Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales

by Goss, Theodora

  “Then at last I know her fate,” the giant said, his voice quiet. “I am pleased that she is free of this fallen world.”

  “And Bergit? I do not see her. What is her fate?”

  “The wench betrayed me,” the giant said. “I should have eaten her as I had intended.”

  “Did you?”

  “I could not. She was part of the wretched Story, just as I was. Just as I am. We have been waiting for you to do your part. She is buried in this hill with me, a rag and a bone, with a guttering flame still lit within her. I know this because I can hear her keening in the night.”

  “I am meant to force you to free my brothers and their wives. To free Bergit as well, so that she may come home with me and be my wife. I promised my father I would do these things.”

  “Do them then, wretch. Do them so that I may rise from this place and render you over my cooking fires.”

  “You are no threat to me, giant. Nor will you be ever again.”

  Ivar returned the heart to its box.

  Håkon hopped closer, head cocked to the side. “What are you doing?”

  “This was never the giant’s Story, Håkon. He was imprisoned by it. He lost his wife to it. His own story ended long ago.”

  The crow paced, considering this. Finally he said, “I don’t see how that matters. Did you tell him to free the other princes and their wives?”

  “No.”

  “What? Why not?”

  Ivar turned where he sat, resting his back against the boat, looking out onto the candlelit water, the emptiness beyond it. “Crow, I don’t know what to do.”

  Håkon leaped onto Ivar’s leg, took a step forward. He was rather a large bird, and Ivar felt some misgivings about provoking him. “You do what you are meant to do, my prince! What else? You release your brothers and fulfill your promise to your father. You marry the lovely Bergit, and you enjoy the vigor of youth. You return to the Story, as you’re meant to do! What is this ‘I don’t know what to do’ nonsense? Preposterous is what. Do this, and I will carry news of it to your father, so that he may ready the castle for your return. I’m sure that that is my function here.”

  “And what of Olga, my wise friend? Hm? What of my wife?”

  “Well . . . ” The crow seemed genuinely at a loss for a moment. “She is old, my prince. Her remaining years are so few. Bergit is young and beautiful. Just like you now! Or at least she will be when you command the giant to release her. Think of the handsome children you will have. Think of the pride in your father’s eye.”

  Ivar did think of those things, and they were good. He thought of the promise he made to his father, which he had neglected, to his shame. He thought of his brothers, their hearts cresting as they returned home with the women they would build families with, their eyes full of life’s coming bounties. And he thought of lovely Bergit, terrified and imprisoned, whose cleverness procured for him the information he needed to save her, and all the rest. It would be a sorry thing indeed to turn his back on them all.

  But then at last I know her fate, the giant had said, with the sadness of long centuries alone in his voice. I am pleased that she is free of this fallen world.

  Ivar closed the box’s lid. He pushed it out into the water, where it drifted some distance before it sank.

  Håkon was speechless. It is difficult to look into a crow’s eye and read emotion there, but Ivar found this one to be quite expressive.

  “I am quite fond of Olga,” Ivar said quietly. “I think I would miss her more than I could bear.”

  “But the Story . . . oh, my prince . . . ”

  “Crow, it is time to acquaint ourselves with endings.”

  Håkon fulfilled his function after all. He carried Ivar’s message away from the church, where the warmth of summer was already giving way to a chilly wind, across the mountains to the neglected castle of his father. The castle, like the giant’s cottage, had fallen to time. A battlement here, a row of flagstones there, and a half-collapsed tower were all the remained of the once proud structure, scattered in the foliage like old teeth. The old king lived in the tower, where he rarely moved, except at night, when the moonlight would draw him to the window to watch for the return of his children.

  This is how Håkon found him, his moon-kissed skull pale in the window, the cobwebs hanging from his bony shoulders like a grand cape. The crow landed on the sill beside the old king and looked thoughtfully at him, a few grey hairs still wreathed around his head, the black sockets of his eyes gazing emptily back. The crow was old himself now, the feathers around his beak thin and bedraggled, his gnarled feet scaly with age.

