New Fairy Tales Issue 6

contents Letter from the editors

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The Ice Baby by Carys Bray illustrated by Scott Nellis

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Nettie’s Tale by Cathrin Hagey illustrated by Daria Hlazatova

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Phoenix Song by David R Morgan illustrated by Julie Vermeille

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Dollface by Alex Woods illustrated by Fiona McDonald

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Rescued by Ruby Ebrahim illustrated by Laura Carter

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The Giant’s Last Feast

by Frederick Hilary illustrated by Laure-Kate Chapman

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Water Sprite by Vivien Jones illustrated by Evelina Silberlaint

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Velvet by Tim Mook Sang illustrated by Yuki Nishimura

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The River of the Fire of Life

by Francesca Forrest illustrated by Rosie Lauren Smith

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List of contributors

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Creature from the Curiosity Cabinet p47

by Particle Issue 6 Article

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Cover illustration by Evelina Silberlaint This page ‘Winter’ by Julie Vermeille -2-

Letter from the editors Marina Warner has said metamorphosis defines the fairy tale and in this issue several of our tales and poems centre on transformation: a baby is carved from ice; a giant sheds his skin; a girl’s new form enables her to escape oppression. It is the possibility of transformation, of one thing becoming another, that gives even the darkest fairy tale a spark of hope.

The fairy tale form itself has undergone many transformations, from oral tales told by the fireside to literary tales written and rewritten and retold and reinvented in many different ways. As Maria Tatar said recently: ‘they are always changing’. And we’re about to undergo a transformation here at New Fairy Tales. We will still be publishing online, but in new and varied ways. Our bi-annual magazine will be replaced by a series of electronic chapbooks, published on a quarterly basis: some will be open to submissions, others will be by invitation.

There will be no change in our enthusiasm for bringing together good writing and beautiful illustrations, but we’re keen to explore new mediums and innovative ways of working. So, whatever changes we bring about, we hope you’ll join us in our continuing exploration of the potential and possibilities of new fairy tales.

Claire, Andy, Anna and Faye November 2010 ‘The Procession’ by Nom Kinnearking

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The Ice Baby

by Carys Bray It was Winter Solstice in the North Country and a day as dark as the inside of an eyelid had imperceptibly stretched into night. Jens was supposed to be in the hall with the rest of the villagers watching the Mayor light the Yule Log, but he’d slipped away. Liv wouldn’t notice, he decided. She was cradling their newest nephew, smiling carefully, determined to make a performance of happiness to any who might pity the ‘mother and child’ tableau in which she was caught.

Jens’s reindeer skin boots crunched along the powdery crust of fresh snow that glowed yellow in the warm light of his clockwork torch. Tree skeletons crowded either side of the path until he reached the fjord where a world of slate-darkness and sparkle opened out in front of him. He switched off the torch to enjoy the black of sky and shadow. He looked at the outline of the snow-wrapped mountains piling in the distance and the smudge-light of the moon, reflected in the frozen fjord. He could breathe properly here. He sat down on a hump of snow-covered rock. The air sliced in and out of him, cauterising his thoughts, making things clearer, cleaner and less complicated. In the spring when the fjord melted, both he and Liv would leave the island and travel to town. They would visit the hospital there. At the hospital pieces of both of them could be mixed up and made into a baby. Lots of people did it. Liv didn’t want to, but he would persuade her.

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On the way back to the village hall, Jens’s torch caught the edge of something slightly off the path and he paused to stroke light over it. He was familiar with feather ice and candle ice, with aufeis sheets and pancake ice.

He’d even seen ice discs once as a boy; he’d watched the thin, perfect circles spinning leisurely like compact discs in the slow moving river. But he’d never seen anything quite like the piece of ice at the side of the path. It was perfectly round and slightly larger than a football. It was like a giant, glass hailstone. Jens knelt in the snow and ran his gloved hands over it. He gave it a tentative push. It was heavy, but manageable. He put the clockwork torch in his jacket pocket, lifted the ice ball up to his stomach and walked slowly and carefully along the familiar twists of the path home.

Jens carried the ice ball straight to his workshop where he examined it in the fluorescent-bright light. He felt the familiar squirming of creativity in his stomach, the twitching in his hands and the casting of his thoughts as he unlatched his tool box. While he’d been carrying the ball he had wondered how it might feel to finally see Liv expanding with their child; to see her moving slowly and carefully through the snow. And that was when he’d decided. As he walked around the sphere of ice resting on his workbench, pretending to consider other possibilities, he already knew what was inside it, just as he did when he sculpted wood.

And he was right. Every chisel was perfect. It seemed that Jens was breaking the baby free rather than making her.

When it was time to use the knife, it was as if he was following existing perforations in the ice. He sculpted fine lines and decorative cuts across the baby’s forehead, knuckles and toes with a V-tool. And then she was finished

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– the thing he wanted most in the world. She was perfect, the most wonderful creation he had ever crafted: diamond bright and flawless.

Liv saw the ribbon of light shining under the workshop door when she returned from the Yule celebrations. It was just like Jens to retreat into work rather than face up to the discomfort of another family birth. She was about to knock on the workshop door when she heard a strange sound. It was a cry, she could tell that much. But the pitch of it was extraordinary, like nothing she had heard before. Like the shattering of glass. Like a tinkling, splintering explosion.

She opened the door without knocking. Jens was standing by his workbench holding something wrapped in his coat.

The table was shiny-speckled with splinters of ice and water puddles.

“What’ve you got there?” Liv asked as the jagged crying began again.

“Shh,” he said. “Look.” He parted the edges of the coat bundle and lifted it towards Liv. “What have you done?” Liv stared at the glassy baby as it wriggled and cried.

“Made us a baby. Made the thing I want most in the world.” Jens smiled. “Isn’t she beautiful? I’m calling her Asta: it means love.”

Liv took the proffered baby and rocked her gently in the cradle of Jens’s coat. “She’s like glass,” she said. “It’s as if she’s from an old tale, as if she’s from the world of ice – from Niflheim.”

“Isn’t she lovely?”

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“She’s freezing.” Liv felt the cold of Asta’s back creeping through the layers of Jens’s coat and her own jacket sleeve.

“Don’t worry about that.” Jens wafted a hand at Liv in a return-of-serve gesture. “I can’t believe I made her.

Look at her toes! Aren’t they tiny? And look at her ears. All the whorly, curly, foldy bits – they’re like little flowers.”

The cold was beginning to burn Liv’s arm. She handed Asta back.

“What will we do with her, Jens?”

He nodded towards the sheet-covered pile in the corner of the workshop. “Get the baby stuff out,” he said.

Liv pulled the sheet away from the carefully arranged baby items that she and Jens had made over the years: a crib, highchair, playpen, rocking horse and a box of expertly fashioned toys, all crafted for a child who had no existence outside of their imaginations.

“The crib, fetch the crib. That’s right.” Jens lifted Asta into the crib. “There.”

“Shall we carry the crib into the house?” Liv asked.

Jens looked shocked. “Don’t be silly,” he replied.

“She’ll get hot in there. You fetch me the sleeping bag and some blankets and I’ll sleep out here with her.”

Jens slept in the workshop with Asta all winter. During the day time he placed her in the playpen on a supermarket freezer bag. He talked and sang to her while he worked.

Liv helped with the less intricate carving. When they had a break she put on thick gloves and a ski jacket so that she could pick Asta up.

Sometimes Liv looked sad, but Jens was certain she would get used to being a mother eventually, some women

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took a while to adjust to the idea – he’d read up about it.

Once Liv kissed Asta without thinking and Jens had to help peel her mouth from Asta’s forehead. Liv cried, which surprised Jens as he hadn’t thought it had hurt that much.

Jens was happy. His love for Asta zigzagged through his chest like an icicle. He loved her crystal cries and diamond gaze, her cool smile and frosty fingers. But as the weeks passed his happiness was niggled by the approach of spring. He worried that in its uncovering of the winter, spring may also undo Asta. He remembered Liv’s comment about Niflheim and found a volume about Norse mythology in an old box of books. He read about Muspelheim and Niflheim – worlds of fire and ice which combined to create life. As he and Liv laboured in the workshop, fulfilling furniture commissions, he wondered about installing air conditioning. He thought about the internal electrical generator in his clockwork torch and considered whether such a mechanism might fit in Asta’s chest cavity, allowing her to keep cool during the summer.

“You can’t do that,” Liv said, when he mentioned it to her.

“Why not?” he asked.

“We’re not living in some fairy tale world. A clockwork baby! You’re like the Emperor in the story of The Nightingale,” she said. “Asta is not a real baby, Jens.”

“What if I order a chest freezer from the internet,” he said. “If we could just keep her frozen for the –“ “King Midas,” Liv interrupted. “With his golden statue of a daughter – that’s what it would be like.”

“Not at all,” he replied. “We’d wake her up each winter.”

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“Sleeping Beauty,” Liv hit back. “It wouldn’t be fair,

Anger blistered across his forehead and temples. He was boiling hot with sorrow: as hot as Muspelheim, he thought.

Spring came early to the North Country that year. By midApril it was above freezing and Jens was unprepared. Asta began to melt. Jens retrieved the ice packs from the cool box, froze them and placed them under Asta in the playpen. He brought an electric fan down from the loft and arranged it to blow bracing air at her, but she lay limply in the workshop as the temperature increased.

If this was one of Liv’s fairy tales, Jens thought, something would happen. He didn’t know what, but it would be something. He thought the thoughts that parents think as their children are dying. He made the bargains that parents make, fought the helplessness that parents feel, but Asta continued to melt in the warmth. And as she melted it seemed to Jens that her glassy face was streaked with tears.

“Look. Look.” He held Asta up so that Liv could see.

“It’s spring, Jens.” Liv said. “What did you think would happen?”

“Don’t you care at all?”

Liv studied Jens carefully. “Yes, of course I do. I care that you’re upset. But she isn’t a real baby.”

“She is to me.”

Jens shooed Liv out of the workshop. Asta was dying, dissolving in his arms. He felt a break at the edges of his heart. He struggled for breath as the fracture fissured, splitting through him like a fault line. He knew that he would never feel joy again: it would catch on the cracks – go against the grain of him. Despair raged through his capillaries. Furious tears scorched his cheeks.

Liv was so used to the tinkle and shatter of Asta’s cry that the full-blooded baby-howls frightened her. She dashed out to the workshop and found Jens, sprawled in front of the door with a pink, wailing baby tucked into one wilting arm.

