The Snow Maiden

So this little man comes, and spends the deepest part of winter with me, the time when the sun does not shine for days upon days. He puffs his chest and says he is putting together the history of all the fae of all the lands. Then he let me read it, and I scoff at him. 

He is all caught up in the courts and the civilized tradition where everyone is shining and honorable and noble.

I told him to bugger that, to keep his cute and fluffy bunny fae prancing around, he was not telling the story of my people.

Out here, there’s no civilization, no courts, no code of honor. There is the long dark night where you look into the blackness and it looks back at you, the hunt with blood spilled out on the snow, the warm place by the fire for the teller of tales. To survive in this place takes a different view of life, and that has shaped us as fae. Maybe, once, long ago, we did celebrate the light.

Now, we wrap ourselves in the true nature of our home. There is a story we tell the children that they understand, that I now pass to you.

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful spirit maiden, made all of snow. Born of an affair between Father Frost and Spring Beauty, her eyes were the deepest blue, her hair so pale it was white, and her skin pale and smooth like ice. Her form was perfect, and to see her was to fall in love with the idea of a woman so exquisitely formed.

It is hard on a girl to be brought up by a crusty, cranky old man like Father Frost, but for most of the year, they made a good home for each other. And in the months that Spring Beauty joined them, how they made the rafters ring with their joy and mirth in one another so that just passing by you could feel the warmth of their love for family.

But even though the little Snow Maiden loved her father very much, without her mother would grow lonesome, and sometimes went down to the river to see and hear the young people playing. 

As different as this place is, the one thing that I think is the same anywhere is young people showing off for one another to try to find a mate. Boys butt heads to show how strong and tough they are, girls watch the boys and laugh that twittering little laugh. Boys and girls join in the hunt, to show what capable providers they are. Then they show off their skills by using all the parts of their kills to make clothes and tools. And when they get tired of doing all of that (or they are no good at doing that), the boys start to sing.

And for reasons I will never understand, girls like to listen to them sing.

The Snow Maiden was no different. During the searing bright days when the air was so cold only fools and children went out in it, she would be perched and watching the far side of the river, straining her ears to hear. And why not? What was cold to a maiden such as she?

In time, Father Frost realized where his daughter went, and his heart was grieved for it. Not just for the loss of her company, but that he knew his child was not like the ones on the other side of the river, and never would be. He knew, as she did not, that they were children of mere flesh and blood. He thought and thought about how to make her understand that while they may look like her, and sound like her, and play the way that she wanted to play, that they were as different from her as the wolf is from the boar.

For a long time, he ignored where his daughter wandered, and his daughter pretended that she was looking to gather things that could not be gathered beneath the snow. They both got used to these not quite lies with each other, and secrets grew in their hearts.

Then, a man and his wife that had no children came into the little village and built their house on Father Frost’s side of the river. When the days were bright, the wife brought her mending out, so she could see it better, she said. But really, she was watching the children as they butted heads and hunted and proved they were the most desired mates while wishing for a child of her own. And always she noticed this beautiful girl that did not play, but merely watched from their side of the river.

For many days, the Snow Maiden fled whenever the wife came close. But the wife had once been a hunter too, and she stalked her prey most carefully. She noticed that the Snow Maiden yearned closest to the river’s banks when the boy named Lel sang. And she did not blame her, for it seemed to her that Lel’s voice was a silver horn blown across the ice and snow.

There is no accounting for the tastes of women.

So the wife began to sing, and while she did not have the silvery voice of Lel, she put all the longing of her heart into her songs. They were songs of a mother to her child, filled with warmth and comfort and love. The Snow Maiden heard them, and longed for her own mother, absent for so many dark months of the year.

That longing led her to talk to the wife in all the ways that she could not talk to Father Frost. Day after day, week after week she came back to the little cottage when she wasn’t listening to the children across the river. The man and his wife created a second home for the Snow Maiden and treated her like a daughter, not understanding that she was a child of spirit, not of flesh as they were.

During a very long, cold year in which Spring Beauty could not come at all, the Snow Maiden finally begged her father to let her go and live with the man and wife by the river all of the time. His heart was sore, both with the thought of losing his unlikely child and with his lack of words to make her see that she would not have the happiness she sought.

“My child,” he tried one last time, “I know that you think you want this thing, that you think living in the town is what you are supposed to do. But I tell you that those people are too different from you, from us. You can live as one of them for a thousand thousand winters, and you will not be any more like them than you are now. I am sorry for your loneliness, my daughter, but this is not the answer.”

I have said the Snow Maiden was made of snow. When snow becomes older, it turns to ice. And it was that ice that she showed to Frost Father when words failed to win her cause, and he was sorry to see it. He had hoped that by having a child with Spring Beauty, she would be more like her mother than him. 

In sorrow, he gave his blessing to the Snow Maidens adoption by the man and his wife. For the first time, she was a part of the little village.

The townsfolk marveled at her absolute perfection, and all praised her tranquility and stillness, like the frozen pond. She was warmly welcomed, and for her part, the Snow Maiden enjoyed feeling a part of all of the life and activity that she had watched from across the river for so long. Sometimes she was tempted to speak of Father Frost that the villagers might know him, too, but it seemed disloyal to the man and his wife that had made her a part of this wider world.

And now she could hear every word Lel sang. For all that the other boys of the town butted heads and hunted and sang their throats raw to impress her, she only heard Lel.

And Lel saw her not at all.

Lel sang only for Kupava.

Now every gathering of people has a girl like Kupava among them– she is a huntress not of prey but of hearts, and makes it her reason for being. Kupava was not at all pleased with the arrival of the Snow Maiden, and it did not matter a bit that Lel sang only for her.

For the boy she had decided was good enough to marry was Mizgir, and she had been almost ready to tell him so when the man and his wife brought the Snow Maiden to the village.

I say almost because she had been waiting for the next crop of boys to become old enough to butt heads over her charms. Truly, my friends, I tell you that the hearts of hunting women like Kupava are a bottomless pit of want.

The situation gave the town something to talk about all through that winter, with the older women who had been huntress in their turn admiring Kupava’s tactics, while the men just wished earnestly that both Kupava and the Snow Maiden would make their choices and retire honorably from the field of battle.

As for Mizgir, he saw no one but the Snow Maiden. He hunted the white ermine in the darkest part of the winter and laid their pelts at her feet that her garments may be trimmed as befit a queen. He carved charms of stone and ivory by firelight in the long winter nights of waking dreams to garland about her neck. He wrote songs of his own and sang them in praise of her.

Coolly, she thanked him for his gifts and songs, but still turned her face to Lel when he sang and would not be distracted from him.

Kupava turned this over and over in her head. When you got right down to it, all of the possible mates were mostly the same… maybe one was slightly faster in bringing down prey, or one sang more clearly. It would be prettier to say that the Snow Maiden’s marked attention to Lel had raised him in Kupava’s eyes. It would be pettier, but true, to say that Kupava took Lel to keep the Snow Maiden from having him in revenge for taking the boy she had picked out for herself.

Truly, a woman’s mind is a dark and twisty place.

On the first day of spring, It all fell to. It was a day in which, cunningly, Kupava lured Lel into going hunting with her. If only he’d known that he was the prey! And yet, both of them found fortune that day, for that very special gift that too few of us find was bestowed upon Lel and Kupava out in those snowy woods.

They found they truly loved each other. 

Now I have lived a long time, and I will go on living a great deal more and believe me when I tell you that this kind of love that they had, it comes maybe once, twice in a hundred years. And when you see it, it lights up the lovers from the inside, as though they were candles that burn only for one another. For some, that light sparks warmth and wonder, and a desire to see everyone with whatever portion of that happiness they can find for themselves. And even if what they find is but a thousandth part of that love, they are content.

Others– it kindled something different.

When Lel and Kupava returned to the village that evening, their hands clasped, aglow with all the wondrousness of true love, the Snow Maiden was troubled.

For her heart was of ice, she could not feel what it was that had the townsfolk turning to one another, all smiles. And with all the bite and hunger of an icy blast of wind from the north, she wanted to feel what Lel and Kupava felt, to have what they had.

Alone in her bed that night, the vision of them and all the village rejoicing with them burned into her mind. She thought of Mizgir in this new light, and knew that she could not feel for him what Kupava felt for Lel. 

She crept from her bed, her heart feeling smaller and colder than ever before. Tears streaked her lovely smooth face, and she wondered if the pain of wanting so much would cause her icy heart to crack. 

Halfway back to Father Frost’s house she had gone, perhaps with dawning realization upon her of what he had tried to warn her from, perhaps because at the end of all things, all little girls want to believe in their fathers to cure the ills of their worlds.

