Cabinet Des Fées

An Important Announcement from CdF

Erzebet — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:39:03 +0000

Apologies to anyone who tried to visit the site late last week, only to find that it was down. We’ve been experiencing a lot of technical glitches lately and have been very unhappy with the way our host has been handling certain things. Because of this, we decided to move the website to a new host and with that move we have given the site a new domain. We apologise again if this causes confusion, but we believe it was the best thing we could do for the site and for you, our readers.

This site will remain static until October 1 of this year, at which point this domain will forward to the new one. This should give everyone plenty of time to update their links, their RSS feeds and anything else that may affect our readers’ experience of CdF. Comments on this site will be closed. If anyone has any questions or concerns, feel free to post them on the new site or send an email to cabinetdesfees [at] gmail.com. Our email address has not changed.

And now, without further ado, we send you to our new site, where you’ll find an exciting announcement and some news that didn’t make its way here.

Welcome to the new Cabinet des Fées!

Green Witch

Erzebet — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:18:14 +0000

Green Witch
by Alice Hoffman, 2010
Reviewed by Donna Quattrone

Green Witch is the sequel to Green Angel, Hoffman’s spellbinding foray into the land of post-apocalyptic fairy tale. Both of these books detail a lyrical and deeply memorable exploration of love intertwined with loss, but either of the pair may be read on its own.

Green Witch begins one year after the cataclysmic event that reshaped Green’s life. She has finally taken off the outward trappings of mourning but her tattoos remain, a striking series of skin-inked stories blatantly fashioned in a land where books are forbidden. They are vivid reminders of her past, as equally enduring as the memories of family and friends that she has lost and the longing for the boy who has ventured off with half of her heart.

While the world struggles to rebuild itself from ashes, Green moves forward towards her seventeenth birthday. Her individual talents have defined the course of her new existence; she tends to her fecund garden, separates truth from lies and collects the tales of those in her surrounding community. Like Green, they have witnessed destruction, faced hardship and suffered grief. Some are content to wade in forgetfulness; others have fine-tuned the art of survival in a variety of interesting ways.

A handful of mysterious women have been labeled as witches, and speculation about their secret powers abound. Green sets off to seek them out, one by one, and proceeds to chronicle their tales on specially prepared handmade paper. Along with their words, the Enchanted also give Green mementos, simple treasures that are not without their own subtle magic. Each step in the collection process brings Green closer to her heart’s desire and, in the end, the greatest gift of all turns out to be the journey itself.

Part coming of age story and part quest tale, Hoffman’s narrative exhibits the classic fairy tale amalgamation of harsh reality, fragile hope, courage, perseverance and the triumphant possibility of happily ever after. This slim volume is structured in sections and each segment resonates with its own particular charm. More magical realism than fantasy, Green Witch charts the path upon which lives are rebuilt and love is rediscovered.

Hoffman’s talent for suggestive, multi-layered storytelling shines in this work; she crafts a thoroughly haunting tale in prose that is both deceptively simple and richly atmospheric. Matt Mahurin’s gorgeous artwork is the perfect accompaniment, it is both eloquent and evocative, and it completes the spell of this beautiful little gem of a book. Pick up a copy and prepare to be enchanted.

New Issue of Scheherezade’s Bequest online

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:54:25 +0000

The tenth issue of Scheherezade’s Bequest is now live, offering stories and poems by Eric Marin, Claire Massey, Joshua Gage, Sonya Taaffe, Bruce Woods, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Patricia Russo, Rachel Manija Brown and more. In this issue we introduce you to the art of Lucy Campbell, whose work illustrates Olivia V. Ambrogio’s The Handless Maiden (revisited). Lucy captures the fearful wonder of the dark forest in vivid colours and firm strokes, using fairy tales and myth as her inspiration. We’ll be seeing more of Lucy’s art here on the site, as she has agreed to talk with us about our shared love of fairy tales.

We’d like to especially thank Nurul Huda for allowing us to publish her essay The Heroic Journey in Shirley Lim’s Princess Shawl which explores Campbell’s monomyth as it applies to the young Mei Li and why stories such as Princess Shawl serve as important tools in the preservation of Malaysian culture. Nurul Huda Binti Abdul Mutalib received her Bachelor in English Language and Literature at the International Islamic University of Malaysia and is now working on her dissertation for Masters in English Literature at University of Malaya and we hope to see more of her here on CdF. From east to west we go with From Folklore to Literature: The Märchen and the German Romantic Movement by Charles Haddox.

