Fairy Stories & Other Tales

The mist flooded the wood purposefully.   It was time to offer the forest a gift: to feed—to soak through the rot and decay that lay on the forest floor.             The forest would thank the mist in time. But the floor gave way.   Down the mist spiraled in mad descent until it found itself before a swirl of stone.             A labyrinth.             ‘Come find the words of patterned three,’ came a voice, as if it floated fast upon the wind, whispering in the ear of the mist in taunting tones.             In desperate fear, the mist sought something warm, a bit of heat upon which it might rise.   But none could be found.             ‘Come find the words of patterned three,’ came the voi...

A shower of dust fell atop Leah’s head as she pulled down the old album, half hidden away on the top shelf of the attic bookcase.             What made her reach for it, she didn’t know—it was as if something feral had possessed her.   Something that had nothing to do with the darkness that had come to settle about her and turn her world grey.             Not waiting for a moment, even to sit in the old wooden rocker behind her, she opened the book.   The painting that greeted her sung into the very essence of her being.   It was a wild garden, riotous with colors.   In it sat a small stone bench, and among the boughs of a full-leafed willow tree, a creek with white peaks seemed to dance along.             How wonderful it would be, she thought, to be within a painting, this painting; no longer to...

Did you feel your heart begin to rise?             Or that sudden urge to fly upon the wind?             To twist yourself about so fast, that you could see the whole world spinning?             And did you see a darting something out of the corner of your eye just a moment ago?   A fairy, or perhaps a sprite, flinging dust about her or around him, by the glittery, sparkling handful?             That is the mark, the sign, the fate of fairy dust.             But fear not!             Oh no, this is nothing dreadful.             You have only been sprinkled with hope and lightness and poss...

At the top of a great tree lies a nest.   Nestled within it is a city.   Within that city is a wizard.             And he is to be much feared.             Why is that, you ask?             The story goes like this:             Once upon a time, the wizard was an old man.   For he was born old, and when the time comes for him to leave his mortal coil, he will be so young he will look all but newly birthed.   But to be born old before all others is to carry a mighty weight—and that is the feeling of orneriness.             To put it another way, the wizard became annoyed quite easily.             But because he had yet to gain his...

In the high country of forest-hidden land—the one that passes as a portal between the realms of mortal and immortal—a royal faerie sat upon a throne of Fae glass, and through a tiny lens that spoke of stayed destiny and inflicted grief, she surveyed the worlds.             Cold she had been in demeanor and in body for time beyond memory, but that was mere water to the ice that pierced her when through her lens memory broke and she saw a man she had known of old. Surprise came as it should, for the Fae queen was used to permanence when death was rendered by her hand. Cold fingers tightened around the arms of her glass throne, then pushed off, only to have her body caught by wings.   She would meet him and find out his aims. ‘Tell me, Laodius,’ the queen began when she stood before him, ‘how came you back to the realm of the living?’ At the question the man looked up, and a small smile played upon his lips. ‘My quee...