Fairy Tales for Unwanted Children: Fairy Tales for Unwanted Children, #3

By Scott Thrower

Some people deserve a happy ending, but that doesn't mean they'll get one.

 

Meet princesses who refuse to be pretty, crabs that will break your heart, and three notes of music you won't want to hear. Poke into uncomfortable places with fifty stories from the award-winning Fairy Tales for Unwanted Children podcast.

 

These stories are not meant for children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Thrower
• Release date: Sep 14, 2020
• ISBN: 9781777107024

Book preview

Part 1

Beasts

The Mother Crab

Once there was a small skiff on the ocean, and on this skiff was a fisherman. The fisherman was a strong man, having spent years setting his back to any task that would result in food upon his family's table, and on this day, that meant pulling traps from the deep with a hopeful heart and able hands.

The day had been slow. Every trap had come up empty, and so the fisherman found his strength waning as he pulled up the final one. Finally, his patience was rewarded, and as the trap broke the surface, he could see three tiny crabs inside, scuttling in shock as the water ran out. The fisherman yelled in triumph, because he had known many hungry days in his life, and now, it seemed, today would not be one.

But as the fisherman tied down the trap and took up his oars, the skiff rocked and was nearly upended. He fought for balance in a spray of sea, and just as he steadied himself, the largest crab he had ever seen emerged from the water. Each leg hit the skiff like a club, and the fisherman was certain that the boat would sink under the monster's weight, but it did not. A moment later, the fisherman sat down heavily at one end of the skiff while the giant grab settled on the other, her enormous claws swaying between them.

I have a request of you, fisherman, said the crab. She had a voice like water and thunder.

I have nothing I can give, the fisherman replied. His voice shook as much as his hands. His heart fluttered at such a rate that he thought it would burst forth and flop along the deck between them.

You have three of my children, the crab said, her voice sad and low. You have three of my children, and I would like them back.

My apologies, the fisherman said, I did not know. His nervous hands opened the cage quickly, and he poured the children back into the sea.

The mother crab watched the fisherman for a moment, thanked him, and slipped back into the water, nearly tipping the skiff in the process. The fisherman sat for a while with a new-found terror of the deep and a clammy sweat upon his brow, and then he rowed himself back to shore with empty traps and a growling stomach.

That night his children ate nothing, but they knew the world too well to complain.

The next day, the fisherman was back out on the sea. In all the years of his life, he'd never had an experience like the previous day. Part of him thought it had been a dream, some spark of insanity brought on by hunger or a long day of sun. In any case, he had children to feed and his only talents were out on the water, so morning light found him bobbing in his skiff.

At the end of a fruitless day, the fisherman pulled up the final cage and found seven crabs within. He stared at the cage and waited, and sure enough, a moment later the world tipped and tottered. He barely regained his footing when the giant crab again raised herself out of the water and noisily clattered onto the boat.

I have a request of you, fisherman, the crab said. She had a voice like water and thunder.

You ask what I cannot give, the fisherman replied. I have hungry children at home, and this is the first food I've seen all day.

I ask what I must, the crab replied. These are my children, and I would like them back.

The fisherman stared at the beast, this talking monster, and his thoughts filled with the saddest sound he'd ever known—a child's rumbling belly in the dark. But something in the way the giant crab watched him led the fisherman's fingers to untying the trap again, and soon he was pouring the children back into the sea.

On the third day, the fisherman collected traps on the other side of the bay, hoping that this time, his luck would change. In fact, it did, and by the time the sun began to set, he had a haul that would feed his family and leave enough left over to sell in town. The fisherman was happy and relaxed as he brought the skiff back toward shore.

But again, the skiff was caught, and the world shook and tilted as once more the giant crab raised herself onto the boat with legs like branches. The fisherman cried to see her.

You have a request of me, mother crab, but at home I have two small children who have requests of their own. They are hungry and they are mine.

Is there nothing I can do? the crab asked, her legs wrapping tightly around the skiff. The fisherman knew that she could snap the fragile boat with ease, and her claws could do worse to him, but the stakes were too high. This time the fisherman could not back down.

