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This year’s poetry and prose contest and fundraiser window will be open from July 1 at 12 AM, EST, through July 31, at 11:59 PM, EST. It is our last submission opportunity of the year. This is the only fee-to-submit opportunity for 2024. All rules for length, theme, rights and content in place overall for this year are also in place for the contest. That means you must follow the regular submission guidelines, which you can find here . You can submit as many times as you want for $5 per submission . So, for example, if you submit three poems, you’d need to send $15 to katewolford1@gmail.com to PayPal. This is our official business and nonprofit address. We only accept PayPal. Please do not send money any other way. Again, our PayPal address is katewolford1@gmail.com . There will be a $50 top prize in each category (poetry and story), plus $25 each for honorable mentions. So, in the poetry category, there will be a $50 top prize winner, plus two $25 honorable mentions chosen. Ditto for stories. Entries should only be sent to thefairytalemagazine@gmail.com . Please put “Poetry Contest 2024” or “Short Story Contest 2024” in the subject line of your email. We will notify you of receipt of submissions only , if your submission is not chosen. Those chosen will be contacted by email no later than September 1. So if we haven’t reached out to you by then, your work has not been chosen. The winning entries will be published in the fall, specific date to be announced. It’s a huge mistake to not read our guidelines and to not read our latest issue before submitting. So to help your chances, please do both. We look forward to reading your submissions. Image from Pixabay .

I don’t have the kind of recipe book that appears in Glass and Feathers . If you haven’t read my Cinderella continuation novel, one of my characters, Mother, is a healer who lives in the woods. She has a book filled with drawings and descriptions of plants and recipes of the herbal remedies she makes with them. It is a spell book of sorts, including entries from many different hands made over years and years. While I don’t have such a recipe book, I do have an inherited treasure that’s a bit similar. It’s my mom’s 1961 Betty Crocker cookbook. I don’t use most of the book, but the recipes I do use are family favorites so delicious that special occasions wouldn’t be special without them. Besides, the dog-eared, flour-spattered pages with my mom’s writing are comforting. And over the years, my husband and I have made this book our own by writing in it too. Here's a favorite I make every July: Fresh Berry Pie (courtesy of Betty) with my mother-in-law’s recipe for the crust. There’s a kind of magic to using our family inheritance. Enjoy!   For a 9” Pie: 1 to 1 ½ cups sugar (depending on the sweetness of your berries) 1/3 cup flour ½ t. cinnamon 4 cups fresh blueberries (Betty says you can use other berries—but blueberries are our favorite) 1 ½ T. butter   Crust: 2 ¼ cups flour 1 t. salt ¾ cup butter 5 T. cold water (more or less as needed)   Heat oven to 425°. Mix flour and salt in bowl. Cut in butter with pastry blender or two knives. (I actually use my hands, but you do you.) Add water to flour/butter mixture, 1 tablespoon at a time, and mix with a fork. Once dough is formed, divide in half. Roll out each half to form the bottom and top halves, placing bottom half in pie pan. Mix flour, sugar, and cinnamon, then mix into the berries. Pour mixture into pastry-lined pan and dot with butter. Cover with top crust with slits in it and seal. (I usually sprinkle the top crust with some sugar, but that’s optional—it’s quite sweet already.) Cover the edges with strips of foil to prevent over-browning. Bake 35-45 minutes or until crust is nicely brown and juice is bubbling up through the slits in the crust. Serve slightly warm, but not hot. It’s also delicious cold. Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a dark continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, Three Ravens Podcast, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com , or connect on Facebook, Instagram, @lissa_sloan, or Twitter, @LissaSloan. Images by Lissa Sloan.

