Fearie Tales

by Fearie Tales- Stories of the Grimm

  As the dumbwaiter’s doors started to move apart, Blamire hefted his ax, jammed his foot into what remained of the soil and took a deep breath.

  “Mmm,” he said, “stronger than usual.”

  “Shit and vanilla,” the scarecrow by his side said.

  Blamire turned in shock. “So you can speak!”

  And then the doors fully opened.

  PETER CROWTHER is the recipient of numerous awards for his writing, his editing, and, as publisher, for the hugely successful PS Publishing imprints. As well as being widely translated, his stories have been adapted for TV on both sides of the Atlantic and collected in The Longest Single Note, Lonesome Roads, Songs of Leaving, Cold Comforts, The Spaces Between the Lines, The Land at the End of the Working Day, and the upcoming Jewels in the Dust. He is the coauthor (with James Lovegrove) of Escardy Gap and The Hand That Feeds, and author of the Forever Twilight SF/horror cycle and By Wizard Oak. Crowther lives and works with his wife and PS business partner, Nicky, on the Yorkshire coast of England. He is currently writing a sequence of novelettes set against a background of alien invasion and the implosion of the multiverse.

  The Old Woman in the Wood

  A poor servant-girl was once traveling with the family with which she was in service through a great forest. And when they were in the midst of it, robbers came out of the thicket, and murdered all they found.

  All perished together except the girl, who had jumped out of the carriage in a fright, and hidden herself behind a tree. When the robbers had gone away with their booty, she came out and beheld the great disaster. Then she began to weep bitterly, and said, “What can a poor girl like me do now? I do not know how to get out of the forest. No human-being lives in it, so I must certainly starve.”

  She walked about and looked for a road, but could find none. When it was evening she seated herself under a tree, gave herself into God’s keeping, and resolved to sit waiting there and not go away, let happen what might.

  When she had sat there for a while, a white dove came flying to her with a little golden key in its beak. It put the little key in her hand, and said, “Do you see that great tree? Therein is a little lock. Open it with the tiny key, and you will find food enough, and suffer no more hunger.”

  Then she went to the tree and opened it, and found milk in a little dish, and white bread to break into it, so that she could eat her fill. When she was satisfied, she said, “It is now the time when the hens at home go to roost. I am so tired I could go to bed too.”

  Then the dove flew to her again, and brought another golden key in its bill, and said, “Open that tree there, and you will find a bed.”

  So she opened it, and found a beautiful white bed, and she prayed God to protect her during the night, and lay down and slept.

  In the morning the dove came for the third time, and again brought a little key, and said, “Open that tree there, and you will find clothes.”

  And when she opened it, she found garments beset with gold and with jewels, more splendid than those of any king’s daughter. So she lived there for some time, and the dove came every day and provided her with all she needed, and it was a quiet good life.

  Then one day the dove came and said, “Will you do something for my sake?”

  “With all my heart,” said the girl.

  Then said the little dove, “I will guide you to a small house. Enter it, and inside it an old woman will be sitting by the fire and will say, ‘Good-day.’ But on your life give her no answer. Let her do what she will, but pass by her on the right side. Further on, there is a door, which open, and you will enter into a room where a quantity of rings of all kinds are lying, amongst which are some magnificent ones with shining stones. Leave them, however, where they are, and seek out a plain one, which must likewise be amongst them, and bring it here to me as quickly as you can.”

  The girl went to the little house, and came to the door. There sat an old woman who stared when she saw her, and said, “Good-day my child.”

  The girl gave her no answer, and opened the door.

  “Whither away?” cried the old woman, and seized her by the gown, and wanted to hold her fast, saying, “That is my house, no one can go in there if I choose not to allow it.”

  But the girl was silent, got away from her, and went straight into the room.

  Now there lay upon the table an enormous quantity of rings, which gleamed and glittered before her eyes. She turned them over and looked for the plain one, but could not find it. While she was seeking, she saw the old woman and how she was stealing away, and wanting to go off with a bird-cage which she had in her hand.

  So she went after her and took the cage out of her hand. And when she raised it up and looked into it, a bird was inside which had the plain ring in its bill.

  Then she took the ring and ran quite joyously home with it, and thought the little white dove would come get the ring. But it did not. Then she leaned against a tree, determined to wait for the dove.

  As she thus stood, it seemed just as if the tree was soft and pliant, and was letting its branches down. And suddenly the branches twined around her, and were two arms. And when she looked around, the tree was a handsome man, who embraced and kissed her heartily, and said, “You have delivered me from the power of the old woman, who is a wicked witch. She had changed me into a tree, and every day for two hours I was a white dove. And so long as she possessed the ring I could not regain my human form.”

  Then his servants and his horses, who had likewise been changed into trees, were freed from the enchanter also, and stood beside him. And he led them forth to his kingdom, for he was a King’s son, and they married, and lived happily.

  The Silken People

  JOANNE HARRIS

  Once there was a little girl who lived in a village by a wood. She was very curious and always asking questions. She asked her nurse: “How did you lose your eye?”