I am sorry, but I must choose my children.

The giant crab sighed, and the skiff creaked ominously within her grasp. I understand your choice, fisherman, as desperation leads to difficult decisions for us all.

And with that, the mother crab raised a giant claw and wrenched one of her own legs away. Blue blood splashed across the deck, and the leg dropped with a heavy thud.

Now your family will be fed for many days, the mother crab said, and all I ask is that you return to me my children so that we may leave in peace.

The fisherman looked at the mother crab, still bleeding onto his boat, at the leg that could feed his family many times over, and again his fingers found the ties on the traps. Soon the children were poured back into the sea, and the mother crab delicately limped back into the water, darkening the waves with her blood.

Is there nothing you won't do for them? the fisherman asked in amazement.

How could you question the things a mother would do? she replied, with a voice like thick, cracking ice, and then she disappeared into the waves.

The next day, the fisherman did not go out on the sea. He stayed at home with his children. They were happy and ran through the sand and trees likes spirits. He listened to their laughter and wrapped them in his arms, and he wished every day could be this way.

The next day, the fisherman readied his skiff. He waved to the other boats on the water, and he set his traps even though his stomach was full. As the afternoon waned, he pulled in the traps, half hoping that each would be empty, but they were not. When the last trap came up, the fisherman's skiff was heavy with crab. He'd had one of his most successful hauls. He watched the tiny crabs clacking over each other and waited with his oars in his lap until the familiar lurch tossed his skiff as the crab mother climbed awkwardly aboard. This time she crouched, cracking her claw in the air. In her anger, she scuttled, tossing the skiff tossed this way and that.

By what right are you here after what I did for you? she snapped with a voice like crashing thunder.

But instead of answering, the fisherman raised a hand in signal. Suddenly, ropes snapped taut across the water, pulled by the other boats.

At first they wouldn't believe me when I spoke of you, the fisherman said sadly, watching as the crab mother struggled against her bindings. But then you provided proof. I've been promised so much for a wondrous beast that I will never again have to row upon the sea and my children will never again know hunger.

The mother crab thrashed and fought, but the ropes held the skiff in place.

Stop, the fisherman said firmly. If you come easily, I promise I will never again set a trap in the ocean, never again catch one of your children in my nets. As he said this, he poured the cages of her children back into the water. If you come easily, they will be safe.

The mother crab grew tense and then sagged against the deck. She made sounds so terrible that the fisherman barely realized they were sobs.

But you were so kind, the mother crab said. How could you also be this?

The fisherman sat heavily at the back of the skiff, turning his head back toward home.

How could you question the things a father would do? he replied, and then he signalled the other boats and began the slow paddle back toward shore.

Froth of Blood

Once upon a time, there was a ship upon the sea. Its crew threw out great nets that sank below the waves, and at the end of the day, when the nets were hoisted back upon the deck, they shifted and shook, spilling forth the bounty of the sea. Sailors walked through the slippery frenzy, dragging and throwing what they liked into the deep belly of the ship and sweeping everything else back into the waves.

On this ship was a young man, newly bearded and still adjusting to life on shifting decks, still looking to the horizon for land and awed that the ocean stretched so far that he couldn't find it. He moved among the nets with the older sailors, the ones so marinated by life on ship that their hearts beat salty blood. They stood up to their knees in the squirming alien life of the water, cutting with their knives until the deck frothed with red. The new sailor tried to follow suit, but he threw more back into the sea than he sentenced to the icy blackness of the holds. He tried to harden his heart, but these creatures pulled from the depths touched him as they thrashed and flopped, breathless in the fading light of day, the small and the enormous, with their array of wondrous colours, strange shapes, and barbs, and their confusion at suddenly finding themselves in a world they could neither understand nor survive. So, when he could, he slid them back into the sea, hoping no one would notice in the chaos that his knife was clean and that what he dropped into the ship had already died in the nets.

The sun had nearly set when he saw the hand on the deck, a delicate, perfect hand in a tangle of rope, and the new sailor slipped in the froth when the hand suddenly moved. He ran over quickly, calling to the other sailors, There's a boy! In the nets, there's a boy!

