Fairy Stories & Other Tales

The whirlwind wasn’t chaos—at least, not quite. Too, 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 turned instantly 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.    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 snow, skin as black as night, in a ragged cloak of many colors.    And a soul that glowed colorful, too.    The image in the mirror was a fool. She cared to serve the poor, the sick, those at the mercy of the law.    Haggard. Deluded. Powerless.    At peace.    That last was no more than a split-second thought.    And yet, it was almost enough… some small flickering wond

There were the haunted woods. You know them. The ones you walked through that night when the mists lit up with an eerie light and you knew you’d regret it if you didn’t follow the light to its source.       The source was the moon, of course. There was no surprise in that.       But the twilit pond did surprise you.       Not because it was a pond, but because of the faerie creatures that danced about it with their tiny bodies gliding about on shining wings, all gossamer and glow.       When you stripped off your jacket and dove into the pond, that surprised you, too.       Not as much as the Fae creatures on the other side who pulled you up as you gasped your breaths and told you that you would be there for the next hundred years.      Which was fine, you decided in an instant.        You didn’t mind.        It had always been a dream of yours, a fancy of wonder. It was a grand, enticing way to spend a hundred years.       W hen you came back, the world was not much ch

Once upon a time a woman sat alone, locked at the top of a stone tower.       When the people who had come to settle near the tower first approached it, they discovered her locked inside, and set about freeing her. The question as to whether she had been put there, or whether she had voluntarily ascended was to become a moot point, for when the door was finally unlocked, she refused to descend. Indeed, so often did those who wished for her liberty come to the door of the tower and try to remove her from the top most room in which she had once been locked, that, after a time, she discovered a way in which to lock herself in—and all others out.       It is unknown how long she remained locked in the tower room, for no one could get inside to see her until a sizable knight who happened to be passing was asked to go up and use his hefty shoulder to beat down the door.       But when he did so, it was discovered that the tower had been abandoned; the woman’s whereabouts were unknown.

 Once there was a little girl who wandered into an enchanted forest. That's obvious. Of course she did. How else do you get into an enchanted forest? The interesting part is what happened when she got there. Which was this:     She came upon an unkindness of ravens. They were singing. Naturally it was a dirge. That's the only thing a raven can sing. As it happens, they were the queen's ravens.      Which queen?      The one who ruled over all the enchanted lands. Haven't you heard of her? She's testy. Aged. Bit of a handful, really. Likes her ravens.      The ravens liked the little girl better. They followed her instead. So... that made her queen.     What happened to the other one? The testy one?      Well, this is a fairy tale, so I think you can guess.     But you'd be wrong.      This is a new kind of fairy tale. One of those modern ones. Where the old women aren't nasty, poisonous old crones (well... not always). Where old women have a lovely, motherl