Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(4)

Fairy Tale Review (digitalcommons.wayne.edu/fairytalereview) is an annual literary journal dedicated to publishing new fairytale fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The journal seeks to expand the conversation about fairy tales among practitioners, scholars, and general readers.

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This story was originally written in exchange for a donation to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. I was broke then, but I

could write, and I found someone who was interested in having a story written to a prompt of their choosing. At the time I’d never been to Louisiana, so I instead wrote about a watery setting. I grew up with Korean folktales of the Dragon King Under the Sea, which I remember more from the illustrations in the children’s books than the stories themselves, and I have often thought that they are the closest thing that Korean lore has to Faerie.

Incidentally, the treasures in this story owe something in spirit to a certain fantastic table owned by my grandmother, which my

cousins and sister and I would often marvel over: a hollowed out bowl of wood with a glass top, within which were souvenirs gathered from the many places my grandparents traveled to when they were younger.

Yoon Ha Lee

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The Coin of Heart’s Desire

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Yoon Ha Lee


In an empire at the wide sea’s boundaries, where the clouds were the color of alabaster and mother-of-pearl, and the winds bore the smells of salt and faraway fruits, the young and old of every caste gathered for their empress’s funeral. In life she had gone by the name Beryl-Beneath-the-Storm. Now that she was dead, the court historians were already calling her Weave-the-Storm, for she had been a fearsome naval commander.

The embalmers had anointed Weave-the-Storm in fragrant oils and hidden her face, as was proper, with a mask carved from white jade. In one hand they had placed a small banner sewn with the empire’s sword-and-anchor emblem in dark blue; in the other, a sharp, unsheathed knife whose enameled hilt winked white and gold and blue. She had been dressed in heavy silk robes that had only been worn once before, at the last harvest moon festival. The empire’s people believed in supplying their ruler well for the life in the sea-to-come, so that she would intercede with the dragon spirits for them.

The empress had left behind a single daughter. She was only thirteen years old, so the old empress’s advisors had named her Early-Tern-Journeying. Tern had a gravity beyond her years. Even at the funeral, dressed in the white-and-gray robes of mourning, she was nearly impassive. If her eyes glistened when the priests chanted their blessings for the road-into-sunset, that was only to be expected.

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? The Coin of Heart’s Desire ?

Before nightfall, the old empress’s bier was placed upon a funeral boat painted red to guide her sunward. One priest cut the boat loose while the empress’s guard set it ablaze with fire arrows.

Tern’s oldest advisor, a sage who had visited many foreign shrines in his youth, turned to her and said over the crackling flames and the lapping water, “You must rest well tonight, my liege. Tomorrow you will hold court before the Twenty-Seven Great Families. They must see in you your mother’s commanding presence, for all your tender years.”

Tern knew perfectly well, as did he, that no matter how steely her composure, the Great Families would see her as an easy mark. But she merely nodded and retired to the meditation chamber.

She did not sleep that night, although no one would have blamed her if she had. Instead, she thought long and hard about the problem before her. At times, as she inhaled the sweet incense, she wanted desperately to call her mother back from the funeral ship and ask her advice. But the advice her mother had already passed down to her during the years of her life would have to suffice.

Two hours before dawn, she rang a silver bell to summon her servants. “Wake up the chancellor of the exchequer,” she said to them. “I need his advice.”

The chancellor was not pleased to be roused from his sleep, and even less pleased when Tern explained her intent. “Buy off the Families?” he said. “It’s a bad precedent.”

“We’re not buying them off,” Tern said severely. “We are displaying a bounty they cannot hope to equal. They will ask themselves, if the imperial house can afford to give away such treasures, what greater might is it concealing?”

The chancellor grumbled and muttered, but accompanied Tern to the first treasury. The treasury’s walls were hung with silk scrolls painted with exquisite landscapes and piled high with illuminated books. The shapes of cranes and playful cats were stamped onto the books’ covers in gold leaf. Tiny ivory figurines no larger than a thumbnail were arrayed like vigilant armies, if not for the curious ? 22 ?