He pushed aside tails, fins, and tentacles until finally he looked down at the gasping face of the most beautiful boy, practically a man though still not bearded. He cut away at the ropes while the others rushed across the deck to his side, but when the sailors reached them, they pulled the new sailor away, shouting for the captain as the boy continued to struggle against his bindings, desperate to breathe.

The young sailor stared in horror at the crew that held him, at their smiling faces, and listened as cheers rose up along the deck as each crew member found out about the find.

The boy in the net let out an otherworldly cry. He reached out for the young sailor as he was pulled away, but that hand was not what the young sailor expected to see.

It was green in the orange sunset, webbed between the fingers, and scaled to the elbow. The boy's eyes were wide, too wide, and as the sailor slipped in the blood and the sea, tumbling from the hands of the crew, he finally saw past the boy's long, red hair to the gasping gills along his neck.

We'll be rich, a shipmate said, his voice thick with awe.

We'll each buy a ship of our own, another cackled.

Not I, said a third. I'll finally afford a life away from accursed damp with blessed dry land beneath my feet until the day I die.

But the new sailor lay among the entrails and dying fish at the feet of the crew and watched as the boy's struggles grew weaker, not hearing the dreams proclaimed around him or the sudden silence as the captain arrived, fat and fearless, leaning on her crutch of blackened wood as she grinning broadly with teeth that were mostly hers, and took in the sight before her—the fish boy dying on the deck.

It was the tail the new sailor stared at. He'd unknowingly been pushing it aside just moments before, thinking the boy lay somewhere beneath a huge, thrashing fish, but now he followed it up to a soft, smooth belly and the transition from scales to pale flesh, the too-human, struggling chest and shoulders, and finally the gilled neck and face. His gaze met the boy's, and he saw himself there. He saw the face of his younger brother and the lads from the village. He saw the face of his friend who'd walked out on the thin ice of the river two winters ago and never came back. On the deck, the boy's eyes were losing focus as his movements slowed. He couldn't be more than a year younger, the new sailor realized, if these creatures aged like people.

The captain's voice boomed as she barked out her orders. Crewmates scattered like cockroaches in sudden light, raising the anchor and setting the sails, rushing across a deck of forgotten fish dying in the cool air of evening. Finally, the captain reached down and pulled the new sailor to his feet, and they stood over the boy, barely moving before them.

Set to it, the captain said, clapping the sailor on the shoulder, tonight the king feasts on a very special fish, and tomorrow we live like royalty.

The ship creaked. As the captain lumbered off, the night filled with snapping sails and the screech of gulls settling in their bloody wake. Pulleys squealed and crewmen shouted, and at the sailor's feet, the boy's eyes closed and did not reopen. The stench of the ship was overpowering, painted with scales and entrails. The last light of day slipped beneath the horizon, and lanterns were lit as the sails filled, but the new sailor was rooted to the deck like a mast.

At last, the ship started gaining speed and a burly deckhand came forward and grabbed the boy by his tail, the colourful fan of it spilling out of his hands.

Lend a hand, he said simply as he began to drag the limp boy toward the dark pit of the hold to be kept cool. The boy was still caught up in the net, and the new sailor thought about that face lying among the ice and the sawdust, the dead and the dying. Again, he saw his friend's eyes through the icy crust of the river just before he was swept away, then his brother's face, and then his own.

The boy's profile caught in the lantern light, pale and otherworldly, calm and asleep. His red hair mingled with the blood on the deck until it seemed like it was endless, tangled among the barrels and bodies, draining back into the sea to trail them home.

Let him go, said the new sailor. He held his clean knife up before him, and he was almost surprised to see it there. The deckhand laughed, jovially and then not, as he moved from certainty to confusion in the span of a breath, and the new sailor feinted toward him with a jab at the air, causing the deckhand to stumble backward and slip on the ichor of the deck, nearly tumbling into the hold.

The new sailor grabbed at the netting and heaved toward the sea as yelling rose up and a sudden flurry of boots pounded against the deck. He heaved again, slipping, moving far too slowly. He was dragging not just the boy but everything else that had been abandoned in the tangle of ropes.

