[FairyTale] Introduction and Elowyn Wisp - 1

Hello.

For quite some time I have been trying to resurrect a wonderful project I started with some of TC's friends and family members earlier this year to find new fairy tales.  But due to life and a series of other happenings, these got started but were never finished.  These tales were to be released under the Creative Commons License....

The original people involved in this project were TC Ricks, Andrew Greenberg, Greg Sanford, and Julie R Ray.  Others showing interest were Bill Bridges, Josie Burgin Lawson and Fiona Skye.


New Fairy Tales by New Fairy Tales Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The original project was to start a story and then turn it around, round robin style with each new author adding to the original story.  There are currently four 'seeds' and I'll be randomly selecting two and pursuing those until done.  Anyone who wants to participate may submit a possible answer to anyone else in the group by the following day...

For example, after I post one of the four seeds here, all written up to this point, anyone on the list can continue and anyone else on the list can vote for the next version they like most.  No one is required to continue it at all, and you may write a continuance under an alias and be added to the group list in this post.  Elsewise, I will write a continuance a week by default until 'done' and then finish at least the first four seeds, maybe more after that if the group so decides.

If you want to join (or leave) the group, email me at redanvilcreative at the google mail.

Anyway, here is one of the four seeds, selected at random.

Untitled (For Now)
Once there was a man and woman who had no children, despite their best efforts. One evening, when the woman was feeling especially melancholy, she took a walk down by the pond, gathering wildflowers and humming a soft tune as she went. Her fingers moved absently, weaving a garland of the flowers as she walked and thought, until she found herself on a path in the forest. She glanced down and was surprised to see that she had woven a small person of her flowers- with a head, two arms, and two legs. She felt a stab of foreboding in her belly, but just then she saw a flickering of light a little way off the path. She could not help herself wandering closer to see what the light was. When she came closer, she could hear singing and music, and see the shadows of people dancing about. Far to the edge of the revelry lay a small bassinet. The woman crept closer and saw inside the smallest baby she had ever seen. She thought that she could hold it in just the palm of her hand, and, picking it up to see, she lay her garland down in its place. No sooner than she had it, she could not put it down again, and quietly she walked back the way she came, cradling the small baby, a girl, she saw, with all the love a mother could give. When she arrived back at the small cabin she shared with her husband, she walked in boldly and said, “Husband, look, I have born us a daughter. Her name is Elowen.” He never was a very bright man, and, it was a very small child, anyway, so he did not question her story. The woman handed the girl to her husband and suddenly felt very ill. She told her husband she had a pain, laid down in her bed, and if she woke up again, it was not in this world. The husband ever after said that she had died in childbirth.

The man did his best to raise the girl. He gave her milk from the cow and from the nanny goat, but she would have none. He made porridge sweetened by honey, but she turned up her nose. All her life she drank naught but the rain as it fell from the sky and ate naught but the dandelion wisps in the wind, but, grew, all the same, until she was but a little small for her age. Her father loved her, as he had loved her mother, but did not understand her very well. She, for her part, did not understand him either. Why did he become so upset when she brought home spiders and rats and other small things and made them a cozy place in her room? For all she could see, he acted as though he were afraid of the things, but she knew that could not be so. And why did he insist that she stay inside on nights when the moon was so bright, it was like the day? He would go so far as to lock her up in her room to keep her inside. Yet, she was a very clever girl and he was not such a clever man, so she always found a way to get out, and she would lay down by the pond and let the moon bathe her in its light.

It was on such a night that she saw off in the forest a small light. She was over taken by curiosity, and followed it down into the forest. As she walked, it seemed to move further and further away, and so she stepped away from the path and walked deeper and deeper into the forest.

The next morning, the man awoke and unlocked her bedroom door, but, in her place on her bed, he found only the dust of withered wildflowers.

A slight breeze came through the open door, and the old man hurried to collect the dust in a jar. He was not a bright man, but he knew his lands like he knew the back of his calloused hands. Purple wildflowers  grew by his house, and blue ones by his field. Patches of yellow wildflowers sprung up around his pond. Red and pink wildflowers were rare on his lands, appearing mainly where the pond bordered the neighboring woods. He took his walking staff in hand, gathered cheese, bread and a fresh egg from his speckled hen, and trudged off to the woods.

By the pond he found the faintest trace of small footsteps, the impression of the shoes he had made and the nails he had used barely visible in the dawn’s light. He followed them to the forest, where the tracks continued along the path. Suddenly they disappeared, and he searched to the right and the left of the path without success. He leaned on his staff, quietly peering into the woods.

The cry of a wren pierced the stillness. Not the pretty tunes of a bird seeking a mate, they were instead the shrill, insistent sounds of an angered animal. Looking around, he saw a nest on the low branch of a nearby elm. Near it, a black snake coiled at its base, a wren circling angrily over him. The wren flew quickly by the snake, its chirping louder as it circled around the serpent. Despite the racket, the black snake continued inexorably up the tree and toward the little nest. The high-pitched twitter of baby wrens, unable to fly, rose from the nest.

The man moved forward, almost without thinking, and used his staff to pry the snake from the tree. The snake wrapped unwillingly around the staff, and the man could not shake it free. It stared at him, and much to the man’s amazement, a low, rumbling voice emanated from deep inside the snake.

“Now what am I to do for dinner?” asked the snake. Almost without thinking the man reached into his lunch bag, and pulled out the egg.

“This egg came from a fine hen,” he said, “and was never fertilized. It holds no life. Take it instead.” The man laid it on the ground.

“I prefer warm, live food,” said the serpent. When the man did not move, the serpent finally unwound from the staff and dropped to the earth. There he studied the egg before opening his jaws to swallow it. Finally satisfied, the snake crawled into the underbrush, a round shape visible in his stomach.

The baby wrens continued to chirp, and the mother still circled the nest, but her own cries had quieted. Not wanting to disturb the bird any more, the man took one more look and prepared to return to the path. Then he noticed one small footprint, distinctly Elowen’s, right by the elm.