High on a snowy mountain, three trees, neighbors for hundreds of years, exchanged complaints. ‘All we ever talk about is eagle this, hawk that, or oh the bear has twins this year. I, for one, would like to go over to the other side of the valley and see what’s beyond the glacier,’ said the […]
‘I’m going to leave,’ said the broom, wiggling for emphasis. ‘See if I don’t.’ ‘You’ve been saying that for years,’ said the cauldron from its comfortable position above the warmth of embers in the fireplace. ‘And yet you never go. You complain a lot, but you’re quiet as Obadiah when the witch is around. Isn’t […]
No one noticed when Temulon left the village. They were all too busy preparing the new ship for launch. Temulon trudged through snow up the steep hillside to the trees, where she rested, gasping little puffs of mist. She was determined to find the Wall, to get through it, to see for herself if what […]
oh, my dearie, have a care be not captured by her stare feathered leggings does she wear beyond the mist, you’ll find her there These words were sung in a creaky voice by the ancient beggar seated on a great boulder near the road. They made no sense at all to Mabel, the potter’s daughter, […]
In the time of castles a sad queen slipped into the woods on a blue moon midnight. She hurried along the glow of a path lighting up in front of her as she muttered over and over again, ‘Never forever.’ When the cottage appeared under a drapery of vines, as she had been told it […]
The village baker, dusted in flour head to toe, waved his rolling pin high and shouted orders. The Queen had decreed two dozen walnut cookies to be delivered that afternoon in time for a gathering of regal importance. The baker’s wife and daughter raced here and there, down to the cellar, out to the pasture, […]
Long ago, giants stepped down from the sky and moved into the ice caverns on the snowy peak of the high mountain. There they lived content until one day the giants’ daughter, Bredla, stomped into her parents’ chamber. ‘I’m leaving to go see flowers. Fendak, the falcon, told me about flowers. He says they’re pretty […]
Once upon a time a woodworker’s apprentice named Trundle, troubled yet again once more by murky dreams of sliding darkness, tossed and turned on his bed of wood shavings. A woman, seen below as she appeared to him, loomed in the murk of his dream and sang this song: ‘Bronze to silver, silver to gold, […]
Once long ago an innkeeper’s wife took a jug of cream to the old widow woman who lived all alone in a thatched hut near the bog. It was said that the old woman was well acquainted with the fairy folk beneath the bog. It was for this reason wrapped around another reason that the […]
Once it happened that in the dead cold grip of winter a young maiden tended to her failing grandfather, a cobbler no longer able to practice his trade due the long and hard fought victory blindness and its ally arthritis had won over him. Covered with scraps of leather, the grandfather huddled on the hearth […]
