fairytalemood:
“Aschenputtel” by buttcap
She was the Cinders Girl, because they made her tend the fires. She did more than this of course.
She tended the house, she cleaned the floors, she cut the wood and she cooked the meals…
But they called her the Cinders Girl because of the black marks on her face. The black streaks, the black patches.
They looked like ash streaks, sometimes ash flakes off.
They said her hair looked strange and black, like burnt cracked wood and her eyes sometimes gleamed hot yellow, like a coal.
People avoided her when she went outside.
The Stepmother “made up” her face when she went out, but it didn’t matter.
Eventually, under the sun laboring or near the fires, growing hot…
It would melt away.
It didn’t matter the clothes they gave her, soon they would look ragged, full of burn holes and her shoes would soon disappear.
But they just didn’t understand.
She was the Cinders Girl.
*
When the Father wanted a child, he could not have one. The Mother was unable and soon died, but he still wanted a child.
He knew a bit of magic and he still wanted a child, so he prayed in front of his fire, he prayed to the flames.
He knew a bit of magic, but did not know its power and so his house burned down. But in the wreckage and the rubble, there was a child.
A little girl stood there, blackened skin, cracked and glowing red, when she moved she left foot prints of ashes. When she moved, cinders came off her body. She touched her hair and embers cast off in the wind.
The Father was aghast, he fled and raced away.
And she stayed there, waiting.
The only thing that had survived the fire was the fireplace, so she went there, sleeping there, hiding there, invisible, blackened and ashen…
She waited long enough and the house was rebuilt.
The Father had returned. He returned with the Stepmother and her real Daughters.
They did not expect her to be there still, especially not when she emerged from the first fire they built, her arms open and welcoming to the Father.
He said she was a slave. He said it was okay to work her, that she was a magical thing, a beast.
She did not understand these words, but that was fine. The Father had returned, he had returned to love her.
And in that moment, explaining and worried about what the Stepmother would think, she got near to him and hugged him. Hugged him tightly.
He burned up quick, he burned alive, and turned into a pile of ashes on the floor.
She turned to the Stepmother, arms out and expecting.
The woman doused her with a bucket of water.
“STAY BACK YOU DEMON!”
And even though she was afraid, she figured she could use the girl… as a slave at least.
She saw how much she had loved the father, so she threw the man’s ashes into the fireplace.
“Do not leave from here! Do not leave him!”
The Cinders Girl never would.
*
“It’s terrible mother… all she does is play with ashes. She’s playing with the ashes again!”
“She gets all excited and she burns off all the things we’ve given her… she turns into that thing!”
The Stepmother set her mouth in a thin line. She did not like the Cinders Girl, but she did not want to be without her slave labor. She did not like the Cinders Girl, but she did not want to let that demon loose into the world.
“I will think of something.” she told her daughters. “I will get her away from us, away from this place!”
And so the Stepmother schemed. And she plotted.
It seemed that the Princess was on a search, a search for glass slippers. She’d owned a pair, many years ago, when she’d first been betrothed to the Prince and she was looking for another pair again, hoping this item, that had caught the young man’s eyes, would win his heart again as the Prince’s heart and eyes were straying.
She knew what glass was made of and she wondered, thinking of the ashes, if she couldn’t be of some help.
She sent the Cinders Girl outside one day, to run an errand, putting her face on extra thick so she would not return early as she did when it melted off. She sent her off across town for some item she did not need and when she was gone, she collected all the ashes from the fire and left to the glass maker’s.
It took a few hours and the Stepmother worried if she might not make it home before the Girl, but when the shoes were done, she made it known to all who would hear that she had glass slippers for the Princess.
And then she returned home.
It was very late when the Cinders Girl returned, her face gone, her face cracked and red lined like a log in the fire. What was left of her dress was smoking, but she held her errand item in her hands.
It was hilariously enough a custom iron poker.
She took it to the Stepmother, looking at the shoes she had on a pillow. She stared at them and stared at them, before the woman said, “They are not yours!”
