Grateful
by Brittany Warman

In my mind, prince,
I have woven evergreen branches through my hair
and fallen through worlds like snow.

I have sucked the juice
from red ripe pomegranate seeds
gratefully, with abandon–
I have explored my life inside enchantment.

In my mind
I have been light on a butterfly’s wing,
the shadows on a forest floor,
the ticking sounds of a clock.

I have heard the ocean’s cry;
seen the glitter of the city inside me.
I have built a tower
from the pieces of my spell haunted experience.

In my mind
I have walked inside a cat’s eye,
swam with seals,
and slept beside my own still body.

What right have you,
love and swords,
to end my dreams?

To call it waking,
to call it a kiss,
and say I should be grateful?

Brittany Warman is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and is currently working on her master’s degree in folklore at George Mason University. She has had creative work published in Magpie Magazine, Finery, EMG-Zine, Jabberwocky, and The Sarah Lawrence College Review. Her website is www.brittanywarman.com and she journals at briarspell.livejournal.com.

The Wolf and the Three Wise Monkeys
by Hal Duncan

Once upon a time, there was a Big Bad Wolf, a cultivated guy, top hat and tails, but a bit of a cad, a cur, a bounder, not a bad sort per se, but of dubious scruples and instatiable appetites, a propensity for exotic narcotics and avante garde Swedish art magazines featuring young male cyclists in sundry stages of undress. He came to me, he did, in the bathroom mirror one day, saying, Where the fuck’s my fairy story, scribbler?

Snickety-sharp teeth aglint in his grin, eyes of steel, he was switchblade, poetry, fury. What was I to do?

So I began: Twice upon a time, I said — since we’re starting again — there were three wise monkeys. Tom, Dick and Harry, Larry, Curly and Moe, what they were called… we dunno. Let’s call them See-No, Hear-No and Speak-No, the Brothers Evil, Esquire. A fraternity of swine, they were, unholy trinity of primal primate power-mongering, living lavish on their spoils of class war. They’d left their mother long ago, gone out into the world to make their fortune and fame, make a name to be spoken with awe. They built houses in the forests of Fantasia.

The first wise monkey built his house out of money, a papier-mache palace of five pound notes, no windows, so that everywhere he looked he saw the wonders of his wealth, blue notes layered and lacquered smooth to a mockery of marbling, balustraded balconies, broad steps sweeping down from a mezzanine to a ballroom with a bar fully stocked, bottles of every beverage you might name and then some. Blood of the indebted. Tears of the bereaved.

Alone in luxury, gaze caged in the grandeur of his greed, he drank.

It was beautiful. While he could still see it.

Enter the Big Bad Wolf.

– Let me in, let me in, he says. Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!

– Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin, says the monkey. Or chest and back, whole body really.

Couldn’t shave, you see, that monkey, lost his eyes in a game of Texas Hold ‘Em.

So the wolf he huffed and puffed, and that house of money caved, came crashing down on the sophisticated simian. The wolf hauled him from the ruins, ripped his throat out, tore open his soft underbelly, feasted on his innards.

Second wise monkey built his house out of bibles, thick leatherbound tomes of scripture inscribed on illuminated calf-skin. Closed and sealed, of course, the books mere building blocks of walls to muffle the sounds of the material world beyond. A vast cathedral of catechisms was mere vestibule to a mansion temple, a monastery tower of myth and morals.

– My father’s house has many rooms, he’d say, when visitors questioned the sheer scale of this city of the soul, when he still heard the questions. My father’s house has many rooms; I’ve got to measure up to him, you know.

Big Bad Wolf strides up, proud citizen of Sodom.

– Let me in, let me in, he says. Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!

– What? says the monkey.

– Fucking let me in, kiddy-fiddler, says the Big Bad Wolf. Or –

– I can’t hear you, says the monkey, eardrums sealed with candlewax to mute all dissent.

So the wolf he huffed and puffed, and that house of bibles fell as Babel, down upon the pious primate. The wolf hauled him from the ruins, ripped his throat out, tore open his soft underbelly, feasted on his innards.

Third wise monkey built his house out of bones, skulls of civilians slaughtered in airstrikes on foreign soil, fibias dug from mass graves of genocide, femurs of cannon-fodder carnage and collateral damage, vertebrae and ribs cemented in human glue, a fortress ossiary.

Squat and circular, the bunker of bone sat as a crypt, ash grey as concrete, filmed with the dust of death, only a few dark slits to let the light in, and a chimney belching black smoke, filling the forest with a stench of burning plastc, roast pork.

Many found it unspeakable. Not least the wise monkey.

Behold, the Big Bad Bhagavad Wolf, devourer of worlds.

– Let me in, let me in, he says. Or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down!

– Aaaa, says the monkey.

– What? says the wolf.

– Aaaa, says the monkey, his tongue hacked out so no tribunal could make him talk of terror and torture.

So the wolf he huffed and puffed, but that house of bones stood solid as a skull, the military monkey secure inside. He huffed and he puffed but that house stood steadfast and silent — monolith, monument, mausoleum.

– Fuck this, said the Big Bad Wolf.

So the Big Bad Wolf climbed onto the roof, to the chimney. Inside, the monkey was shovelling filleted flesh into the furnace when a stream of piss drenched the flames. And the wolf dropped down into sizzling, smoking embers.

Big Bad hauled that monkey from the ruins of flesh he hid in. Throat, soft underbelly, innards, you know the score. Found the monkey’s tongue, yanno, pickled in a jar on the mantelpiece, wears it round his neck to this day. Everywhere he goes it tells the atrocities it knows, to all who’ll listen.

And they all live happily ever after.

What’s the moral to this story? Is there a moral to this story? I don’t know. I just made it up one day, when the Big Bad Wolf came knocking at my door.

– Let me in, let me in, he said.

– Sure, I said, and there he was in the bathroom mirror, snickety-sharp teeth and eyes of silver. Tongue round his neck.

– Where the fuck’s my fairy story, scribbler?

So I gave him one.

– Cool yarn, said the wolf. Little preachy perhaps, but I liked it. Now… tell me the one about the Wolf and the Seven Little Archangels.

