Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(69)

“Come home,” called her mother-aunt again.

Emer shook her head, only vaguely aware of the ruckus in the chamber behind her, of hares returned to the shape of men, and dogs released from servitude.

“I shall find my way there . . . some day.”

Emer-that-was thought herself weightless. She thought herself plumed, skipped onto the sill and pitched out to spiral down and ? 213 ?

? Flight ?

hover in front of the woman. The raven-girl memorized the new face, the familiar features, so she might recognize them later, then with a powerful flap of her wings, Emer-of-feathers rose towards the dawning firmament.

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Angela Slatter is the author of the Aurealis Award-winning The Girl with No Hands and Other Tales, the World Fantasy Award-shortlisted Sourdough and Other Stories, and the new collection/mosaic novel (with Lisa L. Hannett), Midnight and Moonshine. She received a British Fantasy Award for “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” (A Book of Horrors, Stephen Jones, ed.), a PhD in Creative Writing, and blogs at www.angelaslatter.com. In 2014 she will take up one of the inaugural Queensland Writers Fellowships.

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I loved fairy tales when I was a child. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” and Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince” made me cry. As I got older I was thrilled by how grim the Grimms really were. Then came Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s anthologies of reworkings and subversions, which led me on to “The Bloody Chamber” by Angela Carter. It contains my favorite short story, “The Tiger’s Bride,” her take on “Beauty and the Beast.” It’s dark and dangerous. It speaks of objectification, desire, and our true natures.

It’s important to me, not just as a reader, but as a writer. It made me pick up a pen.

So, I still love fairy tales. Not so long ago I bought a beautiful copy of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, Scandinavian fairy tales collected by Peter Christen Asbj?rnsen and J?rgen Engebretsen Moe, and illustrated by Kay Neilson. Someone I know, who will not be named here, saw it and asked, “What are you buying children’s books for?” If you’re reading this anthology you’re the sort of person who understands the folly of this question.

“Egg” is dedicated to my mum, Veronica Sharma. It’s a very personal and important story to me for a number of reasons. It’s about the difficulty of wishes. Every wish has a price. We just need to know what we’re prepared to pay.

Priya Sharma

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Egg


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Priya Sharma


I consider my egg; its speckled pattern, its curves, strange weighting, and remarkable calcium formation that’s both delicate and robust.

It hurts but I’m determined. The old hag promised. I put my egg inside me.

Hot water soothes my skin. It plasters my hair to my scalp and runs in rivulets down my back. I nurse the heavy feeling in my lower abdomen with my hand. Then comes a different sort of deluge. Blood trickles down my thigh. Water carries it away and down the drain.

It’s expected. I’ve already urinated on a stick this morning and it pronounced me without child. Disappointment has joined agony and blood on the same day of each month.

I drop my towel into the laundry basket and dress.

There’s a sparrow on the balustrade. A blighted bird, one of many breeds decimated by predators, harsh winters, and pestilence. The public were outraged by the loss of blue tits and robins but sparrows are too nondescript to feature on calendars and cards.

Another joins it, then a third. The trio perform an aerobatic display, as if they don’t already have my attention. A fourth, now a fifth. More and they’re a flock.

I step onto the terrace but they don’t flee. They stay earthbound and hop around, leading me down the steps to the lower garden. Past the tennis courts to the fresh green avenue of limes. Over the stile ? 219 ?

? Egg ?

and across the fields to the crumbling farm buildings at the edge of my estate.

The barn. The sparrows enter through a broken panel. The rusty hinges whine and creak as I pull the door open.

The old hag lives on a bed of moldy hay, twigs, moss, newspaper, and woollen tufts. She squats rather than sits. Her irises are covered with a milky shroud. She wears layers of white, each stained and torn, like a demented virgin bride.

A sparrow lands on her upturned hand. The hag brings it to her face and peers at it with opaque eyes, listening intently, as if to a song I can’t hear, before it flies up to the beams above.