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  Fae

  Meet Robin Goodfellow as you’ve never seen him before, watch damsels in distress rescue themselves, get swept away with the selkies and enjoy tales of hobs, green men, pixies and phookas. One thing is for certain, these are not your grandmother’s fairy tales.

  Fairies have been both mischievous and malignant creatures throughout history. They’ve dwelt in forests, collected teeth or crafted shoes. Fae is full of stories that honor that rich history while exploring new and interesting takes on the fair folk from castles to computer technologies and modern midwifing, the Old World to Indianapolis.

  Fae covers a vast swath of the fairy story spectrum, making the old new and exploring lush settings with beautiful prose and complex characters. Enjoy the familiar feeling of a good old-fashioned fairy tale alongside urban fantasy and horror with a fae twist.

  With an introduction by Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman, and all new stories from Sidney Blaylock Jr., Amanda Block, Kari Castor, Beth Cato, Liz Colter, Rhonda Eikamp, Lor Graham, Alexis A. Hunter, L.S. Johnson, Jon Arthur Kitson, Adria Laycraft, Lauren Liebowitz, Christine Morgan, Shannon Phillips, Sara Puls, Laura VanArendonk Baugh, and Kristina Wojtaszek.

  Praise for Fae

  “A delightfully refreshing collection that offers a totally different take on your usual fairy stories! I should have known that editor Parrish (who also edits the cutting edge horror zine, Niteblade) would want to offer something quite unique. I found it difficult to stop reading as one story ended and another began—all fantastic work by gifted writers. Not for the faint of heart, by any means.”

  — Multiple Bram Stoker® winner, Marge Simon

  “Seventeen tales… range in feel from horror to upbeat tales about homes where things go right, and are set everywhere from the modern day to mythical fantasy pasts. The best of these stories evoke things from real life—loves and values—and show characters making hard choices that reveal who they are and what they’re made of. Anyone with an abiding love of Faerie and the Folk who dwell there will find stories to enjoy in FAE.”

  — Tangent

  “Nibble on this deliciously wondrous collection of stories of fae one at a time or binge on its delights on one night, you’ll love the faerie feast this collection provides. Love, loss, horror, healing, humor, tragedy—it’s all here, where stories of magical beings and the humans they encounter will enthrall and enlighten the reader about both the mundane and the otherworldly. I devoured it.”

  — Kate Wolford, editor of Beyond the Glass Slipper, editor and publisher of Enchanted Conversation: A Fairy Tale Magazine.

  “There’s no Disney-esque flutter and glitter to be found here—but there are chills and thrills aplenty.”

  — Mike Allen, author of Unseaming and editor of Clockwork Phoenix

  FAE

  an anthology

  Edited by Rhonda Parrish

  World Weaver Press

  Copyright Notice

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of World Weaver Press.

  FAE

  Copyright © 2014 Rhonda Parrish

  Published by World Weaver Press

  Albuquerque, New Mexico

  www.WorldWeaverPress.com

  Cover designed by World Weaver Press

  First edition: July 2014

  Also available in paperback - ISBN-13: 978-0692207918

  ASIN (mobi): B00LWGZ7EA

  B&N (ePub): 2940149709625

  Kobo (ePub): 1230000252221

  This anthology contains works of fiction; all characters and events are either fictitious or used fictitiously.

  Please respect the rights of the authors and the hard work they’ve put into writing and editing the stories of this anthology: Do not copy. Do not distribute. Do not post or share online. If you like this book and want to share it with a friend, please consider buying an additional copy.

  FAE

  Introduction

  Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman

  In the dark woods, in the hidden hollows and crevices overlooked by human eyes, in the enchanted spaces between worlds, there are the fae. Magic incarnate, they haunt us in our stories, in our imaginations, perhaps even in our backyards. They are as much a part of the fabric of this universe as we are, and they are tired of being pushed aside and misremembered. This collection seeks to reestablish our conception of the fae as they truly are: powerful and playful, utterly alien yet uncannily familiar.

