It’s a draft… but I wanted to share.

In a tiny fishing village nestled betwixt and between the sea, the forests, and the mountains, there was a solid, sturdy boy named Jeran.

Hair bleached blond by the sun and whipped into a stiff crest by the salt and the spray, barefoot in most weathers, it seemed Jeran had always been a part of NestledbytheSea. And that was almost true. On the rare occasion that there was time for talk, and folk troubled themselves to ask the lad where (or more to the point, who) he’d come from, Jeran would give a lazy, one sided smile. “Might as well say I’m the son of the wind and the waves,” and something about the insouciance of the words, or the way the boy’s jaw set worked the magic of discouraging questioners.

Though he would not give more of his antecedents than that, the townsfolk had come to trust Jeran nonetheless. He seemed to always turn up when extra hands were needed. And so clever his hands were! It seemed there was nothing of the trade of the sea he did not know, whether it was fishing nets wanting mended or a flat bottomed hull wanting tarred. There was no job so dirty, noisome, or tedious that Jeran wouldn’t lend his aid. And always, always with goodwill and thoughtfulness. 

The Widow Carpenter’s shingles were renewed like magic each fall, and wood chopped to get her through the winter. When this had been accomplished, no one knew; it would simply be done once the air got a certain nip to it.

Builder Halron had broken his leg in the busy summer season, and went from a prosperous man to one who did not know what he could barter to feed himself through the winter. The week after the accident, a small skiff of the type that could be sailed by an injured man and several casks of smoked fish turned up at the dock off his porch. 

Whenever asked, Jeran would give his one sided smile and proclaim that he had no knowledge of how these things had come to pass. “Lots of good hearted people in this village, glad to do for one another. It’s why I never wanted to call anywhere else home!”

When they stopped to think about it, not one of the longtime residents of NestledbytheSea could put a finger on just when the boy had turned up. It just seemed he’d always been there, a lanky, tireless blond boy with pretty sea green eyes.

And that was more or less the way Jeran wanted it.

He had come to this tiny village to be a part of a community that took its living from the sea, not only to be a part of it, but to learn everything there was to know about that ever changing beauty. When Jeran was not, to his mind, earning his place within the village, he could sit at the mouth of his sea cave for hours. Watching the waves lap against the rock, the changing colors of the sun and moons reflecting off the waters. Sometimes he’d feel the call of the magic, and slip beneath the surface to feel himself and all the forms of life seemingly suspended in space and time. Resting upon the ocean floor, he’d let the sands trickle through his fingers, and wait.

What he was waiting for, Jeran didn’t precisely know. It was as though he was perched on the edge of the dock, ready to dive into the water, but the perching went on and on. 

And so Jeran schooled himself to patience. He smiled his smile, he helped where he could, and when the waiting became too much to bear, he wrapped himself in the arms of the ocean herself. She always understood him, and soothed him when no other pursuit could.

It came as no surprise to him that when the first call came, he was dozing there in a tangle of kelp. He slept better under the water, as though all the pressure of it held him together and let him hear only what truly mattered.

In his dream, he saw a beautifully curved bow rise from the waves and slice through them, clean as a knife. This vessel rode upon the water, towering above the currents that could swamp the flat bottomed scows the villagers used for fishing and trading wares along the coast. It was gilded by the moon that paid a path to the northeast, dancing with starlight. 

For the first time in his long, long life, Jeran felt a longing deep into his bones. He must stand upon that ship and be carried where the stars followed. When morning came, it found him woolen headed and muzzy. It seemed all he could think of was how the ship had been shaped.  The curving sides that held it aloft in the water would give far better control in the vast open waters, making all manner of voyages possible.

Before the sun was a handspan over the horizon, Jeran found himself at Master Halron’s door, pushing himself in on that good man’s breakfast. While at first sleepily annoyed, there was something about Jeran’s ideas that intrigued him and fired his imagination almost in spite of himself.

“Working the wood to warp it intentionally can be done, I learned that in my time with the elven woodsmiths. Would that one of them were here!” The builder had one of those mobile faces with bushy eyebrows and an overly pronounced, beaky nose that works itself into exaggerated expressions without its owner’s permission. Just now, the dark brows were drawn together in thought as he fetched a stick and began sketching on a sand table under the window’s light, a piece of forgotten toast dangling from his other hand.

“See here, lad,” he said, pointing with the stick after he’d drawn what Jeran had described. “If we drill out the joins correctly and assemble it together like so, tarring the seams well… I think this is what you’re wanting?”

Jeran leaned over the table, for once, smiling with both halves of his mouth. It was a beatific grin that lit his whole face, and suddenly neither Master Halron nor his wife begrudged the break in their morning routine. Before they knew it (and for reasons that were difficult to explain later), they had agreed to help Jeran build his dream. Having their hands seized, wrung in thanks then led to the trio madly capering about the small cottage. 

They could never describe it to anyone but each other, but for the builder and his wife, it would become a long cherished memory.

“The only problem,” wheezed the good master as he tried to catch his breath, “is that I do not have enough seasoned wood on hand for such an undertaking.”

“No problem at all, Master Halron. I shall see to it immediately!” Again flashing that bright grin, Jeran was out the door before another word could be spoken.

The builder’s lady fell into her chair at the small dining table, and hand on her chest. “My word, I’ve never seen the like from our Jeran, did you see the way his eyes shone?” And her smile was almost as bright as Jeran’s had been.

Master Halron laughed, a carefree sound he hadn’t made since he was a very young boy himself. “My dear, I do believe we are about to see a thing that has never been seen before, and it fair takes my breath away.”

