Shattering the Glass Slipper E-Book

Marie Brennan

• Herausgeber: Zombies Need Brains, LLC
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 420

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Fairy tales are as old as time, and yet… In Shattering The Glass Slipper, fifteen talented authors take on these age-old tales and transform them into bold and brave new visions. Discover worlds where the Seattle Space Needle acts as Rapunzel's tower; where seven princesses plot their own rescue from the fae; where a magic mirror is connected to an app on your phone…and shows you more than you may be able to handle. Get hired by a giant to climb beanstalks, each with its own problem to solve…or by the Goblin King to turn Tweets into gold. Hunt a firebird for a single feather. Use the internet to find a prince for a princess. And more! In each of these stories, there is a thread of the familiar, spun by magic or technology into something new to achieve the improbable and, often, the impossible. Through ages past and into the future, our writers are traveling roads less traveled with characters that are light, dark, and always unpredictable. Join Marie Brennan, Lucia Iglesias, Alyse Winters, Rebecca A. Demarest, R.J. Blain, Miyuki Jane Pinckard, Rachel Swirsky, Angela Rega, Alethea Kontis, Y.M. Pang, Patricia Bray, Cat Rambo, Rhondi Salsitz, R.Z. Held, and José Pablo Iriarte as they turn Happily Ever After inside out!

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Other Anthologies Edited by:

Shattering

Copyright © 2022 Crystal Sarakas, Rhondi Salsitz, and

COPYRIGHTS

Two for the Path

A Bracelet of Blood and Hair

Not the Youngest,

#BeYourSelfie

The Twenty-Fifth Bean

The Crane

Time Is a Secret Door

Harvest

Dear Auntie Star

Bride of the Blue Manor

Goblin King

The Six of Them

The Seven Princesses

Ashes of a Cinnamon Fire

The Tale of Jordan and Atheny

About the Authors

About the Editors

Acknowledgments

Shattering

the

Glass Slipper

Other Anthologies Edited by:

Patricia Bray & Joshua Palmatier

After Hours: Tales from the Ur-bar

The Modern Fae’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

Temporally Out of Order * Alien Artifacts * Were-

All Hail Our Robot Conquerors!

Second Round: A Return to the Ur-bar

The Modern Deity’s Guide to Surviving Humanity

S.C. Butler & Joshua Palmatier

Submerged * Guilds & Glaives * Apocalyptic

When Worlds Collide * Brave New Worlds

Laura Anne Gilman & Kat Richardson

The Death of All Things

Troy Carrol Bucher & Joshua Palmatier

The Razor’s Edge

Patricia Bray & S.C. Butler

Portals

David B. Coe & Joshua Palmatier

Temporally Deactivated * Galactic Stew

Derelict

Steven H Silver & Joshua Palmatier

Alternate Peace

Crystal Sarakas & Joshua Palmatier

My Battery Is Low and It Is Getting Dark

David B. Coe & John Zakour

Noir

Crystal Sarakas & Rhondi Salsitz

Shattering the Glass Slipper

Shattering

the

Glass Slipper

Edited by

Crystal Sarakas

&

Rhondi Salsitz

Zombies Need Brains LLC

www.zombiesneedbrains.com

Copyright © 2022 Crystal Sarakas, Rhondi Salsitz, and

Zombies Need Brains LLC

All Rights Reserved

Interior Design (ebook): ZNB Design

Interior Design (print): ZNB Design

Cover Design by ZNB Design

Cover Art “Shattering the Glass Slipper”

by Justin Adams of Varia Studios

ZNB Book Collectors #25

All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions of this book, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted material.

Kickstarter Edition Printing, June 2022

First Printing, July 2022

Print ISBN-13: 978-1940709482

Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1940709499

Printed in the U.S.A.

COPYRIGHTS

“Two for the Path” copyright © 2022 by Bryn Neuenschwander

“A Bracelet of Blood and Hair” copyright © 2022 by Lucia Gressani Iglesias

“Not the Youngest, Nor the Prettiest, But Someone Else” copyright © 2022 by Alyse Winters

“#BeYourSelfie” copyright © 2022 by Rebecca A Demarest

“The Twenty-Fifth Bean” copyright © 2022 by R.J. Blain

“The Crane” copyright © 2022 by Jane Pinckard

“Time Is a Secret Door” copyright © 2022 by Rachel Swirsky

“Harvest” copyright © 2022 by Angela Rega

“Dear Auntie Star” copyright © 2022 by Alethea Kontis

“Bride of the Blue Manor” copyright © 2022 by Y.M. Pang

“Goblin King” copyright © 2022 by Patricia A. Bray

“The Six of Them” copyright © 2022 by Cat Rambo

“The Seven Princesses and Two Dukes” copyright © 2022 by Rhondi Salsitz

“Ashes of a Cinnamon Fire” copyright © 2022 by Rhiannon Held

“The Tale of Jordan and Atheny” copyright © 2022 by José Pablo Iriarte

Two for the Path

Marie Brennan

The proverbial “message in a bottle” is supposed to wash up on a seashore. The one I receive comes by river instead—by river and by ally—and both of those are strokes of luck. The sea has relatively little a bottle can get caught on except a shore, but a river through a forest is full of bends and stones and the roots of trees, all of which might stop a bottle before it got very far. And although few go into that dark, trackless forest, “few” is not “none,” and someone else could have found it. Someone who would not have recognized the handwriting on the message inside; someone who would not have brought it to me.