Hal Duncan was born in 1971, brought up in a small town in Ayrshire, and now lives in the West End of Glasgow. A member of the Glasgow SF Writers Circle, his first novel, VELLUM, won the Spectrum Award and was nominated for the Crawford, the BFS Award and the World Fantasy Award. As well as the sequel, INK, he has published a poetry collection, SONNETS FOR ORPHEUS, a stand-alone novella, ESCAPE FROM HELL!, and various short stories in magazines such as Fantasy, Strange Horizons and Interzone, and anthologies such as NOVA SCOTIA, LOGORRHEA, and PAPER CITIES. He also collaborated with Scottish band Aereogramme on the song “If You Love Me, You’d Destroy Me” for the Ballads of the Book album from Chemikal Underground. His current proudest achivement however is the upcoming staging of his “gay punk Orpheus” musical, NOWHERE TOWN by University of Chicago Theater Group. He blogs at Notes from the Geek Show.

The Witch of the Third Night
by Alexandra Seidel

On the first night
they brought her straw
an entire harvest wagon full
and told her to spin gold from it
she told them that she couldn’t
that humans cannot
coax gold from straw
 
They didn’t care
they locked her in
and locked the straw in with her
and the moon was full
 
On the second night
they brought her salt
a small ocean full of salt
and told her to reel silk from it
she told them that she couldn’t
that humans cannot
charm silk from salt
 
They never listened
never cared
bolted fast the door
and let her sleep among the salt
and that night
the moon was waning
 
On the third night
when the moon was black
they didn’t come at all
or rather
not all at one time
she liked men even less
after it was done
and found
 
that she could make a dye of red
with spindle pointed, poised, and brought down fast
 
they left her all alone
after that black moon night
and
 
the moon was almost full again
when she had made a house from chicken feet
and from burning skulls
and had put the young ones to sleep
down down
in the dark

Alexandra Seidel writes poems and stories of the ominous, the macabre, the mythical and every so often, the comical. She swears, sometimes ideas come to her all fancy dressed with painted masks of scarlet and emerald, silver and gold. Thanks to some strangely good fortune, her work is (or soon will be) Out There: Mythic Delirium, Strange Horizons, Cabinet des Fées, Dreams & Nightmares and others. Being a writer, Alexandra keeps a mangy blog right here: http://tigerinthematchstickbox.blogspot.com/

Blood, Snow, Birch and Underworld
by JoSelle Vanderhooft

I.
A daughter like a window:
full as glass
and just as empty.
The queen sucked her forefinger–the one
ever responsible for accidents,
and thought a canyon in her forehead.

Girls like blood and winter and bare branches.
All the rage, like hearts in strong boxes,
dolls in see-through coffins,
little dogs in little bags.
But what is popular is deadly as starvation,
just as catching.

A mother knows this,
when her own did not. Knows
the terror of monstrosity in miniature.

Three red drops on white,
the shellacked sill a perfect frame.
The glass between flawless,
Invisible.
Correct.

The finger circumnavigates her navel,
dips into its wishing well.
Such a daughter: beautiless as air,
No heart
and no guts.
Invisible
and safe.

Her own gut moved,
complicit.

II.

Cardinal on birch.
Snow between.

Ballet-balanced Cipher watches him
tilt head, shake wing–
twitch like the physick’s organs
electrified for the king’s curiosity.

“It’s like this, majesty–”
a flipped switch,
the heart’s veins hop.
“The blood travels on a circuit,
like the seasons.”

The Court applauded.
Unnoticed,
she closed her hand over her breast,
thought of living fruit.
Her own heart, certainly,
did no such thing.

The cardinal perks,
vanishes into December.
She watches, strokes her breast
again.

It doesn’t beat.
Not even when Mother died.

Not even when Father dismissed the doctor,
called for something
softer, more attractive.

It makes no noise at all.
Not even my footsteps do.

Sometimes,
sometimes
she thinks everyone
knows her emptiness,
looks through her like this windowpane
in search
of something red.

III.

Stepmother
is Mother’s reverse.

Skin like grave-loam,
hair curled
brown
as wasting ivy,
dry and thin-ribbed winter
for her predecessor’s hips and bounty,
for her pallor less snowfall than August sun.

Even the mouth is different:
Knife-gash, menses smear–
Obscene, titters the Court.
Not button-prim like their Lady
who ate only in nibbles
and touched no wine.

Cipher does not think it so.
It is the first that smiles.
“You’re Cipher, right?”
Not daughter, princess,
window.
Her lips draw into a seed. “Well,
my dear?
Don’t be afraid.”

Her smile
is the winter sun
between drives of schorl clouds.

A cardinal’s wing shadows the clerestory;
Cipher’s fingers flutter to her breasts.
Beneath her touch, a twist in hollowness.       

Something is not there
that wants to be.

Stepmother’s tongue 
tastes the corner of her lips.
“Interesting.”

IV.

The year’s wheel turns from snow
to colder snow.
Midwinter visits in her holly wreathes,
and crowns of candle fire.
It is a holiday, Stepmother says,
so let the balustrades wear evergreen;            
the tables and ladies
moan with seedcakes and sweetmeats.
Her eyes reflect the hearth, amber
upon amber.
Cipher swirls a sugar cube, considers—the stars
of Tartarus must look the same.
At her left hand, Stepmother laughs a toast;
the stars turn to her
         and burn.
Stepmother smiles a wealth of fire opal,
leans in for a secret–
“The birch when everyone’s abed.”–
clinks stein with Ladies and then Father,
choreography subtler than wind.

Cipher’s breath snags in her ribs–
the new sun ascends between her legs.

V.

The moon is full when dreams of emerald
and amber fall off like a sheet.
The air bites Cipher’s breasts beneath her gown.
The flagstones nip her heels,
snow bites her toes.

The sky’s unraveling quartz,
lapis, chalcedony. Snowflake
obsidian catches upon her lashes,
veils everything in air
and the moonstone winter-light of–

Stepmother
at the birch,
hair a wave of darkness,
smile like the sickle moon.
Empty calls to
Empty.
She waves benediction–
beckon: Come.
steps through the hanging trees.
Her gown is a tear of ruby
cardinal wing.

Cipher follows,
does not blink away the snow
that settles in her eyes.

Stepmother’s burning,
beacon through elder, oak
yew and prickle-pine.
Trees stranger, tall
and ragged. Twigs of diamond,
drusy, chrysocolla pull her skirts,
brush back her bangs,
won’t wait—Stepmother
moves like corpse candle light,
in mist direction, 
but purposeful as plagues.