His lips were blue, his eyes glassy.

“What’s happened?” Liv cried. “Whose is this baby?

What’s wrong? Get up!”

Jens smiled at Liv and directed her attention to the baby with his watery eyes.

“What? What do you want?” Liv put a hand to his head. He was cold and clammy. “Are you breathing – can you hear me?” She ran her hands down his arms and across his chest. He was freezing wet.

“I gave her my heart,” he whispered. “Hot and cold – I made a life...”

Liv made a furious noise that was somewhere between a disbelieving laugh and a wail. The baby stopped crying and looked at her curiously.

“Asta?” Liv lifted the baby out of Jens’s arm. She was warm and soft and clinging.

Jens closed his eyes.

Jens.”

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At first Liv felt nothing. She pretended Jens was in the workshop fulfilling a particularly demanding commission.

As spring warmed to summer, she fumed. She seethed as she harvested wild cloudberries, Asta’s warm bulk dangling from the baby-carrier. She set herself pointless challenges: if I collect enough cloudberries to make jam, he will come back; if I just keep going until the first snow, everything

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will be all right again. By the time the snow began to fall in early October, she was indifferent. She held Asta up to the workshop window to watch the floating flakes; Asta was entranced, but Liv stared beyond the snow flurry, into the past where Jens lived in her memories.

Despite Liv’s preoccupation, baby Asta loved her mother with a whole-hearted, unconditional affection.

“That little girl is so loving,” people observed.

Liv’s reply was always the same: “She has her father’s heart.”

“Oh, what a lovely thing to say,” people replied.

As winter thickened, Liv became resigned to life without Jens. Love for Asta filled her chest like a slowly proving loaf. She grew to love Asta’s hearty cries and warm gaze, her merry smiles and exploring fingers. She held Asta on the rocking horse and listened to the sway of her laughter. She sat Asta in the highchair and fed her toast-fingers, spread with sweet, cloudberry jam. She wrapped her in snug layers and carried her down to the fjord, where Asta liked to sit and watch the ice-hard winter-sparkle of the water.

It was on the way back from the fjord with Asta one day that Liv had the idea. Now that her grief was small and hard enough to see past and swallow around, there was space for her imagination to operate. When she got home she went on the internet and ordered the largest chest freezer she could find. She also ordered enough insulating, aluminized bubble wrap to make into several pairs of trousers and shirts.

And so, on Winter Solstice, when a day as dark as the inside of her eyelids had imperceptibly stretched into night, Liv left Asta in the village hall with her extended

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family and crunched through the deep snow along the path to the fjord. Lighting the way with Jens’s clockwork torch, she searched for a ball of ice larger than the one that he had described, hoping to sculpt it into the thing she wanted most in the world.

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illustrated by Scott Nellis

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by Cathrin Hagey

Nettie was a fair girl underneath the grease-slicked soil of her outer skin. Her hair, if washed, would have shone like the autumn moon. Her skin, if caressed, would have glowed like hot coals beneath a blanket of snow. Nettie lived with a foul-smelling, toothless man called Uncle.

Whether or not he truly was her uncle was not important because he was the only caregiver Nettie had ever known.

Uncle sent Nettie out collecting every day. If Nettie returned with sellable wares she ate a crust of bread or a hard biscuit and was allowed to sleep in peace. If she did not return with sellable wares Nettie was sent to forage and sleep in the alley, where restless men and beyond-allhope women roamed, none of whom appeared to ever require a good night’s rest.

One dreary day, when the sky was smudged out and rain spattered like shrapnel against the road, Nettie set out to collect things for Uncle. She did her best to avoid Nick,

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the young thief who lived in the next hovel. Nettie had known Nick since they were both knee high to a mangy dog. Nick loved to torment Nettie; and Nettie, for her part, ran at the sight of him.

Nettie walked with her head held low against the stinging needles of rain. She hoped to find a bit of cloth to sew into her tattered dress, a bit of cloth Uncle might allow her to keep for once. It needn’t be fine.

At the end of the day when Nettie returned to Uncle’s hovel she carried an empty spool, a half penny, two small bottles, an ancient slipper for the left foot and a cracked china doll’s head. She carried the wares, except for the head, which she hoped to keep for herself, within a fold of her dress which was lifted up to reveal two rough feet and two red legs.

Nick spat when he spied her coming. “She can’t have much there,” he said to no one. “Only her shins are showing.”

Nettie never saw him coming. Nick flew from his hovel, a battering windstorm of a boy.

“Go away,” cried Nettie, “or I’ll call Uncle.”

“Call him if you like,” said Nick, licking his lips at the sight of the bottles.

“I will,” said Nettie, softly.

“No you won’t. You’re afraid of him same as everyone else.”

Nettie wasn’t sure whether Nick meant that she was afraid of everyone or that everyone was afraid of Uncle.

But then she thought, with great sadness, that both were true.

Nick helped himself to the bottles, the slipper, the spool and the half penny. “Thank you milady.” He bowed

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low, gave Nettie a shove, and ran off barking with delight.

Nettie was afraid to go back to Uncle’s empty handed, but she had nowhere else to go. Uncle’s hovel was a damp, windowless rat hole; but it was her only home. Nettie crawled through the doorway until Uncle pulled her up by the hair, growling, “What did you bring me?”

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Nettie described the things she had found and carried home, except for the doll’s head which she kept hidden between her legs. Nettie prayed that Uncle wouldn’t find the doll’s head.

“You’re lying,” said Uncle in a sinister whisper that barely escaped his spongy lips.

Nettie shook her head back and forth and held her breath. The blows that followed were half-hearted. Even Uncle was weary of the task. When it was over, Nettie was tossed into the street. She saw Nick one last time before nightfall, as the sun sank behind a jumble of hovels thrown together like wooden crates in a rubbish heap.

“Beware of the bogeys!” shouted Nick from his window.

Nettie settled in between two barrels at the back of a drinking establishment. The doll’s head was warm in its nest between her legs. She reached under her dress and pulled it out. Two painted blue eyes looked out from a pure white face. Tiny cracks in the cheeks gave it an impish look. She cradled the head in her arms and rocked it until her own head came to rest against her shoulder.

As Nettie slept, a black cat wound along the alley, avoiding a rivulet of filthy water that drained along one side. It saw Nettie and froze. The doll’s head stared out from the middle of the child as if it were the face of death itself. The cat remained frozen until it was convinced that the glowing thing wasn’t really alive.

Nettie awoke to the feeling of something rubbing against her. The alley was dark and she cried out a little because she was frightened, forgetting her cries were more likely to bring foe than friend.

The cat said, “It’s only me. Don’t be afraid.”

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“Who are you?” whispered Nettie.

Before the cat could reply, a man and a woman tumbled through a gap in a far wall. The cat hid behind a barrel while Nettie tucked the doll’s head back under her dress. The man caught sight of her as she did so. He said, “What you got litt’l miss?”

The woman at his side clucked, “Poor wee thing – not likely to last the night, is she? Let’s take her with us.”

Nettie shuddered but she held her tongue.

“Show me wot you got, dammit!” The man’s lips smacked together like two raw fish.

Just then the black cat stepped out from behind the barrel. In those days many people believed a meeting with a black cat in the dead of night was a bad omen. The man and the woman each had a lifetime of bad luck behind them. They weren’t inclined to invite more, so they trotted away down the alley as fast as the woman’s swollen legs allowed.

When the man and the woman were gone, the cat purred, “What happened to the rest of your doll?”

Nettie brought the precious doll’s head out from under her dress and cradled it as if it were alive and its life depended on her. She didn’t say anything, but her actions told the cat all it needed to know. The girl had found a doll’s head and it was more valuable to her than were a hundred dolls to the Royal Princess.

“Poor thing,” said the cat, thinking of Nettie.

Nettie heard and thought the cat meant the doll.

“Yes,” she agreed, “she needs me.”

“Does she?” purred the cat. It rubbed its whiskery face against Nettie’s cold feet. “You are only a girl, and a poor one at that. Someday you will drop the doll’s head, or

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lose it.”

“I won’t,” cried Nettie.

“You won’t mean to,” said the cat, “but it will happen, unless ...”

Nettie had been staring into the doll’s twinkling eyes, but she looked up. Her own eyes were very sore and she blinked away the pain as best she could. “Unless what?” she asked.

“If you give the doll’s head to me, I will take it to my friend. My friend is an expert in taking care of doll’s heads, among other things.”

“Oh no!” cried Nettie. “She’s mine. She needs me.”

“Could you be so heartless as to keep her for yourself when she would be better off somewhere else?” The cat wound around the barrels, around Nettie’s legs, and then came to a stop directly in front of her. Nettie didn’t answer, but she kissed her doll tenderly on its china cheek.

“If you allow me to take the doll’s head to my friend, I will bring you something in return,” said the cat. Then it licked the edges of a sore place on its skin.

Nettie was far from heartless. She stroked and kissed and bathed the doll with her farewell tears, but she did not put up a fuss – something the cat took note of. And after handing her precious doll over to the cat, Nettie curled up and cried herself to sleep.

When morning came, a fact that could be told from the movement of people in the alley more than the dawning of light in that dark place, Nettie sat up. Her eyes were glued shut with muck and she used her dress as a towel, rubbing and scraping at herself until she could open them.

An unexpected bobble of light made Nettie look down

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as soon as she could see again. A gleaming mirror lay on the cobbles at her feet. It was a hand mirror with smooth glass like a silver pool in the road. Nettie looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then she picked up the mirror and aimed it at a patch of sky. The patch of sky had a brownish hue, but the mirror version was a twinkling green jewel. Nettie gasped.

A vain girl might have admired herself in that mirror, but Nettie did not. Her first thought was to show the prize to Uncle who, if he was pleased with her find, might give her a little more than a mere crust of bread to break her fast. She picked up the gift and shuffled back to Uncle’s hovel. Alas, dear Nettie was not to arrive there unmolested. Nick, the young thief, ambushed her and tore the mirror from her hand.

“What’s this?” He doffed his cap and danced a jig.

When he looked into the mirror, Nick's eyes widened with fright.

“What do you see?” asked Nettie.

The ruffian fled, dropping the mirror. Nettie did not move but watched the mirror float like an autumn leaf, until it hit the ground with a splash. Nettie stared at the mirror. Its silver green eye was fixed on the sky.

