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Hello Enchanted Friends: Welcome to the Spring/Summer 2024, issue of The Fairy Tale Magazine, “Flights of Fancy.” If you are a recent fan, then you may not know that for over 15 years, in both the Enchanted Conversation and FTM iterations, we published directly on the site, and did not do PDF versions or sell subscriptions. We only experimented with that in 2023. So we are returning to our roots with this wonderful issue! This issue is packed with emotion, magic and old stories filled with new details and new points of view. I’m proud of how it has turned out. You’ll see terrific stories and poems inspired by “Jack and the Beanstalk,” “The Lady of Shallot,” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” “Diamonds and Toads,” “Snow White,” and many more. I’m also proud of how Kelly Jarvis and I put this issue together (especially Kelly), as we are still learning this platform and are not art experts! The FTM team, which also includes Madeline Mertz, Kim Malinowski, and Lissa Sloan, is the best. Below is the Table of Contents for the issue, and please note that we included the lovely St. Patrick’s Day story by Cheryl Israel, “The Magic Mirror,” which ran on March 17. Yours in Enchantment, Kate Wolford Table of Contents “The Bean Seller's Song,” Kelly Jarvis ”Willow's Balm,” Kim Malinowski “Things Gretel Knows,” Lissa Sloan “The Weavers Speak,” Deborah Sage “Steps,” Kristen Baum DeBeasi “The Shoppe on Brackenbury Lane,” Grace Nuth “The Witch's Table,” Amy Trent “The Lady of Shalott Bleeds Out,” Lorraine Schein “Sleeping Beauty's Garden,” Madeleine Elias “A Frog Remembers the Quiet,” Helen Patrice “A Prince's Perspective,” Lauren Reynolds “Stained,” Raina Alidjani “A World In Her Tresses,” Ian Li ”The Prophecy,” K. L. Shailer ”The Tower,” Lynn Hardaker ”Medicine For The Ailing Mortal, as Told in Seven Stories,” Silvatiicus Riddle “Practical Jack,” James Dodds From March: “The Magic Mirror,” Cheryl Israel Image: “The Giant Butterfly,” by George Hood.

Oh, love, you are whispering willow, me beneath branches, breathing in oak, moss, watching lichen grow. Drift me away into far mountains, into ice, rugged your bark pulls me back into my own coloratura, dew on leaves tangle me vibrato, mud on feet, my palms, surface roots prodding me safe from freeze, canopy tendrils tickle as I natter away. You, patient, greening, flavor sunshine, choreograph our musky jade caress. You firm, tall, bring our twigs into unison, understand, all patience and wisdom. I warble a capella melodies, you lullaby me through wind and frost. Such cadences, such arias, we blister in our sunshine, our voices spinto and bel canto. I would die beneath your branches, ache out my love, my heart verismo and your fingertips bowery coffin. Kim is a poet and writer who dabbles in archeology and historical literary research. She is a differently-abled advocate and her email is open to the public. She writes because the alternative is unthinkable. Check out her website: https://www.kimmalinowskipoet.com/ Image (filtered), from Pixabay.

He had only a cow, milky and white, and my own hungry look in his youthful eyes. The beans screamed in my pocket, singing their lies. I smoothed my white beard, nodded my head. “Good morning, Jack,” I said. I spun him a story of how high he could climb, leaves licking his body like soft feathered wings. The beans whispered their false rhyme of jewel-hued night, thick bars of silver, and ruby-red rings. They warbled of white hens who would lay golden eggs, and hummed the hushed, haunted tunes of gilded harp strings. The boy’s eyes grew as wide as the sky. I rattled the beans like coins in my hand. Some say it was a lowly cow who brought about creation, lapping god-like forms from salted frost with her rough pink tongue. How I long to sip sweet streams of cream to quell the dangerous, darkling dreams that remind me of my time in the sky and the terrible things I have done. Let the boy climb high through thick webbed vines to marvel at the wonders of the Milky Way. I have traded my beans for Milky White, and I will wallow on earth the rest of my days. Kelly Jarvis (she/her) works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine. Her poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review, Mermaids Monthly, Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, A Moon of One’s Own, The Magic of Us, and Corvid Queen. Her short fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and the World Weaver Press Anthology Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers. She can be found at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/ Image from Pixabay.