The darkness parts
upon another red–
tree bare as black pearl
spread ventrical

Fruit beating
each
a heart.

Stepmother
shifts like circulation,
cups one pomegranate,
brings it to her hands.
“Do you know
how you were planted?”

The wind whispers
in shades
In cautions.
Cipher does not listen,
hears only the beat
of living seeds.

She shakes her head, embarrassed.

Stepmother smiles,
like gold might smile.
“Carefully,” she says,
“like harvest grain,
like potash in fire:
for another’s purpose.”
“Tell me,”–
the pomegranate cradled in her hand–
“what need has either
soil or window
for a heart?”

The wind ripples their hair like sails
and there is a space beneath her ribs.
Cipher feels above it,
reaches–

“Hurt is in the taking.”
Stepmother strokes the red curve.
“Eat, and there will be hunger,
want, rejection.
Death, too–
For seeds must die to yield.
Eat not,
You will know the story of a window–
empty
as the world is full.”

The fruit is ice inside her palm,
heavy, cold–
familiar as the space
–that must be filled.
Cipher shuts her eyes
and plucks.

The seeds stick like stars
inside her.

VI.

Stepmother vanishes
like hoarfrost.
The palace forgets her like a dream.

The cardinal hops branch,
shakes snow from wings like waking.
Cipher smiles
like a window opened,
and a breath

         Escaped.

JoSelle Vanderhooft is a poet and author whose works include The Tale of the Miller’s Daughter, The Memory Palace and the 2008 Bram Stoker Award finalist Ossuary. She regularly edits collections of lesbian fiction, which most recently include Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories and (with Catherine Lundoff) Hellebore & Rue: Tales of Lesbian Magic Users. She lives in Florida.

Bone Song
by Sara Cleto

Once upon a time, you broke me into pieces. You took my voice, you cut my hair. You cast a spell, and I fell asleep.

I let you do these things.

I don’t know why. You were beautiful, yes, but not more beautiful than my song. My hair was brighter than yours, and my magic was stronger. I had a book of spells, thicker than a tree trunk, brimming with words that were so true, a human voice could never shape them. I had a wand of oak and maple, tipped with pure silver, crafted long ago by a grandmother’s grandmother and imbued with all the wisdom of a crone who had once been a maiden.

But my magic was white, white and unforgivably innocent, and I dropped my book and my wand when I fell into your arms.

Your touch was something hot that flared against my skin, shedding sparks and leaving tiny star-burns in its wake. Caught in your briar-arms, pinned by wolf-eyes, you were every tale ever told, conspiring against this most naïve of princesses.

I knew, even if I did not quite believe, what would happen if I lay down with the wolf. Even the prince of the wolves. But when you bared your fangs at me, I was overcome by a certain tender sentimentality, and I went to you.

You gobbled me up.

Bones, strewn in the dirt. Leaves, disintegrating under the acidity of spilled blood. You ran into the woods to lick your muzzle clean, to pick the fleshy fragments from your briar-arms.

I lay there for too long, watching sky bleed into darkness and grow anemic with light more times that I can count.

A goose-girl found me there. She swept my bones into a heap and sang to them. When they finally sang back, she seemed unsurprised. Joint by joint, piece by broken piece, my body knit itself to the rhythm of the music.

Skin grew across the bones like ivy, and midnight hair poured from my skull.

When I was whole once more, we rose and walked into the woods. We sang to the bones of the princesses. And to the bones of the wolves.

Sara Cleto graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BA in English Literature and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Folklore and Literature at George Mason University. Among her interests are reading obsessively, plotting foreign travels, and drinking large amounts of coffee. Her work has appeared previously in Mirror Dance and Moon Drenched Fables.

Kytgy and Kunlelo
by Rose Lemberg

Ancestors fill
all things. In the green-moss stones
the ancestors of riverdark live,
in the rivers — star-mothers,
in deer flesh — unborn children.

Kytgy, the little girl, sits
on the green-moss stones,
she smells roe in the riverwind,
reindeer in the tundra-wind,
blubber smell coming from the sea-people–
she doesn’t want to smell war.

The ancestors teach her,

Kytgy, the little girl, sits
on the green-moss stones.
She smells blood in the riverwind
bitter tears in the tundra-wind.
How will she defeat war?

Kytgy goes
stitched spirits buzzing,
to her father’s yaranga.

A spirit-hearted child she summons.
a spirit-hearted warrior is needed.

Kytgy’s father goes to summer-camp,
sable-parka shaking,
eyes crossed, mighty hunter,
beaded parka shaking.
Of all women
he doesn’t want to choose
embroidered women
in their kerker suits,
berry-sweet women
in their hunting furs.

They comb out the orphan,
pop the lice with their fingernails,
make her bride
for Kytgy’s father,
that mighty shaman-child’s father.

Nine months Kytgy waits
talking to eider children,
lemming pups, wild children,

all the in-between children.

The babe, boy-child, Kytgy holds in her arms.

Kunlelo goes,
mighty warrior, to fasten war,
to protect his land
from the white-smoke people,
to take blubber
from the walrus people,
to take elk-land
from the antlered people,
to take berry-land
from the pinecone people,
to protect his land
from the white-skin people.

How will the world come right now?
None can defeat Kunlelo.

Kytgy takes off
her parka of spirits,
puts on her best furs, embroidered furs,
bride furs, blood-bride furs,
follows the sea-wind to the walrus people
lies down in the ditch by the sealskin yaranga,
waits for the men to marry her,
that berry-bright sister, Kytgy,
to marry her there in the ditch.

Nine months — she gives birth,
leaves her child with the sealskin people,
to raise her child with the blubber people.

She walks
the world, fleeing from enemies,
goes to the antlered people, elk people,
pinecone people, deer people,
wind people, star people,
white-smoke people,
white-skin people,

Wherever she goes, she marries,
wherever she goes, she gives birth,
wherever she goes, she leaves children.

Kytgy, peace-bringer,
from whom the whole world descends,
Kytgy, peace-bringer,
became the ancestor in all things.

