FAIRY TALE FLASH - Melody Cottage by Mary Ellen Gambutti

I say! Your life will now change...

"I could fracture their servitude to a pitiable life," muses the enchanted Blue Rabbit, as she punts on the enchanted river. Both anger and music emanate from a couple’s riverbank cottage. "I can make a difference in their life."

Overbearing husband is unhappy with his lot. His wife is resigned. She sullenly sweeps dust and cobwebs with a corn broom. His ill-contented moodiness sets her on the verge of despondency.

It goes like this:

“I just want a nice easy life, what’s wrong with that?”

And this:

“Can’t you just be happy here with me?”

                                                                                                   

Blue Rabbit hops from her boat and creeps under the garden fence where husband hoes garlic.

“I say! Your life will now change!” Cobalt Cottontail extends her nimble cerulean paw with a velvet bag and a spell. Husband accepts plush pouch, and Mr. McGregor’s nemesis squeezes back under fence.

Husband loosens the pouch strings. "Gold! Hare of Indigo has granted a fortune! Life will be better! We’ll leave this shack behind!” He'll splurge on a castle, complete with servants, that lies upriver. Denim Doe has enabled such a choice.

“Wife! Are you coming with me?” impatient spouse shouts as he pulls on his straw hat, then mumbles, “Soon I’ll be wearing an ermine cap.”

His wife cringes, shakes her head solemnly, knows only an ordinary life; cares not for a castle of gold. "This is where I live, and where I’ll stay."

Husband leaves her in the dank, cobwebby cottage, and treks upriver through pine forest, where his gleaming castle awaits. "There will be plenty. No more hoeing!" He is almost right.

Back downriver, in melodic cottage, there is now no anger. Blue Bunny keeps the wife company in the garden, munching blueberries.

Husband relishes his new digs--silk, silver, gold--rides an elegant horse in field and forest; dines on fine food prepared by servants who eye him suspiciously— "isn’t he our peer?"

Before long, he notices a taste of regret in his sumptuous fare; misses the humble mutton prepared by his wife, their simple, but cozy lodgings. He feels the draft of emptiness; chill of disappointment. He stares out the turret, sad gaze turned downriver.

"Can I be happy here?" Confused, he drifts to the riverbank.

Suddenly, who appears?

“Ahoy, Mate! If you leave the castle now, you lose everything. That’s the deal!"

Despondent, the husband asks, "Have I not already lost all?"

Husband climbs aboard Bunny’s Blue Dinghy, and Admiral Lagomorph and he set sail toward the sound of sweet music.

"I'm ready to try again, if you are," says sheepish husband, as the rustic screen door slams behind him.

In unison, they sing, “Could you be happy here with me?”

That evening, they rock on the front porch of Melody Cottage, overlooking the enchanted river, while gentle music wafts on the water.

"I missed moments like this more than anything," confesses the husband.

“This is heaven! Pass me a beer!” says Lapis Lapin.

Mary Ellen's stories appear or are forthcoming in Gravel Magazine, Wildflower Muse, The Remembered Arts Journal, The Vignette Review, Modern Creative Life, Thousand and One Stories, Halcyon Days, Nature Writing, PostCard Shorts, Memoir Magazine, Haibun Today, Borrowed Solace, BookEnds Review, StoryScape. Her chapbook is Stroke Story, My Journey There and Back. She and her husband reside in Sarasota, Florida.

Check out her blog HERE

and on Facebook HERE

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

Check out LARRY'S BOOKS HERE

FAIRY TALE FLASH - The Dragon's Lair by Jeff A. Harbrow

It's not plunder, 
it's my life's work...

The sun crested the mountains and sprayed its golden hue into the woodlands that covered the foothills. Kator's crimson scales caused blood-red flashes to dance across the rock formations as it circled above the entrance to its lair. The Knight with his armour shined approached the mouth of the cave.

"Foul beast, I've come to slay you and rid you of your plunder."

The ground shook as the dragon landed above the cave mouth. Its claws dug deep into the soil. Heat emanated from its body. Kator lowered its head to be level with the Knight.

