FAERIE

FAERIE 

MAGAZINE 

ISSUE NO. 

35 

SUMMER 2016 

Celebrating the Extraordinary 

mermaids, kelpies, 

selkies, and sirens + 

UNDERWATER 

WORLDS 

ANNIE STEGG’S 

mythical creatures 

the 

new fiction from 

ALICE 

HOFFMAN 

+ DIANA 

ABU-JABER 

an homage to 

LABYRINTH 

GOBLIN KING 

& 

$10.95 USA | $12.95 CAN 

+ PRINCE

These handmade resin 

bangles are embedded with 

flowers, plants, leaves, 

shells, moss, and bark. 

Visit faeriemag.com for more 

faerie-friendly treasures! 

Every issue of Faerie Magazine celebrates magic and beauty in the real world, but this one is even 

more enchanted than most. Our cover model, Kathy Gfeller, a.k.a. Twig the Fairy, dazzles 

children at Renaissance fairs and fairy festivals across the country with her flutes, her massive 

shining wings, and her pockets full of fairy stones and glitter. Twig has graced these pages multiple 

times … but who is the woman behind this sweet, lash-batting creature? Kathy is someone who used 

to look for fairies in the woods in the Minnesota countryside and who “went to the sweetest spot” in 

her heart to create the creature she’d once hoped to find and make her real. We love that—people who 

take their dreams and visions and bring them to life. 

Letter from the Editor 

Summer 2016 

This issue features artists of all kinds who bring their own magic into the world and illuminate it for 

the rest of us. The smiths at Baltimore Knife and Sword fashion blades that King Arthur or Gandalf 

might have carried. Joel Grey inhabits such disparate, astonishing characters as the Wizard of Oz and 

the Emcee in Cabaret. The Drachenstich play in Furth im Wald, Germany, has resurrected 

a fire-breathing dragon for centuries, so that, as writer Jill Gleeson puts it, “for a few 

precious hours, the past becomes present and dragons become real.” Artist Annie 

Stegg paints a world of “dragons and gnomes, flying horses and mermaids,” that 

seem to live and breathe on the canvas, while novelist Mark Tompkins tells us how 

he wrote a novel about fairies after finding himself pixie-led in Ireland. There’s 

a water theme here, too, and sirens, selkies, kelpies, and mermaids abound—all 

shifting, hybrid figures that move between worlds, alternating between our own 

and another that’s just out of reach. 

In that spirit we also celebrate in this issue those magical artists and creatures 

who’ve passed on. Photographer Grant Brummett, who shot our cover and who 

passed away last fall, took countless stunning shots featuring Kathy in wings and 

a mermaid tail and in ball gowns that billow and swirl underwater. Bella Kotak 

shot a gorgeous homage to the beloved film Labyrinth and the iconic Goblin 

King played by David Bowie, who was as enchanting and changeable as 

any siren. And finally, our photo editor Steve Parke shares with us some of 

his intimate, lovely portraits of Prince, for whom he worked for well over a 

decade, and tells of a man who believed that anything was possible. 

We hope that you find and create your own magic this season, whether it 

involves dragons or mermaids or rock stars—or whatever you sought when 

you played, as a child, in the woods. 