Spring Beauty, denied past her time, was abroad in the land, and heard her daughter’s cries. Embracing her child, she paused in her labors to hear the tale of woe.

With a heavy heart and sadness in her eyes, she gave the daughter the gift she begged for. A garland about her neck that would warm her heart to love was her gift, but it came with a price. The Snow Maiden was, after all, a creature of the cold, it was her nature and could not be spurned. To be warmed from the inside and the outside at the same time would be her undoing. So Spring Beauty admonished her to shelter herself in the shadows of the trees and not to go out into the bright sunshine that would soon spread across the land.

Laughing with joy, the Snow Maiden clasped her mother to her heart. Over and over she thanked her and danced back across the snows with new life, finding all that her eye touched to be beautiful by the grace of love.

All the way back to the village she ran, keeping to the safety of the forest and marveling at all the things she never seen or understood before. She wanted to creep and she wanted to fly to Mizgir’s arms and tell him all the love of her heart.

Now, you remember that I just told you that true love happens maybe twice in a hundred years? Well, when Mizgir laid his eyes upon the Snow Maiden and hers on him, that was the second time in a hundred years that true love blossomed right there in the little village. They ran to each other and embraced in the middle of the town square, that all could see how they felt, and rejoice with them. The power of the moment was so strong, that all the town poured from their cottages to see it. 

Old men smiled at their wives, and the wives reached out their hands.

Young men reached out to touch their wives and their children, remembering the fruits love brings forth.

Children looked on in awe, hoping to one day be so lucky as to find something so special.

Even the sun was charmed, breaking through the clouds to beam down its approval.

In the arms of her beloved, the Snow Maiden forgot all her mother’s warnings. She was so consumed by the power of this love, she ignored her own nature and melted away into nothingness in Mizgir’s arms. No longer constrained to a shape, her spirit swept into the skies, spreading the warmth of passion that had been her death, and the Snow Maiden became Spring Wind.

As for Mirgiz, he never recovered from holding all that he had wanted with all the fire of youth in his arms and watching it slip away. On midsummer’s eve, he chased the Spring Wind into a lake and drowned.

You ask me about the Spring Wind? Oh, she is still here, living with her mother and not realizing that her form is gone. Is it a blessing, that she is always at that moment of perfect beauty in her lover’s arms? Sometimes I think both ways– that she traded a frozen heart for being frozen in a moment in time.

But what a moment in time!

So you see, not all the stories have princesses and happy endings and riches and joy. But still they must be told, that we know of our natures, that we feed them lest we become something that we are not.

If you are not happier for hearing my tale, perhaps you are wiser. It is enough.

Excerpt from the Way of the Fae by Arian Telia Wellman. All rights reserved, blah blah.

Don’t steal my shit.

The Craven

Never can I not remember the evils that took place that November, when the world lost the fairest maid ever to walk to settle a score. I may be but a young fae lad, and I’m told that my fancies will grow cooler and paler as the years pass- and yet, and yet, I know I shall feel the sting of this pain till the veriest last.

For many days after the sad tidings were delivered, I remained in my burrow and laid alone. Neither wind nor rain touched me as I swaddled myself in the care of the numb. Friends came, but I saw none of them, in my den their words could not reach me, their hands could not touch me. Part of me wishes I laid there still, but I am obliged to sit upon this perch until I am stone, or he is no more.

Sometimes I wonder which happy occasion will arrive first.

All my sorrow, all my plight, all my pain, all my loss, all of the suffering of my light of love is lain on his doorstep. This low dull witted creature, this cowardly mule headed fool that drove my darling to doom. For some farcical point of human pride, he laid all that was decent aside and played the dastard to win her hand without a care for her heart.

When the lovely girl was among the living, she was one that would suffice, once she no longer drew breath, she was the only who had ever lived. Long and long I plotted and pondered how to insure his short pathetic human life was as miserably squandered as surely as my lady had been damned.

At last it came to me one dark night in which my heart found no solace, and I took on an ill omened form. As black as an unredeemed soul, with eyes to fix upon the heart and render it cold, I spread my wings and flew to the pleasant house of prosperity he preferred. 

It took only minutes to find him seated before a roaring fire in velveted comfort, warm and well fed and well cared for, looked after all his life long. His smug countenance as he turned the page, undoubtedly with a mental aside that his abilities were far superior to the wordsmith he read, nearly undid all my good (or ill, if one considers it as such) intentions as I wanted nothing more than to bury the beak of my borrowed form within his breast. How dare he smirk so in such satisfaction when my beloved lay in her cold virginal tomb!

With a fury I knocked in the only way I could, pounding for admittance across the threshold, but did he leave his comfortable chair by the fire to see who called at such an hour? No, he did not! It was a gentle faced lady who came by my beckoning, looking out into the swirl of snow. In through the politely cracked door I swept, silent as a shadow. The housekeeper frowned, thought, then yes! shrugged and turned away, following the call of all the chores necessary to keep the residents in their accustomed comfort. 

You may read and wonder in all of my plotting and planning how did I see to disrupt one such as this? With servants to cater to his every whim, a home to take pride in and social standing to spare how could I ever hope that the mounting sense of injustice be repaired?

And to you I would respectfully offering this reminder- all of the blessings that money can convey, all of the status, all of the worldly possessions you may surround yourself with- none of these things can weigh against the engagement of the conscience and the weight of the guilt carried within one’s mind. 

Down the hall I ghosted, my determination as solid as the oak of the door to the chamber that I knocked upon next. And heard a start and a shuffle, then a pause like a breath held, waiting to see if the tapping would resound or was but a fancy.

When he let the breath go, I knocked again, and when he called out, his voice had a quaver that filled me with chilled delight.

“Sir or Madame, truly your forgiveness I implore! But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping, and so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door that I scarce heard you,” said he, as he swung the door open, apprehension a mask over his face.

Oh! To see this, to see that a midnight visitor fed his morbid fantasies, I settled on the lintel above the door. For the dread was too delicious not to be drawn out and savored, lingering so sweetly against my senses as he whispered, “Lenore?”

With a shudder at the stillness, he lingered but a moment looking up and down the hall. As soon as he shut the door, I flew to through kitchen and stable to alight upon his window ledge. There I made more noises pecking at the shutters, hoping to set his pulse once more aflutter.

“Surely,” he said, “Surely that is something at my window lattice. Let me see then what the threat is, and this mystery explore. Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore, tis the wind and nothing more.”

Thus emboldened, he thrust open sashes, up windows, out shutters with violent motions, and welcomed me into his pleasantly cozy abode. Grandly in I went, noble as a prince, to settle upon a suitably glowering bust, joining my gaze to the blind eyes and looking down, down, down in judgment at my foe. And there I sat, onyx eyes boring into his very soul.

“Though thy crest by shorn and shaven thou art sure no craven, ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore. Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”

Oh! And now the word, the perfect word, the essence of my sadness that would drive this excrescence down the path to madness was the part of my plot that had finally moved me from my burrow. For all of his clever classical references and mocking tone, I gave a single word in answer- “Nevermore.”

He stared up at me for long minutes in silent marvel, and perfectly still I remained as though I myself had become one with the bust on which I rested. Clearly, he waited for me to speak again, to further my point and give him something he could wrest against and win (at least in his own mind) with force or charm. 

Then he scoffed and muttered, “Other friends have flown before- on the morrow he will leave me, as my hopes have flown before.”

If I could have smiled with the same smug smirk I had seen from him so recently, I would have, as it was, I answered him, “Nevermore.”

Startled, he did as most men do and went to explanations, suppositions, some trick of logic to will away the creeping of his flesh. “Doubtless,” he said, “what it utters is its only stock and store caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore- till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore of never- nevermore.”

Not settled enough in his argument to dismiss away the apparition of me, he drew his velvet chair away from the fire and sat opposite me to ponder my appearance and the meaning of the one word I would continue to gift him with forevermore. I kept my unbirdlike stillness, my burning gaze fixed upon his visage, taking pleasure in his every shortened breath and twitch. I knew already he thought of his lost lady, and as much blame as eyes can have were concentrated within mine as I stared down from the bust.

“Wretch!” he cried. “Thy God hath lent thee- by angels he hath sent thee respite, respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”

I scoffed to myself, as though I would release him from his care so easily! but merely said, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet!” he screamed, “Thing of evil! Prophet still, if bird or devil! Whether Tempter sent or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore, desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted on this home by horror haunted- tell me truly, I implore! Is there balm in Gilead? Tell me, tell me, I implore!”

To which I answered, “Nevermore.”