We are also planning a new category on the Cabinet des Fées website, one concerning the interactive connection from storyteller to storyteller. We will offer a fairytale type to invited storytellers in the hopes of fostering a spirit of potluck, a sharing of recipes and spices from their spice-boxes in the creation of a medley of expressions and impressions from different parts of the world. We aim to explore lesser known fairytale types with strong heroines who, like Baubo, know that the truth behind femininity is that of collaboration as well as the complexities underlying characters who are neither perfect, nor altogether good. This is intended to be an adventure in storytelling itself, and is separate from the prose and poetry you’ll find in Scheherezade’s Bequest. We’ll be talking more about this as we solidify our plans to explore the fairy tales of the world.

Our new reviews include James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips, Neverland: J.M. Barrie, The Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan by Piers Dudgeon, All the Fishes Come Home to Roost by Rachel Manija Brown, The Fairy Tale Tarot by Lisa Hunt and Fairy Tales by Terry Jones.

We hope you enjoy this issue; we’ve got lots more in store.

Raven

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:52:51 +0000

Raven
By Claire Massey

There was once a queen and she had a little daughter, who was as yet a babe in arms; and once the child was so restless that the mother could get no peace, do what she would; so she lost patience, and seeing a flight of ravens pass over the castle she opened the window and said to her child, ‘Oh, that thou wert a raven and couldst fly away, that I might be at peace.’ (Brothers Grimm)

She changed almost immediately, sprang from my arms into the living room window, clattered at the glass with beak and claws as she tried desperately to make her wings work.

I watched her watch the flock of ravens as they flew out of sight, over the terraced roofs, chasing wind torn scrags of cloud.

I was still holding my arms as though to cradle her and support her head. She shifted on the windowsill, tried to extend her wings and began to cry. Not the shrieking mewl that had been piercing me for weeks but a raw caw-cawing sound.

I sat down on the floor. She perched on the edge of the windowsill, claws digging into the paintwork, and turned to face me, head cocked to one side, her blue eyes darker, black feathers shining in the thin winter sunlight. She clicked her beak.

I wondered if I should shut the window in case she tried to fly again, but she didn’t move. Neither did I.

I looked at the washing basket on the floor beneath the window, heaped with clean babygros, blankets, and sheets that needed sorting and putting away. In the corner of the room was the moses basket I tried to get her to sleep in during the day. I knew an unsucked dummy lay on the yellow sheet, beside where her head should have been.

She clicked her beak again, then stretched her wings. Already so big, surely she should have become a baby raven, or was this what baby ravens looked like?

We each sat and watched the other. It was starting to get dark. I should have put the lamp on, but I didn’t move. She was quiet now. The streetlights clicked on outside and her feathers looked even blacker against their orange glow. I couldn’t see her eyes. Tony would be home soon. I didn’t know what he was going to say.

She shifted from foot to foot then stretched her wings again. She jumped a little. She was going to try to fly. I imagined her crashing towards me. Her beak aimed at my eyes. I clenched them shut. There was a clatter. I opened them and for a moment I had no sense of where she was in the room. I looked at the empty windowsill and up at the open window. Then I heard her beak clicking. She was perched on top of the baby gym. I’d told Tony that she didn’t need it up yet, still too young, it was just clutter, but he’d put it up anyway.

She gripped the orange plastic and experimented with bobbing her head down till she could bat the assortment of jingling animals. As she got more confident she managed to knock a button on one and a grating, echoey version of ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ began to play. She paused to listen, then knocked the button again.

I shifted my weight to get up. She didn’t notice. She was too preoccupied with her toy. My legs had gone numb. I struggled to stand and gripped the settee as I waited for the pins and needles to surge through them. I stumbled to the lamp and switched it on. It made her jump. She landed on the floor and stared up at me. Started to click her beak again.

I wondered if she might be hungry. I didn’t know what ravens ate. All we had in was a freezer full of microwave meals and a packet of Jammy Dodgers. I went to get her a jammy dodger. I took longer over opening the biscuit tin than I should have. It was brighter in the kitchen. I knew she hadn’t flown out of the window. I could still hear ‘Twinkle Twinkle’ grating on and on.

I took the biscuit in to her and put it on the floor, as close as I dared get. She jumped down, nudged it with her beak, looked at me, went back to the biscuit, pushed it a little way across the carpet then looked at me again. She cawed. She hopped towards me. She was looking at my chest.

I started to get the idea. I’d always said there was no way I was breastfeeding her once she got teeth. I’d hadn’t expected a beak. I shook my head and backed away towards the door, back towards the brightness of the kitchen light. She cawed again. I remembered the breast pump that was still in its packaging on top of the freezer. It had looked too fiddly. I’d been too tired to work out how to use it. The box said you had to sterilise every part of it, and we hadn’t bought a steriliser because I was breastfeeding.