She had heard a splash. Nettie was certain she had.

But how could a mirror make such a sound? And why did it not have even one crack in it after such a fall?

Nettie tiptoed toward the mirror. She picked it up and polished it with her patchwork dress, which became damp from the effort. Nettie did not look into the mirror, but went straight to Uncle’s hovel and offered him her prize.

“What the –” Uncle stopped abruptly when he spotted the gleaming object in the girl’s outstretched hand. “Well,

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you’ve finally done something worthwhile.” He slapped her hard on the back with one hand while snatching the mirror in the other. “I think you’ve earned a proper bite to eat this time.”

Nettie thought she saw the cat slink past the open doorway as she took a bite of biscuit and a sip of tea, though she couldn’t be certain. She moistened the dry morsel in the hot tea and delighted in the smell of it, and then the taste of it. Nettie smiled. The hovel was, for the moment, a place of peace.

The moment didn’t last.

“What’s this?” cried Uncle. He gazed at his own reflection in the mirror. “Is this one of your tricks, girl?”

Nettie coughed down the last of her tea. She was afraid to come to Uncle, and so the great brute of a man came to her.

“Look at this,” he demanded, flailing the mirror before Nettie’s face.

She closed her eyes.

“I told you to look!” Uncle pulled Nettie close to him and forced her to open her eyes. She saw at once a mirror image of him, looking even more brutish than the flesh and blood version. And while the flesh and blood Uncle was standing in his hovel, the mirror image of Uncle was a bloated head floating in the sea.

“It’s a trick.” Uncle stared, wild eyed, at Nettie. “It’s witching.”

Nettie looked from the mirror, to Uncle, and back again. She shook her head.

“You’re a witch. I should have seen it before with all the skulking about you do. You tricked me into sharing my roof and my food.”

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Nettie ducked under the blow that followed and saw her own reflection in the mirror. In the mirror Nettie had clean, flowing hair, glowing skin and the sickle tail of a fish.

Then the image was gone and Nettie was forced, headfirst, into a sack, tied in, thrown over a shoulder and marched into the street. No one stopped to listen to Nettie’s muffled cries. No one begged Uncle to reconsider during his breathy, unsteady march to the dock.

Nettie couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t see. She knew, in her ignorant way, that the end was coming – the end of her. She cried a little, but her eyes sealed up and she stopped.

Uncle said nothing when he reached the dock and tossed Nettie, and then the mirror, into the foam. He watched Nettie and the mirror sink beneath the surface.

And then he thought he saw the sickle tail of a large fish flip him farewell.

It has been heard tell that a half-girl, half-fish lives in the Thames and its myriad tributaries. She isn't exactly a mermaid as can be found in other parts, but more of a fishy girl, or a girly fish. She has been seen, on rare occasions, holding a brilliant mirror, which reveals, oddly enough, along with her own reflection, the heads of a monstrous man and a greedy boy floating endlessly and forever in a deep green sea.

illustrated by Daria Hlazatova

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Phoenix Song

by David R Morgan For the child has hidden the bird in the cupboard and all the children hear its song and all the children hear the music and eight and eight in their turn off they go and four and four in their turn and two and two fade away and one and one make neither one nor two but one and one off they go and the lyre bird sings and the child sings and the teacher shouts Do the test, do the test you must do the test but all the children are listening to the music and the walls of the classroom quietly crumble the window panes turn once more to sand the ink is sea the paper trees and the feather in the ancient quill on display a bird again soaring skyward Issue 6

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illustrated by Julie Vermeille Issue 6

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Dollface

by Alex Woods Consciousness came to me kind of slowly, like lying on a beach in a lazy tide. But eventually I was all washed up. I was awake. On the first day I flexed my little cloth fingers, of which I had two, one on the end of each arm. I had two little thumbs as well, nearly as long as the deformed fingers, but fatter and without the delicate bend to them. I was permanently giving my world two thumbs up. The only other thing I did on that first day was to flex my brain. I knew some things. I had been something before and I am something different now. I knew about life; that we, people, lived in houses and I knew the names for all my little bits and pieces. Of which there was one noticeably lacking. Although I couldn’t yet see, I could feel.

On my second day alive I woke in the morning. This was my first morning. Or maybe it was my second-first morning. The sun burnt my eyes and I turned over, pushing my oddly sized face into my pillow. I sat up sharply. Burning my eyes? Eyes. The centres of my buttons swivelled around and around in my head. At first it was hard to make anything out. I was aware of a room with a closed white door at one end, and of a window to my left. I looked at my patterned sheets and then focused on my hands until they became clear.

Nothing happened for about three days, except restless sleep and waking dreams. I picked uselessly at the stitching up my left arm: it was thin, yellowed twine; ugly and old. My hands had a little more movement to them and I began to wonder if my legs worked yet. My little

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cotton suit trousers crinkled up as I bent my legs under my chin and swung over the side of my bed. I stood up. I was unsteady for a while, my legs wobbling beneath me, nearly pitching me over. Straightening myself up, I stretched my arms and legs and shook them out, like an Olympic athlete preparing for a forever-long steeplechase. I walked out of my bedroom door.

I don’t know what I was expecting; a nursing home? A hospital? A family? I don’t know, but what I got was a hallway, red carpets, blue/white walls and a smooth roof.

Opening the door closest to me I stepped through the threshold with a jerk and fell on my soft face. Walking has a learning curve. I was scrambling around on the carpet trying to sit up when, with a sudden gush of selfconsciousness, I realized I wasn’t alone.

“Hello,” I rasped to the other. She sat, staring blankly into the wall. I struggled on. There was nobody else in the whole house: four bedrooms; two bathrooms, which I had come to realise I didn’t need; and a kitchen on the bottom floor with plastic pans and two plastic steaks.

Then She strode into my universe like a whirlwind.

She tore the wall off my home and the accompanying gust of wind nearly washed me to the floor. My mouth fell open,

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not with a dropped jaw but with a peeling back in all directions, like a flower. I bloomed in total awe of the suddenly rising sun. She was big and bright and beautiful and clomped along in black hush puppies with little flower clasps. She hauled me into the air.

She was so warm, my brain popped. There was a rush of wool to my head and I was spinning. As the colours started to blur into the back of my cotton skull, my brown button eyes closed tightly and I was caught in an unreal burst of excitement, or fear. This is how it feels to belong, This is real. . .

I watched Her face in the centre of our vortex, our calm eye of the blistering storm. She was not looking back.

Then it was over as quickly as it started; laid flat on the plastic bed I saw stars for maybe a year. Am I out of breath? I must have lungs now.

I knew enough about people to know she was a little girl and that she was ‘people’. Which meant I was not people. My universe was suddenly placed into perspective.

She was a little Girl but so, so big. And so I was small. This all came to me as I was standing looking out my plastic bedroom window, staring more at my own reflection than what I later knew to be some sort of playroom. It strikes me that this realisation came over me not like my slow awakening and not like my dawning second-first morning, but like a heart-stopping (I had a heart?) cold-stone dropping (did I have a stomach now?) knee-wobbling crush.

I burned to walk out of the room. I wanted to walk on streets and crossroads. I wanted to heat my face against the pure sun. I wanted to wet real hair under summer rain.

I wanted to watch pink blossoms fall prematurely in a

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quick, cold wind. I wanted a steak, I think. I wanted to change my surroundings and force an effect on something.

Anything. I wanted to be.

I collapsed stiffly at the window and turned my face away, the brain-dead one staring back at me from where the little Girl left her, lying in my bed. She just sat there with that smile on her face.

“You don’t care how long the days are, do you?”

She smiled back.

The next time the Girl came to play with us I tried to reason with Her. I appealed to Her good nature but She giggled and chewed my leg. I tried to bribe Her but I had nothing She wanted. I tried to chastise Her like a parent but She ignored my rage and put me in my pretend bed.

My deaf-dumb friend was sat on top of Ugly-Dog’s pile of bricks. The Girl picked her up and brought her over to me.

I was sat cross-legged, with my head in my hands when She started bumping the girl doll against me.

“Stop that.” I said into my palms.

She grinned at me; She was missing her two front teeth. I didn’t know how old she was exactly, but She was old enough to think the doll and I were husband and wife.

What exactly that meant to her I don’t know, but She was in the habit of leaving us in the same bed and She was getting quite upset whenever I kicked Mummy-Doll out of the bed, or when I sulked in the other room with the thin cotton sheets pulled over my head.

It’s just that sleeping next to that corpse was horrifying. I’d come to the conclusion that we were a pair; her yellow twine mirrored mine and we were roughly the same size. It’s not like talking to a brick wall; nobody ever thought a brick wall could talk back. But her, she was just

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like me. She looked just like me. This was torture. This was paralysing.

I stayed up shouting in her face one night. Shaking her and crying into her lap, pulling her woollen hair and begging her. Daring her to open her mouth. She smiled back, politely.

The next time the Girl came to play with us I begged; “Please. Please listen to me; I’m not a doll. I’m not your doll. I’m a man.”

For a moment, for a blissful and graceful moment, I thought She was listening. She paused, holding me in the air. Frozen like a plane, caught in the hands of God. She petulantly or playfully splashed me down, head first into a glass of warm milk. As I began to float I kept my eyes open, staring out into the thick, bubble-less depth. I could’t hear a thing. What was worse was that I couldn’t taste a thing. I couldn’t remember what anything tasted like. Or smelled like. Was that all there was? An endless, blank, flavourless forever? I bumped against the glass.

My skin soaked through and I sank like a brick.

Drying out on the windowsill took an age. I wondered if size and time were relative. Was a day as long to me now, as it was to

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the Girl? For me, the sun rolled slowly. I don’t know if this was because, for me, that distance was so huge it could only take a long time to pass. It might be that one-sided conversations take forever. Taking a deep breath I thought about my lungs: were they made of cloth? Were they formed from pieces of my soft, woollen insides? I began to think that perhaps it was just habit; people breathed so I breathed. Like the child shuffling in its mother’s shoes or scrawled in stolen red lipstick. A bizarre echo of what I was. Or a sad parody of what I couldn’t be. A little, stinging reminder. Every-day.

Another dawn, another day. Another dusk, another night. Watching shadows grow and shrink around the pretend room was all the fun I had. I’d given up asking and given up begging. Given up shouting and given up reasoning. I may as well have prayed to Ugly Dog. There came, one day, a burst in my fabric. I watched for any sign of blood. Squeezing my palm and shaking my hand. “Come on gravity; tell me I’m real.