“Prophet,” he cried again, fists clutching his head in despair, “thing of evil! Prophet still if bird or devil! By the Heaven that bends above us- by the God we both adore- tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn, it shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore- clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore.”

And there it was, the veriest peak, the jagged edge of madness he had reached, the shape of my revenge had taken form as his mind began to break before the storm… and all I said was, “Nevermore.”

Like a shot from the chair, his mien unhinged, he screamed, “Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend! Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Let my loneliness unbroken- quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart and thy form from my off my door!”

For a long moment, I pondered, truly pondered what damage I took upon my soul- was I no better than my rival? Unbidden came the image of the white marble tomb that housed my love, Lenore, and before I could think further, I merely said, “Nevermore.”

from the Way of the Fae- published by Arian Telia Wellman, all rights reserved blah blah blah. Don’t steal my shit.

For this tale, I must write in my own words, for there is no one else to tell it. I recreate it for you from a series of journals found together in a trunk– each bearing a piece of the story that doesn’t come clear until you lay all four series of writings side by side.

In this volume so far, you may have noticed that fae and human definitions of love can create off bedfellows, sometimes very literally. Some of the following is my own conjecture, and guessing at the voices of the past, so I do hope you’ll forgive me my small trespasses. It is merely that I am a student of the natures of our peoples, and wish to share my insights.

Once upon a time, in the warm embrace of Italy, there was a scholar of no small renown who followed the genetic theories by the classicals and developed a life’s work around it. 

What the good doctor did not know (because his human mother could not bring herself to tell him) was that he was half fae. His experiments were heralded as miraculous– likely his passion for the work along with his own unusual genetic makeup allowed him to bridge the gap between possible and impossible with relative ease.

Had he been told of his heritage, the doctor would have scoffed that there were no such thing as faeries, and gone about his business.

Of all the things in the world, the doctor loved but two. His work (which centered around breeding plants with stronger extracts to be used in medicines by the apothecary), and his daughter. His wife had died in childbirth, and as the child grew, they formed a little society of two so exclusively that outsiders frequently required translation of their private language. 

Most of their days, when the doctor was not engaged in teaching at the university, were spent in the garden beds. As the doctor’s experiments because more prosperous, a small jewel of a hot house was added. Endlessly they toiled at all the tasks necessary to caretake a tiny harvest. Ever patient, the health of each leaf was noted upon weekly, the moisture levels checked thrice daily, and soil analyzed continually. The appearance of a slug was a catastrophe of the highest order, necessitating agonization over what the scientifically correct next step would be.

The daughter and the plants simply grew.

Under such careful, tender loving care, and due to the unexpected and unknown extra encouragement, the plants thrived, meeting and surpassing all expectations.

The same could be said of the doctor’s daughter.

“Oh, my dear,” the doctor said one night as they reviewed their notebooks at the dinner table. “I dread that day that you will go from me into an establishment of your own.”

For Beatrice had just turned seventeen, and was surpassingly lovely. Like a maid in a tale (which, come to think of it, she is), she had soft golden skin, enormous dark doe eyes, and dark hair that fell in ringlets the envy of every woman in the city. “Now Papa,” she replied carelessly, “I have yet to meet anyone that could take me away from all that we do here.”

The doctor turned his attention back to the work, smugly satisfied.

But thoughts, once they have been transmuted into words, have a way of festering in the mind. So it was for the doctor, as he wished over and over that his beautiful child was more like his plants. That she should be forever a part of his world, meticulously cultivated and appreciated in the appropriate environment.

He became leery of leaving Beatrice, his mind inventing any number of morbid fantasies of what could become of her to the point where he installed locks on the gates of the manor as well as the hot house.

Beatrice, by nature a creature of unusual serenity, made no mention of the additions to the doors and gates. She merely went about her business, to the point that she seemed to have far more interest in the society of the plants than in people. As the scope of her activities became more limited, the doctor engaged a number of maids, that the house remain comfortable.

The maids began by turning the manor house inside out and putting the rooms to air. While the doctor and his daughter had not been slovenly, one tends to take the whole business of homemaking more seriously as an engaged professional, and what may have been shrugged off as a bit of dust in the corners was no longer acceptable.

And so things went for a time, with the doctor, Beatrice, and the maids quite content with their lots in life. The plants grew stronger in essences pressed from them, the doctor grew more concerned with the future of his lovely daughter, and Beatrice grew lovelier and more engrossed in leaf, vine, and bud.

One day, the doctor brought home an especially promising student to see his gardens. And perhaps, in some well meaning part of his mind, Beatrice as well. They visited the hot house after a tour of the rest of the manor, with the student marking the lock upon the door.

“Of course,” he thought to himself, “the doctor must have extremely valuable, exotic, and rare specimens to protect.” Which was a sentiment the doctor would absolutely have agreed with, for Beatrice was at that moment seated in her favorite spot. 

The sunlight shone through the windows in a moment of perfection, gilding Beatrice’s golden skin as she crooned softly to a vine that almost, almost appeared to sway toward her in adoration.

“Ah! And now I have found you out, Doctor!” He bowed reverently to Beatrice, who blushed most becomingly. “You have a lovely sprite tending your precious plants, coaxing them into their extraordinary growth with her song.”

The doctor chuckled appreciatively. “Ah, Giovanni, it is true. I sometimes think my Beatrice could charm any plant into bloom with a smile.”

Beatrice shushed him, her cheeks aflame. “You flatter me, gentlemen, there are no charms here. Merely careful, scientifically proven methods developed over many years hard work.” The doctor continued to chuckle as he dropped a careless kiss to her forehead. 

“You will find my daughter a most ardent student of the methods of reason, my boy, I daresay she would surpass most of the students at the university, were she permitted to attend.”

Rebuked, Giovanni quickly altered his tactics to discussion of the quality of the soils and herbs under Beatrice’s care. It was refreshing to find a girl who seemingly had no ability to engage in coyness and flirtation, but instead had a serious mind devoted to the passion of her life’s work. Though his own interest in botany had been one of the many fields in which his facile mind excelled, from that hour onward, Giovanni mirrored his mentor in caring only for the plants and his daughter.

It was a difficult courtship from the beginning. The doctor was of two minds on the matter– he could not expect to live forever (though, by the standards of even a half fae, he was barely an adult in lifespan), and if he had to leave care of the two most treasured things in his life to someone, who could be more suited than the best student he had ever taught?

Beatrice herself, after the initial shock of a young man introduced into her carefully plotted and controlled world, felt the siren’s call of the world beyond the walls and the desire to turn the keys on all the locks herself, that she may be safe in the world she loved best.

Truly, the only one of the unusual triangle without a single doubt or reservation was Giovanni himself. Experienced in such matters, he began by sending small gifts with his compliments. He was quite careful– knowing that bonbons and ribbons and poetry would find no favor with the serious Beatrice, he instead sent his own volume on genetic theory that had piqued his interest in the doctor’s lectures in the first place. This was followed some days later by a new chemical meant to fertilize the soil. With inhuman restraint, he let two weeks pass by before paying a call, but that did not mean that he did not linger casually in the square across from the gates, hoping for a glimpse of the beauteous Beatrice.

Each gift was received with rapture; for each Beatrice penned a very proper thank you note, dispatched by the maid on her way to market. 

When finally Giovanni did pay a call, it was of a more scholarly variety than he could have imagined in his moonlit fancies. Upon arrival, he was pressed into service with the wheelbarrow, assisting in the spreading of mulch in the larger garden as he received an encyclopedic history of each specimen.

Better off if he’d been put off by such treatment and turned his fancies to another, but Giovanni’s heart was tucked into the pocket of Beatrice’s leather apron.

Spring moved into summer and then into fall and the hapless student had not so much as stolen a kiss from his fair maiden. Feeling out of his depth and as though this romance was going nowhere, he attempted to move things along by presenting Beatrice with a mass of deepest red roses.

“Oh! How lovely they are,” Beatrice exclaimed as Giovanni presented them to her. Roses were not medicinal in nature in the doctor’s view, so he had never troubled to keep them. She buried her nose into their velvety embrace, arrested by the sensuality that had captivated so many before and after. Once she consented to release them to the maid, she grasped Giovanni’s forearm through his jacket, her dark eyes turned to him in thanks.

They sat in the hot house that day, but Beatrice seemed so infected by the scent of the roses still lingering on her face that she could not settle to work on any task. It was a magical afternoon in which the lovers simply sat and gazed upon on another in harmonious daydreams.

It wasn’t until Giovanni was leaving that he noticed the roses the maid had put into a vase and placed on the sideboard.

