Seven Tales and a Fable

by Gwyneth Jones

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

WINNER OF TWO WORLD FANTASY AWARDS

A magical apple tree in the mountains. A hopeless king with no people to rule. A woman who loves a god. An unsettling princess.

This collection of wonderous fairy tales from award-winning author Gwyneth Jones takes traditional tropes and spins them in the way only she can. Darkness hides in the mundane as much as the magical, and the morals may not be what you're expecting. Enchanting and chilling in alternate turns, each story will weave a spell and draw you in deep . . .

Release date: August 2, 2022

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 240

Sample

Once upon a time there was a country where the mountains were so high that navigators of the coastland faraway took the gleaming of their icy peaks for constellations in the night sky, and it was said that it would take no less than a lifetime to scale their heights. The people who lived in the lowland cities and towns did not often look up to where the cloud-piercing giants could be glimpsed, far away. But they often told each other stories about the mountains, and had vague hopes and great expectations about what might come out of them—some day.

Now in this country there was a king who had three wives—consecutively, in deference to important foreign interests. The first wife he believed he loved, but she had to be put aside because she produced no children. The second wife divorced him, owing to some trouble over the marriage settlement. The third wife did not interest the king at all, but she had a son. The naming day was a serious occasion. The king made sure that no doubtful elements were present: neither fairies of any kind, nor shaven-headed monks. But in private, to appease the conservative party in the country, he had arranged a discreet consultation with an astrologer.

The king, the queen and the baby sat in a small audience room. The soothsayer was ushered in, and the king saw at once that he did not look happy. He stayed close to the door, glancing around him uneasily. “Sire,” he said. “I am afraid I have an unpleasant duty to perform.”

The king assumed the air of indulgent scepticism he had been keeping in reserve for such an eventuality, and vaguely waved his hand. The wave might have been indicating the presence of some large persons in uniform and dark glasses: this king was enlightened, but not foolishly so. The astrologer shuddered, but he spoke.

“While I was in the process of making, as you commanded, Sire, those calculations which impress our ignorant people—I found myself overtaken by a … a stronger influence.”

“A what?”

“I mean, sire, I had been acting on your command and suddenly I found that someone else had taken over from you. As a result of that intervention I now find myself compelled to pronounce a curse.”

The queen, who thought all this was nonsense, gave a startled exclamation. The king looked calmer than ever. “Go on,” he said.

The soothsayer’s eyes seemed to have gone blank, but perhaps that was the result of extreme fear. He began to speak again, in a high, strange voice:

“King, your heir is doomed to suffer, or your kingdom to perish. A time of choice is coming, a moment of decision. Your son must lose his only love, or your lands must be destroyed.”

There was a short silence. Then the king said: “Thank you, you may go. You will be rewarded at the proper rate.”

The man gave a sad smile and went out of the door, followed by two of the persons in uniform. The queen breathed a sigh of relief.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad.”

“Not too bad!” exclaimed the king. He snapped his fingers to dismiss the other guards and began to pace up and down, his face suddenly haggard.

“I don’t understand,” said the queen. “It was only a piece of impertinence. Very likely the boy will love some girl on his own account, without asking us. That is the way of this modern world. And he will have to ‘give her up’. It happened to you, didn’t it? It is nothing to make a fuss about.”

But the king was afraid. He knew what power is. And he had just felt it in this room.

“You don’t understand about curses,” he told her. “How they sneak about and find you out. Have you never heard of a king called Oedipus?”

The queen had had a foreign education. She thought of the bare mountain, and began to feel frightened. But the king said: “There’s only one thing to do. We must keep love out of his life. He is never to hear of it, he is never to say the word. He is never to feel its heat. I shall remake the world for him, and in his world there will be no such thing as—love.”

The queen was shocked, but the king soon made her see that a life without love could be perfectly comfortable.

“I don’t think we need worry about ordinary pleasant social manners,” he explained. “You can be as nice to him as you like, as long as it all remains as meaningless as the smile one smiles when introduced to a stranger. He can have as many toys as you like. It is only when he starts to single out one of those toys as special that we must watch out. The same with nursemaids. Frequent changes, and constant impersonal attention should do the trick. Look at it this way, my dear. ‘True Love’ has always been something to cry about. We’ll keep him laughing. In the end, I think he’ll thank us for this. But of course if it works, he’ll never be able to understand what we’ve done.”

The scheme worked perfectly. The young prince was indeed a very pleasant child. For although he was constantly indulged, it was all done as a matter of course, unemotionally. The feeling of power that a spoiled child can express so unpleasantly was missing. He grew up among pleasant, friendly and obliging people, none of whom appeared to care whether he lived or died.

When he was old enough, to the queen’s surprise, the king sent him abroad to finish his education.

“But, my dear,” she protested, “suppose he falls in love?”

The king smiled calmly. “He won’t. He’s safe. He is in far more danger if he stays here.”

The king had a feeling that ‘arranged marriage’ might not be a good thing for the prince to see. He would observe youths who had been his companions surrendering themselves for life to alien family ties—submitting to tradition, quite frequently against their will. This curious behaviour was bound to raise awkward questions. It suggested some kind of passionate excess: love of family, love of duty; of religion. The prince must not know about such things. His wife, when she came, would be presented as another toy for his collection. Meanwhile, let the loveless youth roam among the ‘free’ young people who would swear to him that to take a lover was purely a matter of selfish pleasure.

So the young prince went abroad. He enjoyed himself thoroughly, and his special education was never in any danger. But then an unfortunate thing happened. The king, of course, had made sure the ‘curse’ was never spoken of in his own country. But somehow somebody had heard of it. The prince found himself mentioned, as an interesting example, in an anthropological quarterly in the University library.