"It's not plunder, it's my life's work." The words appeared in the Knight’s mind although Kator didn't seem to speak.

"Silence beast, I shall have your head!" the Knight drew his sword and held it high before bringing it down hard against Kator's neck. The blade bounced off the scales as if he had just struck stone, and it fell to the floor.

"Leave me human, I do not wish you harm. I worked for my gold just as you have yours."

The Knight scrambled for his sword, with it in hand again he tried another strike and achieved the same result, quickly he retrieved his blade, sheathed it and yelled.

"Foul Beast I'll return and I'll slay you for all your worth!"

Kator lifted his head from the pillow of golden coins. The inner cave was dark, but the entrance was alight with the afternoon sun. Reflections of gold, silver and jewels of all kinds showered the darkness in speckled colors. He listened to the sound of footsteps grow closer until it was accompanied with heavy breathing and eventually an obnoxious voice.

"I have returned beast. Come to rid the townsfolk of your torment and shower them with the riches you stole."

"Please Shining Knight, I do not wish to fight. I told you last time, I earned my wealth honestly."

"Enough of your lies! The townsfolk will sing my name, for slaying you Dragon!"

"The townsfolk will hang you for killing the head of their merchant guild! I tell you now Knight, leave here or else."

The Knight charged into the cavern swinging his sword.

"Very well then." Kator burst into flight gold coins exploding into the air. In a rush of heat, it was out of the cavern and down to the road. The Knight ran out chasing after him. Kator was quick as he fetched the town guard. They marched up the road, Kator above them.

"Halt Knight! You are commanded to stand down in the name of the king. You are under arrest for assault and trespassing."

Jeff A. Harbrow is an Australian writer from the New South Wales South Coast. His work has been published in Haiku Journal and his chapbook of poems Surrounded was released through Ginninderra Press in 2017.

Follow him on Twitter: @jeffah92

and on Instagram @jeffah92

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff

Thank you for reading today's Fairy Tale Flash story, and please share your thoughts about Jeff's tale in the comments section below. We'd love to hear from you!

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FAIRY TALE FLASH - Found by Shalom Galve Aranas

The dark prince awoke at the edge of the sea...

I found you lying on the beach at midnight. I was taking a walk. It was very hot inside my hut and I had to go out in my shawl and white nightdress.

You were naked with sand all over your large, strong thighs. I thought you were a fisherman whom the sea returned and the sand reclaimed. I had to see you. Because even then, my heart pounded as you slept like a prince who needed to be kissed to wake up.

I knelt before your prone figure and kissed you on your powerful mouth.

The dark prince awoke. I saw that you have a noble nose and I knew that I will always have you in my mind for the rest of my life. I lent you my shawl to cover what I would never forget because even then, I was falling in love but was fearful of this power you had over me.

Why are you lying here by the beach? I asked.

I don’t remember, he replied and blinked his eyes twice to have a better look at me.

Did you just kiss me? he asked as though he had been dreaming and I had stolen him from his deep reverie.

Yes, I replied, because I knew kissing a stranger could never lead to anything. He would always return home.

Do you remember your name? I asked but he did not reply. Perhaps he was thinking of who he was.

The stars were a bowl of pinpoints of light above us and the moon stood guarded, shedding light on his form.

I am a prince from an Arab country. This is still a dream because I have been turned into a wolf by a suffering crone whom I turned away, and if I become bored, I shall turn into a wolf again. I remember now, they threw me at sea, to drown because I bit people from our town.

Oh, but you wouldn’t bite me, would you? I just kissed you.

No, I’ve decided to fall in love with you. May I kiss you for saving my life?  I am destitute now and very much alone. I have no one.

I live alone, but how to save you from turning into a wolf and bite me?

You would have to love me. I remember.

But you may just be playing with my emotions, how may I know you mean the truth? I asked modestly.

It is because a prince is always honest with his feelings.  I was bored and lonely. Now I have found you, I know I shall not pine for another not because I do not want to turn into a wolf.

I knelt and kissed him again. I caressed his briny skin and for a brief period I touched fur but I continued to kiss him, tasting his fangs while my eyes were closed.