  The choice to name this anthology Fae reveals much about its intentions. The word “fae” itself operates in two distinct ways. Firstly, “fae” embraces the supernatural possibilities beyond the stereotypical “fairy,” as there are traditionally many different kinds of fairies, several of whom do not conform to the popular portrayal—delicate, gossamer winged, harmless. Secondly, the use of “fae” signals a deliberate rejection of the Victorian appropriation of these supernatural creatures that transformed them into diminutive beings meant to entertain—and not to threaten—children. These tales instead refer back to older, more potent portrayals common in folklore—fairies that are powerful and frightening, fairies that are “Janus-faced, ambiguous” with “lovely face[s], [faces] of promise” and “hideous face[s], [faces] of fear” (Purkiss 4). The word “fae” is a way of reclaiming the darker, more complex heritage of fairylore that spans continents and centuries in a vast web of narrative traditions, wary awe, and endless possibility.

  Reflecting that complex heritage, the tales included here embrace the spectrum of what a fairy story can be—bookended with more classical, familiar stories set in recognizable “fairy tale” worlds, the collection also introduces many very different settings—futuristic, urban, domestic, medieval, and others. Yet the same themes repeat—the strength and capriciousness of nature, the conception and acceptance of Otherness, the tension between fae compassion and fae malice, sacrifice, and the inversion of power to name only a few.

  Though the fae themselves remain elusive throughout these tales, their motives and realms ultimately untellable, their stories can reveal much about the human interior. Our own alienation from the environment we have largely abandoned in our quest for modernity and our yearning to connect with those around us is mirrored in fae narratives.

  Come, gaze into this magic, shattered glass—seventeen stories, seventeen glances—and seek the fae as they once were, and as they still are. And don’t be surprised if you catch your own reflection unawares.

  Further Reading:

  Briggs, Katharine. An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, & Other Supernatural Creatures. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print.

  Briggs, Katharine. The Fairies in Tradition and Literature. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

  Narváez, Peter, ed. The Good People: New Fairylore Essays. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1991. Print.

  Purkiss, Diane. At the Bottom of the Garden: A Dark History of Fairies, Hobgoblins, and Other Troublesome Things. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Print.

  Silver, Carole G. Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Print.

  ~*~

  Sara Cleto and Brittany Warman are PhD students in English and Folklore at The Ohio State University. They both specialize in the intersection of folklore and literature and are particularly fascinated by fairy tales and fairylore. Sara is currently exploring the implications of disability in fairy tales, while Brittany is working on fairy tales, fairylore, and the Gothic aesthetic. Creative writers as well, their co-written poems h
ave appeared in Niteblade and Ideomancer. Separately, they have also published in Mythic Delirium, Cabinet des Fees, Stone Telling, Mirror Dance, and others.

  ~*~

  Rosie Red Jacket

  Christine Morgan

  “Boys are the horridest,” someone said. “Aren’t they just?”

  Georgina, on the stone bench by the garden hedge, started so that she almost dropped her book. She caught it against her lap and looked around.

  Here was the yard, grassy lawns and flower-beds and tree-shaded paths sloping up toward Drewbury Hall, where her uncle’s family lived. Where she, too, now lived, because she had no place else to go. The brick walls climbed green with ivy, the roof-slates were grey, and curtains stirred in open windows as the maids aired out the rooms.

  The only person she saw was Partridge, the driver, out by the carriage-house. He crouched in front of the big brass-grilled snout of Uncle’s gleaming auto-motor, polishing the luminaries with a soft rag. It couldn’t have been him that she heard, because he was too far away, whistling as he worked.

  And the voice had sounded much more like that of a child, a girl her own age.

  Which would have been nice, but the only other girl for miles about was the coalman’s daughter in the village. Mrs. Curtis, the housekeeper, insisted it simply wouldn’t do for Miss Georgina to associate with the coal-scuttle girl. Such things weren’t proper, and therefore, weren’t done.