FAERIE mag.com 

Illustrations ©Guinevere von Sneeden 

faeriemag.com 

Carolyn Turgeon 

3

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FAERIE 

magazine 

VOLUME 35 | Summer 2016 

FOUNDER aNd PUBLISHER 

Kim Cross 

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF 


Editorial Director 

Paul Himmelein 

ART DIRECTOR 

Lisa Gill 

Photo Editor 

Steve Parke 

Deputy EDITOR 

Grace Nuth 

Editor-at-large 

Laren Stover 

Poetry Editor 

Mary McMyne 

Copy Editor 

Robert Horning 

Issue 35 Summer 

Fiction, Poetry 

& Essays 

18 Faerie Knitting with 

Alice Hoffman and 

Lisa Hoffman 

51 Cordelia, or the 

Price of Salt 

by Sara Cleto 

54 Water and 

sky fables 

by John W. Sexton 

78 Excerpt from 

SilverWorld 

by Diana Abu-Jaber 

93 Selkie 

by E. Kristin Anderson 

6 On Our Cover 

Interview With Kathy Gfeller by Lisa Mantchev 

SPECIAL FEatuRES 

25 The Mythic 

Geography of Wales 

by Massie Jones 

30 Baltimore 

Knife and Sword 

by Carolyn Turgeon 

41 The Girl Who 

Circumnavigated 

Ferryland 

Voyaging to Catherynne 

Valente’s Imaginative 

Island Habitat 

by Laura Marjorie Miller 

57 the passion of 

the fairies 

by Mark Tompkins 

84 Wiz Kid. JOEL GREY 

by Laren Stover 

Table of Contents 

Summer 2016 

66 Twilight in the Labyrinth 

by Grace Nuth 

office 

Lisa “Trinket” Oberg 

Bridget M. Richards 

86 Water Worlds 

of KELPIES, SELKIES, 

and SIRENS 

by Paul Himmelein 

Visit us online at 

FAERIEMAG.COM 

CONTRIBUTORS 

Diana Abu-Jaber, E. Kristin Anderson, Sara Cleto, 

Sara Ghedina, Jill Gleeson, Alice Hoffman, Lisa Hoffman, 

Massie Jones, Lisa Mantchev, Laura Marjorie Miller, 

Timothy Schaffert, John W. Sexton, 

Sadie Stein, Mark Tompkins, Pam Yokoyama 

ARTISTS AND PHOTOGRAPHERS 

Ewan Adamson, Grant Brummett, Kevin Findlater Photography, 

Cory Godbey, Bella Kotak, Kate Leiper, Kelly Merchant, 

Andreas Mühlbauer, Jen Parrish-Hill, Brittany Rae Photography, 

Celeste Sloman, Guinevere von Sneeden, Annie Stegg, 

Brenda Stumpf Photography, Kristi Yokoyama, Gale Zucker 

contact us: 

info@faeriemag.com 

Faerie Magazine 

P.O. Box 26452 

Gwynn Oak, MD 21207 

Faerie Magazine Copyright ©2016. No portion of Faerie Magazine 

may be reproduced, duplicated, or reprinted without 

prior written permission from the Publisher. 

ISSN: 1554-9267, recorded with the U.S. Library of Congress. 

Faerie Magazine is published in the United States of America. 

Home, Fashion 

& Beauty 

46 The Woodland Magic 

of Frog Hollow 

by Grace Nuth 

60 Summer lady dress 

by Pam Yokoyama 

76 The Pixie's Pantry 

Moonbeam Medcines 

and Bejeweled Elixirs 


94 Brokenhearted Vest 

Knitting pattern by 

Lisa Hoffman 

20 Annie Stegg's 

Mythic World by Sadie Stein 

96 REmembering Prince 

Photography by Steve Parke 

Columns 

16 the Eccentricities 

of Gentlemen 

Mermaids and Martinis 

by Timothy Schaffert 

61 Summer Berries 

Recipes by One Girl in the Kitchen 

36 Bavaria's drachenstich 

by Jill Gleeson 

faeriemag.com 

5

Title 

Summer 2016 

On Our Cover 

Summer 2016 

One foot after another, so that the liquid chill clambers up your 

body; the second your head slips under the surface, the real 

world has a tendency to quickly fall away. A swimming pool, 

a pond, a lake, the ocean, they are all different artists wielding 

different brushes over different canvases, but the medium 

remains the same: 

Twig the Fairy 

Beneath the Surface 

by Lisa Mantchev 

by Lisa Mantchev 

Photography by Grant Brummett 

Water. 

The water calls to most of us, in some form or another, and now 

it seems that our favorite mischievous woodland friend has found 

her way from the forest to the seas. Kathy Gfeller is the performer 

responsible for bringing Twig the Fairy so vividly to life. You might 

have seen her previously on the Internet, head bedecked with flowers 

and iridescent wings on full display. Or you might have seen her at 

a Faire, playing her flute, cavorting, or distributing gifts imbued with 

glitter and wonder. But if anyone knows that it would take more than 

wings and glitter to make a fairy, it’s Twig. In possession of that divine 

spark of fae, Twig the Fairy (also known about the realm as Twig 

Oaklyn Flewinia Thistlebottom) was first sighted at the Minnesota 

Renaissance Festival in 2003. With over 200,000 Facebook fans, she 

has both embraced and harnessed the sorcery of modern technology, 

and in addition to her live appearances, she has also authored several 

books. 

Faerie Magazine: What first attracted you to creatures like fairies? 

Kathy Gfeller: My mother had a book … the Brian Froud, Alan 

Lee Faeries book. She would take it out from time to time, show me 

some of the pictures, and read me some of the stories. By the age 

of four, whenever anyone came to the house, I would tote this big 

book over to them and say, “Read me this book. Tell me what this 

book says.” 