To whomever may find this, the message begins, I beg for your help.

My ally, the man who found the bottle, stands silently as I crumple the message in my fist. It’s written on a rag instead of paper, with greasy charcoal that rubs off on my fingertips. The rag doesn’t have room for much text, but the writer has crammed in enough. Information on the plight from which she hopes to be saved…and directions on how to find her.

I do not know my way through the forest. My ally is a royal huntsman, and he does.

* * *

The years have not been kind to either of us, but she’s fared better than I. A glance is enough for me to recognize her; old and decrepit-looking as I am, and with the excuse of selling scissors, I manage to get close before she recognizes me.

Then her work-chapped hands tighten on the broom, and a spark of fire flares in her dull, weary eyes. “It may not be much of a life,” she spits, gripping the broom like a weapon, “but I won’t let you take it.”

I would lift my hands to show I mean no threat, but they still hold scissors, pointed and sharp. “I haven’t come to kill you. The huntsman found your message—the one where you asked for help.”

“You, helping me?” Her laugh has the sound of disuse. I doubt there’s been much cause for laughter in her life since she came here. “Leave before I kill you.”

I don’t doubt her resolve. I leave as ordered.

But I come back.

* * *

She’s weeping when I approach a second time, sitting exhausted atop an overturned bucket. At the sight of me, she scrubs away the tears, but more come in their wake. “The queen herself, come twice to visit me. How lucky I am.”

“Queen no more,” I say. “Not since I lost my beauty. Your father has a third wife now.” I doubt she’s found any more joy in it than I did. My former husband is a huntsman, too. But his bait is a crown, a golden castle his cage.

My step-daughter is so tired she doesn’t even flinch when I stroke her hair—an affectionate gesture from the days before I let my jealousy consume me. Now that jealousy has spat me back out again, I find I miss the old habits. There’s a comb in my pocket, and I begin drawing it through her hair, gently teasing out the tangles that caught my fingers before.

“This is a trick. You want me dead.”

“I did,” I admit. It isn’t a pretty thing; I was ugly on the inside when beautiful without. I’m not sure I’ve received the inner sort in trade for the outer, but I’ve gotten more honest. “That’s past. I’m not asking for you to forgive me—only for you to come with me. I can help you get away.”

A long silence, long enough for me to almost unsnarl her filthy hair. I wonder if she’s fallen asleep, despite the tugs I can’t fully avoid. But then she speaks, barely above a whisper.

“They’ll never let me go.”

“They aren’t here,” I say—but I’m wrong. Noise in the forest resolves into them: the men who have kept my step-daughter as their slave for all these years. And despite my resolve to stand fast, to confront them with all the dignity and authority of the queen I used to be, they have mining tools and the strength to swing them.

“Go,” she says, low and urgent.

I don’t test their ruthlessness. I flee to safety.

But I come back.

* * *

Our first day in the forest, the huntsman slapped some berries out of my hands before I could put them in my hungry mouth. “Don’t eat those,” he snapped, impatient and curt. “One will make you sleep. Two will make you seem dead. And three will make you dead in truth.”

Now, slowing my flight, I come across another bush. For one brief, vengeful moment, I think about picking a basket of those berries and leaving them for the men. But they haven’t been feeding my step-daughter well; unwarned, she might eat the berries herself.

I pause, thinking of the deer’s heart the huntsman brought to me in place of my step-daughter’s. For years I lived with horror and regret, thinking it was hers. Thinking she was dead, at my command.

Now I bend, my old back aching, and I begin to pick the fruit.

* * *

“Do you trust me?” I ask, cradling the berries in the palm of my hand.

She wavers. She isn’t sure. I can’t blame her.

I have another in my pocket. I take it out, show it to her, and eat it.

She takes the ones in my palm and eats them.

* * *

I wake up first. The huntsman starts swearing at me when I do. Apparently, his numbers were not as precise or reliable as I assumed; I’ve taken a far greater risk than I know.

But not in vain.

The men don’t bother with a coffin or even a pauper’s shroud. They dump her body far enough away that it won’t attract scavengers to their home, and then they go back to the mines. They’ll continue on without their slave, as they did before she came, and their house just won’t be as clean, their meals ready when they get home. It’s better than they deserve.

She’s unconscious for three days. I dribble water between her lips and massage her throat to make her swallow it. When she wakes up, she’s dizzy and disoriented, vomiting up the food she hasn’t eaten—and then after that, she’s grateful.