  She was about to decide she’d imagined it when the someone spoke again.

  “Don’t you wish that they’d all get the speckles and die?”

  The garden hedge rustled, shedding leaves, as the someone pushed through. Georgina saw with amazement that it was a girl, a girl her own age. Not the coalman’s daughter, either, though her clothes weren’t much better. Her paisley-print dress was faded, patched and shabby. Her feet were dirty, bare of both stockings and shoes. Her jacket, though, was fine and fancy, bright red with shiny buttons all in a row.

  Georgina gaped. It was unladylike; Mrs. Curtis would have given her a stern look. But she gaped nonetheless. “Where did you come from?” she asked in a gasp.

  “From here and there and everywhere,” the girl said. “This side, that side, the up-side and down-side, the other side.” She tossed her head and laughed. Her hair bounced. A few stray leaves were caught in it.

  She had the most incredible hair, Georgina noted with envy. A moppet-mop, her mama might have called it. Curls all over, loose and springy, the effortless kind that did not need to be wrapped and pinned, and slept on so that it was like rocks in the pillow. Quite different from Georgina’s own hair, thin and fine, straight as ironed flax.

  Such a color it was, too, that hair! As red as her jacket, brilliant scarlet. While Georgina’s was the kind of dullish-blonde Mrs. Curtis called ‘wash-water.’

  “I’m Georgina,” she said, remembering her manners. “Georgina Drew. Who are you?”

  “Rosie.”

  “Rosie who?”

  “Rosie Red-Jacket.” The girl laughed again. Rosy, as well, were her cheeks, and her pert-smiling lips, and the scatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were as shiny as her jacket-buttons. “Were those your brothers that went riding velocipedalers off down the lane?”

  “My cousins.” Georgina closed her book and set it aside on the bench. A sort of anxious hope swelled in her heart at the prospect of a playmate.

  Mrs. Curtis, she suspected, would not approve of some barefoot moppet-mop stranger in a shabby dress, no matter how splendid her jacket, but, for the moment, Georgina didn’t care. It was hard to sit and read day after day, quiet as could be, a well-behaved young lady, when her cousins got to romp, and ride, and have fun with their friends in the village.

  “Your cousins,” Rosie said, in a musing sort of way, as if thinking this over. “So, the man with the funny moustache is not your papa?”

  “My uncle. My papa was a soldier.”

  “What about your mama?”

  “She pined away after Papa died,” Georgina said.

  Often, this was met with clucks and sympathy. But Rosie shrugged, said an unconcerned, “Oh,” and added, “so, they sent you to live with your uncle and auntie?”

  “Well, not so much my auntie.” It verged on gossip, though it was hardly a secret that Caroline Drew cavalierly left her husband, home and boys to fend for themselves on a regular basis while she pursued a career as a famous opera singer. “My auntie’s in New York right now, I think.”

  “Oh,” said Rosie again, still unconcerned. She picked a daisy, examined it, and began plucking off the white petals one by one.

  “What about your parents?” asked Georgina.

  “My mama is a lady-in-waiting to the Faerie Queen, and my papa is a handsome courtier with silver buckles on his boots.”

  Georgina giggled despite herself. “No, really.”

  Rosie pursed her red lips, poked her red tongue between them, and made a noise that would have scandalized Mrs. Curtis. “Yes, really!”

  “The Faerie Queen?” When the very book on the bench had for its cover a fanciful color-picture of pixies dancing in a ring to the music of a fieldmouse orchestra, and In the Court of the Faerie Queen and Other Tales in gilt-stamped lettering.

  “The Queen, the Queen, the Queen of Between, the Queen of Underhill and Overmeade, east of the Sun and west of the Moon and north of the Stars and south of the Skies.”

  “You’re a fairy, then?”

  “Maybe.” Rosie skipped around the slender trunk of a green willow tree, then cocked her head and grinned. “Or maybe I’m the devil’s imp, a wicked, evil sprite!”

  “Don’t,” said Georgina, uneasily, but still giggling.

