Fairly Wicked Tales (39 page)

“Have I reached beyond the limit of your father’s power?”

Faugder was not amused, mainly because it had grown weary of George’s haughtiness. “No, not at all,” the fish stated calmly. “You may return home, Pope George.”

The pope had no need for children—which proved fortunate since he no longer had any—and he no longer had room in his life for a significant other. Isabell had been thrown out into the streets of his makeshift Vatican City. By the next day, George decided the life of a pope was dreadfully boring.

Why should I dedicate all my time to God when I can become God,
he asked himself.
All I need is the proper sacrifice.

He had a person in mind. Pope George the Fourth—he added a number to his title because he thought it added a bit more prestige—sent forth emissaries to locate his wife. He did not tell them why he wanted her, or ask them to retrieve her for him. George feared what those around him would do if they knew what he was truly about. He simply wanted knowledge of her whereabouts. So George waited several, agonizing days until someone came back with a report.

“I caught sight of her walking through the woods,” the clergyman said. “I believe she was making her way to the sea.”

Pope George the Fourth smiled a wicked smile.
Good,
he thought.
She’s saving me the trouble of having to carry her carcass to the coast.

***

Isabell held an arm before her bowed head as she fought to walk against the hurricane like wind. The worst storm she had ever seen was taking place. Lightning constantly lit up the pitch black sky while thundered roared as a lion. Nearby mountains shook and boulders crashed into the sea. Humongous black waves capped with white foam rose until they touched the heavens, then down they came—BOOM!

Dear God, the sea!
she thought as she peeked from behind an arm.
Surely it is outraged with the blood of my children.

Isabell’s intention had been to walk right into the sea and join her beloveds, but a shrill shriek caused her to turn around. Standing at the edge of the woods was Pope George the Fourth. His precious miter—or big ass pope hat in layman’s term—sat askew on his head, allowing stray strands of hair to emerge. His clothing billowed in the wind, and his unnaturally wide eyes completed his madman appearance.

“Faugder, Faugder in the sea, come, I pray thee, here to me. For my life, as good as it is, wills not as I’d have it will.” After reciting the summoning spell, Pope George the Fourth tilted his head at an awkward angle, let loose a maniacal laugh, and then charged—a run weakened considerably by the harsh wind—across the sandy beach.

Isabell turned and fled from the man she once loved with all her heart. Not too long ago, she had been a peasant living near the sea. Her life was not an easy one, but she had found contentment. Now her precious children were dead and her husband possessed—all for the sake of power and wealth.

The woman made her way to the water, high stepping her way in, but the sea quickly spit her back out. George arrived to pick his drenched wife up. “Here you are again, trying to hold me back from my destiny!” He brought the back of his hand across his wife’s face, forcefully. She cried out as she fell into the surf. When George leaned down to pick her up again, she kicked him in the leg with all her might, causing him howl and to drop to one knee. The incoming waves pushed him over onto his side.

Isabell managed to stand to her feet despite being bombarded by water and howling wind. She hiked up her soaked dress and made her way over to George who attempted to rise. “You bastard!” she cried out as she kicked him in the head. When he fell back into the water, she kicked out again, but he took hold of her ankle the second time. He screamed ferociously as he pushed her away, causing her to fall backwards into the water.

George, who had lost his hat some time ago, climbed to his feet and stalked toward his wife. Spray from the black sea continued to wash over him. The surf lapped at his ankles. “You have defied your king,” George said as rivulets of water ran down his menacing face, “but you will not defy your God.” He lunged through the air and landed atop Isabell. She did her best to push him off, but her husband possessed a strength not even he knew he had. George wrapped both his hands around her neck and squeezed, while pushing her head beneath the ever fluctuating water.

“You won’t be around to hold me back anymore!” he yelled.

Amidst all the chaos, Faugder arrived. With all its speed—which was a great deal—the fish swam over to where the couple wrestled on the shore. It leapt through the air, and before either combatant became aware of the fish’s presence, George had been snapped up in Faugder’s wicked teeth. The top half of the man’s body disappeared. Without a moment of hesitation, Faugder flopped back around—because the water on the shore was not deep enough for swimming—and gobbled up George’s blood spewing lower half. “I was really starting to dislike you,” the fish said around a mouth full of gore.