She cawed again. I went and got the box.

Sitting on the settee I tore off the plastic wrapping and pulled the various plastic implements out. We’d have to do without sterilising. A raven was different to a baby anyway. I followed the instructions to construct it. In the ‘top tips’ it said you had to relax to be able to express milk. She cawed and hopped to my feet. I held one arm out so I could bat her away if she launched at me. She cried out; it sounded more like her old cry. I pulled my swollen left breast from my bra and milk began to spray out, doing half the job for me. I attached the sucker end and began to pump the handle. It hurt. I watched her watching me.

I couldn’t give it her in the bottle that I’d pumped it into. I went to get a saucer, her claws scrabbled on the laminate dining room floor; she was following me. I didn’t look down, just went straight back into the living room and placed the saucer of thin off-white milk on the floor. She dipped her beak into it and extended a thin black tongue. She made a strange rattling sound as she drank.

Sated she burped. Something I’d never been able to get her to do after a feed. She stretched her wings one last time before curling them back into herself where they became arms.

She was a baby lying on her rug when Tony came in. ‘Great,’ he said, ‘you managed to figure out the pump.’

I closed my eyes and slept.

She’s three now. Bright and troubling. She hides things, steals things, eats worms. People tell me all three year olds do those things, but do they?

Her eyes have changed from greyish blue to brown. In the morning I find black feathers on her pillow amongst the fine blonde hairs she’s shed in the night.

But we play, and the days go quicker than they did. Most days I don’t worry about her too much, until we get to the playground. I see her at the top of the climbing frame—arms outstretched—and I wonder how long it will be before she tries to fly.

Claire Massey lives in Lancashire, UK with her husband and two young sons. Her short stories, poetry and articles have been published in a variety of magazines both online and in print including Flax, Enchanted Conversation, Rainy City Stories, Literary Mama, Magpie Magazine, and Brittle Star. She’s also had a short play produced at the Contact Theatre in Manchester. Claire is the founder and editor of online magazine New Fairy Tales and she blogs about fairy tales at The Fairy Tale Cupboard.

IMAGE: A Large Flock of Birds, Kay Nielsen

Quote from: Grimm, J. & Grimm, W. Translated by Crane, L. (1993) Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Ware: Wordsworth Editions

Snow White at the Automat

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:52:49 +0000

Snow White at the Automat
By Alex Dally MacFarlane

Coins pushed in
and the glass door opens
with a click.
Lunch, there,
on a plate in the slot
third from the left, seventh row up.

The napkins are thin and rough
like her bed sheets.

This is very different to before.

No mother
smiling dangerously at her
over tight laces and a comb.
No fine-dressed husband
offering shining cars, babies,
a beautiful five-course spread.

She does not remember those fondly.

Then
ten slots to the right
she sees it:
round and red and reduced to half price
and, hands shaking,
thumbs in her pennies,
opens the door.

She remembers her mother’s apple,
its glossy skin
its crisp, white flesh
its sweetness and the long, long dreaming
—she remembers it too well.

And waking married
—she remembers that, too.

“Tempting, Mother,
but you know I’m not seven now.”

The apple is lip-bright
as it falls from her hand
lands thunking in the bin
with cast-off packaging.

Her sandwich is lettuce-sweet
as she walks back to her office.

Alex Dally MacFarlane is a writer and traveller, often found in markets. Since leaving her job in July 2009, she’s visited North America, Greece, Turkey and Singapore, and called Australia home for half a year. Next she intends to travel through various countries of mainland East Asia. Her short fiction and poetry has appeared in Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine, DayBreak Magazine, Jabberwocky 4, Electric Velocipede, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Goblin Fruit, Sybil’s Garage and several other magazines. To find out more, visit her website: http://www.alexdallymacfarlane.com

IMAGE: Petite fille tenant des pommes dans les mains, William Adolphe Bouguereau, 1895.

Afternoon Tale

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:52:47 +0000

Afternoon Tale
By Patricia Russo

My niece asked me for a story. It was a hot summer afternoon, and she was bored with her toys and her books and her game screen. What kind of story, I asked. A story about heroes, she said. You mean, like the boy who killed the bear who had three heads, or the girl who returned the moon to the sky? No, no, my niece said. Not made-up stories. A for-true story. So, I asked, like about doctors or firefighters or folks who jump into rivers to save people who don’t know how to swim? No, no, no, she said, looking at me in the way that four-year-olds do when they can’t believe how dense you are being. A story with you and my daddy in it.