A far cry from the fresh blooms he’d brought, they were dead and decayed. No lover’s token, these, but a gift of a spurned, forgotten suitor. Dismayed, he resolved to call upon the usurer of a florist and demand compensation before his next visit.

And then, his mind and heart full of the wonders of the day, he thought on it no more.

It was perhaps a week later that Giovanni, after a lecture on the perils and plight of insects, noted aloud to the doctor that he’d never seen an insect in the hot house, of any kind.

“You are quite right, my boy,” the doctor said, his mood expansive and jocular. “Beatrice is constantly fretting that she must bring air to the roots herself as no lowly worm will consent to do it for her. I believe over the years that the concentrations of the essential essence of the plants may have become so strong that it seeps into the very air, discouraging the depredations of maggot, worm, slug, or snail alike. Even as the marigold discourages all manner of wildlife with its natural odors, so it is, I think, within my hot house.

“Remarkable!” exclaimed Giovanni. “Never before have I heard of such a thing, and yet, it is the only logical explanation.”

It was a few days later that he mentioned the theory to Beatrice herself, only for her to burst into tears. When he would have reached out to comfort her, she warded him with a gloved hand.

In fits and starts, she laid out her woes with her gaze fixed upon the floor. 

For she had also noticed the fate of the roses. Being of a methodical mind, she arrayed the evidence of what she knew to be true, and then raised her sights to pure conjecture.

The roses had been fresh cut, and should have remained in their blooming state for a week, if not two. They were dead in hours.

Insects could not survive in the hot house. Frequently she had to sweep away a suicidal line of them who tried to cross the threshold in the night. Insects also did not trouble her. In a time where lice of all varieties flourished in the warm climate of Southern Italy, she hadn’t seen one on her person in years.

Troubled by her thoughts, she’d contrived to take the maid’s bare hand in hers. The girl had fallen down quite insensible and remained that way for two days.

She’d gone to her father and laid out her hypothesis.

And he had smiled. The doctor was delighted with her sharp mind as well as what his daughter had become. “Tell no one, especially not Giovanni, there is a purpose at work here, and I must think upon what that is.”

It was that moment, that sense of covetousness in his eyes, that had shown Beatrice everything that she’d taken care not to see. If to touch her was death, the doctor never had to worry that a suitor might steal her away; his greatest treasure was forever safe without a single lock needed.

“He did this to me! Willfully, knowingly, he has done this thing to me without my consent! I cannot live like this, my Giovanni, but neither can I die!” She wept, not with any great passion, but a soft, forlorn sound.

Giovanni put his gloves on and took her gently by the shoulders. “What do you mean you cannot die, my dear?”

Shamefacedly, she dashed the tears from her face. “I didn’t want to hurt you, and I don’t want to know I’ll live my whole life without being able to touch a living soul. I will not live in this cage with my father’s smugly satisfied face knowing he has me snared.”

“Beatrice, you always loved it here before!”

She looked up at him, her gentle lips twisted to one side. “When you choose your circumstances, to be content is easy. When you see the bars of your cell and know that this is what will be for all time, everything changes.”

It was not a statement he could argue with. “What did you do?”

Beatrice gave a choked laugh. “Can you not guess? I took poison.”

Not satisfied with a single cup of hemlock, the doctor’s daughter had taken a draught of every poison known to her to be available to her hands, recording her reaction to each one. First, she’d gone through the very gardens she tended. Then she’d gone to the apothecary. Finally, desperate, she had borrowed the strongest substance she could find, the substances the maids put down to ward off rats and vermin.

There had been no adverse effects at all.

“In fact, when I woke up the day after, I felt an entirely unusual level of refreshed. My father remarked upon how my eyes shone and my skin glowed with health at breakfast.” Purged of her tears, Beatrice’s voice was now flat, as though she was reciting the lineage of one of the specimens she tended.

Through her recital, Giovanni’s mind raced. When she was finished speaking, he stood up and paced the room, letting action assist in his cogitations.

“Beatrice, my own heart, if I told you I could cure you, but that you would have to leave this place to remain cured, would you be willing to go?”

While iron bars do not a prison make, the same can not be said of selfish fathers, yet Beatrice bowed to the habits of years when she slowly, methodically plotted out how she felt about the proposal. That Giovanni could do as he promised, she had no doubts. Her extensive education had taken place within a single branch, his had covered many.

“Yes, I would go. I never want to see this place again, and if I did not know how much it would set back the science of what I’ve done, I’d burn every damned plant here before I left, to ensure that such a thing could never happen again.”

And so the plan was set. It took a week for Giovanni to acquire everything that he needed, as well as find an amenable priest and conveyance to leave the city as quickly as possible, per Beatrice’s wishes.

The lovers chose their time wisely; the doctor was out for the evening at a symposium. After a stilted dinner with the only conversation being for the benefit of the servants, Giovanni drew Beatrice into the garden for a stroll.

As soon as they were out of earshot, he gave her the antidote to every known poison he had painstakingly brewed. With a sweet, trusting smile, her gloved hand on his face, Beatrice drank it down.

And fell down dead before she could say a word.

That was where the doctor found them, for Giovanni put his lips to hers in bittersweet farewell, and unlike Juliet, found that haply some poison did yet hang on them.

Proving that there does exist some justice in the world, the doctor was convicted of the murder of both his daughter and his putative son in law. Scandal bred scandal for the months leading to the trial, and the most careless utterances became damning proof of the blackness of the doctor’s soul.

Through it all, he said not a word in his own defense, nor at all. His guilt had rendered him mute for all of the rest of the long years of his life.

But that’s another story.

Rumplestilskin

So there was this time that me and Lou were stuck on incognito lookout duty at this guy’s castle. See, we owed us a favor to King Oberon for a little bit of financial type assistance he offered us when we was havin a bad run of luck at the rat races. (Lou wants me to put in here that them races was fixed, and I reminded him we knowed they was fixed, cause we’ve had a couple side jobs helpin with said fixins.)

So we had a fifty year stint as yeomen to King Oberon, and if he said watch this castle, well, that’s just was we’s was gonna do.

We sure wasn’t gonna hang out at this place for the pleasure of the surroundins. Now me and Lou, we’ve fallen on some rough times, but nothin like where this guy was, and it’s not like we run around tellin people we’re kings, neither. Everythin was a little grimy and fallin apart, everyone was a little skinny and cranky, and altogether, it made for the kinda place that you’d just as soon pass right on by if you was on the road.

The good part about the job was that the castle was in such poor repair, me and Lou had some real nice quarters and passages worked out that let us go anywhere in the place without being seen by nobody. Pretty sweet for stayin out of view and all, and King Oberon sent some sprites every now and again to make sure we was taken care of for provisions and all.

Of course, that meant we had to fill out these things called ‘requisition forms’ – he had this guy who was obsessed with somethin he called modernizin the operations and that this was the wave of the future or somethin.

Whatever, we figured it was somethin to do while we waited for somethin interestin to happen at Castle Charlot.

That part took a long time. Y’see, the king was apparently so disagreeable about life in general (and Lou says who could blame him, the man got a bum piece of luck- you get born as king and then it’s king of a crapheap like Castle Charlot. And I reminded Lou that you gotta make your own luck and grab opportunity by the horns and not bet on rat races. Lou conceded the point) that even his own people spent most of the time stayin the heck away from him.

So, no surprise, turns out King Crank has trouble with findin himself a noble bride. The irony bein that a nice fat dowry woulda set the place to rights in no time at all. But a girl what gots that kinda scratch, she don’t have to settle for this yutz. She could have a guy what had a nice place, a good attitude about life, a guy what would try to get along.

This wasn’t that guy.

In time, the king hadda lower his sights just a little bit from the nobility to the gentry. After all the barons and knights and squires hastily packed their daughters off to distant relatives with some lame excuses (‘Young Wanda has always wanted to learn more about alchemy from her auntie Zelda by the sea’ or ‘My little Agnes is nursing her half brother in Transylvania through a case of dragon pox’), the king gnashed his teeth and pulled his beard.

And began looking at commoner’s daughters as marriage material.

You ever notice how every village has that one guy with the very dangerous combination of a lack of sense and a lack of luck? Well, in Charlot village, that guy was the miller. Right about the time the king accepted the fact that he was gonna be marryin so far beneath his station for heirs and repairs of his fortune was right out the window, the miller stumbled on a little payday.

Like most fools and their money, (you mean like us? Lou is pipin up. I told him to shaddup) bein soon parted, this miller took his windfall straight to the tavern and started buyin rounds. And over the course of a long night, proceeds to tell this crazy story about how his daughter can spin straw into gold, and that’s where his sudden cash influx came from.

