– Go oooooooon, mam. I wanna knooooooow.
Haha, well, you’re certainly impatient tonight. Should I do as Mammam does and punish you both for your interruptions by telling you there’ll be no more stories tonight? No? Then try not to interrupt again. I do keep telling you… The witch and her true-daughter waited for their chance still. They had it at last when the young queen gave birth to a healthy baby boy. The witch and her true-daughter talked their way into being tasked with caring for Aoife. At first, while the king was there, they tended her tenderly, but the witch tried to convince him to leave his wife’s side. The birth had not been easy, she said, and the queen needed peace and quiet. At length the king relented and left.
And when the witch and her true-daughter were alone with Aoife, they killed her and cut her up into many pieces that they then threw out the window. The witch bade her true-daughter take Aoife’s place and cast a spell to make her look like her stepsister. It would take a long time to be powerful enough to fool the king, but they could afford to wait.
– Don’t like this story, mam. Scary story.
– How does she get rescued?
Ach, just listen, liefies. Coen might have been chased away and he might have been turned into a fawn, but it takes a long, long time to lose your true self completely, so he still stayed as close to the castle as he could without arousing the witch’s suspicion, and so he saw what had been done to his sister. Very carefully he fished all the pieces of Aoife’s body out of the river and put them back together. It was very difficult for him because, being a deer, of course he had no hands. But he persevered until his sister was lying beside him on the bank, quite dead.
– Wouldn’t the evil witch see him, mamma?
Oh, no, Krista. He was too smart to let that happen. He did this quite out of sight of the castle, for even as a deer he knew the witch would have done something to stop him if she’d seen him. So, out of sight of the castle, he lay on the riverbank beside his sister’s body and that is where the water-nymph that loved him found him, weeping as only animals can weep and she thought that her heart must surely break. The water-nymph sought out the high-fey for help and before long the seelie Queen took pity on the wilting little creature. Or, perhaps, she was angry with the witch and wanted her punished. No one knows and no one will know unless someone finds the Queen and asks her. No, Alva, that is not a good idea. Mammam would be furious with you and you’d never be told not another story ever again.
– But, mamma, how do the storytellers know if no one knows?
It depends on the storyteller, Krista. Some are wise, some make it up, and some have been told by the Fair Folk. Sometimes if the fairies like a person true, they will share their stories. Now, let me continue. When the seelie Queen appeared to Coen, she touched his brow to break the magic upon him and there lay Coen, with nothing but a pale, starry spot where she had touched him to his own self.
– Heehee. He was naked?
Of course he was, Krista. Deer don’t wear clothing. When the seelie Queen spoke to him, it was in tunes of music. Her voice was haunting and luring, sweet and bitter, anger and gentleness, and age and youth all in one single voice. “Wouldst wish avenge thy sister?” she asked of Coen. When the boy — though in truth he was a young man now — nodded, she spoke of clothes and weapons and with these she gifted him. It took him some time to put them on for he had much yet to remember about being human.
When he was dressed, he asked, “Can you bring her back to life, Your Majesty?” for he was a bold lad.
“With the right herbs, Coen of the Stars, many things may be accomplished,” the Queen told him, and continued, “But thy sister will nevermore dwell in this iron-world. Thy freedom fair we gave. Thy chance, thy one chance, to ask the blood-price for thy sister lies in this.”
– What’s a blood-price?
– It’s when you take one life for another that’s gone.
Very good, Krista. You’ll hear it many times in the old stories, Alva. But Coen wished more for his sister than revenge, for they were of the same birth. Finally the Queen relented and allowed him his sister, if he but served her all his life and, in his rashness, he agreed. First, though, he must deal with his stepmother, which lends some credence to the belief that she was angry with the witch.
– What’s ‘credence’?
It’s when you have a reason to believe something is true, Alva. Now, at the time, it was customary to give a feast for your newborn child only after it had survived its first year. In all those days, the king had not seen his wife for the witch did not know when her magic would be powerful enough to obscure the truth from his heart. And when the great feast came at last, her true-daughter stayed in her tower still.
Midway through the evening Coen arrived though none later knew how, playing a lute that sang with angel’s grace, and so drew the attention of everyone at the banquet. The young prince had not wished to sleep at all, and neither would you with the noise that the feast was making! But when Coen played a lullaby the boy fell asleep so deeply that the witch must have the instrument for her own. She longed for restful nights again and convinced the king that his wife would love to have such an instrument and it might restore her strength. And so the king asked Coen what he wished in exchange for the lute.
“There is not any a thing I want that you would give,” the boy answered, for he knew a little of magic now and the seelie Queen had told him that he must be fairy-sly to gain his sister’s freedom.
The king said he would give the boy half his kingdom and a fat boar’s weight in gold. Again, Coen said, “You cannot give me what I want.”
“I will give you anything you ask, boy, for that lute. My son has never rested so peacefully as now and it may heal my wife.”
And if anyone saw Coen flinch at the word ‘wife’ no one bothered to include it in their stories. He lifted his chin a little. “Will you truly give me any a thing I ask for?” he asked. “No matter what I ask, you will give it me in exchange for my lute? I have your word?”
