Wolves and Witches

by Amanda C. Davis

  But I know that you love the color purple, and that the smell of lilacs is your favorite thing about spring. I know that you dislike pointed heels and prefer shoes that are more comfortable than fashionable. “I want shoes that I do not even remember I am wearing,” you said. I know that your favorite dance is—was—the waltz, although I suspect that you do not care for dancing much anymore. I know that Brownie is your favorite horse and that Petulia is your favorite hound and that Baramore is your favorite hawk. I know that your laugh is like silver bells and your smile is like the sun and your hair is black like the night. Your eyes are green as summer. I know that, as well.

  I would have come to you, my princess. I tried to come. But I was out of breath before I even reached the castle gates, and when the chancellor saw me, holding my crutch and resting my leg, he told me kindly what I already knew. I am not a prince. Even though I make shoes for princesses, I am still just a cobbler with nothing to my name but a small shop and a bad leg. I could never run through dungeons or fight off enemies, and even if I could somehow make it through victorious, I knew I would never be able to waltz with you at our wedding, even if you still enjoyed dancing.

  As I went back home, hobbling slowly down the hill from the castle to the city, I passed a knight and his retinue. He was handsome and strong. His minstrel rode behind singing songs of his bravery and prowess. The knight was everything I was not, and the chancellor greeted him with a smile and welcomed him in to the castle. The heavy wooden doors slammed shut behind him and I was alone on the road.

  I should have given up. I should have put you and your sisters from my mind and turned again to my shoes and my shop. I loved you too much, though, and when I heard that the handsome, brave knight had also failed to determine your secret, I decided that I would help you in the only way I could. I made shoes.

  I worked all day and night, crafting dance slippers more beautiful than anything I had ever created before. I made them in rainbow hues for your sisters, but for you it was always purple, the most vivid, most plush shades I could find. I stitched every design, each more gorgeous than the next. Peacocks spread their plumage from heel to toe. Moon boats sailed on night-silver streams. Mermaids dove into the depths of the sea and fairies sparkled, real diamonds shining in their eyes, their wings threaded with gossamer. Each pair was a work of art, with all of my love and devotion and longing poured into every detail. It did not matter to me that they were destroyed in a matter of days or even hours. I made them beautiful for you.

  I made them comfortable, as well. I did not know what was happening to you, but I knew that you were dancing each night. I have never danced myself, since no one will partner with me and my leg keeps me from such vigorous movement, but my sister complains of her feet after every time the butcher’s boy takes her to the servants’ balls. I knew you would need comfortable shoes. I made them of silk: I made them of the softest wool I could find. I tried new things, things no one had ever done before, just to make your shoes as comfortable as possible. I studied the work of cobblers far and near, magical and mundane. I plucked clouds from the sky and sewed them into your soles. I found feathers that were so light they floated on their own power—these lined the insides of one pair, and for a few hours during that night, you flew. I collected dreams and wove them around the only part of you I could reach. No matter what other troubles you faced, I never wanted my shoes to cause you any pain.

  The story of your rescue is remarkable. Everyone knows how the soldier used magic to find his way to the underground kingdom where you were forced to dance night after night, how he was able to fight his way to the surface with the proof of his journey, how he broke the spell that kept you and your sisters prisoner. In the city they say that he truly loves you, that it is obvious in the way he looks at you, and that he would desire you even without the promise of a dowry and eventual kingship. They say that you love him, as well, as you have never loved anyone before.

  I did not believe them. I wanted to hate this soldier, this stranger who came and did everything I had hoped to do. But then you came into my shop, both of you together, and I could not hate him any longer, for I saw the way he looked at you, and I saw the way you looked at him. You had never, not once in a dozen years, looked at me the way you looked at him. You were happy with him. You loved him. I knew then that my heart had to let you go.

  There is much speculation as to whether you will dance at your wedding. Most people say that you will not. I think you will. I believe that for everything dark there is a light. You danced in the dark for so long: I think that you will want to dance in the light again.

  When you do, when the band strikes up your favorite waltz and the soldier that you love takes you by the hand and leads you on to the dance floor, you will wear these shoes. They will be as light as a feather and as comfortable as clouds. You will float in them, and they will be such that you will not even remember you are wearing them. They are the best shoes I have ever made. They were made by my hands and mine alone. They are my last gift to you, my princess. Wear them in good health and happiness.

  It has been many years since I put a present in the toe of your shoes, but today, after I finished this pair and wrapped them carefully in paper and silk, so that they will stay perfect and precious until you need them, I began to write this letter. When I am done I will tuck it safely away in your wedding shoes. They are the last shoes I will make for you, and I thought we should end as we began.

  The next time you come to my shop, I will not be here. I am giving the business to my apprentice: he is an excellent cobbler and will serve your family as I and my master served before him. He can provide shoes for you, and your sisters, and your new husband, and your future children, because I do not think I could bear to. I am leaving. There is an old witch on the road out of the city that specializes in turning men into heroes. I think I will seek her out. They say she helped the soldier win your hand in marriage. Perhaps she can help me find my own princess, somewhere else, who does not care that I am not a prince and that I cannot dance.

