The Starlit Wood

by Dominik Parisien

  But I’m suspicious of the Rumpelstiltskin story: the bragging rewarded, the awful king rewarded, promises broken, but it’s all right because the miller’s daughter is beautiful and the ugly little old man who helps her is devilish and cruel. There’s something uncomfortable and not quite right about that, too much justice on Rumpelstiltskin’s side, and it’s hard for me to miss the sinister in the caricature of the hunched long-nosed man whose hands run with gold and who wants to steal golden-haired babies.

  That feeling is at the heart of this story for me: that stomach-tightening moment when we see ourselves in a story, seen through a hostile eye, and understand that we aren’t allowed to be the hero. Because of course, I do also want the miller’s daughter to be victorious; to come out of the whole affair with a crown and a happy child, the accepted grand prizes of fairy tales. But I want to be her, with her in that victory; and I want the power to be in her hands, for good and evil.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  We’d like to thank several people who were instrumental in helping us pull this anthology together: Joe Monti and Ann VanderMeer for guidance and support; John Joseph Adams for advice and anthology expertise; Michael McCartney for making our book look beautiful with his brilliant and innovative art direction and design; Elizabeth Blake-Linn for making the book feel like a work of art; Jeannie Ng, Bridget Madsen, and Valerie Shea for making it perfect; Benjamin Carré and Stella Björg for their beautiful art; and Ellen Wright for taking awesome pictures of us. We’d also like to thank the rest of the team at Saga Press: Justin Chanda, Jon Anderson, Alexa Pastor, Catherine Laudone, Faye Bi, Audrey Gibbons, Ellice Lee, and Deane Norton. And a huge thank-you to the writers whose stories make up this book. Thanks as well to Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling for inspiring us with their many beautiful fairy tale books over the years. Dominik would like to thank friends and loved ones for their support, especially Derek Newman-Stille, Mike Allen, Kaitlin Tremblay, and his family. He would also like to thank Marianne LeBreton for always being there, Nicole Kornher-Stace for always having his back, and Kelsi Morris for a great many things. Navah would like to thank her family and good friends, and the members of the Feminist Book Club past and present, with a special shout-out to Liz Kossnar and Kristin Ostby for giant beanbag/couch support. She would especially like to thank Naftali Wolfe for far too many things to count, and the world’s best tiny humans and fairy tale believers, Eliora and Ronen.

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  DOMINIK PARISIEN is an editor, poet, and writer who lives in Toronto. He is the coeditor, along with Navah Wolfe, of several anthologies for Saga Press, and the editor of Clockwork Canada (Exile Editions). He was also an editorial assistant to Ann and Jeff VanderMeer for various projects, including Cheeky Frawg Books, Weird Tales, The Time Traveler’s Almanac (Tor), Sisters of the Revolution (PM Press), and The Bestiary (Centipede Press). His fiction and poetry have appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Shock Totem, Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, and other venues. His fiction has twice been nominated for the Sunburst Award. You can find him online at https://dominikparisien.wordpress.com/ and @domparisien on Twitter.

  NAVAH WOLFE is an editor at Saga Press. She is the coeditor, along with Dominik Parisien, of several anthologies for Saga Press. She previously spent six years as an editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, where she worked on many bestselling books, including some that have won awards such as the Printz Honor, the Pura Belpré Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Stonewall Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Schneider Family Award. She has also spent time working in a children’s bookstore, on a climbing wall, and in a zoo. She lives in Connecticut with her husband, two tiny humans, and one editorial cat. Visit her on Twitter at @navahw.

  ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

  CHARLIE JANE ANDERS is the author of All the Birds in the Sky. She’s also a founding editor of the science fiction website io9.com and the organizer of the Writers with Drinks reading series. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA, and several anthologies. Her novelette Six Months, Three Days won a Hugo Award.

  ALIETTE DE BODARD lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a system engineer. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories. Recent works include The House of Shattered Wings, a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, and The Citadel of Weeping Pearls (Asimov’s), a novella set in the same universe as her Vietnamese space opera On a Red Station Drifting.