Isabell immediately sat up straight, rising from the surf like one of the dead rising from its grave. She coughed and sputtered in an attempt to dislodge the water from her nasal passage and throat. Once steadied, Isabell looked up and spotted the gigantic fish lying on the shore. It appeared to be stuck on its side.

“Dear God, save me!” the woman pleaded as she scrambled to her feet.

Faugder’s whiskers waved about while it observed the woman flee—an escape impeded by blowing wind and rushing water. “A soul has been offered, the debt paid,” Faugder stated in its baritone voice. ”You have a wish to be granted if you so choose.”

Isabell stopped cold. “You’re the fish my husband told me about?”

“That I am.”

“Can I have my family back, as they were?”

“My father does not do refunds.”

The woman threw her hands up in defeat before letting them drop to her sides. “Then let me return to my shack near the sea.”

Faugder grinned, inadvertently flashing its razor sharp teeth. “Go home. It is done.” And with that being said, Faugder floundered about the surf until it caught a wave that carried it back out to sea.

Isabell returned to her familiar shack: tired, wet, alone, and heartbroken. Years later, when the sea went back to normal and both fisherman and fish migrated to that area, she could be found sitting on a rowboat in the middle of the hullabaloo. She never caught any fish. Isabell was no fisherman and she did not claim to be. She would just row out into the sea and stare into the calm, reflective water, daydreaming about what was and what should have been.

About the Author

Bennie L. Newsome
is a writer and graphic designer from Birmingham, Alabama. He is the author of
The BoogeyMann
(YA humor, horror),
Life is no Fairytale
(YA humor, romance), and
Agape
(Christian, fantasy). In addition to his three novels, Bennie’s work has been published in numerous anthologies, including Hallmark’s
Thanks, Mom
.

Rum’s Daughter

A retelling of “Rumplestiltskin”

T. Eric Bakutis

It was a cold, clear night when Rum watched his child die. Snow hung heavy on the ancient pines of Toroia Wood. Even the howl of the winter wind could not consume Bricka’s anguished cries, the pox eating her fragile yellow skin.

Over and over Rum sent his warmth into her. Each time, a little more of his anima slipped away. Her pox tore at his throat and ripped at his gut, but he would bear all the pain in the world to save his daughter. He would die if she would live.

When at last she slipped away, Rum drew solace from the silence. Her pain had ended. Her brittle skin hung on her bones like so much sackcloth. He spent some time digging in the hard, frozen dirt—the nails on his clawed yellow hands dirty and broken when he finished. When he had made her place suitable, he returned Bricka to the earth. He buried her beside her mother and joined their graves with leaves of silver fern.

Rum curled his yellow body into a ball and closed his muddy eyes. Let the winter freeze him, and the pox strip his bones. He would die here gladly, with his family, under the heavy boughs of Toroia Wood. The harsh men and bitter winter had taken all he loved. Let them take him, too.

When the sun rose and he still lived, Rum understood his mother still needed him. The plagues of man afflicted Toroia Wood yet she, unlike Bricka, might still be saved. Rum spent the day skittering through the forest on his backwards yellow legs, attending to Toroia’s every need. Here, he tended saplings snapped by horses. There, he drew human pestilence from a birthing pool. Through all the mending, Rum worked alone. So far as he knew, he was the last of his kind.

The diseases of men, the despair of fenced cows, and the blind fear of slaughtered pigs had sickened all those birthed by Toroia Wood. The men had savaged and opened her, sawing off her fingers and toes, tearing new wounds with each bite of their saws. Soon they had built a castle inside her, lodged in her great wet throat like a granite spike.

Rum had seen the terrible place only once. He had slipped inside to steal honey, hoping to soothe Bricka’s cough. The castle stood wide and stout, blocks of cut stone that weighed upon each other, built around the bones of a thousand screaming trees.

Glitta, his wife, had once told him humans were blind to the old world. She pitied them that loss, pitied them even as they cut her birthing tree with metal saws. She died with her tree, crumpled in his arms and clutching their daughter.

