Fairy Stories & Other Tales

 Once upon a time an empire threatened to impress the world. One small village, however, went undetected by its lure. How it did so is a story of perspective. For one woman's evil empire is another man's status quo. And it is her job to do life differently.     The key was this: when the world turned large and looming, the village didn't know. They had food to grow and clothes to mend, bread to bake and fish to catch. Their village witch had an idea that the world was growing sour. But there was no need to trouble anyone with the notion until it was time.      The empire came knocking, and the witch told the village. But she also said, 'Let them come. There is little we can do to keep them out, and it is better for our minds to be occupied with living.' And so her village did as she suggested.     The plan of the village spread to another village, one closer to the heart of the empire, through a traveling peddler. And then from that village to another. And from that

Branches, branches. Branches everywhere. It always begins this way. Branches. Or brambles. A briar. Thick and encroaching. A breakable portent of evil. Though it can be eradicated with a hacksaw. And the girl is asleep, the story says. Covered by a curse. Doomed.     The girl thought about these odd things as she lay on her bed at the top of the castle's tallest tower, drowsy and in and out of sleep. The castle was covered in branches and briars and brambles, and other bushy things that bore down on passersby. She was hiding in her bed. Just in case someone decided to play the rescuer. She couldn't remember the end of the stories, but surely no one would look for her here. Not in her bedroom. That would be rude.    She was glad the sorceress had forgotten about fog. No one ever gets cursed with fog. The sorceresses always forgot about fog. The thing about fog, she thought, was that in the story, the fog is already there, misty, glomming onto the atmosphere to set the stage. I

Once upon a time, a little girl—the daughter of a great shepherdess—was gifted a sheep. The girl loved the sheep as though it were an extension of herself, caring well for it every day, and snuggling against its warm coat every night.      One day, a dragon flew down, eyed the sheep, and said to the little girl who had thrown herself in front of it, ‘if you give me your sheep willingly and with no fuss, I won’t burn your village to the ground.’      The little girl’s eyes went wide, then narrowed in a calculating fashion as the wheels of her mind began to turn.      ‘Dragon, sir,' she said, 'I cannot give you my sheep, not even to save my whole village, for I have promised to care for it. But you may eat me instead.'      The dragon blinked once, then twice, and then flew away from the sheep, the village, and the little girl, for he did not have enough logic in his heart to contend with that.