  AMAL EL-MOHTAR is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey. Her short fiction has received the Locus Award and been nominated for the Nebula Award, and her poetry has won the Rhysling Award three times. Her fiction has appeared most recently in magazines such as Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, and Uncanny, and in anthologies such as The Bestiary (edited by Ann VanderMeer) and Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories (edited by Alisa Krasnostein and Julia Rios). She contributes articles and reviews to NPR Books, Tor.com, and the L.A. Times; is a founding member of the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours and a contributor to Down and Safe: A Blake’s 7 Podcast; and edits Goblin Fruit, a quarterly journal of fantastical poetry. She divides her time and heart between Ottawa and Glasgow. Find her on online at amalelmohtar.com or on Twitter @tithenai.

  JEFFREY FORD is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. A new collection, A Natural History of Hell, will be out in 2016 from Small Beer Press. He lives in Ohio and currently teaches part-time at Ohio Wesleyan University.

  MAX GLADSTONE has been thrown from a horse in Mongolia and twice nominated for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award. Tor Books published Last First Snow, the fourth novel in Max’s Craft Sequence (preceded by Three Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, and Full Fathom Five) in July 2015. Max’s game Choice of the Deathless was nominated for the XYZZY Award, and his short fiction has appeared on Tor.com and in Uncanny magazine.

  THEODORA GOSS’s publications include the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), a novella in a two-sided accordion format; and the poetry collection Songs for Ophelia (2014). Her work has been translated into ten languages, including French, Japanese, and Turkish. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Locus, Seiun, and Mythopoeic awards, and on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her short story “Singing of Mount Abora” (2007) won the World Fantasy Award. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program. Her first novel, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, is forthcoming from Saga Press in summer 2017.

  DARYL GREGORY is an award-winning writer of genre-mixing novels, stories, and comics. His most recent work is the young adult novel Harrison Squared (Tor). The novella We Are All Completely Fine won the Shirley Jackson award, was a finalist for the Nebula, Sturgeon, Locus, and the World Fantasy Awards, and is in development at the SyFy Channel. His SF novel Afterparty was an NPR and Kirkus Best Fiction Book of 2014 and a finalist for the Campbell and the Lambda Literary awards. His first novel, Pandemonium, won the Crawford Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. His other novels are The Devil’s Alphabet (a Philip K. Dick Award finalist) and Raising Stony Mayhall (a Library Journal Best SF Book of the Year). Many of his short stories are collected in Unpossible and Other Stories, which was named one of the best books of 2011 by Publishers Weekly. His comics work includes th
e Legenderry: Green Hornet; the Planet of the Apes; and Dracula: The Company of Monsters (cowritten with Kurt Busiek).

  KAT HOWARD is an award-nominated short fiction writer who lives and writes in New Hampshire. Her novella, The End of the Sentence, cowritten with Maria Dahvana Headley, was named one of the Best Books of 2014 by NPR. Her debut novel, Roses and Rot, was published in 2016 by Saga Press.

  STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES is the author of fifteen and a half novels and six story collections. Most recent is After the People Lights Have Gone Off, from Dark House. Up next is Mongrels, from William Morrow. Stephen lives in Colorado with his wife and kids.

  MARGO LANAGAN is the New York Times bestselling author (with Scott Westerfeld and Deborah Biancotti) of the Zeroes trilogy. Her solo novels include Tender Morsels and The Brides of Rollrock Island, and she has published five short story collections, including Black Juice. She has won four World Fantasy Awards and been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, and Shirley Jackson Awards. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia.

  MARJORIE LIU is an attorney and New York Times bestselling author of over seventeen novels. Her comic book work includes Monstress, X-23, Black Widow, Dark Wolverine, and Astonishing X-Men, for which she was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award for outstanding media images of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. Liu currently teaches a course on comic book writing at MIT—and a seminar on popular fiction at the Voices of Our Nation workshop.

  SEANAN MCGUIRE was born and raised in Northern California, pinned between redwood trees and the towering shadow of Mount Diablo. She lives there still, in a crumbling farmhouse at the edge of a wildlife reserve, which she likes to cheerfully remind people is directly in the path of the tarantula migration. Seanan shares her home with two enormous blue Maine Coon cats, a terrifying number of books, and a steadily growing collection of creepy dolls. Really, all she’s missing to be a horror movie is her own private corn maze. Seanan was the 2010 winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her first book was published in 2009 (Rosemary and Rue, DAW Books). She has released more than twenty-five books since then, under both her own name and the name Mira Grant, and she shows no signs of slowing down. Seanan doesn’t sleep much. When not writing, she records albums of original science fiction folk music (called “filk”), travels, and continues in her efforts to visit every single Disney Park in the world. It’s a relatively harmless hobby, so we let her have it. You can keep up with Seanan at www.seananmcguire.com, or on Twitter as @seananmcguire.