Rose Lemberg is an immigrant from three countries. She currently works as a professor of Nostalgic and Marginal Studies somewhere in the Midwest. Rose’s short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Fantasy Magazine, and other venues, and was recently reprinted in People of the Book: A decade of Jewish Science Fiction and Fantasy. Her poetry has appeared in Apex, Goblin Fruit, GUD, Jabberwocky, and Mythic Delirium, among other venues, and has been nominated for the Rhysling Award. She edits Stone Telling, a new magazine of boundary-crossing poetry. Rose can be found online at http://roselemberg.net.

The cover art for the 14th issue of Scheherezade’s Bequest was provided by Catherine Rémy, a visual artist who draws inspiration from landscape and myth. Her work has been exhibited at the Chatham Arts Centre, Covent Garden’s Jubillee Centre, the Medway Arts Centre, the Cornflower Gallery, in Stuckist shows and in a number of books and magazines. Born Rémy Noë, Catherine experienced gender dysphoria at an early age and escaped into art as a means of coping with her condition. In her own words: “As my paintings are such different styles, which confuses art galleries, I use two names for the two difrent styles. Rémy Noë for the landscape work, and Catherine Rémy for my mytholgical work.” So, while you can find Rémy Noë on Wikipedia, it is the mythological work of Catherine that interests us. The first question I posed to Catherine was the usual “how did you get started”. I’m always fascinated by what draws people to live a creative life, what inspires them, influenced them, and what obstacles, if any, they have encountered along the way — such as expulsion from school and threat of arrest.

“When I was five years old my mother left my family, leaving me with my sister and father who bought me up. I did not see much of my mother after this and she died only four years later. The only real solid memory I had of her was that she was obsessed with myths and fantasy stories. I always remember she had a huge old copy of Lord of the Rings on her bedside table. As soon as I could read well enough I read this book and many others like it. As I grew older I exhausted the genre of fantasy and began to explore in depth the original myths, most of which were Anglo-Saxon, Northern European, Celtic and Finnish.

At the same time all of this was happening in my life I was always painting and drawing. My reaction to gender dysphoria was to escape into nature and paint; out in the countryside drawing and painting I found peace, and through many years of doing just this got my skills in the arts of drawing and painting. These two passions met when I went to art college and began to be taught in art history and more advanced ways of painting. I loved the idea of putting stories and narative into my paintings and drawings of the countryside.”

West Field Wood © Catherine Rémy 2007

“My main influence in the devolpment of my style was Turner and his use of perspective, and the study of the way the human eye curves perspective. I exagerated this and began to put the stories and myths I loved so much into my work.

I discoved from my reading of Anglo-Saxon myths the history and culture that went with them, and how in the early period the culture was much more shamanic in feel than the later medivial time. I began to visit the location of many of the stories, to see the places and graves of long forgotton kings, sites where great battles were fought, doomed romances took place and to see how the myths in this close but also alien culture were heavily tied into uniting the people with the land and the seasons. I painted on site, hour after hour, creating many rough drawings and sketches, and then in my studio combining them into my now devolping style.”

“Centre section of a painting carried out on site in kentish woods, part of a larger piece which will be three contained circles on wall with large circle on ground.” Kingswood II © Catherine Rémy 2010

I understand that you attended Canterbury College of Art from 1993 — 1998, but had some troubles there. What was going on back then?

“My career as I was devolping this way of painting had its ups and downs. I went on from doing a BTEC at Canterbury Kent instituite of Art and Design (now UCA) to a degree. Here I hit a wall — the modern art world. The college was almost entirly given over to conceptual art and drawing and painting were almost not allowed. I of couse did not stand for this and soon found myself expelled for several high profile arguments about the nature of art. I then discovered the Stuckist art movement which grew as a counter reaction to this way of thinking.”

You were a founding member of the Maidstone Stuckists. Can you tell us a little bit about that and about what drew you to Stuckism?

“The Maidstone stuckists came about as a result of a group of us in Maidstone talking about how much we admired the main group of stuckists in London and Chatham. There were quite a few artists in maidstone who always use to drink in the goth/punk/alternative pub in Maidstone called The Minstrel, we always talked about our ideas and how much we disliked the artistic establishment, most of us having been spat out of the system at one point or other. I talked to Charles Thompson (one of the two people who formed the main body of the Stuckists) and he invited us to form our own subgroup, christened the “Maidstone Stuckists”. We were mixed between artists and poets with an aim toward getting some sort of artistic comunity going in Maidstone. We all liked myths and the artwork, stories, poems influenced by them, so had a good comon grounding together and thought this would be a good base from which to grow. We started to hold twice-weekly meetings in different pubs in Maidstone, put on shows wherever we could, and often had other Stuckist artists from other groups showing their work with us.”

Rémy Noë (dark glasses, background right) at the first Stuckist demonstration against the Turner Prize, 2000.

“Sadly over time we all started to get hit by life, the meetings and shows happened less often, untill they faded out all together. After the movement died down, I went back to art college again. This one was also in Canterbury, but this time I attended Christ Church University’s very good art department, also known as Slade by the Sea. Here I found myself getting lots of new ideas, and really learnt how to do life drawing very well. I studied anthroplogy and ancient art, especially Anglo-Saxon and Sami art. I wrote my dissertation on the art of the Sami, falling in love with their culture after making a very good Sami freind on a walking holiday in Sweden. For my reseach I travelled around the arctic circle area of Norway, Sweden and Finland, looking at art from 10,000 years ago to the present day in remote but very friendly villages.

I’ve now finished and have a B.A and M.A in fine art, and am introducing the ideas and ways of working I’ve learnt into my mytholgical paintings, as well begining to explore China, and learning about the culture there.”

Why do you think you’re drawn to working with myths and old stories?

“This is a tricky one to put into words. One of the things that attracts me is their closeness, yet at the same time alien nature, to our culture. The whole Wade/Weyland cycle of myths, for example, feels so alien to our modern sense of morals, especially the central piece of the Weyland story where he gets vengeance on those who wronged him. I know there are vengeance stories in our modern times, but Weyland’s revenge is shown as a positive as opposed to, say, a modern tale where unless one is a psycopath, one feels guilt for taking revenge, even if one is justified.

