Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback(98)

Liselle’s pain brings me back again, the way it always has. I let it carry me through the sky, wound around my useless heart. I wonder what Liselle will choose—accept a brother’s gift, or refuse it out of spite. I know what I would do, but I’m not Liselle. I can only hope that, in this sense at least, it isn’t too late, and her heart is still stronger than mine.

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A. C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex, and The Best Horror of the Year Volume 4, among others. In addition to her fiction, Wise co-edits Unlikely Story, publishing three themed issues of unlikely fiction per year. You can find her online at www.acwise.net.

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Retellings are a common approach to the art of writing fairy tales, but often the tales that get retold over and over are those that originated from the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, or Charles Perrault. Other fairy tales exist without having necessarily been classified as such, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s because of the form they take, like Christina Rossetti’s famous poem, “Goblin Market,” from which I took my inspiration. When I first read that poem, it was clear to me that it was a fairy tale, but told in the form of a poem. In my retelling, I transport the poetry into a prose story form, and also attempt to illuminate a story hidden within Rossetti’s original version. That’s truly the most beautiful thing about retellings, I think: the way that one author can illuminate or reveal what the original author either couldn’t see or did their best to conceal.

Christopher Barzak

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Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me

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Christopher Barzak


Days, weeks, months, years afterwards, when we were both wives

with children of our own, our mother-hearts beset with fears

and bound up in tender lives, I would call the little ones to me and tell them of my early prime, those pleasant days long gone of not-returning time. I would tell them of the haunted glen where I met the wicked goblin men, whose fruits were like honey to my throat but poison in my blood. And I would tell them of my sister, Lizzie, of how she stood in deadly peril to do me good, and won the fiery antidote that cured me of the goblin poison. Then, when my story came to

end, I would join my hands to their little hands and bid them cling together, saying, “For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.”

And when afterward the children went on their ways to create their imaginary worlds in the afternoon sunlight, or under the shadows of the willow tree at the bottom of the garden, I would weep, silently, from where I sat on my bench, for I had lied in telling them the story in that particular fashion. It was told in that way for their own good, really, with a sound moral embroidered within it, but none of it was true. Except the part about the fruit, and the goblins, and how my sister saved me from a terrible fate.

What I did not tell them was how my sister also destroyed me. A

part of me, I should say. Perhaps the best part. But stories for children ? 303 ?

? Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me ?

never hang a broken heart upon the mantle for all to witness and to fear. Instead it is a lively heart, and it is beautiful, isn’t it? Thudding away like a fine instrument! The stories one tells children always mean: Life will be happy, my dear ones, even though you will struggle within the world’s fierce embrace.

Perhaps I should begin with the day when everything truly went

awry, the day Lizzie and I were walking down by the brook near

our family’s farm on the outskirts of town, arguing, as we had been doing for much of that summer, and I first came to spot the goblin merchants as they erected their marketplace in the glen across

the water. At the time I did not know it was a market they had set themselves to making in such a hidden place, outside of town, where the idea of patrons lining up to buy their goods was an unlikely

gamble; but I could hear their voices float toward us, and when I

looked over the swaying reeds by the gently flowing water, I could see their tables laden with fruit so lushly colored it shined like precious gems beneath the waning red sun.

It was their faces, though, that charmed me more than anything. Some wore the features of a red fox with sharp ears, charcoal-tipped. Others had long white whiskers that drooped, like a cat who has just lapped a satisfying bowl of cream. One bore the snout of a pig, another peered through the round golden eyes of an insect. Before I could realize what I was doing, I had stopped my progress on the path and Lizzie, who now stood a few steps ahead of me, had turned back to say, “What is it, Laura?