjoying the life of the footloose. Then, as sometimes happens, he fell in love with a woman whose feet were firmly fixed in one place. She was a miller’s daughter, and when the miller died, as he inconveniently did soon after her marriage, responsibility for the mill fell on his son-in-law. And it fell heavily. The new miller never ceased to regard the mill as a burden, but in his role as husband, and later as father, he reluctantly accepted his fate.

The first of his offspring was Ulfric, named for the noted Nordic warrior Ulfric the Unwilling, later the star of Greenland: The Musical. Young Ulfric was indolent and idly self-centered, but fortunately never mean or malicious. The miller’s second son was Rodney, a farm boy by nature. He liked animals, and they seemed to like him. The youngest brother was William, even-tempered and agreeable, with no obvious vices. The miller saw himself in the boy and consequently feared for his future. Today, as William approached the age when his father had left home in search of his fortune, the miller, now a widower, was determined to do something about it.

On certain evenings, weather permitting, the old man would retreat to a spot in his pasture, inhaling the sweet scent of clover, surveying the majestic arc of the heavens, and letting his imagination soar to the beckoning stars. The bird was on the wing, the poet said, and the old man knew what he meant. If the miller were ever to find a life beyond milling, the time had arrived to start living it. And so, one fine morning, addressing two problems as one, he turned his attention to Ulfric:

For years beyond counting, he began, clearing his ears of his life’s labor’s residue, I’ve been known to one and all as the miller. Henceforth, as of sunrise tomorrow, you will be the miller, and I the miller emeritus. While we’re waiting, I’ll take a moment to divide the estate, though it poses a nettlesome problem.

Why is that? asked Ulfric, who knew himself privately as the Principal Heir and therefore saw no problem at all.

Look at it this way, said his father. If there were only two of you, I could say, ‘Ulfric, you keep the mill; Rodney, you take Serena the cow.’

Yes, Ulfric said thoughtfully, you could say that, and no one would think the worse of you for it. It’s a very nice mill, and Rodney has always been fond of the cow.

However, the old man continued, I couldn’t very well say, ‘Ulfric, you keep the mill; Rodney, you take the cow, and William, you be content with what’s left.’

Ulfric looked around hastily to see if he’d missed something worth coveting.

My point, continued his father, "is that there is nothing left. The mill and the cow, that’s the kit and caboodle, the sum and substance of my earthly possessions."

Ulfric sat on a stone and began cracking his knuckles.

I wish you wouldn’t do that, said the miller. It reminds me of a Spanish dancer I knew in my youth.

Sorry, said his son, but it helps me to think. In fact, it’s given me an idea.

Which is?

If William stayed on at the mill, I could have him do the grinding and bagging.

"What would you do?" asked the miller suspiciously.

Supervisory duties, said Ulfric. I could offer constructive advice concerning his work habits. Maybe keep an eye out for rats. And I’d try my hand at some souvenir knickknacks—candlesticks and the like, made of bread.

The old man frowned. Miller by trade, baker by avocation, he had no notion of what the like might entail and no patience with what he took to be whimsy. I have a better idea, he said. I’ll fix the lad a nice batch of doughnuts and send him off to make his way in the world. According to the code of the miller, he who makes the flour for the dough must also grind and bag for himself.

You made that up, complained Ulfric.

So? asked the miller. Who’s better qualified?

W illiam stood by patiently the next morning as his father stuffed his knapsack with doughnuts. There you are, said the miller, greeting his first day as a pensioner. A dozen plain, a dozen glazed, a dozen cinnamon, and a roast beef on rye. That’s the one without a hole in the middle. Clearing his throat, he shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He had never cared much for goodbyes.

Well, said William at last, I believe the time has come to be off. Give my best to Serena and Rodney, and tell Ulfric to keep his nose to the grindstone.

The old man looked puzzled.

Just a figure of speech, said the youth. I’m sure he’ll be a big success running the mill.

I hope so, his father said gloomily. If I gave him anything smaller, he’d lose it. And he has some funny ideas about bread.

William reached for the knapsack, but the miller detained him. Before you go, he said, I have something for you. Take this walnut, but don’t use it recklessly. Cast it down in your hour of need and no harm will befall you. It would be foolish to have it for lunch.

A s the sun crept higher on a warm, cloudless