The story of Weyland’s father Wade goes further into my area of interest than his son’s tales which, although a good read, doesn’t really tie the people and the landscape together. Wade is scattered all over Kent — for example Watling street, which goes from one end of the county to the other, bears his name (‘Wat’ being another version of Wade). I also strongly suspect — but haven’t fully delved into the idea yet — that St. Nicholas and Wade have some connection. These tales — where the very essence of the land has been reborn into heroes, gods and monsters — are what inspire me. The landscape we live in can possess us to such an extent that we need the myths and stories to become one with it.”

Which of these stories do you love best?

“I would say, without doubt, that even though not an old mytholgy but a re-imagined one, the tales from Tolkein’s “Silmarillion” (especially the tale of Lúthien and Beren), have had a lasting influence on me. I’ve found many versions of this tale from “real” myth, but still the Tolkein version is the one that moves me inside. That conquering of death and giving your all to the one you love, the way it is written, the depth in the echoing of older stories it’s built on — everything about that story from the moment I first read it has capitaved me.”

The White Lady © Catherine Rémy 1996

This can be a difficult question for artists to answer, but which of your own paintings do you love best?

“My favorite painting is Sundeomma. The place where I based it on is a very (for Kent) remote valley in the heart of the North Downs, which always seems to me like it has the real feel of nature and myth in it. The story for that painting I sort of made myself; I was inspired while walking the Downs — nothing complex, just the meeting of the day and night. I plan to paint from there again one day, this time using the shadow-like stories I am begining to read about from the Bronze age, stories that only seem to exist as ghosts within other tales and the strange rock art from this time.”

And finally, what do you hope to achieve with your work?

I see my mytholoical paintings as in many ways forming the third part of this triangle between the landscape where we live and die, the stories and myths that tie us to the land and visual images uniting the two. I want to give people a new way of seeing what at first glance might be just a small wood, an isolated hill.”

Virginia: You described the image we used for Scheherezade’s Bequest 13 as different layers — photos and drawings, and your CV mentions your interest in “visual misunderstanding” and “ocular strangeness.” Where does this interest spring from? Are you a fan of optical illusions, or does “ocular strangeness” mean something entirely different to you? Does the “visual misunderstanding” in your art spring from your experience of seeing the world?

Study of a Gug II © 2001

I also love non-fiction, especially biographical writing — it’s reassuring that other people aren’t so different. I like to layer different media in my art, it produces images which are open to the dynamism of serendipity and halts the limits we often put on ourselves to make the thing we have in our ‘mind’s eye,’ which can often be repetitive or stylistic.     

So I find mixing things up makes it easier to create something fresh and original.

V: How many times have you sung “Sweet Child of Mine” at karaoke?

K: Ha Ha, brilliant! Not ever, but I sang “Paradise City” with my best friend Laura, at the Metro Center karaoke many years ago… she was much better than me! I’m quite shy, so that and singing Free’s “Alright now” are the only times I’ve ever done karaoke… plus I have an awful voice.

V: You work in lots of media, and even within a medium, your styles really vary. I was interested by the paintings on your website, and that some are totally abstract, some are pretty psychedelic. It’s almost like your fantasy paintings are the most “realistic.” Is that a conscious decision/statement, or just how the work comes out?

Room of Roots © 1999

“..It was certainly a room of roots. Not of a few simple, seperate formations, but of a thousand branching, writhing, coiling, intertwining, diverging, converging, interlacing limbs whose origin even Steerpike’s quick eyes were unable for some time to discover.” Titus Groan, Mervyn Peake.

K: I suppose it’s partly conscious, but mostly because I want to try new mediums and techniques in order to be proficient in as many as possible. It has at times been dependent on what I have to hand; through a lack of funds or the need to get something down before the muse flits!

I think I have so many styles because I’m inspired by countless things, whether the medium itself, Art, other Artists, music, literature, environment or dreams/nightmares, etc. To make fantasy believable (or more acceptable) it has to be based in reality, it has to be directly identifiable — then show its difference.

V: By moving among painting, drawing, sculpture, and textiles, do you teach yourself new techniques or seek out mentors? Do you find that the media are more a way to stave off artistic boredom, or do they feed one another?

Thomas Perez © 2010

I particularly love drawing and mixing it with photography. I think they complement each other well; I can blend the styles to suit what I’m trying to achieve. Because I’m often inspired by disjointed views and weird feelings, it’s easier to recreate those by mixing mediums. It’s not necessarily to stave off artistic boredom, more a need to be original and non-repetitive. Yes the media often feed one another!

V: Erzebet and I are both CRAZY about your clothing. Is all of the fabric vintage, or do you manipulate the textiles? (I immediately assumed that you designed the fabrics yourself, until I read the “about” page.) Is sewing yet another branch of your art or a “brain rest”?

K: Thank you! Most of the fabrics I use for clothing are vintage/second hand or from charity shops. I love old clothing and past fashions. At college I made several ‘garments’ using sculptural techniques, recycled materials and vintage apparel: a willow twig corset, feather corset, vintage fabrics patchwork, bone and old metal head wear to mention a few.

For me, sewing has sprung from a loathing of wearing clothing I know anyone else may own; its pure vanity really, so I sew in order to have outfits that are unique and made to fit. It used to be cheaper too, to buy old clothing/cloth and revamp it, not so much anymore with the current vintage trends.

Often wearing the clothing I’d made, people would want to know where I got it, and many a time their response would be “will you make me one?” or “you should make them to sell”, so I decided to set up my own clothing label (Green Poppy) to make one offs and very limited runs of attire using vintage or hard to find fabrics, cut from old patterns adapted to modern tastes. It certainly does give me a brain rest as you put it, though it hurts my back, and not something I feel I could do full time.

V: Describe a just-right day.

K: Well, if I had my way, this would happen:

A blustery autumn day, I’d get up late (11am-ish, because the later I sleep, the better dreams I have)… eat my weight in Marmite on toast and Yorkshire Tea for breakfast… open my emails to find a message from a book publishing house (The Folio Society would be my 1st choice) with a commission to illustrate Don Quixote, or Gormenghast (my favorite novels)… go for a long walk with my boyfriend, over the moors I grew up on… happen upon a pub, sitting with a pint in front of its roaring open fire, Patti Smith would walk in, sit down for a chat, discover my art, love it and commission something for her next novel or album cover (this would be heaven), home for a tea of chip butties, then to work through the night on those dream commissions…!  

(A girl can dream…)

A retelling of the classic “Little Mermaid” tale, this is an interesting, even darker take on the story.

