Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

blink an eye. Doesn’t acknowledge the girl standing there beside her with an apple in her hand. The girl can’t take it any more, she starts shouting and cursing and crying and making a real scene. She throws the apple against the wall and slams the door on her way out of the room. The next morning, she packs a bag and is gone.

What happened to you anyway? The doctor said the delivery boy found you lying on your bedroom floor. I didn’t even know you let those kids have a key to the house, but I guess the groceries had to come from somewhere. One year I’ve been gone, and not a word from you. Not a call, not a question about how I was doing, and then the next thing I know Mr. Spinner is crying and telling me you’re in the hospital. I called the hospital and they told me you wouldn’t be going home. They told me I’d better get here as soon as I could.

I know, finish the story already. Okay. The girl hears that her mother is in the hospital, right, and her first reaction is good, let her rot. Then she thought, the house is empty, here’s my chance.

I went to the house yesterday, Mother, to collect a few things. Do ? 330 ?

? Erzebet YellowBoy ?

you know what I found? I could hardly believe it. You picked that apple up after I left, didn’t you? You picked it up and put it on your dressing table. It’s still there, all rotten, right beside the tarnished comb. I saw that apple and how you’d moved it, and I finally figured out what I could do.

Here. I brought you something. This is the story you wouldn’t let me tell, and this is how it ends. I smashed your mirror, Mother. I brought one of Mr. Spinner’s hammers with me to the house, was going to break open the door of the shed and get some stuff out of there. Instead, I used it to break your mirror. Don’t be mad, there was no way I could have carried the whole thing.

Here, mom. Uncurl your fingers, let me put this in your hand. Be careful, I taped the edges but they might still be sharp.

Look. It’s a piece of your mirror. I brought it for you. That’s right, take it. Can you hold it up? Okay, good, now you can see yourself.

Surprised, aren’t you. Well, I told you, Mother. This is a story about love.

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Erzebet YellowBoy was born in America, but now lives in a tumbledown cottage in rural France with her husband and a posse of wild cats. She is the co-founder and long-time editor of Cabinet des Fées, an online journal of fairy tales, and the founder of Papaveria Press, a micro-press specializing in hand bound, limited editions of mythic prose and poetry. Her work has appeared in Fantasy Magazine, Not One Of Us, Electric Velocipede, and Clarkesworld Magazine, and in the anthologies Japanese Dreams, Running with the Pack, and Haunted Legends. Her novel Sleeping Helena was released by Prime Books in 2010, and she has several novellas forthcoming from Masque Books. Erzebet is also an artist and a bookbinder. Her work can be found at www.erzebet.com.

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“Blanchefleur” was inspired by one of my favorite fairy tales, Madame D’Aulnoy’s “The White Cat.” In D’Aulnoy’s version,

or the translation of it that I read as a child, a king wishing to pass his kingdom to his sons asks each of them to find the smallest dog, the finest linen, and the most beautiful woman in the world. Each of the princes goes on this quest, but of course it is the youngest who succeeds, with the help of a mysterious white cat who rules a cat-kingdom. She gives him the small dog and the fine linen in walnut shells, and in the end, she herself becomes the most beautiful woman.