It was the male nightingales, after all, who sang at night,
as her mate had sung to her before an owl
had made a meal of him. Who was she
to do this?
And yet she could already imagine
the red rose, the most beautiful of all roses,
that her song would produce.
She felt this task had been given to her.
In all the garden, only she
could sing a red rose into being.
That evening, as the moon climbed the sky,
she left her nest in the thicket and flew to the rose bushes.
She perched on the arching cane with the most beautiful rose
on it, white as snow. I’m ready, she said.
All right, said the Boule de Neige. We shall do this together.
She put her breast on the thorn so it pierced deeply
and sang. She sang all the songs she had learned
since she had hatched from an egg—
songs of courtship, songs of warning, songs about rain,
songs that meant The cat is coming.
The lizards said, what is that racket? But the sundial
liked it, and the fountain accompanied her as well as it could,
and the other rose bushes, who knew what was happening,
listened intently: the Variegata de Bologna,
the Reine des Violettes, the Souvenir de la Malmaison,
who claimed descent from Empress Josephine herself.
Even the daisies in the tennis lawn understood
and blushed to be witnessing an event so important.
The student up in his garret bedroom
said, How prettily the nightingale is singing!
as he leafed through his Kant and Hegel.
Only the professor’s daughter did not hear it,
for she was practicing at the pianoforte
and anyway the French doors were closed.
All night long the nightingale sang,
and by morning the rose was as red as her heart’s blood,
as red as the velvet mantle of a king,
or a ruby worn by an American heiress.
Even the dawn was astonished
and touched it delicately.
But what about the nightingale? She lay
on the rich soil of the rose bed,
her small heart barely beating. Had it been worth it?
She thought it had, she was almost certain.
For during that long night it had come to her
that the rose, despite being beautiful, was beside the point.
For the point—and here she gasped, her beak open
to take a final breath—was the song, and becoming the song.
Before breakfast, the student walked into the garden.
A red rose! And the most magnificent one
he had ever seen. Surely she would dance with him now
at the party the professor was throwing that evening
for his department. There would be a waltz, he was sure of it.
He would hold her tightly around the waist, and she would dance
with him, and maybe kiss him in the conservatory.
Look, he said, showing it to her
over toast and marmalade in the breakfast room.
It will match your dress perfectly.
Oh, she said. But I’m not wearing that dress anymore.
Where had he found the rose? She had asked for a red one
because there were none in the garden. Tonight, she was planning
to slip away during the mazurka, when no one would notice,
and elope with her cousin, whom she had loved since they were children
spending summers together at their grandparents’ house in Funen.
Her father had quarreled with his father and forbidden her
to see him, so they had been meeting in secret.
She wore his engagement ring on a chain under her bodice.
Tomorrow they would be married. They were risking
everything—the anger of their fathers, disinheritance.
But at least they would be together.
She did not want the student searching for her at the party,
preventing her escape. Why could he not have fallen
in love with someone else, like the kitchen maid?
Later the student, despondent,
on his way to the university, discovered
that he had inadvertently tucked the rose into his satchel,
not knowing what else to do with it.
With an oath he flung it into the street,
where a cartwheel ran over it
and a horse’s hooves trampled it
into the mud. Love is a fool’s game,
he thought. Better stick
with what can be learned in books.
That night, after the party was over,
the professor snoring in his nightcap, the student
sprawled on his bed, still in his clothes
(he would have a hangover the next morning),
the professor’s daughter in a coach rolling toward Copenhagen,
her head on her cousin’s shoulder, the marriage license
tucked safely in his waistcoat pocket, only the kitchen maid
still awake, washing the last of the coffee cups,
Mother Night came walking down the street.
The pear and quince trees in the orchard bowed,
as did the elm. The fountain spit its waters
as hard and high as it could so the drops would sparkle
like fireworks under the moon. The daisies
grew pale—they were very young. The rose bushes,
who were well-bred, bent their canes gracefully.
Even the lizards, despite being diurnal, blinked their eyes
in the moonlight. And the old house itself, which had stood
since before the Reformation, said to her,
Lady, I am not worthy
of this honor.
She smiled and said, I believe you have something here
that was made for me? Ah, yes.
She stooped in the street, on which the mud had dried,
and picked up the rose, crushed, its petals scattered.
then put it into her dark hair, fastening it
with a jeweled pin. There, it blossomed
and its fragrance filled the garden. In that house
all the sleepers, from the professor to the cook,
would have strange dreams.