It isn’t the same thing as forgiveness. Once I asked the huntsman to kill her; once she considered any refuge, no matter how brutal, better than living with me and her father. But she’s free now, and that’s what matters. I may no longer be beautiful, I may not be queen, but for the first time in years, I will sleep well at night.

She makes me show her the bush where the berries grow. She plucks one and studies it, held gently between finger and thumb.

“A third wife, you said.”

“When last I heard, yes. There might be a fourth by now.” Another pretty thing, to be cast aside when her youth and beauty are gone.

My step-daughter says, “I’d like to meet her.”

One for sleep. Three for death. And two for the path to a new life.

I don’t question her intentions. I help her pick berries.

And we go back.

A Bracelet of Blood and Hair

Lucia Iglesias

I am an uncommonly good sorceress, but I used to be an even better dancer.

On the eve of Prince Sigson’s birthday, all I wanted to do was practice so that every step would be perfect, but my siblings wouldn’t stop pestering me for new clothes.

“So you want a dress made from starlight?” I sighed. “And you, you want a doublet of moonlight? And you, a cloak lined with thread spun from new sunshine? Very well. But you must dance with me first, every last one of you.”

I have many siblings. We danced throughout the night and I was still awake making their clothes when first light split the horizon like a sour orange. Their wishes were simple enough. I had a closet of starlight and moonbeams. Their wishes bored me. When all the new clothes were hung, I sat on the wide window ledge, sharpening my shears and letting my leg hang over the sill. It was just past sunrise, dew lifting in a sweet haze off the flax fields. Soon the sun would crisp their leaves and we would have to put on our wide-brimmed hats, but the early morning was still cool as the tip of a cat’s ear.

I studied the scene below me, looking for something to steal. But I’d already done a dew dress; I had a suit of flax-flower blue; I’d even cut a hood out of a particularly luscious sunrise. There was nothing left, nothing new. I gave up and crawled into bed, thinking I’d just have to wear the flax-flowers after all. Those gorgeous flounces of sunshine tended to wash me out—at least in the blue I would glow.

When I woke up, my siblings were squawking around the closet, doing up each other’s buttons and tying each other’s bows. They were disappointed when I pulled out the old suit. They’d hoped I would have something fabulous and new.

“Of course I will,” I promised them, like a fool. “You didn’t think I’d wear something new just for tonight’s dancing, did you? I’m saving it for tomorrow night, the Queen’s ball.” And then, because I’m the oldest and they all look up to me, even the ones who are already much taller, I couldn’t help but add, “It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before. I think Prince Sigson might fall in love with me tomorrow.”

Some of my siblings laughed at that, but more of them demanded to know what I’d done. I told them they’d have to wait until tomorrow to find out.

That evening, I danced badly. All I could think about as I spun around the palace courtyard was the masterpiece I’d promised my siblings. It was lucky I’d spent all night practicing or I’d have maimed a fair few of my partners in the blade dance. No one asked for a second dance, except for Sigson’s friend Benno.

After the first few dances, I collapsed on a bench between some of my siblings and one of them handed me a mug of cider. They were all a little drunk and silly, so I slung my arms around their shoulders and looked up at the night sky. The moon was a ripe quince, all golden and almost round, with a shimmer to it like very fine fur. With my arms locked around my siblings I could lean very far back, far enough to see all the constellations of the summer sky spread out like a game of jacks. I was warm and my collar was tight and the cider was very good and for a moment I felt as if I were looking down at the sky instead of up. I started feeling sick to my stomach and was about to say so when the music stopped with a wet, sideways sound. I sat up fast, stars tumbling past my eyes. The musicians were all staring at the palace’s red marble steps. And there was the Queen, in one of her better but not best gowns, descending with a train of autumn oak leaves rustling down the stairs behind her.

She gave the barrels of cider a heavy look, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she turned to Sigson and wished him a happy birthday. Then she gestured at a pair of small boys who had followed her down the steps. They were carrying a heavy crossbow between them, dark walnut wood with fastenings in silver.

“I had this made for you,” said the Queen, as Sigson caressed the barrel with the back of his hand. “You’re all that a man should be now, except you have no one with whom to share your throne. I am old and you are getting older. Tomorrow at my ball you will tell me whom you wish to wed.”

Sigson’s fingers tightened around the silver fastenings. “Mother,” he murmured, “I’m not ready.”

“I know,” she said, “that’s why I’ve given you until tomorrow.” Then, with a flick of her whispering train, she paraded back up the palace stairs.

After that, the night became like a bad dream. The prince was swarmed by a flock of aristocrats, handmaidens, and knights, fluttering around him in a rainbow of velvet, silk, and satin, all stepping on each other’s hems and crushing one another’s crinolines. It was awful. A few of my siblings tried to shove me into the frenzy but I shook them off.

I hate to give him credit for anything, but it was Benno who put an end to the pandemonium. He fought his way through the thick of the mob and towed the prince out with him.