“I vow to give you whatever you ask, boy,” the king affirmed.
– What’s ‘affirmed’?
– It means ‘agreed’, small-fey.
Krista! Do not talk to your sister so! You shan’t have dessert tomorrow evening. … Ahem. The king continued. “On my life, I swear it.”
Coen shook his head. “I will not give my lute for that. Will you swear on that which is most dear to you instead?”
“I swear.” And Coen nodded for he deemed that it was well and gave the king his lute. The king grasped it tightly, if a little hesitantly, but then Coen let it go and only the king was holding the instrument in his hand. Still, Coen waited with his request, but the witch grabbed for the lute and it was when the king gave it to her that Coen spoke.
“In return for that lute,” he said, “I wish for the deaths of your mother-in-law and your wife.”
Nothing was said after that and no sound was made. But the king had already given away the lute and sworn an oath. Coen waited until the silence stretched too long for the king to bear. “My wife is dearest to me,” he said. “That is a cruel thing to ask, boy.”
Coen merely shrugged. “Perhaps, Your Highness. She need not die now, but let there be no time lost for the death of the queen’s mother. Let her remains be burned tonight. This you have granted me, by your oath and in front of these witnesses.” He smiled lightly, though it was a dark smile. “You have fine warriors.”
And so his stepmother was cut down at the feast and her remains thrown onto a great fire that very night. It blazed a mixture of its natural red colours and pitch-black for the unseelie magic so destroyed. And when the last wisp of darkness had dissipated into the night, the witch’s magic fell from the king and he knew that the woman whom he had cared for that long year was not the wife he loved at all. He wept for her even as the guards in their anger at the witch’s deception ran up the tower where the false queen lay and dragged her down the steps and onto the courtyard wher
e they had all gathered.
Coen looked the girl over, once, twice, thrice and said, “She has her mother’s traits.” And so what should have been a great celebration turned into great mourning for Aoife had been beloved by many. Coen instructed the king to play the lute, but he was too stricken by grief and anger to do so. That is why Coen took back the lute and settled at the edge of the gathering, at a place where the sun would touch in the morning, and he sang of their flight as children and the fate of his sister so that all gathered there might know the story they had been a part of, however briefly.
When the sunlight started to fall on him, Coen and his music began to fade away, though the lute remained behind. And when the sun had risen into a golden blanket across the clouds, Aoife walked through the gate and up to the king and her son. No one had seen her coming, and no one had seen Coen disappear. And at that moment no one cared about what had happened to the young man who had played the magical lute.
That, dearhearts, was the first of the deeds of Coen of the Stars. Soft sleep and dream of stars.
– There’s more?
Yes, Alva. There is much more, but not tonight.
– I don’t think I want to hear any more about Coen, mamma.
– I do!
– You were scared!
– Prrrrt. I like scared. Sometimes.
– You’ll have nightmares.
– Will not!
– Will too!
– Will –
Girls! Go to bed before I decide that I shall never let you hear a bedtime story again, not even Mamman’s stories. I am appalled and disappointed in you both. You were behaving so nicely until now… There certainly won’t be any more stories for at least a week. If bedtime stories only make you bicker then perhaps you should not be listening to them. Your father and I are trying to raise you to be kind and polite to other people, but how am I supposed to think you will be when neither of you can be kind to the other?
– But, mamma –
No, Krista. It is well past your bedtime and if this is what telling you stories does to you then there shall be no more. Do not make faces, Alva, lest you want the fairies to make you look like that forever. They take great delight in that. Now go to bed. It’s late for you both and you need to be up quite early tomorrow. You shan’t be rested if you do not go to bed now.
– Yes, mamma. We’re sorry, mamma. Soft sleep, mamma.
Soft sleep, my dear girls. May your dreams be as gentle as a summer’s breeze and filled with an abundance of love. Good night.
The First Deed of Coen of the Stars is a curious little piece. It’s the start of a story within a story. Originally it was a fairly straight-forward retelling of Brother and Sister, but it then morphed into the first of a mythological cycle of tales, exploring how Coen of the Stars became a great hero.
This is one of the more accessible parts of the larger narrative and stands on its own sufficiently well that I thought I could include it to poll interest in the larger narrative, so I could gauge how to prioritise my ongoing projects.
“You should have a partner!”
But I don’t want a partner. Have never wanted
A partner. I don’t get it. I live
In the same world. See the same things.
But I don’t have that need.
“You should be having sex now!”
But I’m not interested. Have never been
Interested. Why would I want that?
I don’t need it. Why do you?
Because I don’t get it.
“Everybody does it!”
Well, I don’t. I just said
That I’m not interested. What’s the point?
Oh, I’ve read the literature. Seen the movies.
But I don’t feel that.
“Being intimate means having sex!”
No, it doesn’t. You just think so, because…
Actually, I don’t know why. I just know
Society’s got that one horribly wrong.
We can be intimate without having sex.
I don’t need sex to be close to someone.
There. I’ve said it. Now you know.
But you don’t understand.
“You’ve lost a part of you!”
No, I haven’t. I’ve always been this way.
I am not interested. I do not care.
