Fairy Stories & Other Tales

 Once upon a time there was a girl. She was the kind to throw her arms to the wind and dance barefoot in the rain. Naturally, she was the kind to wander. And once, when she wandered, she found herself in an enchanted wood.     It took no more than a moment for her to find a tree she liked. As usual, she asked the tree a question.      'Tree, would you tell me a secret?' the girl asked.     Quite unusually, the tree whispered an answer.     The girl thought about the tree's response all the rest of the day.     She thought about it all the rest of the week, all the rest of the year, and for the many years that came after.     She thought about it as she lay down on her last day, in her last hour, even her last minute.     Her life had been spent thinking. And it was not a waste.

I saw a strange thing in the wood one night. A witch on a broomstick flying through the air. Or maybe she was just a woman. On a broom. With a pointed hat.      She wove through the trees low, flying toward a glow in the distance.     I followed.     She landed in front of the glow that had become a brightness.     The brightness moved toward her; it swallowed her.     My eyes adjusted to the light. Or, rather, to the fairies that gave off the light.     The woman with the pointed hat who from time to time flew on a broom, sat on a stump that curved like a chair, nestling in as though it had been made for her.     The fairies flew still in the air, or sat on the ground, or on the surrounding shrubs. Comfortable, but leaning toward her. They were waiting.     She took a breath, and began to speak stories.     About princesses and princes and witches ...

 Once upon a time there was a woman who screamed up at the stars every night for a year.     It made no difference, except to her heart.     At the end of the year, she found her heart was stronger.     Which is, it must be said, a very nice consequence from yelling.

 Once upon a time there was a prince who entered into a disadvantageous marriage. Indeed, he was so belittled for his choice that he lost all his wealth and all his privilege. In point of fact, when the news spread the day after the secret affair that had only been between a woman, a priest, and a witness, he was thrown out of his father's palace with nothing left but the clothes he wore.     Yet he loved his bride.     And so he took to finding a home for them, which he did, in a poor village, in a poorer house, and soon the bride found herself with child.     The prince, for all his courtly ways and intellectual manners, was at a loss as to how to support a wife so sickly she could do nothing save vomit into bowls. He sat and stared at the wall and thought. For he had to do something.     When the wall offered no inspiration, the prince went to sleep.     Upon waking, he was still at a loss. So he walked a...