“Listen everyone,” he bellowed, “let’s not suffocate him. A bevy of swans just passed overhead not long ago. It’s out of season for swans, but I say, let’s hunt!”

So Sigson and about half his suitors called for their horses and rode off into the Queenwood still in their dancing clothes. As they galloped off, they looked like a meteor shower come down to earth, all those gold and silver hems trailing behind them. My siblings do not hunt, so they stayed to help finish up the cider. I told them I fancied a midnight walk and headed after the hunters into the wood. I thought perhaps I might find something there that would make a good costume for tomorrow’s ball. The stakes had been raised. If I could find something in the woods that Sigson had seen as he cantered past, something that would remind him of the tender summer nights and the fresh air on his face, perhaps—

I walked for a long time, fingering the shears tucked into my belt. I found many things that I could have made into suits or gowns: the shadow of the weeping willow, black against the river’s silvery sand; feathery halos of cattails going to seed; birch skin, chalk white dashed with stripes of gray. Any of them would have made a fine frock for the ball, but I never had a chance to make my decision because with no warning, a white mist unfurled from the roots of the trees, rising as high as my knees. I could no longer see where I was placing my feet. I walked through a dry and restless sea, unsure of where I was going. As the mist twined up my legs, I came to a clearing in the trees and saw a lake the same shape as the lumpy moon. The lake was white with swans.

Breast to breast, they moved as one, slow ripples fanning out across their ranks like waves on water. I was so absorbed in their dance that I didn’t notice Sigson until he stepped from the shadows, crossbow cocked. He must have become separated from his hunting party, lost perhaps in the same mist that had obscured my way. I watched, helpless, as he took aim. Then, from the midst of the flock, a woman stepped out lightly, wading through the lake towards Sigson. I am an uncommonly good enchanter, but even I cannot tell you where she came from or how she came to be there.

The Prince, too, was taken aback. The crossbow twitched in his hands—I think, for a moment, he was frightened enough to shoot, but then the bow drooped and he dropped to one knee.

She seemed to be about our age or a bit older. She wore only a light slip, plain muslin and very white. She was tall, taller even than Sigson, I thought, though it was hard to tell with him still kneeling in the mist. Her shoulders were quite broad and ribbed with muscle, like the fibrous bands that run the length of a redwood’s trunk. The grace of her movements flowed around her, finer than any silk I had touched. Crouched in the shadows, I felt clumsy as a child. She did not step out of the lake but instead seemed to drift up and onto the bank like the mist itself.

I do not know what passed between them. I was too far away and heard only an owl’s nervous cruing. But soon, the two of them were dancing along the lake’s shore, mist spiraling out around them. I knew I was watching something I was not meant to see, so I turned and walked back the way I came. As the mist sifted back into the underbrush, I found an owl feather sticking up between two stones. I decided it would make a dress and worked the whole gown out on my walk home. I made it complicated to keep myself from thinking about what I had just seen. It had a high, tufted collar and hoops over the shoulders that fanned out over my scapula like wings. My arms and collarbones were bare, and there was an outer corset boned with more feathers. The skirt was long and full, split down the middle to reveal petticoats of frothy white feathers scattered with black specks. The outer skirt trailed out in a train that was half as long again as the skirt itself. All along the edges were feathery ocher eyes.

When my siblings found the gown tossed over the foot of my bed the next day, they woke me up with their noise. They demanded I try it on and I was too tired to bully them out of my bedroom. Once their curiosity had been satisfied, there was nothing for it but that they should have feathered vests and caps and capelets to match. They seemed very certain that the Prince would want to marry me and didn’t want to miss out on any attention that might be bestowed on the lucky family. After what I had seen on the lake last night, I did not think there was any chance of that, but I could not bring myself to tell them. Perhaps it had all been a dream brought on by cider and the moon.

So, bristling with enchanted feathers, my whole family processed up the palace steps and into the ballroom. Then I was glad that I had dressed all my siblings so well, for truly no one in the palace looked less than radiant that night. I couldn’t rest my eyes anywhere, overwhelmed on all sides by extreme beauty. I lingered over cheekbones daubed with crushed roses, hair twisted into the shape of a sleeping dragon, a dress slit up the side to reveal a glittered thigh. I paused over elegant wrists emerging from a voluminous cape, a red beard oiled so that it glistened like fire, an earlobe encased in a fragile silver blossom.

Then I saw Sigson. But before I could even begin to savor that spectacle, I saw her. They had dressed her in a white gown, hardly more intricate than the shift she had worn out of the lake—the same, sharp white, only longer, brushing the tops of her feet, which were still bare, and gathered slightly at the shoulders so that the linen poured down her back in two wide bands. Her hair was too short to put up. It seemed she’d done nothing but comb some water through the white-gold strands and slick them back so that they formed a sleek cap. I had to get closer.

Leaving my siblings to fend for themselves, I drifted through the dancers. Sigson had his hand over hers, but they were not dancing, just nodding slightly to the sway of violins. When I reached them, I inclined my head to the Prince, but couldn’t think of a single word to say to him. It was as if we had no common language. Instead, I turned to look at the girl.