And even though it’s crazy stupid, that story ran through the town like wildfire. The next morning, the king had it along with his sparse breakfast tray, and of course he demands the girl be brought to the castle at once. Straw was about the only thing other than rocks and bad attitude the king had in abundance, so he figures he’s home free.

Now I gotta tell ya, the way the king handled the next part should really go down in like some kinda book about how not to pay your addresses to the fairer sex. He had her escorted into the throne room by two men at arms that was as bad tempered as him, tells her he’s gonna lock her in a room fulla straw, and if she hasn’t spun it into gold by mornin, he’ll chop off her and her father’s heads. 

So you know me and Lou hot footed it to the room to see if she could really do this, cause, you know, if she could, we might could pick up another one of them life skills that would be really kinda helpful.

But no, the girl gets locked in with her spinnin wheel and piles and piles of straw and just sits down and starts to cry.

Me and Lou’s a lot of things, but we ain’t cold hearted. A pretty girl’s facin havin no face in the mornin, and we get to talkin about how we could help.

Before we could think of anythin that would be helpful, an imp popped up in the room, cacklin like they do.

Somethin about imps you should know, they ain’t no nice guys. They got no problem gettin their hands dirty and doin folk wrong as long as they get paid.

And I hear they eats cats, the bastidges.

They was talkin so low, we couldn’t hear what was bein said, but could make some educated type guesses. This imp guy was flappin his arms around a bunch between the girl and the wheel and the straw and I think tellin some tale about how he’d spin all the straw for her, but wanted somethin in return. They went back and forth a bit before she gave him the ring off her hand. She cried more as she twisted it off her finger– it was super clear that this little ring meant a lot to the girl.

The cold hearted imp bastidge loved it. Shook hands on it and he got to work. And sure enough, the little green bugger does know how to spin straw into gold, cause it started pilin up right quick.

And me and Lou is up in the rafters, trying to take note of everythin he done and how he done it.

Long story short, when mornin comes, the straw’s gold, the imp’s gone, and the girl, havin managed to get some sleep and comb out her hair with her fingers, don’t look half bad. In sweeps the king, absolutely filled with glee that he ain’t broke no more. It put him in such a good mood, he noticed that the girl wasn’t exactly a hag, herself, and he gets down on bended knee, apologizes for bein a yutz, asks to marry her and make a life of happily ever after again.

Just kiddin, we know that only happens in storybooks, not the real world in like what we lives in.

He grabs her up by the arm, drags her into an even bigger room filled with straw, and tells her she’s got the day and the night to spin all this into gold too. If she can do it, he’ll marry her, and if she can’t, off with her head.

Ain’t those both just charmin propositions? Here this poor girl just gave him more money than he woulda got from the dowry of the noblest of princesses, and this is how the yutz says thank you. 

The poor miller’s daughter paced around and around that huge room while Lou put his observations to work. No one really seemed to get anywhere though, cause the miller’s daughter apparently wasn’t takin herself no notes the night before, and Lou’s spinnin efforts got us copper instead of gold.

“Lou! That’s not gonna help the lady, what are you doin wrong?”

“I dunno, Vin, I coulda swore that this is just how the imp did it,” he said, his round innocent face all worked up. “Maybe he was sayin somethin we couldn’t hear.”

“Maybe you should try harder,” I said, one eye lookin out the peephole at the girl.

“Maybe you should come give it a shot since you knows so much!”

And if you could believe it, that went even worse. I coulda swore I did everythin the imp had did too, and all I got was silver.

“Well this is no good,” we agreed. But feelin like we couldn’t not say nothin at all, we was just about to introduce ourselves to the miller’s daughter when that bastidge imp popped up again, wantin to play let’s make a deal.

“Oh this won’t do,” I said, and jumped down from the wall, puttin myself between the imp and the miller’s daughter.

“Look, mac, the lady ain’t got nothin to give you, so why don’t you just shove off?”

Well neither the lady nor the imp liked that too well, even after I did the mannerly thing and introduced myself.

“Why are you trying to drive away the only soul who can help me?” the lady said.

“Cause me and Lou’s can help you!”

The imp snickered, and I wanted to wipe that smirk offa his face. “You can spin straw into gold?”

I cleared my throat and shuffled my feet a little in the straw. “Not exactly, but silver spends, too.”

Both lady and imp scoffed at me. “Are you trying to get my head cut off, you little creeper? Why don’t you just go back to what you were doing, nothing useful, and let me get back to talking to my friend, here? This is really none of your affair,” she said haughtily, stickin her nose in the air. I was startin to think that maybe her and the king deserved each other.

“And I would lay bets that if you do know anything about spinning, you got it from watching me last night!” the imp said in outrage. “By rights, you owe me for teaching you!”

For some reason, this is when Lou decided to interject himself into the conversation. “I think not, my good man, for you see, at no point in the proceedins with the miller’s daughter did you stipulate that she should turn away or ignore what you were doin. You practised your craft openly, at no time checkin for the presence of anyone else that might infringe upon your right to guard a trade secret. And since we was under strict orders of King Oberon to observe anythin of notice goin on in Castle Charlot, well, youse can see the predicament it woulda put us in had we not kept an eye on what’s what goin on last night.”

You gotta love Lou. He don’t often decide to speaks up in fronta folks, but when he does, he uses the right words almost every time.

The green drained right out of the imp’s face. “You’re King Oberon’s men?”

I turned my shoulder to him and tapped the crest on my livery. “Read it and weep, catmuncher.”

He didn’t take the news with too good of grace. His face was all screwed up like he was eatin lemons with a skunky smell to ‘em. “What will you, my lords?”

Well, that was a turnaround and no mistake. We didn’t know why we was watchin the place to start with, and we didn’t want to interrupt anyone’s plans.

Lou came to my rescue again. “You can make a deal, we’s just gonna be here to make sure it’s a fair deal. King Oberon is tryin to establish ties between fae and human and youse guys what cheat people make it kinda hard to get a good rep goin.”

The imp looked like he’d had broken glass for breakfast, but the green was comin back into his face. “Gentlemen,” he said, his voice oozin oily smarm. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.” He turned to the miller’s daughter and gave her a sigh and a nod.

And you coulda knocked me over with a feather when she turned into an even greener, impier imp!

“I present to you my daughter, Wagglethurp.”

The girl turned imp curtsied to us politely.

“You see, the king needs money, my daughter needs a husband, and I happen to have a certain set of skills. But we knew presenting the matter as a straightforward proposition was not going to accomplish anything. So we were set to practice a bit of subterfuge.” He went on to tell us that he knew the king was a yutz, so he’d arranged this whole charade just so’s he had a good reason to ‘steal away’ his daughter’s firstborn and see to it the kid was brought up right.

Or as right as an imp can raise one, which me and Lou was polite enough to keep to ourselves.

“That seems like a real twisty way to end up where you’re goin,” I said. “But I can’t think of why King Oberon would object. In the end, this guy gets a wife, an heir, and a buncha money, and he ain’t no nice guy.”

Both imps was noddin at me now. 

So, we let the pair get about their business, which really didn’t have nothin to do with me and Lou. Sure, we still felt sorry for Wagglethurp, but we figured she wasn’t in for nothin she didn’t sign up for. 

The next mornin, the yutz king come in, saw all the gold heaped around the room, and decided to go on and marry the imp (or is it impess? I always gets that mixed up) under the next full moon. I guess he wanted time to flaunt to all of the nobles that had turned him down all about his good fortune.

We sent our report off to King Oberon and didn’t hear nothin back, so we kinda shrugged and kept an eye on things like usual.

The weddin went off with lots of stuff that normally ain’t a thing (has you ever noticed how people what’s suddenly got money feel like they gotta throw it around to prove they got it? Yeah, me and Lou could write a whole dissertation type thing on that) like solid gold goblets and plates and napkins (which is super impractical) and horseshoes (for luck, ya know). All the neighborin kingdoms and duchies sent folk to come and schmooze and try to sell the bridal couple more and more outrageous stuff to get their hands on some of that spun gold. 

And mostly, they went on and bought it! In a month, they managed to start add on wings to Castle Charlot with glass in the windows and all kinds of newfangled gadgets and whatnot. They spent money like it was nothin, and I guess, in a way, it was.

Finally the day of the weddin came, and to our shock, we was invited to attend as honored guests. So’s we put on our best double breastfed suits with shined up spats and we went to see what kind of extravagant craziness the king and queen put together.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, King Oberon his self shows up at the feast. 

Now, I ain’t sayin that don’t happen, even nowadays, but some folks is kinda leery of havin fae muckity mucks to fancy gatherins due to a few bad apples givin gifts that ain’t so great.

