Fairly Wicked Tales

by Hal Bodner

  This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events and the situations are the product of the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to actual persons, either living or dead, or historical events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright 2014. All rights reserved.

  Cover Design by atrtink.com

  Photo by C. Simmonds Photography

  Model: Elisabeth Lewis

  Table of Contents

  Song of Bones

  by Vekah McKeown

  Red

  by Katie Young

  Sweetheart,the Dream Is Not Yet Ended

  by Gary W. Olson

  Crumbs

  by Adam Millard

  A Thrice Spun Tale

  by Suzi M

  His Heart’s Desire

  by Fay Lee

  Little Beauty

  by Matthew Hughes

  Hare’s Tale

  by Jay Wilburn

  The Golden Goose

  by Robert Holt

  A Prick of the Quill

  by Lizz-Ayn Shaarawi

  Sacrificed

  by Laura Snapp

  The Glass Coffin

  by Dawn Cartwright

  The Price of the Sea

  by David Matteri

  A Blue Light Turned Black

  by Wilson Geiger

  Let Down Your Hair

  by Eugenia Rose

  The Wolf Who Cried Boy

  by Armand Rosamilia

  It Comes at Night

  by JP Behrens

  Bloodily Ever After

  by Reece A.A. Barnard

  Al-Adrian and the Magic Lamp

  by Tais Teng

  The Fisherman and His Wife

  by Bennie Newsome

  Rum’s Daughter

  by Eric Bakutis

  The Ash Maid’s Revenge

  by Konstantine Paradias

  Gingerbread

  by Hal Bodner

  Foreword

  I remember reading fairy tales as a child, and then reading them as an adult, and then reading them to my own children. It will come as no surprise to anyone that the darker the tale, the more I enjoyed it. And when I found that some were based on true events—my love for them knew no bounds.

  I’m not talking your Disney fairy tales here, I wanted Grimm Brothers. Give me the morbid, the twisted, and the gory. As an adult I discovered the wonderful books edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling:Snow White, Blood Red; Ruby Slippers, Golden Thorns; and Black Thorn, White Rose. I gobbled those books up like Hansel eats gingerbread. Fairy tales retold for adults, what a concept.

  Fast forward to the present day and we are surrounded by fairy tales—from movies, to TV shows, to YA books, and more. So why add to it by doing yet another book of fairy tales? Because these tales are different. These tales give the villain a chance to tell his point of view. Or maybe the hero is telling the story, but the truth this time. The line between good and evil is often blurred, but we tell our tales so the hero is clearly in the right. Even when he’s wrong.

  So sit back, relax, and let us tell you the real story. Once upon a scream …

  Stacey Turner

  July 2014

  A Song of Bones

  A retelling of “The Singing Bone”

  Vekah McKeown

  I beheld the last of the torches going out, the final procession line returning to the safety of the castle. Nobles and commoners alike, grim, all dressed in the monotone shades of mourning. My father, the King, had been laid to stately rest in the cemetery grounds outside the great Cologne Cathedral. He would not be buried within the tombs of its foundation, for like I, he was not of noble birth. Like him, the crown which rests upon my brow I’d won by righteousness instead of ancient bloodline.

  I took no joy in this bauble, this badge of office purchased with the lives of noble men, though a tiny smile touched my lips. Glad was I for the black veil of mourning, shielding such a ghastly expression from view. The spectacle going on beneath me paled in comparison to the ungodly sin of vengeance coloring my countenance. To put it gently, torchlight from the honor guard was not the only bit of radiance to illuminate the darkness.

  He had long since stopped screaming, the flames of righteousness silencing forevermore the cause of all my miseries. I would have preferred to hear him sing out his suffering for hours yet, reveling in the beautiful aria of his torment. Burning to death seemed less than he deserved, the terms of his punishment taken from my royal hand. Suffer not a witch to live, or so said the Holy Book clutched to my chest. He assisted in laying the curse upon the good soul who had been my father, and upon the King before him and his daughter, the woman who had become my stepmother when she married my father. Her hand had commissioned the crown I wore, and her hand had bathed it in unwitting blood.

  Other fires rage in the distance, purging my land from the contaminated things which brought these atrocities upon us—the bones of my uncle being chief among them—anointed with salt and holy water before being kissed with flame. May he burn in eternal damnation for his part in this unholy action, as well; his ashes flung into the Rhine River to never find peaceful rest. I lay equal blame at his feet, blame he shares with the traitor burning beneath my balcony. It was my Uncle’s jealousy that brought ruin to all, and it is my justice that at last confined him to the grave.

  Though perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, showing to you the end when I had not explained the beginning. This is not my story alone, though the only way I can explain such events is through my eyes. This is the story of family and the exploitation of a dream by unclean, selfish hands. I shall take you back to the beginning, to a time before a crown came between two brothers, to when a young girl rode atop her father’s shoulders, devoted to him and her belief he could do no wrong.

  Once upon a time. Isn’t that the way such fables begin?

