From the book "After Ever After" by Karen Nelson
They had called her “Miss Muffet” many years ago. They thought it funny, her running away and crying behind the pump house, sucking on a swollen finger that would soon show the spider’s angry sting.
No one had considered her since. Not a single child commented on her sudden affinity for arachnids. No concerned mother queried her parents about her odd, luminous eyes, her preference for the dark. She took to wearing large coats with wide sleeves. A wide brimmed hat disguised the increasing hunch of her back. Nothing could gloss over the increasing size of her belly, and the school expelled her for this evidence of loose morals.
When the children came, hundreds of them, she kept them close, whispering the names of those who had wronged her. They grew into magnificent versions of herself and at her command they left her arms to bring some friends home for
their mother.
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