As the builder and his wife finished plotting their next steps over breakfast, Jeran’s feet carried him to the furthest part of the village that could still be rightfully considered part of the village. Unlike the paths by the beach that were paved with smooth stone, from the last bend of the path onwards was paved with wood chips.

Banly was a woodcutter that had fallen in love with a local girl while visiting for a trader’s mission who had just never left. He’d found a spot by the forests he so loved, built his wife to be a fine log cabin, and settled in among a people that needed him, but never really understood his fascination with trees. Redheaded (and bearded), squat and muscled with the demands of his profession, he had three sons that had turned out just like him, and two daughters that had followed their mother’s ways to the sea.

When you live in the forest, the demands of the sun are not quite as insistent as when you live upon an eastern shore, and Jeran found the whole family still at table for breakfast. To be sure, it was a massive table and a massive breakfast; Jeran found himself dwarfed by the four burly men with their bristly beards. 

“Master Banly! I have a need for quite a lot of wood.”

The eldest woodcutter harrumphed and glared at this stripling lad balefully. Some people need to build up to the concept of morning, and Banly just so happened to be one of them. He jabbed a finger at his youngest son, then made a shooing motion. Being of a sunnier disposition to greet the day, the boy (who was still a foot taller than Jeran and used to his father’s grumpiness) grinned and motioned Jeran into his seat with a wink.

Once seated, another grunt and point saw to it Jeran was presented with a more than ample breakfast. While it may have daunted him any other day, making dreams come true was apparently appetite building, and the boy fell to the overflowing plate with a will. Only once about half of the contents had been consumed was there another grunt from Banly in his direction.

“Of course, Master Banly, I want to build a ship. A ship of the likes we’ve never seen before, that can go beyond the largest of the waves and cross the sea,” he waved a forkful of eggs towards the general direction of the coast.

Banly made a garumph into his beard, raising an eyebrow inquisitively.

“I have no idea, I just know how we need to go about building the ship. There could be anything out there- sea monsters, naiads, mermaids, maybe a new way to see the whole world!” Just considering all of the possibilities made Jeran’s head spin. Always before, he’d been content to watch the world from this tiny corner of it, but as suddenly as he was asked the question (though to be fair, whether or not that was the question is only known to Banly) it was as if the entire world beckoned to him. 

The woodsman stared at Jeran for a long minute, his head cocked to the side as though he strained to hear music from too far away. It made everyone at the table pause, straining to hear what Master Banly heard.

The mistress of the house remembered the moment that Banly had clasped her hand to his breast while they took their vows, and how it had pounded against her knuckles.

The eldest brother’s imagination was fired by this ship Jeran had spoken of, and he could almost see it, as he heard the bite of the axes, thudding into the flesh of his friends. Then the pounding of the hammers that would give them new life out upon the waves, to go far beyond the horizon. He resolved to find the tree spirits that would wish such a fate.

The youngest daughter, though… she had eyes only for Jeran. While most saw a brightness within him, then the kindness that he let flow from him, young Salda saw him standing in the prow of this ship he imagined, ever facing forward to see what came next. Leading with a pure heart, never looking behind him, but ever forward to each new sight and new day. She lost her heart to that mad young man for then and always, and always knew that he would never be more than kind to her.

But her heart was gone from that moment and she followed him on all of his voyages, save the last.

From time to time, there can be a special kind of madness and magic, when inspiration is able to kindle and catch fire amongst a group of folk. So it was that summer in NestledbytheSea once Masters Halron and Banly began working from a dream. Everyone genuinely liked Jeran and respected the masters, and before long, work on the usual summer projects was lain aside that they may turn all available hands to this ship. Those that could follow Master Halron’s sketches guided those that couldn’t, while those that couldn’t swing a hammer lent their backs to help carry the lumber. Those that could do neither of those instead saw to the care and feeding of the laborers. And still others, after an evening’s consultation with Master Halron and Jeran, began work upon the immense sails that would be required.

Hoping to please the dreamer with their gift, the sails began to take form. The lady of the oyster beds had a cousin who traded with the elves on occasion, and offered an exorbitant price that she lay hands on a particular type of oil that would stain the rough cloth a deep blue and seal it against the air. When she showed the other sewers what she had wrought, nothing would do but that the Widow Carpenter’s wedding gown be plucked free of all the beautiful silver embroidery that graced it.

When a young girl expressed her astonishment that the widow was willing to destroy the lovely dress, the old woman smiled. For just that moment in time, the gathered were all able to glimpse the girl she had been when last she wore it. “Child, I had my moment with this, and I could have wished it to have been passed on to a girl of my own. But as that did not come to pass, I would rather the thread shine out to the world than be wasted on just me. And the dress is still lovely to me, as a memory of what was and a reminder of how much further a piece of me and my Merk still go.”

So if there were a few tears that fell as the stars of their sky were stitched upon the deep blue sailcloth, some of them were in hope, and others in remembrance.

All through the summer, NestledbytheSea buzzed from before dawn to very late in the long nights, watching the bones of the dream rise on the beach next to the largest dock. Within two weeks, the ribs were there, two more saw the planks begin to hug around them. A sturdy, spacious cabin was planned for below the decks, with space meant to carry all manner of things. Already, those that plied their flat bottomed boats up and down the coast to trade saw the merits of such a shape for carrying cargo. Their conversations of future hopes made a fine counterpoint to the work of the present during the evenings, and everyone had their own little trove of insight to share.

About three months from the time Jeran awoke from his dream in the grotto, his ship was all but completed. He awoke on the first morning with the crisp bite of fall to see his sails, the beautiful silver starred sky sails being hoisted into the rays of dawn’s light.