  ***

  The name of the village to which I was born is not important. Small and quaint, pious as such villages ought to be. Possessed of a single well within the center of its town square, a single structure of brick and mortar serving as its Inn and tavern. Our population had been ravaged by the Black Death when my father was very young, most of the stone structures torn down and burned to prevent a reoccurrence of the sickness. It had become our custom for the town council to gather in the common room of the Inn, and all matters of legality regulated to fireside chats over mugs of ale.

  After the plague sickness, our village was deemed too small to merit its own church. Thusly we as a community walked the long miles upon the road to the neighboring city to receive our weekly dose of spirituality. In those days I rode upon my father’s shoulders, a wisp of a girl untouched by more than seven summers worth of life. My father and I and my uncle shared our little wooden house with its thatched roof, mere farmers trying to scratch out an existence. To someone so young and inexperienced in the world, grand palaces held little more enchantment or richness, held less perfect wonder, than those innocent summer days.

  It is the simplest pleasures in life that bring the greatest of joys, or so my mother once said before making the trip to Heaven. Words I never understood until much later in life, when time slipped away from me on ghostly feet and destiny unfurled a tapestry of years quite different than I anticipated. Far too late to transform the pattern of my life with colored threads of gentleness and joy.

  Pieter lived on the next farm over, his mother the woman that did her best to raise me in the wake of my mother’s passing. On the last day of my innocence, he ran through the
throng of citizens, chasing the village dog. Of course I squirmed against father’s shoulders at once, wanting to go and run with my heart’s friend. After much sighing, he set me on the dusty path, admonishing me to stay within eyesight. Looking back, I understand his approval of this running about while on the way to church. I would be tired and quiet during the sermon and would most likely sleep on his back during the walk home.

  “Pieter!” I cried, running after my friend. “Pieter, wait!”

  His blond hair flashed in the mid-morning sun, his laughter floating back to me on the warm winds. But it was where his feet were taking him that made me frown, made me fear. On either side of the winding road rose up the Black Forest, a place no person walked with a light step. Untold horrors lurked in those woods, whispered stories by women and men alike of faeries and sprites and all manner of demons lurking in those trees coming to the forefront of my imagination.

  “Pieter!” I tried again, running faster. “Father said to stay on the road. Pieter, wait!”

  He vanished into the outer trees before I could catch him, chasing the mangy yellow dog. His laughter fainter and fainter as the distance increased, my horror growing inversely. Chilled darkness emanated from the shadow of those trees, an abnormal occurrence energy dancing in the shadows of those trees. Summer was nearly upon us, and though winter snows often piled to heights above my little head, our summers baked the earth hot enough to cause drought. I had overheard the village council speak of an overly warm spring this season, so it stood to reason to my young mind that springtime shadows should not be this cold.

  No breeze ruffled my hair, nevertheless the trees swayed with unnatural silence, as if tangled in strong winds.

  I slowed my frantic pace, standing on the edge of the forbidden place, afraid to walk further into the darkness.

  “Pieter?”

  “Magdaline!” came his return. “Come see what I found, Mada. You must see this!”

  I glanced backward, towards the warmth of sun and family. They seemed so far away now, like stringed puppets dancing on the tiny stages when carnival came to town. Did I run to the safety of the light and leave my friend to the unknown perils of darkness? Did I run to my friend and risk my father’s wrath if I managed to escape the faerie cook pots with my skin intact?

  “Mada, hurry! MADA!”

  Without thought I plunged ahead, my tiny heart beating as if to jump past my teeth with fright. I found Pieter not too far inside the first ring of trees, staring with wide eyes at the ground. The yellow dog he’d been chasing no longer sported the sun-kissed glossiness of vitality, its fur soaked with the precious ruby liquid of life, its large dark eyes unseeing. I didn’t know what else it was I saw after that. Never before had I seen anything disemboweled, not even when Uncle Kristoph cleaned the chickens for dinner. My father had never permitted it.

  I could not quantify the slimy, snakelike ropes knotted in piles where the stomach should have been. The reek of bowels spilled of their digestive juices so foreign as to not register as an odor in my mind. That wasn’t what Pieter had wanted me to see, though. In his palm, he clutched what looked to be an arrowhead made of stone, markings upon it reminding me of swirling loops more than words. That little prize had been what he wanted me to view, not the death of the dog he loved so much.

  And most certainly not the gnarled old man stooping down before the dog, red-bathed blade in one hand and the other using a stick to stir through its spilled innards. He glanced up at us, as if finally noticing our presence.

  “Children,” He murmured, his words laced with a flavor I had never experienced. “Why do young children come to stare at Old Teufel? Mayhap I find the answer here.”

  He stirred the guts again, his breath wheezing in and out of his open mouth.

  “How can a dead dog tell you anything?” Pieter spoke up, his fear melting away into the curiosity of all young boys. “The dog is in heaven now. He can’t speak anymore.”

  “Oh, but he can,” Old Teufel replied with a hissing chuckle. “He can tell you a great many things if you have the eye to watch and the ear to listen.”

  “What does he tell you?”