He did not bite me, and when I opened my eyes he was still there, kissing me back.

Shalom Galve Aranas has been published at The Lycan Press, Former People, The Blue Nib, Medium, Written Tales, The Ugly Writers and others for her poetry and fiction. She is a loving single mother of two.

Follow her on Facebook: Shalom Aranas

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

Thank you for reading today's Fairy Tale Flash story, and please share your thoughts about Shalom's tale in the comments section below. We'd love to hear from you!

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FAEGOTTEN

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FAIRY TALE FLASH - A Brother's View by Becca Miller

He shoved his way through the crowd, but another was there first...

In the crush of dancers, he barely saw her as she entered the room. Yet, there was something about her that immediately drew him to her. Was it her beauty? She was very nearly the most beautiful woman in the room, with her perfect blonde curls and bright blue eyes. The air of magic that hung around her? Whatever it was, he knew that he had to meet the mysterious woman and take her into his arms. Who was she? He really did not care. He lived for the moment and wanted to dance.

He shoved his way through the crowd, almost at her side. Horror! Another there first. A growl of frustration. His brother? Of course. For the crown prince must always be first. And he forever second. He sulked in the corner. Pouting. Angry. Dejected. Someone joined him. He glanced over to see Lady Alyssa Davenport. She had been his brother’s favorite. She must also be feeling the rejection.

“It’s Ella,” Alyssa spat. He looked to where his brother and the mysterious girl were dancing. Ella. Alyssa’s beautiful, perfect step-sister. Always doing good. Always helping others. Revered for her compassion. And always avoiding society. He was surprised to see her here.

“The Council of Fairy-Godmothers has decided to reward her for her perfectness. They made her alluring and irresistible for the evening. Of course, they appeared while she was supposed to be helping me dress. I was forced to finish dressing by myself. It is unfair,” Alyssa whined. Normally, he would be annoyed by her complaints, but tonight he found himself commiserating. How tiresome to have the perfect sibling.

“At least,” Alyssa concluded, “she is leaving early. She has to feed orphans tomorrow or some such nonsense.”

Devastating! He would not dance with the perfect Ella, for his brother would monopolize her until she left. Maybe, he thought, this evening was not a complete waste. He could take his brother’s first choice. Certainly, tomorrow Ella’s allure would have worn off and Alyssa would once more be preferred. But he could win her first.

“Dance with me,” he said to her. It was a request, not a command. Though he always could command. He was a prince, even if just a second born.

“With you?” Alyssa snorted. “I want the best, and that is your brother. Not you.” She walked away, leaving him alone. Soon enough, Ella left his brother alone. But his brother was not dismayed.

“You know it was only Ella,” he informed his brother the next morning. The crown prince smiled and replied he already knew. Ella had told him.

A few short months later, the second born prince found himself sulking at yet another ball, this one a wedding. Alyssa joined him. Again. Only now, she smiled sweetly at him, asking him to dance.

“I only want the best, Alyssa. That is not you,” he replied, staring at the beautiful Ella, in all her perfectness. Now Crown Princess.

Becca Miller loves reading, coffee, fairy tales, writing, cats, and both rainy days and sunshine. She is thrilled when she can combine those loves in any form.

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

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Edgar Allan Poe and the Jewel of Peru HERE

FAIRY TALE FLASH - The Song by E.L. Bates

A song called to her 
that no one else could hear...

“Can’t you hear it? Can’t you hear the song? It’s calling to me, and I must answer.”

“We’ve been through this before, Marina Alexandrovna. There is no song!”

Marina looked at the carrots she was supposed to be scraping for dinner. No song? How could her mother not hear it? She could hear almost nothing else.

It was a melody like none she’d heard before. Wilder, deeper, richer, purer than the gusli or the svirel played by the Wanderers who often came to the village fair.

Marina’s feet danced in response. Duty told her to stay; the passion burning in her chest urged toward a higher calling.

Leaving carrots, dinner, a startled mother, and her home behind, Marina followed the song.

