Fairy Stories & Other Tales

A tall woman with a mannish face bearing a hint of a mustache on the upper lip stormed through the streets like a tiny self-contained hurricane beating against the flow of bodies.             If one more person calls me ‘sir’ I’ll scream, she thought.             Then she took a breath, which was immediately followed by an eye roll.   Pull it together Joanna, she told herself just before she slammed into a tiny old woman whose neck really was far too bent to see her coming.               When the fairy rose from the ground directly in front of her Joanna realized she may have let her thoughts spin wildly out of control.             ‘I can grant you a wish, my dear, if you like…’ the fairy was nonchalantly examining her nails as she spoke to Joanna.               Joanna, however, was not even close to nonchalance.   She was ‘chalancing with a vengeance, looking from side to side.   But on finding herself alone in an abandoned alleyway, both calmness and wariness took over si

The whirlwind wasn’t chaos—at least not exactly.   And the mesmerizing glare from the light around it wasn’t precisely destructive.   But there was a rather foreboding quality to it, made all the more so by the woman dressed in black controlling what had suddenly turned into thick, shadowed lightening that danced in the palms of her hands.             She dressed in black with purpose.   Long ago she found that color fades and white darkens.   Black it was, to maintain the passage of time; the color of the power she craved.             Yet she knew that there remained still a small corner, infinitesimally minute, that held knowledge that glowed colorful and shined.   Not the strength she knew—something else entirely.   Something she kept at bay by the power of the dark lightening that glistened and flashed against her fingertips.             In her looking glass she sought the Fairest, as she was wont to do in a moment of weakness.             A woman agéd, hair as white as sno

I stood in the middle of a circle.   I should have known better, for it was formed of mushrooms.             One moment passed to the next, and with it my vision of new trees and lemon-green changed to gnarled wood and dark forest.             A man with thin-tipped ears stood before me, his stance so light I could not be sure if he was floating.   He paid me a courtly bow, then extended a hand of tapered fingers, each exquisitely beautiful.             But I was familiar with the Fae.   I knew to let my heart leap into my throat, and feel my pulse beating in my hands.   The clammy sweat that began to trickle down my back was appropriate.   The tension in my gut of palpitating fear made sense.             I closed my eyes inside the faerie ring and froze for the count of ten.             When I flicked my eyes open, I was back.             I stepped quickly away from the mushrooms and let myself rest against a narrow tree, catching my breath, and soaking up the newness of

The world woke blinking, and found that all was well.   The trees were green and lush, the oceans teaming and cool, the mountains high and steady.   And the people were at peace.             But peace was dull, the people found, and so the trees were felled, the oceans emptied, the mountains set to trembling.   All tumbled and came to ruin until the day when the earth stood still, for upon it lay nothing more than bones.             The world woke again, and all was once more set to rights.   The trees were green, the oceans cool, the mountains high.   And the people were, once more, at peace.   Yet again the people found peace dull.   Down came the trees, up rose the oceans, trembling went the mountains.   And the earth was again barren.             Then came a day when the world woke and found the pattern broken; for every place the world looked, the earth was set askew.             The trees were scrawny, stunted for want of worked ground, the oceans were all tumult, and t