She stroked the timbers of the house, which creaked with pleasure,
then scratched the lizards under their chins. To the roses,
she nodded, as great ladies nod to each other,
and they nodded back, knowingly. She smiled
at the daisies, who immediately closed up with shyness.
Finally, she lifted the nightingale, lying
stiff and lifeless, then breathed on her, long and slow.
The nightingale gasped and fluttered. When she saw
the face bent over her,
she hid her head beneath her wing.
Such humility, said Mother Night. And in a great artist.
Would you like to sing in my garden at the end of the world?
The nightingale, not knowing what to say,
gave one small trill, but that was enough.
Pardon me, said Mother Night to the wall,
reaching into the thicket and lifting the nightingale’s nest,
then putting the nightingale on her speckled eggs. Carrying
the nest in the palm of her hand, she proceeded up the street,
for she had a great deal to do before sunrise.
In Paris she picked up a poet
who had died that day of meningitis
in a hotel room, after being released from prison.
She put him into her pocket, already filled
with all the oddments she had collected that
night.
Still carrying the nightingale’s nest,
she walked to the end of the world, to her house
of many rooms, some large as the sky,
some small as a mouse hole,
where everything precious is preserved.
If you ever find it—it’s not on any map
and you can only go there by invitation—
sit in the garden, just at twilight,
and hear the nightingales. There are three of them.
They are said to be very fine.
Mirror, Mirror
Each morning, standing barefoot on cold tiles,
I ask you, not who is the fairest in the land—
I'm neither that vain nor ambitious.
But am I as fair as I was
yesterday, or the day before yesterday,
all the yesterdays on which I was younger
than I am today. Those lines that Mother Time,
the indefatigable spider,
is spinning beneath my eyes—have they spread overnight?
Perhaps I should stop smiling so frequently.
Perhaps I should stop frowning, avoid the sun—
already it has painted a few brown spots
on my cheeks and forehead. Or sleep for a hundred years,
which is as effective, they say, as a facelift.
Each morning you say, yes, you are older now.
There are white hairs on either side of your forehead,
looking as though they had been touched by Frost,
whose fingers leave precisely such fine streaks
over the meadow grasses, the windowpanes.
Soon, you will become a winter landscape
crossed by tracks where hare and deer have passed
on their way into the darkness of the forest.
Soon, you will sprout mushrooms.
Wake up, wake up! you say.
You will sleep all too soon—now is the time
to live as though you were going to live forever,
as though winter never comes
and all the fairy tales
were true.
Acknowledgments
I don’t remember when I started reading fairy tales, although I still have my first fairy tale books: Kis Gyermekek Nagy Mesekönyve, Grimm Legszebb Meséi, and Elek Benedek’s Ezüst Mesekönyv, whose strange, beautiful illustrations kept me up at night. These books exposed me to a world beyond my grandparents’ apartment in Budapest, where I spent the earliest years of my life. Later, they helped me adjust to life in new cities: Milan, Brussels, and finally Washington, D.C., where I grew up. Although I graduated to children’s stories like Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, and then adult stories of fantasy and magical realism, fairy tales never left me. They are some of the most powerful narratives human beings have produced, about what we most want (beauty, home, bread) and fear (darkness, abandonment, being devoured), which is why they keep being retold and reconfigured. I returned to them as an adult, when I began doing some of that reconfiguring myself. Now I teach fairy tales to university students, who often haven’t read the older versions by Basile, Perrault, and the Grimms. Hopefully, they come out of the class appreciating the power and complexity of these old tales. It is a privilege to have read them when I was young, and to participate in the long tradition of reimagining them for a new era.