There are moments in life that are too perfect for mere words, and a space in our hearts for those sights, sounds, and feelings to be permanently etched. To recall them is to be back, for a little while, in that one time and place, a gift to carry through all of one’s days.

So that moment was for Jeran, the day he set sail in his dream with Salda, her cousin Rippen, and a stowaway squirrel named Climber to see what lay beyond the horizon.

Their journeys would become legend.

If house hunting is hell, moving day has to rate somewhere in the lower regions of purgatory.

Chaos, in a word. With the mess getting deeper with the addition of a seven year old son, hyperactive basset hound, and husband who is convinced, out of nowhere, that he has descended from a long line of professional moving men and knows best.

After the seventh repetition of ‘I know what I’m doing honey’ I finished taping up the boxes holding my dishes and said a small prayer. To whom, I don’t know.. I never heard that there was a patron saint of relocation.

My distant consolation was the fact that we weren’t going through all this torment for yet another undersized overused apartment. No, we’d finally found the perfect little jewel of a house, with a price that we couldn’t have resisted.

“It’s almost too good to be true,” Bart had said a few dozen times as we’d walked over the house, and a few dozen more as we hung in the limbo of making offers. By the time the offer had been accepted, he shut up, though he claimed not to be as superstitious as I am, I know that he didn’t want to tempt fate.

By midafternoon, the cap of moving day hit as it began to snow. Frustrated, seeing himself as letting down all that supposed inbred talent and skill, Bart and his helpers hurriedly stored the boxes in the wonderfully spacious garage. I wasn’t especially pleased with this, but I also had no intention of going through to see if my perfect dinner set of 12 had become a somewhat imperfect set of 300 in the snow.

By the time the rushed stacking of the boxes and odds and ends of funiture was finished, the garage had ceased to be an empty cradle, waiting to provide comfort to our vehicles. Instead, it was a tumbled wilderness, where curtains and paintings of questionable taste lurked darkly. A bad start, but I reasoned to myself that not everything can go perfectly; we were already way ahead of the game as it was, and due a drawback or two.

Sleep was peaceful and deep that night, and I can truthfully say that I heard nothing.

I continued to hear nothing throughout the next month, as I slowly began the work of moving the house in from the garage, box by box.

Its funny about the things we choose to hang on to. As I began my slow but sure excavations, I noticed a number of things that didn’t need to be in the house. In my categoric mind, I began planning a yard sale for the first week of summery weather.

It was probably just about March, when the true rainy season set in, that Bailey the Basset got the quills in his nose. “What the hell?” Bart said curiously, and I knew the situation had to be truly dire to have gotten his attention away from the Lakers vs Bulls game. With a sigh, I wiped my hands on the dishtowel and went into the den to find Bart holding one of the quills up to the light.

“Damn dog managed to find a porcupine out here in the suburbs. I didn’t think porcupines even lived in the desert.” He passed the artifact to me, and since I’ve never seen a porcupine, quills off or on, I nodded at it wisely. Bailey seemed none the worse for his attempting maiming, in fact, he was already face down in his water dish.

“Strange though,” I said softly. “It doesn’t really feel like anything animal. It feels almost.. well.. wooden.”

“Would Tony have left a little wooden spear around for the mutt to get into?”

“Be rather hard to stick a wooden spear in your own nose without opposable thumbs, no matter how Tony left it laying.”

Bart shrugged, his attention wandering back to the beckoning glow of the tv screen. “Maybe porcupine quills change to a more dried out kind of texture as they get older. Who knows? I’m not Dr. Doolittle or anything. But you might just keep Bailey indoors more, and tell Tony to watch his toys. Poor little guy was crying,” he finished, rubbing Bailey’s ears absently.

“Yeah, I’ll do that,” I said sourly, heading back to the kitchen to find the heroically wounded animal a treat.

When queried with the offending spear, Tony shrugged unknowingly. “Maybe Bailey went to Borneo and found the pygmies. It’s about the right size,” he said, squinting at it and showing me how tall the pygmies ought to be.

“And where’d you learn about Borneo and pygmies?”

“Pauline found ‘em. On the old channel.”

I sighed and sent Tony back out to get into whatever mischief he had in mind for the afternoon. Anything to keep him away from the classic movie channel and the Perils of Pauline!

The next incident was about a week later, when Bart adventured into the dark garage for his soldering iron. After opening multiple boxes and generally making a mess, he shouted for me. Of course, as the woman, I must have some divine mystic ability to place my slender hand on precisely the implement he wanted, even before he told me what he was looking for.

“Bloody hell,” he growled some snappish 45 minutes later. “The damn thing’s just plain gone.”

“What’s worse than that,” I answered, “is that I could swear that a bunch of things have been moved around. Not the big stuff,” I said quickly. “And not the stuff that you were digging through either. But that picture.. the horrible one of the orange sails heading into the sunset. I could have sworn it was all the way against the far wall last week.”

And now it sat, still against the wall, but halfway down it. As though the picture had tired of its exile and was trying to escape into the house. There was also an old coleman camping lantern that had somehow been removed from its shelf, and the matches were missing entirely.

“That lantern was too high up for the kid to reach. And I can’t imagine him taking the matches or moving the painting,” Bart said, shaking his head thoughtfully.

Then the picture crashed noisily over on its side, and Bart and I decided that the soldering iron wasn’t that damned important. Or that we were very much out of shape and a sprint to the door was a good idea. The spookyness of the garage had won out for the day.

That night, the chanting began.

Our bedroom was directly over the garage, or I’m sure the kids would have long since alerted us about the phenomenon. Adults tend to sleep more soundly, and give less credence to the soft night sounds that would immediately get the full attention of a child. I listened to the chants for over a week before mentioning it to Bart, putting it down to some new, interesting perversion on the behalf of the hot water heater.