Through the darkest forests, over the steepest mountains, across the frozen steppes, until her shoes wore through and fell from her feet and her clothes were nothing more than rags, Marina followed the song.

Despite the people who thought her mad, who told her to stay, who tried to hold her back, Marina followed the song.

Through times of despair when the notes were faint on the wind, when she was ready to abandon all hope, when it seemed her quest was nothing but a dream, Marina followed the song.

Until the day she found the singer, in a tree of silver apples beyond the world’s end.

The golden firebird trilled one final note and vanished in a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke, leaving behind a single golden feather in Marina’s hand.

She looked at it and smiled, at last understanding why she had been called.

Feather in hand, she set off once more, this time to carry the song to all who could not hear it for themselves.

E.L. Bates is the author of the fantasy-mystery novel "Magic Most Deadly" and the space opera "From the Shadows." She lives outside Boston, MA, where she spends her days homeschooling her children and dreaming of other worlds.

You can find out more about her at https://stardancepress.com/

or follow her on Twitter @E_L_Bates

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

Check out LARRY'S BOOKS HERE

FAIRY TALE FLASH - Selkie Lament by Connie Todd Lila

The embrace of the sea surrounds

the whole of you at once...

“Sing us your silky song, Gran.”

“That’s Selkie, poppet.” Gran smiled and dropped a kiss on top of the sleek, umber hair tickling her chin.

“Will you sing it?”

Clearing her throat, Gran sang the lament past bitter memory.

“The Moon is high…

She paints the waves

with sequins o’re the water

But Her sacred song

I cannot dance…

So grieves Her Selkie daughter…”

“Tell us about Graypa, Gran. Only please don’t cry this time.”

This time she didn’t.                                                                                                        

He’d been a fisherman, kept his boat out in the dusk, and so saw her swimming. Unclothed, he thought her a mermaid and chased her to shore. When she ran on two legs, he followed her wet footprints to a crevice in the rocks. Some of the kelp tossed over it was hastily pulled aside. Squeezing through, thinking to corner the maiden, he found instead and held before him an animal skin. Sleek it was, umber-colored and soft. Lightning-struck, he realized he possessed the pelt of a Selkie.

And, thus, the Selkie herself.

He gathered dry tinder to lay a fire and wait. In the weak light, he saw dune grass move in the still evening air. Looking to that direction, he held up the pelt. She stood, stared at him, took a step.

He folded the pelt and sat down upon it, then held out a tin mug filled with hot tea. She came to the fire, eyes on her pelt. He gave her the tea and wrapped her in his woolen coat without moving away from the pelt. The coat was a poor, smelly substitute. But it warmed her, as did his tobacco-scented tea. He spoke as she sipped, promising the warmth of hearth and home, and the nearness of her pelt, if she came with him.

She followed her pelt.

Each time he left for the fishing, she searched the poor cottage he kept her in, never finding the hiding place. Nor would she. The very first time he left her for the sea, he stowed the pelt in a metal chest weighted with stones, locked it fast. The key went over one side of his boat, the chest over the other, bubbling and burping as it sank away.

Years later, after a daughter and a broken promise, he drowned in a storm, taking his secret to his grave.

“A man’s love will give you a firefly flash of pleasure, poppet, if you’re lucky…and then you’ll still hunger. The embrace of the sea surrounds the whole of you at once, fulfilling the yearn, calling you to more, and fulfills you again. No man or woman’s love can match it.”

Gran shifted the girl on her lap and looked into her dark, liquid eyes.

“The yearning will call you from a deep slumber…call you until you find yourself walking barefoot into the waves in your bedclothes instead of your sleekness…stolen…stolen…as your poor mother did. When her man went to war and never returned, the sea call came upon her, too strong to ignore, the desire for salt water to take you.”

Gran looked out the window. Smoothing the sleek, dark head with her hand, she said, “It’s time.”

The girl ran to the bed and pulled a small, folded shape from inside a pillow cover. She and her Gran left the humble cottage and walked to the shore, where the moon scattered sequins across the waves.

“Farther this time, poppet. Farther and deeper.”

