Fairy Stories & Other Tales

The trouble with witches, from time to time, is that they tend to have no offspring. They do, however, have apprentices. Now, there is nothing that precludes a witch from a wedding. Witches are occasionally known to have a jolly kick-up of a day and evening in such an affair. They tend to make the most of the drink. They even, on occasion, make the most of the groom. But such states are rare.      The witch knew this was the case.       She explained that this was the case.      She even offered a slightly distant, rather rhythmic pat on the back.       None of it did any good for the apprentice weeping uncontrollably on the couch-cum-bed that made up the potion-making-cum-kitchen-cum-spare-room. Indeed, the young lady didn't seem to quite grasp the fact that young gentlemen weren't often wont to wed a woman of a witchly persuasion. It was a simply matter of mathematics. Men liked to know a certain amount of things. M...

Once upon a time a woman wandered into an enchanted forest. She met the river, and the spirit of the trees. She saw the fairies dance. She met the wise old witch who lived in the corner of the forest in her small cottage surrounded by herbs. Then she went home.     That was her first mistake.      How did one come back from an enchanted forest, she wondered?     Day after day, she continued to wonder.      That was her second mistake.      But mistakes do not necessarily a lifetime last.      On a day of her making, in an hour of her choosing, when she had wondered her wondering for the last time, she stepped back into the enchanted forest.      There she made her life, for there had been no reason to leave. 

 There was once a witch who left her house for an evening party. They had said it would be 'fun.'     As she walked down the path, she thought about it. She paused. No, that couldn't possibly be right. She turned around and walked back to her house.     She reached her cottage door, made a cup of tea and sat in her favorite chair with a book.     They had made a mistake. She'd tell them tomorrow. They had got the notion of fun all wrong.     

 There are three things a wealthy person thinks to fear: poverty, degradation, pity.      There are three things an impoverished person lives in fear: injustice, abandonment, the weather.      There are three things a kind person wishes to change: society, systems, the minds of the wealthy.      There is one thing a wise person knows to change: herself. 

 When a man from a Faerie court, and thus 'man' in name only, came to power, it did come as a shock. Not coming to power. If men aren't coming to power, they're leaving power, and if their not leaving power, their being executed. Thus is the way of men. Even in Faerie.       No, the surprising thing about all that power was the particular other thing that came with it. Not the privileges - those were anticipated favorably - nor the pomp - an expectation devoutly to be wished. And it was not the meetings, as such. Surely he must have known, he told himself over breakfast and again after teatime, that there would be meetings. It couldn't all be waging wars and making profound statements designed to appear clever at first glance before the second thoughts of the public, those intelligent little moments that, like bindweed, could not be eradicated. But surely there didn't have to be so many meetings. There were the regular meetings to make decisions, the meetings to...