Fairy Stories & Other Tales

There was once a village known for the wealth and quality of its fish.   Though most of the fishermen began their catches at dawn going no further than the teeming bay on which the village sat, one particular boatman set sail every night at dusk, going far into the open sea, and could not be seen until dawn the next day.             No one thought much of this, save that it was the peculiar practice of an old man—though from time to time concern arose among the villagers regarding his eccentricity as a waste given that there were always more fish to be caught in their bay.             Still, he did well enough.             It was the consistency of his comings and goings, however, that caught and captured the attention of a young village lad.   To do the same thing for years on end struck him as an unimaginable fate, and he would not be satisfied with the explanation that the boatman was simply strange.             And so, one day—or rather, one night—he followed the boatman.

When the air moves in sweet, soft breezes and the clouds begin to fan out like wings, those are the nights of the fairy revels.             One small head pokes its way from a tree’s trunk.   Then another.   Followed by multitudes, as tiny faces press their noses to the air, to see if the coast is clear.   And then shimmering gossamer wings fill the space between the trees as the fairies leave their homes and begin to dance.             It begins in partners, a dance of aristocracy.   A formal affair, with gentle touches of hand to hand and careful turns of precise points.   Then, as though they have drunk some wine, the fairies’ toes begin to tap, and their music, which comes from the trees themselves, begins to shift.   A reel forms, no partners needed, as fairy feet bound up and down the forest floor in gleeful abandon, as though their heads have moved to heady drink.   The reels pick up speed, no fairy misses any step, until the steps cannot satisfy.   The fairies take to the

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