  The nurse, who had a porcelain eye as blue and white as a china plate, said: “Oh, I don’t remember. Maybe I left it lying around, and the Silken People stole it away.”

  “The Silken People?” said the girl.

  “The ones our kind call insects. They have as many tribes as there are people in our world. They’re everywhere: in the food you eat; in the fruit you pick from the orchard; on the path you tread; in the air you breathe; in your house; in your bed; under the eaves; and when you die, they’ll be there still, feeding on what’s left of you.”

  “That’s horrible!” exclaimed the girl.

  “That’s life,” said the nurse. “Learn to live with it. And never hurt an insect, child—not a bee, or a wasp, or a butterfly—or the Lacewing King will get you, for sure.”

  The girl said: “Who’s the Lacewing King?”

  “Some call him Lord of the Flies,” said the nurse. “Some call him King of the Faërie. He lives under the mountain, and in stagnant water, and in the trees, and his people have always been in the world, even before First Man and First Woman.”

  “Have you ever seen him?” said the girl, her eyes wide.

  “No one sees him,” said the nurse. “Not unless he wants to be seen. But you’d know him, if you did. And you’d live to regret it, too.”

  You notice how the nurse didn’t quite answer the question. The girl noticed too, but for once, didn’t push for an answer. Instead, she said: “What does he look like?”

  “Sometimes he looks like a man,” said the nurse. “Tall, with hair like a moth’s wing. But sometimes he is a swarm of bees, or wasps, or a dancing cloud of gnats. Sometimes he comes into our world, but no one knows he’s there. He has a million million spies, and no one can ever hide from him.”

  “Can I see him?” said the girl.

  “No,” said the nurse. “But he sees you. The Silken People see everything.”

  After that, the girl spent a long time watching the insect world. She learned how ants can carry loads a dozen times heavier than themselves; how butterflies spend one life as a grub and then gro
w wings for a life in the air; how bees make honey; how wasps fight, gnats bite and even the cheery ladybug is a predator fiercer than a wolf, biting the heads off aphids as they travel up the flower stems. She watched how the mantis dines on her mate, wringing her hands in silent prayer, and how the termites shape their nests into great underground cathedrals. She watched them all attentively, but she never saw the Lacewing King, or the Silken People.

  “Well, of course you didn’t,” said the fat nurse, when the girl complained to her. “The Silken Folk walk in disguise. They never cast a shadow. No one sees their true shape, except when—”

  “What?”

  “Well, sometimes you can glimpse them just as you’re waking from a dream. Or from the corner of your eye, when you’re looking at something else. But they know how to move among us. They’ve been doing it ever since our kind began to take over the earth. They’re quick—and clever—and they only move when they know we can’t see them.”

  “How?” said the girl quickly, having already decided that she was going to see them, however long it took her.

  “They wait until we close our eyes,” said the nurse. “The Silken Folk have no eyelids. They don’t have to blink like you and me, or dream, or sleep the way we do. So, every time you blink, they move, faster than a dragonfly’s wing. And by the time you open your eyes, they’ve disappeared.”

  After that, the girl watched more closely than ever. But, this time, she watched from the tail of her eye, spending hours in the woods, or by the bank of the river, staring, trying not to blink. Once or twice she even thought she saw a flicker of movement—and often, there were clouds of gnats, or tiny green-and-brown butterflies, or summer swarms of bees that came to circle in the sleepy air.

  The nurse became anxious. “It isn’t good for you,” she said, “to be spending so much of your time in those woods. It isn’t healthy. And besides, why do you even want to see the Silks? They’re dangerous, and cruel, and cold, and the Lacewing King is the worst of them all. Better to leave them well alone.”

  But the girl didn’t listen. She wanted to see the Lacewing King. She already saw him in her dreams, with his waistcoat of bees and his honey-dark eyes. Sometimes, as she was waking up, she even thought she’d caught him watching her from the foot of the bed, but she could never be quite sure.

  And then, one day in the summertime, when the girl was fifteen years old, she went to her secret place in the woods and found a stranger sitting there, a man with hair like a moth’s wing and eyes the color of honey. In the dappled light under the trees, she saw that he cast no shadow, and her heart began to beat very fast as she greeted him with a brave, bold smile.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?” she said. “One of the Silken People.”

  He grinned. “You’re very curious.”

  The girl nodded. “My nurse always says I ask too many questions. But if I don’t ask them, then how will I know?”

  “Know what?” said the stranger.

  “Everything,” said the girl.

  The stranger laughed. “That’s the spirit,” he said. “No compromise. No surrender. Well, little girl, I can’t promise to teach you everything. But there are things I can teach you, as long as you can trust me. Will you do that? Trust me?”

  Once more she nodded. “I promise,” she said.

  “And don’t tell anyone I’m here. You’ll never see me again if you do.”

  “I promise. Now teach me!” said the girl.

  That summer, she came to the woods every day, and every day met the stranger. He told her stories, taught her songs, and they kissed in the shade of the beech trees. The girl was so happy that she barely knew how to hide her excitement, but she knew she mustn’t speak of it to anyone in the village. If anyone found out that she was seeing the Silken Folk, that would be the end of her—and the end of her lover, too.