  A full-time writer since 2001, GARTH NIX has worked as a literary agent, marketing/PR consultant, book editor, book publicist, book sales representative, bookseller, and as a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve. More than five million copies of Garth’s books have been sold around the world, and his books have appeared on the bestseller lists of the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, the Guardian, and the Australian. His work has been translated into forty-one languages.

  NAOMI NOVIK is the acclaimed and bestselling author of the Temeraire series, begun with His Majesty’s Dragon. Her latest novel, Uprooted, is a new fantasy inspired by stories of Baba Yaga and the Polish fairy tales and folklore of her childhood.

  SOFIA SAMATAR is the author of the novel A Stranger in Olondria, winner of the William L. Crawford Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the World Fantasy Award. She is also a Hugo and Nebula award finalist and the recipient of the 2014 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her new novel, The Winged Histories, was published by Small Beer Press in 2016.

  KARIN TIDBECK is the award-winning author of Jagannath: Stories and Amatka. She lives in Malmö, Sweden, where she works as a freelance writer and creative writing teacher. She writes in Swedish and English, and has published work in Weird Tales, Tor.com, Words Without Borders, and anthologies like Fearsome Magics and The Time Traveler’s Almanac.

  CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, and Hugo Awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.

  GENEVIEVE VALENTINE is an author and critic. Her first novel, Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the 2012 Crawford Award; her second, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, was an NPR, Washington Post, and Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year. Her short fiction has appeared at Tor.com, Clarkesworld, the Journal of Mythic Arts, and in New Haven Review and others; her nonfiction and criticism have appeared at the Dissolve, the AV Club, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the New York Times. Her most recent novel is Icon, the second book in the Persona duology.

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Saga Press eBook.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. • Compilation and Introduction © 2016 by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe • “In the Desert Like a Bone” © 2016 by Seanan McGuire • “Underground” © 2016 by Karin Tidbeck • “Even the Crumbs Were Delicious” © 2016 by Daryl Gregory • “The Super Ultra Duchess of Fedora Forest” © 2016 by Charlie Jane Anders • “Familiaris” © 2016 by Genevieve Valentine • “Seasons of Glass and Iron” © 2016 by Amal El-Mohtar • “Badgirl, the Deadman, and The Wheel of Fortune” © 2016 by Catherynne M. Valente • “Penny for a Match, Mister?” © 2016 by Garth Nix • “Some Wait” © 2016 by Stephen Graham Jones • “The Thousand Eyes” © 2016 by Jeffrey Ford • “Giants in the Sky” © 2016 by Max Gladstone • “The Briar and the Rose” © 2016 by Marjorie M. Liu • “The Other Thea” © 2016 by Theodora Goss • “When I Lay Frozen” © 2016 by Margo Lanagan • “Pearl” © 2016 by Aliette de Bodard • “The Tale of Mahliya and Mauhub and the White-Footed Gazelle” © 2016 by Sofia Samatar • “Reflected” © 2016 by Kat Howard • “Spinning Silver” © 2016 by Naomi Novik • Cover illustration copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Carré • Interior illustrations copyright © 2016 by Stella Björg Björgvinsdóttir • All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. • Saga Press and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. • For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com. • The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. • The text for this book was set in Baskerville. • The illustrations for this book were rendered in pen and ink. • Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data • Names: Parisien, Dominik, editor. | Wolfe, Navah, editor. • Title: The starlit wood : new fairy tales / edited by Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe. • Description: First edition. | New York : Saga Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. • Identifiers: LCCN 2015041920 (print) | LCCN 2016000469 (eBook) | ISBN 978-1-4814-5612-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-4814-5614-2 (eBook) • Subjects: LCSH: Short stories, American. | Fairy tales. • Classification: LCC PS648.S5 S7 2016 (print) | LCC PS648.S5 (ebook) | DDC 813/.010806—dc23 • LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041920

  inik Parisien, The Starlit Wood