I have lost nothing, because I have never had it and,
If it’s all the same, I like it better that way, thanks.
It isn’t all the same, though. We live in different worlds.
And you never try to live in mine,
While I can’t escape yours.
It’s everywhere with no way out.
Not that I’ve seen, anyway.
And your world encircles us, circles back on itself,
And I can only stand at the outskirts,
Here, at the place where the last ripples meet.
And I can only shout that I am not like you,
Will never be like you. Do not wish it, do not want.
And nothing, nothing, nothing you do
Says I have a right to be me.
So, please, stop trying to turn me into you.
The world’s big enough for us all.
The quotes are all things that someone coming out on the asexual spectrum may hear. The day I wrote this poem, I was more than a little frustrated by them. So I wrote a poem and then didn’t know what to do with it.
In the end, the dearth of ace spectrum poetry and stories I’d discovered out there convinced me to put my anxieties and self-confidence issues aside and include it. Visibility and representation are important and every bit of it helps!
All the world is fire. It fills Phee up. Burns everything clean. Everything away. The fire is in Phee’s nostrils, in Phee’s eyes, in Phee’s bones. It sears. It soars. It coats Phee’s voice in blackened, twisted, honey tubes as it rises and snaps and crackles.
Be careful, they had warned. Be cautious. Phee’s path is not one to be trod lightly, they had said, but it was the one for which Phee had studied all Phee’s life. It was the one that had lain within Phee’s soul and in Phee’s very being.
Even Phee’s parents had known that.
And now everything shifts, was shifting, has shifted, is still shifting. All the multiverse stretched out around, within Phee, teasing. Phee knows there is much yet to be studied. Much yet to be learned. But Phee knows Pheeself as only Phee, as her, as him, as the thrum of a hummingbird’s wing, as the heart of a coyote’s howl, as the beat of a pulsar.
Phee-that-was and Phee-that-is and Phee-that-may-be all mingle and blend and yet stay apart. Phee can do anything. Phee can be anything. Phee is the ripple of a lake, the leg of an ant, the scent of barn owl feathers. Phee-that-was is burned to ashes by Phee-that-is. Knowledge like iridescent sands caught in a tube of glass. Phee-that-was has ideas and memories rooted deep within. It takes all of the fire to show Phee-that-may-be all the sides of the sand-chunks and for Phee-that-is to crumble them into smaller pieces. New pieces. It takes all of the smoke to shift the knowledge-sand into new patterns.
Phee-that-may-be is content. Phee-that-is is impatient, but the fire is gone. The smoke is gone. Into Phee, out of Phee, away from Phee. Gone. Phee-that-is is exhausted. There is so far yet for Phee to go, but the path is there, all around Phee, and it is patient in its waiting.
What can I say about Phee? I wish I knew. I never know how to describe this story. No other description but Phee seems to fit. Phee is Phee and Pheeself is as Phee is.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed seeing how people read Phee’s story and I think Phee would be tickled too. It’s been so diverse. I’ve had people taking it pretty straight-forwardly as the story of a phoenix resurrecting itself and as an allegory or metaphor for the creative process, for example!
Phee always serves as a reminder to me that something short and small can have a huge impact on people.
For Clare, who asked me to recap this in a poem
&n
bsp; A pyrite promise for gold
At a pond was given.
The girl’s word was kept, just so,
Yet her pride turned love to silt.
This is where I admit that there are aspects of The Frog Prince that have never made sense to me. I grew up with the version where the princess throws the prince against the wall in disgust and… somehow that breaks the spell and they live happily ever after? (Meanwhile, the prince’s trusty servant dies of joy.) The variants where the princess actually kisses the frog, despite her reservations, make more sense to me, but only because so many stories feature the same kind of love.
I do like the story, odd as that may sound, but I like it for the darkness in its ending and the questions it poses about the prince’s servant and the way that it makes me want to explore how to make it work for me.
They always say that I was abducted. That it was not of my own will that I found myself in Erebus.
It was the first decision I ever made.
Mother sought to keep me trapped amid her flowers and her corn. Sought to confine me far away from laughter and companionship, from love. Perhaps her reasons were those of a concerned parent, but we never talk about it. If we talk at all.
I wanted to see the world, any world. The quiet of Erebus is not the same as the quiet of meadows. I liked it, so I stayed. I was not caught, those first few times, and I did not stay long. I was only ‘abducted’ when Mother found out.
Eating the seeds was my second decision. There is beauty in this realm. Even in Tartarus, there is beauty, though it is deformed and distorted. All pales to the Elysian Fields, but they remind me too much of my cage. I prefer the peace of Erebus. Death is only fearful if your soul sees Tartarus. There is more beauty here than in all the meadows.
My husband is nothing like the way these stories show him. It pains my heart to hear the stories told, for he is gentle. Too often I see him lead a child’s shade to drink of Lethe, to restore its innocence. Too often I hold him when he fears his heart can take no more. Perhaps, for him, it would be better if he were the monster mortals believe him to be. But he is not.
And I wish the world to know I love him for it.
Recounting this to you, to remember, is my third decision. It will not be the last.
Feather by Feather and Other Stories Page 14
