Vagabond: Fairy Tale Issue: Vagabond, #1

By Charles Eugene Anderson, Denise E Dora, Jamie Ferguson and 6 more

Twist your way through a spellbinding collection of fairy tales for grown-ups from an esteemed group of fantasy masters. Tales to delight, bewitch, and beguile await within the pages of Fairy Tale Issue, featuring all-new stories by giants of the genre Melanie Tem, Rebecca Hodgkins, Denise E. Dora, De Kenyon, Jim LeMay, Jamie Ferguson, Lucy Taylor, and Steve Rasnic Tem. 

Follow a little cat who bravely guides a young girl through the dreamworld's dangers in De Kenyon's "The Society of Secret Cats." Witness cunning and courage triumph over evil witches and monsters in tales from Rasnic Tem, Hodgkins, and more. Watch romantic dreams turn to nightmares in Ferguson's "Magic and Machinery" and Taylor's "Prenuptials." 

These visionary story spinners cast their literary magic to take you from once upon a time to the edge of the imagined, from steampunk ruins to mythical forests, blurring boundaries between reality and fantasy. Fairy Tale Issue lures you off the beaten path to a new enchanted realm with every page you turn.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mad Cow Press
• Release date: Jan 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224229789

Charles Eugene Anderson

Charles Eugene Anderson lives in Colorado. Chuck is a former teacher. He now spends his time writing, hanging out with his pup, Champ, and learning how to bake. More about Chuck at http://charleseugeneanderson.com

Book preview

Vagabond: Fairy Tale Issue

Copyright © 2024 by Mad Cow Press

Vagabond is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, places, incidents, or living or dead persons is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved.

Vagabond: Fairy Tale Issue

VAGABOND 1

MELANIE TEM REBECCA HODGKINS DENISE E DORA DE KENYON JIM LEMAY JAMIE FERGUSON LUCY TAYLOR STEVE RASNIC TEM

MAD COW PRESS

Contents

Foreword

The Changelings

How Baba Yaga’s Hut Got Its Legs

Faithless

The Society Of Cats

Hansel And Gretel In The Enchanted Forest

Magic And Machinery

Prenuptials

Little Poucet

About The Authors

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Foreword

Welcome to Vagabond. Jim and I are going to give you the very best speculative fiction magazine on the market. We promise to find the very best writers in the business to write the very best stories to entertain the pants off of you. Okay, that’s the promise.

Now here’s probably what happened, but be warned I’m a fiction writer so I might take some liberties. I will try to cut the boring bits and embellish the exciting moments of the founding of our exciting new zine. Also, I seem to remember it as a play. I’m not normally a playwright, and I don’t think this production will ever be produced on Broadway, but hey, stranger things have happened. I don’t know, maybe the founding of Vagabond will become a television show on some obscure cable television network.

Setting: In a brew-pub located in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado.

Time: It’s the early 21st century. Two friends sit across from each other waiting for their beers to arrive.

Chuck (early 50s…retired teacher...now he’s a leaf in the wind): Jim, we should start a magazine (I told you this was exciting). What do you think?

Jim (distinguished older gentleman...former civil engineer...now a rogue and a man about town): Where is our beer? All I wanted was a porter. The bartender did say they had a British porter, but I wasn’t expecting him to fly to London to find it.

Chuck: Jim, you’re not listening. We know so many talented writers. I think we can produce one of the best science fiction magazines out there. We can really make something special. What issues do you think we should start with? Maybe we could have a space opera? Or maybe a dinosaur issue.

Jim: Our last anthology was dinosaurs. Don’t you remember? It was Jurassic Park on steroids. Maybe we could do something else? I like the end of the world idea, and if I don’t get my beer soon, I think my world is going to end. (He looks around.) Oh, I see the problem. The bartender is flirting with the waitress.

Chuck: He sure is…he’s forgotten about us. She’s cute. I can see why he's distracted.

Jim: My beer is only a dream.

Chuck: Wouldn’t you say it’s a…‘Fairytale?’ That’s what the first edition of Vagabond will be, a fairytale edition. But what should we do for the second edition?

Jim: There’s a beer apocalypse going on in here. Why did we pick this place?

Chuck: I think that will be our second edition. An apocalypse edition. Good thinking.

Jim: Sure, Chuck. That sounds great, but maybe next time we could meet someplace else.

The Changelings

MELANIE TEM

The Changelings

Bridget sat quietly in the house of the creature who had stolen her child.

In her hand was a mug of the best coffee she'd ever tasted: strong and aromatic, and still hot even though she'd been mostly ignoring it for some time. On the table at her elbow was a bowl of dry-roasted peanuts, which even under the circumstances she had a hard time resisting; they nearly filled a dark, thick wooden bowl of an odd shape, whose polished planes made her want to keep running her finger‐ tips over it. An old Waylon-and-Willie tape of love songs was playing, one of her favorites. The creature knew.

Crystal and Cynthia were practicing jump rope chants and cheers on the front porch. Bridget could see them through the window, although there were odd distortions in the pane; the heavy bone-colored shade was rolled at the top now, and she guessed that when it was down no one would be able to see inside this house at all. Sometimes she just glimpsed movement on the porch; sometimes she caught a little face or body in stylized animation. She kept a watchful ear and eye on them, terrified that, now that she had finally found her real daughter, she would somehow lose her again.

