Just A Reminder:

just a reminder:

if you send people hateful and toxic messages anonymously, i don’t want you to follow me or talk to me. this community is supposed to be a safe space to share our stories with each other. juvenile hatred has no place here.

Let Down Your Hair

he is a young man, with a young, pregnant wife. they are poor, and can’t afford much, so he sneaks into the witch’s garden at night to steal away the rapunzel lettuce his wife so desperately craves.

when the witch gothel catches, him she demands the child that her garden is feeding as payment.

he agrees, because there’s nothing else he can do.

he and his wife can have more children, but not if they’re dead. they can have more children later, when they have the means to provide for them, when they’re older and more sure of themselves, when the prospect of being responsible for another mouth to feed isn’t quite so terrifying.

his wife is still slick with blood when he wraps their daughter in an old pillowcase and brings her to the stone wall separating their land from the witch’s. “are you going to hurt her?” he asks, clutching his crying daughter to his chest.

gothel raises an eyebrow and says, “what a foolish question.” she pulls away from him and is gone in the next instant.

his arms feel empty, but lighter too. he’ll never say this aloud, but it’s almost a relief to give the child away.

they couldn’t even afford to feed themselves, never mind anyone else.

he wants to be a father. he doesn’t want to be the father of a hungry child.

~

this is not the first time gothel has bargained a child away from its parents. and so she tucks the squalling little girl in bend of her elbow, and goes where she always goes.

“caroline!” she calls out, “oh mother caroline!”

she stands in front of large house, one that has the general appearance of being many houses stacked up on top of each other, all different colors and sizes and styles. also, from the side, it does not look unlike a rather large shoe.

the door bangs open, and a small wave of children run for her, small sticky hands grasping at her dress and cloak, and gap toothed grins everywhere she turns. “have you brought us another brother?” a girl asks, wrinkling her nose. “i have too many brothers.”

the boys turn to her, glaring, but the girl is unrepentant. she’s the only girl in among the younger kids, and is quite cross about it.

then the older kids surround gothel, the ones that had had the patience not to go chasing after her at a sprint. the teenagers like to pretend like they don’t care, but she has many eager and impatient eyes on her, lots of twitching fingers eager to take the baby away from her. that’s fine by gothel – she’s eager to be rid of the blasted thing.

“that’s enough!” a powerful, creaky voice shouts. “that’s quite enough of that! make room, make room, let me through!”

the crowd of children part for mother caroline. like gothel, caroline has dark skin and black hair, a strong, wide nose and plump lips. but while gothel appears to be a woman in the prime of her youth, caroline is an old woman. her back is straight and strong, and there is strength in the width of her waist. but her dark hair is streaked with silver, and her skin has started to bend to the will of time and gravity, causing delicate wrinkles to frame her face. “little sister,” gothel greets, “you’ve gotten older.”

caroline shoots her an irritated glance, “while you haven’t changed at all.”

“you could have became a witch like me,” gothel says, not for the first time, “you were always quite good with physical magic. then neither of us would age at all!”

“change is inevitable,” caroline says with the type of finality that makes gothel’s skin crawl. “let me see the child.”

the children crowd impossibly closer as gothel hands the baby over, red faced and new. caroline cradles the babe against her chest, then stills, her lips pulling down at the corners. “what’s wrong?” gothel demands, peering down at the baby anxiously.

she looks like any other baby gothel has seen. her face is squished oddly and her eyes are a watery blue. she has ten fingers and ten toes – gothel checked! – and she was crying when her father handed her over, but she’s quiet now.

“i can’t take this child,” caroline says.