The atmosphere is fantastic, Nordic and stark, a perfect setting for an ocean myth to take hold. There is a nice contrast between the lushness of the ocean kingdom where Lenia, the mermaid, lives. This place is full of colors and life, while the convent where Margrethe is hiding, or even the castle she later travels to, is bare and almost colorless. It makes for an interesting work.

The characters themselves are well crafted, and very different from the idea we might have acquired from the original tale. Lenia is complex character, not necessarily an easy one to love at first, but there is a power to her, a strength that earns her our respect if not our whole-hearted love. By the last page, we are cheering for her, breathless to see her end up safely where she needs to be. Margrethe is less complex, her actions clearer, but nonetheless important. Although we do find ourselves hoping for Lenia to be the victor, we also root paradoxically for Margrethe to have her happy-ever-after.

This is a wonderful story shaped into a wonderful, fresh novel. It is not for the younger teens, though, since there are some sexual moments, but for the older young adults and for adult themselves, it is a fabulous, magical book.

Salt
by Joanna Hoyt

I.

This is how it was in the beginning, though they kept it se-cret even from me. This is the tale my mother never told me:

The fire roared. The thick curtains shut out wind and rain. The king and queen sat side by side, shivering, not touching, not speaking, staring at the door.

The old woman entered along with a gust of wind.

“Where is the child?”

“Here.”

Even by firelight the birthmark covering the baby’s left cheek and eye was dark and vivid.

“You see,” the king said heavily. “You know what they’ll say. To have a third daughter and no son is bad enough; but to have a daughter who’s witchmarked—they’ll talk of a curse. And some will do more than talk.”

“Might it not fade?” the queen asked. The old woman stared into the shadows.

“No, it will darken as she grows. She’ll have her health, though, and strength; her shoulders will be broader than her fa-ther’s. She’ll be short and broad and strong and dark.”

“Then they’ll think her a changeling, or think–”

“She’s yours,” the queen said sharply.

“I don’t doubt you, love. They may.”

The old woman turned, looked the king in the eyes. “What would you have me do?”

“Change her.”

“Take her away and steal some pretty child to lay in your cradle?”

“No. No, I mean change her. Make her what she must be.”

“I can’t change what she is. I can change what she seems, but the price will be high.”

“I will pay whatever you ask.”

“I will take nothing from you. But to be one thing and seem another, that always costs dearly. Your daughter will pay the worst of the price, but you’ll pay too, both of you.”

The queen raised her head.

“Every king pays that price, and every queen, and every royal child.”

“She need not be a royal child. You’ve two daughters al-ready. Tell the court that the child died. Let me take her, let me raise her to be what she is.”

“And the tongues would wag at that, too. The captain of the guard already murmurs about a sick king and a sonless throne—and he has three sons, damn him. There mustn’t be anything else to strengthen his claim that I’m cursed.”

“Well,” the old woman said, “you chose. I’ll do what you ask now. Later the choice will be hers to make.”

II.

By the time I was old enough to know anything of it my fa-ther’s throne was safe enough, though he was not always well enough to sit on it. The harvests were good, which made folk less disposed to think of curses. The guard captain had been publicly disgraced as a bribe-taker. My father had lords who were loyal to him, either for love of him or for fear of each other. And he had his celebrated daughters.

People praised my older sisters for their skill with lan-guages, their music, their courtesy. People called me, beautiful as the morning of the world, called me the blessed child, the luck-bringer; and they brought me their griefs as though I truly could bestow good fortune or blessing. Under the cover of my sis-ters’ music, ladies sat down beside me and murmured of what they had lost, or what they had always longed for and never found; when I walked in the garden alone, maids and gardeners bowed low to me and then lifted their heads and poured out their sorrows and fears. Their loss was past my mending, sometimes past my under-standing. I was only a child. It was my helplessness as much as their grief that started me weeping. Behind my eyes the tears were wet, but as they rolled down my cheeks they hardened and fell into my lap as pearls. Those at least I could give to comfort my people.

Only my parents looked warily at the pearls I shed. I learned to avoid my father in the sick spells which came more and more often as I grew older. He was ever gentle to me in health, but in fever he shrank from me in fear.

My sisters envied my fine bones, my smooth fair skin that never perspired, the pearls that fell from my eyes. Once the eld-est scolded me until she wept. I touched her face and felt her tears, still liquid, on my hand; I put my hand to my mouth, tasted salt and envied her.

Salt was dear even for a king’s household; most went to pre-serve our meat for winter, leaving little for the table. But my sisters could taste salt as often as they cried.

III.

My mother found me sitting alone under the rose arbor with a lap full of pearls.

“What ails you, love?’ she asked. She did not touch me. “Your father’s ill, but he’ll not die of it; and the doctors might find something yet to bring back his full strength..”

“I wasn’t crying for him,” I said, ashamed that it was so. “For myself.”

She tried to look past her fear for him and see me. “Your sister said you’d quarreled.”

“It isn’t fair,” I answered. My voice was husky, not the high clear tone in which she had carefully trained me to speak.

“When was life ever? But how do you think your sister has wronged you, love?”

“It’s not her. I don’t know who wronged me. I don’t know why I have to be like a statue instead of a girl. The young men talk and laugh with my sisters, and they stare at me. You hug my sisters and you stare at me. All people want from me is my beauty, which I can’t give them, and luck, which I don’t even have, and my tears, and there’s no salt in my tears, they’re not real…”

“Daughter, you’re luckier than you know.”

“I’m sick of being beautiful. I’d rather look like the gar-dener’s daughter and have people treat me as though I was human.”

“Have I taught you so little? Do you think royalty is ever free to do what it would rather? We do what we must.” Indeed she had taught me how to flatter a stupid ambassador from an important country and how to be cool toward a friend who might otherwise be accused of being a favorite–though I had few real friends in any case.

“What we must? And is a statue, a lovely doll, all that a queen must be?”

“Is that what you think I am?”

“No,” I admitted. “What you act like, maybe, but not what you are. You lie, you all lie, and you all know you’re being lied to, and I guess you like it that way. But you always lie for a rea-son, and you’re real–you cry, you sweat. You choose to tell lies, but you’re not one.”

She jerked her head back as though I had hit her; then she turned and walked away in silence.

I jumped when the voice spoke behind me.