Come on blood; if I can bleed I can die.”

It had been more than one thousand sunrises and I was not dead. Nor did I believe I was alive. The Girl had grown and the room was stale; the air was still. Dust covered everything and my universe was closed and tired and old. I had given up long before. The sun sloped across the sky, the flowers rose from the soil. The moon chased the sun, the flowers hid away, ashamed of their pride in the cold of the night. Nearly two thousand days of loneliness. Nearly two thousand nights of dust and rust. I was the king of silence. I was the prince of pin-drops. I reigned over my own, endless unhappiness, and ruled supreme in my own court of dry tears and sleep and

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bottomless days.

I skirted the room; it took over an hour. I lifted some red blocks and put them back where they belonged. I don’t know how long it took, but I had done it a hundred times or more. The sun dipped below the houses. The snow lit silver and diamonds across the road and strung out, cascading up and over treetops like little, glinting pearlstrings. The handful of houses I could see, I could ever see, had lights twinkling to and fro. All patterns and chaos.

It was while I was counting the lights that she turned to me.

“Toy.” She said. “Toy.” I blinked.

“Toy look at me.”

I turned around, dumbstruck.

“Toy,” she said, almost sympathetically. “Just let it go.”

I stared at her cotton lips; all these years in silence and solitude. I could have killed for conversation, but all I could do was stare.

“Just let it go Toy, you are what you are.”

I dropped to my knees.

“If you let it go, the days just wash over you.” She turned her face away from me and never spoke again.

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illustrated by Fiona McDonald

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Rescued

by Ruby Ebrahim

It wasn’t so bad, you know, up in that tower.

We had some lovely conversations.

Wrapped up in the scales and always a fire to keep us warm.

Almost a pity to get rescued.

He cried at the wedding. Of course he was invited. With a special request to not get slain. I missed him later.

We still write letters. Charming doesn’t know. Naturally. I take them out sometimes and touch their charred edges whilst he’s away jousting with his friends.

Write back promising to visit the tower.

I never have. My prince wouldn’t like it.

His princess in love with the dragon.

He’ll have to wait.

illustrated by Laura Carter Issue 6

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The Giant’s Last Feast

by Frederick Hilary

The giant took the key from his pocket and unlocked his garden gate. The rusty old lock hadn’t been opened for an age, and the key wasn’t much better: it had once been bronze but had since become a kind of dull green. Even after the key had been turned, the gate would not push open. The ground beneath had grown up, and grass and weeds entangled the gate’s bars, and he had to give it a push with all his giant strength to make it budge. Heave! It opened a crack, just enough for a small human child to squeeze through (relish the thought!). Heave! Enough for a slim, much younger giant, but not for an old one with a large paunch. A last heave. He was out, and there was the old cracked path, sprouting crab grass, leading to the human world beyond.

The giant had lived alone for time out of mind, in a dark old house surrounded by a high wall. He had seen none of his own kind in this time, and for the past few years he had seen no humans either. This meant he’d had to subsist on old rotten turnips and withered fruit from his pantry. What he liked best, of course, were children, human children, but he’d had none of those for so long he thought he might go mad. A child’s flesh is more tender, more aromatic and sweet than anything else to a giant.

Though his gate had been locked to keep away questing knights or bands of villagers, he had long counted on

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children slipping through the cracks in his wall to retrieve kites or in response to a dare by their playmates. And that was when he'd come stomping towards them and plucked them up like fresh daisies from the overgrown grass of his garden. But this did not happen anymore. For some reason no children passed beyond the wall.

One day the thought came to him to go out, to go seeking meat in human lands, and to risk being followed or even slain. In the distant past giants had done this, until they realised that such behaviour would spell their doom sooner rather than later. But now, having gone so long without flesh, having been kept up every night with the memory of its sweetness, he resolved to go out and take some for himself. He would risk the pikes and pitchforks of villagers. He would risk even death if it meant he could chew on the bones of a child one last time.

He set off on the old path that wound away from his home. He knew vaguely where the nearest human dwellings lay, though he didn't know how he knew. It wasn’t long, in fact, before he came upon a small hamlet.

Little brick houses nestled along a narrow, clear stream.

Although the sun had just risen, no people were up. This was odd, really, because in such a place there were always farmers and shepherds who take their sheep out at first sign of daybreak. As he drew nearer, overcoming his fear of being spotted, he saw no livestock, and no signs of any people. He stomped over to one of the little houses – hardly higher than his knees. The wattle roof had a hole in it. He recognised what had happened. A giant’s hand had reached in and plucked the people from inside.

So I am not the last one after all, he thought. There is another like me, one who has come out to get his fill of

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human flesh, and especially of child’s flesh. Another who has had enough of rotten turnips and mouldy apples.

He went on over the next hill, and the next, looking for another village, and soon enough found one. It was a much larger settlement, and this time not deserted. What the giant saw, however, wasn’t people, not even a single human, but another giant. This must be the giant who had eaten the people from the first hamlet. He was sitting on one of the stone houses, or what was left of it, for the bricks had fallen inwards to make a kind of rounded heap of stone and timber, and this the stranger giant was using as a chair.

“Good day, brother,” the giant said to the stranger giant.

The other nodded his head as he glanced up. He was chewing on something.

The giant couldn’t contain his curiosity. “What’s that you’ve got there? Child, is it? Little boy or little girl, plucked in their tender years, just as every giant likes best?”

The stranger giant nodded as he chewed and his eyes gazed far away. “Aye, like a newborn lamb, only sweeter.

All that innocence, all those sweet dreams and innocent tears. It all goes into the flavour. One of the best I’ve ever tasted.”

“Do you have any to spare? I haven’t eaten a child in so long.”

“Oh, no, sorry. I can’t give you any of this. Not even a limb. It’s too good. It would be a shame to let even a little bit go to waste in another giant’s belly.”

The giant looked at the stranger. He wasn’t that big.

A younger sort for sure, and likely green in giant ways.

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Wouldn’t it be easier, instead of going off in search of another village, to force this youngster to give up his meal? There was no honour amongst giants – no giant was ever blamed by his own kind if he killed another giant. No giant liked the taste of giant flesh, but it had been quite common, in the old days, for giants to fight amongst themselves for the pick of the human food.

He watched the stranger giant chewing his meal, and his mouth watered and his belly ached. The stranger giant, for his part, seemed to be enjoying the envy.

“It’s all there, in the taste of the meat. A child’s joyful springing through summer meadows. His first tears for a lost pet. His frolics in the little river, splashing amongst the minnows. The bedtime stories that make his eyes mist over and go to sleep.”

“Don’t tell any more,” said the giant. “I can’t take it.

I've tasted all those things myself. I've eaten the wild abandon of play. I've swallowed fledgling dreams. I've munched and chewed on school holidays filled with adventures and carefree wanderings. I've tasted meat that is wholly local, that has known only the grass of one happy spot, and never been beyond the farthest-sighted hills; the meat of a child who thinks his father a giant like ourselves, and his mother the kindest being on earth.”

“Enough, enough!” shouted the stranger giant. He got up from his sitting place, and took the food from his mouth and tossed it onto the ground.

It was a piece of rancid-looking turnip.

“What’s that?” boomed the giant. “Turnip! What happened to the child meat?”

The stranger giant stared at him as if he was mad.

“Child meat? Don’t you try to imagine everything tastes

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like child meat? Though it never does. I thought you knew.

I thought you were just playing along. But what you said just then – all that stuff about play and youthful dreams and the rest – it was just too much! It made me sorry for everything.”

The stranger giant turned his back and lurched off towards the nearest hills without another word. The giant was left more baffled than ever. He took a look round the village, saw that there wasn't a human in sight, and set off again, going in the opposite direction to the stranger giant.

He headed for the distant horizon where the sun was slowly rising. The land was gentler there and he had the vague feeling or memory that it sloped down towards a coastal plain, though he didn't know how he knew. It was away from the hills and therefore, his logic told him, or whatever passes for logic in giant kind, that the human dwellings would be more numerous, for the stony hills housed giants and bogeys.

He came at last, after tramping for many miles, to the walls of a great city. They were so tall he couldn’t see over them. This was indeed a great human settlement, built perhaps with the intention of keeping giants out. He followed the wall till he came to a gate, and was surprised and heartened to find that it lay open, with a wide tunnel leading to the city beyond.

As he entered the tunnel, he fancied he could smell human flesh, and even child’s flesh, mingled amongst all the familiar smells of a city. He heard the rumble of a cart come up behind him, but he didn't turn his head for his attention was immediately caught by the sight before him.

Here was a city aright: a city of enormous dwellings built with great slabs of hewn stone. Its countless

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inhabitants thronged the streets and marketplaces, their voices crying out to barter and sell. There was every kind of colour and flavour of life imaginable, as is true of all great cities where different tribes and creeds mingle. Every kind except one. Not one person amongst all that great throng was human. They were all giants, whether younger or older, hill-dwelling or from the plain. All like himself.

The cart that had entered the city behind him now turned about and he caught sight of what the carter – who else but a giant – had brought. It was a cart full of rotten turnips and mouldy apples, of withered tree roots and rancid potatoes. The smell that had enticed him inside – the smell of human flesh and especially child’s flesh – had been nothing but a memory. He looked from left to right, at the milling giants who didn't even notice another strange giant in their midst, and felt his old worn legs begin to buckle under him. Were there nothing but giants now, anywhere in the world?

He addressed the carter. “Tell me, giant friend. Why have you brought all that stuff into the city?”

The giant carter frowned, as if the question were an irritation, “Isn’t it obvious? How else are we supposed to eat?”

“Are there no people anymore? No children?”

The giant carter looked at him as if he were mad, and turned his face away.

The giant took a last look at the city, and went back through the gate and outside.

He walked for many days. He went over hill and through dale, and found nothing in the world but giants.

Every village was abandoned, and every little hamlet stripped of its people and even livestock. So of course

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there were no children. He felt the ache in his belly as the days went by, and considered digging up some turnips, but the thought of eating them left him more bitter than ever.

At last he came to the shores of the sea and looked out on the choppy grey waters. There was nowhere else to go, so he turned back and sat down near the sea shore, in a little meadow next to a stream that widened into a river as it flowed out towards the ocean. Here he went to sleep for most of the morning. When it was afternoon, and the sun was tickling his thick, stubby giant nose, he opened his eyes. What he saw made him sit up in shock.

