Frightful Fairy Tales (7 page)

The great black wolf’s head appeared suddenly in her window again, its sharp, white, adept teeth glinting behind the paneless window. Its eyes looked human. “Go away!” she screamed. She was surprised when it obeyed. Moments later she heard it crashing against the door, howling. Something about its call seemed familiar. Ivy’s mind struggled to recognize it, but when she did, she blocked it out of her perception. The connection she made was much too hideous to bear.

In a panic, she realized she had forgotten to lock the door. She rushed and pushed against it with all her strength to hold it shut. Her hand wavered as it reached for the bolt but the wolf was incredibly powerful. It forced its paw through the door but with a sudden burst of strength, Ivy slammed the door, severing the wolf’s paw from its arm and leaving the wolf howling on the outside.

As the cries faded into the distance, Ivy was astounded and sickened as she watched the wolf’s paw in a bloody pool before her transform into a man’s hand wearing her husband’s wedding ring.

That night, through a veil of tears, Ivy carefully wrapped the hand in cloth. The following morning she left the house to search for her husband, the former Prince Blackie. She finally found him wandering by the Black River, holding his severed bleeding wrist wrapped in his shirt. Blackie shuffled aimlessly and stared at her with unseeing eyes-he was deathly pale and muttering to himself, "Not hair nor stitch nor teeth nor hide…" Ivy took her stricken husband home and cauterized his wound with a hot poker from the fire.

After this experience, Blackie had an extreme change of heart. Now he could never return to reign over the Black River kingdom because he had lost a crucial part of himself in the world above. Finally, he cut his hair and beard and groomed his fingernails. This action not only returned him to his former appearance-save for the exception of the hand and a clearer, more sagacious look about the eyes-but also helped him regain his clever, kind personality.

Years later Blackie remembered this episode as being surreal and could barely recall anything from his time as a werewolf. He became a good, hardworking fisherman and dutifully worked with his net to come home smelling of nothing but brine.

Evenings, the sailor kissed his patient wife and sat by the fire polishing to a sheen the lovely ivory hook that now stood in place of his hand. Embossed into the base of the hook was the glinting wedding ring that had once been his crown-forever reminding the former prince of his reign under the deep waters of the Black River.

THE SIREN SHIP

The alluring water lapped at the beach, while soft lights reflected off the waves, glistening against them and shining like luring beacons to the sailors. The logical source of this light was the moon, but another source was said to luminously glow far away on an island.

Eighty-three years previously, a little girl accidentally washed out to sea in a small boat. She disappeared for two weeks, and everyone look her for dead, her family mourning bitterly. On the first day of the third week, however, they heard a familiar cry at the door and were overwhelmed with relief and joy when they found their daughter had returned to them safe and healthy.

When asked where she had been, she answered with this story, a story that never wavered in time even though she is now an old woman. She claimed she crashed into an island only seen at low tide that was completely inhabited by beautiful women, white and wormlike, their flesh and waxen hair so pale they glowed in the dark. From their heads grew long and twisting tapered horns, and instead of legs, they had iridescent fish tails. They could turn their tails into legs if they chose, but they mostly kept their fins because they never had much use for legs and thought them less attractive anyway.

They lit fires on the rock and sang songs about their life under the sea while playing beautiful exotic instruments they made from shells and coral. They seemed like ghosts but were not. In fact, they were very aware of their mortality, despite the fact they could each live for one hundred and fifty years. They cultivated their children inside empty oyster shells, and after gestating them the proper amount of time, they plucked them from the shell to join them. Their skin and body remained supple and nubile until the moment they died, age manifesting itself only in the depths of their eyes and by their lilting voices turning old and crabby.

They were deeply afraid of and despised the squids and sharks that lived in the water surrounding their island, and oftentimes they played mean pranks on them or killed them for fun. They sat by their fire and ravenously ate shellfish and lobster, the while smoke from the fire spiraling upward much like their horns. They also made simple smoke rings and jumped through them or made interlocking rings that rose high in the sky and dissolved.

They tried to convince the old woman, who was then a child, to be their daughter, but after two weeks she still cried and missed her home on land. They kindly repaired her boat and with kisses, wreaths of kelp, and fond farewells, led her back to shore.

The old woman told this story for many years and would readily tell anyone who cared to listen. Young boys who grew to be sailors longingly gazed at the glow on the ocean and the strange circular clouds arising from nowhere to surround the moon. Some said they heard the songs of these women while they sailed, but no one had ever really seen them.

One night as large cargo ship loaded with precious spices and jewels sailed past the vicinity where the island was supposedly located, something hit the ship so hard, the boat almost capsized. Large tentacles reached over the bow of the ship, grabbed some of the sailors on board, and dragged them screaming into the ocean. It was then they realized a giant squid had attacked the ship.

It eventually dragged the entire ship into the ocean. A few men struggled to remain on the surface, but in the end all lost their battle with death.

The boat later resurfaced and floated aimlessly on its side, the valuable cargo now rattling worthlessly inside the hull. After a couple of months, it bumped into an island and washed ashore.