The Doomsday Book of Fairy Tales

by Emily Brewes

  The girl bowed her head. “I understand, Father. Good-night and good-bye.”

  Kissing his cheek, she went out to sleep with the horses. She lay down on the bed of straw and began to weep. Her father’s only horse came near and nuzzled her hair with his nose. She brushed him away. “I’ve nothing for you. Leave me be.”

  “Master’s daughter, why do you cry?”

  “I cry because my father does not know the ill the king’s agents wish him, and because he does not believe when I tell him they will steal me away come morning.”

  “Climb on my back,” said the horse, “and I will take you to a place of safety beyond the mountains.”

  So they had fled, and now the harsh dawn cast blades of light across the mountain’s flank, driving shadows into deep hollows. The horse drove tirelessly across the blank field of snow until they came within sight of the pass. There he faltered for the first time.

  “Master’s daughter,” he said, “I will falter twice more before we reach our destination. Each time, only tell me you love me more than your own life, and it will give me strength to go on.”

  The girl leaned forward and whispered in the horse’s ear, “I love you more than life itself.”

  In an instant, the beast was spurred as though chased by all the hounds in the village. Up to the ridge they sped and through the narrow pass. Looking over her shoulder, the girl thought she could just see the purple livery of the king’s agents as distant specks on their back trail.

  As morning gave way to afternoon, the horse faltered again, worse than before. The girl fell forward onto his neck and called breathlessly into his ear, “I love you, horse, more deeply than my own heart.”

  Again, he was spurred, this time as though harried by a pack of slavering wolves. They raced and chased down the mountain’s far side, flashing through the wide-spaced trees of a pine forest. When she glanced behind, the girl did not see the king’s men but knew they followed still. She remembered the look in the captain’s eye; it was not the look of a man easily cowed.

  As the sun crept low on the horizon, they reached the flat land of a valley’s bottom. There the horse faltered a third time. He tripped so badly and so suddenly, the girl was pitched from his back. There was a sharp, wet crack, and when she turned to look, she saw the horse standing on a leg from which protruded a shard of bloodied bone.

  She pulled his head down beside her own and told him, “I love you more than God and all the saints in heaven!” Her hands shook and her legs trembled, but whether from cold or fear could not be said.

  “Climb on, climb on!” insisted the horse. “I can delay no longer!”

  The girl did as she was told. This time, the horse galloped as though all the hordes of hell dogged his heels. She cringed to think of his pain, running on a broken leg, and buried her face in his mane.

  At the valley’s far edge stood a house, neither humble nor ornate. A comfortable house whose windows glowed warmly in the frigid night. The nearer they came, the lamer grew the horse, until he fell to his knees before the garden path.

  “Here is the place of safety, and here is where I leave you. Go to the door and beg leave to enter in the name of BardyJin, for that is my name and those inside know it well.”

  The girl hugged the horse’s neck and wept into his mane. “If I leave you here, I fear you will die. And I do love you, for you have surely saved my life.”

  The horse bowed his head. “If you love me as you say, go now to the house and speak my name. Only do it quickly, for the king’s men come!”

  She dried her tears and went to the door. There she lifted a bronze knocker shaped like a cherub-faced boy crowned with roses and knocked three times.

  “Let me in, let me in! In the name of BardyJin, let me in!”

  The door was opened by a wizened old woman, whose silver hair was shorn nearly to the scalp. Her head bowed so low, her chin touched her chest, and her eyes were reddened from crying.

  “Who comes to my door and demands entry in my son’s name?”

  “Grandmother,” replied the girl, “I make such a demand. Though I only do as my horse has commanded me.”

  “What horse?” asked the old woman, peering into the yard. “I see no horse, but a young man on a crutch.”

  The girl turned, surprised to see exactly that. The young man limped forward into the yard, favouring what was clearly a broken leg. As he came into the light, he was tall and handsome, with chestnut hair that fell to his shoulders.

  “Who are you?” cried the girl. “And what have you done to my beloved horse?”

