How to Fracture a Fairy Tale

by Jane Yolen

  The landholder gladly gave up the child, grateful to have the monster from his hearth. Sons could help till the lands. Only the royals crave girls. They make good counters in the bargaining games played across the castle boundary lines. But this girl was not even human enough to cook and clean and wipe the bottoms of her sisters and brothers to come. The landholder would have killed the moon-misbegotten thing on its emergence from his child-bride’s womb had not the midwife stayed him. He sold the child for a single gold piece and thought himself clever in the bargain.

  And did the Old One clear his throat then and consecrate their trade with words? Did he speak of prophesy or pronounce upon omens? If the landholder’s wife had hoped for such to ease her guilt, she got short shrift of him. He had paid with a coin and a single syllable.

  “So,” he had said. And so it was.

  The Old One carried the gwynhfar back over the miles with his own hands. “With his own hands,” run the wonder tales, as if this were an awesome thing, carrying a tiny, witless babe. But think on it. Would he have trusted her to another, having come so far, across the years and miles, to find her? Would he have given her into clumsier hands when his own could still pull uncooked eggs from his sleeves without a crack or a drop?

  Behind him, they say, came his people: the priests and the seers, a grand processional. But I guess rather he came by himself and at night. She would have been a noisy burden to carry through the bright, scalding light; squalling and squealing at the sun. The moon always quieted her. Besides, he wanted to surprise them with her, to keep her to himself till the end. For was it not written that the gwynhfar would arise and bind the kingdom:

  Gwynhfar, white as bone,

  Shall make the kingdom one.

  Just as it had been written in the entrails of deer and the bloody leavings of carrion crow that the Tall One, blessed be, would travel the length of the kingdom to find her. Miracles are made by hands such as his, and prophesies can be invented.

  And then, too, he would want to be sure. He would want time to think about what he carried, that small, white-haired marvel, that unnature. For if the Old One was anything, he was a planner. If he had been born better, he would have been a mighty king. So, wrapped in the cloak of night, keeping the babe from her enemy light, which drained even the small strength she had, and scheming—always scheming—the Old One moved through the land.

  By day, of course, there would have been no mistaking him. His height ever proclaimed him. Clothes were no disguise. A mask but pointed the finger. At night, though, he was only a long shadow in a world of long shadows.

  I never saw him then, but I know it all. I can sort through stories as a crow pecks through grain. And though it is said he rode a whirlwind home, it was a time of year for storms. They were no worse than other years. It is just that legend has a poor memory, and hope an even worse.

  The Old One returned with a cough that wracked his long, thin body and an eye scratched out by a tree limb. The black patch he wore thereafter gave rise to new tales. They say he had been blinded in one eye at his first sight of her, the gwynhfar. But I have it from the physician who attended him that there was a great scar on his cheek and splinters still in the flesh around the eye.

  And what did the Old One say of the wound?

  “Clean it,” he said. And then, “So!” There is no story there. That is why words of power have been invented for him.

  The Old One had a great warren built for the child under the ground so the light would not disturb her rest. Room upon room was filled with things for a growing princess, but nothing there to speak to a child. How could he know what would interest a young one? It was said he had never been a babe. This was only partly a lie. He had been raised by the Oldest Ones himself. He had been young but he had never had a youth. So he waited impatiently for her to grow. He wanted to watch the unfolding of this white, alien flower, his only child.

  But the gwynhfar was slow. Slow to sit, slow to crawl, slow to eat. Like a great white slug, she never did learn speech or to hold her bowels. She had to be kept wrapped in swaddling under her dresses to keep her clean, but who could see through the silk to know? She grew bigger but not much older, both a natural and unnatural thing. So she was never left alone.