A very long time ago a huntsman and his young wife lived in a small cottage by the forest. The huntsman and his wife wanted to have a child, but though they tried for many years, they remained childless.    One day news came to them from a nearby village of a woman found living in a small cottage in the forest. This witch, for so she was called by the people of the village, could speak with the spirits of the dead during heavy rains and would grant favors to those who came to her in the wet dark.    The huntsman begged his wife not to visit the witch. It was said that beyond the black forest there was a land of dead spirits, and that those who traveled there would be filled with dark and dangerous magic, but the wife was so overcome with her desire for a child that one morning when he was out hunting, and a heavy rain welled up suddenly in the sky, she traveled into the forest alone.   She came upon a small shamble of a cottage set around a willow tree so ancient and thick that the rain could not slip through its leaves. When the wife knocked at the door of the cottage, a gnarled woman answered, her body bent and twisted and her skin holding the pallor of death.    The wife was nearly overcome with fear, but her desire was so great that she found herself being led into the cottage where the witch agreed to help the huntsman’s wife conceive a child. In return, the witch asked a promise of the young wife. She would have to give her word that when the witch came for her she would leave her family and travel to the land of the dead.    The huntsman’s wife was grieved to make such a promise, but so great was her desire for a child that she agreed and left the witch’s cottage with a magical draught. She was surprised to find the heavy rain halted and sunshine slipping through the heavy canopy of leaves as she walked. That night, before her husband could ask what she had done, the wife drank the draught and took her husband to bed.   That very night they conceived a daughter and, overjoyed, the young wife forgot the promise she had made to the witch in the forest, but on the very night their daughter was born the rain welled up heavy and hard against the thatch of their cottage. That night, the witch arrived and forced the huntsman’s wife to keep their bargain. Leaving the newborn with its father, the wife left her family and traveled to the land of the dead, never to return.     As the weeks passed the huntsman’s heart grew cold. He resented his newborn daughter. Her cries and needs. Her resemblance to his lost wife. One evening he woke to her cries and called out, “I wish you were a stone, and could be put out and forgotten.” Then he fed the child and returned to bed. When he woke in the morning there was a large round stone where his daughter had been. The huntsman sat the stone in the garden that had been his wife’s pleasure, and though he did not truly forget, the years that passed dulled the huntsman’s pain as it dulled his memory.      Eventually the huntsman remarried, and with his second wife conceived a son who brought joy and warmth back to his father’s heart. When the boy was five years old, however, the huntsman’s new wife was also taken to the land of the dead. After her death, the huntsman grew afraid even of a light rain and locked his son inside their cottage, fearing that the world would take his one last pleasure.   The boy grew strong in the cottage, but he also grew very lonely with only his father as company. Many times he tried to escape. Through his window he could see the world outside, but he could only open the window enough to breathe in the clear air and never enough that his small body could fit through. Every day he would stare out his window to their little garden and the forest beyond and wish for friends to care for him.   One day during a light rain, while his father was out hunting, a pale and gnarled woman appeared at his window. Excited to see someone new, even if her visage was terrifying, the boy rushed to open the window wide to speak to her. To his surprise the woman only passed him a large stone through the open window. It was a stone from the garden, one that he had stared at many times but never really thought of.   “Make your wish upon the stone,” the woman said, “and you shall have someone to care for you.”   The boy, who had been warned about dangerous witches by his father, was wary, but his desire for a friend was so strong that as soon as the woman had gone, he sat the stone down on his small bed and wished for it to become a friend. Immediately the stone began to transform, and soon became his sister, now grown to a young woman.   When the huntsman returned home, he was met by his son and his daughter. At the sight of the young woman who now looked so much like his first young wife, the huntsman’s heart was overcome, and he begged to be forgiven. His daughter, rather than see him in such agony, only said; “I wish you were a raven, so that you could fly far from here to be again with those you have lost.”   Immediately, the huntsman was transformed into a raven. He flew from the open window and crossed the forest to the land of the dead, and when he had gone the stone-sister and her brother lived together in happiness. Betty Stanton  (she/her) is a writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in anthologies from Dos Gatos Press and Picaroon Poetry Press. She received her MFA from The University of Texas - El Paso. Pixabay image by PyroblueKe.

