Fairy Stories & Other Tales

Long ago, when the air grew cold at the bitter exhale of the gods’ breath and sweet at their inhale, there lived a cat who had no home.
In the cold of winter, the best it could do for shelter was to curl up against a pine tree and hope that, come morning, it would find itself still living.The heat of summer was equally cruel, for the cat would have to search from morning until night for a trickle of water to wet its tongue and sustain its body. One day it passed a man, upright with a golden flask upon his hip and the finest linens draped about him.The cat brushed against the man’s trousers, with no particular want but that of companionship, for it had known loneliness and sought its remedy.But the man tsked at the cat.‘Get off,’ he said.‘Be gone with you.Can’t you see that your fur is shedding on my fine clothes?’And with a kick, he sent the cat away. On another day the cat came upon a woman, who stood in front of a grand house with a watering can, drenching the soil about the stems of t…

A witch stood at the edge of an Enchanted Forest and cackled.
It was a pristine moment; a moment destined to go down in the fairytale archives forever and ever and a day.And perfectly designed.For the witch figured that if she gave a good cackle right out in public where enchanted creatures could hear, all would assume she had become the evil witch of tales and, quite frankly, leave her alone. She was a tired witch, having spent many long years slaving away helping others.If she had settled down anywhere else, instead of this particular enchanted wood, she really could have done anything she wanted—and had a great deal more free time.But such a place is rather a needy spot as far as the world of enchantments goes, because of all the heroes adventuring, and princesses getting lost, and pre-witches going on quests to earn their real witch status.That meant a lot of scratches to be bandaged, dragon fire burns to cure, and water to administer to the shockingly underprepared knights and prin…

There is a restless torment that never ceases.An unsettling that must be satisfied before it lays down to rest—but it is never satisfied, and so it never rests.
It must wake, and when it does, it yearns. The weight of it beats within itself as though a heart, for it is a kind of life blood.And when it eats, it devours—it cannot help it—until nothing is left, save itself; a glowing torrent that aches, turns, and is as brutal as the most tenacious current. Some say the fairies put it there—and lit the match that made it burst.Some say it was the gods, put in place with keen desire so that the frantic depth they themselves could not escape would dwell in others.And some say the gods are fairies, doomed to grow ever smaller, as their place in the world diminishes.But what ignites it matters not; for it grows ever more possessing. A double-edged sword for the fae-gods, for they diminish from its very existence, but cannot be apart from it—for it is by its virtue that they continue to exist. I…

There was once a little boy whose name was Nathan and more than anything in the world he loved to dance.If they had let him, he would have danced until dawn every night—but, of course, they said he had to go to bed.
One day Nathan was walking through the forest, a jig springing from his feet with each step, a whistle on his lips, and his greatest desire to dance until dawn on his mind, when he found that he had jigged into the center of a circle of mushrooms.Too late he remembered that such a ring is not what it appears, and before he could blink, his body was no longer in the mortal world. And so it was that Nathan found himself a prisoner in Fairyland. The fairies had been wickedly clever—the boy’s capture had not been by chance.For there is nothing the fairies like better than to be entertained in their nightly revels by dancing. The boy was not their only prisoner.An elephant had stepped wrongly while on tour with a traveling circus.And thus it was that the boy and the elephant found …