“May I have this dance?”

She nodded and placed her hand in mine. Before I could remember how my legs worked, she had slipped her other arm around my waist and spun me around. I was a very good dancer in those days, but with her, I was perfection. She did not lead like other dance partners. Instead of indicating where she wanted me to go with a slight pressure on the arm or waist, she made small movements with her head. Her head was never still. It was always fidgeting, twitching, twisting slightly on that long, agile neck. And her skin! I had thought her simply pale, but her coloring came not from the skin itself but from the thin sheen of feathers that covered it, as fine as the hairs on my own arms and legs. Her eyes were a deep orange, the pupils small and unreadable.

It wasn’t until after the first dance that I realized I hadn’t even asked her name. Benno had spun her away from me and I brooded from afar as he tried to lead her in the waltz. With any other partner, Benno was a capable dancer, but he didn’t seem to see the movements of her head. They careened around the dancefloor, both trying to lead, leaving a trail of flattened hems behind them.

I danced with her twice more that night. After Benno and a few of Sigson’s other friends had their turns, she sought me out and asked for another dance. She told me her name was Odda and she was to marry the Prince within the week. When I asked where she had come from, she smiled and cocked her head twice very quickly, as if trying to shake water out of her ear.

“From magic,” she said.

“Can you tell me more about this magic?” I asked. “I am an enchanter.”

“I am not,” she said, ducking her head. “So I cannot.”

“Are your kin from this place? Are they near?”

“Yes, but they are a shy and meditative people. I do not think they will come to court. But tell me—” Here she met my eyes. “—are you often at court? For I should like to see more of you when I have wed the Prince.”

“I suppose you will,” I said, but I had bitten my tongue when she spoke of marrying the Prince and the words did not come out very clearly. “I am often here, because the Queen is very fond of the clothes that I can make.”

“Then you must be the very best!” she exclaimed. “Will you make me a wedding gown?”

I said that I would, but the words seemed to cut my mouth.

After our third dance, I lost her in the gorgeous crowds. I saw her again later, dancing with Sigson. Like Benno, he did not seem to read her head movements and made a horrible mess of the dance. Then they must have gone away somewhere together because I did not see her again that night.

The next day, I was woken by a hoard of my siblings all piling into my bed.

“Pela!” they screeched. “Pela! Pelageya! Wake up! You’re wanted at the palace. You’re wanted right now!”

I pushed them off me and rubbed my eyes. They told me that a messenger had arrived with a letter—stamped by the Queen’s own ring!—inviting me up to the palace to begin work on Odda’s wedding gowns.

“Get up! Get up!” they cried, hoisting me out of bed and dragging me to the wardrobe. I let them dress me in a light tunic and trousers and buckle me into my work belt. How could I say no? To my siblings or the Queen? I let them cram my feet into boots and push me out the door. “Tell us everything!” they shouted at my back.

The red marble steps of the palace had been swept clean, and the columned halls were quieter than the woods on a moonless night. I could not even hear the echo of my own footsteps because the marble was covered in plush carpets the color of spilled wine. I met with the Queen in her day parlor and we talked about colors and textures and what was beautiful in the world at midsummer. Throughout our conversation, I kept hearing a sound blowing in from the open window: hissing, intermixed with sharp cries of pain. On the pretext of getting up for some fresh air, I sauntered over to the window and leaned against the casement.

“Be still!” someone grunted from above—Benno, I thought. “Still, I said!”

“Please, Odda.” That was definitely Sigson. “It’s like plucking eyebrows. Plenty of people have survived that!” He laughed then, but the laugh was empty as a bell without a clapper.

I wanted to call out to Odda—but the Queen was staring at me now. I looked down at my hands, knuckles white on the hilt of my shears.

As soon as I could make a polite retreat, I bowed to the Queen and promised sketches by morning. I hurried into the hall, but I couldn’t find any stairs and I could no longer hear anything.

Even in the quiet, I could tell I was being followed. A shadow slid from column to column, always one behind me, never closing the gap. I thought it must be one of the Queen’s little serving boys playing a game, and when I decided it had gone on long enough, I turned and said, “Very well then. You’re quite good at keeping quiet. You can come out now.”

The shadow froze on the wall.

“You can come out now,” I said again.

But there was no response from the shadow behind its red marble column.

I brushed my thumb over my work belt, lingering on the shears. Then I walked to the edge of the carpet and peered around the column.

Odda looked back at me, her hair sticking out at all angles, blood drying in a grim mask over half her face.

“Oh!” I sucked in the sound, afraid someone else might hear us.

“I do not think I will marry the Prince after all,” she said very calmly and very quietly. “Can you help me leave this place without anyone noticing?”

I glanced up and down the hallway, choosing my materials. Then I nodded.