Gretel knows about stones Stones may lead you safe home But they cannot make home safe You cannot squeeze blood from stones They have nothing to give I know about nothing Gretel knows about crumbs Crumbs will not lead you home at all Not if the birds get them first Even kept in your pocket and nibbled slowly Crumbs are not enough I know about not enough And when you do not have enough When you do not even have any When you are afraid in the wood You will not recognize the difference between some and too much It is all the same to you It was all the same to me Gretel knows about hunger About being so hollow you will take any scraps you can get Even if they are rotten Even if they are poison Because you cannot say no If you want to live I wanted to live I did not know the difference between Some and too much Any or a surfeit It was all the same to me Gretel knows about gingerbread You can make gingerbread into a house But it will never be a home It may give you a full belly, sticky lips and fingers Until you are stuffed and trapped and sick Until it is too much I did not know how to tell When I had had too much Safety or danger? I could not tell the difference Between dying and the things I did to save my life Between a fire for warmth and a fire for baking and a fire for the thing I did Gretel knows about turnips Like stones, you cannot get blood from them But unlike stones, you can eat turnips Boiled in a soup, roasted with oil and pepper, even raw I know the difference now I line my garden beds with stones And eat the turnips that grow between them When I have breadcrumbs I sprinkle them for the birds I do not need to save them up I know where to find wild strawberries in the wood When they are ripe I eat them with cream When they are rotten I leave them alone I can tell the difference now I tend my garden Greens, potatoes, carrots, peas Mint, garlic, rosemary, sage I tend my chickens, cow, and bees They give me Eggs, milk, and honey I know what I'm hungry for And eat what I like Potatoes fried with onions and butter Wild greens and herbs and mushrooms Thick brown toast with blackberry jam But never gingerbread There are some things I have had enough of Enough to last a lifetime Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a dark continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories appear in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. She is also a contributing writer at FTM.Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com, or on social media. Image by Arthur Rackham: “The Lady Enters the Forest.”

When she asked for the dresses, the king’s Order came to us, the maidens of The kingdom. Commanded on pain of death, To weave dresses as golden as the sun, As silver as the moon, as dazzling as The stars. Weaving a dress from sunlight merely Burns the hands, Threads of fire ignite fingertips, Leaving heat-radiating scars, reminders Of gold’s price. Moonlight is cooler, less punishing. Silver Water streaming through the needle. Moonlight forgives distraction and Missed stitches. But only a witch can weave A dress from starlight. Interlacing Diamond-keen beams risks Blood and blindness, Fair forfeit for the thief of constellations. And so, for our sister we wove The golden gown and The one of silver, fashioning her freedom With flame and luminescence, but For the one of stars We gave ourselves. Deborah Sage is a native of Kentucky, USA. She has most recently been published in Eternal Haunted Summer, Literary LEO, Fairy Tale Magazine, From the Farther Trees, the 2022 Dwarf Stars Anthology , Amethyst Press’s All Shall Be Well anthology for Julian of Norwich and Eye to the Telescope. Image source unknown.

Editor’s note: Some of you may be familiar with Kristen’s brilliant refrigerator magnet poetry. I’m a huge fan, and am excited that Kristen is hard at work creating a chapbook of these astonishing poems—which FTM will be promoting! Enjoy this taste of her work. The image is by Kristen. (KW) Kristen Baum DeBeasi’s poetry has appeared iBlue Heron Review, The Muleskinner Journal, Menacing Hedge and elsewhere. She is a Best of the Net nominee and was Moon Tide Press’s Poet of the Month for July 2021. When she isn’t writing words or music, she loves testing new recipes and collecting leaves or twigs for her fairy garden.