When time came for the toasts, sure enough, King Oberon was the first on his feet, smilin all friendly as he gave his speech.

He congratulated the new queen on achievin her goals, and the new king for bein so welcomin to the magical type community. It wasn’t every regular guy that would be broad enough to do what he done, and he commended him on his longsightedness.

By now the yutz king was sweatin like a brownie caught in a good deed, castin these sideways glances at Wagglethurp. who was cuttin glances over at us that promised murder and mayhem.

And me and Lou is sittin there as innocent as can be, givin King Oberon every attention.

Oberon says in light of this new era of cooperation between the worlds of man and fae, it would be his honor to accepted the king and queen’s first born for fosterin, that the boy could learn the best of both worlds and take care of all the subjects fairly.

I wanna point out here that King Oberon didn’t never call out Wagglethurp and her father on the scurvy trick they done pulled, and he didn’t do nothin to embarrass the king. He just made a statement and made a real kind, generous offer to take the heir under his wing. He was right honorable about the whole situation, and it made me proud to look to him as my lord.

Of course, it also meant that new queen and her king had a lot of gossip about ‘em, the kind that even piles of gold in every corner of the house don’t exactly cover up. Folks got way less interested in tryin to sell all kinds of crazy stuff to ‘em, and visitin in general. And the queen’s father was done out of getting to raise the heir to be as twisty and double crossin as he was. 

And when the prince showed up right on schedule, not green and with all the right numbers of fingers and toes, it like to drove all the gossipy types nuts, since none of ‘em could figure out what was wrong with the kid.

And thanks to Oberon, the kid got to grow up to be a stand up guy.

But that’s another story.

So yeah, me and my brother fell on some hard times. We’re kinda on the small side for faery types, and it used to be that we had this good deal workin down on the docks, you know, kinda just kept an eye on ships while their crews went out to enjoy the pleasures of the port and all. And maybe captains what didn’t hire us had problems findin their ships the next day. It was a good gig.

Funny thing about that kinda work, though, you got just one ship that gets sunk and everybody gets all bent outta shape and stuff. (Lou wants me to tell ya that first it burned, then it sank, and I want Lou to shaddup and let me tell the story. Lou says we don’t always get what we want, and I told Lou he was gettin to wantin my fist in his face. Lou prudently decided to shaddup.)

Point bein, we was broke as a joke, so we snuck into this cobbler’s shop and hid out. (Lou’s remindin me that we was kinda chased into the cobbler’s shop and was hidin out there on account of some folks that wanted to see if eatin faeries is good for yas. Hint- we don’t know, and we didn’t wanna find out if you could survive travelin through the innards of a human type.)

Now we ain’t never been any great shakes at magic, but me and Lou, we gets by, mostly by turnin our hands to whatever task comes around and doin the best we can at it. Since we was layin low anyway, we started watchin about this leather workin business. And you know? It turned out that cause we was smaller, we could do pretty good work, a lot more dainty and delicate and whatnot.

We practiced on scraps we borrowed, since this cobbler guy was just about as freakin broke as we was. He was sellin every pair of shoes he made just as he made ‘em. And while me and Lou ain’t exactly the most admirable characters you’d ever meet, we wouldn’t steal from someone even broker than we were. It’s like bad karma and stuff.

This one night, we hears the cobbler tell his wife that that’s it, they’s out of money, they only got enough makings for one more pair of shoes and that’s it, they are gonna starve.

Well me and Lou couldn’t stand for that (especially considerin we were livin off their crumbs to start with and all, and if they starved, so was we), and doncha know the cobbler and his wife were so beside themselves that they didn’t put away none of his tools or nothin.

So me and Lou, we knew this was our chance, and we made the finest pair of shoes that hick town ever saw. And then we shined ‘em up real pretty and just hid and waited to see what happened next. 

When mornin came, the cobbler got outta bed, and I tell yas, he was walkin like a man to his funeral when he headed to his workbench. And then he saw them shoes what me and Lou made the night before, and he got all excited and shook his wife awake. Guess they really liked the work we done, cause they kept turnin those shoes over and over in their hands like it was some kinda marvel.

Then they put ‘em out in the window and sure enough, they sold for more money than the cobbler had seen in weeks. 

Now, that cobbler was a careful guy, and he didn’t go blow all his newfound wealth at once. He got a good meal for him and the missus, and then bought more makings for more shoes. And I think he got a little suspicious like, cause even though he left the leather layin on the bench just like before, he kept casting his eyes around behind him. Me and Lou felt a little bad about it, but didn’t come out til our hosts were snorin again.

We had us a tasty meal from the leftovers, then got ourselves settled down to work again. Lou, he hadda be a show off, he started using the scraps of leather we’d been practicin on to put these patterns on his shoes. I thought about stoppin my pair to give him a thrashin for wastin so much time, but I hadda admit, when he was all done, they was the prettiest shoes I’d ever seen, and I almost wanted to get Lou to make me a pair, too.

But he took so long that it was almost sunup when we was yawnin and puttin the last polish on, and we hadda hurry to duck outta sight.

The mornin went just the same, and again, the cobbler was smart, gettin some good food and more leather- and in a lot more colors this time. Lou was so excited he couldn’t hardly sleep for thinkin about what it was he’d do with that when he made the next pairs.

And, the best part, they left out a whole plate of cold ham and cheese and bread and cake, after loudly sayin to the room that they were too full to eats another bite, but maybe they’d want a midnight snack.

So’s, since we had good work and good food, we kept it up. And every day, all them’s shoes we’d made at night sold out! I mean, we was glad for it and all, but it was gettin harder and harder to finish up work before the cobbler and his wife was outta bed.

“Lou,” I said one night as I was stitchin a sole on, “this has been fun and all, but we ain’t makin no money, we’re just caught in the rat race.”

“Vinny, if there’s rat races, we oughta go! Cept.. we ain’t got nothin to bet with.”

Now, you know I love Lou like a brother, cause he is my brother, but there’s no one that’s ever gonna think he’s the brains of the outfit.

“That’s my point, Lou! Every night we work our fingers down to the nubs, but we don’t get no days off or money in our pockets. We just get another day of work.”

“But Vinny, we can’t go and leave ‘em now, they’d starve!”

“I don’t think that’s true, doncha notice that the old man is puttin some coin under the mattress every day? But look here, I think I gotta plan. We could wait up in the mornin, beg pardon for trespassin, and show ‘em how we been doin it so’s they could do it themselves!”

“I don’t know about that, Vin. Some people’s takes trespassin real serious like, and all this food we’s been eatin, well I ain’t sure I could outrun that cobbler’s wife if she decided to come after us with the griddle.”

Sometimes Lou’s got some good points, and after testin out my wings, I noticed I wasn’t even gettin offa the ground, fuggetabout runnin so we sat down and gave the whole idea another think.

Finally I clapped Lou on the shoulder. “Brother, look at what they did to us! We ain’t pickin no pockets in this shape. This was all a part of their ne-far-e-us scheme, doncha see?”

“No, Vin, I ain’t followin ya.”

I put down the shoe I was workin on and laid it all out for him. “They’s was just fattenin us up and lettin us earn our keep this way to keep us from a life of crime! They was tryin to make us go straight!”

Lou gasped. “Why them no good rat finks!”

“I’m tellin ya, Lou, we gotta get outta here before we turns into common house faeries. Maybe if we play it right, they’ll see the errors of their ways and send us off with some of that coin and we can do okay til we find a new business opportunity.”

And that’s how it was that at dawn we was sittin at the kitchen table, ready to have a real serious chat about right and wrong. I’ll tell ya, once I understood the whole sorry plan, I was real disappointed in that cobbler.

They didn’t look too surprised to see us, and when we laid out the whole deal for them, they was very agreeable about the situation. I guess they knew when the jig was up. I didn’t much have the heart to give ‘em the lecture they deserved when the missus started cryin and huggin on us, sayin we’d been so good to them. My stomach started turnin and we hurried and took our leave.

We was out in the street in these real spiffy little suits they’d had made up for us when Lou turned to me. “Say, Vin, can we go see the rat races now that we gots money to bet?”

I threw an arm around Lou’s shoulders. “Sure, buddy. Let’s go find us some work befittin men of our stature.”

And we did, but that’s another story.

Baba Yaga

I want to make it clear- I am only telling this story because I lost a bet with the most annoying little man you have ever laid eyes on. And he nagged and nagged and nagged and then, if you can believe it, he threatened to hex me! The nerve, I tell you.

