Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

Feigning contemplation of the book on her lap whenever her mother or governess swept past, and hoping ever so hard that nothing would come of her misadventure.

Now, Emer removed her frock slowly, fearfully, wondering why she did not feel the cold. She stood in front of the mirror and turned. An inverted feathery triangle lay across her back and shoulders. At the nape of her neck were knots and twists where her tresses had begun to tangle into a kind of plumage. Her nails had toughened, lengthened and grown points. Her thumbs and little fingers were shorter.

Yet she did not call for help.

Emer knew the price of magic—something outlawed since the beginning of her father’s reign. Herbcraft was acceptable; although leechwork was a gray area, its benefits were acknowledged; but witchcraft? Enchantments had enabled the Black Bride to bring calamity, to blind the King to the one he loved, to almost ruin a prosperous land, and to leave the Queen permanently scarred. Emer, transforming as she was, must be committing sorcery, even if it wasn’t her choice.

No, she would not call for help. Surely it would go away. Surely all she needed was to apply more of her mother’s lavender nostrum.

Surely in the morning, she thought, upending the bottle of ointment and slopping it up her arms, surely by then this would all be gone.

v

? 195 ?

? Flight ?

At dawn, as the final act of her vigil the princess dressed all by herself for the first and last time.

A cream silk wimple, a veil of amaranthine gossamer, and a circlet of engraved gold hid the tight calamus cap her hair had become.

Only Emer’s un-feathered face remained visible. Her high-necked ruby robe had sleeves long and loose enough to conceal her glossy black body and her arms, which were rapidly knitting into wings.

Stubbornly, she fumbled with gloves, but didn’t bother with shoes— her legs had wizened, toughened with dusky gray skin, finished with pronged feet. Now three clawed toes click-click-clicked as she walked.

And so it was that the kingdom’s firstborn, pride and joy (and occasional frustration) of her royal parents, entered the great hall with a strange new gait. Her eyes, once blue, were black, and her head moved this way and that, taking everything in with a darting gaze.

She promenaded along the ermine carpet to where her parents sat, enthroned and enthralled by her terrible progress.

When she stood before them, dropping into the queerest curtsey ever seen, the Queen and King began to weep and wail respectively.

Emer’s hands convulsed and the delicate gloves, which had been shoved onto the tips of her transmuting fingers, fell away as the flesh melded. The gown, too, was rent, and soon the princess was jiggling about on one leg then the other, kicking away the rags. Her head grew rounder, tinier, and her ears disappeared; the coronet slid down to sit around her neck like a collar. Wimple and veil hung loose until she shook them off. Emer’s nose and mouth speared into a scintillating beak.

Ladies-in-waiting screamed and lords bellowed. The noise was astonishing; it swelled until the crescendo broke over the raven-girl and she tottered about, looking for escape. One of the high-reaching windows was open to allow the cool breeze in, and she half-ran, half-skipped towards it, shrinking, until the golden circlet slipped away and she leapt through the opening as if performing a circus trick. She hopped onto the sill, gave her parents one last look, and caw-cawed, a sound that echoed the whole sad length and breadth of the chamber.

? 196 ?

? Angela Slatter ?