“It wasn’t that she didn’t like people. It was that she liked books more.” With this quotation from The Spellshop , Sarah Beth Durst won my heart. Durst presents her readers with a cozy fantasy novel about a young woman named Kiela who works in the Great Library of Alyssium. When revolutionaries attacking the Crescent Island Empire force Kiela to flee the library toting all the ancient (and heavily guarded) spell books she can carry, she must journey across the sea to the island where she grew up, starting a new life in the old cottage that once belonged to her parents. Although Kiela has spent so much time among books that she has lost touch with her social skills, she soon learns that to survive on the outer islands, she will have to talk to people, make friends, and find a community. She decides to use a spell to bring her parent’s garden back to life, and tensions mount when she opens a secret spellshop to restore magic to the people, disguising her intent by selling jam. Alongside the debate about who should have access to magic is a sweet, budding romance with an old family friend named Larran. The Spellshop  is a book filled with delights! There are mermaids, merbabies, singing apple trees, winged cats, and even merhorses (half-horse, half-fish) who swim in the magical waters around the islands. Kiela’s best friend is a sentient spider plant named Caz, and his quick-witted quips made me laugh out loud: “I’m blushing. You just can’t tell because of the chlorophyll.” In her author’s note, Durst explains that she wanted to write a book that read like drinking hot chocolate, and in this, her novel succeeds. The lovely prose will leave readers longing for cinnamon buns and raspberry jam, and the happily-ever-after will lend a touch of nostalgia to readers weary with the challenges of the real world. The Spellshop  is a lovely, quick escape best enjoyed on the beach or curled beneath a cozy blanket. Its humor, light magic, and optimism reminded me of Diana Wynne Jones' novel Howl’s Moving Castle , and readers (young and old) will find much to celebrate in its pages. You can find it here . Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review , Mermaids Monthly , Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard , 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 . You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

I am aware that this may seem like the wrong space to be advocating for a TV show, but “Cinderella’s Hearth” is about the home. And most people watch TV at home. To be honest, I absolutely, unabashedly adore TV. I’m a homebody and it keeps me company, even though I’m usually reading while I watch it, because I do prefer reading to TV. Anyway, I kept hearing about a show called “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.” Before I go any further I need to be clear that I don’t understand or care about football at all—except when the Steelers are in the Super Bowl. I also don’t follow cheerleading, although I do respect the athleticism and hard work cheering takes. I’m definitely not a person who sneers at it. So last week I tried episode one, and I was hooked. Maybe it was the barely contained free floating hostility that raised its head from the beginning. Maybe it was the genuine talent and grit the cheerleaders have. Maybe it was the very abundant sparkle and glitter. Maybe it was the mean girl behavior. Maybe it was the friendships that seemed sincere. Maybe it was the fact that many members of the team were impressively employed outside of DCC—and they need to be, because the DCC wages are meager. Maybe it was the pressing question about whether the two women in charge were heinous bullies or just very crisp and realistic. Or, maybe it was because there were some real oddballs underneath all of the glamor and big old hair. Whatever it was, I found it engrossing and entertaining. Each of the seven episodes held my interest completely and I was sorry when it was over. We live in difficult times. “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders” took me out of my generally anxious mood about November. It was shiny and entertaining.  So if you’re looking for a watch, you could do a whole lot worse than “America’s Sweethearts.”  Cue “Thunderstruck,” by AC/DC. If you watch, you’ll know what I mean. Image from NBC. Kate Wolford is the publisher of FTM and The Enchanted Press. The press published its first book, Glass and Feathers , by Lissa Sloan, on March 26. You don't want to miss this engrossing continuation of Cinderella's story.