  Old Teufel tipped his head this way and that, reminding me of a vulture seeking the best, most choice mouthful to consume first. “He tells me the future. He says … he says …” His head lifted sharply, staring at me with eyes that burned. “He says you will be queen one day. Old Teufel would like to meet a queen. Come to me, little queenling, and I will show you the way. I will give you a potion to make you the most beautiful, the wisest. Everyone will love the queen Old Teufel creates. And you will love Old Teufel in return. You will give birth to the Old Ways and Old Teufel will guide you.”

  I did not realize I had been walking forward, my mouth hanging open. His tone had become so soft, so soothing like my mother’s had been, and I wanted to be comforted by him. I wanted to touch his weathered old skin, ashamed I had thought such bad things about this kindly old man. Until I heard the sound of an arrow whisking by, slamming into the nearest tree and sinking in so deep only half the shaft was visible.

  Pieter cried out and I turned quickly, seeing Uncle Kristoph tucking him under one arm, his hunting knife bared in his other hand. My father stood a meter or so back, his bow held and an arrow ready.

  Old Teufel laughed, a hissing sound that made my skin crawl. “The King of Life and the King of Death. Tell me, brothers, which of you will stand as such? Old Teufel knows the magic, and Old Teufel will tell you your destiny. The cost Old Teufel asks is the young girl. Give me the little queenling that I may make her the most beautiful, the wisest—”

  My father’s arrow took him in his leftmost eye, smashing his crooked body backwards into the tree behind him, the fletching of the arrow the only thing visible in the socket. Trees around us shook in a sudden wind, shedding their leaves like tears, covering us in their mourning of the old man. Hissing sounds wove through the branches, a mooching echo of a dead man’s laughter.

  My father grabbed my shoulder, tucking me under his arm much like Uncle Kristoph had done to Pieter. We ran from the dead dog with its spilled entrails and the crying trees and the laughter of a man who should not be able to laugh any longer.

  ***

  Summer brought on the greatest drought in our village’s history. Crops planted and tended with meticulous care yielded up a pittance come harvest time, not nearly enough to sustain us through the winter. My father and Uncle had retrieved their weapons of war from the hidden chests in the cellar, taking to the forests to hunt for meat. They needed such armaments, not for the deer or other small game they sought, but for the newly arrived monstrous beast roaming the Black Forest.

  A gargantuan monstrosity of a boar, such was the beast according to the village council. Easily the size of four men put together, with gnarled leathery skin and burning eyes. The creature didn’t grunt like a natural beast should, instead making this hissing-growling sound, as if the rusted gates of Hell, itself, parted to welcome any crossing its path. So fearsome was this beast, and so harsh the winter, the King had offered the greatest reward for anyone who slayed this demon.

  He who felled the beast would be wed to the King’s only daughter, becoming the next King of our lands.

  Many knights of the realm fought the creature, their mangled bodies found on the outskirts of the forest proper. Placed as if the beast had the sentient mind of a man and did this thing to taunt the King and his daughter. Months had gone by and still none succeeded in felling the mighty boar, villages emptying themselves of their menfolk in an effort to capture a crown for their own.

  Upon the evening of a particularly nasty snowstorm, Pieter and I huddled in the darkened stairwell of the Inn, watching in fear and curiosity as the elder men decided the fate of our village.

  “We ought to accept the charity of the church,” Adolpho Gottlieb, Pieter’s father, said. “Isn’t enough grain in the storehouses to feed the children! Let us go to the city and make what lives can be made
within its walls.”

  Several of the elders nodded, murmuring agreement.

  “No,” Uncle Kristoph said immediately after. “We cannot abandon the village. This is our home. My brother, Lukas, and I fought for His Majesty in the last war to ensure these lands remain ours. We cannot walk away from them.”

  Some muttered in agreement, but few.

  “I agree with your heart, Kristoph,” my father put in gently, placing a hand on his younger brother’s shoulder. “My wife rests in eternal slumber in the fields behind our home. I would not leave her nor have her resting place lost to anonymity. Yet I have my daughter to think on, just as Elder Gottlieb has his son. I would just as soon not abandon her to sickness and death brought on by hunger.”

  My uncle shrugged off his hand, a look of frustrated rage contorting his features. “You forget the other option.”

  “What other option?”

  “The beast.”

  A chill swept the room, the meager fire in the hearth nearly guttering to embers in the unseen wind. And I swore to all holy saints, a hissing mocking laughter skulked upon a perverted air. Silence filled the room, each man present reaching for the holy cross upon their necks, many not realizing they prayed the Our Father in an undertone. Pieter and I crossed ourselves and silently added Hail Marys in counterpoint to the baritone whispers of the elders.

  “Out of the question,” my father snapped when the prayers finished.

  “I agree with Koenig, the elder,” answered another. “Out of the question. A bad omen occurs when word of the beast is spoken aloud.”

  My uncle shook his head. “Do you not recognize this for what it is? No one has managed to slay the beast to this day. My brother and I can do this together. Out of all the men in this village, we two have fought in wars and survived. We understand these woods better than those Knights from the city in their clanking armor. We are huntsmen. Do you understand what fortunes awaits our village if we succeed, if one of us becomes king?”