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what's a fire and how does it - what's the word? - burn

so i have this disney playlist i listen to usually when i’m driving and i was blasting poor unfortunate souls this morning and i was thinking

what if ariel didn’t sign the scroll?

because she’s about to, okay, and she looks at the paper. the parchment made of seaweed, the ones that’s specially treated to survive underwater. and she thinks of her cave of treasures, her books that remain perfectly preserved underwater. “no thank you,” she says slowly, becoming keenly aware of air of this place, of the not-people she’d seen who hadn’t been able to pay the price for sea witch’s bargain. “i – no. thank you. but no.”

ursula tries to convince her otherwise, but ariel runs. she goes back to her cave, destroyed as it was by her father’s anger, and thinks.

she’s the daughter of triton. her books never got wet, though she lives in the ocean. she feels a pull inside her, to the land, to somewhere else, but what if – what if –

what if she doesn’t need the sea witch or her father to perform magic for her? what if she has her own?

ursula had wanted her voice because that’s how she performed her magic. singing in this cave had given it powers and protection, and when she saved her prince from the sea – she sang then too, to keep him safe, to guide him back to life and away from death.

so she has magic. she only needs to figure out how to use it.

so that’s what ariel does now. she’s quiet and keeps to herself, and her father and sisters think that it’s because she’s upset with her father, that she’s busy licking her wounds. she’s moved on from that. she has no trident, and is uninterested with fueling her magic with the souls of the damned like ursula has. so she needs to figure something else out.

she does what she’s not supposed to do, and goes where she’s not supposed to go, slipping past the guards and patrols to the one place in the sea that is forbidden to all of them.

the crevice in the earth where what remains of her grandmother lives.

ariel goes to amphitrite, and the sea goddess is so much bigger than ariel, the size of great whale as she curls at the bottom of the sea floor, too old and too tired to do anything more than sleep. “granddaughter,” the great being croaks, opening an eye as blue and as unfathomable as the sea, “you look like me.”

“they say i look like my mother,” she says, and to herself adds: that’s why father can barely stand to look at me.

“you have more of me in you than your mother,” she says, and she shifts and pulls her mass of red hair over her shoulder. “more of me in you than your father does, even.”

“i have magic,” she says, pulling her bravery to the fore as she swims closer to her grandmother, “i want you to teach me how to use it.” amphitrite pushes herself up, and it’s the first time she’s moved in a millennia, and ariel notices for the first time that her grandmother isn’t a mermaid – she has legs.

she has legs.

“you have power,” amphitrite corrects fiercely, “and i will teach you to wield it.”

and so she does. ariel spends her nights by her grandmother, learning to harness the power of the sea that runs in her veins, and sleeps her days away while her sisters and flounder and sebastian grow more and more concerned, but she refuses to tell them why. she refuses to be stopped.

but her heart still aches. she fell in love with her prince, and she wants him still. so she swims to the edge, goes to the beach where his castle resides in the dead of night when her lessons with her grandmother are complete, and sings

. she’s careful not to let any magic leak through, only her voice. she does not want to enchant him. she wants him to love her as she is. so she sings, her voice clear and powerful and cutting through the air. she hopes he can hear it.

then one day a figure walks to the beach, and it’s him, her prince. “hello?” he calls out, “are you out there? are you – please, it was you that saved me, wasn’t it? won’t you come out and let me see you?”

so she does, waves her tail at him until he catches sight of her and takes hesitant, disbelieving steps closer.

“you’re a mermaid,” he says, eyes wide, “i thought i saw – but it couldn’t be.”

“i am, and it can,” she says, heart beating wildly in her chest. he’s just as handsome as she remembered, and she wants him just as much. “my name is ariel.”

“ariel,” he repeats, and pulls off his boots and goes wading into the water, watching her to see if she flinches away from him. she doesn’t, and his strides grow bolder. “my name is eric.”

“eric,” she whispers, and when he’s close enough he touches her, trailing fingers across the bare skin of her shoulder and tangling them in her hair.

when he kisses her, she feels powerful enough to undo the world.

so there’s that now, spending her nights with her grandmother and her prince, and she knows how to make her own legs now, could walk onto land and be made a queen among the two legged men.

but she’s a princess here first, and before she can do that she needs to take care of something.

ursula.

the rotten sea witch with her rotten sea magic won’t be allowed to torment her people any longer.

she tells her grandmother, and amphitrite smiles and says, “an excellent decision, child. i’ve enjoyed our time together, but i think it’s time for me to sleep once more. i’ve taught you everything i can.”

and tears prick ariel’s eyes, but she holds them back. she knew that it couldn’t be forever, that her grandmother can’t die but no longer desires to live and this is the in-between.