  As though in reply, the old woman pushed past her and ran into the young man’s arms. “My son, my son!” she cried. “My beautiful BardyJin! You’ve come home at last!”

  When the man spoke, it was with the horse’s voice. “I was out gathering pitch in the pine forest. There I was cursed by an old gnome whose tree I wounded. He made me a horse, and so I wandered far and wide in search of a cure. Then I was captured by my master, and though he whipped me betimes, he gave me food and a place to sleep. And I fell in love with his daughter. Little did I know she would prove the cure to my curse as well.”

  At that moment, the king’s men pulled up at the garden path. The captain squinted and stared, certain that he’d seen a house glowing warmly in the winter darkness.

  “It must be past this stand of trees. Some trick of the eye made it appear nearer. Come men! Ride on! We shall not let the girl escape her fate.”

  The pack of them took off, none the wiser that the girl stood no more than an arm’s length from their capture.

  In explanation, the old woman said, “This cottage was built by my sister, who was a witch. It cannot be seen save by those bound to it by blood or marriage.”

  The women stepped to either side of BardyJin and carried him inside. Beside the fire, his mother set and bound his leg, while the girl, whose name was Falada, stroked his chestnut hair. In the morning, they were properly wed by the priest in the nearby town.

  As for the king’s men, they were never seen the more.

  WITH A LIFE LIKE THIS, WHO NEEDS A BOAT?

  THE WEEKS WE HAD SPENT traipsing through the tunnels and passages and intermittently crowded avenues of the Underground were nothing compared to that three days’ waiting. Travel possesses at least a sense of moving forward, even when little progress or discovery is made. Waiting is the essence of stagnation. For the first time in recent memory, we remained in one place, unmoving.

  I did a bit of work for food. Asa was the local scrap dealer in a former shopping concourse called Cumberland Terrace. Doggo and I made short daily jaunts into stubs of tunnels that branched from either end of the central promenade, as well as to the more formal scrap heap in what used to be a Whole Foods. There was little enough of value, but we got by.

  Because the locals had a disturbing habit of eyeing Doggo with a range of hungry expressions, I kept him close by at all times. He meandered cluelessly around my feet, either happily wagging or studiously licking. So long as the food kept coming, he remained unbothered.

  First thing in the morning on the third day, I was back in line at the clinic. I’d been expected that early, because a note on the door instructed me to come back later in the day. I swallowed my dejection as I led Doggo back to Asa’s. On our way, I stopped by the fried krill stand to barter for our lunch. When I told the fella I was staying with Asa, he cut his price down to a novelty button I’d scrapped the day before: bright blue punctuated by a multi-coloured diamond shape with the legend “Go fly a kite!”

  During downtime from scrapping, I had enjoyed watching Asa clean and repair found objects, transforming junk into useful things. It was a painstaking and slow process that was nevertheless calming. A slab of silicon circuit board got fastened into a vise over a warped tin pie plate. Several careful passes with a blowtorch melted away lumps of solder and inlaid metal, which landed in the pie plate. When it had cooled, the lumps got sold to someone who could separate the meta
ls back into usable materials.

  Any scorches (and there were few) were gently wiped away with the cleanest piece of cloth I’d seen in my adult life. Then the piece got clamped into a different device and fed through a foot-pumped saw blade, which sliced it into strips about an inch wide. These were laminated and shaped and riveted into a new handle for a kitchen knife.

  The entire process took the better part of the day, and I watched it from beginning to end. Asa said nothing. Neither did I. We sat in silent communion, both deeply appreciative of the methodical procedure. His concentration was entire, which made sense. Not only was he physically hindered, but the nature of the work demanded attention.

  For me, watching quieted the stories that bubbled up in my brain, unbidden. What had begun as a means to stay awake, to stave off the fear that comes at night, now plagued me. It was something like staying in a bath far too long. The water’d gone cold, fingers and toes were thickly wrinkled, and it was altogether uncomfortable. Only in this case, the bathwater was undiluted nostalgia, and I felt prevented from leaving the tub by the weight of an unseen hand.