  If not, it is no matter. I can go to a different town and begin again. I am a good cobbler, and people will always need shoes. I have learned much, making so many slippers for you. I can do things with shoes that no one has ever thought before. Perhaps it would be a shame for me to set it all aside. I suspect there are unusual people outside of the city who could benefit from my skills. I could make very small shoes, or very large shoes, or shoes that can take you seven leagues in a single step. I believe I could even put boots on a cat.

  Her Dark Materials

  Amanda C. Davis

  First you hoist a girl from the ashes,

  Brush sooty tears from her face,

  Tell her she’s worthwhile.

  Squelch through the garden.

  Heave a pumpkin out of the mud,

  Hack into it a door,

  Grab its orange guts

  Until it vomits seeds and strings.

  Twist those prickly vines around your elbow

  Into axles, hitches, wheels.

  Catch mice barefisted.

  Pluck a lizard from the wall.

  For a coachman,

  Lure out a mean, matted rat

  And seize it by the tail

  And shake free the fleas.

  In the stories they’ll sum it up with

  Wands and incantations,

  But real fairies know:

  You have to get your hands dirty

  To make real magic.

  A Mouth to Speak the Coming Home

  Megan Engelhardt

  Maryn was working with the calven in the barn, stroking their noses and feeding them cane to help the birthing go well, when her father came to fetch her. She could feel his shine behind her, walnut and hay and hexes. His amber caramel mixed well with the velvet and musk of the calven. To Maryn’s senses, that was home.

  Gertride Yahdis came with him. Maryn frowned. The usual gingerbread green apple shine that surrounded the woman
was strange. A weirding note of fog grey ran through the shine, so faint that even Maryn, who walked the ports, could barely see it.

  “The Yahdis twins wandered out this morning,” Father said with no preamble. “A port was open in the eastern fields.”

  Maryn nodded. She always felt the ports open and close in their random swirling ways. The appearance in the field had lasted briefly, but the Yahdis childs were young and quick and unobservant, and it would be an easy work for them to step through and be lost along the portways.

  “Are they not in the woods or by the lake?” Maryn asked, though she knew the answer before her father shook his head. They wouldn’t be coming to her if the childs were anywhere on the stead. They were gone.

  Maryn stood and brushed her hands on her skirt, knowing from the change in shine that Father was studying her. My girl is so young, his shine said. Not yet twenty and already port mistress of the stead. I wish it were another, for all that she is best. He thought that each time she had to wander the ports. She showed confidence and courage in her own shine and continued as they walked together to the house until his shine was warm green with pride instead of red with fear.

  Mother met them at the door with Maryn’s going-bag. Maryn took the rugged leather sack and looked inside it quickly. Everything was there: hen’s teeth and whisp bottles, iron ingots, corn seed, straw for stuffing and chalk for grounding and thistles for seeing. They were nestled beside the mundane things Maryn always forgot but Mother always remembered: bandages, oak cakes, a hard cheese, and two cold flagons of cider. Maryn grabbed a packet of the sweet, crumbly sugar candy they pressed in the winter, as well, for the Yahdis childs had long sweet tooths.

  Satisfied that all was right, she thanked her mother and hugged her, letting the woman hold her tight until the red agitation of her mother’s shine faded to a dusky pink.

  “Be careful,” Mother whispered.

  “I will,” Maryn replied, then turned and embraced her father.

  “We’ll light the jack lights for you,” he said.

  “Then I’ll come home,” said Maryn, “and I will bring Hans and Gret Yahdis with me.”

  She walked away, out to the abandoned mill. A port was spawning just as she pushed open the creaking door, and Maryn took a breath, gripped her going-bag, and disappeared into the smoking crag.

  At the house, Mother handed an empty pumpkin to Father. He solemnly gave it eyes to see and a mouth to speak the coming home. When he was finished, they put a candle in the shell and set the lighted pumpkin beside the door.

  “I’m worried, Lemuel,” Mother said, staring out into the fast coming night. “She’s but a child, and the Yahdis childs are younger yet.”

  “Maryn is port mistress,” Father reminded her gently, pushing back his own fear. “And look, Embly. The jack light burns bright. It will lead her home, just as it always has.”

  Mother did not sleep well that night. She was fitful, her mind full of wicked dreams, of Maryn stepping out of ports into strange places with harsh people who offered the girl no aid. A flash of fire burned across her dreams and it was the jack light, no longer the comforting anchor to home but a cold black flame, a barrier between Maryn and the stead. Mother reached for Maryn in her dreams, but the fire flared and burnt out into a void and Mother woke, heart pounding.

  “Wake, Lemuel,” she whispered, shaking her husband. “Something is wrong.”

  Together they left the bed and went downstairs. The shadows shifted outside. As they watched, moving silently across the kitchen, the shape picked up the jack light. The candle light flickered, revealing Gertride Yahdis’s face, dancing over her red cheeks and small squinty eyes, and then she leaned over and puffed. The jack light went out.

  Maryn’s mother screamed.