Getting her out was easy enough. I made her a hooded cloak, cutting some red from the marble. She darted from column to column and when we reached the doors, I engaged the guards in a short conversation about last night’s ball, angling myself so that their attention would not follow the marble blur moving through the doorway. When we reached the foot of the palace steps, I paused, studying the gravel drive ahead.

“Where do you want to go from here?” I asked, scooping up a handful of dust from the road and casting it over her.

“The woods.” And she was already off, a faint shimmer on the drive, like a heat haze drifting through the palace gates.

When we reached the woods, she peeled off her mantle and pressed a hand to her bloody face. She flinched and drew her fingers away, reopening the wounds.

“What did he do to you?” I asked.

“They plucked me,” she said, and now there was a tang of anger to her words. “Or they tried to. I didn’t make it easy for them. But then they wrestled me down and Sigson sat on my chest with his knees around my ears so I couldn’t move my head.”

“How did you get away?”

“Sigson tried to stroke my face, and that gave me just enough room to turn my head and snap at Benno’s hand. I think I may have broken some fingers,” she reflected, ducking her chin.

“Why?” I asked, twining my fingers through the handles of the shears. “Why were they plucking you?”

“The Queen thought I should look like a real Princess for the wedding day.”

I looked at my feet. “Well, you’re away from all that now. What do you want to do next?”

“I don’t know.” Odda’s eyes were very wide, head ticking nervously to the left. “I can’t go home. Sigson knows how to find the lake. Oh, Pelegeya! He knows how to find my family. If he can’t find me, he’ll come for them. I know he will.” She shook herself, like a bird straightening her feathers. “There’s nothing for it. I’ll have to go back to him. I can’t let him hurt them.”

I stared at her. “You can’t mean it, Odda. How could you go back? You’ll be a slab of raw meat when the Queen is finished with you!”

“Wouldn’t you do the same for your family, Pele?”

My hand had gone numb around my shears.

“There’s nothing else we can do. I told you. I don’t know magic.”

I took her hand and placed it on the pommel of my shears, covering it with my own. “I do.”

This is how magic was explained to me when I was very small.

You see a wave coming towards shore. You can take its measure, its length and depth. You can see light bending through it. Then the wave breaks on the sand and is gone. There is no wave. But the water is still there. The wave was just another way for the water to be, for a while.

Enchantment is like making a wave. I take something in the world and coax it into another shape, for a while. Sometimes for a very long while. To make snow, you need a bit of ice, something to teach the water in the air how to form a crystal. To make a gown of starlight, you need a starry night, to teach the air how to shine just right. But I can’t make something from nothing. A pattern is necessary to guide my shears.

Slipping the shears from my belt, I drew a thin line over the bone of my wrist where the skin was thinnest. I caught three drops of blood in the air. They slid down the blades into a new shape.

I cleaned the shears in the wet grass. Then I stepped back to study my work.

Amongst the clover and shiny oak leaves was a woman, curled up as if asleep. I had shaped her from my memories of the ball last night. In length of limb she matched Odda like a twin. But her skin was smooth and red as rosehips. Odda and I both looked at her for a long time. I cannot say what passed through Odda’s mind, but I thought that I had finally outdone myself. If only my siblings could see the beauty I had made. The woman glowed like the eastern sky in a cold, clear dawn of late December.

“You’re going to hand her over to the Prince?” hissed Odda, kneeling now to brush the ice-blond hair off the woman’s brow.

“She’ll go herself,” I said. “I was in love with the Prince once. I’ve given her all of that.”

Odda looked up at me, eyes narrowed.

“He won’t hurt her,” I said. “She doesn’t have any feathers. She can tell him she plucked them out herself.”

“That would explain the color,” murmured Odda, running a finger down the woman’s bare arm.

“Wake her,” I said.

The woman, we decided to call her Odile, woke slowly, like a small child in the middle of a dream. She smiled up at us, her wide eyes orange as egg yolks. We helped her sit up and explained that she was to marry the Prince. As soon as she heard his name, she shut her eyes and said in a dreamy voice, “I feel as if I’ve always known him. I think I love him.”

“You do,” I assured her. “But you cannot ever tell him about the two of us because he promised he would only ever love Odda, and if he knew that you are not her, he would leave you.”

Her face crumpled like a rose petal and she promised she would never say anything about us, and begged us in turn to remain hidden in the woods. Then I snipped a loose thread from Odda’s white shift and shaped a matching one. After we had dressed her, Odile hurried away towards the edge of the woods, skipping happily on every third step. The skip worried me. Though in shape and form she was twin to Odda, she moved like a child.

But before I could decide what to do about that, Odda had slipped her hand into mine and was pulling me deeper into the woods. I knew where she was taking me. I was afraid that if she found out I already knew the location of the lake, she would lose trust in me, so I told her what I had seen that night she met the Prince. Odda laughed.

“I knew you were there, Pele! I can see in the dark. Why do you think I agreed to dance with you? I wanted to know more about the enchanter I’d seen in the woods.”