  Her nurse was the only suspicious one. She saw the roses in the girl’s cheeks, and the sparkle in her eyes, and she wasn’t so old that she didn’t know Love when it was staring her in the face. One day she followed the girl to the woods, and saw her, sitting on the ground, talking to someone who wasn’t there. She knew at once what was happening, and she leaped out from her hiding-place, croaking out a warning—

  The man without a shadow turned at the sound of the woman’s voice, and for a moment the girl thought she saw his face change; his skin darken; his body twist like a curl of smoke as he fell to his knees on the forest floor. She remembered how the Silken Folk could change into a swarm of bees, and cried out in alarm as her lover’s skin began to crawl, vanishing under a doublet of bees that covered him like a living suit, swarming out of his shirt-cuffs and from the turn-ups of his boots. Soon it seemed to the girl that there was no man standing there at all, just a multitude of bees, streaming away into the air, leaving only his discarded clothes and the distant sound of humming.

  The old nurse said to the girl: “Well, that’s the last you’ll see of him. Good thing, too.”

  The nurse was right. The girl went back many times, but her lover never returned to the glade. She sometimes thought she saw him, fleetingly, from the tail of her eye, or when she awoke from deep sleep, but although she begged him to give her a sign, to show himself or to talk to her, he never replied, or gave her any indication that he had ever been there at all.

  “It’s for the best,” said the old nurse. “You’ll soon get over him, you’ll see. Those Silken Folk are dangerous, and you had no business running after them, or wanting to see things that shouldn’t be seen.”

  But the girl didn’t get over him. Months passed, and still she did not forget. She lost her bloom, which had once been so bright, and her rosy cheeks grew pale and wan. People in the village began to call her crazy because she was always talking to herself, and because she so seldom blinked.

  The nurse grew increasingly worried. “What are you trying to do?” she said.

  “I have to see him again,” said the girl.

  “Silly, stubborn child,” said the nurse. “What is he to you, anyway? You don’t even know who he is. He never told you his name, did he? Why do you think that was, eh?”

  The girl looked at her wearily with eyes that were red from not blinking. “Why?”

  The nurse shrugged. “The Silken People have no names, just as they have no eyelids. Just as they have no shadows, and some might say they have no souls. That young man you met in the woods? That was the Lacewing King, that was: the cruelest and most terrible of all the Silken People. Didn’t I warn you when you were small, to beware the Silks and their sweet talk? They feed you honey, but they sting. Never forget that, child. They sting.”

  Well, the girl had been stung, all right. And now the poison ran deep in her veins. Nothing the nurse said made any difference, or changed the way she went every day to the little glade in the wood, and sat there, tearless, unblinking, waiting for her lover’s return.

  And then one day she didn’t come home. She went to the glade as usual, but when night fell, and the girl still had not returned, the old nurse went to look for her. By the time the old woman reached the glade, the moon had risen above the trees, and its light filtered down through the branches, illuminating the figure of a girl, sitting weeping on a stump. The tears ran darkly down her face, and as the old woman came closer, she saw what the girl had done, and cried out in horror and dismay.

  For the tears that ran down the young girl’s face and dripped onto her white dress were tears of blood, dark in the moonlight. She turned toward the old nurse then, her expression a mixture of madness and calm, and now the old nurse understood.

  The girl had cut off her eyelids.

  The nurse fell to her knees in shock, as her heart gave way at that instant. No one saw her alive again, and no one saw her as, shadowless, the girl stood in the moonlight, looking down at the old nurse with her huge, unblinking eyes.

  “I see clearly now,” she said, and walked away into the night. No one ever saw her again. No one human, an
yway.

  JOANNE HARRIS is best known as the author of the international bestselling Chocolat, which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. However, her first book, published in 1989, was the vampire novel The Evil Seed. It was followed by a Victorian Gothic ghost story, Sleep, Pale Sister. Since then she has published ten further novels, including the fantasy volumes Runemarks and Runelight, and her stories of horror, fantasy, and magic have appeared widely. Forthcoming is The Gospel of Loki, a fantasy novel based on Norse mythology.

  Rumpelstiltskin

  Once there was a miller who was poor, but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the King, and in order to make himself appear important he said to him, “I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold.”

  The King said to the miller, “That is an art which pleases me well. If your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her tomorrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test.”

  And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room which was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning-wheel and a reel, and said, “Now set to work, and if by tomorrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die.”

  Thereupon he himself locked up the room, and left her in it alone.

  So there sat the poor miller’s daughter, and for the life of her could not tell what to do. She had no idea how straw could be spun into gold. And she grew more and more frightened, until at last she began to weep.

  But all at once the door opened, and in came a little man, who said, “Good evening, mistress miller, why are you crying so?”

  “Alas,” answered the girl, “I have to spin straw into gold, and I do not know how to do it.”

  “What will you give me,” said the manikin, “if I do it for you?”

  “My necklace,” said the girl.

  The little man took the necklace, seated himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three turns, and the reel was full. Then he put another on, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the second was full, too. And so it went on until the morning, when all the straw was spun, and all the reels were full of gold.