I bought some time by pouring us both lemonade, and then fiddling with the fan for a bit. Well, I said, I can’t honestly say I ever knew any heroes personally. You’ll have to ask your daddy if he knows any stories like that, when he gets home. But I can tell you a story about a person who set an example. Will that do?

I guess, she said, after a moment, though she looked skeptical.

All right then.

There are people you have to say hello to, even if you don’t want to. Your grandmother taught me that. In the city, she said, people passed each other without a word, a smile, or a nod, and nobody knew their neighbors’ names. But that is not the way we acted in Brimeden.

Brimeden is a village, though it calls itself a town, and in a village everybody knows everybody else. This does not mean everybody likes everybody else. There were plenty of people in Brimeden that my mother could not stand. But on the street or in a shop, my mother would say Good morning, or Good afternoon, or Nice weather, isn’t it, to people who voted against her for the school board, or whose dog kept us awake with its barking night after night. My mother had very rigid ideas concerning proper behavior.

Yes, you’ve been to Brimeden. You don’t remember because you were only eight months old. Your daddy took you for your naming ceremony. No, your grandmother wasn’t there. You know she died the winter the trees walked. That’s one good thing about living in the city. They keep the trees in cages here. But you saw the woman I’m going to tell you about, and she saw you, though she didn’t say hello, or smile, or nod.

Her name was Lulka, and she’d been born in Brimeden, had grown up there, and never once left it, as far as I know. She still lives there, because if she had died, I’m sure a dozen or two people would have messaged me, to say Whew, finally. You see, nobody in Brimeden liked her. Nobody at all.

She was a tall woman, a little stoop-shouldered, and always dressed like she’d been invited to a formal party, even if she were just walking up to the corner store for some milk. And she never spoke to anybody, and never smiled. Never even looked at you, if she could help it.

Mean? I don’t know if I’d say she was mean. She was…indifferent. Do you know that word? It’s like when you don’t care one way or the other. Imagine it was raining right now, and you had to cross the city on foot. If you had an umbrella, would that make you happier than if you didn’t have an umbrella? Right. If it didn’t, that would make you indifferent to the rain. Lulka was like that. She was indifferent to people.

Like… suppose you were playing outside her house, and you fell down and hurt yourself. She wouldn’t care, you see. She wouldn’t push you and make you fall, but she wouldn’t come out to make sure you were all right if you did. Do you understand what I’m saying?

Yes, she was that way with everybody. Kiddies, grown folks, animal beings, plant beings, passing beings.

No, she never got invited to parties.

No, she never said hello to anybody.

I told you this wasn’t a story about a hero. It’s a story about someone who set an example.

Do you remember a couple of months ago, when spring was coming, and the municipal societies held those parades and street fairs, and all that stuff? Right, you got to ride on a real live horse. They do that sort of thing in the city, because magic doesn’t visit here. So we have festivals instead.

In Brimeden, at the turn of every season, a little bit of magic dropped by. It didn’t stay long, and if no one noticed it, it vanished again. Folks kept their eyes awake, but many times it happened that season-turn came and went, and not a single person caught a glimpse or a touch of anything other than the ordinary articles of the six-sided world. You know why people say, See a pin and pick it up? That’s because magic always comes in disguise.

Good magic, I mean. The kind for luck, and love, and health, and success. Sure, it could look like a pin. Could look like a leaf, too, or a stone, or a bent spoon, or a button, or an old sock. Socks were best, people used to say.

No, I never found one. Truth to tell, I never looked too hard. You see, where your grandmother and grandfather and your daddy and I used to live, it wasn’t one of the places the magic showed up. There were only four or five spots like that in Brimeden, and every one of those spots was claimed by the family that had first steaded it, even if they didn’t live there anymore. So when each season-turn came, those folks camped out on those spots, with blankets if it was cold, tents, even. Of course you didn’t have to do that in summer. Then it was the flies and the gnats and the mosquitoes you had to worry about. Plenty of folks that weren’t family, not even by marriage, or adoption, or neighbor-kin bond, showed up, too. Sometimes there were fights, but mostly people kept quiet and just glared at each other, because they were afraid they would miss the magic when it came.

Finders keepers? Yes, it was like that. But suppose we went into your room right now, and there was a twenty-cent piece on the floor, and you saw it first. But I was faster than you and snatched it up, and said it was mine. Right, I don’t think that would be fair, either. But there’d be nothing you could do about it. You’d tell your daddy? Okay. In Brimeden it happened that sometimes folks went to law. To court, you understand? Let me tell you, that just made more mess.