“No,” Bart said when the subject finally came up. “It’s more like those monks that do the backup for those Pure Moods bands.”

“Monks,” I said meditatively, tapping my nails against the stem of my wineglass. “So you think monks have moved into our garage?”

“I’d rather have monks than mice,” Bart frowned.

“Monkly mice, then? Involved in rites for the glorification of God and garaged housewares?”

Bart laughed, the whimsical laugh of little boys and men that have had too much to drink and too little sleep. “I’d prefer mice monks to rat chanters, dancing around the fire with spears.”

And suddenly, it wasn’t funny anymore.

Picking up the big flashlight, the kind cops carry in lieu of batons sometimes, Bart headed for the door to the garage, then thought better of it. Instead of entering through the house, he stepped out the front door. I heard the grinding whir of the garage door opener, and curiousity overcame good sense.

By the time Bart had begun to step in, I was beside him, peering mistrustfully into the sea of our junk.

I couldn’t have remembered the placement of all those boxes precisely.. and yet…

I could have sworn that Tony’s toy box had been taped shut. Now it was open, contents strewn all over the place. Bart grunted, obviously ready to shift the blame to a boy that wanted just one plaything in a box of hundreds of nearly forgotten toys.

When the light hit the surrounding cartons, even Bart had to concede that Tony didn’t have any reason to disarm the GI Joe’s and rip off their heads. A set of Lincoln logs had been broken into and scattered about as well.

By following the path of debris, we found a small hole in the wall of the garage. I remembered when we had first seen the house, there had been an old deep freeze covering this spot. It had looked old, and awkward to move, so I hadn’t thought anything about it.

Now it looked like I should have.

Shining the light in the hole showed us nothing. The darkness was too absolute for a mere flashlight. Bart straightened, shrugging in what I’m sure was meant to be a nonchalant way. As the beam cast over into the corner by the maligned hot water heater, the shrug turned into a shudder.

For in a tidy little path marking the way to the pilot light, we found the GI Joe heads… mounted on tiny pikes. “They honor the firekeeper,” I murmured softly, drawing a look from Bart.

“They?” his voice came out in a squeak.

“Pygmies. The hole goes to Borneo, really Bart, didn’t you ever watch the Perils of Pauline?” I thought I was making a joke, but the longer we stood there, looking at the precisely placed pikes, heads, and the slightly spooked ‘this isn’t happening to us’ look in each others’ eyes, the less funny it was.

“Humph,” Bart said thoughtfully as he took my hand and tugged me from the garage, very carefully watching all the dark corners. “I always saw myself as a live and let live kind of guy.. what do you say we have a truce over the garage, and always remember to knock? I mean, anything that can mangle a GI Joe like that has to be hell on mice.”

And the garage door closed.

A few nights later, I was tucking Tony into bed. “Mom,” he muttered sleepily, “you left the window open.”

“So?”

“So, if it’s open, the flying spleen eating weasels could get in.”

I started to tell him there was no such thing. And then I had a startlingly clear mental image of pygmies, mounted on flying spleen eating weasels, and shut my mouth with a snap.

I closed the window and kissed him goodnight.

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.

The world is a stranger place that we can reckon, and we pass it all by, not as ourselves with how we see us- crooked teeth, laughs that go on too long, the resting faces that say bitch to some and neutrality to others. No, we appear in perfect little rectangles, frozen in time like the wallet sized photographs from long ago school picture days. Like those unwanted cluttery snapshots, we may fade, or take on a patina in certain lights that we certainly did not possess… except when we do.

We think of belonging in regimental fashion, to our family, our organizations, our country- but that is the cheap version to give lip service to when we must fit, must be made to fit, to have something larger than ourselves to look to. That is not belonging.

Those I belong to, I belong to because they keep that little secret snapshot of me in their minds, and I keep mine of them. Little pieces of self in moments that cannot be posed or chosen from a set of proofs to be as perfect as possible. There are people I belong to that belong to me that I see and remember as their most glorious, charming, kind, loving selves. In me I hold my people as being courageous, laughing at all the right parts, and trusting in sharing the burden of their pain to lighten the load. They will never know themselves in my mind, and I will never know myself in theirs, but that lack only makes them the more precious.

I am theirs and they are mine, not in any words that mean what they should mean. I try to throw away whether the words matter, to give shape to the idea of belonging and just enjoy that we belong.

The divine spark in me recognizes and greets the divine spark in you.

The human soul in me that knows pain and weeps, weeps with the human soul in you.

I will wake tomorrow and go about my day, and do the best I can to be a good person. I may not succeed, but if I do in any measure, it is because I meditate on the nature of love and belonging today.

Before the End- Darandur

The gentle dripping of the clock that marked all the days and nights of life within the massive keep had a character all its own, to those that truly heard it.

Darandur had heard that sound, echoing through the caverns for all his life. Sometimes, he felt they burbled with the joys of discovery in the deeps, urging him on around the next bend. It was a promise to guide him home, no matter how many twists and turns the path may take.

Some days, the tempo was a steady given that exhorted him to calm and patience. I have measured millenia in this same way, and I will go on for always and ever, that drip said, and none of Darandur’s problems seemed all that pressing in the sound of that ever onward pace.

On this day, he found himself resting his forehead against the stone of the time piece’s edifice, trying to shut out all of the thoughts clamoring for attention. Of a mercy, there were no other steps or voices, none of the crowded shuffling and murmuring of the Many here.

There were many advantages to life in the keep Naradhurn had carved out of the rock at the beginning of all things. Surrounded by the most treacherous mountains in Myskaria, outsiders were not a common sight. As the treasures crafted by the inhabitants were prized and highly sought, a distant and sheltered refuge was what had kept them all safe.

