When her mother brought food and water, Lupine always lavished kisses on her; however, these only strengthened the woman’s hatred of her beautiful child. “She is young and has her whole life ahead of her. My life is passing by, faster and faster, and soon I will be dead,” the mother thought. To fill Lupine’s years with misery was the object of her private studies, and one day she found an answer that would serve.
She gave it to Lupine as medicine, but it was really a potion containing an evil spell. Lupine suspected nothing, but complained bitterly of its awful taste. Then she coughed, her eyes rolled back into her head, and she fell to the floor as if dead.
The mother laughed with delight and eagerly awaited Lupine’s return to wakefulness. When the daughter’s eyes opened she no longer wore her usual sweet smile; instead, her face was ugly with disdain. The purpose of the potion’s spell was to make her act hatefully toward those she loved and lovingly toward those she hated. Lupine reached up to throttle her mother’s neck.
The woman easily eluded her and ran gleefully down the prison’s stairs and out of the waste with which it was surrounded. She led Lupine into the thick of civilization, where her daughter would suffer the most.
So this little girl with eyes like stars and hair like the night’s soft breezes grew up the plaything of bullies and the despised enemy of everyone she thought fine and fair. No one understood her inhuman passions, and she was most often left alone—except by her tormentors.
Soon after entering maidenhood, Lupine fell in love with a superior lad. Golden as the sun when it is closest to the earth, he had an unusual and endearing skill: finding things no one else knew they should look for. By now Lupine comprehended her enchantment, and so she fought every least stirring of feeling for him. But to no avail, for she found herself telling horrible lies about him, insulting his sister to her face, and spitting on his shoes whenever they met.
Kyrie, her love, being no ordinary boy, met all her stings with tenderness. This only made things worse.
One night she woke from sleepwalking under his open window, a long, sharp knife glittering in each hand. Overcome with horror, she fled back to the wilderness before her mother or anyone else could stop her.
She ran until she could only walk, and she walked until she could only stumble, and she stumbled until she could only crawl, and she crawled until she could go no farther. She had come to the top of a tall mountain. She lay so still that the vultures thought she was dead and came to feed on her, but a fierce little bird scared them away.
By and by, Lupine recovered from her exhaustion and opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was a cunning cup fashioned of leaves and filled with clear water. She drank it all and sat up. The little bird had put away its fierceness and perched on her knees, chirruping at her. She was so forlorn, she decided to confide in the beast. “Oh, Piece-of-the-Sky, if only you could tell me how to end all my sorrows,” she said.
“With pleasure,” the little bird replied. “I will consider it payment for your naming of me.”
“You—you talk!” said Lupine, naturally amazed at this.
“Not exactly. But because of the water I gave you to drink you understand my singing. For only a short while, however, so let us waste no time.
“You need not tell me your troubles, for I have been watching you. The solution to them is simple. You must chain yourself to those rocks there—” the bird gestured with a wing “—the Rocks of Solitude, so you can do no harm to anyone. Throw the key down in the dust. I will retrieve it. Then you must wait till I return with your swain, whose kiss will release you from the spell of your mother’s potion.”
So Lupine shackled herself in the place where ancient princesses had sacrificed themselves to fire-breathing dragons, using for this their old, abandoned chains. The little bird flew off with the key.
Soon Kyrie strode up the path, bright as morning. Lupine hissed at him and shook her rusty chains. He was not afraid, though, for he had learned all that it was necessary for him to know from Piece-of-the-Sky.
Still, he feared Lupine would bite off his nose before he succeeded in placing his lips on hers and melting into her mouth. But at last he kissed his love.
When he stopped they were both dizzy with bliss and victory. He unlocked her, and together they rejoined the world to share their joy. Their whole lives were ahead of them, and they were free.
As for Lupine’s mother, when she heard of the way in which she had been outwitted she grew more and more anxious over her impending death. When would it come? Where would it be? How would it find her? What would be the manner of it? At last she could bear the suspense of her ignorance no longer and jumped into a fiery furnace.
Thus all concerned found peace.