Well, this one time, the magic fooled everybody. Magic will do that—play tricks. It came a day early. And guess who found it?

You got it. Lulka. It was the day before spring, and she was coming back from her marketing, with a basket over her arm and her fine clothes and her shut-in face, and there it was on the pavement right in front of her, a little blue ring that wouldn’t hardly fit a baby’s pinky finger. She stopped, of course. She stopped and she looked at it. And then other people stopped to see what she was looking at, and before you knew it, half the village was there. Nobody, though, sent a runner to tell the family with a claim on that stretch of pavement. You didn’t message about that sort of thing, back then. It was sort of a superstition. Word had to pass from mouth to mouth, otherwise it would be bad luck. Anyway, the folks who first lived on that street, back when it was only shacks and outhouses and not stores and pastry shops and a lawyer’s office, had moved all the way to the other side of Brimeden, to a big house on the hill with a view of the river. They were the last of all to find out what happened that day.

“Go on,” somebody said to Lulka. And the crowd, which up till then had been pretty quiet as crowds go, started muttering and stamping their feet, nudging each other and passing remarks.

Yes, I was there. When I saw the crowd gathering, I went to see what was going on. I saw the little blue ring lying there on the sidewalk with my very eyes.

No, your daddy wasn’t there that day. This happened in the afternoon. He was still in school then.

“Good afternoon, Ma’am Lulka,” I said, because your grandmother always said that when she saw her, and she made me say it, too, if I was with her.

Lulka didn’t answer me. She didn’t answer the man who’d called out, “Go on,” either. She just stood there with her basket on her arm, looking at the little piece of magic.

It could have been health. It could have been long life. It could have been one of those things that always kept your pantry full, or did your cleaning for you. It could be that if you put it up to your eye, you could see the future, or little bits of it, anyway. Maybe if you hung it around your neck, you’d be able to fly. Maybe it was a wish ring, and Lulka could have wished for everybody in the village to love her.

No, we never found out.

Someone else, not the first man, shouted, “Pick it up!”

Lulka didn’t look at anybody. She said, firmly, “It’s not mine.”

The crowd got quiet then. Very quiet, like they were all thinking hard.

Lulka looked at the piece of magic for another minute or two, then walked around it and continued down the street toward her house.

The crowd didn’t move. For a little tiny stretch of forever, not a person even shifted their feet.

Then they all made a dash for the blue ring.

I don’t know who got it. Somebody did, that’s for sure. But whoever it was kept it hidden, never told anybody he or she had it, and never spoke about what the piece of magic could do.

But see, for a while there, Lulka set all those folks an example. It didn’t last long, but then most things don’t last very long. You’ll find that out for yourself when you get older.

She did the right thing. It didn’t make people like her any more. Made them like her less, to speak true. But I don’t suppose Lulka cared, one way or the other.

After that, every time I saw her, whether your grandmother was with me or not, I said hello to Ma’am Lulka. She never said hello back. Never nodded, never smiled. But I didn’t say hello to her to get a greeting back. I didn’t do it for her. I did it for me.

I left Brimeden a couple of years later. I like the city better. There’s no magic here, that’s true. But magic isn’t the most important thing in the world. Never let anybody tell you it is.

Yes, your grandmother set an example, too. Oh, loads of them. Ask your daddy, he can tell you a hundred stories. But the example I remember most is the one I learned from Ma’am Lulka. You might not believe this, but it comes back to my mind nearly every day.

I think it’s time to start tidying up the kitchen now, don’t you? Thank you, sweetie, yes, put the glasses in the sink. Now, what do you want for supper?

Patricia Russo’s stories have appeared in Fantasy, Lone Star Stories, Talebones, Tales of the Unanticipated, Abyss and Apex, Not One of Us, and a lot of other places. She won’t talk about cats or hobbies, because she has neither.

IMAGE: Lady in Black Velvet, Eulabee Dix, 1911.

Fairyland

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:52:44 +0000

Fairyland
By F.J. Bergmann

Glintfleur says hers can talk,
although I don’t believe her.
It’s the same size as mine,
but it wriggles more. Mine used to
scream when I pinched it
and covered it with pink flowers
but now it either whimpers
or doesn’t make any sound at all.
Ashpuppet fastened his high up
in the storm-tossed branches of an oak
the first night he had it,
and what glorious music it made!
Its howling mixed with gusts of wind
and the great kettledrums and cymbals
of thunder and rain, calling
down the lightning.
Spiderskin snatched one away
and forgot it in a clump of ferns,
where a fox found it. I steal
goats’ milk for mine now and then;
you’d think it would be grateful,
and try to please me.
I’m going to be choosier
next time.