  It meant that the Old One had to change his plan. And so his plan became this. He had her beaten every day, but never badly. And on a signal, he would enter her underground chambers and put an end to her punishment. Again and again he arrived just as blood was about to be drawn. Then he would send away her tormentors, calling down horrid punishments upon them. It was not long before the gwynhfar looked only to him. She would turn that birch-white face toward the door waiting for him to enter, her watery eyes glistening. The over-big head on the weak neck seemed to strain for his words, though it was clear soon enough that she was deaf as well.

  If he could have found another as white as she, he would likely have gotten rid of her. Perhaps. But there have been stranger loves. And only he could speak to her, a language of simple hand signs and finger plays. As she grew into womanhood, the two would converse in a limited fashion. It was some relief from statecraft and magecraft and the tortuous imaginings of history.

  On those days and weeks when he did not come to see her, the gwynhfar often fell into a half sleep. She ate when fed, roused to go out into the night only when pulled from her couch. The women around her kept her exercised as if she were some exotic, half-wild beast, but they did take good care of her. They guessed what would happen if they did not.

  What they did not guess was that they were doomed anyway. Her raising was to be the Old One’s secret. Only one woman, who escaped with a lover, told what really happened. No one ever believed her, not even her lover, and he was soon dead in a brawl and she with him.

  But I believed. I am bound to believe what cannot be true, to take fact from fancy, fashion fancy from fact.

  The plan was changed, but not the promise.

  Gwynhfar, white as bone,

  Shall make the kingdom one.

  The rhyme was known, sung through the halls of power and along the muddy country lanes. Not a man or woman or child but wished it to be so: for the kingdom to be bound up, its wounds cleansed. Justice is like a round banquet table—it comes full circle, and none should be higher or lower than the next. So the mage waited, for the gwynhfar’s first signs of womanhood. And the white one waited for the dark prince she had been promised, light and dark, two sides of the same coin. She of the old tribes, he of the new. She of the old faith and he of the new. He listened to new advisers, men of action, new gods. She had but one adviser, knew no action, had one god. That was the promise: old and new wedded together. How else can a kingdom be made one?

  How did the mage tell her this, finger upon finger? Did she understand? I only know she waited for the day with the patience of the dreamer, with the solidity of a stone. For that was what she was, a white pebble in a rushing stream, which does not move but changes the direction of the water that passes over it.

  I know the beginning of the tale, but not yet the end. Perhaps this time the wisdom of the Oldest Ones will miscarry. Naught may come of naught. Such miracles are often barren. There have been rumors of white ones before. Beasts sometimes bear them. But they are weak, they die young, they cannot conceive. A queen without issue is a dreadful thing. Unnatural.

  And the mage has planned it all except for the dark prince. He is a young bear of a king and I think will not be bought so easily with hand-wrought miracles. His hunger for land and for women, his need for heirs, will not be checked by the mage’s blanched and barren offering. He is, I fear, of a lustier mind.

  And I? I am no one, a singer of songs, a teller of tales. But I am the one to be wary of, for I remake the past and call it truth. I leave others to the rote of history, which is dry, dull, and unbelievable. Who is to say which mouth’s outpourings will lift the soul higher—that which is or that which could be? Did it really flood, or did Noah have a fine story-maker l
iving in his house? I care not either way. It is enough for me to sing.

  But stay. It is my turn on the boards. Watch. I stride to the room’s center, where the song’s echo will linger longest. I lift my hands toward the young king, toward the old mage, toward the gwynhfar swaddled in silk who waits, as she waits for everything else. I bow my head and raise my voice.

  “Listen,” I say, my voice low and cozening.

  “Listen, lords and ladies, as I sing of the coming days. I sing of the time when the kingdom will be one. And I call my song, the lay of the dark King Artos and of Guinevere the Fair.”

  Cinder Elephant

  THERE WAS ONCE A lovely big girl who lived with her father in a large house near the king’s park.

  Her mother had been called Pleasingly Plump. Her grandmother had been called Round and Rosy. Her great-grandmother had been called Sunny and Solid. And her great-great-grandmother had been called Fat!