Rum was crawling on all fours, breathing life into a field of trampled clovers, when the crying assaulted his ears, a pure sound filled with longing and woe. Despite the night’s grief he needed to know the source, and he soon found a human girl weeping by the stream. She wore only a threadbare cloak and simple broken sandals, a poor match for a winter chill as this.

Rum considered leaving her—humans brought nothing but misery and trouble. Yet her sobbing reminded him of Bricka, so recently lost, and so he made himself air and slipped closer. What pain had left her so distraught?

She bore no injuries. Was she cold? Perhaps she had lost a child or a mother. The winter had taken humans along with fairies and their kin. Despite the way men brutalized his Toroia, Rum’s heart went out to her. He hurt for what suffered.

When he could stand her cries no longer, he took the form of a kindly old man. He could sustain this glamour for but a brief time, an aspect of his anima. He approached her in this guise.

“What ails you, dear child?”

Her head whipped about like a startled snake. Cold had reddened her pale skin and she showed teeth bright, but worn. Two wet pits made her eyes, right in the center of her puffy face, and her nose looked like a twig grown the wrong way.

“Who are you?” The girl spoke in suspicion and worry. “I warn you, I have a knife.”

It was always war with humans, always rage or sex or fear. “I mean you no ill, my lady.” He forced a kind, human gaze. “I heard you in mourning. Tell me, why do you cry?”

She rubbed her ruddy nose and sniffled. “King Harold has banished me from the castle.”

“Why?”

“Because of Rosella. Wicked Rosella.” Her blue eyes narrowed. “The princess gorged herself on apple pies, fresh as the sun and all the way from Darrow. They were for the king’s banquet. When the king asked her where they were, she said I stole them!”

The world of men. They took what they wanted, when they wanted, and when their crimes found them they sought others to blame. The lowest of them always bore the consequences.

“What is your name, my lady?”

“Ricka.” She sniffled again. “I’m no lady.”

Rum’s heart fluttered. Ricka. Bricka. So close were the names he suspected the girl was another fairy playing a cruel trick. Yet she looked human. Smelled human. Could his mother have twisted things so strangely, so soon?

Toroia Wood asked much of her children, but she had a generous spirit. Had she sent this discarded daughter to replace his own? She was a strange gift, nothing like he desired, yet already a warm place had opened in his heart.

“Where will you go now? Have you family to take you in?”

“Mum died last year.” She shook her head. “Pa died in the war. The castle was my home.” With that she began to weep once more. “I’m going to die, starving in this wood!”

Rum went to her without thinking, holding her fragile form in his odd man arms. “Hush. You will not die.” He found what he needed in memories from his time with Glitta. “There is a village at the edge of this wood. Ashmount.”

Ricka sniffled. “I have no family there.”

“There is an inn.”

She pushed away, eyes narrow once more. “Why do you tease me so? I have no gold, no coins to buy supper.”

“Gold.” Yes. The humans treasured the dead substance like his own anima, foolish and stupid, but foolishness was the way of their kind. “If you had gold, would you stay at the inn?”

She huffed. “Of course.”

“Then we must make gold for you.” Rum examined her threadbare cloak, her shorn sheep sweater, her dead cow pants and her rotting sandals. Nothing of the wood, nothing of the earth, nothing he could work with his anima except …

“Your hair.” The tangled brown nest wrapped around her head. “Give me a lock of your hair.”

Her hand went to her belt, to her knife. “What do you want with my hair?”

“I will buy it.” He smiled. “I will trade you gold.”

“You will?” Her eyes widened.

“Just a lock,” he assured her. “Nothing more.”

Indecision held her but a moment, a struggle between worry and hope. Then she pulled her knife from her belt, took her hair in a firm grip, and sawed. She worked hard and grimaced often, but the lock she handed him was half as heavy as Bricka when she died.

“Please, good sir.” She trembled. “I have little else.”

Rum showed her his back. He held the lock of hair in both wrinkled palms, easing his anima into and through it. Strand by strand, her plain brown hair turned to gold.