Fairy Stories & Other Tales

Once upon a time there lived a maid whose job it was to clean a castle from top to bottom. But she felt cleaning was a fair trade; for, after all, she lived in a castle, and that made her feel very fancy.    One day a old wise woman arrived at the king's behest. She was given a modest room, for she was not so important a guest as to warrant anything of particular splendor. But she was not so unimportant that the maid wasn’t sent to set the fire and to dust. The wise woman thought nothing of ‘importance’ or ‘unimportance,’ and sought a friendship with the maid, telling her of wisdom’s crafts and of its lore.      In a few days’ time the wise woman left, having imparted what answers she could to the king’s queries; just enough time for the maid to have begun to learn the beginnings of the wise woman's trade.     Which is why the maid went with her.      For it will always be better to learn lore than to live in a castle.

 Once upon a time a lonely woman befriended the stars.       It was a hard task, made of long nights filled with ready attention and warm streams of one-way conversation. There were intensive glances filled with yearning, and cheerful banter. Deep thoughts, delightful propositions. And persistence.     At long last the stars spoke back.     They were not the usual sort of friend, for they spoke of time, the universe, and the true meaning of infinity. After they had spoken so, the woman sat, and thought, and pondered.       And for a while after, she was far from lonely.

 There was once a woman who spent the second half of her life in the forest. She went to the woods because she wished to live away from the demands of a world filled with the hustle, bustle, and greed of humans. Instead, she went to a world where she lived according to every season, one where she cared for the trees and the shrubs, pruning careful paths, and tending to the wounded creatures that came her way.     As the years went on, more and more of the wounded creatures to which she tended were human.     At first she minded, for it was humans from which she had fled.     But the tended humans acted differently, perhaps from the woman's care, or perhaps from the forest itself. For they began to live by the seasons, too. And as the forest filled with all kinds of humans with their tended wounds, the woman felt something shift inside her, a warmth wrapped inside a dream.       For nothing makes one hope more than mee...

 There was once a quill that weighed more than the writer who wielded it could bear. The weight was not in pounds or grams, nor was it felt in the hand at any moment save for when it was put to paper.      At every moment that the quill, dripping with ink, set itself to the parchment that lay before the writer, suddenly the weight of it would grow so heavy that the burden felt as though the writer was wrung through with lifting the heavy thing. Curious as to the strange nature of the shifting weight of the quill, the writer tried to measure it by different means― but nothing came up a consistent weight. Still, the writer tried another tactic, pressing it's dry point to the paper where it would not be possible for words to emerge― but then it was as light as it was to pick up as one might imagine a quill. It was only when it was filled with ink that it bore the unbearable weight.     The writer sought to find a different quill, one that would allow...

 There was once a dove who stole a sliver of the moon. It was the tiniest of slivers, no bigger than a fingernail. And yet the moon noticed. 'Why did you take a piece of me?' the moon asked the dove. 'I thought you might be able to spare it,' answered the dove, in a manner much entitled. 'For the night is long, and your time in the night is short, thus I did hope for something greater to see by.' 'A ready answer, but shorter thoughts,' said the Moon. 'For none of me will shine unless it is the time of night when I send forth my beams.' The dove hung her head, chagrined. 'I did not know this.'   The moon smiled gently, and let her beams rest upon the dove's back. 'Ah,' she said, 'that is why it is so much better to ask.'