  “My king,” said the crow. “I bring news of your sons.”

  Upon hearing it, the king turned from the window for a final time and made his ponderous way across the room to a tumble of rocks, which, long ago, he had arranged into something approximating a throne. He reclined into it, hearing through the crow’s message the voice of his youngest son: the most precious, the last to go.

  I am sorry, Father. I have failed you. I cannot come back, and now you must die alone. It is unforgivable. But know that you are loved, and honored still. Your grandchildren will know your name.

  And the king died at last, the sorrow of his grievous loss unanswered, but with the timbre of his son’s voice to ferry him gently on.

  Ivar did not look behind him as he left the church, nor did he think it was odd that the spring weather had abruptly given way to deep snow. The mountains and the fjords were gone. Before him was the austere beauty of the Minnesota plain, and there in the distance was his home, its little chimney unfurling smoke into the icy-starred twilight, while his fields slept beneath the snow until their season came upon them again.

  His old joints creaked in the cold; the winter was going to be hard on him.

  He opened the door and stamped the snow from his boots, slid the coat from his shoulders and set it on its hook. He passed a hand over his weathered face, rubbing warmth into his cheeks. There was a splash from the kitchen, and he entered it to see dear, round Olga, naked as a nymph, reclining in the tub with the steam rising around her as though she were taking her constitutional in some Icelandic spring.

  “Horrible woman,” he said. “That was my bath.”

  “The water was getting cold while you were out there chasing birds, you old fool. I wasn’t going to let it go to waste. Did you catch it?”

  “I did. We had a wonderful conversation, and then I let it go.”

  “One bird brain to another. It doesn’t surprise me one bit.”

  “Ach,” he said. “Have you used up all the heat yet? By God, I need some heat.”

  “As it happens, I’m about finished,” she said. She rose from the tub, this plump old woman, this mother to his children and companion of his life, glistening like some bright mineral wrested from the earth, steam rising from her wet body as though she were a creature of some fabulous mythology, filling his home with heat as the snow fell softly beyond the glass.

  Nathan Ballingrud is the author of North American Lake Monsters, from Small Beer Press. Several of his stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies, and “The Monsters of Heaven” won a Shirley Jackson Award. He’s worked as a bartender in New Orleans, a cook on oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and a waiter in a fancy restaurant. Currently he lives in Asheville, NC, with his daughter, where he’s at work on his first novel. You can find him online at nathanballingrud.wordpress.com.

  Author A. C. Wise grew up obsessively reading and re-reading fairy tales from a lovely phone book-sized and phone book-style compendium containing several volumes of Andrew Lang’s fairy tale series with appropriately color-coded pages. Ever since discovering Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s retold fairy tale anthologies, Wise has aspired to writing (or rewriting) fairy tales of her own.

  Fairy tales are a gateway, they hint at larger possibilities and worlds begging to be explored. They are skeletons wanting skin. Why did the heroine/hero/witch/evil step-relation/
magical talking animal really take that course of action? Fairy tales, as brilliant as they are in their own right, are also fresh stories waiting to be told. “The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings,” was born of the desire to give a voice to the cursed birds of the original story, while suggesting that not all of them might be innocent victims.

  The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings

  A. C. Wise

  It’s Liselle’s pain that brings me back.

  I’ve been gone a long time. Sky-drunk, back to belly with the clouds, it’s easy to forget. With the city all small and gray, laid out quilt-wise below me, why would I ever touch the ground?

  For Liselle. Because her pain smells of nettles, pricked fingers, and blood. Because it sounds like patience and silence. Because it feels like ice forming a skin across the pond, like winter coming too soon. And I’m afraid I’m too late.

  “What do you want more than anything in the world?” the witch asks.

  She plants a foot on my shoulder, holding me at the bottom of the bed. She told me to call her Circe, and said it wasn’t her name.

  “You.” I try to move, but she shifts her foot, ball planted against my collarbone, toes curled to dig in.

  “Too easy.”