There was a child playing in the river. He had no shoes on, and the water flowed past his bare feet. He was a little boy, about five or six years old, with fine freckled cheeks and soft golden hair like spun wool. He was singing a childish song and seemed not to have noticed the giant at all.

The giant rose up and moved his great, stiff limbs. He felt the appetite rising from his belly to his mouth as he looked on the child. He could already smell the scent of innocence, a lamblike innocence, the scent of all joy and happiness when one is truly free and the day seems to stretch out eternally. Was this, then, the last child? Had he found the last child that hadn’t been consumed by giants, the last meadow still trodden by a child’s feet rather than a giant’s?

He stepped, as quietly as he could, toward the river.

The boy wasn't looking towards him. He was looking down into the water, his head bowed, singing his sweet child’s song.

The giant reached the bank. He put one foot into the water, then the other, and despite his great size there

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seemed hardly a ripple in the smooth flowing surface. He came up to the child from the side, well within the boy's field of vision, and still the child did not startle. He put out both his great hands, and reached out to snatch the child from the water, and as he did so he felt a piercing jolt of hunger from the depths of his belly.

And then he felt himself thrown down into the water.

He was pushed headfirst under the surface and lost all footing right away. It was a giant’s hand, surely, that did it. It could not have been the child, for even given all his strength a child could hardly make a giant budge an inch.

But this hand had all the strength of mountains in it, all the strength of the old stony hills he’d come from, so what else but a giant could have managed it? A stronger giant than he had ever been, for with the ease of a child being plucked up from his play the giant had been thrust into the water, and emerged spluttering and splashing and bewildered.

He looked around for the giant who had pushed him under and saw no one but the child just a few yards away, his song uninterrupted. The giant stood there sopping wet, startled and confused, and at last could think of nothing better than to address the child. The boy had obviously heard the splash of him going under and any thought of surprise was lost.

“Who did that? Who put me under the water?” It sounded ridiculous, of course, because they were quite alone.

“Who else is here?” said the child. "It was me, of course."

It was an absurd answer, but a troubling one; something about this child made him feel afraid.

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Suddenly the child stared at him. The boy’s blue eyes were filled with innocence incarnate, “You, being a giant, will probably want to chew on my bones and swallow my flesh, and drink my blood.”

The giant's look gave all the answer the boy needed.

“If you are to be given this feast, there is something you must do for me first.”

“Anything,” said the giant, for the hunger inside him was maddening, despite the vague sense of dread the boy inspired.

“Let me swallow you up, and spit you out whole,” said the boy.

“What? You eat me? I’m a giant, and you a child. It is against the law of things. Giants eat children.”

“Very well. But if I can do it, will you consent?”

The giant laughed nervously. Beyond all giant logic, he was actually afraid of this strange boy.

“If you can do it, then go ahead,” said the giant. “I will even lie down for you, by the bank there, to be swallowed up and spat out, as you say.”

The giant did as he’d said. He lay his great bulk out on the soft grass by the water’s edge, and closed his eyes with an awkward chuckle.

There was no sound as the boy emerged from the water. The giant heard only his own breathing. Suddenly he felt a searing pain, a pain that flooded his whole body.

It was as if great talons had ripped through his flesh, or fire engulfed him, but the pain only lasted a few brief seconds before it was gone.

The giant opened his eyes. He rose up, feeling suddenly lighter, and saw on the nearby bank something that looked like an old heap of clothes. As he stepped

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closer, he realised that it was not clothes but old leathery skin, like the skin some reptiles leave behind. At one end of it was a face, horribly like a mask made of wax or a face carved on tree. It was a giant’s face.

The child – for he was giant no more – looked down upon his small hands and at his bare feet. In his reflection in the river he saw his blue eyes and soft golden hair like lamb's wool, and laughed. He spun his gaze around. He saw summer meadows, looked towards the farthestsighted hills and felt all kindness radiating from the earth.

There was only this one bright, happy spot, and the land of giants was no more. He had been one once, but would never go back that way. He went laughing and playing then through the meadows, and though he saw no sign of the child who had transformed him he thought he caught the scent of innocence on the air, and the flavour of childness, and so he danced off that way and did not look back.

illustrated by Laura-Kate Chapman

Issue 6

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Water Sprite

by Vivien Jones

The worst thing was that the stream was muddy. She, who had been born into a cold bubbling torrent, now felt her way through channels of silted water. Even at high tides when the salt estuary waters crept high up the stream and climbed the alder trunks, the murk only became thinner.

Once or twice she had moved downstream to the shore but the salt stung her eyes and left crusts on her skin. Her companions, the ducks and herons and small fish, gave her a wide berth. She was neither fish, fowl nor human so they closed their eyes to her. But she was safe.

She saw the man every day. He walked with open eyes drinking in the woodland as he went. Sometimes he touched the tree trunks, bent to smell the woodbine, smiled at the summer butterfly clouds above his head; but always he stared into the stream as if searching for something. She knew it might be dangerous but she wanted to speak to him, to ask him what he was looking for. As well as being afraid she was lonely.

She knew she couldn’t be seen unless she showed herself. Her bank brown and reed green skin and hair cut her body to invisible fragments and she could move in the water without ripples. So she watched the man with impunity, liking the way he picked his way through the undergrowth without stamping plants down. He could not be one of those who sought her. There was no urgency in his tread.

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One day, after heavy rain, when she was lying in the downstream current loving its rush and bubbles, she heard his slow approach. He was walking amongst the grasses close to the bank trailing his fingers up the grass stalks and spraying the seed-heads behind him. The sun blazed over the rim of a cloud and outlined her in vapour. He gasped and from his widening eyes she knew that he had seen her, but instead of sliding away and leaving him with a notion of delusion she let the sun stay on her body. He took a step back but his eyes never left her.

“Why do you look into the stream?” Her voice was a new thing, unused. It trickled from her mouth.

He cleared his throat.

“Why do you look into the stream?” she repeated.

“I…I have sometimes seen movement in the water. I thought it might be a large fish. Or an otter perhaps.” His voice was calm. A slight tremor of incredulity rimmed his words.

She laughed, another new thing. “There are no otters here and the fish are small.” She told him. “Do you want to come in the water?”

He looked puzzled but it was a clear invitation.

“It’s not very deep, even with the rain,” she assured him.

He didn’t wait to take his boots and socks off, he slid down the bank until he was under the water to the waist, sitting opposite her. He shuddered and he saw something flicker across her face.

“It’s the cold water,” he explained.

“Not me?” she asked, moving a little away.

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“You’re beautiful,” he said. He looked at the rise of her streaked belly, “And pregnant.”

“That’s my business,” she said sharply, but she was not afraid of him. His eyes were all over her, she could see he was committing her to his memory, her colours and textures, her voice and her otherness. Perhaps he was a singer. Her people were singers.

“Do you have a name?” he asked.

“Yes.” He waited.

“I don’t tell it to strangers.”

He laughed awkwardly.

“I am David.”

“I am Meriel.”

If people in the village wondered why he came back from his daily walks wet to the waist, they never asked. He was not a gregarious man. As the summer weeks went by and she grew rounder, she spent longer each day floating in the shallows to take the weight off her back and he went to her and talked with her about his world and all the things strange to her in it. She offered nothing of her world to him but he saw she was afraid of something upstream, the sea seeming merely unpleasant. She was particularly nervous at flood times when she would watch the rushing water very carefully from the cover of the reeds.

Then one day, at the end of the summer, he went to meet her and found her half sleeping with three soft waterforms writhing around her body under the water. He was touched that she would let him see her when so vulnerable and trust him to be unshocked at the sight of her offspring.

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Their semi-transparent bodies moved with a motion near to swimming but their orbit stayed close to her resting body. Their limbs lay close to their bodies as they wove around her and she trailed her fingertips across their backs as they passed by her hands. Apart from the motion nothing about them suggested fish, but little suggested human being either other than the tendrils that flowed from their heads.

“Are you well?” he asked shyly, thinking he should be bearing flowers. She raised her head from the water.

She smiled.

“Fine now.” Her voice became reedy, urgent.

“David, is there clear water near here? I need… we need clear water if they are to thrive. Could you find a clean stream for us?”

His mind, already full of unasked questions, filled with concern for her. How had she come here? What was she afraid of? He had never touched her but he reached for her hand now. She flinched but did not withdraw her fingers from his grip. He said nothing for a while but held her fingers gently thinking that she would leave him soon to a resumption of the emptiness that was his life before her.

“How would you get there?” was all he asked.

“I can swim in the sea for a short while if you find an estuary. They can ride on my back out of the salt water.

But you must walk the river first, see there are no others like me. I have shown you how to see.”

Thinking of his own state he asked, “But do you not long for others like you?”

“They will kill me.” Her voice was grim.

He dropped her hand.

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“And my children.” She seemed resigned.

“No. That mustn’t happen. How could that happen?”

She stared into the laburnum branches above them.

Some small rebellion underlaid her voice. “I mated with the dominant male. It is not allowed.”

“But that’s animal! No, sorry…no, I didn’t mean that.”

“Yes you did. We are not animal but that’s how we live. It’s how we survive.”

“Do you mean you can never go back?”

“Yes.” “And you cannot stay here?”

“It dries up too often. It’s silted up. They need clear water. I could manage here but they might not.”

“Well then, we must find you some clear water…”

“Thank you, I thought you would.”

Imperceptibly he felt her squeeze his hand.

His heart was beating hard as he turned away from her, knowing he would find her a clear safe stream, somewhere inland perhaps. He would pour over his maps, find not only a possible place but a good place, a beautiful place. In his mind a whirlpool of possibilities swirled. Some nights he woke up through the night sweating with dreams of disaster, other nights trembling with joy at the task accomplished, always with the cut of losing sight of her aching through his body. Then he remembered a garden he had visited on its Open Day, wandering amongst puzzled gardeners and open-mouthed tourists, enjoying its humour and playfulness with space. What he remembered most sharply were the canals that cut through from the nearby river, diverted to play for a while before returning

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to the river and the serious business of making for the sea.

It could be perfect.