“You can choose, too,” it said. I turned and saw a bent old woman with a straight clear gaze.

“You were listening?”

“So I was. I knew it would come to this; I knew, whatever your parents thought.”

“What do you mean?’ I asked her. And she told me the story my mother never told.

I believed the story; believed, too, that I could choose. Looking into her eyes I saw my reflection—not the familiar face I loved and hated, but a broad rawboned face whose left side was overspread with a cloudlike mark the color of dried blood.

“She would weep salt,” I said.

“You will,” the woman answered.

IV.

How was I to choose? It was easy enough to resent what I had when I thought I could not change it. Now that I could… I paced in the rose garden, thinking, while the sun slid down the sky. At sunset the chamberlain called me to my father’s side.

“Is he…?”

“No, lady, he’s no worse. But no better, either. He says he’d best put all in order.”

My father sat propped against the head of his bed, with my mother and his doctor at his right hand and two of his most trusted lords at his left. My sisters stood straight and silent at the foot of the bed; their faces were very still, but there were salt tracks on their cheeks.

“My daughters. My dear daughters.” He swallowed, pushed himself straighter in the bed. “My heirs.”

I had thought the kingdom would go to my eldest sister, or more likely to the man she wed; I thought perhaps it was the lat-ter likelihood that kept her from deigning to wed any. But my daughters, my heirs, he had said. I was torn between the desire to be a queen, and the shame of thinking such a thing while my father was ill, and the fear that I would be made a queen and never be free to go away with the old woman and wear my true face.

“The kingdom.” He licked his lips. “I wanted to hold it safe for you. I did my best…with these friends..” He gestured toward the lords, but his eyes were on us. “But how long can I hold it, like this? You…you’re all healthy and fine and fair and clever. You’ll find men to help you hold your own, once it is your own. Tomorrow I’ll proclaim you my heirs. To take possession in a year’s time. But tonight…tonight I make the divisions. Tonight you must understand what each of you will get. There must be no bitterness over this tomorrow in the hall. You must stand to-gether to hold the land I give you. You understand?”

We understood. The kingdom’s threefold division was ancient, obvious and unequal. There was the City with its guild-halls and sculpture-gardens, its library and its great houses; its mistress would be a lady of note. There was the lowland with its fertile grainfields and orchards; its mistress would be a woman of wealth. And there was the hill-country with its wild forests and its herdsmen; its mistress would not be landless, but there wouldn’t be much more to say for her. For me, as I was youngest.

“I am content,” I said.

“Wait,” my father answered. “You don’t know yet what you’re to have. I don’t know yet. But I must choose tonight.” He looked at each of us in turn. I thought he might question us to see how well we understood the laws, or how well we understood which courtiers and nobles could be trusted, or how wisely we might marry. Instead he asked us, “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” we all said together.

“How much do you love me?” he asked. “Speak in turn, so I can hear you.”

I hardly heard what my sisters said. My heart thumped dully. I must not wound him, nor lie to him, nor destroy my chance—only I did not know which chance to take. When he turned to me I an-swered “I love you like salt.” Like salt, which I craved, which was alien to me. Like salt, which I might yet choose at the cost of everything else.

He understood. His face paled; his hands clenched. “Is that all you have to say?’

I began to understand. He had meant to divide the kingdom between us, no doubt, for the reasons he had given. But he had done it tonight because my mother had gone to him, because he wanted me to see how much I would lose if I chose what he had not chosen for me.

No tears fell from my eyes, but my skin itched terribly; I couldn’t help scratching. Great patches of rose-and-cream skin fell to the ground. It hurt, but I didn’t bleed; I had another skin underneath, thicker and coarser, slick with sweat. I could feel my bones shifting, shortening, thickening. My sisters stared at me. My mother screamed. I turned my face away from them and from the queen I might have been.

“Then let salt be your portion,” said my father’s ragged voice behind me. He began to speak with his lords about dividing the kingdom in two parts instead of three, about coming up with a story to cover my disappearance. My mother called one of her maids. I followed the maid and let her take my gown from me and give me a coarse gown and cloak that would have chafed my old soft skin. When my father’s steward brought me a pack full of salt I took it up on my shoulder. When he took me to the castle gate and told me to go, saying that my mother said I might find a haven on the north road, I went, not looking back.

V.

I walked a long way that night, alone and nearly unafraid, under the starlight in the dark of the moon. A King’s daughter must fear kidnap, and a lovely girl must fear lawless men, but I was neither. The strength of my legs and the easy swing of my arms pleased me. My mother had struggled to teach me to dance and to walk with small delicate steps as a lady must. Now I strode manlike through the City and into the narrow belt of orchards on the edge of the hill-country. My body was tired, but not unpleas-antly so; my heart was a dull ache; my stomach was empty.

At sunup a woman came out to milk her cows and I asked food in exchange for a handful of salt. She looked doubtfully at my face, and gladly at the contents of my pack; she gave me a filling breakfast and sent me on my way with a loaf of bread and a pocket-ful of apples.

“And give my greetings to the saltweller,” she said as I de-parted. “I hadn’t heard she’d taken an apprentice.”

“Nor has she, for all I know. Where does she live?’

The woman gave me directions, blessed me, smiled at me as I walked away. I did not know whether I was more glad or sorry that there was no longing in her eyes as she watched me leaving.

The road narrowed to a footpath as it climbed into the hill-country. The bones of the hills grew starker. I recognized the great rowan tree that the farm wife had described, and the little path worn through the weeds on my right hand. In the clearing I found a small cottage, an apple orchard, a brown goat, a dozen great white geese who ran at me with necks outstretched, and a bent old woman who called them off and watched me with clear eyes.

“You chose, goddaughter, ” she said.

“Did I?’

She looked at me more closely.

“Not yet. But you’ve lost what you had, for all that. Well, well. There’s time yet.” She looked into the shadows of the ever-greens. “Three years you’ll have. Three years to be both. While the moon shines you’ll wear your pretty skin again, and the rest of the time you’ll have your strong body. But you can’t keep both gifts forever. Three years, and then you’ll have to choose, and there’ll be no going back.”

VI.