Titania's missing hair comb sits in the dusty corner of a rummage shop in Least Pickings, nestled between a tarnished silver vanity brush and a cracked mirror, half wrapped in moldering leather. The Shoppe on Brackenbury Lane might as well have left the "e" off their name, since it tilts precariously on the worn sign hanging above the door, threatening to death leap onto any prospective customer who might dare walk through the creaking front door paned with grimy leaded glass. But this is where the faeries go to hide the things they want to forget, or may want to have found. If mortals lived for hundreds of years, they might also find that they accumulate objects laden with memories, treasures that no longer charm or delight. Or items so dangerous they need to be taken out of Faerie, and hidden somewhere they can be forever overlooked and neglected. It is common knowledge among the fae that in such circumstances, the nondescript secondhand store would always be on hand to assist, albeit with the human proprietor's absolute obliviousness to their ethereal comings and goings. The Shoppe never updates the offerings in the front windows, but no one can see through them anyhow to be beguiled by the wares, and Archie (the aforementioned proprietor) has no interest in enticing. Inquire with him for a price, and he will peer at you down his nose through his smudged glasses, huffing and sniffling, and mutter what could be "three quid" or "sod off" in equal measure. An ancient handwritten sign by the dusty cash register shouts "CASH ONLY" in all capital letters. The befuddled person who might stumble through the door might marvel at how such a place manages to stay open. To that all I can say is...faerie magic is quite a remarkable thing. The especially stubborn, intrepid, brave, or resolute individual who determines to explore further has passed the first test, but there are more to come. The front room is filled with a labyrinth of piled furniture, perilously prepared to topple at the slightest nudge from a hip or a handbag. Glass cases are filled to overflowing with prim porcelain figures of cherubic children. Look extremely closely, and you might see one whose mouth opens wide not in wonder, but a never-ending scream. Climb the stairs, take several turns, and you will emerge in the attic, lungs accosted with the pungent and entirely foul smell of mildewing fabric. This is where Archie tosses any textiles he acquires, and perhaps decades ago they began in piles, but now the slowly rotting heaps rise like mountains to either side of you as you traverse narrow passageways through. If anyone was valiant enough to plunge a hand into the bank of the hillock three mounds to the left of the window, they would be rewarded to discover the forgotten fairy godmother's long lost spinning wheel. Be careful with the spindle. It can still draw mortals into an eternal sleep with a single prick. You didn't make it that far? Turned at the doorway and ran back downstairs? So do most, my dear. I cannot blame you. And not all of the hidden treasures at the Shopp"e" are as perilous as all that. Through the largest downstairs room there is a door that leads to a hallway of chairs. Wooden legs stick out in piles of all directions, resembling a peculiar sort of forest. Walk down the hall, turn a corner, and keep walking. And walking. No one has ever found the end. But if you focus on the journey and not the destination, as the human saying goes, you might notice a space where two gothic armchairs and an ottoman with threadbare velvet form an opening that resembles a doorway. Congratulations, you have discovered a portal to the Realm of Faerie. Archie's hoard spills out of an open door into the back garden, where trestle tables pile high with silver platters and ancient flatware. In the mass closest to the thorny rose bush, if you carefully brush aside a few forks and knives, you may see a pair of scissors with the words "armis natura" etched into the blades, and intricate ferns sculpted along the handles. Take these with you to the moors on a midsummer day, and you will be able to cut the mist into a fine fabric, or walk to the hawthorn tree, and you can slice the dew-beaded spiderweb in her branches into a gossamer tulle more beautiful than human eye has ever seen. Search harder in the pile and you may find the needle that will allow you to turn them into garments. But needles in haystacks are far more easily discovered. Perhaps no one will ever find these priceless artifacts. Maybe they will be unearthed tomorrow. There could be less dangerous places for the faeries to hide their treasures, but I'll be damned if they don't find this far, far more amusing. Archie Hawthorne is my name, entirely human proprietor of The Shoppe on Brackenbury Lane in Least Pickings, Yorkshire. I’m the oblivious, crotchety old geezer who doesn’t notice the pixie dust right under his own nose. Or so the Faeries believe. They never stopped to wonder why their human’s shop has been around for two centuries and has never changed hands. It isn’t easy you know, being able to pretend you don’t see them, ignoring their hair pulling, their nose hair tickling. It takes the patience of a retired wizard to keep them from realizing you see them at all. But someone has to keep them from causing trouble. And oh lord and lady, they are the absolute worst at supposedly hiding their treasures. Just a few days ago I found a fairy godmother’s wand stuffed into a glass shoe right at the front of one of the display cases. It’s a full time job, relocating these valuable items to safer spots. And then of course I need to have the wisdom to decide what items should stay hidden, and which customers deserve to take them home. Behind this grumpy face and these grumbled mutterings are a protective mind and heart. I only want those objects that will do good to match with those who need their help. And if a lesser cursed object or two gets tucked into the coat jacket of unsavory thieves, well…I’m just the puppet of fate, aren’t I? Not all is as it seems in Faerie, friend. Nor is it in my Shoppe. The E, you see, stands for enchantment. Grace Nuth is the co-author of The Faerie Handbook, and former Senior Editor of Enchanted Living Magazine. At her day job as a librarian, she matches stories to readers, and she’s currently working on one of her own; a sapphic novel about a selkie and an ocean ghost. Image is from a Crystal Palace Exhibition illustration.