When he was due for his shift, the drops had the insistence of a drumbeat, driving him out into the snows with his spear this grandmother had made for him to stand the watches and march the patrols. Darandur was honor bound to take both his and his mother’s duties that they keep their debts paid to the thegn.

Once, and only once, Darandur had suggested that Thegn Barhadnein would understand the challenges within the Durein clan and reduce the tithe. “The thegn has spoken fair to me this past season, and never fails to inquire for mother’s health.” He remembered that he had said this with a gentle smile and touch to his mother’s hand, so unnaturally still. 

Without so much as moving his chair back from the dinner table, his father backhanded Darandur from his seat with a cuff that spilled him onto the polished stone floor. His head and shoulder took the brunt of the impact, but he bit his lip on any cry of pain. His mother struggled to rise before Grandmother laid her hand upon her shoulder, her mouth a grim line while her eyes bored into the patriarch.

Who did not look up from his bowl, but merely went on eating the watery stew, his jaws working mechanically. His face was weary, as it always was at the end of a day spent in the damp mines. Tharandur had no affinity for magic, no elemental gift at all to coax the precious ores and treasures from the stone. The Durein claim was not as profitable as it had been once, and the hours spent wresting even a meager living from it had taken a toll.

The silence stretched out, unbearably tense. Darandur, scion of the house, had achieved adult status from the time he first paid the family tithe. He would be within his rights to challenge his father, but a quick glance to Grandmother’s face told him this was not the time.

With his forehead’s warmth being leached away by the cold stone, it was easy to bring the scene that had played out three seasons ago to his mind. It was, he admitted privately, why he was standing here instead of putting his feet on the graveled path that would take him home.

Grandmother would be there, taking his spear and armor from him, as befit the matron of the house. She would have warm water at the hearth ready, that he might wash before sitting with his feet soaking in and not catch a chill. A hot drink would be in his hand while Grandmother cleaned and oiled his raiment, clucking over any new dings to be repaired during the next rest day.

And, if she were in a particularly good mood, with mother resting quietly and father gone wherever it was fathers went, Grandmother might tell him the story.

Over the years, Darandur tried to figure out what made the story so important, what it was that made it linger in his mind. Maybe it was the tale itself, filled with adventures unknown to a small boy, safe in the depths of the keep. Maybe it was how the hero broke every rule and every tradition for reasons most mysterious, or the people and creatures met along the way. The hero was young, and wise beyond those years,and people listened when they spoke. Maybe it was the way that the hero always got out of certain trouble, always saved the day.

Maybe it was the way Grandmother’s eyes shone when she looked at him and told him that he was her hero, her hope. It made him feel powerful, strong, determined to do the best he could for all of them.

As all the best stories, it had a hundred different parts, all of which Darandur knew by heart. He had only asked his mother for the story once, only to have her turn away with tears in her voice. “I don’t know it, I am not worthy to carry it to your ears.” That was all she had to say to cause her son’s tears, dripping with a silence beyond voices into his already growing beard.

It was best that Tharandur never knew the story was being told. While it hadn’t always been an armed truce between them, he had never been easy in his manner. Unlike the fathers of his agemates, Tharandur rarely made time for his son’s education, entrusting it to his own mother as their people had done in the days of old.

There was one day his father had taken up a teaching, though, that came unwillingly to Darandur’s mind as he stood, listening to the timeless dripping of the clock.

They had been out in the clear air, running the snare line in the deepest part of winter. Normally a duty that fell to the women of the clan, with their more nimble fingers to set the traps, Tharandur had taken it on the rest day so that Grandmother could stay by the fire with a nagging cough. Her thanks had been perfunctory enough to irk the proud man, and he stamped from site to site, Darandur struggling to keep up in his footsteps.

When they had four rabbits and a fine fat beaver, Darandur asked why they did not turn back to the keep.

His father had snorted, blasting a long plume from his beard. “There’s a lesson to teach there, lad.” He used a mittened hand to clear off the next stone overlook bench they came to. “Yes, we have enough meat to eat until the next rest day, or until mother’s cough decides to heal itself. But we also have three more traps set- because you can never count on the luck of traps. Now, we could go back, have our warm drinks, smoke our pipes.” His hand lingered over where his pipe hung from the belt for a moment, then went to his water flask instead, passing it to the boy before taking his own long draught and coming to a decision.

Tharandur motioned the boy back to his feet, with a sign that meant to step quietly. Very far inwardly, Darandur groaned to himself, feeling he was being punished in the way that small children do. It was another few minutes of sneaking through the snow before he felt an unwontedly gentle tap from Tharandur, followed by a point.

There, floundering desperately in the snow where their snare should be was a perfectly white rabbit. It was laying on its side, mouth open and panting, legs having churned the snow in panic. Around the right rear leg was the twine of the snare. As they watched, the rabbit leapt back to its feet, pulling and tugging, wildly bucking to attempt to free itself. It was a brief struggle, only this time the rabbit landed on its other side, facing away from the watchers. It turned its attention to the back leg as Tharandur cupped a hand over Darandur’s ear.

“I want you to watch this one,” he murmured. Horrified, his eyes darted between the rabbit, suffering so cruelly, and his father. He wanted to ask why, he wanted to take the spear and put the creature out of his misery, ashamed that he was being forced to do this thing.

This was not a thing a hero would do, he thought as the rabbit lay in the odd, curled shape on the snow.

It was just then that they heard the sounds of the thegn’s hunting party, crashing through the woods heedlessly so close to the keep. They were mounted on study ponies, thick furs to keep them warm, with mead in their flasks, and a stone sledge to drag their kills back over the snow. Darandur’s eyes were wide at the number of deer, rabbits, and even a moose piled up, reading for butchering. The rabbit lay, apparently too exhausted to care about the noise or footsteps anymore.