  Light slants across the bed, pools at her throat, slides between her breasts, and drizzles, crisscrossed by shadow, over her belly like honey.

  “Can’t you tell?” I grasp my cock, grin.

  Just the edge of a frown tries her lips. They’re dark, darkened further as she sips wine from a goblet by the bed. Her eyes are the color of lightning-struck stone, ever watchful. I can’t tell her age. Maybe older than the world. She is beautiful, and terrifying, and if I don’t give her the answer she’s looking for, she’ll burn me to ash without ever raising her hand.

  She pushes me back, setting me off balance. “Try again.”

  Bells chime at her ankles. She swirls the wine in her glass, never taking her eyes from my face. She dips a finger into the glass, sucks ruby droplets from its tip, then slides it between her legs.

  Blood pounds, deafening me; my cock aches. I say the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Freedom?”

  “Hmm.” The witch arches an eyebrow, weighing me.

  The words tumble now, a babble that may or may not be a confession. I don’t know what I want; right now, I can’t think past desire.

  “I’m sick of George controlling the purse strings. Our parents left the money to all of us, but he acts like he’s in charge.”

  I’m breathing hard, harder than I should be.

  “Seven brothers in all, yes? And you’re the seventh?” Even phrased as such, it’s not exactly a question, but I nod. “And a sister?” I nod again. I haven’t told her anything she doesn’t already know.

  At last, Circe relents. She lowers her leg, tracing her toes down my chest, and through the hair on my stomach. When she plants her foot on the bed, her legs are slightly parted, welcoming.

  I crawl to her, ashamed of myself, and not caring. Thirsty, hungry, eager, I suck the lingering ghost of wine from between her legs. Her sex tastes of cinnamon and copper—a penny placed on my tongue for silence. The witch winds her fingers in my hair.

  “Interesting,” she says. “When I asked your brothers the same question, they all wanted power.”

  Folding wings tight, I dive, trading the clean smell of cloud and wind for smoky, roasted nuts, horse shit, and overflowing trashcans. Whatever else I may be, whatever else I’ve done, there’s always this: I will come when she calls. What kind of brother would I be otherwise? Not the brother she deserves, certainly. I took her gift, and threw it back in her face. All because I fell in love with the sky, and when she came to save me, I refused.

  Just before I hit the ground, I pull the trick the witch taught me and change. It’s not a rational thing; it’s just a different way of thinking—trading feathers for skin. But it gets harder every time.

  It hurts more each time, too. Bones splinter and twist, going from hollow to full. Feathers draw blood, pulling out of my skin. The weight of my body nearly crushes me. Then I’m standing, panting, in gray clothing the same color as pigeon feathers. Which, if you look at them just right, are so many colors it will break your heart.

  “Hi, Sis.” I lower myself to the bench beside her.

  My voice is rough. It cracks on human sounds, my lips, too, and I lick blood.

  Liselle doesn’t say anything. She hasn’t spoken in at least fourteen years. Maybe more.

  Her down coat is too big. Inside it, her wrists are thin, and her shoulders hunched. She reaches into one of the pockets, and it almost swallows her hand before she pulls out a note pad and a stub of pencil. She scribbles, tears off the sheet, and hands it to me. Her eyes, too large in her face, remind me of ice creeping in around the edges of a pond, freezing toward the center.

  Liselle’s scrawl is childish, unapologetic. Even cruel. Or maybe it’s just because her fingers are stiff with the cold.

  I’m dying.

  I turn the note over, read it again. There’s nothing else, just the stark words, charcoal as the sky.

  “What?”

  Liselle doesn’t sigh, doesn’t make a sound, but I see the impatience as she scribbles again, and passes another ragged sheet my way.

  Cirrhosis. No transplant=dead.

  Liselle turns away, and scatters a handful of breadcrumbs from the bag in her lap. Pigeons squabble at her feet.

  “We’ll get you help. We’ll fix this.” I grab her wrist.

  She shakes me free, and this time she nearly tears the sheet in half handing the paper to me.

  NO.

  I stare at the blocky capital letters. “What do you mean, no?”