The old woman, Nonna, made a habit of inspecting her garden daily. Yes, she hired laborers to do this sort of thing, but the subtleties too often escaped these simple peasants. Like so many tender spring plants, the men required vigilance. No matter. The regular exercise and morning air were good for Nonna, kept her mind sharp, her figure lithe. “The radishes are ready for harvesting and re-sowing,” she commented to the lad who’d just come trotting up the hillside. “They could stand another day or two in the ground. They’ll be bigger that way.” “But the flavor will be spoiled. Harvest them now.” “As you wish, Signora Nonna.” Everyone from the township below, and the ramshackle sprawl on the hillside, called her that. Signora Nonna. Madam grandmother. Not that she was anyone’s grandmother, sadly. She supposed however that the name was preferable to what other towns had called her. Grandma Witch. Grandmère sorcière. Großmutter Hexe. She understood the witch part, but why the grandma? Were the signs of her 400 plus years really showing? She paused in front of the water garden. She could peer over the edge and take a peek at her reflection in the still water. It wouldn’t be as satisfying as holding a looking glass up to her face, but then she’d at least know what she was dealing with. No! No, that way led to poison apples and bubbling cauldrons. Vanity was too dangerous for any witch. She’d broken all the looking glasses in her manor house the day she arrived fifty years ago. Traded her silver for fine porcelain and hammered gold. Sworn off the enchantments that kept her skin supple, her breasts lifted, her eyes bright. Nonna was a good witch. She watched over the township and kept the rabble in the forest at bay, eschewed the luxuries that all witches are folly to, except for one. Gastronomie. The secret to living a life full of joy and purpose was not found in accruing power, creating unsurpassed wealth, beauty, or renown. It was in fine dining. Kings of men would realize their poverty were they ever to dine at Nonna’s table. But they never were. Nonna kept to herself. Lonely as it was, it was safer that way. Really. “Harvest is not determined based on the size of the fruit, but on the height of its flavor.” Something the hungry masses could not grasp. Yes, there were pleasures in this world but none of them compared to pairing a fresh slice of goat’s cheese with a sun warmed cucumber, flavored with basil and pressed rosemary. Except of course all the aforementioned garnished with pink rock salt from lands far away. Nonna stooped to snap a spring pea from its vine. “Any word about the cargo I am expecting at the port?” she asked the lad. “Another couple of days, Signora Nonna.” Nonna sighed. Something else would have to be done until the salt arrived. She picked a warty cucumber and shuffled towards her herb garden. Perhaps this was all for the best. The basil was still coming in. It’d be another day before she could harvest any, and another two weeks before she would have enough for pestos and gelatos. The mint was doing well. “Excellent,” Nonna pulled a sprig and rubbed it in her hands. “I’ve been hankering for a mint chutney and braised lamb dinner.” The sage, fennel, tarragon all were growing beautifully, and then she saw it. Her flat leaf parsley was in shambles. “Rabbits!” Ever since she lured a family of them in, two late summers ago, letting them gorge on chestnuts until the nutty flavor infused every muscle, bone and sinew, she’d not been free of them. And she had enjoyed all the rabbit stew she could stomach. “The rabbits have wormed their way into the garden again,” Nonna declared as she inspected the rows of endive for more damage. Thankfully there was none. “Impossible,” the lad said. He wasn’t a lad. He was, in fact, an old man. But that was the trouble with being 438 years old. Everyone looked like a child in comparison. “We had half the village out last fall digging the wire fences down past the roots. I’ve had the falconers up here weekly. Your beast of a cat has seen to the rest. There hasn’t been a rabbit on this hill since last summer.” “My parsley begs to differ.” “Master gardener!” A lad, a real one with sweat glistening on his forehead despite the cool morning air, came trundling up the hill. “Sir, we found this. Near the wall.” “Give it here,” Nonna demanded. The lad bowed and handed over a scrap of coarse blue cloth. The master gardener pushed up the brim of his straw hat. “A raven could have dropped it.” “Or my rabbit could be wearing trousers,” Nonna said. “I’ll arrange a night watch.” “Arrange for the potatoes and squashes from the root cellar to be left outside my garden wall instead. That should keep this rabbit out.” But it didn’t. The next