“Ah, Tharandur!” bellowed out Thegn Barhardnein, his red beard nearly glowing as the sun struck him. “I wish you’d come to join us if it was hunting you wanted this day. I do miss your voice raised in song, the way we used to hear it.”

“Illness in the house, my thegn. Wouldn’t do to spread it.”

“But you do hunt, and on your rest day, too!” The big man turned in the saddle to his companions. “See now, do as the head of Clan Durein does- always takes care of his own!” Darandur noted the expressions of the younger men take on the same he was sure his own had- was there ever a time or a place without old men feeling like they had to tell young men their duty?

“Och, thegn, the beast suffers. Should we not make an end to it?” asked a boy, younger than Darandur, mounted on a fine dapple grey pony.

Why couldn’t I say that to father? Darandur wondered.

Then his father’s dark eyes flashed before he spoke. “I would that you leave it to me, young master. Doing a bit of teaching this afternoon.”

The thegn’s wild brows formed a bridge over the long nose. “Oh, and what might the lesson be? Teaching your lad to do the women’s work?”

Predictably, this caused a derisive shout of laughter from the hunting party. “Nay, thegn.” The sledge passed by the party, and Tharandur motioned to it. “Do you not wish to guard that all the way back to the keep? We did see bear sign this day.”

The thegn frowned down at the pair before motioning the party off to follow the sledge, while keeping the boy on the grey pony by his side. “One can manage all responsibilities when one has the hands to do so. And I would know more of this lesson you teach.”

“Be that as it may, my thegn.” He turned away from the imposing, glittering figure wrapped in all the furs who did not feel the cold nor stamp through the snow. “Look again at that rabbit.”

Afraid of what he was going to see, Darandur turned back to find the rabbit in the odd, hunched shape, facing away from them. It seemed so very still. “Is it… is it dead?” he whispered, feeling as though he had failed the little creature.

“Nay, lad,” Tharandur said, pointing at the almost imperceptible movements around the twined foot. “Here’s the lesson- you give even the simplest creature enough time, and they will find a way out of the trap.” Darandur felt his heart leap as he looked back to the rabbit, who had almost gnawed through the twine and was moments from being free.

His eyes darted back to the thegn, who’s face had become a frozen mask.

“Aye, lad,” the thegn said, giving a nod to the boy. The boy flung a dagger from the saddle at the rabbit’s head, striking true. The movements stopped. “So it’s best to take what’s yours while you can. And ensure it does not suffer.” The thegn turned his gaze from Darandur back to head of the Durein clan. “A cruel teacher can lead to a cruel man. Next time, I would that you and your lad join the hunt.”

“As you wish, my thegn,” Tharandur said, and the great man rode away without another word.

Memories that make Darandur shake his head as though they were smoke from the pipe he could clear away as easily. They would not help him, just as tarrying here would not help him.

For this was the day that the scion of Clan Durein had failed his testing. The magic did not pulse in his veins, and the song of stone would not sing for him.

Darandur would be no one’s hero. Just the son of a cruel man.

The clock wept for him as he set his feet for home.

The Goose Girl and the magical horse that saved her ass

Sometimes, you find yourself in the strangest situations. The story I’m about to tell you is all because I did a favor for that pox ridden, sly witted, shadow tongued knave called Robin Goodfellow, he who serves at Oberon’s left hand and trapped me in a sad, sad state.

Suffice to say without lingering upon the circumstance, for all know that a full day and night could be spent in speculation upon Puck’s antecedents, that I was once trapped in the body of a horse. For two… hundred… years.

It took the first hundred years to regain the power of speech, then another fifty to keep humans from trying to kill me or disenchant me. At long last, I came into a royal stable, and my situation began to look up. Eventually, I befriended a young princess who was, unfortunately, rather fond of having a talking horse that had a bit of common sense about her. She discovered how to break the curse Puck had left on me, and bound it upon me so that once her daughter was settled and happy, I could resume my own natural form and go about my business. 

Well and so, at least it was a light at the end of the tunnel. And I wasn’t completely powerless, so I made sure the girl was decently pretty, figuring she’d get married off faster. 

And sure enough, the princess got to be about that age in which girl people notice there are boy people and vice versa, and a king of the neighboring land asked for her hand in marriage. Within the month, we were packed up, bag and baggage, with the queen reminding me of her promise to me, sealed with a few drops of blood that she placed on a kerchief in the princess’s pocket. 

We set off on a beautiful spring day, the kind of day in which all is inherently right in the world, and it’s a world that you know you won’t have to go about as a horse much longer. I was daydreaming off the lovely clothes I would wear and the meals I would eat and the company I would keep once I no longer had a tail and hooves.

Of course, that’s when it happened, because that’s the kind of cursed luck I’ve had since running afoul of Robin bloody Goodfellow. The princess grew thirsty and asked her one servant she was sent with to fetch her water from the brook. 

The sly creature sniffed and tossed her hair. “Get it yourself, I’m not getting all muddy before meeting the king just because you’re too stupid to fill a water bag.”

I pinned the servant with a steady glare, and spoke to the princess, who was already sliding out of the saddle to quench her thirst. “If your mother knew of this, it would break her heart,” I muttered, for it would have been slightly uncouth to scream, “Slap this unseemly shrew this instant, you coward!”

You know, the way things ended up, I probably would have been better off trying to put some starch in that spine immediately. Ah well, hindsight.

But I didn’t, and she didn’t, and we rode on. 