Editor’s note: Here’s a throwback from 2021, from one of our favorite poets! She comes to my cottage, adorned in Cinders and ash, silver-gray as the artemisia, Growing in my garden. She comes to tell me there will be a ball. That she longs to go. For her, my only godchild, I gather sage, lambs’ ear and lavender, Lemon balm and mint, beginnings and endings, In an ancient basket. She shall have a dress the color of Rosemary blossoms, Drawn not from needle or wand, but from wish, Slippers crystal-clear as rainfall, though they Are more difficult, requiring freshly gathered dew And a stronger spell. For her hair, a circlet of Pearls from the ashes so readily at hand. Her scent, roses and anticipation. A carriage from a pumpkin. To break a spell of envy, gratings Of lemons and oranges, but No love potion. That is her work, not mine. Bio: Deborah W. Sage is a native of Kentucky, USA. She merged her talent and interest in her first published book of poetry.   A former business executive who after years of being committed to the bottom line is gaining equilibrium in her psyche through her endeavors in folklore. Image of lemon balm from Pixabay

Arabella is no ordinary girl. She’s not even an ordinary princess. True, as the second-born, she won’t inherit her mother’s throne but will instead marry a prince from a neighboring country to secure an alliance. All typical enough for a princess. But Arabella and her three siblings are magical, each inheriting one of their mother’s elemental powers. And as power over the element of air gradually flows from mother to her daughter, Arabella is rapidly becoming the strongest of her siblings. Still, her power is neither here nor there—until the rules are changed. Now the queen’s four children must compete for the crown, and only the fittest will inherit. The Princess of Air must decide where her loyalties lie, what she wants, and who  she wants. Princess of Air  is book one in  Elements of Royalty , a romantasy series by Natalie Cammaratta. Outwardly confident and charming but inwardly conflicted and unsure, Arabella is an appealing protagonist as she banters with her beloved but aggravating siblings, navigates political unrest, investigates a mysterious threat, and struggles to sort out her romantic entanglements. Is her sizzling, secret relationship with Tomas only an infatuation, or is there more to it? Can she and her betrothed prince Jamys form a true partnership, or will cultural differences and a controlling future father-in-law doom them from the start? I loved the unique combination of elements that made up this world and would love to stay in the Elements of Royalty resort, should one ever open. Arabella’s country is airy and beautiful, and the fashions and manners are uninhibited with a classical Greek or Roman feel. However, she is to marry a boy from a buttoned-up, conservative culture that feels more Victorian. I found the resulting culture clash for Arabella extremely intriguing and unsettling. Complete with exciting superhero action, family drama, and heartfelt romance, Princess of Air  is a winner. You can find it here . Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a transformational continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, Three Ravens Podcast, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com , or connect on Facebook, Instagram, @lissa_sloan, or Twitter, @LissaSloan.

As of this writing, it’s 76 days until the most wonderful time of the year: the Autumn Equinox, but I’ll be calling it “fall,” because it makes me think of falling temperatures. Why do I love it so much? First, I’m not kidding about how much I love the falling temperatures. I live in the Midwest, which means our summers have always been extremely hot. The sun is brutal, endless and intense. This was true 200 years ago, and it’s more true now, thanks to climate change. I find the sun so overwhelming that I no longer enjoy gardening, as the gardens in our yard are not shaded. So, in the summer, a formerly big part of tending hearth and home is off the table for this rapidly aging writer. On the plus side, fall is the time of a gorgeous, soft light that is always gently shadowed no matter how sunny the sky is. The relentless sun on much of our yard gently fades each day. It’s restful and our garden looks spectacular. Fall is a time to scale back outside and begin to bustle inside. It’s a time for gathering and drying and storing and inventorying. We change out the light clothes and bedding and prepare to hunker down like the Three Bears before the extremely rude and ill-bred Goldilocks breaks in. Plus, for me, a university lecturer for so many years, it’s the real new year. January doesn’t do it for me. Every fall I’m taken back many decades to buying my five new fall outfits, new shoes, new pencils and textbook covers—usually brown paper that I doodled on all year long. It’s a fresh time for new learning and looking forward to life’s new experiences. Then there’s October, which for me is the big event—the most wonderful time of the year! Warmer and cozier than Christmas and cooler and more relaxed than the Fourth of July, October is the month when I’m happiest. The pumpkins are absurdly orange, trick or treat is not too far away, and it’s National Book Month! It’s a time for casseroles and sweaters and whatever festively named beverage you can’t resist. It’s a fairy tale of a month! So, my fellow tolerators of summer, take heart. The happiest season is on its way. Images by Arthur Rackham.