Nisi Shawl’s story collection Filter House was one of two winners of the 2009 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. Her work has been published by Strange Horizons, Asimov’s SF Magazine, and in anthologies including Dark Matter and The Other Half of the Sky. She was WisCon 35’s Guest of Honor, which Aqueduct Press celebrated by publishing Something More and More, a collection of stories, essays, and an interview conducted by Eileen Gunn. Nisi edited Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars. She co-edited Strange Matings: Octavia E. Butler, Science Fiction, Feminism, and African American Voices with Dr. Rebecca J. Holden; with Cynthia Ward she co-authored Writing the Other: A Practical Approach. She is a founder of the Carl Brandon Society and serves on the Board of Directors of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her website is www.nisishawl.com. She believes in magic.
When I was working on my MA—writing reloaded fairy tales—I had two rewrites I could not make work: “The Raven” and “White Bride, Black Bride.” In the end I gave up, but they’ve mocked me for several years. Each tale had all the elements: princesses, princes, kingdoms, magic, ill-will, bright hope, all bumping up against each other, creating tension.
But neither story was right—neither was enough. When asked to contribute to this anthology, I figured it was time to show those stories who was the boss. I peeled away their skins, cutting off the excess fat and flesh. I took them back to their barest basics and found—for my purposes—the core of a single story. I built a new skeleton, discarding the bones that did not fit, then layering on new flesh, new skin.
All writers working in the genre engage in the same Frankensteining process. With fairy tales, we make and remake our own pretty monsters, with their roots firmly embedded in the past. Oh, they will look new, but if you look at the shadow they cast, you’ll recognize their original shape. You’ll know who and what they were. That co-existence of old and new is both comforting and disconcerting.
Old storytellers used to finish with: “This is the tale you asked for, I leave it in your mouth,” and I think this is the essence of the fairy tale. The words sit differently on varied tongues and each retelling changes the tale, however infinitesimally. The fairy tale is the ultimate Chinese Whisper, shifting with telling and time, its feet in the past and its head in the future—and I think that’s why it’s my favorite form of storytelling.
Angela Slatter
Flight
Angela Slatter
The feathers were tiny and Emer hoped they would stay so.
Indeed, she prayed they would fall out altogether. They were not downy little pins. Small, but determined, their black shafts hardened as soon as they poked through her skin, calcifying under her touch as she stroked them in dreadful fascination.
All day she’d felt something happening beneath the gloves hastily donned after her morning’s escapade. The sight of those ladylike coverings had brought approving nods from both her mother and governess, as if they were a sign she was finally listening to their exhortations. A princess does not run. A princess does not shout or curse. A princess keeps the sun in her voice, but off her fair skin. A princess sits quietly, back straight. A princess smiles at a gentleman’s tasteful jest, but never laughs too loudly. A princess never furrows her brow with thought. A princess does
not chew her nails.
Emer had been determined that nothing untoward was occurring; that the healing salve she’d sneaked from her mother’s workroom would put everything to rights.
But that night, when Emer closed her bedchamber door and finally peeled away the doeskin gloves, she found that the wound in her palm was sprouting dark fronds around its ragged edge. They looked like the collar of her mother’s favorite cloak—except those feathers with their vibrant eyes were from the palace peacocks. A great ball of fear threatened to stopper her throat.
It had been the madness of a moment, to sneak away and run through the gardens with the sky so blue, the clouds so white, the grass such a vibrant green. Trembling in the breeze, the flowers shone like delicate gems: wine-dark amethysts, sun-bright topazes, heavenly sapphires, rubies red as blood, beryl the color of a storm-tossed sea and, stranger still, the roses.
She’d danced and run, bounded and rolled like a child of five not a young lady of thirteen. Not like a princess on the eve of her fealty ceremony, someone who shouldn’t frolic until her gown, once a triumph of pink embroidered with daffodils, had its hem torn and trailing, one sleeve held in place by four tenuous threads, and grass and dirt staining the pattern. Tradition decreed the heir—even if, to the regret of many, she was female—be left unattended this day, not so she could play, but so that she might stand vigil, alone, unsupervised and mature, meditating on her future life of state. Preparing to pledge herself to the land, to be its sovereign and its succor, now and always.