By midafternoon, the princess was again thirsty and the same disgraceful mummer’s show played out. Only this time when the princess leaned out over the water, the kerchief carrying the queen’s blood (and the realization of all my dreams of being in my own form again) slipped out of the princess’s pocket and was whisked away by the river.

The servant crowed in triumph. “Now that you’ve lost your mother’s blessing, I will no longer be a servant, but a princess.” In short order, she’d stolen the spineless princess’s clothing and climbed upon my back to ride into the king’s castle as his bride. I meekly went along with this indignity, trusting that the king could see for himself who was of royal blood and who was a serving maid. 

And if somehow he did manage to miss it, I would simply take the first opportunity to enlighten him. Truth be told, I was far more concerned about the missing kerchief than any other part of this little misadventure.

Unfortunately, the false princess was brighter than I gave her credit for. No sooner had we entered the courtyard than she demanded I be put to death for offending her. And the true princess, she claimed, should be given the simplest of tasks, for she was lacking in wit. (To be fair, the way her mouth gaped open after the former servant slapped her for speaking out of turn, that part of the story wasn’t hard to carry off.)

The king must have really wanted the alliance, for he took his bride at her word. And you know, I was still pondering the chances that dying as a horse would release me into my own form and let me put things right.

But no. My princess begged the knacker to stuff and hang my head on the wall where she could pass it every morning while she went off to her new occupation of herding geese. 

I swear I’m not inventing this tale. She really just wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

You know what’s worse than being a live horse? Well I’ll bloody tell you. It’s being a damned dead horse’s head who has to say nice things to hopefully bring some sense into the vast, empty, echoing wasteland that existed between the deposed princess’s ears!

So once a day, throughout the rest of the spring and summer, I got a total of about five minutes a day to give gentle, wise advice that equated to ‘stop being a moron and get me out of this mess’. And smell myself as I began to slowly decay. 

Boredom does not begin to describe how tedious this was. I started learning to imitate the voices of others to get the kitchen staff to pick fights with each other. And then I moved on to the stable hands, and though it took a little longer, I picked up the cadences from the gentry. 

That’s when I really got started.

The true princess was just never quite going to get there on her own, you see. Something about not wanting to be killed blah blah blah, yadda yadda. So I started a whisper campaign. In all sorts of voices, just barely able to be heard, I spoke of the goose girl and her beauty and kindness and how she was surely not some simple maid.

Eventually, as summer wound into fall and the flies, thankfully, died down (no pun intended), the king began to look upon the simple goose girl. I made sure her hair was as golden, her profile as nobly pure, and her skin as white as my dregs of magic could make it. 

And, you know, because fighting fair is fighting stupid, maybe I also made the false princess’s voice more like the cawing of a crow, her eyes squinty, gave her the gout, you know, just a few minor inconveniences. If the king’s affections for her had been true, he could have overlooked all of that.

But kings are the damndest people, and it was clear that even a half blind, croaking, gimping wife with an alliance was better than no wife and no allies. 

So… and I want to stress, this was a very long time ago and the reports are somewhat mixed. But it’s probably not a coincidence that right about then, one of her breasts sagged about two handspans from where it had been, and she sort of went bald.

At this point, the weight of the king’s crown was such that he liked to go for long rides with just a few retainers. Because roaming the countryside aimlessly is far better than staying home with your wife when your wife has… issues. 

On his way to the stable early one morning, he happened upon the goose girl and I speaking. “Oh,” I cried loudly, “how your poor queen mother’s heart would be broken to see you thusly, Your Highness!”

That (finally!) got the king’s attention. “Hark, what is it you say, ah, horse?”

I glared down at the goose girl and growled, “Tell. Him. NOW.”

But did she? Nooooooooo. 

Thankfully, the king was a good deal brighter than I’d initially thought. “I would hate to intrude on a private conversation,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back and rocking to his toes. He cast a canny glance at me, and I wondered just how much he’d put together of late. “Why don’t I just go along in for my mount and you carry on telling your story like I’m not even here.”

The goose girl dropped a curtsy and held it until the king was out of sight. “Well, Falada, I don’t know why I’d need to tell you the story, you were there.”

If I could have slapped my forehead in frustration, I would have. As it was, there was a long suffering sigh that refused to be contained. “But Your Highness, I would so enjoy hearing it in your sweet dulcet tones and better understand, from your point of view, what adventures we’ve had.”

Have you ever noticed that some people love to talk about themselves? Without a moment’s hesitation, she spilled out the whole sad, sorry tale (or at least the parts she knew, to be fair). 

As she went on (and on and on), I could have slapped myself a second time… if I’d just asked her the right question, she would have been spilling her guts to anyone in earshot for months. Then I had to remind myself that it also would have been a fine way to get the poor girl killed if the tale had come to the false queen’s ears.

The king, of course, took a rather dim view of his queen’s involvement and had her summoned at once. Her appearance was rather a shock even to me- she hadn’t been given leave to don a wig or any kind of underpinnings that could have evened out that whole chestal region issue. 

I almost felt a little bad. Almost.

“Good morrow, wife!” he fairly shouted. “Tell me, if you would, how you were serve justice upon a lady in waiting that betrayed her mistress?”

Peering into the company, the queen was just able to make out the goose girl, and smirked with triumph. “Why, my lord,” she said, very slowly to try and minimize the gravelly, harsh tone, “I should cause her to be put into a barrel studded with nails and dragged through the streets by a team of horses until she was quite assuredly dead.” Sweetly she smiled at my princess.

I wriggled my nose, and the queen’s smile was a little less sweet as she spat out a tooth. Maybe two, it was a little hard to tell from the angle I was forced to observe the scene from.