The deckhand rose up, off balance on a twisted knee, and the new sailor met terror in a way he never had before, scrabbling back on the slick wood as rope tore into his hands. The salt of the sea burned him. Angry faces swarmed forward, reaching out for rope and boy and sailor. The sailor's breathing was shallow and quick, his eyes wide as the world flickered around him, changing too quickly in the dark and lantern light, breaking apart. Suddenly the weight of the net was so much more, and every foot he'd been gained before was now inches. He twisted and lashed out with his knife, and for the briefest of seconds the crew fell back.

The world tipped and the sailor was falling, dropping into the cold, cold sea. The net crashed down around him.

He tore at ropes, slashing what he could as he was dragged deeper by the weight. The world was muffled, and the light of the stars and lanterns disappeared. Ropes were yanked as he sawed and cut, his lungs full of water and salt he could not breathe. He screamed, swallowing more as the sea swallowed him.

Then hands closed on either side of his head, soft and strong, and a moment later something pressed against his lips. Suddenly the sailor could see. The boy was kissing him, holding him as they sank into the dark, and the sailor stopped struggling without meaning to. The sailor's neck was sliced from within as gills split the skin, and now he could breathe. Webbing formed between his fingers, and scales dug themselves out of his flesh. In shock, he let the knife slip from his hand, but the boy caught it. The sailor tugged away his breeches as his legs fused together into one great, long tail, a tail he could somehow see as his new eyes adapted to the dark of the depths.

And then the world was tossed again as the net surged upward and the boy and sailor were dragged back toward the ship. The boy cut at the last of the ropes that bound him, and just before they were pulled out of the water, he was free, swimming away as the net broke the surface. He turned to the sailor and reached out a hand that broke the water.

But the sailor was caught, tangled and confused, locked in a new shape and clumsy, pulled back into a world he could neither understand nor survive. The lantern light seemed impossibly bright as he was dropped on the deck to gasp at air his new gills could not breathe. He tried to rise from a tangle of ropes, but a tail was so very different from legs. A crew of men surrounded him, each recapturing dreams that had so nearly slipped away into the sea.

Elf

In a certain realm in a certain land, there was a lost man who had wandered far from city and village, past where roads tamed the wild. Trees grew taller here, mountains crowded about like teeth against the darkening blue, and when storm clouds gathered across the mouth of sky, the man felt sure he'd be swept away.

He gave up hope of cottage or road, because it had been days since he had seen either. He no longer looked for paths or dens, because the animals here were different and strange. He gave up hope for food or rest, because the world did not offer either.

Now all he hoped for was to be dry, and as rain began to patter against the canopy, he spotted a split in the rock and secreted himself inside. The downpour lashed against the mountainside, echoing through the small cave, but the damp could not reach him, and so he sat and listened to the storm as it battered against the rock. He nestled in the darkness, hollowed and thin, and as sleep claimed him, he imagined notes of music within the rolling thunder.

When the man awoke, it was to summer warmth and the golden light of morning shining through his eyelids. There was still music, away though on the edges. There was birdsong, leaves shuffling in the breeze, and actual song coming from far away. The man was glad of it after being lost so long, now thinking he'd rested within a stone's throw of a village.

He stretched and smiled, happy to find the aches and pains of the dream fallen away. He was kissed by the softest of fabric as it slipped against the bare skin of his arms. The cloud-like cushion of the bed was the most comfortable he'd felt. Whoever had carried him away from his hole in the mountain had to be rich to afford such splendours. He decided that morning could wait and banishing the dark dream and the storm, the creeping dread of endless forest and soaring rock. There was no sense dwelling on ugliness when everything felt so fine now.

The lost man's stomach woke before he did, and the quiet growl tugged his mind back from where it had drifted—a quiet place with no room for thought, just the lightness of morning and the touch of sun, and silk, and breeze.