morning, more of the parsley was gone. There was hardly any of it left after the third night. The gardeners were profusely apologetic. The master gardener volunteered himself to keep watch over the plant, but Nonna wasn’t about to let the last of her secret ingredient for tabbouleh in the hands of men who clearly didn’t understand its value. She herself waited that night as the rabbit jumped the fence. The man was painfully thin and unfortunately dirty. He headed straight for the herb garden and pulled the parsley up by the roots. “Desist this instant, rabbit! Unless you wish for long ears and fluffy tail.” She could do it too, transform this man, this thief, into the actual animal. But what use had Nonna for a skinny rabbit? The man screamed in terror. “Mercy, majka vjestica!” Majka, not baka, or old mother, or any other signifier of age. Well. Nonna would hear what this fellow had to say. “What is the meaning of this?” “Please. My wife. She’s sick with child. She can’t eat. She loses weight even as her belly swells. Her milk for the others is all but gone.” “Others?” “Twin boys and their older brother.” “Their ages, Signor.” The man gave them in months as opposed to years. “Gracious.” They really were rabbits, copulating and reproducing at that rate. “Parsley can be had in town every market day. Why steal mine?” “We’ve no money. Even if we did, my wife can’t tend the children in her condition. It’s only after I get the last of them to sleep that I can leave our cottage, forage for food.” “There is a difference between foraging and stealing.” His nose twitched nervously, exactly like a rabbit’s. “Her people should be conscripted, pressed into service,” Nonna said. “We have no people.” “Hire people.” “With no money and no trade?” Rabbits were haughty creatures. Nonna knew she shouldn’t ask. The less she spoke the better, but Signor Rabbit was eager to divest himself of the details. “My wife made lace before she became ill, and I’d sell it on market days. She cannot make lace now.” “Learn yourself.” “I’ve tried. But I don’t have the skill, and I don’t have the time. My family has already spent a winter on next to nothing. They can’t survive a spring the same way.” “The squashes, the pumpkins.” They had all disappeared outside her garden wall. “Yes, I fed the children and myself, but my wife couldn’t keep them down. Not after the parsley. It’s all she’s wanted since that first night. What was I to do?” Haughty and helpless. Nonna picked a slug off the eggplant vine. “Your cottage is where exactly?” The rabbit pointed to the steepest part of the hillside behind her garden wall. Through a dense tangle of trees, she could almost spy a miserable little wooden shack. Nonna sighed. Served her right for settling on the unfashionable side of the township. “Then you and I are neighbors, Signor Rabbit. You and your warren may come to my gardens as often as you have need. There is enough to share. In time perhaps your wife might make me a nice pair of lace sleeves.” The rabbit’s throat warbled and his lips trembled. “What now?” “We can’t. The bobbins and threads were traded for milk. We have no means, none, of repaying you.” The man was in tears, lying in the spring mud. “I love my wife. I did this to her. I did this to the mother of my sons. Uprooted us from kin, took our chances on a port town. More business, I argued. More profits. Foolish. Stupid. For what? Another baby that was never supposed to happen? A mistake as surely as this night is miserable. We have enough babies. And that is all we have. Nothing more. No food. No clothes. Just the promise that if my wife should survive her child bed, there will be another mouth that we cannot feed.” This was a problem then of not just a sick and starving mother, but children that could not be provided for. A family that had lost its livelihood, and a babe that was above all unwanted. It was as the rabbit said, even if this little family weathered the storm, they’d still have an additional mouth that could not be fed. A whiny runt they had already begun to resent. It would of course be a girl. “Your wife. She is close to her confinement?” “She is in her confinement.” Then the baby was most assuredly coming. No herbs on Nonna’s part could change that. “I see. We shall make a bargain, Signor Rabbit. You will frequent my garden daily, taking all the supplies you have need of, after which you will escort me to your cottage where I will meet your family and wife. There may be other needs that you are blind to.” New bobbins and thread for lace making, naturally, and tinctures the poor woman could take to prevent this unfortunate situation from ever happening again. “But I am already in your debt!” Signor Rabbit wailed. “I demand the unborn child as payment