The years passed quickly over me. I was glad of the strength of my arms as I carried jars from the brine spring to the boiling pans, as I tipped the mother liquor from one pan to another, packed the dried salt into boxes and carried them down to the vil-lages. I learned to hold my head high when folk looked on me with pity or contempt, to laugh gently and reassure those who made the sign against the evil eye, to smile and sit eye to eye with the children who ran from me at first. In time their fear wore off: I was no longer the witchmarked stranger but the saltweller’s ap-prentice, a strong, ugly, good-natured girl with a ready answer for anything and a strong back for any burden. Sometimes they told me their griefs, as the courtiers had done when I was a child. My hearing seemed to comfort them. And sometimes I could lend a hand with the harvest or keep an eye on the babes.

Such were my days. Every afternoon before dusk I returned to the old woman’s house. At the first touch of moonlight I felt my skin softening, my arms and legs extending, my waist and shoulders narrowing, and looking in the well (the fresh spring we drank from, not the brine spring), I saw the king’s daughter’s pale lovely face. Sometimes I wept for the beauty I had lost, and some-times for fear of losing the strength I had won. Sometimes I laughed to think of the two gifts I held, one of them always se-cret.

News came slowly up into the hill-country, but it came. First there was the rumor that the king’s youngest daughter, the blessed child, in grief at her father’s illness and in fear of unrest among the nobles, had taken a vow to live in solitude and pray for the health of King and kingdom. “And may none of the lord-folk work against her prayers!” the merchant who brought the word added. So I served my family as well by my absence as I might have done by staying. Later word came of the crowning of my sis-ters. There was little word of how they ruled, but the taxes rose slowly, and the land had peace.

One day in the full of the moon, late in my third year at the brine spring, we had our first guest: the son of the king whose lands lay beyond my eldest sister’s eastern border. That day I had stayed to tend the brine-pans while my godmother went to meet the traders in the village. She shamed the prince into carrying her heavy trade-goods back. I came around the cottage with a bas-ket full of goose eggs and there he was, smiling like the sun. My godmother hurried into the house, pausing in the doorway to cau-tion the two of us to behave ourselves. He gaped; then he recov-ered himself, murmured some unmeaning gallantry, asked me about the work of the spring, never looking at my face. I thought how differently he would look and speak if he saw me by moonlight. My godmother came back out, gave me a look that was not without pity and called him into the house. I fled to the brine spring. When I came back he was gone. That night I sat beside the well from sunset until dawn and returned with my hands full of pearls.

VII.

I did not answer when my godmother asked if I wished to wear my beauty by sunlight again. I tried not to listen when she re-minded me that my three years were nearly through. I worked my-self to exhaustion during the days, and I sat by the well while the moonlight lasted. The moon waned, vanished, waxed again. When it was full again, and I had only two weeks left for choos-ing, I stood staring at my face in the well and at the pearls in the grass around my feet, and I heard a branch crack in the oak above my head. I stared up at the king’s son. He dropped to stand by me. I could see his face clearly in the moonlight, hand-some and gentle, longing; and I knew what he wanted from me, and I could give it. And how could I not want to give it? I held my hands out to him, and he took them, and then he stooped to kiss me. The moon rang like a bell.

He drew his head back and said “In tales it’s the maiden’s kiss that turns the monster to a handsome man; but you broke free of the spell yourself, and all I have to do is kiss you in cele-bration.”

“You know, then? You know I was the woman you saw before—the one with the mark.”

“No,” he answered, smiling. “You only looked like that woman while the spell was on you. This is who you are.”

“No. That was who I am. This is the spell.”

He frowned. “That’s what the beldame said, but not what your parents told me when I brought them the beldame’s message and the pearl.’

“They lied, then. They thought they had to, I suppose. But…How are they now? I haven’t gone beyond the village these three years.”

“Your mother’s well. Your father ails, but he lives. They have joy of their daughters, I think…I mean, of your sisters. They…they said that they were dismayed by your enchantment and they drove you away, and later they were terribly sorry, but they didn’t know where to find you. They hoped that you would come to them again before your wedding.”

“My wedding?’

“Our wedding,” he said, smiling. “If you’ll have me.” Plainly he hadn’t much doubt. Why should he? He was handsome, kind (for he had carried my godmother’s load), rich and royal. And marrying him would allow me to be a queen without threatening my sisters’ inheritance.

“And you’d have an enchanted queen?”

“I would have you,’ he said, and my blood ran hot in me. “And—whatever your life has been here, you were raised a lady, it will come back to you.”

An owl called in the wood behind me. I turned and saw, not the owl, but the pattern of my life as it would be there; the graceful compliments, the polite evasions, my saltless tears. And he—would he be satisfied once he really knew me? And who would know me as the farmers knew me? Who would tease me, or hug me, or ask me to bring in another load of firewood? And would he be able to bear it if I was not satisfied with him?

I turned back. “If you would have me,” I said, “you’ll have to have me as I truly am. As I look by day, not as I look now.”

“But even the beldame said…”

“Yes, I could change back—or I could have, once. I can’t now. I’ve chosen.”

I saw the hurt in his eyes, and the pearl tears rolled down my cheeks; and once again I felt my soft skin peeling away, my bones thickening, and I knew that he saw my true face in the moon-light. He recoiled; he couldn’t help it.

I held a handful of pearls out to him. “Here,” I said. “Take these for yourself. And a basket of salt for my father’s table. Tell them where to find me, if ever they want to. Give them my love. And you—you, go find someone you can love. It won’t be hard. My blessing goes with you.”

“How can it?’ he asked.

“Because you showed me what I chose.” I said. “You set me free.”

He blinked at me, bowed low and turned away. I walked back to my house, to my work.

Years later in the marketplace I heard a minstrel sing of the King’s fair and virtuous daughter who wept pearls, who was the joy of her kingdom until her father banished her for failing to flat-ter him and a jealous enemy cast a spell of ugliness on her, which endured until another King’s son found her in her exile and saw her true and lovely face by moonlight.

The minstrel put his lute aside.

“That’s never the ending!” called a farmer in the crowd.

“Well, I had the tale from a strange fellow who broke it off there. But who can doubt the ending? He broke the spell on her, and they wed, and they live in bliss until the sun shrivels.”

I laughed until the salt tears streaked my face.

Joanna Hoyt lives on a Catholic Worker farm in upstate NY with her mother and brother and various guests, goats and chickens. She also has stories published by Mindflights and Daily Science Fiction.