New Found Fairy Tales

The Princess Fairytales

New Found Fairy Tales

These Tales were written long ago, in a time of mystery and imagination. When our worlds were many, strangled by a wood, hidden by mist, watched by eyes that could not see. Each world blinded by its touch. Fear grew in creatures of the worlds, darkness in their imagination, coldness gnawing their senses.

People in many forms populate these worlds, people like us, dancing with joy and torn hearts, in the mysterious light of ordinary and magic. We know these worlds now through Tales handed down, fragments of clothing snatched by trees, fragrances remembered, of journeys travelled and lives past. As easy to catch as mist in our hands.

I found these Tales one winter’s day when the Sun died and the ice creaked. In the refuge of my home, the lights shone and an electric flame mimicked a wood fire. I sat on a chair by the fire, a notepad on my lap, and spied something strange. A parcel concealed amongst others, with a name I did not recognise. How long had it tarried there, from whence had it journeyed? Mysteriously, the wrappings were older than the house, older than the village in which I lived.

Opening the parcel revealed a treasure trove of aged tales, of lives scrapped across the earth, leaving imprints in the mind. Worlds no more, worlds we did not know lived and worlds we did. Worlds we thought thrived in worlds we dreamed. But as I read the Tales, to my horror they faded from the page. Panicking, I read faster, struggling to catch the words, store the meaning but the faster I read the faster they faded through the page and air. No ink to give them substance, no page to tie them, they floated before my eyes and tumbled into the fire, an unreal flame capturing a surreal word.

The tales had gone and I remained with memories of what I might have read. No time to sleep, my fingers searched, pressing the vacant paper in hope, refusing to let die what had died before.

I found myself in the morning writing in the air, the notepad slipped from my lap. Perhaps I had caught the words but the sentences were gone. In despair I walked away, leaving the scattered papers on the floor and ethereal ink in a flameless fire.

That was many years past, now I am grey and sit on a different chair in a different home. I lived another life until one day I found a strange folder on the computer on which I now write. Within the folder were tales, fragments of what might have been. Tales started in a rush, suddenly ending, tales almost complete and tales I would remember – if I could but read them. A tale of what happened then is a tale of no telling. It is sufficient, whether we wish it or not, that a handful of mist pervades our mind. Words of mist without substance, feeding our world as they feed worlds strangled by a wood hidden by mist, watched by eyes that would not see. Close your eyes and see not letters forming on the page, see the tale and the tale behind the tale. These tales are new found, as real as any page written in mist.