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