“you’ll be an amazing queen,” amphitrite murmurs, and closes her eyes for a millennia more.

this isn’t something to be done in the dead of night, although it would be easier to do it then.

she will make a spectacle of it, she will remind the sea that her people are not to be trifled with.

once upon a time they feared a blue eyed, red haired sea queen with the power to destroy them all. it’s time for them to do so again.

so she drives ursula to the center of the city. her sisters cower and people hide, and her father comes rushing forward to save her.

“you’ve committed great crimes against my people,” she says, not flinching as lightning gathers in the sea witch’s hands, “so now shall a great crime be committed against you.”

“foolish girl,” the sea witch snarls.

triton is yelling. he won’t get there in time.

he doesn’t have to.

she doesn’t need to sing anymore. instead she lifts her hands and pulls ursula apart without ever touching her, not only renders flesh from bone but also sets free the souls she’s been hoarding, reverses the magic done to those who’d fallen into the sea witch’s trap.

they all stare at her, her people, her father, and her sisters. she looks to triton and says, “i’m not a little girl anymore.”

he opens his mouth, closes it again, then says, “i can see that.”

all at once everyone’s perceptions are turned sideways about their youngest princess. she commands a power that even her father doesn’t have access to, she’s not depressed and dreamy – she’s powerful young woman who knows exactly what she’s doing.

so she does what she wanted to do, she gives herself legs and steps onto the sand and launches herself into eric’s arms. she becomes his bride, and the rumors run rampant of what she is, of where she came from, but they can’t prove anything and so they rule.

they live long, happy lives. ariel is his consort, his advisor, his wife, his tactician, and his best friend. all those years reading drowned books have certainly paid off. she ages herself along with her husband, bears his children and then teaches them they ways of her – their – people.

her husband dies, and she disappears, like the stories of selkie women that everyone whispers around her. their children give their father a sea burial, and vow to see him again one day. what they know and none of their subjects do is this – their father’s body isn’t in that casket.

she returns to her ocean, her legs form into her glittering green tail, and she goes home. she uses her terribly powerful magic, and brings her husband with her. she went from princess ariel of the sea to queen ariel of the land, and now she’s back again.

she’s not quite a teenager, but neither is she the old woman she pretended to be on land. she’s returned her and her husband to the prime of their life, and as she gained legs to be with him, he now gives his up to be with her.

eric becomes a merman, and a prince by virtue of being ariel’s husband.

she returns to her family and her world without missing a beat, and they all welcome her as if she never left, treat her husband with kindness and respect.

because they all know.

it doesn’t matter that she’s the youngest. when, far in the future, triton’s reign ends –

ariel’s reign will begin.

From CreativeSoul Photography on Facebook:

Sharing one of our favorite shoots from our Glory book. We were happy to partner with our talented designer friend Sara Bunn who created these stunning AfroVictorian dresses for our London shoot. The girls looked absolutely gorgeous and regal that day.  Special thanks to @lisafarrall for the beautiful hairstyles, @alerohbeauty for makeup, and our gorgeous models @tamiaxjaila Wami @jennifer_tuck and @nia.g_x #creativesoulphoto

Mexican Gothic (2020)

From the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow comes a reimagining of the classic gothic suspense novel, a story about an isolated mansion in 1950s Mexico—and the brave socialite drawn to its treacherous secrets. He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemí. You have to save me. After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She’s not sure what she will find—her cousin’s husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.   Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She’s a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she’s also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin’s new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi’s dreams with visions of blood and doom. Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family’s youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family’s past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family’s once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness. And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia  (Author)