I followed her back to her home. There was no mist on the water now. In daylight, it looked like an ordinary lake. The swans were no longer swimming in formation, but diving and fishing and resting each to their own fancy.

“Come on!” said Odda, stepping into the water, head bobbing with excitement. “It isn’t deep.”

I left my boots on the shore and followed her in. The day had grown warm and there was no shade from the sun, which glared straight down on the lake with a hot, metallic light. But the water was pleasantly cool and the sand was very fine, swirling up in little clouds around my feet.

In the middle of the lake, Odda opened a door. This was no magic I had ever seen before. She reached out and twisted something in the air, and as her arm drew back, it was as if she were pulling aside a curtain that had been there all along. Air and water made room for the new place. I followed Odda inside and she closed the door behind us.

“Do you think a message will be able to reach us?” I asked, looking around the airy little cottage of white walls and high windows. We had told Odile that if there was any trouble, she must go to one of my siblings. They would get a message to me, for they all had some small magic of their own.

“I think so. The cottage is somewhere near the lake. The seasons are the same, and the weather, and sometimes I can even hear the trumpeting of the swans. But I’ve walked all over the woods and never found it. Would you like something to eat?”

She fixed us a crisp, juicy salad of watercress and cattail stems sliced into papery half-moons. There was bread, too, a dark, greenish loaf that tasted a little brackish but was nice enough with butter.

My head kept nodding. Odda took my bowl when my head nearly ended up in the salad. I woke in a cloud of white linen and down pillows. The sun had set and the sky beyond the windows had darkened to the luminous purple-blue of flax in bloom. I was about to get up and find Odda when a turtle dove landed on the windowsill and cooed at me.

In the voice of one of my brothers, the bird said: “You must go back to the place where you left Odile. She is coming to find you. She says she danced with the Prince.”

Rubbing my eyes, I shambled into the kitchen calling for Odda. As soon as I had explained what the turtle dove had told me, she pushed open the door to the lake. We splashed back to shore, apologizing to the swans, who ruffled their feathers at us and said nothing at all.

The woods were very dark now and the moon had not yet risen above the trees. Odda clutched my hand, leading me along paths only she could see. The shadows stuck to our feet, dragging silently over the leaves behind us.

We heard Odile before we saw her. Deep, gulping cries oozed through the undergrowth from the place beneath the oak tree. We sat in the leaves and wrapped our arms around her shoulders, rocking her gently between us. Gulping back sobs, she told us that Sigson had wanted to practice their dancing in preparation for the wedding.

“I don’t know how to dance!” she wailed. Odda looked over her head at me. Her eyes were all pupil; there was no anger there, only a hollowness. She was not even surprised.

“It’s alright,” I said, trying to stroke Odile’s head. But my hands were sticky with sweat and I only pulled her hair, making her yelp.

“It’s not!” she cried. “He knows something is wrong with me. He’s been asking all sorts of questions about where I went this afternoon and how come my skin is so smooth.”

“Don’t worry about that,” I said. “You’re everything he wanted.”

“But I don’t know how to dance!”

“You will when you leave these woods.”

Odda, whose hands were always dry and cool, nudged my hand away and stroked Odile’s hair. All the while she looked at me, head cocked, waiting.

I pressed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, trying to block everything out so I could think. To make a gown of owl feathers, I had needed only an owl feather. To make Odile, I had needed only blood and memories. And to make her dance better than anyone, I would need to outdo myself once more.

I knew what I had to do. But I couldn’t make my hands move. I wanted to rest, I needed to rest—just a moment, just a moment longer, in the dark, in the stillness.

I don’t know how long they let me rest there with my hands pressed against my eyes, but I was dimly aware of Odile slipping out from under my arm, her ragged breaths settling into the rhythms of sleep. I heard an owl—perhaps the same one I had heard only two nights ago—cru-crrru! he called, cru-crrru!

When I opened my eyes, Odda was still watching me. Odile slept, head pillowed in Odda’s lap, one hand wrapped around the swan-woman’s knee. I brushed my hand over the sleeping woman’s knuckles, following them over the curve of Odda’s knee and down over her calf, stopping when I reached her ankle. She was warm through the silvery buzz of her feathers. They hadn’t plucked her here. She did not move under my hand. I could feel a tendon pulsing there under the thin skin.

Without saying anything, I drew the shears from my belt. She drew in a short breath but said nothing. She didn’t move. The tendon vibrated softly as a purring cat. So much of dancing well comes from knowing when to be still.

Then I rolled up my right trouser leg. Taking my hand from her ankle, I found the matching tendon on my own. I opened a slit in the skin, the length of my hand, and peeled back the edges so that the tendon was laid bare. Carefully, as if pulling out a row of stitches, I picked at the tendon with the point of my shears, until the threads came undone and I could peel up a thin fiber from the toughened plait. My fingers were steady, but the rest of my body was shaking so hard I was afraid the shears would slip. The pain was like nothing I’d ever known before. It radiated up my leg, pounding through my spine with every beat of my heart. I knew I would lose consciousness soon. My life would be in Odda’s hands then.