Whale Fall  is a stunning, debut novel that takes place on a fictional, remote island off the coast of Wales. Although it is 1938, the population on the island, which numbers only fifteen men, twenty women, and twelve children, is at least ten years behind the mainland in terms of fashion, politics, and ideologies. When a dead whale washes up on the shore, the islanders take it as a portend of doom, and following not far behind the whale is the entrance of two English ethnographers who seek to study the island’s culture, collecting its customs, tales, games, and geography for university study. A bright, eighteen-year-old island girl named Manod, who feels caught between the pressure to marry and leave the island and the need to stay on the island and care for her younger sister in the wake of their mother’s death, becomes enamored with the English researchers. They hire Manod to help them translate stories and communicate with the Welsh speaking islanders. The story of Manod’s experience is punctuated with notes from the ethnographers and recreations of the tales they collect in their research. One tale features a woman with three daughters so beautiful the ocean sweeps them away in a jealous rage, returning them only as gulls flying in the wind. There are several variants of this tale, one which returns the daughters as whales, along with selkie stories and references to the Mari Lwyd. Although the novel celebrates folklore and those who are drawn toward it, Whale Fall also provides a poignant commentary on the exoticization of isolated communities and the impossibility of maintaining authenticity when studying other cultures through the lenses of our own. The researchers and the islanders exact irreversible changes upon each other that affect both Manod’s individual coming-of-age and the community’s sense of cultural identity. At the background of Manod’s human narrative is the ever-present decay of the whale just off the coast of the island waters. The title of O’Connor’s novel forces readers to think of the researchers’ interest in the dwindling population on the island in relation to a natural “whale fall,” a term used to describe the slow plunging of a whale carcass to the bottom of the ocean. Although the death of a whale is a tragic loss, its decomposition supports various communities of marine life who scavenge on the flesh for months, and the researchers in the novel, who live on the stories of a disappearing culture, are presented as scavengers who take what is not theirs and use it for their own intellectual benefit. In direct contrast to the rotting whale is Manod’s younger sister, a wild child who speaks only in her native tongue and collects the bones of dead animals, storing them in jars until she finds the scraps she needs to recreate whole skeletons from the pieces. The tide-like push and pull between decomposition and reanimation, between the human world and the natural world, between the island and the mainland, between preserving stories and losing them, between death and life, pulses beneath the narrative of one girl at the crossroads of her obligations and her desires. Heartbreaking and harrowing, Whale Fall  is a must read for fans of folklore and all those who enjoy contemplating our power and powerlessness as tellers of tales. I loved it!You can find it here . Thank you to NetGalley for a free copy of the book in exchange for a fair review. Kelly Jarvis works as the Assistant Editor for The Fairy Tale Magazine where she writes stories, poems, essays, book reviews, and interviews. Her poetry has also been featured or is forthcoming in Blue Heron Review , Mermaids Monthly , Eternal Haunted Summer, Forget Me Not Press, The Magic of Us, A Moon of One’s Own, Baseball Bard , 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 . You can connect with her on Facebook (Kelly Jarvis, Author) or Instagram (@kellyjarviswriter) or find her at https://kellyjarviswriter.com/