F.J. Bergmann frequents Wisconsin and fibitz.com. She has no academic literary qualifications, but hangs out with people who do. Her publications include Asimov’s, Farrago’s Wainscot, Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, and regular literary journals that should have known better.

IMAGE: A Fairy Flew Off with the Changeling, Arthur Rackham

The Labyrinth and the Knight

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:52:23 +0000

The Labyrinth and the Knight
By Rachel Manija Brown

Thanks to Dan Blum for the prompt.

The courtiers stared at me when I entered the throne room at the King’s command. They always stare, though they have seen me often enough to become familiar with my appearance: a knight in armor of unrelieved black from helmet to boots, without a patch of bare flesh visible anywhere save the window cut into the left side of my breastplate. There my shirt too has been sliced away, exposing the pale skin and flesh as a target of such seeming ease that it seems to silently mock. That catches the attention of my opponents, to be sure. But as I have said, the courtiers have seen it many a time.

I knelt before the King and asked, “What is your pleasure, my liege?”

Smiling, he gestured for me to rise. “In a forest there is a palace, and in the palace there is a labyrinth, and in the center of the labyrinth there lurks a creature. I order you to kill the monster and lay down its head and heart before the throne.”

“How may I find my way through the labyrinth?”

The King shrugged. “I’m sure a bold knight such as yourself will discover some method. Bring rope. Bring breadcrumbs. Break down the walls as you go, if you please.” He smiled again, showing his strong straight teeth. “Maps are of no use in this labyrinth. Even I can no longer penetrate it as I could when I was a younger man.”

The King laughed, and the courtiers laughed with him. I did not understand the joke. But then I rarely do, nowadays.

He dismissed me to the care of a steward, who gave me directions to the forest. I have ridden and walked through many of this kingdom’s woods to slay dragons and outlaws, giants and cameleopards, all at the King’s command. Perhaps this was one I had visited before. But I did not recognize the palace that loomed white and shining before me, nor did I recall the dusty treasures that lay abandoned within.

With so many poor and desperate in this land, I wondered that none had come to steal the cups carved of chalcedony and jade, or the tapestries woven of gold and silver thread. I supposed some enchantment lay upon the palace. Such spells cannot touch me, however they affect those around me. Often enough I have seen brave knights clutch at their breasts and flee screaming, while I walk on, not even knowing what phantoms affrighted them. It is for that reason that I only go questing alone.

I came at last to what seemed a great feasting room, but for the gray granite staircase in its center with steep uneven steps leading down to darkness. Surely this was the entrance to the labyrinth. I lit a torch, drew my sword, and made my way into the black. I did not make use of rope or breadcrumbs. If I slew the monster and found my way back into the light, well and good; what the King commands, I must perforce attempt. But I was not bound to follow suggestions, only orders, and I did not care if I ever returned.

The path forked at the base of the staircase. At first I thought there was nothing to choose between the two paths. But then I saw a red thread lying on the gray stone of the path to my left. I picked it up and tugged at it. It was stronger than it looked. Rather than snapping, it pulled taut.

Perhaps it had been placed there as a trap. Or perhaps it was genuine luck. Either way, the simplest course was to follow it, so follow it I did, through twists and turns, past echoing caverns and rooms heaped high with silver and gold. Perhaps I valued such things once, but riches no longer tempt me. I followed the thread, never pausing, pulling it through the black metal that encased my fingers. My torch burned low, then guttered and went out. I kept walking through the darkness. If the thread snapped, I would never be able to find it unless I took off my gauntlets and felt about with my bare hands. Moved by an impulse I could not name, I rubbed the thread across the skin over my breast. It was smooth and fine. Silk.

When one is in the dark for many hours, one’s mind creates light whether there is any or no. It was some time, therefore, before I realized that the ever-growing glow before me was real. Then suddenly I stood in a bower, all light and airy, and a golden-haired lady arose from her seat and came forward to greet me. In her delicate hand she held the other end of the silken thread.

“Sir Knight,” she said, as if she had been expecting me. “I have saved you much time and effort by leading you here. Will you reward my courtesy with a show of your own?”

My mouth went dry, and my hands trembled. Though I cannot feel as others do, one knight – since slain in a hunting accident in the King’s own party – told me I could guess at my heart’s commands by studying my bodily sensations. I believed that what I was experiencing was what others would call excitement, or perhaps fear. Surely this lovely maiden was a magical disguise wrought by the monster in an attempt to lull my fears in order to take me by surprise. It was strange, though. As I have said, enchantments have no affect on me.