In a most royal fashion, the king suppressed a shudder and called for such a barrel to be created and brought forth. There was a very strained silence in the courtyard, with no one really knowing what would happen next. With extreme restraint, I managed not to wreak any further havoc upon the queen.

Once the ordered barrell was rolled out, the king ordered his wife to be loaded up and executed in the manner she had chosen. The gasps of shock from the members of the court underlaid the wails and screams from the queen as the deed was done. 

As for the king, he merely gave a curt nod of his head before turning to his chamberlain and asking that the goose girl be taken and offered hospitality fit for a princess. With the faintly disapproving look that seems to be universal to the breed, he did so, with their withdrawal, everyone went to go spread the delicious gossip.

Everyone that is, except the king. Once the courtyard had cleared, and sighed and walked over to lean against the wall I was unwillingly perched on, gazing up at me. “I’m guessing you aren’t really a horse.”

“You’d be guessing right.”

He smiled. “My old nanny told me a lot of stories when I was a child, and promised me that if I was especially observant and clever, I might get to see some real magic in the world.”

I turned my head and lifted a brow. “So how did that turn out for you?”

That got me a laugh. “About as well as it did for you, I think. Since it would appear you’ve been on my side the whole time, and I’m getting my happily ever after, it would seem the least I could do is a few favors for you.”

My mind raced, knowing I needed to not waste any tiny bit of this goodwill but still get everything I could out of this man while he was in a good mood. And how not? As far as he was concerned, he woke up that morning next to a screeching hag and if I gauged the look in his eye right, tonight he’d be bedding down with a beautiful princess. That brought an immediate thought to mind.

“Well, could we start with an actual wedding this time? You know, it’s always interesting to me to meet the families- girls so often turn out to be just like their mothers,” I said, smiling toothily. “Think of what you could have avoided!”

The king coughed into his fist, and it was suspiciously laugh like. “Fair point, but I’m also willing to bet the servant’s mother doesn’t quite look like that.” He stared at me pointedly.

“LIkely not. Do you ever notice that sometimes what’s inside someone just overshadows what’s outside? I think it’s more a case of that,” I said, nodding as sagely as I could, mounted on a wall. “But your people have been through a lot, and a wedding is also a fresh beginning that spreads hope and goodwill!”

“Alright, alright fine! I’ll throw a wedding, and yes, I’ll invite the bride’s family. Anything else?” The king’s tone was less genial now- he really had been looking forward to bedding the goose girl.

I made my next plea as plaintive as possible. “Can you please get me the hell down off this wall? Maybe put my head on a stick or something and get someone to move me around a little? Do you have any idea how damned boring your courtyard is?”

As I’d intended, the king laughed and made it so. I decided it was fair to go ahead and like him- any testiness was kind of understandable considering the ups and downs of his day.

So it was that I was officially invited to the wedding, with the court jester riding on the stick as though it were an actual horse. Normally I would have objected to such treatment as being far beneath my dignity, but I’d seen the seating chart for the reception, and the jester happened to be seated right next to the bride’s mother. 

I think seeing me was something as a surprise, at least, her eyes bugged out rather impressively. “Falada? What in the world…?”

Jerking my nose towards the radiant bride, I growled, “Does she look happy?”

“Um.. err… yes, she does,” the queen admitted.

“Then get. Me. Off. This. Thing!” I snarled.

And that’s how, during the toasts, a dead horse head on a stick turned back into a fairy. We were as discreet as possible, of course. It just wouldn’t do to upstage the bride on her day. I seated myself demurely next to the queen and spent the service wiggling my toes.

Have you ever had the purely indescribable sensation of wiggling your toes after they’ve been hooves for nearly two hundred years?

No, of course you bloody haven’t! I’m the only idiot that managed to be stuck in horse form for that long- I know because I went and looked it the hell up!

I had to wait until I had an appropriate amount of privacy to have a good all over scratch… hands really are just the most amazing things. You can’t fully appreciate them until you’ve had to do a very long time without them.

Graciously, I accepted the king’s offer of the best suite of rooms outside of his own. While he’d been aware that he’d stumbled across some kind of magic, he had no idea that he’d cut off the head of a faery, and was most contrite.

To be fair, I had been awaiting his reaction with a certain amount of glee. If I had been less immediately impacted by how terrible and degrading a curse can be, I might have been tempted to apply one for having my head cut off and mounted on a wall. As it was, stuffed with the choicest delicacies two kingdoms had to offer and a bit giddy with my first cups of wine in I couldn’t remember how long, I chose to let bygones be bygones and accept his and the new queen’s most fulsome apologies.

Even the new queen’s mother had the grace to say that she had been overly greedy for her child and that she should have freed me as soon as she had the means to do so.

But for the evening of the wedding I was nothing but the kindest, gentlest guest one could wish for.

The next day, I sat down all the royals within ready reach and gave them a very stern demonstration of why it’s extremely impolite and unwise to hold leverage over a fae. I must have been very impressive- there was a lot of blanching, pale faces, retching, and out and out fainting at some points.

I think it was safe to say they took my point almost immediately. The reparation offers for all offenses to my person real or imagined were truly gratifying.

Mollified, I lingered in that fair kingdom for a goodly span of time. I had my little princess to think of, after all. While the king seemed like a decent enough fellow, I hadn’t quite forgotten that he’d pitched his first wife into a nail studded barrel and had her dragged through the streets. And yes, you could say that for all her painful empty headedness, I had grown to be a bit fond of the girl.

After the birth of their second child (a fine girl they named Falada that I freely gave my blessing to), I was satisfied that the king meant to mind his manners and went on my way to find that loathsome blackhearted bastard Puck. And yes, I found him.

But what happened then is another story.

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.