Heat

I'm thinking about poisons. The type that go on apples, the type that go on spindles. Or perhaps the best kind are the curses-- you don't have to put a stopper in those, add the skull & crossbones. They are ultra portable, no?

Curses. Spite. They're always part of fairy tales; bad faeries seem ready to drop one at the slightest offense. Leave me off the party invitation list, will you? My RSVP will be on its way as a few words that will blight your fields, leave you asleep for an aeon, keep you from being fruitful.

But then, too often, the poison comes back to you, doesn't it? The stepmother swings from the heights in her red-iron-hot shoes. Dancing to the victor's music. The mirror is smashed. The dwarves dig, and dig, and dig, and the wicked fairies find themselves bound in iron and salt water and tossed deep. Deep.

The spite that gets unsaid, though, that poison eats at you. If you keep it inside, you find it resurfacing, so often you need a warning label on your own thoughts. Easier, perhaps, to let a young couple into your house, pretend to linger near the oven door, let yourself be pushed in. Easier to surrender. Let your wickedness finally be a cautionary tale to others.

Who, after all, really mourns the wicked?

Sleeper

Even as long as she had been asleep, her eyes still moved with dreaming. What could you dream about after 100 years of sleep? Did she dream life, that she was awake, brushing her hair, doing the dishes? Ah, but princesses never do the dishes.

Perhaps in their dreams? If serving girls dream of life in the top floors of the palace, is it the opposite for those who have never touched real, hard life?

Probably not. She probably dreams of balls, dancing. Champagne in crystal glasses and kisses stolen on close embraces. Softness and furs and the flash of a chandelier.

Fine music, laughter. Or maybe spinning thread, fine silk, over and over into cloth. Into tapestries of history, life, unicorns in woods, or tigers dancing. Lovers meeting under apple trees while white peacocks look on, aroused. Life. Fate.

If she wakes from her dream, will that universe end?

Wicked (Step)Mother

Us
Anne Sexton
I was wrapped in black
fur and white fur and
you undid me and then
you placed me in gold light
and then you crowned me,
while snow fell outside
the door in diagonal darts.
While a ten-inch snow
came down like stars
in small calcium fragments,
we were in our own bodies
(that room that will bury us)
and you were in my body
(that room that will outlive us)
and at first I rubbed your
feet dry with a towel
because I was your slave
and then you called me princess.
Princess!

Oh then
I stood up in my gold skin
and I beat down the psalms
and I beat down the clothes
and you undid the bridle
and you undid the reins
and I undid the buttons,
the bones, the confusions,
the New England postcards,
the January ten o'clock night,
and we rose up like wheat,
acre after acre of gold,
and we harvested,
we harvested

I am only human. And not really all that old, as time is reckoned. And once upon a time, I was a princess.

You laugh. All you can see are the crow's feet, the blotches on my hand from too much sun. Hair with a few white streaks, right there, where I always said I wouldn't dye. Say, of photographs, "that can't really be you."

Men lay at my feet. Wrote my name on walls with spraypaint. Beat their chests as I gave them up. I was worshipped; a goddess.

Now, I see this girl, who looks like me. So much like me but better. No Oil of Olay could ever get me back there, no Age Defying makeup slant my eyes or highlight that color.

And this girl, I love, with an ache that eats my heart. Licks its fingers afterwards. Leaves me alone in a woods with wolves and red cloaks if I even imagine her not smiling at me. A tiny piece of me; the best bits.

What am I to do? They made me a step-mother. A little distance, makes it seem easier.

I avoid mirrors. They are only out to lie. I don't speak to fairies. All that wing-span makes them flighty. I sew buttons; I sew tapestries; I sew the entire history of my people. And I watch as she replaces me.

And I smile. Because, contrary to the Grimmest interpretation, it really is okay.

Out of the Woods

After a long time, the princess made her own way out of the woods. Perhaps she no longer attracted the attentions of unicorns, and she had not worn flowers in her hair in a very long time. Her hair was not entirely red anymore and the wine in her basket for grandma was long gone. She carried her own pack, and knew that often, the heroes with the shiniest armour are the ones that can be trusted least. She knew how to handle wolves and never danced in fairy rings at night. She even knew that woodsman can sometimes come to your aid but more often than not, it's better to have an axe handy yourself.

When she made her way to the village she remembered as a girl, it was smaller, somehow, and there were heartsick memories lurking in shadowy corners. She ignored them and kept moving.

She didn't expect any fairy godmothers to help her. They were busy with their own lives, figuring out how to stop their wings from drooping, how to clean pumpkin carriages, or the best key for a song to get mice to sew little garmets for themselves. That sort of thing.

She found the house of her mother, long empty, cleaned it, chased fat dimpled spiders out of corners, lit a fire, mended curtains, cooked stews. A cat that had been living off the mice in the nearby woods took up a perch on her stoop, courteously ate rodents, sometimes leaving a bit of tail for the princess in payment for the scratches he deigned to let her give him.

If, sometimes, a young girl came to visit her, and they drank tea and talked of possible futures with handsome strangers and fate's change, if, sometimes, those young girls took away vials of hope and left a little money behind, well, that's small business for you. Time spent in dark woods with wolves and heroes will teach you a lot about fate, and futures, and the comforts of a small house with comfortable chairs.

But she never, ever, fed them gingerbread. That sort of thing only leads to trouble.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time a young, redheaded princess found her way into the woods. It doesn't matter which woods, it doesn't matter how she came to be there. What matters is that these woods were dark, and the paths were unclear, and there were small animals hiding under low branches as she passed. There were larger things, too-- the reason the small animals were hiding.

The redheaded girl did not wear a red-cloak, carry a basket for her grandmother, smell gingerbread, or hear fairy music leading her on. She simply walked. She was alone, and at first, she was not very afraid. She figured she would find her way out, and knew she had a good head on her shoulders, and reasoned that where she had been lost she would eventually find her own way out.

There may have been monsters. There may have been encounters with magical beasts-- perhaps dragons, with fiery red eyes. Perhaps unicorns, lulled by the sound of her singing into resting their heads upon her lap. Perhaps there were heroes so entranced by her beauty that they threw themselves into her service and found her to be worthy.

Perhaps not. Perhaps she was just lost, and never found, in a woods far from home.

Which story would you write?


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p.s. this is not a metaphor for my life. It is fiction. Don't read anything into it. I'm just thinking about fairy tales.