for my kindness.” There was no authority in Nonna’s voice then. Only the echo of 400 years lived without anyone to share the treasures of her table. “The babe may reside with your wife for however long she finds comfortable.” A loophole that the mother could exploit indefinitely, if she so wished. “When your wife is ready, bring the child to me. I will raise it as my own.” “You offer us deliverance. Thank you, mother witch. Thank you!” The rabbit, his arms full of vegetables, scurried over the wall. Nonna sighed. She knew what would happen. The baby would be handed off with the stub of the mother’s cord still attached to its belly. The rabbits would after another season or two of her kindness, move down into the town, buy a beautiful shop for selling their lace with rooms above for living. They’d never again think of the child. But the town would. In time, Nonna’s charity would be twisted into villainy.  Because this is what people did. They told stories that always shaded witches as monsters. The townsfolk would say she stole the child, locked her away behind garden walls, kept her from her people, until of course one brave young man fell in love and promised her a better life filled with adventure and mystery--rabbit warrens and sold bobbins. But as much as Nonna tried to feel sullen about the whole affair, her lips–heavily wrinkled and creased as they were–tugged upward into a smile. A daughter and a family, well warren, of rabbits to share her table for a season. She had better harvest the rest of the remaining parsley. She would be doubling her tabbouleh recipe for the foreseeable future. Amy Trent never met a cookie she didn’t instalove and immediately eat. Seriously. She wrote a song about it. Cookies aside, Amy loves to escape into fairy tales and happily-ever-afters. She delights in transforming obscure folklore into fluffy, feel-good novels. Head to her website, amytrent.com, for more info! Image by Arthur Rackham.

When the boat slid before me as if waiting, I snipped the blue thread in my wrist with a sliver of the shattered mirror and with my bloodied finger wrote my name on its stern so as to be remembered. I laid down, unravelling my braids from their ivory combs. They trailed behind me, a tangle of bright skeins like seaweed skimming the surface. I watched the blood flowers floating below, a rose tapestry aswirl, embroidered on the water. My life ebbed like the stream’s foam. Though faint, I fought to raise my head to gaze toward Camelot, my wrists staining my white gown red. Crowned with the last light, I chanted happily, words slurred into nonsense, serene, no more dreading the future. Behind me, my tower spindled the gilt-edged brocade of clouds. I had been most popular at court among the other ladies, and favorite of the knights, who sought my attentions. One lady envied me and told her mother, a powerful witch, who trapped me in that tower and cast the curse. The last words I heard as I died were Lancelot’s. Did the lady hear of them? She has no need for another curse, now that my doom has come to pass. She is satisfied, but I will haunt her now. When she looks in her mirror, I will be there: my face cracked from side to side, dripping blood on her reflection. Lorraine Schein is a NY writer and poet. Her work has appeared in VICE Terraform, Strange Horizons, Scientific American, NewMyths and Michigan Quarterly, and in the anthologies Wild Women and Tragedy Queens: Stories Inspired by Lana del Rey & Sylvia Plath. Her book, The Lady Anarchist Cafe, is available from Autonomedia. Image, “I am Half Sick of Shadows,” by John William Waterhouse.

Reality is too tidy after one hundred years of dreaming So she makes her garden messy She grows no roses, but wild brambles that bear the sweetest blackberries Soft between her teeth, sun ripened and warm Only she can pick them safe from thorns She does not sleep much, which makes the court whisper Of curses reversed but not quite broken She shelters in her plants’ unjudging company Weaving moonflower and morning glory into ever-blooming vines Cradled in the roots of a steady birch The trees know all about long, deep sleep By night she gathers up the sleep she does not need Bundling it, poppy-scented, in a gossamer net bag Then creeps through the castle, soft as starlight Giving rest to the old laundress and the weary maid Rich with visions of rose petal castles and flashing fairy wings Once eternally sleeping, now she sweetens dreams Madeleine Elias has an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco. She is a writer of magical stories and poetry, an avid crafter, a singer and a dancer. She lives with one foot always in the land of stories and is working on her first novel. Vintage artwork, artist unknown.

