A safe fairyland
is untrue to all worlds. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien
I’ve been reading Tolkien, and thinking about stories and
mythic journeys (more on that another time), and puzzles and codes (more on
that too), and macrocosms and microcosms.
And the confluence of all of these has steered me creatively towards
reworking a fairy tale.
I love a good fairy tale, but don’t be fooled, it’s not
all magic wands and princess dresses out there in fairyland. There are plenty of nasty little blighters with
sharp teeth and even sharper wits lying in wait for our unsuspecting characters.
But there are also lessons to be learned, fortunes to be made, and hopefully
some happy endings, too.
Fairy and folk tales give us plenty to work with. I’ve previously penned a flash fic based on a
particularly disturbing old story. My vignette takes place entirely on The Stairs which lead down into a very dark
place:
I tread down the stairs, cautiously, testing each one’s soundness
before transferring my full weight. Each
step groans a slow warning to me. It’s
dark down there. I reach the edge of the
light, then dip my slippered toe into the pool of darkness. It rises to my calf, then my knees, then my
thighs, with each downward step, closing around me in its silky depth, swirling
and enfolding my fine skirts.
I bet you want to know what she finds at the bottom,
right?
I’ve also written a conte
merveilleux of my own invention. It adopts the shape, style and symbolism
of an old folk tale, and weaves together elements of faerie with a love
story. Delivering sweetness and
heartbreak in less than 1200 words, Sweet
Apple is one of my favourite pieces of writing.
For my next piece, there are so many stories to choose from, and so little time! The source story needs to have enough inherent
complexity to permit a meaningful reworking, but enough simplicity to allow the
original elements to remain intact. For
a while I was thinking about the two girls, one kind and one mean-spirited, who
encounter an old lady by the well. The kind sister is rewarded with roses and
pearls falling from her mouth whenever she speaks, but the unkind sister has toads
and snails dropping out of hers.
That’s not all of the story, because
their mother is horrible too. (Family
dysfunction 101). All is not lost though, because a prince just happens to be riding his horse through the forest at exactly the right time (!). There are plenty of
gender stereotypes to chew over in a re-telling, but the most delicious temptation lies in
the hilarious story possibilities for things-falling-out-of-people’s-mouths.
But there is another story I keep returning to, like a
task that must be completed by dawn. I’ve spun it round and round in my mind,
and it has cast off fine filaments that have burrowed into my imagination and
taken root. As a child, I never liked
this story. There was always something deeply unsettling about it. As an adult, I recognise the themes of
manipulation, deception, and greed, and it strikes me as a thoroughly modern tale.
It deserves a more thorough telling, which examines the motivations and actions
of all its characters and provides a resolution for each one of them,
regardless of their position in the social hierarchy. But since my denouement leans heavily on the
original fairy tale, I’ll keep its name to myself, and leave you to guess which
story it is.