Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

? Tanith Lee ?

it, keeping the gates oiled between here—and there. And he is a poor king, a coward and tyrant, is he not? His people sullen and afraid, his guards afraid, too, or arrogant and drunken. He’s not how a king should be, his people’s shepherd, who will die for them if needs must.

Few kings are any good. Few men, few human things.”

But still they sobbed.

Then Yannis said, “I tell you now what I’l do, then.”

And he told them. And the crying ceased.

Down into the king’s hall went Yannis, with the twelve princesses walking behind him on their bare and bruised and lovely feet.

And as he had suspected, the instant the court and soldiers saw the daughters walked meekly with him, everyone grew silent.

The king with his grayed black-iron beard and hair looked up from his gold dish of bloody meat. “Well?” he said.

“Their secret is this, sire,” said Yannis, “they stay wakeful on full moon nights and do penance, treading on sharp stones, and praying for your health and long life, there in their locked room. Such things are best hidden, but now it’s not, and the luck of it is broken. But so you would have it.” And then he leaned to the king’s ear and murmured with a terrible gentleness this, which only the king heard. “But they are, as you suspect, powerful witches, which is why you fear them; but the old gods love them, and you’d best beware. Yes, even despite all those other men you have allowed these girls to dupe, and so yourself had the fellows shorn of their heads: blood sacrifices, no less, to the old powers of Darkness you believe inhabit the lands below the Sun Beneath. This too shall I say aloud? Or will you give me what I’m owed?”

Then the king shuddered from head to foot. Top to toe, that was fair. And he told everyone present that the soldier had triumphed, and would now become a prince, the king’s heir, and might marry too whichever of the daughters he liked.

“That’s easy, then,” said Yannis. “I’m not a young man; I’ll take the oldest head and wisest mind among them. Your youngest girl, Evira.”

And because, he thought , she is the golden cup that holds my heart.

And gladly enough she came to him, and took his hand.

? 87 ?

? Below the Sun Beneath ?

v

Less than half a year the iron king survived; maybe he destroyed himself by his own plotting. But by then Yannis was well-loved by the city, its soldiers loyal to him, for he had learned how to be a favorite with them, having seen other leaders do it.

Yannis, therefore, ruled as king, and his gold-haired queen at his side. Some say they had three children, some that they had none, needing none.

But it was not until after the burial of the cruel first king that Yannis said to his wife, “But did your white cat, at least, not protest?”

“At what, dear husband?”

“At your changing her, for however short a space, into a goat.”

“Ah,” Evira said. “Of course, you have known.”

“And the dogs to wolves, and the birds—to chickens . . . ”

“They were glad,” said Evira, coolly, “privately to meet with you.

For I had sensed you were coming towards us all, and foresaw it was the only way that you would let me tell you and warn you and teach you—and so help me to save my sisters, who trust no man easily, from our fearsome and maddened father. The way matters stand in this world, it is men who rule. So here too it must be a man. But a man who is cunning, brave, kind—and with the skills of magic woken in him, needing only the key of one lesson.”

And from this they admitted to each other that Evira had disguised herself as the elderly witch in the woods, and since she was far cleverer than her sisters, none had discovered her. Though at the last, as they danced, because of the russet radiance of her eyes, Yannis did.