When he told her she looked at him with such trust he felt afraid, doubtful of his capabilities. He waited until after midnight when the last house lights in the village were off then he drove the pick-up slowly to the silent bridge above the stream. In the back was wedged a child’s swimming pool, brimming with cold water. He tramped upstream to where the water was close to the path and waited. Very soon she flowed up out of the water, her children’s bodies waving in the water behind her.

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“I shall have to carry you,” he said. “Will they be frightened?”

“I will carry them and you will carry me,” she spoke firmly but there was a tremor in her voice.

She lay under the water and gathered her children into her arms, nuzzling them into a single tessellated form on her breast. He thought she sang softly to them until they seemed mesmerised and calm. She nodded to him.

He got into the water and slipped his arms beneath her and lifted her clear in one quick sweep. It was twenty paces to the pick-up and though he knew he should be quick he didn’t want to jerk the children from their trance, or relinquish the feeling of her small damp weight in his arms, so he walked slowly. She was breathing fast. The sight of the pick-up alarmed her and he found himself singing softly to her as he lifted her into the water. She curled round her children in the centre of the pool, trying to avoid contact with the plastic sides. He wished he could have sat with her. She was shivering, not with cold.

“I’ll drive slowly. Think of the clear water.”

He pulled the tarpaulin across the pool.

He drove so slowly he feared being stopped by the police but the road was only lit as he crossed the town boundaries. Twice he stopped to check his passengers but after the second time she was so distressed there was further to go that he decided to finish the journey as soon as he could. He cut the engine where the drive left the road and allowed the slope to carry them silently past the estate buildings. Nothing stirred. The pick-up stopped on gravel. He threw the tarpaulin back joyfully.

“We are here,” he announced.

She uncurled slowly, still soothing the children.

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“Water.” She sniffed the air.

He gathered her up and walked towards the bridge that curved over the stream. He knelt on the grass and slid her into the water where she rolled, tipping the children into clean wetness and wakefulness, before immersing herself. He watched her swim upstream shadowed by watery forms, rising half out of the water to examine the bank sides, her head turning from side to side. Then she swam back.

“It is strange,” she said.

“But safe? Does it feel safe?”

“I don’t think there will be others here.”

“And clear. Is it clear enough?”

“Yes. But there are no plants, no stones, and it does not wander.”

“It is a made place.”

“If I stay here, can you come to talk to me still?”

His heart churned. “No – well, once a year perhaps but there will be other people, many other people.”

“I don’t show myself to other people.”

She turned without saying more and swam strongly away upstream. He sat on the bank in the quiet of the small hours and listened to the rustling of hedgehogs and small creatures and the cry of a hunting owl. He was thinking he would not see her again when there was a splash nearby and she surged towards him with a smile on her face.

“There is a river further on, a real river, with stones and plants. I smelt others but not my group, they will let us live there. Come, walk behind me.”

He followed her undulating body past bridges, walkways, and circles of trees until he found himself

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crossing a fence onto the river bank where the wide waters of the river moved swiftly under old willows and alders. He could scarcely keep her in view amongst the foam and tumble of the flow, but he sensed her excitement and could see now that she had her children close to her and they were all rolling and circling round her body. There was no moon, so he could not be sure, but now and then he thought he caught the gleam of other bodies in the water moving in the same ecstatic way. He smiled. He could leave her here.

illustrated by Evelina Silberlaint Issue 6

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i she lives the maiden in her bedroom the top of a tower sleeps & eats there hears rain outside and counts the drops her parents own her say she cannot leave and she cannot leave her parents who love her she says combing her hair soft like velvet blonde like moonlight that stays soft in towers out of weather ii she waits for me in her bedroom behind a shut door her father owns her says she cannot leave and she cannot leave the burly father who needs her she says locked in the room wrapped in blankets as soft as her skin but I slip under the door like paper she is scared has never seen me before covers herself in blankets on her bed iii she stands in water buckets and pales water to her ankles her mother owns her says she cannot leave and she cannot leave her mother who shows her the future in vanity mirrors she says standing in buckets eels swimming infinity around her ankles she boards up her bedroom window plywood over glass sheets from her bed she wraps around her torso I am not allowed to enter this room and water sways against her ankles iv she hears me outside her bedroom window boarded up inside she sees only shadows on the ground I am throwing stones from a cairn to her window a bed of lilies grows for her to sleep her parents say she does not listen but she hears the stones clacking against her window

by Tim Mook Sang Issue 6

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v she climbs through the smallest slit the size of a sliver in the plywood covering her window and crosses the bed of lilies lit by moon & garden lanterns she joins me in the night I take her through hollow hills to yellow birds in public houses she loves to hear them sing someday my prince will come she says like market girls while sonatas play over her questions I cannot hear her stones on my window vi she waits for me stands in water buckets and pales behind a shut door in a room I am not allowed to enter but I slip under doors like paper see her wrapped in blankets sweating from her legs & from her torso both emit the scent attract snakes & worms & not spiders legs flick flicking her fingers as she waits but I come take her away with me all the things that she attracts vii she stays in my bedroom one ear pressed firm to the door I told her not to listen but she has to hear her mother yells she owns her that she cannot leave her little sister who hates her that I am the evil prince the thief who slipped under her door like paper that I will steal everything and I do viii she weaves for gold makes more coins than I do busking on cobblestone streets during days I am not home not with her craned over her loom weaving silk soft like her skin I never see her work but only once when she could not see me through the puddle of feathers & blood ix she draws pictures when alone she shows them to me & everybody sees the pictures are always the same she says they are of someone she knows the pictures of a sunlit steady goat who lives in seashells and wears shoes of lead that clap on concrete like pacing horses in the background hangs a new moon moving water those pictures do not look soft she says they are of someone else yet the face is always hers

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x she waits for me in my bedroom behind a shut door holding her scratched face her sister made sent after her by her mother to bring her home they own her they say & take her clothes and parade in them before her some with blood from her face they are the wicked mother & jealous sister I say and I open the door to bring in ice & towels & tinctures to rest in blankets of my skin xi she stands outside I let her by herself told her it is alright that blades of grass cool the bottoms of her feet that I am watching from afar with bow & arrow shooting birds I can walk on knives she says I tell her they are leaves of grass and blood from her feet soaks into the dirt unnoticed xii she goes to see her sister alone her sister still wearing clothes once a maidens stained with blood her sister asks for help asks the maiden to take her places only maidens can go to be fair they are sisters but the gatekeepers say the clothes are overly soiled but they are hers her sister says with the maiden there as landscape her mother watches from afar wanting to be the queen clapping her withered hands xiii she goes to meet her father I go with her outdoors and we drink the wine her father makes red & white the blanket striped on the grass she attracts spiders from my skin crawl on her skin soft like wine stained glasses stale in our bedroom that spiders climb inside & die in the trap lit by burning candles one after another xiv after another still she waits for me to come to her shut in a room naked wrapped in blankets I shred & cut until she falls all around me soft like velvet and then leaves again

illustrated by Yuki Nishimura Issue 6

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The River of the Fire of Life

by Francesca Forrest

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“Aren’t you ready to get up yet?”

Bright-as-the-moon shook the boy, who hadn’t stirred from the hollow in the snow where he had decided, some while ago, to rest after playing so sportingly for so long.

His eyes were closed, and that dangerous warm breath of his was barely. . . was it coming out of him at all?

Fast-falling-sleet and Seven Stars and Whirlwind came over to take a look. Fast-falling-sleet put a hand on the boy’s forehead.

“Cold. Safe to touch now.” He looked over at Brightas-the-moon. “But it means we can’t play with him anymore. When warm things get cold and stop moving, they’re finished. Broken – like when too many of us sat on that birch tree, remember?”

Whirlwind and Seven Stars nodded and returned to spinning round and round the beaver pond on skates they had created from snow, in imitation of the ones the boy and his friends had had.

“Can’t we fix him?” Bright-as-the-moon asked. The boy was as still as the leaves at the bottom of the beaver pond. Could he even be the same creature who had flashed over the ice on those metal-bladed shoes, laughing and teasing all present?

Fast-falling-sleet shook his head.

“No. Warm things like him all have a tiny fire inside them. It’s what makes them be alive, like water and cold and wind make us alive. Once it goes out, that’s the end.”

He glanced over at the others, who were chasing each other across the ice. “Coming?”

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Bright-as-the-moon didn’t answer. “Wake up. Wake up and play,” she whispered to the sleeping boy. Her breath made leaves and feathers of hoarfrost appear on his cheek. She brushed them off.

Fast-falling-sleet laid a hand on her shoulder.

“Leave him. We’ll find others to play with, next time we come here.”

“But this one was the best!” said Bright-as-the-moon.

“He showed us snap-the-whip. He jumped clear over the beaver dam, like a knight in the snow host leaping a river!

He stayed and played even when his friends got all hunched and shivery and said they had to go home.”

“He was pretty good,” conceded Fast-falling-sleet.

“It’s too bad his fire went out, but sitting there won’t fix him, and our chance to play is nearly gone. The snow host is on its way. Listen. . . Hear it?”

Bright-as-the-moon did hear it, the whirl and gallop of its wild frosty rampage; a blizzard whiteness approaching from the west, where the sun was sinking.

“You know we’ll be stuck running in the eddies, once it gets here,” Fast-falling-sleet said. “Let’s play some more snap-the-whip while we still can.”

Bright-as-the-moon twisted out from under Fastfalling-sleet’s hand. “You go ahead.”

Fast-falling-sleet sighed and Bright-as-the-moon heard the light swish of his feet in the snow as he walked away, then the shrieks of delight when he and the smaller two started up again with snap-the-whip. Bright-as-themoon stayed by the boy. Midnight-stubborn, she was.

“Hey. Hey. Snow girl.”

It was another of the warm creatures, a bird, a bright red one with a black mask, hopping from branch to

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branch in one of the arrowwood bushes by the beaver pond.

“If you want to fix him, there’s a way to do it,” the bird said.

“Fast-falling-sleet said –” “That his fire had gone out. I know. But if you put a new spark in him while his body is still fresh, he’ll perk

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back up. You need to go to the realm of the Salamander King. The River of the Fire of Life flows right through it.”

The bird preened its chest feathers. “My kind are favorites of the Salamander King; that’s why we wear his colors.

Here, this should get you in.”

A red feather fluttered in the frosty air. Bright-asthe-moon caught it.

“How do I get there?” she asked.

“Follow the crimson path,” the bird said. “But hurry; it’s only visible while the sun’s setting.”