  Doggo lay at my feet, quietly farting in the warmth of Asa’s room. Apart from the cubbies in the wall, it was eerily identical to the one we’d left behind, only Asa earned enough to keep the methane tank of his stove full. Had I not been ill, I might have even deemed it uncomfortably hot.

  I reached down and rubbed my fingertips behind Doggo’s ears. He groaned and stretched. I wondered if it’d been long enough and considered asking Asa if Doggo could stay there while I hit up the clinic again. That was when my vision started to darken, from the edges at first. Colour pulled from view, shadows reached up and swallowed the light.

  Around the tool he held in his mouth, I heard Asa ask, “Are you okay?”

  Then I folded over into my own lap, and I didn’t hear what he asked me after that.

  THE FLOOR ISN’T COLD so much as hard. When I hit it, the metaphor overwhelms me: rock bottom. There is no further to go. I can swim no deeper through the grotto of my mind’s eye. If I look toward the surface, I can see the light from a thousand pale fires seething into an uncaring sky.

  Beside me, by the fire, Olivia whispers, “She’s hiding something. It’s about Dad.” Her lips hang loosely, distorting the rest of what she says into a garbled heap. The letters fall into tangled shapes like piles of autumn leaves.

  Doggo sits up and whines. What else could he do? He can’t swim.

  Can dogs hold their breath?

  Maybe he’s not a dog at all but an otter. I remember watching a video with otters in. They made noises like squeaky toys for dogs and juggled rocks between their paws.

  “Why did the otter want to become an astronaut?”

  My body starts to shake. A seizure? I do my best to keep my tongue out from between my teeth.

  Olivia’s mouth starts oozing white froth. Her eyes catch fire and melt down over her cheeks.

  “Hey, can you hear me?”

  “He wanted to go to otter space!”

  “If you can hear me, squeeze my hand.”

  I’m not even sure I have hands anymore. I reach out, feeling for them with arms like an octopus. An octopus was put in a tank of sharks and ate them when no one was looking. That was a different video.

  A thousand miles away, I feel the picture of one human hand holding another. I reach out and grab it.

  “Good, good. There you go. Squeeze as hard as you can.”

  The picture is crumpled into a tight ball. Glossy surfaces rub against one another and make little squeaking sounds, like a dog’s toy.

  “Do you know your name?” shouts a voice from across a vast undersea chasm. The sound echoes all around, falling like a shower of golden dust.

  “You don’t even know my name,” says someone else from nearby. The voice is cranky and old, put out to be woken up from some fantastic dream.

  “Do you know what day it is?”

  “Medicine day,” growls the voice. “Three days later, we go to pick up two pills. It’s not a cure, I just need time to get out. To find her.”

  Silence stretches like a visible distance. I remember walking down a road that didn’t seem to have an end — a wide paved expanse that vanished over the horizon.

  Mum’s face is haggard. The stresses are too great. Still she turns to me and says, “Keep going, Jesse. We’re almost there. If I don’t make it, take Olivia with you. Keep her safe!”

  She is whisked away by sudden wind, lifted from the ground and folded from sight into the cone of a tornado that spins silently past. Dark currents of grit whirl skyward, but the only sound is my own breath in my ears.

  Then I realize I have my hands jammed over them.

  “Jesse? Can you hear me?”

  “Mum?”

  “No.”

  HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JESSE VANDERCHUCK! (REPRISE)

  MY SEVENTEENTH BIRTHDAY marked our second year Underground. Olivia was coming up to eight. This was long before we moved to the neighbourhood beside the Metzlers. Mum wasn’t teaching anymore, so she took work where it could be found. We’d moved out to the westernmost edge of the Underground, beneath the towers of Islington, where she was helping someone set up a tilapia farm.

  They were having trouble getting access to water through the usual channels, so there was a petition circulating to allow diversion of rainwater into this gigantic tank they’d found and cleaned out. As much as folks wanted fresh fish, a lot of them were wary of letting the floodwaters in on purpose. They eventually got all the guttering and pumping to a science, but back then it wasn’t unheard of to lose a neighbourhood to flooding in a bad rain.