Editor’s note: This little fairy tale flash of a story ran in 2018, and I really enjoy it! (KW) The dragon was a problem. And he did not change his mind and go home, because that was not a thing one was allowed to do in his world. He had come to kiss the sleeping girl, this stranger, this was his quest, and he would die rather than give up. The small dragon was not one to suffer fools, and it knew what you have to do if you are small and vicious and in love. So it did. When what once had been a prince and a hero was a mere wisp of smoke and ashes, the sleeping girl smiled without opening her eyes. She reached out a hand to pet the dragon’s scaly head. It nestled back against her soft skin, draped its tail around her slender neck and sighed, as they both drifted back into timeless sleep, happily ever after. Everything else up to this point had gone according to plan. The thorny vines with their poisonous blossoms, those hadn’t been a match for him and his trusty sword: he had slashed them into submission. He had braved the moat, scaled the castle walls, not without effort or injury, but certainly with unwavering confidence. Somehow, he had expected things to be easy once he had managed all that, once he was inside, once he was standing in front of her enchanted bed, lips puckered. Kiss the sleeper, break the spell, wedding bells. Now, however, there was the dragon. Dragons live to guard things. It’s their destiny. People have used them to guard treasure for centuries. This one was only a small, scrappy thing, thin and long, its scarlet scales impenetrable like chainmail. It had curled up on the sleeping girl’s pillow, and it had apparently decided that its job was to guard the girl’s innocence with its own eternal life. Of course he had tried to stab it, that was his primal instinct—which was also why he no longer had a weapon, his sword shattered into pieces at the first attempt. Then he had tried to bribe the creature with gold coins from his pockets. The dragon had only stared at him, its golden eyes unblinking. Now he was trying to simply ignore it, and go in for the kiss regardless. But this was the worst strategy of them all, because now he had made the dragon angry. It hissed and bared its fangs in warning, and when he did not back off, it spewed a scorching cloud of green fire in his direction. The heat and noxious fumes were enough to make him scramble into the corner of the room. He tried to still his racing heart. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do. He did not cry, because no one had taught him how to. And he did not change his mind and go home, because that was not a thing one was allowed to do in his world. He had come to kiss the sleeping girl, this stranger, this was his quest, and he would die rather than give up. The small dragon was not one to suffer fools, and it knew what you have to do if you are small and vicious and in love. So it did. When what once had been a prince and a hero was a mere wisp of smoke and ashes, the sleeping girl smiled without opening her eyes. She reached out a hand to pet the dragon’s scaly head. It nestled back against her soft skin, draped its tail around her slender neck and sighed, as they both drifted back into timeless sleep, happily ever after. Laura Theis grew up in a whitewashed house in Waldperlach’s Fairy Tale district, where each street bears the name of a mythical creature. Today, she is an award-winning singer-songwriter and her short stories, radio plays and poetry have been broadcast and published in Germany and the UK. She is the winner of the 2017 AM Heath Prize, holds a Distinction in Creative Writing from Oxford University and has twice been nominated for the Tassilo Award. She lives in Oxford with her partner and a scruffy black dog called Wodehouse. You can find her music on badasssnowwhite.bandcamp.com Image by Yash Munot, on Pixabay.

