Frightful Fairy Tales

by Dame Darcy

  The woman was clothed in shreds of a dress that had once been simple but elegant, seemingly from another era. The damsel’s teeth glinted in the moonlight as she sang to Dorret with the liquid voice of a nightingale.

  So many pearls

  for pretty girls.

  I love you dearly,

  I love you sweet.

  Come to the well,

  and we shall meet.

  When Dorret awoke, the woman was gone, and in her place the full moon shone brightly through the window, so bright she thought it might blind her. The girl sat up and rubbed her eyes. Outside, far across the meadow, she heard a woman singing. It was the same voice she had heard in her dream. Dorret suddenly felt afraid. She had once read in a book that those who slept in the light of the full moon would surely go mad by morning and become lunatics. She leapt out of bed and carried her blankets and pillow into the closet. There she finally fell asleep, but only after she pushed a bit of clay into the keyhole to keep the moonlight from shining through.

  The next day was Sunday, and Ma and Pa had taken the cart to town for a church social. Dorret sat in the garden, pensive and quiet, scarcely noticing the bright blue sky, the rustling of the aspens, the song of the starlings.

  “Why are you so distracted, dear sister?” asked Dulcet. “You have scarcely spoken all morning.” After much coaxing, Dorret told her sister about the beautiful damsel in the well. Dulcet was curious. Was there truly a damsel in the well, or had Dorret simply been dreaming? Hand in hand, the girls ran to the well and pried off the wooden cover. They gazed down into the darkness. Listening very carefully, they heard the faraway sound of dripping water. Tentatively, Dorret called a greeting down into the well. “Hello!” she cried. A very faint voice sounding nothing like her own returned from a distance. “Hello,” it said, echoing her greeting.

  Dorret excitedly turned to Dulcet. “See? I told you. She’s in there!”

  “Dorret, your imagination has always been so strong,” Dulcet replied. “I’m sure it is only an echo.” This time Dulcet called, “My sister says you’re the damsel in the well. Is this true?” The reply wafted up from the depths of the well, echoing three times in the same ghostly voice, “True, true, true.”

  Dulcet and Dorret lay peering down for a few moments longer, mesmerized by what had just occurred. Dulcet turned to Dorret and said, “This is very interesting and all, but Ma and Pa told us to be good. We should go back to the house and wait for them like we’re supposed to.”

  As the twins turned to leave, they heard a soft, lilting voice answer from deep in the well:

  I’m eating cake.

  I’m wearing pearls.

  I have more cake

  for two good girls.

  I’m playing cards,

  the game of hearts.

  I need to fill

  two other parts.

  I am alone,

  please play with me.

  Come down the well

  and we’ll make three.

  Upon hearing this, Dorret ran back to the barn and fetched the lead rope for one of the horses. Dulcet ran after her, proclaiming that her younger sister should proceed more sensibly and not to rush into things.

  “We have been afraid of this well for most of our lives,” Dulcet said. “It cannot be wise to jump into it. If you want to go, though, go ahead and drown yourself.”

  Dorret was angry and impatient. “You are frightened and weak,” she said, “but I’m not. And when I climb out of the well with all my pearls, just you see if I share any with you!”

  Then Dorret tied one end of the line to the remains of the well’s ragged rope with an adept knot, as any good farm girl could. She wrapped the new line around the arch that spanned the opening for good measure and began to lower herself into the black mouth of the well. She was frightened, of course, but determined not to let her older sister see.

  After a while Dorret looked up and was shocked at how far she had descended. The mouth of the well was a small blue hole, her sister’s worried form a tiny silhouette. Then she looked down and saw nothing but darkness; the voice of the damsel grew louder, ever louder. In the narrow shaft of sunlight, Dorret saw something glinting far below.

  What a smart little girl.

  I long to see.

  Come more quickly,

  come join me!

  Join me,

  join me,

  join me.

  Dorret reached the slimy black bottom of the well and looked eagerly around for the pearls. When she took a step forward, her shoe nearly sank and she heard a crunching sound beneath the mud.

  As her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, Dorret saw that broken skeletons surrounded her. She lifted her foot to reveal a crushed skull. Her heart raced and she seized hold of the rope, anxious now to return to her sister. But she saw something gleaming white-could it be the pearls? At that moment the damsel stepped out of the shadow. In her outstretched palm she held a pile of teeth.

  “So many pearls…,” said the damsel, her laughter making the grating sound of an old hinge.

  As the damsel drew near, Dorret saw that the woman’s pale flesh was decomposed in patches, her dark blue veins stitching the skin together crudely. Unlike the beautiful countenance Dorret saw in her dream, the damsel was missing pieces of her ears and the entirety of her nose. The specter’s thin hair hung like spider webs, revealing the shape of her skull. Her bones had broken through the skin at the elbow and wrist. The only thing similar to Dorret’s previous vision was the dress the damsel wore. Now the cold air of the well grew colder still and a smell of drowned, dead things, things rotting away in darkness and the damp permeated the air.

