Fantasy
You won't see traditional fairy tales here, at least unaltered. But fairy tales do provide a great common language upon which to build a story or twist the old out of recognition.
Once upon a time in a far off land, in a tiny room, in a tall tower, at the centre of a vast and impenetrable maze, the princess Adrienna cocked her head and frowned.
"Who said that?" said the princess.
The gibbous moon hung over the crowns of the baobab trees as Afua slipped from her cot and headed up the cliff road to the house of the witch. Red clay wet with the night rains slapped beneath her heavy feet, her hurried strides belying the fear curling in her belly. It was a dangerous thing to steal from a witch.
But after tonight, she would no longer be called Sahona, the frog. Afua had always brushed off the insults, thinking that she'd grow like her friend Talata had grown, tall and graceful. Afua stayed squat, however, with a pointed face like a chameleon's, blotchy skin, and bowed legs more suited to a lemur than a young woman.
I knew the girl would never give up her child.
I knew before I asked. That is the sort of deal you only make if you're young and naive and facing execution and the idea of a child is so very far away that it is an easy thing to give up.
I never really loved her.
I never loved her, but from the first moment I saw her I coveted her, desired her in the way the ivy desires the castle wall, or the oyster the pearl.
My sister Amy came back smiling from the village well, saying she'd drawn water for a beggar-woman. She gasped when the first rose fell from her mouth, followed by a rain of diamonds. She'd thought it reward enough to see her kind lovely face mirrored in the woman's eyes. But it didn't take her long to decide that she deserved the gift, and that her sharp-tongued older sister deserved less.
I was fool enough to resent that, so when I went to fill a kettle and a lady asked for a drink and asked after my sweet pretty sister, without asking how I was, I bade her draw water for her sweet pretty self. I faltered when the snake fell from my lips.
In the white of the snow, dusk-stained and bordering invisible, the footprints were increasingly harder to follow. The curled moon was little use to see by. It turned the land grey. Clouds would soon make everything dark. We'd have to use our electric torches then, and that could ruin it all.
"We're too slow. We're not going to make it." Prentice halted, bringing me to a stop also. He paused to reclaim his breath. "Once we're in the woods it'll be like midnight. We'll never find her."
Sister knew about wicked stepmothers. No one warned her about wicked stepfathers. Stepfather only noticed Sister at night, in the dark.
When she saw Brother's bruises, Sister declared "Mother's too scared to help us. Let's go into the forest. We'll be safer there."
Long ago, an indifferent father and a sweet mother bore a child. Her father called her "son" when he called her anything at all, but her mother recognized the girl truly as she was. Whatever name they gave her at birth fell away from disuse.
Her mother died when she was still young. In her tenth year her father remarried a cold woman who had two daughters of her own. When her husband's child refused to dress in breeches, cut short his hair, or answer to the proper masculine pronoun, she declared he could be a gentleman among them, or a scullery-maid and serve them.
He still believes I will turn into my mother.
He looked at my year's work, listed out on paper. He drew breath through his long nose. He stretched his neck. It looked like his collar was trying to bite his head off. "Let's talk about your gifting, shall we?"
He didn't wait for me to answer. He stabbed the middle of one page with a pudgy finger. "Seventeen candy canes. Let's start there."
The sails are not black but they should have been. The three of us don't know it.
I stand aft. Sometimes talking with the Rafe, the tillerman. Sometimes not. Mostly we watch her wait in the bony bow, drawing the light out of the air to shine around her. Looking towards France. Looking towards Tristan, of course. I was, too, for I could not have loved him any more than if he were my own son.
Hunched on the waiting-room floor, a gargoyle clasped a chair leg with razor sharp talons. Its ridged spine protruded through its leathery skin.
I glanced at Ms. Shipley at the reception desk.
The man is tapping out a tune with one foot, a tune that is a mystery to everyone but him. The tune goes something like this: tap tap tap pause tap tap tap pause tap tap tap tap pause tap tap tap tap pause. It's worse than having a pop song stuck on repeat inside your head because instead of trying to shed it you keep trying to capture it, and the only man who knows the secret is still tap-tap-tapping but he isn't going to reveal a thing.
He's not; and you know it by looking at him. You know it first by looking at his shoes, which are brown leather, scuffed and laced up wrong with floppy worn tongues. Above the shoes, a flash of thin ankles: he's lost his socks. You feel sure "lost" is the right word, not "forgotten" or "not worn." He had socks at one time and now, for whatever reason, they are gone. Above the thin ankles, frayed denim hems. The jeans (Granny still calls them dungarees; you do not know why this piece of information rises unbidden in your thoughts) don't fit the bare ankles and the battered shoes. You think: normal. That's it; the jeans are the attire of a normal person. The shoes are things a crazy person would wear, shuffling through the city on their broken-down backs, talking to people who aren't there.
Gunthar sat in stoic silence, a woolen blanket folded over his lap, facing the fireplace. Ada set her basket of fabric and lace onto the frayed rug and eased herself into the chair next to his, pulling it closer to the fire.
He kept his eyes on the flickering flames. "So, it's over?"
He is telling the wrong story.