I grew up in the country, in this gorgeous nature preserve where 

it was easy to just blink for a second and imagine that I had seen a 

tiny wisp of a pixie stirring across the forest floor or that there were 

little water spirits in the creeks and the brooks that ran through the 

property. I would look for fairies every chance that I got. My mother 

was really spectacular in helping encourage my imagination when I 

was little. She said that if I left trinkets out for the fairies, they might 

replace them with other things, so I grew up believing that chocolatecovered 

cordial cherries came from fairies. 

FM: So how did Twig come into being? 

KG: It was during college. I have friends who worked at the 

Minnesota Renaissance Festival. One day, they called me and said, 

“Hey, there are auditions for a fairy court, and if you don’t go, we’re 

going to come up and kidnap you and take you there.” And I thought, 

fairies and the Renaissance Festival? Count me in! 

6 

faeriemag.com 

faeriemag.com

On Our Cover 

Summer 2016 

The entire troop taught me all about street performing, and 

I fell in love with it. Their portrayal of fairies was more like 

the Seelie Court, so there was a hierarchy. We had the most 

spectacular fairy king. His name was Gene Landry, and he had 

these beautiful giant butterfly wings. I think they might have 

been sewn parachute material. 

By the second year, the group had formed a theater company 

in Minneapolis, and they no longer had time to do the festival. 

But I loved the street performing, so I decided that I’d really like 

to come back as a solo artist and create the sort of character I 

would have wanted to meet when I was little. 

And that’s exactly what I did for Twig: I thought about what 

sort of fairies I wanted to meet when I was looking for them in 

the woods. I went to the sweetest spot I could find in my heart, 

and I created her to be completely loving and instantly accepting 

of every person that she met. To express moments of “I was 

always fated to meet you” or “Oh my goodness, dear old friend, 

I can’t believe our souls are meeting again.” 

I observed how toddlers and young children flirt with people 

that they find interesting or beautiful, so when Twig meets 

people, oftentimes there’s sort of an exaggerated shyness— 

that kind of childlike flirtation that says, “I think you’re really 

amazing, which makes me a little scared, so I’m going to be 

timid for a moment.” That moment of shyness actually draws 

most people in and helps to drop their guard. Suddenly, they’re 

like, “Oh, well, if she’s afraid of me, then she can’t be scary at 

all.” This is especially true with kids. 

FM: Twig feels very much like an earth elemental. Was the 

development of a mermaid character a way of exploring other 

facets of nature? 

KG: I remember that with every wishing fountain, every falling 

star, I made two wishes. One was that someday I would grow 

up to have wings and become a fairy, and the other was that if 

I ever got to swim in the ocean, I would turn into a mermaid. 

My father was a really avid fisherman. I had no interest in actual 

fishing, but I loved being in the boat and on the water with him, 

imagining that there were tiny little mermaids following us in the 

wake of the boat as we crossed the lake. 

Then one day, I literally jumped into the deep end of the 

pool. Photographer Grant Brummett and I started working 

together in 2008, shooting photos of Twig. I believe it was 2009 

when I got my mermaid tail, and I had the thought, Oh, maybe 

we should do a mermaid project. He used a small underwater 

camera, the disposable kind, and he was also able to get 

some video. 

The day that we shot in both a waterfall and a pool was the 

first time I had ever put the tail on, the first time I had ever 

swum with it. I fell in love, and from that minute on, I was 

hooked. I knew I had to do a mermaid book. I needed to work 

underwater. I needed to learn how to perform underwater, 

how to hold my breath, how to make pretty faces. I needed to 

learn how to be a mermaid. It was a new challenge and I really 

wanted to explore it. 

I didn’t realize until I actually put on the tail that it was going 

to become such a strong passion. 

FM: How did the underwater shoots evolve over time? 

KG: Once we started working on my mermaid book, I realized 

we were creating these beautiful images and these incredible 

moments of magic, but with Twig as a mermaid or as a fairy, 

there’s always a lightness, a happiness. Because Twig is such 

a joyful character, there were places that I couldn’t necessarily 

take her. 

I started talking with Grant about shooting things other than 

Twig and Mermaid, and he was so excited. Like, “Yes, yes, yes, 

yes, yes, can I please shoot Kathy?” We realized we would have 

the freedom to explore different moods, different tones. Rather 

than producing a series of bright, beautiful smiles, we would 

be able to explore the quietness and mystery of the water, to 

allow the images to be more serious and have a slightly darker 

undertone. 

So then I started buying giant ball gowns. I have a fiber 

background, so I know that certain materials are going to look 

ghostly underwater. The motion of silk and the fluidity of its 

movement just captures so beautifully because everything moves 

so slowly. 

FM: Tell us more about what it was like to work with Grant. 

We were so sorry to hear of his passing. 