I spend my time in the mud, the well, the lily pond. It’s comfortable, if a little dull. Sometimes a fairy visits. She shrinks herself down to my frog size, and we croak. She’s after company, fun, some mischief. I think, compared to her flitting, my life lacks possibility. She puts in my head wild ideas – to be a man, a prince, climb out of the well, and live on land, in a house, even a palace. Dreams and fancies become plans. I look at the sketches we have scratched into the slime. She’s going to get herself a sweeping black dress, find some baby to curse, be That Sort Of Fairy. I’m going to get a girl to kiss me, turn into a man, live happily ever after. Then my fairy friend has a black dress, and a pendant of jet and moonlight. She casts a spell on me that I thank her for, so now I’m forced to endlessly return a ball to a silly girl who could play anywhere she likes, but thinks it’s fun to lob it down the well. My fairy friend curses a baby, becomes a legend. I let the girl kiss me. I become a man, famed for once having been a frog. Clothes itch, air dries my skin, and I’m one gender all the time. More slime grows over our well etchings. My wife is the kindest woman in the world, but she is no soft mud covering, cool and wet. My fairy friend visits, tells me we both got what we wanted. The bright lights of celebrity thrill her, blind me, just as headlights dazzle a cane toad on the road. The golden ball, ensconced on a plinth, lights the whole palace. Everywhere except my heart. Helen Patrice is an Australian writer living in Naarm, oddly obsessed with fairy tales, myth, and folklore. She lives with a view of the Dandenong Ranges, which often inspire her work. Her new fairy tale collection INTO DARK WOODS will be published in 2024. Helen lives with her husband, adult offspring, two opinionated cats, and one small yappy dog. Image for “The Frog Prince,” by Walter Crane.

It doesn’t seem fair, really, that a moment’s curiosity should become a life commitment, that one single good deed should turn into a declaration of marriage, and that should be our only destiny. We didn’t go into the Woods looking for wives, but adventure, freedom: perhaps peace, not a girl in a glass coffin We didn’t climb the tower expecting to find a maiden in need of rescuing, maybe treasure, or a Sorcerer, a map to some other quest. You don’t explore an abandoned castle lost to time and caked with briars hoping to find a sleeping Lady, maybe a dragon, or an ogre, or an evil witch or some other beast that needs to be conquered. That always makes for a better adventure. You climb the beanstalk hoping to find a giant not a harp shaped like some girl. You slay the evil king to free the villagers from tyranny not to win the hand of his daughter. We leave home hoping for quests of knowledge, challenges to test our courage, travels for treasure more precious than gold, migrations into manhood, so when we come home, different than before, we’re ready to take on the tasks of kingship, to rule wisely. Instead, this happens: we find a girl. Of course, we can’t leave her there, Of course, it’s a kiss that breaks her spell, Of course, we’ll take them home. How else can we help them? That’s also unfair, really, That our first kiss— —and theirs— should be with a total stranger, and a forced affair. And yet they wake up, dreaming of their true love, their Prince Charming, their kingdom to rule: are we even allowed to say no? To apologize politely and say we don’t feel that same? That we’d rather be friends? It wouldn’t be fair to them either, if we weren’t honest. But the Maiden wants her Prince, the Queen wants her grandchild, the King wants his legacy secured, the People want a Royal Wedding, the Minister wants to avoid a scandal: what choice do we have? And what of her when she realizes this is her Grand Reward, that the prize for all her suffering and hardship, should be a man and babies and obnoxious mother-in-laws. What if she wanted to be an adventurer? Or a warrior? Or a Beast Tamer? Or a Witch, herself? No one asked her what she wanted before she pricked her finger, or got stolen by a flock of crows, or kidnapped by a dragon or forced to marry an ogre. No one asked her what she wanted because her opinions don’t always matter, and no one ever asks the Prince what he wants, because his opinions never matter. That’s not how the story goes. That’s not Happily Ever After, or, at least, not the one everyone wants. It really is terribly unfair, that our gracious gesture, our kindness and compassion should be so horribly misunderstood. Lauren Reynolds spends her days spinning outrageous tales of faeries, pirates and evil queens and has published several short stories and poems. She lives in Maryland with her best friend and two dog daughters. In her free time she enjoys exploring the marshlands, visiting historical towns, searching thrift stores for hidden treasures and is a self-proclaimed mythology nut, anime junky and monster lover. Image for “Lady of Shalott” by John William Waterhouse.