He wants to explain it in terms of magic and wishes and fairy tales, but the right language for this situation is the language of gravity and magnetism, of galaxies and gas giants. It is a mechanical, technical problem--a problem of mathematics and science. The problem is that I want him to go back where he came from, and he won't.
Three teenage girls crowded round the terrarium on the desk in Annabel's room. It sat amid an avalanche of fingernail polish bottles and schoolbooks. In one back corner of the terrarium, a frog cowered.
"Kiss it!" Lacey said to Annabel, fanning her freshly pink nails.
Fairy Tales
You won't see traditional fairy tales here, at least unaltered. But fairy tales do provide a great common language upon which to build a story or twist the old out of recognition.
by Dani Atkinson
Published on Sep 14, 2012
by Annie Bellet
Published on Mar 16, 2012
by Sheila Crosby
It was pretty scary watching the witch sing "Happy Birthday".
Instead of being pursed in disapproval as usual, her mouth stretched into a smile so wide that it made me think of strychnine. Meanwhile her eyes stayed as cold and unblinking as a hawk, with a nose to match. She wore the inevitable silky blouse, twenty years out of date and buttoned right up to her wrinkled neck, but today it was little-girl pink. Even her trousers were pink. The outfit clashed hideously with her strident plum hair, and I couldn't help thinking they were going to get stained when she shinnied down the tower.
Published on Nov 22, 2010
by Ellen Denham
***Editor's Note: An adult story with mature, adult themes***
When I see you for the first time, a shark-sized shadow slinking around the mad-hued corals below, I gasp through my snorkel. But curiosity gets the better of me, and I linger, floating above. Your arm emerges first. A man swimming so deep without a tank? The instinct of rescue thrusts me into a dive. Then I see your segmented tail, mottled gray. And only then, your beautiful face, upturned, startled--almost human except for the flexible antennae extending from your jaw. I push back to the surface, a creature of land and air--unlike you--needing a breath to make sense of what you are. You rotate to face me, your torso well-muscled and pale as marble, like a Greek statue. Watching me, you coil and uncoil the jointed carapace that forms your body from the waist down, allowing me glimpses of the tender flesh beneath. A gesture of trust, or of submission? Your gaze is calm, eyes wide with wonder as mine must be beneath my mask.
Published on Nov 22, 2012
by Megan R. Engelhardt
Published on Jan 31, 2012
by Sarah Goslee
Published on Dec 12, 2012
by Lydia S. Gray
***Editor's Note: Here be mature and potentially disturbing themes. Read on upon your own recognizance***
The old watchmaker went to the builder of dreams. "Make me a wife," he said.
Published on Aug 15, 2012
by Joanna Michal Hoyt
Published on Jul 25, 2011
by Mai L Lee
The clock tower rises above the city, its bricks stained black. The hour hand rests against the curve of the eight, and the minute hand points due east, toward the wall where the forest creeps along the perimeter. The hands do not change. The cogs have long since melded with rust and rot, and the tower bells are silent.
Published on Nov 19, 2010
by Christine Lucas
“And did you find God, stranger?” Aisa asks, scrubbing the shirt she’s washing harder. There’s a persistent tint of guilt around the collar that the river waters won’t clean.
“No, I didn’t.” His voice is weary, hoarse, the dust of countless roads lining his throat and lungs. He settles down on a fallen trunk close to her, rubbing his leg. “I haven’t seen anyone wash clothes this way in ages, and I have wandered far, and for a long time. Why?”
Published on Dec 2, 2010
by Mark Patrick Lynch
Published on Dec 19, 2012
by Melissa Mead
Published on Jun 6, 2011
by Lauren K. Moody
Published on May 30, 2012
by Michelle Muenzler
She should not have jested about the tenderness of the Captain's ribs last week. Even guards have breaking points, peanut brittle thin.
Published on Sep 14, 2010
by Mari Ness
Published on May 10, 2013
by Torrey Podmajersky
Published on Sep 3, 2012
by Steven Popkes
Published on Dec 24, 2010
by Melanie Rees
Published on Jul 11, 2012
by Lynda E Rucker
Published on Oct 31, 2012
by Robert E. Stutts
***Editor's Note: Adult fairytale. Adult themes.***
Even in high summer, paths through these woods are difficult to find, let alone follow, overrun as they are with brambles and briars and bracken. But in summer there is the sun above you to warm your head, and the green of trees to cheer your heart.
Published on Feb 4, 2013
by Henry Szabranski
Published on Jan 22, 2013
by Eliza Victoria
***Be Advised. Mature Language in the story that follows***
There was a girl in a white dress crying inside the MRT station. She was sitting all by herself on a bench on the platform, farthest from the entrance but closest to the doors of the first car of the train. She was all alone because the train had just left, taking the rest of the commuters with it. Dante, on his way to work, had missed the train. He would have missed seeing the girl's wings, too, if he weren't standing at the right angle.
Published on Jun 8, 2012
by Sylvia Spruck Wrigley
Published on Nov 7, 2012
by Christie Yant
Published on Apr 3, 2012
by Kathryn Yelinek
Published on Dec 15, 2011