Get it here

Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the author of Gods of Jade and Shadow, named one of the best books of summer 2019 by Publishers Weekly; Signal to Noise, named one of the best books of the year by Book Riot, Tordotcom, BuzzFeed, io9, and other publications; Certain Dark Things, one of NPR’s best books of the year, a Publishers Weekly top ten, and a VOYA “Perfect Ten”; the fantasy of manners The Beautiful Ones; and the science fiction novella Prime Meridian. She has also edited several anthologies, including the World Fantasy Award-winning She Walks in Shadows (aka Cthulhu’s Daughters). She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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the gifts of beauty and song

ok so i think maleficent did a great job of giving us a different kind of sleeping beauty story but here’s another one

what if the three faeries were the dark ones

what if maleficent had been the good faerie all along

fae are all about illusion, about misdirection, about doing one thing and being another. it makes sense that the adorable and seemingly kind faeries would be the bad ones, and the one shrouded and darkness and cruelty would be the one trying to do some good.

“you will be gifted with beauty” says flora, but what is beautiful to the fae is often horrific to everyone else. beauty to the fae is coldness, darkness, it’s emotionless and ruthless and power. it has almost nothing to do with a pretty face.

“you will be gifted with song,” says fauna, but that means voice, pretty words, and oh, who doesn’t know what tangled webs the fae weave with their words, the traps they leave, the same way they’re doing it right now

then maleficent arrives - and she’s too late. the young princess has already been cursed. she’ll grow now not into a young woman, but a young fae. a mercurial being, not someone fit to lead the land of men. so she does what she must. maleficent is a good faerie, she can’t kill directly, so instead she curses the no-longer-human child, gives her a curse of death that will be complete when she pricks her finger on the needle of a spinning wheel. it’s indirect, but it’s the only way she knows to save this kingdom. then she leaves.

but the faeries will not be defeated so easily. so merryweather casts her own spell, alters maleficent’s just enough – she will fall into a deep sleep, one that can be broken by the most powerful magic this world knows: true love’s kiss.

the faeries aren’t worried. true love is an easy enough spell, they only need a suitable, malleable prince to cast it on when the time comes. foolish mortal have been falling in love with beautiful fae since the dawn of time, and this will be no different.

the king announces all the spinning wheels are to either be burned or locked up in a secret room in the palace, and that the faeries will raise aurora in the woods, far away from spinning wheels and evil faeries.

this all works out even better than they could have hoped for. they get to raise aurora on their own, get to teach her the subtle arts of manipulation and misdirection out from under the eyes of the king and queen. aurora grows older, and more beautiful, more dangerous. the fae will have one of their own on the thrown of the mortal realm, will have a fae queen because aurora is more faerie than human now.

aurora isn’t a faerie though. not completely: she’s human enough to lie, to cheat, and steal – to throw off the shackles that hold back the rest of the fae and use her position as queen to tear down the world.

maleficent likes these humans, it’s why she spends so much time in their realm. they’re fun playthings. if the fae succeed at putting one of their own on the thrown, then the mortal realm will turn into something as twisted and cruel as the fae court. that’s not what maleficent wants – humans are twisted and broken, but in the same ways. she likes them how they are, and she wants them to stay that way.

so she steals away the young prince philip in the middle of the night, weaving a spell of sleep on him, and she goes to the forests, deep into them, slipping into the darkest shadows of the oldest trees. she goes to the elves, because they are one of few races who can’t be tricked by their magic, who know the sharp cleverness of their tongue, who know the worst and best of what faeries can be. she goes to the elf king and queen and offers them philip in exchange for an elven prince, one she can place back on the throne in the mortal realm.

“one mortal prince is not worth an elf prince,” says the king, “for the child, you may have a servant child.”

an elf child is pushed forward, and to an untrained eye he looks like all the others, but hers is not an untrained eye. he’s smaller than he should be, his clothes don’t sit as perfectly straight as the others do. but he has kind eyes, and that’s truly what she needs, more than royal blood. besides, she has nothing left to bargain with.