  But though she was bigger than most, the girl had a sweet face, a loving heart, a kind disposition, and big feet.

  Her name was Eleanor.

  Her father called her Elly.

  Now, Elly and her father did everything together. They rambled and scrambled over the rolling hills. They bird-watched and dish-washed and trout-fished and star-wished together.

  In fact they were happy for a long long time.

  But one day Elly’s father grew lonely for someone his own age; someone who laughed at the same jokes; someone who’d memorized the words to the same songs; someone who knew the steps to dances like the turkey trot and the mashed potato and didn’t think those were just food groups.

  So he married again, a woman so thin, it took her three tries to throw a shadow. She had two skinny daughters. One was as skinny as a straw, one was as skinny as a reed. They had thin smiles, too. And thin names: Reen and Rhee. And hearts so thin you could read a magazine through them.

  Reen and Rhee smiled their thin smiles all through the wedding, and the very next morning they made Elly their maid.

  They made her do the dishes. They made her make the beds. They even made her sit in the fireplace, where she got covered with soot and cinders.

  To make matters worse, they called her names:

  “Elly, Elly,

  Big fat belly,

  Cinder Elephant.”

  So Elly cried.

  But crying only made things worse. It made the soot into mud pies and the cinders into bogs. So Elly stopped crying.

  Elly may have been big, but she wasn’t stupid. She did the sisters’ work without complaining and she did it very well. And in her spare time—which meant long after her stepmother and the skinnies were asleep—she read books. Books about football and baseball, books about tennis and golf. It was how she preferred to get her exercise.

  One day as Elly worked in the kitchen, two little bluebirds peeked in the window.

  Elly guessed they were hungry, so she gave them each a crumb of bread.

  Just then, in came the skinnies, Reen and Rhee, one thin as a reed, one thin as a straw. “Mama, Mama,” they screamed in their thin little voices. “Look what Cinder Elephant has done!”

  Their skinny mother came quickly in her best running shoes, size five-and-a-half narrow. (Very narrow.)

  She took the bread crumbs away, saying, “Cinder Elephant, this is all you will get for your dinner. Dieting will do you a world of good, and you will thank me for it later.”

  Then she turned to her skinny daughters. “I have great news. Prince Junior is home from school.”

  “The PRINCE!” Reen and Rhee squealed, for of course they had heard of him. He wore great clothes. He had straight teeth, which in the days before dentists took a lot of doing. And he was sure to inherit the kingdom.

  Then, they smiled their thin smiles at one another, and ran to their bedrooms to pick out their prettiest dresses to wear just in case they should bump into him.

  Elly stayed on in the kitchen pretending to cry. But as soon as the skinnies were gone, and her stepmother, too, she gave her bread-crumb dinner to the bluebirds, anyway.

  They ate it in one gulp each, singing:

  “The bigger the heart,

  The greater the prize.

  You will be perfect

  In somebody’s eyes.”

  Fairy-tale birds always sing like this. It’s annoying to everyone except the heroine.

  Meanwhile, in the palace Prince Junior had just had a serious talk with his father the king.

  “Time to get married,” said the king. “Time to grow up. Time to run the kingdom.” The king always spoke that way to his son: short and to the point. Pointed remarks were his specialty.

  “I’m not in love,” said Prince Junior.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the king.

  “I’m not even in like,” said Prince Junior.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said the king.

  “I don’t even know any girls,” said Prince Junior.

  “That matters,” said the king. “Time to think about it.” So the king began to think.

  It took hours.

  It took days.

  It took help. The queen was his helpmeet.

  At last they came up with a plan.

  “Time for a ball,” the king said.

  Prince Junior was pleased. “Oh good,” he said. “I like balls.” He meant he liked footballs and baseballs and tennis balls. (Though he wasn’t terribly fond of mothballs. They stank something fierce.)

  “Your father means a fancy-dress, drinking champagne from slippers ball,” said his mother, the queen.

