Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

Once Upon

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New Fairy Tales
•

Other Anthologies Edited by

Paula Guran

Embraces

Best New Paranormal Romance

Best New Romantic Fantasy

Zombies: The Recent Dead

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2010

Vampires: The Recent Undead

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2011

Halloween

New Cthulhu: The Recent Weird

Brave New Love

Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful

Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012

Extreme Zombies

Ghosts: Recent Hauntings

Rock On: The Greatest Hits of Science Fiction & Fantasy

Season of Wonder

Future Games

Weird Detectives: Recent Investigations

The Mammoth Book of Angels & Demons

The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2013

Hal oween: Magic, Mystery & the Macabre

Once Upon

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New Fairy Tales
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PRIME BOOKS

ONCE UPON A TIME: NEW FAIRY TALES

Copyright © 2013 by Paula Guran.

Cover design by Sherin Nicole. Cover art by Golda Reyes.

Cover title set in QumpellkaNo12 typeface by Gluk Fonts.

All stories are copyrighted to their respective authors, and used

here with their permission.

“The Giant In Repose” © 2013 Nathan Ballingrud.

“Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me” © 2013 Christopher Barzak.

“Tales That Fairies Tell” © 2013 Richard Bowes.

“Warrior Dreams” © 2013 Cinda Williams Chima.

“Blanchefleur” © 2013 Theodora Goss.

“The Road of Needles” © 2013 Caitlín R. Kiernan.

“Below the Sun Beneath” by Tanith Lee.

“The Coin of Heart’s Desire” © 2013 Yoon Ha Lee.

“Sleeping Beauty of Elista” © 2013 Ekaterina Sedia.

“Egg” © 2013 Priya Sharma.

“Lupine” © 2013 Nisi Shawl.

“Castle of Masks” by Corry Skerry: this version © 2013 Corry Skerry.

(An earlier version appeared in
Fairy Tales in Split Vision
, ed. Cindy Lynn Speer, Drollerie Press, 2009).

“Flight” © 2013 Angela Slatter.

“The Lenten Rose” © 2013 Genevieve Valentine.

“The Hush of Feathers, the Clamour of Wings” © 2013 A. C. Wise.

“Born and Bread” © 2013 Kaaron Warren.

“The Mirror Tells All” © 2013 Erzebet YellowBoy.

“The Spinning Wheel’s Tale” © 2013 Jane Yolen.

Prime Books

www.prime-books.com

Publisher’s Note:

No portion of this book may be reproduced by any means

without first obtaining the permission of the copyright holder.

For more information, contact Prime Books:

[email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-60701-402-7

•

For El en Datlow and Terri Windling—

without whom so many wonderful new fairy tales for both

children and adults would never have been written.

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CONTENTS

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Ever After • Paula Guran • 9

Introduction: 19
u The Coin of Heart’s Desire • Yoon Ha Lee • 21

Introduction: 33
u The Lenten Rose by Genevieve Valentine 35

Introduction: 51
u The Spinning Wheel’s Tale • Jane Yolen • 53

Introduction: 59
u Below the Sun Beneath • Tanith Lee • 61

Introduction: 93
u Warrior Dreams • Cinda Williams Chima • 95

Introduction: 119
u Born and Bread • Kaaron Warren • 121

Introduction: 129
u Tales That Fairies Tell • Richard Bowes • 131

Introduction: 149
u Sleeping Beauty of Elista • Ekaterina Sedia •151

Introduction: 159
u The Road of Needles • Caitlín R. Kiernan •161

Introduction: 185
u Lupine • Nisi Shawl • 187

Introduction: 191
u Flight • Angela Slatter • 193

Introduction: 217
u Egg • Priya Sharma • 219

Introduction: 235
u Castle of Masks • Cory Skerry • 237

Introduction: 265
u The Giant in Repose • Nathan Ballingrud • 267

Introduction: 285
u The Hush of Feathers, the Clamour of Wings

• A. C. Wise • 287

Introduction: 301
u Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me

• Christopher Barzak • 303

Introduction: 321
u The Mirror Tells All • Erzebet YellowBoy • 323

Introduction: 335
u Blanchefleur • Theodora Goss • 337

About the Editor and Illustrations • 383

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Where did it start for you? When did you first discover fairy

tales?

For me, it was a book titled
Fifty Famous Fairy Stories
: no author or editor listed, only the illustrator, Bruno Frost. Published by the Whitman Publishing Company as part of their Famous Classics

series, the copyright dates are 1946 and 1954. I think the first version was a traditional hardcover with a dust jacket. My edition is printed on cheap pulp paper—286 pages total—and its “hardcover” is printed

in vivid color with a shiny cellophane-like coating over cardboard.

Frost’s line drawings are enhanced with spot color of either aqua

or pink. I still have it: spine replaced with packing tape and pages crumbling.

I have no idea where the book came from or when, but I know

my mother read its stories to me before I could read myself. Then

I later read them myself, over and over. The tales are, of course,

sanitized versions, but decently written in straightforward, never

condescending prose. The selections are a hodgepodge—probably

heavily influenced by Andrew Lang’s fairy tale books of various

colors—of English and Scandinavian folktales, Charles Perrault,

the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, Madame d’Aulnoy,

Arabic literature, and maybe other sources.

I don’t care to analyze the origins of the contents or even ponder

why these fifty were selected—this is a holy book to me. It was both magical and very real—it took me away from “real life” but it also

was pertinent to my life in many ways—and it was even revelatory.