I opened my eyes and found Odile’s right ankle, nestled in the clover and green oak leaves. I didn’t look at Odda.

“I need a lock of your hair,” I said. My voice sounded as if it were coming from somewhere under the leaves.

She didn’t hesitate, just pulled a strand right out and placed it in my bloody hand. Without looking, I tied the hair to the flesh and joined them together around Odile’s ankle. I tied them very tight, so that they pressed up against the skin. The bangle tightened around Odile’s ankle, and then it began to dissolve, sinking into the woman’s rosy flesh.

After that there was a darkness that lasted a very long time and I could not find my way out.

I woke up to swan feathers fanning out across my cheek and a sharp peck on the ear. When I opened my eyes, I found myself propped against a sway-backed willow on the shore of the lake, with several swans nestled comfortably around me and one blowsy little cygnet nibbling my earlobe. Before I could do anything, Odda swept down and picked him up. She clucked something at him and tossed him into the lake.

“You’re back!” she said.

So she had decided to love me. I could see it in the crinkles around her eyes. I could see it in the knots of white linen bound around my ankle, and the sprigs of yarrow she’d placed between the folds. Once, we had loved a prince, and now we would love each other. And Odile would go on loving him in our place. Our Odile. Thinking of her rosy ankle made me want to go back to sleep.

“How long have I been gone?”

Odda settled beside me in the crook of the willow tree, nudging some swans out of the way. They fluttered up into the air and settled back down in her lap.

“Long enough for the Prince to marry his Swan Princess and dance throughout the night. Long enough for the stories to reach all the way into the wood. And if they haven’t died, then they are still living today.”

I looked at my ankle again. “Thank you,” I said.

“I couldn’t leave you to bleed. I need a dancing partner! You’re the best I’ve ever had.”

“I do not think I will ever dance again.”

She laughed, a great honking sound that startled the swans off her lap. They tumbled up in a white flurry, like laundry on a windy summer’s day.

“I know what I’m doing, Pele. It wouldn’t matter if you had cut both your legs off. You have me to lead you now.”

She was right about the dancing. My leg healed well enough. But my shears were ruined forever. I couldn’t make them cut so much as the green from a blade of grass. Odda said it wasn’t the shears that were ruined but my will. I believe she was right about that too. As soon as I drew the shears from my belt, I would begin to wonder whether the green wouldn’t be happier staying on that blade of grass, turning gold with the larch in autumn, and sleeping the winter away under a thick quilt of snow. Then the shears would slip from my fingers, sinking hilt-deep into the soft mud of the lake shore.

We danced every night that summer. And the swans flew in wide rings around us, filling the air with the low, rushing music of their wings.

Not the Youngest,

Nor the Prettiest,

But Someone Else

Alyse Winters

Else was bicycling home when Odd and Harald stopped their cart to tell her of an unusually large white bear headed towards her family’s farm.

“Oh, damn it,” Else said, for her plans for the evening had been to clean the mud off her new bicycle, take a long bath, and read until dinner.

Now this would all have to be thrown out the window. Either the bear was simply an unusually large white bear, in which case it would have to be chased off by the family’s dogs, Solveig and Vigdis (unlikely), or shot by her father, whose vision had never been all that good (exceedingly unlikely).

On the off chance it was not an unusually large white bear, but some sort of spirit or god in disguise (extremely unlikely) or some sort of purloined duke or prince (slightly more likely, but still quite uncommon, in these days), her evening would be ruined, because the household would be thrown into chaos over what said miscreant wanted and which of their daughters would have to save his soul.

Else, who craved reading material the way a drunk craves a nightcap, was very familiar with these scenarios, and some small part of her was in fact hopeful to one day encounter one, so that she might treat it to the full, acerbic commentary she felt it truly deserved.

“Want a ride?” asked Odd, who was looking with bemusement at the runs in her stockings (sheer, to her mother’s horror) and her rumpled walking skirt (a demure navy blue, to Else’s horror). “Assuming you prefer to reach home before nightfall…”

“How impossibly clever you are,” Else said with saccharine sweetness, dismounted her bicycle, and thrust it at the hapless Harald. Both brothers were engaged with self-conscious courting of her elder sister Birgit and so had to be obliged, as Else’s family was rather poor, and Odd and Harald’s rather rich. Or at least, what passed for the rich in the farming country. Birgit was not so much sought after for her great beauty (that belonged to Inger, the youngest), but her strong sense of practicality.

A tall, commanding-looking young woman, Birgit was neither elegant nor beautiful. But no one could deny that if you wanted anything done quickly and efficiently, Birgit was your woman.

“Birgit got all the sense in the family,” their mother was fond of saying, while at the same time implying said sense derived from her line, and not their rather absent-minded father. Yes, Birgit was the practical, sensible one, Else the bookish, prideful one, and Inger was beautiful and artistic, Else supposed. And dreadfully spoiled.