“very well,” she says, and hands the boy to the queen, who quirks an eyebrow but takes the boy agreeably enough. maleficent doesn’t know what they plan to do with the boy. she does not care – they won’t hurt him, but that’s as far as her knowledge extends. the elf child moves to her side, and she bows low before holding out her hand. the elf boy takes it, and they travel back to the mortal realm.

“your name is philip now,” she tells him, “you are a prince here.”

“yes ma’am,” he says, used to taking orders, and not used to being a prince. “what would you like me to do?”

she looks down at him, and he’s staring at her, patient and with those same soft eyes, and she says, “grow up. don’t be afraid. this is your realm now, and these are your people. do you understand?”

his eyebrows dip together, so she knows he doesn’t, but he says, “yes, ma’am.” that’s okay. he’s her only hope to save aurora, to save the world. he doesn’t need to know that.

so philip grows. he has a doting father and is trained to be a little prince, and that’s what he becomes. he grows up honest, and kind, and humble. he becomes a prince that no other elf could be, only someone who’s seen the crueler and harder side of life would know how important it is to strive to make the world just a little softer.

aurora is a young woman now. ethereally beautiful, manipulative and thoughtlessly cruel, just like her faerie guardians raised her to be. except she’s not all fae. she’s a human too, a young mortal girl that loves beautiful things and the warm rays of sunlight on her skin and the soft weight of a fox napping on her lap. one day she’s in the woods, trying to encourage an apple tree to grow. philip is there, having gotten separated from his hunting party and hopelessly lost, and he’s just thankful there are no other elves around to laugh at him. an elf! lost! in the woods!

except instead he bumps into aurora, and he can see under glamour effortlessly, isn’t even sure why she has one when she’s so beautiful underneath. “hello,” he says politely, because the elves considered faeries to be beneath them but his father raised him with manners. besides, she doesn’t feel quite like a fae.

and aurora looks at this handsome young man, not the first she’s seen, but the first she’s seen whom she likes, even if she can’t know why. he feels different, his presence in the air isn’t like the other mortal men she’s encountered. instead, he – he almost – he almost feels like her. like something that doesn’t belong, like something not quite normal and not quiet other, like they’re the answers to something but everyone forgot to tell them the question.

so they’re circling each other, intrigued by each other, and philip and aurora end up spending the day talking and playing and laughing and coaxing trees into growing and enticing woodland creatures to say hello and getting fish to bring them shiny rocks from the stream. all the things normal elvish and fae children get to do, but they never got a chance to because philip was a servant and aurora is a plaything for dark faeries who want her to become something twisted just like them.

and they meet, in secret, again and again. and philip peels away the layers of aurora’s cruelty and hardness, untangles all the bits of her that the faeries had tried so hard to twist together. aurora is still smart and manipulative and powerful – but the scales have tipped just enough, being with philip has healed her just enough so that she’s more human than fae.

philip and aurora fall in love, because of course they do, they’re two of a kind, different sides of the same coin, they don’t believe in destiny but they believe in each other.

philip tells his father he’s found the woman he wants to mary. aurora is whisked back to the castle, and her guardians tell her of their plan: aurora will return to her parents, and she will be named the heir, the crown princess. then the faeries will kill them, and aurora will become queen.

aurora doesn’t care about her parents. the person she was before meeting philip would have been all for this plan, or at least wouldn’t have minded. but now – she knows morality, she knows little girls shouldn’t go around killing the people that bore them. so she hatches a plan instead.

she pretends to go along with it, of course, pretends to be just as agreeable and despicable as always. the faeries are banking the success of their plan on aurora’s ability to lie. they forget that she can lie to them too.

iron can be used against fae, so she goes searching the castle for something she can take and use. she finds a locked room, and when she gets inside it’s filled with broken spinning wheels. she can’t begin to imagine why this room exists, but it doesn’t matter. she carefully goes through, gathering the needles from each wheel. she’ll only have one chance to do this. she has to get it right.