Though her mother died when she was born, Sorcha spent her early years safe, loved, and cared for. She had an education and a purpose and became skilled with herbs and healing at a young age. The only daughter of Lord Colum of Sevenwaters, Sorcha had six older brothers, and the seven formed a close bond, each sibling pursuing their own gifts and talents but always committed to one another. But after their father took a new wife, everything changed. When her brothers are turned into swans by their stepmother’s malevolent magic, only Sorcha can save them. To break the spell, she must finish a task that is lonely, excruciatingly painful, and surely impossible. But for those she loves, Sorcha will do anything. Daughter of the Forest is Juliet Marillier’s retelling of “The Six Swans” set in Medieval Ireland. It is a time of much unrest as the Irish and the Britons, pagans and Christians, battle for supremacy in Ireland and across the water. The Fair Folk still linger in the forest surrounding Sevenwaters, and Sorcha and two of her brothers are gifted with magical connections to one another. But Sorcha's gifts won’t help her fulfill her task—she must have strength, faith, and pure grit simply to endure her ordeal, let alone break the spell. I am shocked I had never read this extraordinary classic of fairy tale fantasy before. But it came along right when I needed it. Daughter of the Forest is a powerful examination of the effects of trauma, taking on depression, anxiety, and self-harm, as well as suffering and guilt. This is a beautiful story of transformation in which happy endings are not neat and tidy, and every bit of healing and growth is earned, even when the scars are not deserved. I believe great art always costs its creator something, and it’s clear to me that Juliet Marillier has given generously in the making of this moving tale. Lissa Sloan is the author of Glass and Feathers, a dark continuation of the traditional Cinderella tale. Her fairy tale poems and short stories have appeared in The Fairy Tale Magazine, Niteblade Magazine, Corvid Queen, Three Ravens Podcast, and anthologies from World Weaver Press. Visit Lissa online at lissasloan.com, or connect on Facebook, Instagram, @lissa_sloan, or Twitter, @LissaSloan.

Editor’s note: For many years, I wrote a home and garden column for a small newspaper. Today I’m reprinting one I wrote in 2021. (KW) Thyme is one of the two herbs I absolutely must have in my garden. The other is lavender. I have a number of other herbs growing, but those two are essential, for scent and beauty. Thyme has one more important quality: It flavors food. I’m aware that lavender is often used in cooking, but it lacks the savoriness of thyme. Me? I don’t want to eat or drink anything with a strong lavender flavor, but there’s a lot of disagreement on the tastiness of lavender. All thyme is edible, but the best for faster harvesting and top flavoring is usually English, French, common or lemon. This is the “tall” kind, which is the only one I have in my garden. It runs anywhere from six to 12 inches and is very easy to gather in. I use it to edge a good portion of our garden, as it flops beautifully over our brick edging. Thyme handles our Northern Indiana winters very well. It turns brown in my garden, but then, every April, it begins to green up again, and has lovely white flowers from late spring through early summer.  They smell lovely and the bees get positively drunk on the scent, which makes it an excellent choice of you want to help out pollinators. The other popular type of thyme is the creeping kind. It is absolutely lovely in the right kind of garden. Very low growing, at between two and six inches, it is a bit slow getting started, but after the plants are established, they move along reasonably quickly. The flowers range from white to red to purple. Planted in a checkerboard pattern, they give an extreme wow factor to your garden. Creeping thyme also looks lovely growing between and over rocks, and some people even use it in place of grass. Oh how I wish I could do that, but alas, our neighborhood requires a standard lawn. Like most herbs, thyme does not like to be fussed over. Plant it in soil you’ve amended with some compost or other organic matter, then water well (but you want it to live its life in well-drained soil). After that, just don’t let it get too dry, but leave it alone. Don’t worry about feeding it. Just let it grow. As for folklore, one story has it that thyme was in Baby Jesus’s manger, and that’s where it got its unforgettable scent. What a lovely idea. In the secular world, thyme is said to give you courage, and in many cultures, burning thyme is thought to “purify” both people and their surroundings. In the olden times of England, it was thought that if you rubbed thyme on your eyes, you just might see the fairies. Ouch! I think the oils in the plant would sting. During the Black Death, plague doctors put thyme in nosegays to protect them from stench and disease. Thyme is, in fact, an antiseptic, and unlike many essential oils, thyme really will kill bacteria, so maybe those old doctors were onto something. As for cooking, well, thyme can be assertive. I like it best in soups. I’ll just grab a sprig from my garden and throw it in whole. It’s easy to fish out when your soup is done. Mmmm. That makes me want chicken soup. Thyme’s up. See you next week. Unsplash image by Alejandro Piñero Amerio. Kate Wolford is the publisher of The Fairy Tale Magazine, and runs The Enchanted Press. The press recently published the Cinderella continuation novel, Glass and Feathers, by Lissa Sloan. Get your copy here.