Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

She should have known. She’d been the matter. Now it was

something else taken from me.

For days, weeks, months afterward, I waited in the sullen silence

that accompanies exceeding pain, hungering for another glimpse,

wanting the sound of their music to find me, eager for the taste of their fruit upon my lips, desiring only to dance within their circle once more. But I never spied the goblin merchants again. Instead, I began to wither, the way Lizzie had warned me poor Jeannie had

after returning from the woods without her young man. And as I

withered, Lizzie seemed to grow brighter, as if she held a warm fire within her.

In all the months that passed, I had only one brief period of hope, which came when spring returned to us and I recalled the peach

stone I had brought home from the goblin revels. I had placed it in ? 314 ?

? Christopher Barzak ?

a drawer and, upon remembering it, I quickly took it out to set it on a wall that faced south, and soaked it with my tears, hoping it would take root, or grow a green shoot after I planted it in the garden.

No shoot ever came, though I dreamed of melons and trees full of

ripe apples; and sometimes, as I came to see if the peach kernel was growing, I would be deluded by visions of ripe berry bushes, the way a thirsty traveler in the desert will see water where no water flows.

No more did I sweep the house, no more did I tend to the fowl or

cows. No more did I join Lizzie and her mother to knead cakes of

wheat, no more did I gather honey. Instead, I sat in the nook by the chimney and nursed my sorrow. And never did I fetch water from the brook, for going there reminded me too much of what I could no longer see, hear, touch, taste.

“Poor Laura,” Lizzie said one day in late spring, while I was at my worst. I had stopped eating, because no food set before me tasted of life, and even when I tried to eat for the sake of Lizzie and her parents, I could not take more than two bites before my stomach turned and revolted. “Poor Laura,” said Lizzie, coming to sit beside me. She lifted my cold hand from my lap and held it between her burning palms. “I cannot stand to see you suffering like this, sister. Tonight I will put a penny in my purse and go to the goblin merchants for you.”

I was too feeble in mind and in body to say anything to stop her,

and could only watch as she slid the coin into her purse and went on her daily mission to fetch water from the brook.

What occurred down there, in the glen near the flowing water,

beneath the newly leafed trees and the shadows they cast upon

the ground beneath them, I could only imagine from my own

experiences. But Lizzie was a smart girl, and always prepared to get what she wanted without giving herself over in return. So later, when she returned at moonrise, and spilled into our room, slathered in the juice of goblin fruit from top to bottom, I could not believe the words she sang out to me.

“Laura, oh Laura, did you miss me? Come and kiss me. Never

mind my bruises, hug me, kiss me, suck my juices, squeezed from

? 315 ?

? Eat Me, Drink Me, Love Me ?

goblin fruits for you. But I did not let them touch me, only you. Only you. Come, Laura. Eat me, drink me, love me. Make much of me. For you I have braved the glen and had to do with goblin merchant men.”


With a start I leaped from my chair, already concerned that Lizzie had tasted fruit that would destroy her. I clutched at her, and kissed her, and held her to me, as we once did with great passion. Tears sprang from my eyes, burning as they fell from me. And as the

juice from the goblin fruit smeared upon my sister’s body filled my mouth, I felt my youth and vigor being restored to me, and tore at my robe, and then at Lizzie’s, and we tumbled toward our bed like two awkward dancers, parting the curtains as we fell onto the pillows, and then began to touch each other as we were meant to.