  Still, the job kept tokens in the kitty. Mum wouldn’t let me and Olivia work — not yet. She had some hang-up about childhood, wanted us to have one as long as possible. While I was fine with limiting the interactions with strangers a job typically entails, Olivia had ants in her pants about earning her own money.

  Sometimes I’d take her on short excursions through the nearby tunnels, even to the border of a Heap that leaked out from the bottom of a broken door. We refurbed and sold on the sly, splitting the take. I bought hootch and novels. Until she ran away, I never realized that Olivia had saved every last token to pay for her escape. Maybe if I had …

  No. Never mind.

  We lived in a camping trailer that someone had lowered into the earth and buried in a hole punched in the wall of a tunnel. That whole area of the Underground reminded me of an old show we used to coax out of a set of tin foil rabbit ears attached to a Sears floor model TV. The title had the name of the creatures in it, something like friggle or fraggle. This area was like that: dank, lit in blue and purple, and always with the sound of distant drips echoing off the walls.

  If we had neighbours there, I never met them. For reasons I’ve never understood, people insisted on stacking themselves like cordwood beneath the remains of Toronto’s downtown core. Could’ve been force of habit, since that’s what it had been like before the tipping point. It meant more work in one place, but also more workers in the immediate vicinity. Seemed to me that it just made life more difficult than it had to be. To be honest, I quite liked the breathing room our west-end digs afforded. If only the rich folk had taken up tower space more evenly across the whole of the city.

  We celebrated the guesstimated day of my birth with a small party. Mum managed to make a cake but fell somewhat short of making it edible. Still, it got the point across. Olivia broke the sullen silence that had become her personality long enough to hand me a picture she’d drawn on the inner surface of a cracker box. It was us, with Dad, standing in the yard of the farm. The sun was shining and everybody smiled. Mum was conspicuously absent.

  Nonetheless, I said, “Thanks, kiddo.”

  “Don’t call me that!” Olivia spat, flinging that zero-to-sixty venom of hers with serpentine accuracy.

  I put my hands up in surrender. “My bad! Clearly turning seven makes you a full-on grown-up.”

  “Ne
arly eight,” she retorted, reddening.

  Mum looked up from strapping into a set of green coveralls to say, “That’s enough, you two. I don’t want you bickering all day while I’m at work.”

  We both fell silent. Olivia, staring at the floor like it owed her blood debt, stalked off to the bedroom and pulled the curtain closed behind her. She’d spent the last few weeks trying out her skills as a moody teenager and refused to speak to Mum.

  “You gotta go right now?” I asked, picking at what was being palmed off as cake. I was just a bit put out that the celebration was so short-lived.

  Mum nodded. “In a minute. First I want to see you open your present.” She pulled a lumpy parcel of newsprint and brown packing tape from the hall cupboard by the door. It crinkled softly when she set it on the kitchen table. “It’s not much, but I hope you like it.”

  I put on my grown-up voice, the one that knew only the practical concerns of survival, to say, “You didn’t have to get me anything. I thought we were saving up for a set of aquaponic grow tanks.”

  “It’s your birthday,” she insisted. “Open it up!”

  I looked down the hall. Olivia’s feet stuck out from under the curtain, her skin dirty through the holes in her socks.

  “Hey, Olivia! Come help me unwrap this!”

  “Get fucked,” she replied.

  “Jesus! Watch your mouth, young lady!”

  Mum got up to give her heck, but I stopped her. “It’s okay, Mum. Just leave it.”

  “She is ruining your birthday, Jesse.”

  “Maybe, but it’ll be more ruined if you two start screaming at each other. Just sit. I’ll open this, then you’ve gotta get going. You’ll be late.”

  She bowed her head, fuming at Olivia, at her lack of control, at being alone in her role as a parent. “Yeah, okay. You’re right.” As she sat back down, a mischievous twinkle winked in her eye. “I hope you like it,” she repeated.

  There was so much tape, it was nearly impossible to open. I pulled and tore and wrenched until I revealed a pair of bright-blue running shoes with an orange stripe up the sides.