He was most unpleasantly surprised. He flew home at once, and the next day bounced into his father’s office, blazing with passionate indignation.

“There’s a curse on me!” he cried. “And you believe it or you wouldn’t have kept it secret. I’m under a curse! I want to know what it is!”

The king picked up a pen and smiled suavely.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you.”

“You’ve got to tell me.”

“I’m afraid I just can’t.”

The prince collapsed on a chair. “Is that one of the conditions?”

The king seemed amused. “Well, it is one of your conditions, you might say.”

The prince stared in angry bewilderment, and left, scowling.

The king began to laugh. He had never felt more sure of his son, and his son’s training.

But the prince, who did not care about anything very much, had one deep interest in life. He went straight to a girl he had known in the days before he went abroad. She was engaged now, and alarmed at being seen with another man, even the prince. But she had the remains of very bitter feelings, so she did as he asked. The prince guessed there was no point in going to any respectable practitioner of the Old Arts: his father would have got at them. He was looking for a back-street magician.

Five days later, when the moon was waning, the prince found himself standing outside a nasty little hovel in a back alley down by the stinking river. He was having second thoughts. From the way the old crone had cackled, he guessed his former girlfriend had arranged some kind of practical joke, he couldn’t think why. “You can come in now,” croaked the voice of the seer, and the prince stooped and entered.

The atmosphere, which had been fetid before, was now thick with the fumes of some herb she had put on the fire. Where was the old woman? He made out her figure in the shadows. Then a flame shot up, and he was able to see her face. It had changed. The grimy network of wrinkles had disappeared. The eyes that looked out of the smoothed mask were strangely clear and bright. Perhaps the girl had paid this old hag to do some petty evil, but something different had happened. She was now in the power of a force greater than herself. No king’s son could mistake that look. It was horrible.

The old woman’s mouth moved stiffly. A voice came out.

“Prince, among the peaks of the far white mountains there grows a little fruit tree that bears apples of snow. Set an axe to the roots of that tree, and you will find out how you have been cursed …”

There was no more. The natural stink of the place began to overcome the smoke again. The prince felt disgusted. He flung down another handful of money and left. He shivered involuntarily as he stepped out of the alley … someone walking over his grave. Religion was a reasonable business, but he had always hated these old murky regions of traditional belief. He had never known why.

But as he walked away, back towards the modem city, he raised his head and looked to the east. He could see nothing but the city and its glow in the sky, but he knew that somewhere over there lay the white mountains of his quest. And suddenly, as sharp as that shiver of dread, he was overtaken by a great longing to be on his way. He smiled a promise to the east, and then turned for home.

He made his preparations in secret and left as if for a short holiday in the hills; without taking any special equipment or supplies. He was surprised, when he came to the villages in the foothills, to find how far he had left civilisation behind. He couldn’t buy anything like proper mountain gear, or food concentrates. Instead he bought quantities of thick felt clothes, and four little silent men with round dark faces and short thick limbs. They would carry the tins of butter and canvas tents and other old-fashioned provisions. He never talked to these little men, only to the go-between.

He kept his identity a secret of course. Perhaps it would have made a difference, perhaps not. On the ninth day of the expedition he woke up to find they had left him.

He had to give up and head back after them, carrying what he could. But without those four stolid bundles of garments how oppressive this other silence seemed: an icy oblivion or white light and blue shadow, stretching limitless in every direction. “At least I should be able to tell up from down,” the prince told himself firmly, “and that’s all I need.”

He tried to maintain the proper stolid state of mind, as he pecked his way onward, across an endless slope of white crisp snow. But the implacable silence, and the fear of what might happen next time he put his foot down, were too much for him. Shadows began to shift, taking on improbable shapes and colours. Voices called to him. He had no idea which way was up, or down. He panicked and began to run, fell down breathless and began to go to sleep. “No, no,” he told himself, “mustn’t go to sleep. Find the little fruit tree—”

And suddenly he saw it. It must have been there all the time, just ahead of him. The snow face was split, and in the V was greenery and sunlight—a magic valley full of fruit trees; and one of them bore snow-white apples. The prince gave a great yell of triumph and began to leap across the snow, laughing and shouting. Until he began to fall into a great blue-mouthed crevasse that opened beneath his feet. There was no magic valley.

The creature who lived in the cave at the bottom of the crevasse was stronger than she looked, and fearless. When she heard the crump of something falling she went out, examined it, and dragged it in. She put it on her bed and wrapped it in fleeces. She thought it was dead so she slept on the floor that night: because the dead ought to be treated with respect.

In the morning she found it had its eyes open.

“Are you dead?” she asked it.

“No—” answered the prince weakly.

“Then I won’t kill you, either.”

The prince looked at the fragile little white hand lying on his arm, and laughed feebly. Then he lost consciousness again.

He found out later that he should not have laughed. She was supposed to kill anybody who somehow found this cave and looked on her: and she had been trained rigorously in ways of killing that did not depend on height and weight. She was a priestess. Her name was Ari-gan, which means ‘white child’. She was slight and wiry, with strange, colourless hair and skin. Her eyes, which were a very pale blue, had a curious wavering, unfocused stare. Probably that was because she had never looked at a human being before, not even her own face in a mirror. Her eyes had been bound from birth to the day she was brought here, sleeping, and abandoned. The prince was worried about her being a priestess. He could see there would be trouble if a man was found with her. But apparently the people who came twice a year to bring her supplies never approached the cave.

“I know when they have come, by the weather and by a dream I have. Then I go out and find the food and leave a sign, so they know I am still here. That is all.”
. . .