  Prince Junior groaned. He really preferred watching birds to that kind of ball.

  “Invite everyone in the kingdom,” said the king, priming his prime minister. “As long as they are girls. Send invitations to every shop girl, cop girl, mop girl, prop girl, and champagne-in-the-slipper girl in the kingdom.”

  “And,” added the queen, “remind everyone—no invitation, no admittance.”

  So invitations went out on creamy invitation paper, and every girl in the kingdom was invited except for Elly because her stepsisters tore up her invitation. Then they made Elly pick up the creamy pieces.

  On the night of the royal ball, the stepsisters swept out of the house in yellow gowns, skinny as straws and looking like brooms. They rode to the castle and their skinny mother went with them. And to the castle as well went every shop girl, cop girl, prop girl, and champagne-in-the-slipper girl in the kingdom.

  But Elly stayed at home staring into the cinders. She had no invitation to the ball. Even worse—she had nothing to wear. To make sure Elly didn’t try to go to the castle, the stepsisters had hidden her clothes except for the slip she had on, and didn’t tell her where.

  At ten o’clock, there came a noise at the kitchen window. It was the bluebirds.

  “You gave us something

  Yummy to eat.

  Now we are back

  With a marvelous treat.”

  Elly threw open the window.

  In flew the bluebirds with all their bird friends carrying a large gown made of feathers. Blue feathers from the bluebirds, gold feathers from the goldfinches, green feathers from the greenfinches, and brown feathers from the owls.

  They slipped the gown over Elly’s head before she could say a word. The birds sang:

  “You look beautiful,

  As trees in the fall.

  And now you can set off

  For Prince Junior’s ball.”

  Actually, with all those feathers, Elly looked more like a big fat hen. And as much as she wanted to go to the royal dance, Elly knew a thing or two about such balls herself. No one could get in without a proper invitation. But she didn’t want to hurt the birds’ feelings.

  So she said, “I have no dancing slippers. Size nine-and-a-half wide. (Very wide.)”

  The birds flew away all atwitter and did not return until eleven o’clock, when they pecked excitedly at the kitchen window.

  “Let us in, let us
in.

  We’ve come with a treat:

  A pair of new shoes

  To put on your feet.”

  (Please remember that the expression “birdbrain” had been invented by someone who knew quite a bit about birds. Possibly John J. Audubon, who may have said it first in French.)

  Elly opened the window and in flew the bluebirds with all their bird friends carrying two big slippers made of twigs and grass which they slipped onto Elly’s feet.

  “How do I look?” Elly asked.

  Actually now she looked like a big fat hen sitting on a nest. But the birds all thought she looked beautiful and said so.

  Elly didn’t want to hurt their feelings. But she still had no invitation. So instead she said, “I have no carriage to ride in. And if I walk to the palace, I will be too late for the ball.”

  The birds convened a quick parliament, took a vote, and a minute later came back with an answer:

  “Here we are,

  birds of a feather,

  and so we must all

  flock together.”

  And before Elly could ask them what they meant, they’d lifted her up and up and up. The wind blew under the arms of the feather gown. And away Elly flew with the flock to Prince Junior’s fancy-dress ball.

  By now, of course, it was nearly midnight.

  Prince Junior was tired of talking about things he didn’t enjoy—the weather, the price of fancy dresses, and the name of every single dance that had been played by the very busy orchestra. He was slightly sick from the shoe champagne. So he slipped away out onto the terrace by himself for a breath of fresh air and a bit of bird-watching. There were usually owls outside in the trees.

  He had just put his field glasses up to his eyes, when what should drop from the skies but a giant hen on a nest.

  Prince Junior was amazed. He stared at the lovely round face through his glasses. He checked his field guide.

  There was no such hen listed among the chickens.

  It was Elly, of course, come to the royal ball but without an invitation.

  “Sorry to make an end run around the guards at the door,” she said.

  “You know football!” cried the prince.