  “Oh, fine, all right.” She flopped into the grass, elbows propped and chin on her hands, dirty heels kicking up. “What do you do all day? You looked bored half to a frazzle, sitting here with your dumb old book.”

  “It isn’t dumb.”

  “I’ll bet you a butterfly that those cousins of yours, they aren’t sitting with books, bored to frazzles. I’ll bet they’re out having a grand time. Getting into plenty of mischief. Having plenty of fun.”

  “Well, but they’re boys.”

  “Horrid, hateful boys who abandon you. And why?”

  “Because I’m a girl.”

  “Doesn’t that make you cross?”

  “They’re hardly going to have tea parties with me.”

  “Tea parties.” Rosie made the rude noise again, flipped onto her back, rolled her head, and looked at Georgina upside-down. “Phooey and piffle and tra-la-la to tea parties. Why not play with them? Do what they do?”

  “Because, I told you, I’m a girl! They wouldn’t have me tagging along, even if I wanted to! And Mrs. Curtis—”

  “Phooey and piffle and tra-la-la to Mrs. Curtis, too, the pinch-faced wretch!”

  Alarmed, Georgina cast another quick glance around, sure that she’d find the housekeeper’s grim figure looming out of the garden. But she only saw Partridge, leaning on a fence post, chatting to a laundry maid with a basket on her hip.

  “What you should do,” Rosie went on, “is go find them, your cousins and their friends.”

  “They won’t—”

  “Not like you are, no. Put on my jacket. It’s magic. It’ll disguise you as a boy so that they can’t even recognize you.” She sprang up, removed the bright red jacket with the shiny buttons, and held it out to Georgina.

  “Magic, is it? Then how come it didn’t disguise you as a boy?”

  “Because I didn’t say the magic words, silly.”

  “And even if I did go find them, what if Mrs. Curtis comes looking for me? She told me not to leave the garden.”

  “I’ll sit here with your book and she’ll think I’m you.”

  “You don’t look anything like me.”

  “I’ll use magic! Now, put on the jacket, do up the buttons, and say snips, snails, puppy-dogs’ tails.”

  “This is a peculiar game
,” Georgina said, but she put on the jacket and did up the buttons. It was a perfect fit. “Snips, snails, puppy-dogs’ tails.”

  A dizzy swirl rushed over her and suddenly…

  “I’m… I’m a boy!”

  Her dress and stockings had become a shirt, socks, and knee-britches. Her shoes were boys’ shoes. Her hair, instead of falling fine and straight past her shoulders, had gone short and messy. The ribbon that had held it back was now a jaunty tweed cap.

  “I’m a boy,” she said again, hearing how even her voice was different. She stared at Rosie, whose grin was wider than ever. “It really is magic!”

  “I told you!” Wider than ever, yes, that grin of hers was. And not a little bit scary. The shine in her eyes made them look like lantern-panes. “Now, go find your cousins and their friends. Play with them as long as you like. Then just come back here, say sugar, spice, everything nice, and you’ll be a girl again.”

  Georgina laughed loud with delight and turned toward the gate.

  “One more thing,” Rosie added. “There’s a packet in the jacket pocket—packet-jacket-pocket!—with hard candies inside. Lemon drops and cherry, in twists of waxed paper. Have as many as you want.”

  “I don’t care for cherry candies, thank you,” Georgina said, remembering her manners again. “They taste like medicine-syrup.”

  “Then give those ones to your cousins, and you can have the lemons. But don’t say thank-yous that way and be all polite and ladylike. You’re a boy now!”

  And so she was! As a boy, why, she could run down the lane, she could whistle and whoop as loud as she wanted! Nobody tutted. Some even smiled, or called out a cheerful, “Halloo there, laddie!” as she dashed through the village.

  She soon spied her cousins’ velocipedalers tipped in a heap down on the riverbank under the trolley bridge. The cousins themselves—Robert, Tom, Edgar and Petey—were with a few other boys. Friends of theirs from school, she supposed.