Always I have kept to myself, and I think there is no crime in it. If someone trespasses upon my doorstep, especially if that someone isn’t one of our kind, I see no harm in using them for my entertainment. Or maybe my dinner. What’s it to you? Not like it was your child, for I am sure anyone that reads this would teach their children better than to go bothering the old hermit woman what lives in a hut standing on chicken legs. 

What? It was what I had in plenty and usually people are smart enough to be a little off put and then we all come out a little more fortunate for the day.

Once, centuries ago, there was a girl who was not taught her manners and had little in the way of common sense. So it was to my door she came begging, for a flame, because boo hoo hoo, her mean stepmother had left them only a single candle and that candle went out and left them all in the dark.

I ask you, who doesn’t see through those kinds of shenanigans? 

It happened that I had some chores that wanted doing, and I am sometimes more curious than I ought to be. Maybe, I think, if this pretty little girl is not smart enough to avoid my home, maybe it is because she is strong or brave. 

So I set her to the tasks, and wait to see how she copes. If she is smart, maybe I keep her, like a pet. I am no queen that is needing of a court, but having a mortal about can be useful from time to time.

Many tasks I set her to, and for days and days she does them, almost like she has a magic of her own. Maybe she is not so smart, but someone is doing her thinking for her, and I began to think that it is that someone I would like to know. I think, too, maybe it is another one of my kind trying to drive me out of my comfortable place and claim it for themselves, so I am being especially cautious to hide my secrets. 

In the meantime, all of the things that would take me time are getting done, and I am able to go further into my woods, where the deeper magics lie. I cast the bones of foresight, and see that this stupid little pretty girl will someday be a queen of her own kind. 

Well! That started the wheels turning in my head, mostly about how blind men are. Then I used the bones to look backward and the whole story came clear. The girl’s father was a fool chasing after a fortune to satisfy a bottomless pit of a woman who drove his child out of his home. But all to no good, for the girl, she had a powerful protection. That piece of the puzzle took some time to figure out- it was her mother, half a fae herself, stuck in a wooden stick in her daughter’s pocket that was trying to save her child. 

Now, the charitable thing to do would have been to spirit the stick away from the girl and set the mother free into a new body. The wise thing to do would have been to take the stick and use the mother as a slave. 

Over and over I went back and forth, thinking one way and then another. And why would I rush, anyway? The chores were getting done, I was getting good work done, no need to be hasty. Almost in spite of myself, I started to grow fond of the girl, and to admire the mother that never considered her work done as long as her child was in danger.

Yes, I can be a little sentimental from time to time, try not to be so surprised.

So, in time, when I had reached a good stopping point in my greater work, I gave the mother back the form of flame. It’s so close to spirit anyway that it didn’t take much anyway, and a good thing, too. While not quite as stupid as her daughter, she came very close. When I bade the girl to take the flame and begone, the stupid girl went home again! And her stupid mother burned up the bad stepmother and stepsisters, which don’t get me wrong, was a very good start.

Then stricken with horror at her actions, she told her daughter to bury her in the ground, so she couldn’t hurt anyone else.

Stupid woman.

Just as I had foreseen, the girl went onto a city, caught the eye of the right man, and became queen. She lived as close to happily ever after as anyone can, mostly, I think, because she stayed just as stupid til her dying day. Did you ever notice that? It makes me wonder why I spend so much time chasing knowledge, since ignorance seems truly to be bliss.

The world is a strange place, and that’s coming from an old hermit fae who lives in a hut made of bones. Think about that a second.

Her mother though? I dug her right back up again after she left and told her exactly what kind of a fool she was. Oh, how she wept and wailed and begged me to let her go and watch over her poor little child. Never a word of gratitude for not simply eating her, nor for giving her such a useful form. So I stole away her voice, and brought her back to my home where she could pay back all the work that I put into her new form.

Right now, she’s in my fire, warming my little hut. I keep telling her someday I may give her something closer to flesh, that she may be reunited with her Vasilisa.

Too bad I can’t give her wisdom with it.

As for me, Queen Vasilisa managed to spread enough stories about the mean old woman living on the edge of the gloomiest forest in all the lands that most people go out of their way to avoid me. If they should happen to find my little home, the turn pale and flee. Some have seen me at my labors and taken it ill, or let their imaginations run wild. The tales, they grow and grow until I am a legend.

Best of all, I am left in peace, mostly. 

Every once in a while, some idiot wanders into my domain and does something truly offensive. Sometimes, they run quickly enough.

And sometimes, I have dinner.

I’m just saying, seems like an awfully good idea.

I’m not really a thinker so much… I mean, I can think about things in a logical from point a to b to c manner, but it’s not really how I have my best concepts come up. I’m not sure how to explain it other than by saying sometimes I feel like I’m more intuitive than intelligent.

What does that mean? Well, it means I think/worry about a thing, trying to shove it into its box so I can think/worry about other things that don’t need thinking cause they are ready for doing… and while it’s in that box that I’m stomping up and down on to keep the lid shut while I handle something else, what magically pops out is the solve.

Clear as mud, I know. And I’m sorry but we’re gonna keep wandering anyway.

It came to me, while worrying over the SCOTUS’s latest antics and maybe considering rereading The Pelican Brief out of a certain grim nostalgia while recommending others read The Handmaid’s Tale cause I ain’t ready to put on a Martha uniform yet.

Whether you call them MAGAs or hard right Republicans (which I don’t like because the people I’m talking about aren’t Republicans) or, my personal favorite, Tuckerites, the fact of the matter is these are people who are banding together around hate. Something has happened to them, and I don’t know what, and honestly, I barely care at this point. Something happened to the point that one of the drivers for their sense of purpose is to tell other people how to live. And sometimes they call themselves Christians, which, you know, you do you, fact is that little brown guy told you to love, accept, and care for everyone, not the those that happen to look and think like you.

Think about what being on the inside of that community is like. Some of you may already know what it’s like- the ongoing crusade against so many things that don’t matter, giving (and giving, and giving) money to support people who want to stand on a stage and scream into a microphone to tell you what to think, and by the way, give me more money. I’ve known folk that were churchgoing types… but you know, I’ve never seen a member of said church turn up when they needed someone. In fact, I’ve seen members of churches put people in precarious positions (hey, elderly woman, why don’t you let this sketchy drug user be your new roommate? we’ve prayed on it, it’ll be fine) that don’t exactly equate to caring for people in a healthy way.

Please understand, if your experience with organized religion has been different from mine and my observances, I’m happy for you. I don’t need to hear about it, just keep doing you and let it keep doing what it does for you.

Myself, I don’t need that. I don’t need someone to play gatekeeper and standing between me and faith. No one does. I suppose I do follow Christ a tiny bit, or at least some of the teachings- but he was not the first or only one to tell humanity to be good to each other, make amends for trespass, and pray in private.

So, getting closer to my point here.

What do the communities that aren’t simpatico with the Tuckerites have in common?

Well, they aren’t built on a foundation of hate. Ever been to Pride? It’s an outpouring of love and acceptance. Ever been welcomed by a sweet old abuela to dinner? Pure, fattening as fuck lard cookies made with love. People who cling to their identities and refusing to be other than out of pride, and sometimes stubbornness, but always, always love. These people know who they are with a surety like a lodestone drawn to true North. Their purpose is a better life for their people, for their children, and they are fucking fiercely beautiful and strong in that purpose.

In my heart, I believe the Tuckerites are jealous. Beyond who they vote for and who they hate, they have no identity. They parents and their children are either just fucking like them, or very fucking distant, trying to find their own path out of the judgmental hatred.

I ended up talking about this to a whole lot of people last week, so I guess there’s nothing stopping me from writing it now. My mom was definitely a Tuckerite, and she really did not care for gay people. “Why do they have to shove it in everyone’s faces?” was a common question, and, like most of my generation, I would sigh and refuse to engage. (Yes, my mother knew I am bi, she just didn’t care to acknowledge it or it may have impeded her ranting.)

When that same question came up during the Q&A portion of the panel I was on, it rang through my head in a memory I’ve been trying to forget. “How do you deal with these people who say this?”

Well, clearly, I didn’t. Funny thing about life is that it typically creates the circumstances for growth, if you are willing to see and take advantage of them. My foster son, who was out and gay, reconnected with us during the pandemic. I’m sorry to say that he never got to meet my stepdad (who passed when we were still all in bubbles and everything was shut down solid), but from the moment he met my Tuckerite, grieving mother, he took her into his arms and called her Gramma. He helped us move her out of her apartment, came to spend time with her while she was living here, and even visited her in the hospital, took her deliveries out to the rehab center. He could get her to laugh, take her meds, and eat when she would ignore the rest of us. Jake had a million things to do at any given moment, and he always made time for my mother, always treated her with great care and affection.