“Yes.” the Cinders Girl said, reaching for them.
“NO.” the woman said, banging her hand. She reached for a bucket of water, which she always had nearby. “BACK YOU DEMON! BACK!”
“They are mine!” she said, reaching for them.
“I said BACK!”
And then there was a knock on the door. And the sound of royal horns.
“OPEN THE DOORS CITIZEN! YOUR PRINCESS HAS ARRIVED!”
The Stepmother pointed. “Open the door!”
And the Cinders Girl went, looking over her shoulders at the shoes.
She opened the door, ignoring all the people who came in. Ignoring the talk that followed. Ignoring everything, except the shoes.
She watched the princess in the large blue gown hold the shoes and she walked towards her.
“Those are mine.” she said, her voice distressed. She cracked and popped like a healthy fire and the Princess recoiled.
“WHAT IS THIS? GUARDS!”
“No no!” The Stepmother stopped them. “This… is… a special servant. A magical servant! She can tend all the fires in a single home at once!”
The Princess looked dubious.
“This I also give you… as a gift. Take her instead of paying me for the shoes.”
The Princess curled her lip. “She will not get in my carriage.”
“She can follow behind it.” The Stepmother looked at the Cinders Girl. “She has the shoes. You go with her.”
The Cinders Girl looked at the Princess.
“They are mine!”
“Filthy thing…” she muttered, leaving the home.
She left and the Cinders Girl followed, her dress burned all the way off, her made-up face melted into thin air, her shoes non-existent.
She followed the Princess and she followed the shoes. She followed and followed, her arms out.
“They are mine.” she said, over and over.
“They are Father.” she said, over and over.
When she made it to the castle with the Princess, she was doused with water and thrown into a fire place. Bars were installed and once she was hot again, a great flame grew within the fire place, the Cinders Girl reaching out past the bars, her guards beating back her arms with royal pockers.
“They are mine!” she cried. “They are father!”
And there she remained.
The Stepmother hadn’t lied. The Cinders Girl could tend all the fires at once. Bars were installed on every fire place and the ovens were monitored. If she got out, buckets of water were handy. She was promptly doused and put back.
She appeared, skin black and smoking, lined red and orange like a fire place log, her arms out, calling and crying, “They are mine! They are Father!”
The Princess wore her glass slippers and won back her Prince.
And she lived happily ever after, her fires always warm, her bed always warm.
Her feet fashionably decorated.
![hamburgerjack:
fairytalemood:
“The Little Mermaid” by Gabriel Pacheco
The legends told the tales the best, the stories of the Sea Witches.
They’d appear, comely and calling, sunning and singing on far off rocks, beckoning to easily lured young men.
They’d swim out, expectant. And meet their doom.
At first, many believed they just drowned the young men…
But that was before bones began washing ashore.
“Lock up your sons.”
It was a temporary measure, for under the full moon, when a Hag’s power was the strongest, her song could reach far inland, far beyond the beach, past castle walls and into closets and cradles and where ever else a mother or father might hide their son or boy-child.
You couldn’t stop them.
They’d walk, they’d run, they’d crawl, and clamor…
To meet the sea…
To meet the Hags.
Still far off, they were smart not to get so close to shore, for men were not without their means and nor were the women among them.
So they took to ship.
At first, the voyages were doomed.
Out on the water, the territory of these Hags, there was nothing to protect the crews from their songs. Now, not just singing of seduction, they summoned gales and water spouts, threw their voices to sound like men overboard and when a man would look, would trap them in nets of seaweed and kale, pulling them down.
The last thing a man saw, they said, was a mouth of razor sharp teeth and gleaming, fish eyes on a “woman’s face”.
There wasn’t a solution. Men disappeared. The young and then the younger and then the old men, out for revenge. Those, they just drowned, the bodies, bloated and some still bleeding, washing upon the shore.
There wasn’t a solution.
**
**
“Erika?”
She bound her chest as tightly as she could. “Yes, Mother?”