  “How old are you, my dear?” asked the damsel, hungrily.

  “I’m eleven,” said Dorret, frozen in place by fear.

  “I am a two-thousand-year-old spirit, my dear, and I have no body but those I can steal. I stole your grandmother’s fifty years ago but her body is almost worn out. Now I must have yours!”

  Dorret leapt for the rope and screamed to Dulcet to pull her up. The damsel clutched Dorret’s right shoe, her grip terrible. Dorret screamed and tried to kick the damsel’s hand away. Though the blows tore loose more of the damsel’s skin, the fiend did not relinquish her grip. At the mouth of the well, Dulcet pulled at the rope with all her might to no avail. Just when Dorret thought she could not pull herself away from the damsel, an idea came to her. She dug the toe of her left shoe into the heel of the shoe the damsel clutched and pried it off her foot. Dorret scrambled up the rope, leaving the damsel clutching her shoe. When she reached the top, Dorret rushed to embrace her sister.

  Dulcet and Dorret vowed never to tell their parents about the damsel in the well. The damsel visited Dorret for the rest of her life but only in nightmares. For the evil spirit could not leave the well unless she found a new body, and to this day she has not found one.

  And the moral of this story is “Intelligent girls escape the troubles wise girls avoid.”

  THE BLACK RIVER

  Ivy sauntered along the pathway in the woods; she cooled herself with her collapsible fan and searched the ground for shining stones or hematite to add to her collection.

  Ivy was a striking girl and her name suited her perfectly. She had green sparkling eyes the color of ivy, long dark hair that hung in tendrils like ivy, and like her leafy namesake, she was very curious and loved to wander and explore away from her home.

  She particularly liked to meander about the forest and on the beach looking for shiny prizes. For Ivy admired the jewels and beads in notion stores and in shop windows, but because she was just a young farm girl who lived with her mother, she could not acquire them. Thus she used the stones she found on her beachcombing journeys in handcrafted jewelry and embroidery she created herself. In fact, as she wandered through the woods, Ivy wore a plain farm-girl dress that she had embroidered with leaves and ivy made of hematite.

  Everyone thought Ivy was very clever because she could make s
omething out of nothing. On this fine June day, Ivy’s search led her to the Black River. It ran cold and strangely still. The water was clear but it was so deep that it appeared black. Many people had wandered near this river never to return, and Ivy’s mother often warned her, “Beware of the Black River! It looks still and calm, but the dark tide pools can pull you under. Swans on the river have been heard to talk, and at night people have seen strange patterns of light illuminating the depths underwater.” Ivy knew all this, but it did not stop her-she had a habit of going where people told her not to go.

  Ivy wandered near the bank, hypnotized by the hum of dragonflies and other insects in the otherwise still air. Water lilies floated on the surface, slowly moving in a senseless circular dance downstream. The narcissus flowers lining the water bent to kiss their reflections, forming arches through which the lilies passed.

  The sunlight glimmered and played on the water, making millions of diamonds, but something else caught Ivy’s attention. There at her feet was a golden ring, the likes of which she had never seen before. The filigree was carved so intricately it was impossible to conceive that a human had wrought it. If she squinted, Ivy could read the tiny words on the inside of the ring: “Property of POBR.” What could it mean? She knew no one named Pobr.

  Ivy slipped on the ring immediately, and to her sheer delight, it perfectly fit the pointing finger on her right hand. When she held her hand aloft to admire her lovely new bauble, she suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to plunge herself into the river. Her hand with the ring pointed, against her will, toward the swirling black waters of the river. Ivy tried to remove the ring but it would not come off her finger-it was as if the ring were part of her body, as if it had formed there while she was still in the womb. Every time she resisted, the ring yanked and jerked at her more strongly. She began to feel like a fish on the end of a fishing line-except that she was being pulled into the water, not out.

  The girl resisted until she lost all strength. Wearily, she let her extended hand pull her forward into the Black River. She took a deep breath, and the chilly water rose up and consumed her as she fell headfirst into the blackness. Downward, ever downward into the depths of the river the ring pulled her, and her heart beat faster and faster in her breast so that she could hear it pounding in her ears. Her clothing, once flowing and light, was now wet and heavy. It clung to her limbs, binding her and pulling her downward. Ivy tried to kick off her shoes, but she only managed to get one shoe loose. Tiny bubbles rushed past her as she sank but otherwise she saw only blackness.

  Ivy thought of her beloved mother and of the tragedy of drowning at such a young age, when suddenly a large bubble rising from below popped against her face with a puff of air. She gratefully breathed in the air. After that, bubbles of air appeared more and more frequently and she managed to breathe fairly regularly.

  After what seemed like ages, Ivy saw a weird luminescence far below-like the greenish phosphorescence she had seen on the shores of the river under the light of the full moon. For a moment she thought the glowing spot might be the moon and she suddenly became confused about whether she was going up or down. But as she neared the light, she saw that it came from a bubble dome structure that looked much like a large blue pearl and was about forty feet in diameter.