Holding her pelt close to her bare chest, the girl ran to the water and dove into the curl of a wave. Moments later, a sleek, dark form rose from the surface, spun joyously in the air, then sliced the water gracefully, nose first.

“Farther, poppet…farther and deeper until you can’t come back this time. Stay safe with your own.”

A single tear slid down her cheek, pearl-like beneath the moon.

“Stay whole.”

Connie Todd Lila writes, tends herbs, and reads fairy tales in the Central Wisconsin woods she shares with her husband, their resident flock of crows, and the Devas that preside over their gardens. "Rumi - and one of my Runestones - both advised, 'Unfold your personal myth', so that is what I am doing."

Cover: Amanda Bergloff

Thank you for reading today's Fairy Tale Flash story. Share your thoughts about Connie's story in the comments section below. We'd love to hear from you!

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FAIRY TALE FLASH - Love Conquers All by Laura Theis

The dragon was a problem.

And he did not change his mind and go home, because that was not a thing one was allowed to do in his world.

He had come to kiss the sleeping girl, this stranger, this was his quest, and he would die rather than give up.

The small dragon was not one to suffer fools, and it knew what you have to do if you are small and vicious and in love. So it did.

When what once had been a prince and a hero was a mere wisp of smoke and ashes, the sleeping girl smiled without opening her eyes. She reached out a hand to pet the dragon’s scaly head. It nestled back against her soft skin, draped its tail around her slender neck and sighed, as they both drifted back into timeless sleep, happily ever after.

Everything else up to this point had gone according to plan.

The thorny vines with their poisonous blossoms, those hadn’t been a match for him and his trusty sword: he had slashed them into submission.

He had braved the moat, scaled the castle walls, not without effort or injury, but certainly with unwavering confidence.

Somehow, he had expected things to be easy once he had managed all that, once he was inside, once he was standing in front of her enchanted bed, lips puckered.

Kiss the sleeper, break the spell, wedding bells.

Now, however, there was the dragon.

Dragons live to guard things. It’s their destiny. People have used them to guard treasure for centuries. This one was only a small, scrappy thing, thin and long, its scarlet scales impenetrable like chainmail. It had curled up on the sleeping girl’s pillow, and it had apparently decided that its job was to guard the girl’s innocence with its own eternal life.

Of course he had tried to stab it, that was his primal instinct - which was also why he no longer had a weapon, his sword shattered into pieces at the first attempt.

Then he had tried to bribe the creature with gold coins from his pockets. The dragon had only stared at him, its golden eyes unblinking.

Now he was trying to simply ignore it, and go in for the kiss regardless.

But this was the worst strategy of them all, because now he had made the dragon angry.

It hissed and bared its fangs in warning, and when he did not back off, it spewed a scorching cloud of green fire in his direction. The heat and noxious fumes were enough to make him scramble into the corner of the room. He tried to still his racing heart. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what to do.

He did not cry, because no one had taught him how to.

And he did not change his mind and go home, because that was not a thing one was allowed to do in his world.

He had come to kiss the sleeping girl, this stranger, this was his quest, and he would die rather than give up.

The small dragon was not one to suffer fools, and it knew what you have to do if you are small and vicious and in love. So it did.

When what once had been a prince and a hero was a mere wisp of smoke and ashes, the sleeping girl smiled without opening her eyes. She reached out a hand to pet the dragon’s scaly head. It nestled back against her soft skin, draped its tail around her slender neck and sighed, as they both drifted back into timeless sleep, happily ever after.

Laura Theis grew up in a whitewashed house in Waldperlach’s Fairy Tale district, where each street bears the name of a mythical creature. Today, she is an award-winning singer-songwriter and her short stories, radio plays and poetry have been broadcast and published in Germany and the UK.

She is the winner of the 2017 AM Heath Prize, holds a Distinction in Creative Writing from Oxford University and has twice been nominated for the Tassilo Award. She lives in Oxford with her partner and a scruffy black dog called Wodehouse.

You can find her music on badasssnowwhite.bandcamp.com

Cover: Amanda Bergloff @AmandaBergloff