Leaving the manicured lawns upon which she was usually permitted a chaperoned stroll, Emer had wandered into unkempt areas where the demarcation between garden and myrkwood was little more than a rough boundary of aged briars. Smooth malachite stems spiked with roses’ thorns—roses black as ebony!—entwined seamlessly with the gray and brittle barbs of the brambles.
A burning glow from the heart of each bloom had compelled her closer; an opalescent flash of green and red and gold, orange and azure and magenta had drawn her. She’d reached out to touch the nearest one, careful to avoid its prickles. The petals were like velvet. As she pulled away, she felt a stabbing pain in her upturned hand.
One moment the air in front of her was empty and the next, a raven, which had sat so still that it’d been invisible in the chest-high hedge, occupied the space with regal mien, its claws fixed tightly around the briar barrier. The crimson wound in the center of Emer’s palm showed where it had made its mark.
Emer stared at the bird; its feathers glistened tenebrous-dark, yet radiant as if moonlight had been woven into their undersides. The raven gave a harsh cry—if she hadn’t known better, she’d have said it sounded apologetic—and Emer noticed its eyes burned with the same fire as the blossoms, colors flickering and dying, only to be replaced by the next brilliant hue. The creature took off, flying higher and growing smaller until finally it dove, plummeting straight at the girl, veering at the last second and shooting into the shadowy depths of the forest.
That was when Emer’s nerve had broken. Hitching her skirts, she’d fled to her rooms, changed her dress and hid the destroyed one. She’d smoothed her hair and washed her face, slipped on the snug gloves, and spent the afternoon, heart aflutter, sitting in the solar. Feigning contemplation of the book on her lap whenever her mother or governess swept past, and hoping ever so hard that nothing would come of her misadventure.
Now, Emer removed her frock slowly, fearfully, wondering why she did not feel the cold. She stood in front of the mirror and turned. An inverted feathery triangle lay across her back and shoulders. At the nape of her neck were knots and twists where her tresses had begun to tangle into a kind of plumage. Her nails had toughened, lengthened and grown points. Her thumbs and little fingers were shorter.
Yet she did not call for help.
Emer knew the price of magic—something outlawed since the beginning of her father’s reign. Herbcraft was acceptable; although leechwork was a gray area, its benefits were acknowledged; but witchcraft? Enchantments had enabled the Black Bride to bring calamity, to blind the King to the one he loved, to almost ruin a prosperous land, and to leave the Queen permanently scarred. Emer, transforming as she was, must be committing sorcery, even if it wasn’t her choice.
No, she would not call for help. Surely it would go away. Surely all she needed was to apply more of her mother’s lavender nostrum. Surely in the morning, she thought, upending the bottle of ointment and slopping it up her arms, surely by then this would all be gone.
At dawn, as the final act of her vigil the princess dressed all by herself for the first and last time.
A cream silk wimple, a veil of amaranthine gossamer, and a circlet of engraved gold hid the tight calamus cap her hair had become. Only Emer’s un-feathered face remained visible. Her high-necked ruby robe had sleeves long and loose enough to conceal her glossy black body and her arms, which were rapidly knitting into wings. Stubbornly, she fumbled with gloves, but didn’t bother with shoes—her legs had wizened, toughened with dusky gray skin, finished with pronged feet. Now three clawed toes click-click-clicked as she walked.
And so it was that the kingdom’s firstborn, pride and joy (and occasional frustration) of her royal parents, entered the great hall with a strange new gait. Her eyes, once blue, were black, and her head moved this way and that, taking everything in with a darting gaze. She promenaded along the ermine carpet to where her parents sat, enthroned and enthralled by her terrible progress.
When she stood before them, dropping into the queerest curtsey ever seen, the Queen and King began to weep and wail respectively.
Emer’s hands convulsed and the delicate gloves, which had been shoved onto the tips of her transmuting fingers, fell away as the flesh melded. The gown, too, was rent, and soon the princess was jiggling about on one leg then the other, kicking away the rags. Her head grew rounder, tinier, and her ears disappeared; the coronet slid down to sit around her neck like a collar. Wimple and veil hung loose until she shook them off. Emer’s nose and mouth speared into a scintillating beak.