With the second growl, the dream split like webs once disturbed. His eyes snapped open. His bed was high in a tree, cradled above a city carved of wood and stone, cloud and water, and maybe even sunshine. Even the branches that held him were intricately engraved with symbols, pictures, and words, though none that he could read. As he staggered back to clutch the branch that help him, the whole tree swayed, and leaves the size of dinner plates began fluttering trips to the distant ground. When the man found his courage and peered over the edge of his bed, he saw them below, looking up.

Elves.

He'd heard the word before, tales at his grandmother's knee, but language had fallen far short of the mark. They were impossibly thin and graceful, moving about their city like wishes upon the breeze, their long arms and legs covered in swirling markings. Their upturned faces had delicate features and large, pale eyes. They clothed themselves in scarves and leaves, blossoms and starlight. As he watched, one began to climb toward him, lifting itself up the tree quickly and weightlessly, and it was halfway to him before the man remembered to breathe and that he was waiting for it naked, wrapped in just a sheet as thin as a blanket of morning dew.

He darted about, terrified the bed would plunge to the ground. When he found his clothing freshly washed and mended, he dressed quickly, but his fingers were clumsy with the buttons. He nearly tipped with a leg caught in his trousers. When the elf reached him, the lost man was still grappling with his tunic, but his fingers stopped as he came to face the elf, all thought slipping away.

Its pale green eyes were as delicate as morning snow in the sunlight. Its long fingers closed around the thick branch, and the elf eased itself over, tilting its head as it rose beside him. Its long hair splashed across its face like ocean surf. Its skin was painted with blues and browns and yellows. Across one cheek was a sunburst that opened and closed like breath. Along its neck was rain. Mixed throughout was language, but nothing the lost man could read. The elf brushed the hair from its eyes and watched coolly with no hint of smile or frown, no sign of anything that could be interpreted as feeling.

The man said nothing, because there was nothing to be said. After a long moment, he remembered to breathe, but only just. He thought to step back, but any movement seemed too clumsy. His hands dropped away from his tunic because they could no longer understand buttons.

The man stared for as long as he could, and when that was too much, he fell, and the long arms of the elf reached out to catch him.

He awoke, stumbling into the deep ruts of a road. He barely caught himself as he fell. A horse cried shrilly close at hand. The man had to roll to avoid the heavy crush of a wagon, and as he scrabbled to up onto his twisted leg and looked about, he saw that he was no longer lost. He was home, with the taste of smoke in the air and the discordant din he knew so well all around him. Here, the trees were trees. the road was road, and nothing he saw was perfect. The uneven road lead to lopsided buildings with peeling paint and fetid smells. The faces of those clustering close were pocked and scarred, and the smell of them all was overpowering. One wizened face came close with eyes too wide and a dark mark upon its cheek. The man recoiled before he knew her, his own wife who grabbed him up with strong arms and sobbed into his shoulder.

He tried to tell his story, averting his eyes so as not to look at his listeners, but words fell short. They looked at him with wonder, but wonder was not enough, and each time he tried to make clear what he had seen, he felt like a child painting the riverbank with mud.

That night he tried to sleep on a bed of straw with his wife quietly snoring beside him, but the itch of it kept him up, just as the scratch of these coarse people and rooms left him raw.

The next day he tried anew to tell his story. His wife listened carefully as he retold his tale over and again, but each time a new detail was lost—first the markings on the tree and then the height of the bed. Weeks later, the last detail faded as the strange elven eyes melted away, and now the story was nothing more than comfort, light, and beauty with a creature that escaped explanation.

But it haunted the man, leaving him lost again. Each morning he woke, blanketed by the weight of the world, and each day was spent in his shop with a wife with eyes of mud and hair to match. When he tried to remember why he'd loved her, instead his thoughts flitted away to the forest where something tugged at him, though he could not remember what.

He did not see his wife grow unhappy, because never tried to look. He tried to only see lovely things, but even lovely things had flaws, and once they were found he could see nothing else.

As summer ended, a baby came, and it came as a great surprise, because he wasn't watching for it or listening. The world moved on around him, and he so rarely noticed as it did, but the baby's first cry cracked through and the man was excited at last. He was excited to be excited, which came as a great relief.

As the nursemaid