Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

Summer sunshine. Liselle’s smile. Her fingers pricked by thorns and smeared red with berries, instead of pricked by nettles and red with blood.

I chose once, I could choose again. I could break my body against the glass. I’m not a card-carrying organ donor, but could a doctor refuse a dying man’s last wish?

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? The Hush of Feathers, the Clamor of Wings ?

I bank away from the witch’s tower, circling. Do I have the courage to fly straight, and not break away this time?

Is it too late? Can I pull Liselle from the ice?

My reflection wavers in the witch’s glass, as I turn again, skimming the tower so the window scrapes my feathers. Another thought occurs. George’s car arrives at his office at six o’clock every evening.

How hard could it be for a dirty, gray pigeon to startle a driver, to cause an accident? Surely George has an organ donor card in that fat wallet of his, along with all his cash.

And if not, I still have six other brothers.

What would I give to have Liselle back again? My blood? Theirs?

I can’t give her back her voice. I can’t give her back the seven years and more I stole from her, but I can give her something better—the choice I had, to take my gift, or refuse. It’s the least I can do.

Liselle’s pain brings me back again, the way it always has. I let it carry me through the sky, wound around my useless heart. I wonder what Liselle will choose—accept a brother’s gift, or refuse it out of spite. I know what I would do, but I’m not Liselle. I can only hope that, in this sense at least, it isn’t too late, and her heart is still stronger than mine.

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A. C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. Her fiction has appeared in publications such as Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Apex, and The Best Horror of the Year Volume 4, among others. In addition to her fiction, Wise co-edits Unlikely Story, publishing three themed issues of unlikely fiction per year. You can find her online at www.acwise.net.

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Retellings are a common approach to the art of writing fairy tales, but often the tales that get retold over and over are those that originated from the Grimm Brothers, Hans Christian Andersen, or Charles Perrault. Other fairy tales exist without having necessarily been classified as such, for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it’s because of the form they take, like Christina Rossetti’s famous poem, “Goblin Market,” from which I took my inspiration. When I first read that poem, it was clear to me that it was a fairy tale, but told in the form of a poem. In my retelling, I transport the poetry into a prose story form, and also attempt to illuminate a story hidden within Rossetti’s original version. That’s truly the most beautiful thing about retellings, I think: the way that one author can illuminate or reveal what the original author either couldn’t see or did their best to conceal.

Christopher Barzak

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Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me

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Christopher Barzak


Days, weeks, months, years afterwards, when we were both wives

with children of our own, our mother-hearts beset with fears

and bound up in tender lives, I would call the little ones to me and tell them of my early prime, those pleasant days long gone of not-returning time. I would tell them of the haunted glen where I met the wicked goblin men, whose fruits were like honey to my throat but poison in my blood. And I would tell them of my sister, Lizzie, of how she stood in deadly peril to do me good, and won the fiery antidote that cured me of the goblin poison. Then, when my story came to