Ladies-in-waiting screamed and lords bellowed. The noise was astonishing; it swelled until the crescendo broke over the raven-girl and she tottered about, looking for escape. One of the high-reaching windows was open to allow the cool breeze in, and she half-ran, half-skipped towards it, shrinking, until the golden circlet slipped away and she leapt through the opening as if performing a circus trick. She hopped onto the sill, gave her parents one last look, and caw-cawed, a sound that echoed the whole sad length and breadth of the chamber.
With one swift beat of her new wings she caught an updraft. Her parents, released from their paralysis, ran to the window and watched as their daughter joined a waiting unkindness of ravens that greeted her with croaks. The sun kissed her wings and she and the birds were gone, faster than thought, faster than possibility.
They flew toward the horizon. Emer-that-was wondered how far they’d come—and when they’d stop—as they floated over fields and rivers, mountains and valleys, towers and turrets of rulers petty and great. But Emer-of-feathers did not ponder, merely obeyed instinct and followed her fellows. They flew for so long that Emer-that-was despaired of ever finding her way back.
When finally they began to descend, it was toward a huge granite edifice positioned astride a river, nothing like Emer’s hilltop home of polished marble and clear glass. This was a castle fit for battle, with windows so slender they were suitable only for shooting arrows through, or sending out the occasional pigeon bearing a message to an attacking general, saying he may as well piss into the wind, for this bastion would never fall to the likes of him.
The flock aimed itself at the closed portcullis, winging precisely through the grille, Emer as lithe and light as the rest. They traversed a deserted courtyard, thence towards a great set of doors hewn from oak and banded with silver. The doors, as if sensing their approach, opened at the very last moment, but the winged host did not slow, did not hesitate, as if cooperation
was to be expected.
They flew along hallways lined with threadbare tapestries and paintings of people who’d been obscured not by time but by the tearing and shredding of canvas. They flew through rooms lined with rows of weapon racks filled with rusting swords and battleaxes, unstrung bows, decaying spears and toothless morning stars. They flew through bedchambers so thick with dust they had to rely purely on intuition to navigate. They flew until at last they came to a hall as lofty and lengthy as a cathedral’s nave, as cool and dim as one too, for most of the tall pointed windows were shuttered. At the farthest end sat a woman.
Bustling around the chamber was an army of servants. Here and there, valets and footmen, butlers and a majordomo, maids and ladies-in-waiting, some of them in the costume of courtiers and some of them in rustic attire, but Emer had no doubt they were all, without exception, slaves. No matter their garb, none wore human form. Each was canine, walking upright and wearing a motley mix of livery, using fans, carrying trays, bearing tea pots and saucers, one the lord of a samovar, another king of the canapés.
Emer glided onwards, unaware that her companions had dropped behind. She slowed, and descended, carefully avoiding the shifting mass of what appeared to be large rabbits—no, hares kicking at each in occasional ill-temper. She alighted on the shabby red carpet leading to the dais upon which a cushioned throne was set. Three short steps separated her from black-booted toes.
Lifting her gaze, Emer took in the woman’s face, gypsy-hued, marred with long-healed scars; her hair and eyes like jet, lips like a damson plum. And the features somehow familiar, yet Emer could not place them. The woman in a long charcoal dress, with carmined nails, smiled down at the raven who was a girl. Emer shuddered deep inside her hollow-boned body. She wished to fly, to flee, but her limbs would not obey.
The dark one limped down the stairs to gather up the bird. She tucked Emer under her arm as one might a chicken, and stroked her with a hand almost entirely curled in upon itself. Emer recoiled, willing her talons to lash out and tear, her beak to stab and shred, but her body was contrary. All she could do was shiver. Clicking her fingers, the woman produced a chain as fine as thread from thin air. The thing shone and shimmered as she twisted it twice around the raven’s right foot. Emer watched as the metal fused. The other end was looped through the intricately carved rose-and-briar pattern adorning the top of the throne.
Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Page 15