She'd recognized the child called Cynthia (not a bad name; not one she would have chosen, but not bad; she wondered if she'd have to change it) the moment she saw her on the school playground. She'd known for sure when Crystal started bringing her home to play, to have dinner, to spend the night.

The girls were so different from each other that Bridget knew they wouldn't have been friends if it hadn't been meant for her to right the wrong. Cynthia was like her: shy, not good with words, unable to stand up for long to Crystal's willfulness. Cynthia wasn't good in school, as Bridget had not been; Crystal was a star student, though she seldom paid much attention. Cynthia never got in trouble, was, like Brid‐ get, skilled at discerning rules and following them; Bridget was forever getting notes or having to attend conferences about Crystal's behavior—stealing, fighting, talking back to the teachers—which she was powerless to affect, though she tried everything she could think of. Cynthia, like Bridget, never called attention to herself by achievement or by misdeed; Crystal was in the spotlight all the time.

Cynthia looked like Bridget, of course: the same wide-set pale blue eyes, flawless skin like white tissue paper, pink lips, hair somebody had once called flaxen. Crystal was dark, darker every year, and the palm-shaped birthmark on her right cheek more distinct; her skin was coarse, her hair thick and wild with a terrible cowlick on the crown of her head that no comb or brush or pick would go through, her mouth so naturally red that Bridget would have suspected her of sneaking makeup and would have punished her if it hadn't been that color since the first day of her life. Sometimes, because it had been, Bridget punished her anyway. Crystal's eyes changed color with her mood and with what she was wearing, but they were not the subtle, suggestive color called hazel; they were brilliant green, violet, vivid brown, translucent gray, utter black. Crystal's eyes made Bridget shudder; she had always avoided looking directly into them.

Through the screen door, Bridget could hear Crystal and Cynthia whispering together now like any other eleven- year-olds in the half-welcome company of their mothers. Cynthia was giggling; Crystal never laughed.

Dressed in yella

Went upstairs to

Kiss a fella

Made a mistake

Kissed a snake

How many doctors

Will it take?

Cynthia stumbled over the rope at the count of seven ‐ teen. They started the chant again, and Crystal was still going at fifty-three. Bridget wasn't surprised. Crystal had always been unnaturally strong and well-coordinated. She herself wasn't the least bit athletic, and she didn't go to Crys‐ tal's games and exhibitions anymore because she couldn't bear to see how accomplished the child was, how alien.

Can I get you anything? asked the creature, who went by the name of Kathy. It was an ordinary name. It was an ordinary, hospitable question.

All this normalcy and friendliness only gave away her true nature, and so did her hands, which hovered with obvious intent over every object she touched, whether she ended up using it or not. And her eyes, which looked directly and audaciously at you, changing color even as you struggled to avoid meeting their variegated gaze. Her eyes, like Crys‐ tal's, were ringed with lashes so thick and dark that they made Bridget think of moustaches, or, disturbingly, of pubic hair.

Do you need anything? Kathy asked again, looking at her.

No, Bridget lied. No, thanks.

The girls' chanting had become more brazen, their delivery more sultry, and Bridget saw Crystal strike a sexy pose that looked much less like childish parody than it should have. Cynthia copied, but she was just an embarrassed little girl mimicking her elders. Crystal had a full bust line already, enhanced, over Bridget's objections, by a padded bra. Through the little-girl shirts Cynthia always wore, Bridget had noted that her breasts were just developing, and that one of them was larger than the other.

Cinder-ella Dressed in red

Got a snake to

Take to bed

He's too skinny

Said her mother

Go back out and

Get another

How many babies

Will they make?

Before Bridget could avert her eyes to protect herself, she and the creature had exchanged maternal glances. Kathy sighed and said indulgently, They grow up awfully fast, don't they?

Bridget took another tiny swallow of coffee and one peanut. She was afraid to say much for fear of inadvertently providing Kathy with weapons to use against her. Of course, she might be able to use silence, too. Bridget coughed loudly.

Although sometimes, Kathy said, "I worry that Cynthia isn't growing up fast enough. I mean, she doesn't know things now that I knew when I was seven or eight.'

Feeling that she should keep up the pretext of making social chitchat even though the creature probably could see through it, Bridget cleared her throat. Some of the girls in their class actually wear makeup to school. Can you imagine? In fifth grade? I fight with Crystal all the time to get her to wait.

There was a pause, and then Kathy said, I try to get Cynthia to wear a little lipstick and blush, a little light eye shadow. She's so pale, washed out. But she won't. A couple of times I've insisted, put some of my makeup on her, told her how pretty she looks, and the minute she gets to school I know she washes it off.

They're too young! was all Bridget could think to say.

Kathy didn't say anything for a while. The tape ended and the machine clicked off; she made no move to get up and put on another. There was silence from the porch as well; nervously Bridget leaned forward until she could see the girls crouched together in a corner. She didn't like the look of it but, like so many things about Crystal, there was nothing so specifically objectionable that she could protest or punish or forbid.

Crystal gestured animatedly, long painted nails glit tering, and she was talking a lot, while Cynthia sat with her knees up to her chin and made designs with her fingertips in