Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet 29

by Edited by Kelly Link

  The youngest, whom the others simply called Baby, was the sweetest and most beautiful, with big brown eyes like the star of a Japanese comic book and flowing hair like a pre-Raphaelite heroine. She loved to wear red and pink together, feathers in her hair, as many shiny baubles as possible, and when she left school, she found a calling as a fortune teller. She took her clients’ hands gently between her own and told each one something completely unexpected but true. Her sisters indulged her, letting her sleep late on her days off, washing her delicates by hand, keeping the ripest berries and saltiest almonds for her to snack on, and waiting up for her when she stayed out late, not to scold her when she returned but to help her off with her tight dancing shoes. You might think that all this spoiled Baby, but in fact the opposite was true. With each indulgence, Baby became more grateful, more tender, more loving and caring.

  The castle is decorated all over with mirrors, angled every which way so that in none of them can the sisters see their own reflections. Instead they see someone across the street and half a block away, but because they are looking into a mirror, they expect to see themselves and so suffer many sequential moments of confusion.

  One day, the third Phoebe went off into the forest—chasing a client’s lacy handkerchief taken by the breeze? following a kitten (she loved cats) or a golden deer—and the giant found her walking down a fire road, looking blankly at the white-barked birches and quaking aspens and thinking of nothing at all. He cut off her feet so that she couldn’t run away, then slung her over his shoulder and took her home with him.

  The deer came and told her sisters what had happened, advising them to rescue her from the magical box in which the giant had locked her. Even though the box was full of lovely glittering things, and even though in it one could not feel pain, it was not like home.

  That was that, they thought. How would they ever get her back?

  One by one, as I’ve told you, the two eldest transformed themselves into skunks and porcupines and went after him with spoons and nets, but nothing worked because the giant’s wife always saved him with vats of tomato juice to remove the smell and needle-nose pliers to remove the quills and soothing salves of toothpaste and copious amounts of Vicodin. Sometimes in these stories, the giant’s wife will help, tired of her monstrous husband, but not in this one.

  And so it was Baby’s turn.

  “How is it done?” she asked her sisters and following their directions to breathe and push and push, she turned herself into a damsel fly with delicate wings and an iridescent blue abdomen, a strong flyer who could stop in midair, dart sideways, and even fly backwards. She flew off and a fairy tossed her a shiny egg which she caught in the basket of her legs and which became a pretty pink ball and then a crystal ball, although crystal ball-gazing had never been her forte. In two other encounters, her tenderness served her well, and she received a needle and a poisonous flower. When she got to the giant’s house, she relied on his curiosity and stupidity. Luckily he had plenty of both. “Hello,” she said and he said, “Holy cow, a talking dragonfly! Come here, wife, and look at this!” When his wife appeared, the youngest Phoebe poisoned them both and freed her sister.

  The giant is their father, of course. Yes, I know this doesn’t make sense. Their father, the King, lives in the castle at the center of town with his second wife, the blond witch.

  When they were little, they sat in a circle with their friends and played the game The Little Bird. “Year of the bird, year of the bird,” they chanted and passed around a matchbox from which a tiny heavy metal bird wrapped in red flannel might pop out at any time. Or maybe a dry leaf or a budding twig, dandelion fluff, rabbit turd, rusty bottle cap, cat’s paw. “All fall, all fall,” they chanted as they waited to see what would appear. These items were not magical. As soon as an item appeared, the child holding the matchbox leapt up and ran around the circle until the item took wings and flew off. If it flew to the south, that meant good weather. If it flew to the north, snow, no matter the time of year. If it flew to the east, they would find golden candies by their dinner plates that evening, and if it flew to the west, they must all scramble for home. Those times are long gone now.

  I could tell you the story of how one slipped over the edge of the falls by accident. I could tell you the story of their tunneling to escape.

  The youngest Phoebe enchanted the giant with the pink ball—it floated in the air and turned all sorts of colors and always returned to its owner no matter how far it was thrown. While he was playing with the ball, she placed the flower in her hair. He found her so pretty he let her come close and she stabbed him with the needle. The usual poison symptoms ensued until he staggered and died, his fall shaking the earth.

  Or she steals a wasp’s stinger and a scorpion’s poison, or they give her these things willingly after she performs some small service for them. All the sisters are searching, but in searching, they lose each other. The giant takes only the feet, not the sister, and she’s been left at home while they search (obviously—she has no feet!). She keeps calling to the others; they keep calling to each other—Fee-bee!! Fee-bee!! Until it drives the giant’s wife crazy. The siren loves only her own song.