  She snatches the paper from my fingers, underlines the word, and thrusts it back at me. Her eyes are all ice now, the black water at the pond’s center swallowed up and the summer girl she used to be, drowned.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been gone; I can’t tell how old Liselle is, but in this moment, she might be as old as the world. If I don’t answer carefully, she will freeze my heart, and shatter it with a touch.

  “Liselle . . . ”

  But I get no farther. My sister stands, scattering the last crumbs from her lap. The birds at her feet take flight, filling the air with the startled sound of their wings. The wind catches the empty bag, swirls it up to snag in the branches stretched over the pond. There is rage in every line of Liselle’s body. Rage she has never spoken aloud.

  The sound of all that silence is ice cracking, deep in the heart of winter. It’s a vast oak, snapping under the weight of snow. Thin as a twig, Liselle is hard as stone.

  I know exactly how hard she is, exactly how strong.

  Seven years of silence, one for each brother. That was the witch’s price. And Liselle paid it, laying a sister’s love against the lure of sex, sweat-slick skin, and the taste of cinnamon, copper, and wine. The taste of freedom and power, against summer sunlight and raspberries picked from the brambly wilds of our parents’ backyard, against woven daisy chains, and scrapes healed through the magic of Band-Aids.

  Seven years, she swallowed her voice, her love and fear; seven years, she pricked her fingers to the bone sewing nettle shirts, one for each of us. Seven shirts, seven years, seven brothers who had become dirty, gray pigeons by a witch’s curse.

  And one who chose to stay that way.

  It’s too late to tell her I’m sorry. Besides, she’d know it was a fucking lie.

  I reach for her, but she’s twisting, gone. She can’t fly, but she can still run.

  “This is freedom,” the witch says.

  Circe stands me in front of the mirror. I’m naked, sweat cooling on my skin, but hard again the instant she touches me. She ignores my need, and runs her fingers down my chest, down the center of my body, nails catching ever so lightly on my skin.

  “I’ll show you what you are,” she says. “Inside your skin, what you’ve always been.”

>   My skin splits; it isn’t blood that pours out, but feathers. There’s no pain, but that doesn’t mean I’m not horrified, terrified, as my flesh peels from my bones. I try to scream, but it emerges a strangled, rusty coo.

  Panicked, I flap wings. My heart hammers against hollow bones, reverberating to deafen me. I want to ask her what she’s done, how she could betray me. The witch only smiles, and bends low to gather me in her hands.

  She holds me in cupped palms, wings pinned to my sides.

  “Hush,” she soothes. Her breath smells like wine; her lips skim my feathers.

  The kiss stills me—not with desire this time. But, because she is predator, and I am prey. If I move to displease her, those lips will reveal white teeth, and like a carnival geek, she’ll snap my head off, and crunch up my bones.

  Holding me against the warmth between her breasts, so I can feel her heartbeat, Circe goes to the balcony and opens the doors wide. Her apartment, the jewel in a spire of green glass, a needle thrust up from the city, overlooks Central Park. Naked, she stands at the railing, and puts her lips close to my feathered body again.

  “I’ll tell you a secret,” she says. “You can change back any time you want. It’s only a different way of being, a different way of thinking. You’re free; no one can tell you what to do, or what to be. It’s up to you to choose.”

  The witch leans over the rail, stretches her arms out and me with them.

  “But,” she says, and even though my body is suspended over the city, I still hear her as though her lips brush against me. I still feel the stir of hot breath over feathers. “If you tell anyone, it won’t work anymore.

  “This,” she says, “is freedom.”

  She opens her hands, and casts me into the sky. It is flat gray. It threatens to swallow me whole. The city is too many colors, spinning up as I plummet down. Panic snaps my wings wide. Feathers arrest my fall. Chill as it is, the wind catches me, whips me over the park.

  Winter-stripped branches reach for me, and grasp nothing. Far below, the pond winks with cold light, molten silver, spilled on the ground. The clouds kiss my back, smooth my fear away. People move below me, small as ants, small as I used to be. I never want to land.