• 9 •

• Introduction: Ever After •

Far from turning me into the sort of girl who expected some prince

to save her, fairy tales were examples of people, animals, even beasts becoming who and what they
real y
were. Bad things happened to all kinds of people, but if you were clever and showed others your value, you’d triumph in the end.

I also remember being deeply outraged at foolishness. As much

as I loved the story “Rapunzel,” for instance, I thought the mother—

who so desired rampion she endangered her husband and lost her

child—to be idiotic. Rapunzel herself was a complete lamebrain for

thoughtlessly exclaiming, “Good mother, how is it you are so much

heavier to draw up than the King’s son? He takes but a moment to

climb up to me.”

In my teens, I discovered that wasn’t the question the girl posed

when the tale was first retold by the Grimms. Rapunzel’s query was:

“Why it is that my clothes are all too tight? They no longer fit me.” After living nightly with the prince “in joy and pleasure for a long time,”

Rapunzel was pregnant. If you lock a girl up in a tower and don’t tell her anything about birth control, pregnancy is a natural consequence of “joy and pleasure.” What a relief! She wasn’t stupid, just ignorant.

Nor did I see the prince as a rapist or a victimizer. He was so devoted to Rapunzel he threw himself off the tower when he thought he had

lost her forever. And Rapunzel turned out to be damned resourceful;

after giving birth to twins and living through great misery, she healed the prince’s blindness and saved the man she loved . . . and possibly a whole kingdom. The way I saw it, they’d lived through hard times in

the unsafe, brutal world outside isolating towers and unprotected by royal entitlement. Rulers with such experience would be a good bet

to reign well and serve their people.

I also eventually learned my
Fifty Famous
/Andrew Lang/Brothers Grimm version of “Rapunzel” was not the only traditional story

about a maiden locked in a tower. There are similar tales to be found in many cultures. The Grimms weren’t even correct in calling it a folk tale. Their source may or may not have known it was a retelling of

a story published by Friedrich Schultz in 1790, who had—in turn—

• 10 •

• Paula Guran •

translated it from “Persinette,” a 1698 French story by Charlotte-

Rose de La Force. “Persinette” was evidently inspired by Giambattista Basile’s “Petrosinella,” published in 1634 in the first volume of his
Lo
cunto de li cunti
.

I came to view the vegetable-craving mother-to-be in a different

light too. The cravings of a pregnant woman can indicate dangerous

vitamin deficiencies, and in many folk traditions fulfilling an

expectant mother’s desires for certain foods is of tantamount

importance. Perhaps it
did
amount to a matter of having to have the rampion or dying.

The witch? Maybe she was a wise woman or herbalist who had

knowledge that could save both mother and child. Demanding

custody of the child in return seems an extremely unequal deal, but

it may have been in the infant’s best interests if the mother was weak or ill.

Or perhaps the father was thinking only of saving his own skin

or his wife’s life. He might have doubted the chances the child would even be born.

As for shutting a child reaching puberty away from the world—

many parents wish they could do that very thing. Some even attempt

to do so—sometimes with similar outcomes as far as pregnancy.

I have many more—often conflicting—ideas about the meaning

of the story now. And I'm not a scholar or expert in folklore and fairy tales—I'm sure they have even more to say.

But, at the very least, the story said something about how we all

have to grow up and break out of whatever towers we are imprisoned

in. We all wander lost and blind at times; we all hope for a happy

ending or, at least, that our suffering will be worth its cost.

That is part of the wonder of fairy tales: they are simple, intimate stories that are, at the same time, complex and broadly applicable. We experience them and understand them one way as children, other

interpretations arise as we become adults, still more thoughts as we mature further. As children we feel the darkness in the woods and

fear what lurks in its shadows. As adults we begin to understand that

• 11 •

• Introduction: Ever After •

there is no light without the dark; that without the dangers of life, the risks, the difficulties, the hardships, and the monsters, we cannot grow. If we never go into the woods, we’ll never really understand the

“ever after” of our lives.

The old stories were intended for adults or an “all ages” audience

that included children. They began as folk tales told aloud; later they were literary works authored by individuals (although often inspired by or based on the older oral traditions). Eventually shaped into

what was considered a more suitable form for children, adults then

disdained them as nursery stories.

Then in the late twentieth century, while still existing in versions intended for the youngsters, fairy tales re-emerged in literary

retellings as stories for adults, .

“Rapunzel,” my randomly chosen example, has directly inspired

contemporary authors such as Anne Bishop, Emma Donoghue,

Esther Friesner, Gregory Frost, Louise Hawes, Tanith Lee (twice),

Elizabeth Lynn, Robin McKinley, Lois Metzger, Richard Parks, Lisa

Russ Spaar, and others. There are several beautiful picture book

versions in print, and it has been expanded into novels for children with books like
Golden
by Cameron Dokey (2006),
The Stone Cage
by Nicholas Stuart Gray (1963), and
Letters from Rapunzel
by Sara Holmes (2007).
Zel
by Donna Jo Napoli (1996) and
The Tower Room
by Adèle Geras (1992) are novels intended for young adults; for

adults there is
Bitter Greens
by Kate Forsyth (2012).

“Rapunzel” has been adapted into graphic novels and for dance,

stage (including incorporation into a Broadway musical), television, video, had its eponymous protagonist turned into a Barbie doll,

and—with
Tangled
(2010)—animated by Disney and consequently