KG: Shooting with him underwater was such a gift and such an 

adventure. Grant was not only willing to go on that adventure, 

he was eager to try new lighting, to improve the clarity of the 

water, to figure out how to drop the levels of chlorine so that 

whomever he was shooting with could keep their eyes open 

for longer. He had a passion for taking things to the next level, 

making them more beautiful. His dedication to his own craft 

pushed me to gain every skill that I could. I feel so blessed and 

honored to have been able to work with such an artist. 

Also, his family is one of the sweetest, most amazing, loving 

families I have ever met. When I was working on the books, I 

stayed with them several weeks. His wife and his two daughters 

are truly the most open-hearted people I have ever met. Grant 

was always generous with his time and with his talent, and his 

family was similarly generous. 

I’m so excited that he lives on through his work and that there 

are so many amazing images that he produced that have become 

iconic for Twig and for Mermaid. 

FM: Circling back to Mermaid, what is it that personally draws 

you to the water’s edge? 

KG: If you talk to any mermaid performer, they will tell you the 

8 

faeriemag.com

On Our Cover 

Summer 2016 

exact same thing: Ever since they were young, they daydreamed about the story 

of the Little Mermaid. We can’t help but imagine what that magical world would 

be like. I grew up in Northern Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes, which was 

obviously freshwater. I didn’t actually get to swim in the ocean until I was in my 

twenties. I got to go snorkeling and scuba diving in the ocean for the first time just 

a couple years ago. 

Now that the ocean has opened up to me through free diving and scuba diving, 

the beauty of it is just so moving. The creatures that you encounter in the ocean 

are every bit as magical as anything you would imagine. I was in Indonesia 

last year and got to watch a cuttlefish laying her egg sacs on the reef. It was the 

most beautiful thing I’ve ever witnessed—her back had these photo sensors that 

constantly flicker and change to blend in with the reef below, to hide her from 

predators. And this sparkling, glittering, ghost-like creature was just ever so slowly 

and methodically placing an egg sac here, an egg sac there, an egg sac here, as if I 

didn’t even exist. It was just a moment of pure magic. 

FM: What sort of magical realms do you imagine underwater? Are they grand 

like Atlantis, or more natural? 

KG: When I was younger, I think I probably imagined cities like Atlantis, where 

there were entire races of merpeople. I also imagined entire worlds where, 

essentially, it would be just like our natural world with trees and flowing grass and 

everything, only instead of birds, fish were flying through the air. I think there has 

always been a bit of whimsicalness in my imaginary underwater realms, but as 

I’ve actually explored the ocean, the true wonder of it has been more than I 

ever expected. 

When we were in Roatán recently, my fiancé and I did a night dive where 

there was bioluminescent algae that was activated by friction. You turn off your 

flashlight, and with every kick, it’s like fairy dust is coming off of your fin. If you 

wave your arms in front of you, magical sparkles come off of them. 

Experiences like that really make you want to adopt ethical practices and 

responsible eating habits, things like not consuming fish that take upwards of fifty 

years to mature, like grouper. It’s hard to be a mermaid and not love seafood, but 

it’s important to learn how and what to eat. There are other steps, things as simple 

as using reusable bags instead of plastic bags. Recycling, reducing your waste, 

reducing your carbon footprint. I see all of these terrifying studies that are coming 

back saying how much of the Barrier Reef is bleached out, and that’s due to 

climate change. The more I explore the ocean, the more I want to protect it. 

FM: With long-term plans to continue exploring and protecting the ocean, do you 

have any plans for more mermaid-themed books? 

KG: There are definitely going to be more mermaid projects from Twig in the 

future. Not this coming year, but possibly next year. 

Lisa Mantchev lives in the Pacific Northwest surrounded by trees, children, and fluffy dogs. 

You can read more about her books for adults and children at lisamantchev.com. 

We share these photos in loving memory of the brilliant Grant Brummett, who passed away last 

fall. More of his stunning work can be seen at grantsphotos.b2webs.com. 

faeriemag.com

Title 

Summer 2016 

Title 

Summer 2016 

12 

faeriemag.com faeriemag.com 

13

y 

w 

GENTLEMEN 

EPHEMERA AND APOCRYPHA FROM THE NOTES OF TIMOTHY SCHAFFERT, ESQ. 

MERMAIDS AND RUM 

Vintage ads for a Jamaican rum featured a mermaid and 

the promise (or threat?) of “just a hint of seaweed.” This 

rum-soaked mermaid is one of many. Today’s Sailor Jerry 

spiced rum sports a tattoo-inspired mermaid on some of 

its labels, and the company’s website notes that “the first 

nation to abolish issuing sailors daily rum was the U.S., 

which did so in 1862. New Zealand upheld the practice 

until 1990.” 