  Across the worlds, Maryn felt the anchor disappear. She quavered, just for a moment, and her shine turned black as a night without a single candle burning.

  She could not go home that way.

  Home, where even then, moments after the light went out, Father had thrown open the door and grabbed the jack light from Gertride’s unresisting hands. He lit a match shakily and offered it to the candle until the wick caught and the flame burned in the pumpkin shell once more. Carefully he set the jack light aside, safe settled on the table, and turned on Gertride.

  “Why?” he asked, and was proud that his voice did not shake. His wife had dropped to her knees and he wanted to go to her but there would be time for mourning—too much time, he feared. Now was a time for answerings.

  Gertride Yahdis stared back at him defiantly. Her face was half mad and her shine was oily dull, mud brown and grease black and the rich, arrogant purple of shrewish women.

  “We are starving,” she said, her voice as sharp as a hornet swarm. “My Bil and I, we have so little. Those childs of his ate more than they were worth and did little enough work to earn it. There are better worlds beyond the ports. I thought they could find another family in one of those places, who could afford to keep them.”

  “We would have helped you,” Father said, but Gertride folded her plump arms over her chest and shook her head.

  “It’s better this way,” she said, even as Lemuel realized he could not see the thin blue of starvation anywhere in her shine. “It’s better.”

  Mother, still on the floor, whispered “What about Maryn?” and her husband knew he had all the answerings he would get, so he knelt clumsily and held her.

  “She’s brave, Embly. She has the knowings to survive. She’ll find her way homeward.”

  “But the jack light,” his wife said, and now tears trembled on the outside of her voice. “It went out. Her anchor home is gone.”

  “Ports still connect here,” he replied. “It will be hard, but Maryn is our daughter, and the port mistress. She will find her way back, even if it takes a hundred years.”

  “And we will keep the jack lights burning,” Mother said.

  “We all will,” Father said, looking hard at Gertride Yahdis, his own voice iron and cold. “The whole stead will light the jacks, for our Maryn, and for your Hans and Gret.”

  * * *

  Worlds and ports away, Maryn found the childs just as the witch screams faded from the oven. They seemed none the worse for wear, though Gret was too thin and Hans looked larger than she remembered him. They stayed in the cottage until the sugar roof melted from the rain and ants invaded the bedding, and then they moved on.

  “Will we ever get home?” Hans asked as they filled their pockets with eaves. Maryn smiled bravely, for else her shine would have betrayed her fear.

  “Of course we will,” she told them. “We will follow the jack lights until we find a port to take us home.”

  They wandered for many years, and through many ports, and in every town and village they stopped and showed the people how to make the jack lights. The villagers remembered, and every year they lit candles, and gave pumpkins eyes and mouths, to see and speak, and when Maryn and Hans and Gret stepped through the ports they found friendly faces and a line of jack lights to guide them.

  Word never came through the jack lights if they ever made it back to their stead, but the three eventually stopped coming through the ports and, after all, Maryn was best at traveling the ports. Time passed, and many forgot the story of the port mistress and the two lost children. But some things live on, and to this day there are those who open their homes as welcome for strangers and children, and there is candy, for those with a long sweet tooth. Then they take a pumpkin and give it eyes to see and a mouth to speak the coming home, and place a candle gently in its orange shell so that it glows against the night like the shine of walnut and amber and velvet and musk—like the shine of home.

  A Shining Spindle Can Still Be Poisoned

  Amanda C. Davis

  If that was a prince up there,

  Tower-bound in bitter briars,

  Sleeping away his curse,

  No girl would ever seek him.

  Not for fear of the bria
rs—

  I’ve seen kitchen maids hack through worse than that—

  Nor for the tower—

  I’ve seen serving girls climb higher

  Bearing greater burdens

  With no prince to wed them at the top.

  A bound, briared prince

  Would wait forever

  Simply because he sleeps.

  These days,

  The princes clog our town

  Like cloying flowers:

  “I hear she’s lovely.”

  “Is she as beautiful as they say?”

  Sure, she’s beautiful.

  She never eats.

  She never speaks.

  She never moves.

  You’d never see a princess

  (Or a piratess, or an orphan

  Left landless and shoeless,

  Alive on her wits)

  Stumble across a sleeper and say,

  “Oh, I’ll marry him.”

  Maybe he’s lazy.

  You can’t know, when he’s lying down.

  Maybe he’s cruel.

  Maybe he’s stupid.

  Hard to tell with his eyes closed.

  Sure, he’s a prince.

  Doesn’t mean he’s not cruel.

  These princes,

  Silk and steel,

  These daring sons of kings,

  Do they wonder if she’s lazy,

  If she’s cruel or stupid?

  “As long as she’s as pretty as they say.”

  Maybe they don’t wonder.

  Maybe they don’t mind if she is.

  So off they go to battle living thorns

  For the pretty thing trapped in the tower

  Almost a hundred years ago

  For a momentary rudeness

  That wasn’t hers.

  No, it’s a good thing she’s a Sleeping Beauty

  Not a Sleeping Pretty-Boy,