  Next to the bubble dome, she found a large ring secured with a chain. Upon pulling it, the bubble dome opened and two doors slid back into the dome like elevator doors. Ivy entered and crawled through a hallway in which the ceiling was covered in ornate pressed tin images depicting what she assumed were fictional underwater scenes: battles between handsome men riding sea horses, others fighting squids and skates, and still more being crowned with wreaths by beautiful siren muses.

  The floor was some kind of hardwood, varnished blue and polished to an unearthly sheen. Running down the center of the floor was a long and garish Oriental carpet that Ivy crawled on so that she might not hurt her knees. As she crawled, she regretted wrinkling the rug behind her, but it could not be helped. At the end of the hall she found two doors spanning from floor to ceiling, each with a tiny platinum handle.

  Ivy turned the handles and unexpectedly catapulted into the center of a noisy, crowded dance hall. Ivy was so large in comparison to the people in the hall that she loomed over the ornately dressed couples. All fell silent and turned to stare at her, looking up at her aghast. The only sound in the hall was the sound of water dripping from her soaking clothes onto the mosaic floor. A booming voice broke the unbearable silence, exclaiming, “So I see my crown has returned. Come to me, my beauty!” Ivy looked to the source of this voice, and at the far end of the hall on a splendid throne held aloft by two glistening opal dolphin statues, she saw a small handsome man with skin like ivory and mahogany hair. He beckoned to her.

  As Ivy moved obediently toward the throne, the band struck up once more and the couples resumed their dance. Ivy noticed with increasing alarm that with each step she took, everything around her grew larger. It wasn’t until the ring slipped down on her wrist like a bracelet that she realized that it was she who was shrinking and not the others who were growing. By the time she was ten feet from the throne, the ring had become so large and heavy, she had to hold it in the crook of her arm. At the foot of the throne, Ivy presented the crown-for that was what she now realized it to be-to the prince.

  She knew he was royalty, for when he took the crown and placed it on his head, it fit perfectly. Then he bowed to one knee and kissing her hand, introduced himself: “My lady, I am the prince of the Black River. Contrary to appearances here, I am not a formal ruler-everyone here calls me ‘Blackie’.” With a smile that revealed glistening white teeth, he extended his hand as an invitation to dance. She was so taken by his black eyes and charming ways, she conceded unhesitatingly, and he gracefully swept her onto the dance floor.

  “Such a fine specimen of femininity should also have a name to match. What, pray tell, is your name?” When she told him, he burst into peals of merry laughter. “You’re far from your roots now, Ivy,” he said.

  As they danced, Ivy put aside her confusion and began to take stock of her situation. “My mother always warned us there were strange things in the Black River, but I never suspected anything to spectacular,” she said to her dance partner. “How is it that I came to be in this place, my Prince?” Ivy asked wonderingly.

  “Please, Ivy, you need not be so formal. Please call me Blackie,” said the prince. "The story of how I lost my crown is quite simple, really. Last week my footmen and I were lolling about by the banks of the Black River when we heard mortal hunters tramping noisily and clumsily through the underbrush. You mortals are always so ignorant, and whenever one of you sees us, you inevitably run about madly and trample us. Therefore, to avoid their inevitable idiocy, we jumped back into the river to escape being seen by the brutes.”

  “When we returned to our underwater palace, I found to my dismay that I had left my crown on the grass by the river. I immediately cast a spell that would return the crown to me within a week. I expected to see it served to me in the belly of a fish but my fishing caught another prize entirely,” he said smiling.

  At this, Ivy blushed and when the prince kissed her hand, she turned positively scarlet. "You are so different from other humans. You are so lovely and calm,” he told her.

  As they continued to spin about the dance floor, Ivy looked around at the other dancing couples. They seemed to change shape as she watched. First a cod then a funny man resembling cod danced with a woman clad in yellow who turned into a chicken in a dress. Shape shifting was not limited to the dancers: the cakes on the table turned into meat; the wine bottles turned into urns filled with magnificent roses and then back into wine bottles. And all this happened to the tune of warbling musical instruments which themselves changed from a harp into a cello in the blink of an eye as the adept musicians played on. Nothing seemed solid in this strange place. With all the rhythmic swarming and swaying, Ivy became positively seasick. The last
things she saw before she swooned and everything turned black were the prince’s strange white teeth.

  When her eyes next opened, Ivy found she had slept. She was ready to believe it was just a dream when she realized that she was not at home underneath her favorite patchwork quilt but rather lying in an expansive canopy bed under a yellow silk coverlet. She thought of the bizarre night before and the shape-shifting couples. She then thought of the striking prince and racked her brain trying to remember…hadn’t he also changed? Strange images flashed in the back of her mind but she couldn’t wrestle them to the foreground. A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.