  Or there are three princesses and three princes who rescue them, as it should be. Or only one. Or twelve. There are never four of anything but in this version there are.

  In another version, they are four generations of the same family rather than sisters: Grandmother, Mother, Daughter, Granddaughter. Tzipporah, Perle, Frayda, Phoebe. All called Faigale, the little bird.

  Finally one day, the giant’s wife caught the youngest sister, alone in a field. “All right,” she said. “All right, I’ll find your sisters for you. I’ll even return the feet (though I don’t think they’ll do your sister much good now—we’ve picked nearly all the meat off of them). There’s one condition though—you, none of you, can be human again. You must live out your lives as birds.” And so the youngest acquiesced and all the sisters came running, yes even the one with no feet, and the giant’s wife turned them into birds to spend their days catching flies, and away they flew until they landed here.

  About these Authors

  Nina Allan’s stories appear regularly in Black Static and Interzone, and have featured in the anthologies Strange Tales from Tartarus, Best Horror of the Year #2 and Year’s Best SF #28. A first collection of her fiction, A Thread of Truth, was published by Eibonvale Press, followed by The Silver Wind. Nina’s next book, Stardust, published by PS Publishing, was shortlisted for the BFS and BSFA Award. An exile from London, she lives and works by the sea in Hastings, East Sussex.

  Sarah Blackman is the Director of Creative Writing at the Fine Arts Center, a public arts high school in Greenville, South Carolina. Her collection of stories, Mother Box, is forthcoming from FC2 next spring.

  Ian Breen lives and writes in Western Massachusetts.

  J. Brundage lives in Arizona.

  Rhonda Eikamp is originally from Texas and now lives in Germany. Her stories appeared up to the year 2001 in venues such as Space and Time and The Urbanite. More recently she has had stories published or forthcoming on Daily Science Fiction and in the anthology Grimm and Grimmer: Black. When not writing fiction she translates German legal texts, which helps keep her mind convoluted, or just confused.

  David Galef is the pseudonym of David Galef, whose latest book is the short story collection My Date with Neanderthal Woman (Dzanc Books). He also runs the creative writing program at Montclair State University.

  Neile Graham is no longer smug about being Canadian, with the Prime Minister and tar sands and all. However, she still is one though she dwells happily in the Seattle rain, working for the UW and Clarion West Writers Workshop, not finishing novels, and writing poems which have appeared in books with her name on them and more recently in Goblin Fruit, Queen’s Quarterly, and The Moment of Change: An Anthology of Feminist Speculative Poetry.

  Claire Hero is the author of a collection, Sing, Mongrel, and three chapbooks, the
most recent of which is Dollyland (Tarpaulin Sky). Her poems and stories have appeared in Avery, Black Warrior Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Denver Quarterly, Magpie (UK), and elsewhere.

  In addition to successfully feeding many vegetarians sandwiches in her personal life, LCRW cooking columnist Nicole Kim-berling specializes in formulating this very same item at the restaurant where she now cooks.

  When not writing Jennifer Linnaea studies Japanese, practices Aikido, and works at the local library in her adopted town of Eugene, Oregon. Her fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and Interzone, and more.

  Kara Singletary writes with her left hand, reads books analyzing sci-fi TV shows, and knits. She runs too many blogs, but has only one personal one (coffeesocksannndkitties.tumblr.com). Maybe now she’ll start a writing blog. This is her first time being published outside of her high school, although if her world domination schemes come to fruition, it won’t be her last.

  Maya Sonenberg’s second story collection, Voices from the Blue Hotel, was published by Chiasmus Press. Her first, Cartographies, received the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. More recent fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Fairy Tale Review, Web Conjunctions, Hotel Amerika, New Ohio Review, and Pear Noir. She lives in Seattle with her family (including a daughter named Phoebe) and teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Washington.

  Christopher Stabback writes words, plays music, and lives in a hovel in Sydney where the rusted roof turns rainwater to steam in the sun. His story, “In Which Faster Than Light Travel Solves All of Our Problems” appeared in Clarkesworld.

  Eileen Wiedbrauk’s work has been published in North American Review, SWINK, Enchanted Conversation, and others. She is Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press, a collegiate English instructor, blogger, coffee addict, cat herder, MFA graduate, fantasist-turned-fabalist-turned-urban-fantasy-junkie, Odyssey Workshop alumna, NewMyths.com book reviewer, designer, tech geek, entrepreneur, avid reader, and a somewhat decent cook. She wears many hats, as the saying goes. Which is an odd saying in this case, as she rarely looks good in hats. (eileenwiedbrauk.com)

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