Once Upon a Time: New Fairy Tales Paperback

There’s no end of hurt.

I pull off Chick’s jumper and nightdress. Her nappy. Her feathers have come in overnight. I’d be restless too if I had pinions pushing through my skin. Soft plumes cover her abdomen.

Her shoulder blades peel away from her back and unfold. Her wingspan is mighty considering she’s so slight. No wonder Chick’s clumsy on the ground. She’s designed for flight.

Click, click, click.

Chick leaps up, her feet curling like claws around my forearm. I hold her up. She’s heavy, held like this.

Click, click, click.

I’m fixed by my daughter’s gaze. She’s ferocious. Dignified. I bow my head. She doesn’t need my limited definitions. She has her own possibilities and perfections.

Clickclickclick.

I launch my precious girl. She takes flight through the hole in the roof, going where I can’t follow. She tilts and tips until she catches the wind and spirals upwards, a shadow on the sky.

How high she soars.

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Priya Sharma lives in the UK where she works as a doctor. Her short stories have been published by Interzone, Black Static, Albedo One, and on Tor.com, among others. Her work has been reprinted in Paula Guran’s The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2012 and 2013

and Ellen Datlow’s The Best Horror of the Year 2012 and 2013. She is writing a novel set in Wales, which is taking a long time as she writes in longhand with a fountain pen and then types it up very slowly.

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I had this idea for an epic, bad-ass scene I wanted to illustrate, but as soon as I started to sketch the hero’s corset, I knew he deserved a whole story. “Castle of Masks” is his story.

Cory Skerry

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Castle of Masks


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Cory Skerry


It wasn’t difficult for Justus to take the place of the yearly sacrifice.

“Go home,” he said, and when Ingrid opened her mouth to argue, he lifted his skirts to show her the stolen cutlass dangling beneath. “I’ve hunted fox, deer, wolf, and bear—a beast in a castle is nothing to me.”

Her face was a wet moon in the chill starlight, her eyes so red that even the colorless night couldn’t hide them. Her name had been drawn in the village lottery, and she’d spent the last week thinking she must die.

“Good luck, brave fool,” she whispered. As Ingrid’s footsteps faded behind him, the sounds of the approaching carriage grew louder.

Justus smoothed his skirts and tried to pretend he was a woman.

Once in a while, when it came time for one of Justus’s neighbors to give up his own daughter to the Greve, the man suddenly wanted everyone to charge the castle and slay the monster instead of sending his child to be devoured. No matter that the Greve supposedly changed into an oversized wolf in the night, or was a ghoul wearing the rotting limbs of the victims—it was high time that people risk their lives for justice. Invariably, everyone else was just as reluctant as he had been the year before when it wasn’t his child being taken from him.

Justus regretted having been so complacent until last year, when his sister, Gudrun, was chosen, but he wasn’t about to embarrass ? 237 ?

? Castle of Masks ?

himself by demanding that the folk from his and other villages help with his revenge. It hadn’t yet occurred to him that he might go in his sister’s place—and as soon as he had the thought, he began his preparations.

The coach was black, and so were the four stout horses that drew it. Their breath ghosted through the crisp air, but the driver’s didn’t.

Justus’s heart pummeled his chest—was it true, that the Castle of Masks was served by the undead?—but after a moment he saw that the man simply had a thin wrap over his face.

“My name is Valfrid,” the man’s voice creaked.