Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

“If it’s so hard to catch his daughters, then why try?”


“Because it is never hard at all. Those who watch the girls, or would do, the princesses drug asleep, being themselves well-versed in witchcraft. Whoever wants to find out anything must not taste a bite nor swallow a sip in that house, unless it be from the common dish or jug, and sampled by others. Or if he is forced, he must only pretend. And immediately after he must feign slumber or better—slip into a trance so sleeplike, so deathlike, it will convince the sternest critic. Then he may follow those girls as he wishes, and learn all and everything. Providing, of course, none can see him.”

Yannis said, “For example, by letting his spirit free from his body.”

“Just so.”

Next a silence fell. It came down the chimney and through the two little windows with the shutters, and sat with the witch and the soldier, timing them on its endless noiseless fingers to see how much longer they would be at their council.

At last Yannis said, “Two secrets, then. What is the third?”

“I said already, son, you must find the third secret yourself. But some call it Courage and others Arrogance, and some blind fool Madness. You must act on what I have taught you, that is the third secret. Now, go milk my goat, who has fallen in heart’s-ease for you, and bid my chicks goodbye. Then you shall set off again, if you’re to reach the city gate by sundown.”

Yannis stood like a man distracted. Then he said, “Either you want my death, and so have done this. Or else you mean me to prosper.

But—if that—then why? I’m nothing to you.”

? 69 ?

? Below the Sun Beneath ?

“For sure perhaps, or not,” she said. “But I have been something for you. For even when you were a warrior in the wars, you have cared for me.”

“But Missus—never ever did I meet you before . . . ”

“Not me that speaks these words, but so many others— womankind.

My sisters, my mothers, my daughters, the daughters of my

daughters—all of those. For the old woman and the young woman, they the rest of the soldiers might have killed for uselessness, or put to a use that would have killed them too. Those women that you helped, that you defended, and hid, that you gave up your food to. Women young and old are dear to you, and you in the midst of turmoiled men, blood-crazed and heartless, have where able been a savior to my kind. And so, also to me, Yannis, my son.”

Then Yannis hung his head, lost for words.

But she, as she turned in at the leather curtain, said to him, lightly, “I will after all tell you a third thing. It is how the old beast of a king knows his daughters are at dangerous work.”

Yannis shook himself. “How, then?”

“By the soles of their feet. ”





II


They used a different language in the city—in their buildings, their gestures. While their speech contained foreign phrases, and occasional passages in a tongue that was so unlike anything in the regions round about that it took him time to fathom it. However, he came to realize he had heard snatches of it before. It was an ancient and classic linguistic of which, racking his brains, he saw he had kept a smattering.

Most of the city was of stone. But near the center—where a wide, paved road ran through—the architecture was, like the second language, ancient, and some even ruinous, yet built up again. Tall, wide-girthed pillars, high as five houses stood on each other’s heads.

Large gateways opened on terraced yards. A granite fountain played.

Yannis was surprised. But the metropolis had been there, evidently, far longer than those who possessed it now.

? 70 ?

? Tanith Lee ?