There are so many people without whom the stories and poems in this book would not have been written or published. I would like to thank the following editors not only for buying them, but also for the insightful comments that made my writing better than I could have made it on my own: Shawna McCarthy (“The Rose in Twelve Petals”), Karen Meisner (“Sleeping with Bears”), Paula Guran (“Blanchefleur”), Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien (“The Other Thea”), Ellen Datlow (“Red as Blood and White as Bone”), Terri Windling (“The Bear’s Daughter” and “What Her Mother Said”), Mike and Anita Allen (“The Bear’s Wife”), and Julia Rios (“Rose Child” and “Seven Shoes”). I would doubly like to thank Mike and Anita for making this book possible—it would not exist without their editorial guidance and the wonderful work of Mythic Delirium Books. My heartfelt thanks to Jane Yolen for her magnificent introduction—her writing has influenced and uplifted me for years, and it is a privilege to have her words at the beginning of this book. A second heartfelt thanks goes to Ruth Sanderson for her magical illustration. I can’t imagine a more beautiful and fitting image for the cover. I’m very lucky to be part of a community of fairy-tale writers and scholars who have helped me understand and reinterpret these old stories: thank you to Maria Tatar, Cristina Bacchilega, Christie Williams, Claudia Schwabe, Veronica Schanoes, and Helen Pilinovsky for all they have taught me about fairy tales. I would also like to thank all the students who have taken my classes on fairy tales over the years—they have taught me so much more than I have taught them. And finally, I would like to thank my daughter Ophelia, who is a constant source of joy and inspiration—a fairy tale come true.
About the Author
Theodora Goss is the World Fantasy and Locus Award-winning author of the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format; the poetry collection Songs for Ophelia (2014); debut novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), and sequel European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018).She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into twelve languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program. Learn more at theodoragoss.com.
Praise for Snow White Learns Witchcraft
“This lush collection artfully gathers together many of World Fantasy Award winner Goss’s fairy tale–themed poems and short fiction published over the last 16 years, including her Locus-nominated story ‘Red as Blood and White as Bone.’ As a Hungarian-American raised on Hans Christen Andersen and the Brothers Grimm, Goss takes obvious delight in reweaving classic European folk tales to reveal new, often deeply feminist, perspectives. In ‘The Gold-Spinner,’ Rumpelstiltskin is recast as a girl lying to save herself, while ‘Conversations with the Sea Witch’ features the Little Mermaid as an old woman looking back on a life both difficult and well-lived. In ‘A Country Called Winter,’ a college student must come to terms with her birthright as ice threatens to overtake the world, while ‘Mr. Fox’ explores the balance of power between lovers, and the choice to say no to a future others have laid out is celebrated in ‘The Princess and the Frog.’ Perhaps most poignant of all, ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ is a beautiful, sensitive reminder that storybook love is not all it’s cracked up to be. This toothsome collection is best read in one go.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Theodora Goss re-fleshes and re-clothes old tales in multifarious ways. Sometimes the stories’ new garments are classic and mythic, sometimes they’re up-to-the-minute, twenty-first-century creations, fresh cuts and colors that bring new truths from the underlying structures. Through prose and poetry, Goss shines her unique light into the fairytale forest—and many bright eyes gleam back.”
—Margo Lanagan, New York Times–bestselling and World Fantasy Award–winning author of Tender Morsels
“I was expecting this to be good, but it’s wonderful. Seeing these pieces together makes me realize what a vivid, authentic and important voice Goss is. These are real fairytales, magical, unsettling, touching, and brilliant. I loved every word.”
—Jo Walton, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo award–winning author of Among Others
“Theodora Goss’s Snow White Learns Witchcraft is a gorgeous, lyric collection of fairy tale retellings. Goss has the ability—the witchcraft—to be able to see the heart
of the tale, and show it, polished and reflected and new, to the reader. I loved these stories and poems, their wildness, their beauty, their truth.”
—Kat Howard, Alex Award–winning author of An Unkindness of Magicians
“With each story, Theodora Goss weaves new myths from the threads of childhood and legend. This collection does what the best songs and poems and spells do: slips gently into your consciousness, then slowly changes the way you see the world. A wonderful addition to Goss’s works.”
—Fran Wilde, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Hugo finalist and author of the award-winning Bone Universe trilogy
“The elegance of Goss’s work has never ceased to amaze me. It feels effortless, but endlessly evocative and suggestive, flowing with the rhythms of both the natural world and the intimate socio-familial cosmos. Goss’s language fits together like gems in a complex crown, a diadem of images and motifs, resting gently on the head, but with a deceptive weight.”
—Catherynne M. Valente, New York Times–bestselling author of Space Opera
“In Snow White Learns Witchcraft, Theodora Goss weaves words that look disturbingly like snow and feathers into new stories that are familiar but uniquely remade. A Goss heroine breathes life into silent castles, imprints her own image in darkling mirrors, and plucks enchanted apples from the hands of peddlers; she is a bear’s bride, a newly minted queen, a thunderstorm of a woman and so much more. Dr. Goss cements her position as one of our foremost re-interpreters of fairy tales.”
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