Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

end, I would join my hands to their little hands and bid them cling together, saying, “For there is no friend like a sister in calm or stormy weather; to cheer one on the tedious way, to fetch one if one goes astray, to lift one if one totters down, to strengthen whilst one stands.”


And when afterward the children went on their ways to create their imaginary worlds in the afternoon sunlight, or under the shadows of the willow tree at the bottom of the garden, I would weep, silently, from where I sat on my bench, for I had lied in telling them the story in that particular fashion. It was told in that way for their own good, really, with a sound moral embroidered within it, but none of it was true. Except the part about the fruit, and the goblins, and how my sister saved me from a terrible fate.

What I did not tell them was how my sister also destroyed me. A

part of me, I should say. Perhaps the best part. But stories for children ? 303 ?

? Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me ?

never hang a broken heart upon the mantle for all to witness and to fear. Instead it is a lively heart, and it is beautiful, isn’t it? Thudding away like a fine instrument! The stories one tells children always mean: Life will be happy, my dear ones, even though you will struggle within the world’s fierce embrace.

Perhaps I should begin with the day when everything truly went

awry, the day Lizzie and I were walking down by the brook near

our family’s farm on the outskirts of town, arguing, as we had been doing for much of that summer, and I first came to spot the goblin merchants as they erected their marketplace in the glen across

the water. At the time I did not know it was a market they had set themselves to making in such a hidden place, outside of town, where the idea of patrons lining up to buy their goods was an unlikely

gamble; but I could hear their voices float toward us, and when I

looked over the swaying reeds by the gently flowing water, I could see their tables laden with fruit so lushly colored it shined like precious gems beneath the waning red sun.

It was their faces, though, that charmed me more than anything. Some wore the features of a red fox with sharp ears, charcoal-tipped. Others had long white whiskers that drooped, like a cat who has just lapped a satisfying bowl of cream. One bore the snout of a pig, another peered through the round golden eyes of an insect. Before I could realize what I was doing, I had stopped my progress on the path and Lizzie, who now stood a few steps ahead of me, had turned back to say, “What is it, Laura?

Why must you always al ow your heart to flap as if it does not belong to you but is possessed instead by the wind?”

I wanted to laugh, and laugh I do now, when I think of Lizzie’s

frustration over my displays of emotion. After all, we had been

arguing that day about how it had been she who had stirred my

emotions like a spoon of milk into a cup of tea. “How can you now

wish that I not be stirred after having stirred me?” I had asked, just before I heard the goblin voices. But Lizzie had only shaken her head with disgust and refused to answer.

? 304 ?

? Christopher Barzak ?

“What is it, Laura?” she asked again, with more concern this time, as I stood on the path by the river, entranced as if in a waking dream.

“Over there,” I said, lifting my chin in the direction of the goblin merchants as they set about their queer business. Now they had begun to play music, a bow on a fiddle, with a long reed pipe settled upon the lips of a rat-faced goblin, and as their notes weaved toward us, the other goblins began to dance, arm in arm, with sweat on their brows, circling one another, switching partners.

“They’re horrid,” said Lizzie. “Do not look at them, Laura. Come.

Let us be on our way.”

On our way. I looked at Lizzie, who stood half-turned to me, half-turned in the direction of home, and blinked. It was not our way.