Fairy Stories & Other Tales

It was a strange day when the three women appeared, walking along a long road into the village.   Indeed, the road itself was perhaps the most curious affair, for it had appeared overnight where before there had been only a green meadow.   Along each side grew tall, gnarled trees, jagged shrubs, and strewn wildflowers—all of an ancient feel that looked as though they had been growing since time immemorial.   Of course, no one saw how it was made, nor who put it there, nor how it appeared, or even when.   But it could not be denied that the entirety of the village saw the road itself, and, coming down it, the three women.             The first woman had the grace of a dancer, the second the stance of a fighter, and the third was bent and wrinkled like an old crone.   But all three had a fearsome Fae stare that struck terror into the hearts of the humans who looked on them.             It was made all the stranger for it was the day after a village woman had given birth to a child,

Once upon a time, when the Earth was lonely, a man named Rust made his way to the top of a mountain to shout.             It was a yearly ritual, and, as I said, the Earth was lonely, so there were few passers-by as he made his way threw winnowing valleys and up steep, curved paths.   The journey itself was a hard slog, and though there might have been meaning in it, Rust didn’t pay much attention.   For him, there was grandeur at the top of the mountain.   And, more than that, there were the valleys, which were beautiful, but made ever more exciting because when he shouted, they shouted back.             When first Rust took to shouting atop the mountains, the Earth shook slightly.   And all that the valleys did to shout back was merely echo the bellows that Rust issued.   The Earth, it must be said, was at first confused by the cacophony of sounds that reverberated back and forth whenever the mood took Rust to put forth his cry.   Indeed, it was that the Earth shook herself, cau

This is the story of a hand.  A small hand.  A hand that had the habit of slipping in and out of other hands.               At the beginning of our tale, this small hand would take to gripping tightly to the fingers of the hands of giants.  The need to grip such sizable fingers with ferocious tenacity was born of trembling that tremored about the hand whenever the world grew dark or dangerous or unfamiliar.                Slowly over time the fierce squeeze of the hand lessened as the fingers of giants seemed to shrink in tandem to the world growing steadily into a knowable presence.  Only the occasion of great sudden startles and sharp stark shocks caused the hand to squeeze other, more familiar hands.  And other slips, the pressings of palm to palm, were born of equal wonder at the sheer delight of warmth and gentle ridges and tender skin               Then came a day when the small hand slipped inside a trembling one — one that shook and sweated and wrung about in a chaotic fr