“How so?” I asked.

The lady started and dropped the thread. Her eyes opened wide, and her own hands shook. When she spoke again, it was in a rough voice unlike her previous dulcet tones. “Take—Take off your helmet. That would be courteous. You see that I am unarmed.”

“You need no steel,” I said. “You are the monster of the labyrinth.”

“Is that what you were told?” she asked. “Go the labyrinth, and slay the monster within?”

“It is the King’s command.”

The lady began to weep, as monsters do when faced with death. I have seen this, and I have freed their blood to mingle with their tears. I lifted my sword.

“Hold!” she cried. “Even a monster should have one final request.”

I hesitated, my sword poised beside her slender neck. “What is it?”

“I wish to exchange names.” She scrubbed at her eyes and the tears on her face, until her cheeks flushed red. “My name is Rosamund. What’s yours?”

“I am the Black Knight.”

“That’s not a name.”

I felt trapped, though I had not agreed to the exchange and no one may bind me save the King. “I have none. I am only the Black Knight.”

“You do have a name. And I know what it is.”

I was silent, but I did not strike.

“Don’t you want to know?” asked Rosamund.

When I did not answer, she said, “Let me tell you how I came to this place. Once I was the mistress of your King. Rosa Mundi, he called me: the Rose of the World. He loved me once, and he built for me a beautiful bower in the woods. But later he grew wroth with me, and he offered me a choice: the dagger, or the cup of poison. I am not brave. I chose the poison.

I awoke here, to the sound of the King’s laughter. ‘You may not leave until a knight who is pure of heart carries you out of the labyrinth. And never will you find such a one, not in all my kingdom!’ And he walked away and left me here, alone in this cold place. Many a knight has come to rescue me, but none were pure of heart. Now I suppose the King has grown bored with the game.”

I felt my sword dip in my hand, though I was not weary. “But that is the same choice he gave to me. I awoke knowing nothing of myself, with a great scar on my breast and the King standing before me with a bloodied dagger. He told me that I had chosen the dagger, and so he had cut out my heart and hidden it.”

I gestured at the opening in my armor. “You see how many scars I have there now. But no one can kill me by piercing my breast. My heart lies within a diamond casket in an iron chest at the bottom of a lake in a lightless cavern below the castle of a giant – or so the King told me.”

“Have you not gone questing for it?” asked Rosamund. “Surely there cannot be an unlimited number of giants’ castles.”

“I have not.” I had not thought upon the matter before, but I did now, and the reason became clear. “Without my heart, I cannot care enough to seek out my heart.”

“It was a terrible thing the King did to you.”

“He made me invincible. I do not know that he did such a thing out of anger. Why did he imprison you?”

Rosamund looked at me steadily. Her eyes were not blue, as I had first thought. They were gray as the moment before the rain. “I fell in love.”

My entire body felt hot, and my vision blurred. The knight never told me what feeling matches such sensations. “Who—who was your lover?”

Rosamund’s mouth twisted, though with laughter or pain I could not tell. “Do you truly not remember?”

“I do not,” I replied, my own voice sounding pettish in my ears. “If I did, I would not have asked.”

She stepped forward and pushed my sword aside with the heel of her hand. Standing on the balls of her feet, she lifted the helmet from my head. Then she took me by the hand and led me to a mirror. It was small, and I leaned close to her in order to see my own face. Our hair mingled, hers gold, mine dark red and going gray. My face only seemed familiar to me insofar as I saw it beside hers.

“You are Queen Eleanor,” she said. “Before he took your heart and your memories—before he took your love and your life away—you were married to the King.”

“He is a monster!” I exclaimed.

I wondered at the passion in my own voice. Then I thought upon monsters, and upon my orders; upon Rosamund’s enchantment and my own.

I sheathed my sword. “The King ordered me to find the creature in the labyrinth. I have found her. He also ordered me to slay the monster and lay down its head and heart before the throne. That will be convenient. The monster already sits upon the throne.”

Rosamund stooped and snapped off a length of the crimson thread. Tying it around my wrist, she said, “There is your lady’s token. Fulfill your quest, and return to me. Perhaps the enchantment will end when the enchanter is dead.”

“I will take you with me,” I replied. “Do you not wish to see the monster slain?”

“I cannot leave until you find your heart,” she protested. Then she began to laugh. “Or perhaps I can. The King said that the knight who carries me from the labyrinth must be pure of heart, but he said nothing of where the knight’s pure heart must lie.”