From the distance there came a lonely cascade of musical notes. “Oh – the wife’s calling,” the bird said.

“Gotta fly. Good luck!” He spread his wings and rose up from the arrowwood bush.

The long rays of the setting sun glinted on the ice of the stream on the other side of the beaver dam. A path of frozen fire: crimson, but cold. Not like the river of the fire of life, thought Bright-as-the-moon. That river will be hot.

How will I carry a spark back with me?

She recalled how the boy, amazed at the snow-spun skates she and the other snowchildren had made, had taken off his mittens to touch one. The warmth of his hand had melted the toe of the skate.

“I’m sorry!” he had said.

“It’s all right,” Bright-as-the-moon had replied, gathering more snow into her hands and blowing on it, then kneading it back into the ice skate. “Just don’t touch me with those dangerous hands of yours.”

“Never!” he had promised, putting his mittens back on. With mittens on he could take her hand, or Whirlwind’s, or Seven Stars’, or Fast-falling-sleet’s. The

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four snowchildren and the three human children had made a powerful whip, hands joined.

I need mittens. Not snow mittens; his mittens. They protect hot things from the cold and cold things from the heat. Bright-as-the-moon carefully slipped the boy’s mittens off his hands and put them on her own.

And his coat. She might need that, too, to shield her body of snow from the heat of the River of the Fire of Life.

The mittens on her hands made her clumsy, but she still managed to slide the boy’s arms out of his coat and her own arms into it.

What about his hat and scarf, and his boots? He had worn them to protect against the cold, so shouldn’t she wear them to protect against the heat? Carefully she removed these items too, and put them on.

The boy looked smaller and even more still and broken without their protection. Bright-as-the-moon hesitated – but now the wind was rising again, gathering the fallen snow and driving it in gusts and billows. The snow host was coming. She mustn’t waver; if she lingered here and the snow host arrived, she’d be swept up in its train and the boy would never be fixed. Hastily she pushed a blanket of snow up around him, right up to his chin, and hurried off down the sunset-ruby path of the ice, following it and following it until the stream disappeared into the ground.

Time to use the key. Just as the sun was sinking from the sky and the ice was turning from red to black, Bright-as-the-moon touched the feather to it and – – found herself in a new place, killingly hot.

The frozen stream had been replaced by something bright and bubbling, a vein of liquid fire that hurt her eyes

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to look at. Instead of wide air all around, there were glittering crystal and mica walls that flashed and shone in the glow of the fiery river. A film of water ran down the sides of the walls and along the ground, turning to steam as it entered the river.

Each breath Bright-as-the-moon drew in this new place hurt. She stared at the bright river. How could she even get near it?

“Hello,” said a cheerful voice accompanied by a splash, as the speaker popped his head and shoulders up from the molten flow. Bright-as-the-moon jumped back.

It was a red-gold boy, sparks and embers dripping from his ears and hair.

“Hello,” said Bright-as-the-moon, keeping her distance. “Is that river you’re swimming in the River of the Fire of Life?”

“Yes it is!” he replied, sounding pleased. “For some things, anyway.” He cocked his head and looked Bright-asthe-moon over, hat to boots. “I don’t think it would do you much good. You’re made of cold, aren’t you? I can feel it from here. I’ve never met anyone made of cold before.

Cold things don’t usually come here.” The boy hoisted himself out of the fire river, peeled a sheet of mica from the nearest wall, and wrapped it round himself. It melted in soft folds against him. Bright-as-the-moon flinched as droplets of water from the wall landed on her nose and cheek, but they turned harmlessly to snow, then melted again in the heat and rolled down into her scarf.

“What’s that? What just happened to the water?” asked the boy, staring. “Do it again!”

“You mean like this?”

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Bright-as-the-moon blew on the damp surface of the wall and it whitened briefly, a bloom of frost and ice, before it faded back into water.

“Yes! Wonderful! Do it again!” He came to stand beside her, and she could feel the powerful heat of him through his mica cloak. She backed away and sat down on a crystal outcropping. It was exhausting to stand up in this place.

“I can’t right now. I’m here on a quest. I need to get a spark from that fire river. I need to ask the Salamander King for it . . . do you think he’ll let me take a spark out of here?”

The boy frowned. “Why would you want something that would hurt you?”

“It’s not for me, it’s for a human boy. His life fire went out while he was playing with my snowmates and me, and I want to fix him.”

The boy’s frown deepened. “You got to play with a human? I never have. I’ve never even seen one. You’re lucky.”

“Well, this one is pretty adventurous. If I can fix him, he might find you one day. I need to hurry, though.”

While his body is still fresh, the bird had said. But how was it possible to hurry here? How could the fire boy move about so freely? Bright-as-the-moon’s limbs felt like stone.

She leaned back against the wall.

“Your face looks shiny now,” the fire boy said.

Bright-as-the-moon put a mittened hand to the bridge of her nose. It came away damp.

“I have to get out of here,” she whispered. “How about that spark? Do you think I can have one?”

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“You’re melting,” the fire boy said, still staring at Bright-as-the-moon’s face. “I wonder if anyone would ever risk melting for me.”

Bright-as-the-moon couldn’t think of a good response. It was hard to think at all. She closed her eyes.

The heat seemed to grow fiercer on her nose, on her eyelids.

“Don’t go to sleep here!” the fire boy said. She opened her eyes and saw he was leaning right over her.

“I’ll give you a spark,” he said.

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Bright-as-the-moon blinked and struggled to her feet.

“The Salamander King . . .”

“Oh, he won’t mind. He’s my father. But you’ll need something to put it in.”

“I thought I’d carry it in these mittens. They protected the human boy’s hands from the cold and they’re protecting my hands from the heat.”

The fire boy laughed and shook his head. “A spark from the river of the fire of life would burn them right up.

Let’s see . . . maybe this.” He reached down and broke a piece of crystal from the outcropping Bright-as-the-moon had been sitting on. Then he pushed his thumb into it the way Bright-as-the-moon might push her thumb into snow.

“This’ll do,” he said. “Stand back a minute.”

Bright-as-the-moon stood back. The fire boy wiped his brow with his hand and sparks came flying off and landed, hissing and sputtering, on the ground. One fell right into the depression he had made in the crystal.

“Here.” He handed it to Bright-as-the-moon.

“Thank you.”

“But – Can I have something from you . . . to remember you by?”

“I don’t think anything of me can last long in here,” said Bright-as-the-moon. She pulled out a couple of strands of her hair and set them on the crystal outcropping, and within moments they became water.

“See?” The fire boy broke off another piece of crystal and hollowed it out the way he had the first.

“Can I have one of your mittens?” he asked. “Can you put it in here, so I don’t burn it?”

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Bright-as-the-moon thought fuzzily that there was a reason why she should turn down this request. But the fire boy had given her a spark of the fire of life. Wasn’t it only fair to give him something in return? With effort, she pulled off one mitten and dropped it into the fire boy’s crystal cup.

He grinned.

“Thank you! Now quick, your key.”

Bright-as-the-moon held her own crystal and its precious contents in her mittened hand and lifted the red feather up with her exposed hand. But which wall to touch?

“That one,” said the fire boy, pointing. As his hand came close to hers, Bright-as-the-moon felt a sharp and dizzying pain.

“Ow!” Both Bright-as-the-moon and the fire boy jerked their hands back. The fire boy looked horrified. His lips parted to speak, but Bright-as-the-moon had already touched the feather to the wall, and – – now suddenly here she stood, in the wonderful cold, with the moon overhead and the frozen stream beside her.

Back along the stream she went, taking long, deep breaths of the reviving air until she reached the beaver pond and the soft bed of snow where the human boy lay.

Bright-as-the-moon knelt beside him and brushed the snow away from him. As she did, she saw what the fire boy must have seen as she was leaving the hall of the Salamander King: her bare hand, which he had nearly touched – the hand that still ached from that sharp pain – was missing its last two fingers. They had melted clean away.

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“But I’m not broken. I’m not broken,” she repeated to herself. “I still have my wind and cold and water within me.” She slipped an arm around the human boy’s shoulders and brought him closer to her. All the sharp parts of his face – his nose and the ridge of bone below his eyes – seemed to shine unnaturally in the moonlight.

The way mine did, by the River of the Fire of Life, when I was melting. But he’s not melting, he’s freezing. He needs to melt, and I can help him, she thought.

Bright-as-the-moon brought the crystal cup up to his lips and let the spark from the river of the fire of life fall onto them. It didn’t burn them. Instead, it slipped right between them and disappeared into the boy. A shudder rippled through his body, and slowly, as if they were great weights he was lifting, he opened his eyes. Bright-as-themoon smiled.

Another shudder shook the boy; now his whole body was shaking.

“I’m so cold,” he whispered.

“I had to borrow your coat,” said Bright-as-themoon. “Here, you can have it back now.” She slipped it off and helped the boy get his arms into its sleeves.

“My right hand’s not working right. I can’t feel my fingers,” the boy said, pushing himself to a sitting position and turning his hand first palm up, then palm down, a frown on his face. The fingers didn’t move.

“I had to borrow your mittens, too, and I had to give one away to get a spark to wake you up,” Bright-as-themoon confessed. “But if you put this mitten on one hand and keep your other one tucked up in your sleeve, maybe your fingers will begin to work again. At least they won’t melt away.” She held up her own damaged hand.

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“You lost fingers because of me?” The boy was still shivering violently. “Does it hurt?”

“A little.” Bright-as-the-moon rubbed her threefingered hand with her five-fingered one. “But I’m not broken. And you’re not anymore, either. Here, you should take your hat and boots, and your scarf too.”

Just then, from across the snow-covered meadow, there came the sound of voices accompanied by bobbing lights.

“– at the beaver pond,” one said, a man.

“Just let him be all right, just let him be all right . . . and let us find him quickly. If we can just find him quickly. . .” A woman’s voice.

“Buster’s got a scent; Buster’s tugging!” A girl’s voice.

“It’s my family!” said the boy, looking out in the direction of the voices. A dog was barking, the sound nearing with each bark. Bright-as-the-moon stepped away from the boy and retreated to beaver pond.

The dog burst through the arrowwood bushes and jumped onto the boy, covering his face with sloppy kisses.

A girl followed close behind.

“He’s here! Andy’s here!” she called. “He’s sitting in the snow without his hat or boots on, but I think he’s awake – you awake, Andy?”