meanwhile, philip can’t find aurora. she’s not in the woods or the cottage, and he’s desperate. he begs the wind for help, knows that he’s not the sort of elf that the wind cares to listen to, but this is important, it’s a matter of love. and the wind helps him, guides him to the castle. it’s the day of aurora’s coronation as crown princess.

she’s prepared, she was up all night carefully weaving magic into the needles, the ones that she’s tucked into the sleeves of her dress. little girls probably shouldn’t be going around killing the beings that raised them either, but thanks to philip she knows the faeries that raised her are not good, that the things they made her do were not good, and she wishes she could feel bad about what she’s going to do, but she doesn’t.

she’s about to be coronated, the faeries by her side, when she spins, knocking the crown from her mother’s hands and onto the floor. she reaches inside and flings the needles with inhuman force. they embed themselves into the faeries, and aurora flings herself between the faeries and her parents, refusing to let harm come to them, because she doesn’t care but she knows she should, because she thinks that if philip was here he would want her to care.

and it’s a vicious fight, of magic and strength, but aurora is just as the faeries made her – powerful and beautiful and strong, and she wins.

the faeries lay dead and aurora turns to her people, the ones staring at her in fear, and she drops her glamour, reveals her blond hair and pink lips, and she almost looks the same, before she looked like something out of a nightmare, and now she looks like what she is – a princess, pretty and hard and broken but in love and with a heart that can learn to love even more than a lost prince with kind eyes. “they were dark faeries. i know it’s hard to tell the difference, but it’s true. they would have destroyed you,” she tells them, and her voice breaks, “just like they tried to destroy me. you are my people. i will protect you.”

and it’s been a long time since this realm has had a warrior princess, a warrior queen, but after a long moment of stunned silence they start cheering, and pressing forward, and aurora is smiling. her parents come forward, wanting to make sure she’s okay, wanting to make sure they’re foolish decision to entrust her to faeries hasn’t broken their only daughter.

aurora reaches out a hand. a single spindle needle falls from her sleeve. she reaches out to grab it and –

– it pricks her finger. she collapses instantly. everyone’s crowding around her, her parents are weeping, because she’s in a death-like sleep, because they were so close to having her back and they’ve lost her.

philip bursts through the doors, “aurora!”

he pushes to the front of the room, hands reaching for her. “philip?” the king asks, staring at the son of one of his best friends, at the boy who they’d arranged to marry his daughter.

“what happened to her?” he asks, hands hovering over her, but not wanting to touch and somehow make it worse. he glances at the dead faeries, “was it them? i knew they were hurting her, i knew it–”

“you know her?” the queen asks.

philip looks between them, and gathers his courage and admits, “i love her.”

the king and queen look at each other, then at him. “true love’s kiss will break the spell,” she says urgently, “please, you must try.”

philip stares, because true love’s kiss is a faeries spell, or a mortal miracle, but it has nothing to do with elvish servants and almost-fae princesses. but he loves her. so he must try.

he bends over, oh so carefully, and they’ve never kissed before, so he closes his eyes, and presses his lips to hers, soft and careful, just enough pressure to make sure it counts and not a bit more. he leans back, and they all wait.

aurora opens her eyes. “philip!” she cries, then: “you kissed me!”

“yes,” he says, even as her parents pull her up and hug her tight. “will you marry me?”

her parents let go and she flings herself into his arms, “yes!”

and the very confused audience for this coronation / murder / engagement starts clapping, because a royal wedding is something to be celebrated, and as confusing as the past couple hours have been, they’re at least clear on that.

aurora and philip stay in love and get married, officially uniting their two kingdoms. they’re are scarily well matched couple, and just and powerful and merciful rulers.

the day of their coronation as king and queen of their newly united land, maleficent stands at the back of the crowd and smiles.

read more of my retold fairytales here