Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

It was her way. It had been her way for the entirety of the summer.

It had been her way since she first kissed me in late spring, when everything was in riotous flower. It was she who held me close in our bed and told me not to say a word of this to her father, for it would break his heart to know his daughter and his oldest friend’s child had been so twisted from what should have been a sisterly bond, as they had raised me in my parents’ stead these last few years since my mother and father had died from consumption. It had been Lizzie who said, “We must never tell anyone what we have done, and we

must stop ourselves from doing it ever again, Laura.”

“But why?” I asked. “It does not feel twisted, as you name it, Lizzie.

Is it not love we are feeling?”

“My father would not call it love,” said Lizzie. “And if your mother and father were still here instead of with the angels, they would not call it love either.”

“What do you call it?” I had whispered in the dark of our room, my hand resting near hers, my fingertips barely brushing her tender wrist.

But Lizzie would not answer. She simply turned her back to me, as

she did now on the path, turning to lead us the rest of the way home.

“No,” I whispered, and turned toward the music instead, turned

toward the goblins and the fruits they had assembled upon their

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tables under the trees in the glen. “This is my way,” I said, and stepped off the path to join them.

Behind me, Lizzie gasped. I could imagine her hand, too, delicately flying to cover her mouth as it did whenever she was shocked or

frightened. “Laura!” she said, but I continued on my way. At the edge of the brook, I took off my shoes, parted the reeds with my hands, and stepped down into the water. It was ever so cold, but on a day as hot as that one had been—both from the sun and from the strong words we’d exchanged—I welcomed the shiver.

The water rose no higher than my knees, and it took only nine

or ten strides before I had reached the other side and could release my dress, which I had bunched within my fists as I crossed over.

Immediately, as I came to stand on the other side of the brook, the goblin’s music came to an abrupt halt, and they all turned in unison to stare at me.

At first I worried they would not welcome my intrusion, so I

began to apologize profusely for interrupting, but even as I unrolled my pleas for forgiveness like a long scroll before their strange faces, the cat-whiskered goblin man lifted his palm and said, “My lady, no apologies! You are our first patron of the evening, and you are welcome to our party. Come, look at our fruits, so succulent, and so deliciously dripping with juices! You will not find such fruits sold in any town. Will you try a pear or an apple or a melon? Won’t you taste this peach?”

He produced a perfectly golden peach in his hand, and stretched

it across the space between us. At first, he had seemed to be standing too far away to reach me, but in the next moment he stood inches before me, the peach already lifted halfway to my mouth. I could

smell its ripeness, and my mouth watered, hungering for its juices.

“I have no money to buy your fruit, sir,” I said, turning my face to the ground to hide my embarrassment. Here I had come in order to hurt Lizzie, here I had come to join the goblin festivities, and yet I was not prepared to purchase their goods at all.

The cat-whiskered goblin’s fingertips found my chin, and lifted

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ever so gently, so that I stared up into his yellow-green eyes, which seemed to sparkle in the fading light, and in that moment I saw that his whiskers and his fur were no more than a mask he had placed upon his face. “You need no money here, my lady,” he said. “That is the currency of humans.”

“Are you not human, then?” I asked, and could not help but hear