Bright-as-the-moon retreated further onto the beaver pond as Andy’s parents appeared in a flurry of hugs and exclamations.

“Good bye, snow girl – and thank you. Thank you for saving me.” Though they were only whispered, Andy’s words slipped past the noises of joy and relief and reached Bright-as-the-moon’s ears. She smiled but didn’t answer.

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Instead, she bent her head low to catch the echo that the ground still held of the snow host’s passing. As Andy’s father lifted Andy into his arms and his mother wrapped a blanket around him, Bright-as-the-moon set off in the snow host’s wake, heading for the snowlands.

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illustrated by Rosie Lauren Smith

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Writers Carys Bray completed an MA in Creative Writing earlier this year. She recently won the MA category of the Edge Hill Short Story Prize and has been shortlisted for the Strictly Writing Award. She lives in Southport with her husband and four children and blogs at http://postnatalconfession.blogspot .com Cathrin Hagey lives in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan with her husband, three children and an assortment of guinea pigs. She holds degrees in mathematics and education but currently pursues her first love: children's and mythic fiction.

More of her writing can be found at www.cathrinhagey.com and www.cahootsmagazine.com.

David R Morgan teaches at Cardinal Newman School in Luton, and lives in Bedfordshire with his family. He has been an arts worker, literature officer, organiser of book festivals and writer-inresidence for education authorities, Littlehay Prison and Fairfield Psychiatric Hospital (which was the subject of a Channel 4 film, Out of Our Minds). He

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has had two plays screened on ITV. His books include: The strange Case of William Whipper-Snapper, Blooming Cats, a Horrible Histories biography: Spilling The Beans On Boudicca, The Broken Picture Book, The Windmill and the Grains and Buzz Off. His poetry collection Walrus On A Rocking Chair, illustrated by John Welding, is published

by Claire Publications and his adult poetry Ticket For The Peepshow is published by art’icle.

Alex Woods is a twenty-three year old student in creative writing from Liverpool, currently studying for an MA at Edge Hill University in Ormskirk, Lancashire. He is a writer of short fiction that deals with fundamental elements of human emotion and psychology.

Ruby Ebrahim: I am 23 and currently living in Sunderland. Although I enjoy writing prose I am more comfortable with poetry and have been particularly influenced by the writings of Carol Ann Duffy and e. e. cummings. I have been writing ever since I can remember and adapting fairy tales or creating new ones has always been a passion of mine so to be included in this magazine is very exciting for me, especially since fairy tales are such an important part of world culture. To borrow the words of G. K. Chesterton; ‘Fairy tales are more than

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true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.’

Frederick Hilary studied medieval literature at Lampeter University, where he won a scholarship. He has read fairy stories and fantasy since childhood and considers himself a student of C.S. Lewis and George MacDonald. He currently lives and teaches in Greece, near the port where Agamemnon's ships departed for Troy. Despite this, he has yet to read the Illiad.

Vivien Jones lives on the north Solway shore in Scotland. She is a semiprofessional early musician along with her husband, Richard. Her short stories and poetry have been widely published and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and Radio Scotland – her first themed collection of short stories, Perfect 10, was published in September 2009 by Pewter Rose Press. Her first poetry collection – About Time,Too – was published in August 2010 by Indigo Dreams Publishing. In August 2010 she won the Poetry London Prize. She has been awarded a Writer’s Bursary from Creative Scotland for her next project on the theme of women amongst warriors. www.vivienjones.info

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Tim Mook Sang: I studied at the University of Northern British Columbia and the University of Ottawa, graduating from UNBC in 2007 with a BA, and from Ottawa University in 2010 with a BEd. I have previously had poetry published by Canadian Literature and Crow Toes Quarterly, and blog at http://eatingandeffing.tumblr.com.

Francesca Forrest listens to wood thrushes in the summer and tests the ice in the winter. She likes to forage for wild foods, but copyediting keeps the family fed more reliably. You can find other short stories and poems of hers online if you search diligently.

Illustrators Evelina Silberlaint: Every time another character together with their belongings and surroundings departs on a journey from my mind into the dimension visible by others of our kind, would it be a sheet of matte paper or a screen, I try to find the best travelling option for them depending on their own unique essence,

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but most of the time their new welcometo-our-world experience starts off with a pencil drawing on a sheet of white paper transformed into an inky liner pen drawing and ends up alive, breathing and blinking on a digital screen. My work is inspired and influenced by various matters including personal experiences, beauty and uniqueness of human relationships, shimmering shadow deities from the dark side of folk tales, conversations with human beings and precious and magical silence of night hours. www.ghostlymiss.com Julie Vermeille studied a BTEC Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at the London College of Printing and graduated in 2004 from a BA (hons) in Illustration in Camberwell College of Arts. She has been part of the Craft Central Designer network since 2007 and as well as having produced her own hand bound books, she has been working for Creaturemag and has been published in a Fil Rouge Press book. She has been involved in various collaborative work including exhibiting with Chocolate Rain and doing some workshops with the House of Fairy Tales.

Julie's work is based on ink drawings.

She likes the fluidity of the medium, the surprises that come from the shapes laid

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on the paper; she likes the feeling of things happening a little by chance.

Julie uses patterned fabric, vintage lace and buttons…. Textures, colours and history in those objects fascinate and inspire her. www.julievermeille.com Nom Kinnearking: From a shed in the Norfolk countryside I paint portraits of female characters. They spring from objects found, sleepy notions, songs heard and books read. Dressed for performance, with hearts on sleeve and thoughts on heads that hint their tales.

The trail of artists I’ve fallen for and been inspired by span from Frieda Khalo and Marc Chagall to the current workings of Shaun Tan and Joe Sorren. 'The Procession' (oil on board) uses my fathers Concertina as prop for the scene of serenading the town into a trance whilst they sleep. www.nomchomski.com Scott Nellis lives with his pens by the sea in Brighton. He graduated with a BA in illustration and loves to create fiendishly detailed drawings. Scott looks forward to exhibiting more of his own personal work along with producing commissioned pieces within the illustration and arts industry. Please see more at www.scottnellis.com and feel free to contact him with any enquiries.

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Daria Hlazatova: I'm a Ukraine-based illustrator with particular love for drawing and making collages. I drink a lot of tea and dream of having a husky dog. I love travelling which is a great inspirational force for me. My work is very often inhabited by animals, ladies and bowler-headed gentlemen who come out at night. All my drawings are brought to life by pens and pencils and largely inspired by literature and theatre.

Some of my illustrations have been published in several art magazines and exhibited in the UK and the USA. I'm currently working on my first zine which will feature a collection of my drawings.

I'm delighted to provide illustrations for New Fairy Tales! www.dariasgallery.blogspot.com Fiona McDonald studied painting and drawing at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney in the late 1980’s. After art school she began developing her life size figurative soft sculpture for which she has become well known. Fiona has continued to make two dimensional art work as well as her sculpture, puppets and dolls. 2010 saw the publication of Fiona’s first two knitting books: Babes in the Wool and Knitted Aliens both published by Search Press UK. Knitted Fairies and Knitted Vampires are both forthcoming. Fiona’s first non-fiction title Textiles: A History will be published by

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Pen&Sword in June 2011. She has exhibited widely throughout Australia, Britain, China and the US. Visit Fiona’s website: www.fionamcdonald.com.au and her blog http://fionamcdonald.blogspot.com Laura Carter is an English illustrator currently living in the Netherlands. Her latest crush is on her boyfriend’s Wacom tablet, and she shall be putting her newest creations on www.lauracarter.co.uk. On most days she cycles to school to learn Dutch, because she finds that words can sometimes be as useful as pictures. She feels a bit uncomfortable writing about herself in the third person.

Laura-Kate Chapman: I’m an illustrator currently living in Liverpool. I graduated from Liverpool John Moores University in 2008 with a first class degree in Graphic Arts. I would describe my illustrative style as lovingly meticulous. I like to weave intricate patterns into my work as I feel that it is attention to the little details that can be most captivating. More than anything I’m trying to create a visual world that gives the mundane a more magical feel and above all else I want my illustrations to make people smile. www.laura-katedraws.co.uk

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Yuki Nishimura, a surrealism lover, is a Japanese freelance illustrator and animator based in UK. She landed in London in 2008 to finish MA Illustration course at University of the Arts London.

It gave her a chance to explore the nonsensical illustration referring to British nursery rhymes which developed her own aesthetic and rules of how to visualize the words. Her interests in mountains and nature (as drawing motifs and also as travel destinations) also gives her strong inspiration. As well as the surrealism, the spirit of nature worship she learnt in Japan forms the basis of her work. www.yukinishimura.com Rosie Lauren Smith (better known as Autumn Alchemy) is a mostly self taught illustrator of all things magical. Heavily inspired by the golden age illustrators, she uses traditional mediums for her work, mostly watercolours, inks and pencils, occasionally touched up with acrylics, gold leaf and pastels. Other inspiration comes from nature and the British countryside, illuminated manuscripts, the smell of burning wood, damp leaves and moss and gloomy weather. More recently she has taken up needle felting to bring her creations to life. Visit her blog at http://autumnalchemy.blogspot. com

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This wonderful book is by our very own Art Director Faye Durston.

It’s available now in all good bookshops and via amazon: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wychwood-Fairies-Faye-Durston/dp/023071496X And you can see just how magical the book is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXYQ4NYKDbo Issue 6

www.newfairytales.co.uk

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New Fairy Tales is a not-for-profit online magazine run on a voluntary basis. If you’ve enjoyed this issue please show your appreciation by helping us to raise money for Derian House Children’s Hospice. After this issue we will be raising money for another charity, so if you’ve never donated to Derian House before please do take a minute to do so now (the minimum donation is £2).

Thank you. http://www.justgiving.com/newfairytales

ISSN 2042-7999 Editor: Claire Massey Associate Editor for Fiction: Andy Hedgecock Associate Editor for Poetry: Anna McKerrow Art Director: Faye Durston Design: Claire Massey

Illustration on this page by artists Amy Nightingale and Claire Benson, also known as Particle Article: www.particlearticle.co.uk Copyright Notice: Copyright of all the work contained in this magazine remains with the individual writers and illustrators. The magazine is intended for personal and educational use only. Please respect copyright; all enquiries about the work contained in the magazine should be directed to editor@newfairytales.co.uk. We will pass your enquiry on to the relevant writer or illustrator.

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