“Are you sure?” the woman asked, her voice hoarse from weeping. “Are you SURE?”
She put on her clothes -her brother’s clothes and then went to the vanity, picking up the scissors.
“I’m sure.”
“But they’ll know. They’ll eat you -they’ll kill you! The Hags -.”
“Even if they do, I’ll kill as many as I can.” as she looked at herself in the mirror, grabbing a handful of hair and began to cut.
Her mother wept again, leaving the room.
**
**
No one had made it to Hag’s rock proper. It was a small island to itself, far off the beach.
Sometimes, when the Hag’s wanted to taunt them, they’d sit up on the rock, backed by the waves and toss their “hair”.
Once, in a spy glass, she’d seen them up close.
It wasn’t hair at all, but tentacles. Some like squids, some like jelly fish. All sorts of limbs and tentacle hanging down, hiding eyes and mouths that were so… inhuman.
She’d wanted to sob and empty her stomach, walking the island. There were sun bleached bones and tattered clothing everywhere, trinkets and things from the pockets of deadmen…
Mementos from wives and daughters.
“You’re not Man-Flesh.” a voice rasped.
“No.” Ericka said, unsheathing a long dagger. She turned to look and there one was.
A Sea Hag.
Pale skinned, pasty skinned, with long, jointed webbed hands that splayed on the rock. She couldn’t see the thing’s mouth, its face covered over with a mass of wriggling red tentacles.
She heard a sucking sound, watching its chest expand and gills flutter.
How long could a Hag stay above water?
It tilted its head.
“A Female…” the tentacles lifted randomly, playfully, as if in amusement.
And then the sucking sound again.
“We do not have songs… for females.” the tentacles parted and Ericka saw what she deemed to be an eye, the pupil horizontal and liquid looking. “But I am hungry…”
The sucking sound again and a wet smack as it began to pull itself, hand by hand -flipper even, onto the rock
“Come Female…” it raised a flipper upwards, pulling aside some tentacles to reveal a beak.
“LISTEN.”
The sound was horrible and Ericka put her hands over her ears, screaming. She turned away, wanting to flee, but then she remembered her brother and what they found of him, washing up on shore. And she turned back, gripping her knife.
“JUST DIE! ALL OF YOU DIE!” she screamed.
She rushed the monster, slashing wildly. The song stopped, the sounds coming from the Hag now the sounds of its own screaming.
Tentacles flopped and writhed, dismembered from the Hag’s face, and there was a mix of something black mixed with the blood. She slashed at where she thought the thing’s throat was, terrified when more Hags began to appear on the rock, began to drag themselves out of the water, to the defense of the dying one.
Some sang, they sang in that horrible voice. Some attacked her, monstrosities with spiked faces and open wound mouths shooting spines at her, others flaring out their fins and hissing, some spitting ink and acid.
She stabbed her knife into the thing’s throat, fleeing back for her boat, fleeing for the safety of the shore, but it wasn’t to be.
A black tentacled thing, its body obese and gelatinous took hold of her boat, got into her boat, its eyes glowing.
“Poor, unfortunate female…”
Ericka screamed, her cries cut off as she was wrapped up, head, throat and body, by the thing.
**
**
There was no solution, there was nothing they could do.
There were no songs now, no warnings. They did not taunt from the safety of the rocks now, the Sea Hags.
But now they walked the shores.
You would see her, a thing you thought was a “her” anyway, stumbling along the shores in need of aid. Red haired, pale skin, with elegant limbs -surely, a high born lady. It would fall and you would run to her, turning her over. And what you would see first was the wound on her neck and then the criss cross of deep gouges on her face. And then you would see this was no lady, but a Thing.
A beast thing from the sea.
They would find the bodies with their faces eaten off, the pucker marks of tentacles all across the exposed neck and arms. They went after fool-hardy men and naive women, feeding on seagulls and crabs when they couldn’t get their regular prey.
[Unfinished]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ltdt03iLMK1qj5qvfo1_500.jpg)