I lifted her into my arms. Though my heart lay within a diamond casket in an iron chest at the bottom of a lake in a lightless cavern below the castle of a giant, I could feel it beating.

Rachel Manija Brown’s short story “River of Heaven” was published by Strange Horizons, and she has sold poetry to Star*Line, Abyss and Apex, and Goblin Fruit. Her memoir All the Fishes Come Home to Roost: an American Misfit in India was published by Rodale, and her manga-style graphic novels Spy Goddess and The 9-Lives were published by Tokyopop. She also writes for television, and recently sold an animated sf series, Game World, to the Jim Henson Company, in collaboration with Sherwood Smith.

IMAGE:The Black Knight, Ivan Bilibin, 1900.

A Correspondence from the Queen

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:50:18 +0000

A Correspondence from the Queen
by Annclaire Livoti

When word reached her of Rip Van Winkle,
Her Majesty summoned pen and parchment
and wrote him an epistle that began:
Dear Mr. Van Winkle, upon hearing of your plight,
I could not help but sympathize….
When a reply arrived, the letter was barely legible,
bearing the hesitant scrawl of one who had barely learned his letters
and who had never regretted it until now.
It became a habit, then, for Her Majesty to send letters
across the land and sea to a small little village
sheltered by the Catskills.
The tones of the missives lessened in their stiffness,
the Misters and Your Majesties dropping from their greetings,
and their signatures simplifying to Rip and Briar Rose.
They confided in each other—
how things could change in a century—
how odd it was to have a president instead of a king—
how much she missed her uncle, ten years dead when she awakened—
how much he didn’t miss his wife—
until one day the courier bore, with slow and uncertain step,
word from Judith Gardenier that her father was dead.

Annclaire Livoti has recently graduated from Radford University and is now applying to graduate school for a Master’s in Library Science. She lives in a small town in Northern Virginia, which is so tiny it hasn’t even earned a stoplight. In November 2009, she had a short story published in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress XXIV.

IMAGE: Actor Joseph Jefferson as Rip van Winkle, photographed by Napoleon Sarony in 1869.

Now and then

Erzebet — Tue, 18 May 2010 13:49:58 +0000

Now and then
By Sabrina Vourvoulias

I.

Wind it around me, I say,
I can take it.

Only the young
and very stupid say this.

Or believe that magic will remain
butterscotch,
smooth and thick and
a joy to lick off the lips.

II.

Rosewater.
Rose petals.
Rose hips.
Rose of Castile. Wild
and briar rose.
Curses.
A hodge-podge list
from Larousse:
arcane gastronomy
or foreign spell book.
What kind of fairy god
mother snares with such?

Sleep, she says, and
who said anything about God.

III.

New canes sprout
from an old wooden trunk.
Spongiform heart, skin turned
bark, the girth of age.

Can it be saved, wonders
the horticulturist.
It still gives flowers,
though none will call them princess
roses. It was only a name
on the price tag anyway.

Prune it, suggests a colleague.

Magic might cut through
the thicket.
But not a knife.
Not a machete.
Not even a two-handed sword,
tempered in blood and
christened with a proper
name.

IV.

I dream of the kiss.
But the release
is not as imagined.
The magic that pours
into my mouth
bites like gall.

Wake up.

It is my own voice
that turns dead wood
back to flesh.

What are these brambles
wrapped so tight
they have become veins?

What are these thorns
spiked through my heart?

What are these tender buds
so long into winter?

It was a gift,
the fairy godmother says,
peevish.
A rest and a wakening. See?
—I hurt.—
Her laugh carries the whiff
of cardamom and cayenne,
of shaggy cinnamon
from other lands.
Do you taste it, she asks.
—What?—
Magic as it changes.
Sharp and bitter.
Sour, sweet and salt.
All together,
on your tongue.

Sabrina Vourvoulias was born in Bangkok, Thailand—the daughter of a Guatemalan-Mexican artist and an American businessman—but grew up in Guatemala. She moved to the United States when she was 15 and studied fiction at Sarah Lawrence College (in Bronxville, N.Y.) with Allan Gurganus, and poetry with Jane Shore and John Skoyles. Her poems have been published in Graham House Review (11 and 13) and in the We’Moon calendar. Most of her publication credits and writing awards have been for her work as staff writer and editor of small local newspapers in New York State and Pennsylvania. She lives in Glenmoore, Pa. with her husband and daughter.

IMAGE: Little Red Riding Hood Arrives at the Door of Her Grandmother’s House, Albumen print, Henry Peach Robinson, 1858.