One of the last times I saw my mother was Mother’s Day, and my foster son, naturally, went with me. She reached out to hug him before me, and hugged him again after me when we left. I never asked Jake to censor himself around her, or be anyone but who he was. And if this home is built on anything (except Star Wars), it’s love and care.

From the time she met Jake til she passed away nearly two years later, I never heard her say a single negative thing about gay people.

Love will win over hate every time- in my deepest heart, I truly believe this. I have to, or the tidal wave of hate breaking over our heads right now becomes unbearable.

It’s just hate, fueled by jealousy of the strength of communities, by fear, by anger. When you’ve been sold a bill of goods stating that to be enlightened/saved/whatever rocks your jollies has only one miserable path that requires you to condemn others, and you see all these others who know who they are, daring to be different, and then being HAPPY being different from you… and that you cannot follow… surrounded by people who love and support their differentness, knowing you would NEVER receive that same care if you let yourself be like them…

I’d be pissed too.

So this… individual.. named Becky Burkett apparently doesn’t like childless people at Disney.

Disney’s Magic Kingdom to Welcome ONLY Adults With Children, Beginning Late Summer 2023

I know this may seem really shocking if you’ve been reading along and just think your devoted blogger is just as fucking cool as a polar bear plunge in January…. I’m not cool. I’m not confident. In fact, I typically have to be slightly coaxed (if not outright bribed) to leave this charming little abode in which about 90% of what I see, hear, smell, and touch was put there because I take pleasure in it. All of the other creatures in the house actually like me, I hope at least 90% of the time.

The short list of places where I feel out of place-

1. The park- people don’t like it if you play on the slide or swings and you’re over 30. I’m not saying they’ll card you.. just the STARES pretty much do the job on their own.
2. Restaurants. Since covid, I worry I’m not tipping enough or that I’m inadvertently being a pain by wanting to tidy the dishes. Or that I ordered something complicated, and the server is wishing I’d go die in a fire.
3. The movies- it’s not like the plane where middle seat gets both armrests… they are all middle seats! WTF gets the armrest! (not gonna lie, been considering booking a buffer seat so it’s never a problem again and I don’t have to crane my neck from an aisle seat to see the screen.
4. Retail stores-
   • /cough TORRID cough- the mean girls working the counter are usually talking smack about whoever just left before me… what new irritations am I provoking without knowing?
   • Bath and Body works- OMG please quit putting stink under my nose that I didn’t ask for! I do not want to smell fucking Dragonfly Shimmer Daydream for the rest of the day!
   • Really everywhere on the mall- I don’t care WHY you want my phone number, I don’t fucking want to give it to you. Does it ever occur to you that the fact that your employer is willing to give ridiculous discounts on purchases if you have it means my data is more valuable to them than your product?

Now, I’m not saying Disney parks are my Cheers or anything- but I do enjoy stepping into various fantasy versions of the real world. Where the staff is nice and plays along. Where you get to pick the experience you want, as long as you got that credit card to make your Disney dream come true.

I’m not saying I didn’t see the OG rant on childless people at Disney before.. I did.. and I chalked it up to the old adage.. opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one.

But this Becky Burkett… she took all this effort to write this article, filled with links about how nutty ‘Disney adults’ are. Didn’t notice the first time? Here’s a few examples-

RELATED: Disney Adults Are Awful Human Beings. And Some Are Barely Human at All

RELATED: Cringe-Worthy Disney Adults Really Are the Worst. Here, See For Yourself

RELATED: Disney Adults & Mental Health: What’s the Connection?

RELATED: Report From the American Psychiatric Association Claims Disney Adults Are No Longer Considered Psychopaths

I’m sure I could find Becky’s IG and Twitter and go bonkers at her and call her names. But you know, just like I yield the armrest, tip 30%, and don’t play on the swings anymore… that’s just not something I do. If I’ve learned anything about mean girls in the nearly fifty years of dealing with them, it’s that attention is the key.

So here ya go, Becky Burkett, writer for DisneyDining.com… I hope you enjoy the meager attention from my teensy, rambling blog. I hope you get a laugh out of the fact that I had a long moment of incredulous sadness. I hope the fact that I now understand that there’s more than an unhinged rant about people like me, that there’s actually a whole movement of people like yourself, writing this clickbait articles to convince us to stay home just fills you with glee.

In the end… well, the judge from Office Space said it best.

There’s a lot of thoughts and feels running around in my brainpan right now- and I’m sorry to say a sizeable portion fueled by anger and despair.

One of my little hobbies is to peruse a few forums on Reddit, most often r/internetparents and r/amiwrong. Yesterday I came across two posts that absolutely broke my heart.

The first was someone upset that Astrid in the live action How to Train Your Dragon is going to be played by a young Black actress. You see, she herself is descended from the vikings, and identified with Astrid growing up.

Gee. Ya don’t say.

Deep in my heart (and probably for obvious reasons) I truly believe that telling stories is the most important thing we do as people. Whether its written down, filmed, a conversation between friends- to tell a story is to offer up the chance to connect with someone. To have them feel what’s in your heart and mind at a moment in time. Maybe you’re trying to make someone laugh with a tale of your own ridiculousness. Maybe you’re trying to give a lesson through your own experience.

But you never (or at least I never) tell a story without the intent to evoke a feeling. Let that marinate a minute- every show you’ve ever watched, every book you’ve read, every anecdote has attempted to control you. But in a good way (well, mostly.)!

When it comes to representation, stories are going further. If you can see and identify with the character’s situation, what they say, what they do… well, they go from being a character to being a person that you’re rooting for through their story. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, they become Real. Real people can be empathized with, because, holy chao, there’s ways in which they are like you. Because that’s where the basis of understanding them begins, it’s then okay that they aren’t like you in other ways, because the Realness is already there.

Here’s the secret.. every person is Real. The problem is that if we routinely see the world around us that way, it can be devastating to feel that many feels at once, to understand that so much joy and pain and noise, feelings just as real as what YOU feel every day.. it’s out all there. It’s all Real, and there’s too damn little you can do to share in the wonder.. or stem the bleeding. It’s too much to encompass, and we’re at critical mass overload. I truly believe that we were not meant to live in communities as large as we do… and if we continue to do so, we’re going to need an upgrade of some kind to allow us to be the best part of humanity while eradicating the worst parts.

And what’s really not helping is the undeniable fact that our society, particularly in the last 10-15 years, has a vested interest in exploiting the fault lines between people and telling us how different we are.

Because if someone is different from you, it’s okay to think you are greater than.

If someone is different from you, it’s okay not to agree with them.

If someone is different from you, it’s okay to hate them.

Go Team Us. Boo Team Them.

Sound familiar? There’s a reason it resonates- it’s taking that overload and breaking it down to a binary equation. The most useful life skill I have picked up is to simplify the complex, and I like to think I do it well. We don’t like to feel stupid, and if you can make something simple, gaining agreement gets a lot easier.

Do you feel like we’ve gone full circle? Cause we’re almost there.

There’s nothing simpler than manufactured outrage- over, maybe, something that on its face is about art, but in reality, is stopping people from identifying with people not like them.

I know it hurts and I know it’s hard. I still hope you’ll find it in your heart to see who’s Real and hear their story.

With that in mind, I want to leave you with this story. As you read it, imagine this is your friend you lost touch with, but have thought of fondly from time to time.. someone Real to you.

That’s all I have to say, because my heart is too full.. yes, with horror and hurt, but maybe a little spark of hope, too. Because if I didn’t believe we were better than this… why would I be here telling you the story?

Be well, friends.

LGBTQ Couple arrested for PDA at mini-golf in Texas
byu/Cheeseballfondue inBestofRedditorUpdates

It’s a gray day that’s a little too warm.. especially when, you know, the cooler isn’t on yet. (That’s tomorrow and we will survive til then.)

So we’re laying on the couch, a little bored as I get rid of a headache and Rick naps a little.. I sit up and he asks what I’m going to do.

Rick- Gonna play your game? (Referring to The Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, in which I am stuck trying to fly into a stupid storm. I’m actually afraid of heights and this part is a little anxiety inducing)

Me- Gonna stop picking on me as much? Notice I didn’t say ‘at all’, because I understand reality.

Rick- I’m not picking on you! I’m giving advice!

Me, imitating Rick- ‘Oh hey, how bout next time you don’t fall and die’… THAT IS NOT ADVICE

Rick- Sure it is! It’s something you shouldn’t do next time.

Me, sighing- Now I have to go write this up.

Rick- You’re just stalling now.

Me- That’s right! Can’t die if I’m writing and I will keep on staving off the death! /marches down the hall to scribble this down