We can see this anti-rum sentiment in a report from the 

American Temperance Union, in which a missionary in 

New Zealand lists those American ships that “professed 

Temperance” and yet “are vending spirits very freely to 

the natives.” Among them: “Mermaid, of Salem, four tons 

of rum—Temperance!!!” 

Sailors were corrupting the mermaids too. In the 

folktale “Where the Mermaids Are Gone,” published 

in 1881 in the weekly literary journal All the Year Round 

(edited by Charles Dickens Jr.), a sailor finds himself in an 

underwater kingdom where he discovers mermaids circling 

a cask on the ocean floor, whisking it around with “the 

eddy of their tails.” The mermaids ask the sailor what’s in 

the cask, and he opens it for them and introduces them to 

rum. They all get soused, and the mermaids beg him to 

stay beneath the sea. One sits on his knee, “shakes her long 

golden hair, an’ glimpses out at me under her eyelids.” She 

and the other mermaids attempt to entice him with kisses. 

“Stay with us,” they say, “thou lovely bein’ from the dry 

land!” But the sailor swims away, taking the rum with him. 

Mermaids 

and Martinis 

A brief history of the 

intoxicating allure of mermaids 

In “Mermaid Stories,” a writer named Lovejoy tells the true-life tale of a ship’s 

crew feasting on a mermaid dinner in 1737. The mermaid was “a buxom 

specimen” who tasted like veal. “When they are first taken,” the ship’s captain 

reported, “they cry and grieve with great sensibility.” A turn-of-the-century 

newspaper article reported that Japanese fishermen cooked and ate a mermaid, 

wanting to test the legend that anyone eating one will live a thousand years. The 

men found the mermaid “exceedingly palatable, much superior in taste to bream 

or a carp.” 

While any well-traveled gentleman’s matchbook collection will demonstrate visits 

to various seaside mermaid restaurant-lounges, most modern mermaids are on the 

menu only for show—for all their romantic allure and whimsical kink. Mermaids, 

singing and naked, have lured sailors into the rocks for as long as men have sailed 

the sea, so small wonder they’ve been used to peddle liquor since the days of 

Shakespeare. While it’s unknown if Shakespeare himself visited the Mermaid 

Tavern of 17th century London, the saloon did attract a gang of raucous wits. 

(“What things have we seen/ Done at the Mermaid!” writes Francis Beaumont 

in a poem.) 

Since then, the mermaid has held a curious place in the history of advertising. 

Whether she’s bare-breasted or wearing a brassiere of oyster shells and kelp, she 

often seems as chaste as she does seductive, both corrupting and incorruptible. 

MERMAIDS AND COCKTAILS 

Sorting through the collection of an 

eBay seller called matchbookalbumstore 

offers a glimpse into the 20th century 

history of the mermaid as cocktail 

waitress. There’s the matchbook souvenir 

from Cattleman’s Cove, of Atascadero, 

California, which articulates the steak 

and seafood offerings with a picture 

of a cowboy-hatted rancher standing 

dangerously close to a mermaid on a 

rock. The Mermaid Club of Osage 

Beach, Missouri, promises “continuous 

mermaid dancers.” The Sailor Arm’s, 

a bar on Florida Street in Milwaukee, 

features a topless mermaid in its ads 

(complete with little dots for nipples) 

sitting in the hook of a phallic anchor. 

The matchbook illustration for the 

“air conditioned” Herring Run Bar and 

Restaurant of Massachusetts depicts 

a rather harried-looking mermaid 

attempting to balance a tray of martinis 

as she rides some waves. Meanwhile, 

the mermaids on the matchbook for 

the Riviera Party House of Lucerne, 

California, enjoy martinis of their own 

while a-swim in a giant martini glass— 

serving as sexy swizzle sticks beckoning 

men to the party, while also somewhat 

implying shrimp cocktail. 

MERMAIDS AND MAD MEN 

In 20th century magazine advertising, 

visions of mermaids were no longer 

limited to rummy sailors. After World 

War II, with the growing influence of 

the ad agencies of Madison Avenue, 

advertising spoke directly to the 

American man’s need to assert his 

masculinity, to his desire to restore 

traditions in a country determined to 

disrupt them. During the war, women 

took on jobs and family roles they weren’t 

inclined to give back. The mermaid was 

a way to strip women naked and make 

them playful and servile; she became the 

lady of choice for a gentleman’s cocktail 

culture. And mid-20th-century ads began 

to resemble Playboy cartoons. 

A mermaid has been part of the 

advertising for Woolsey marine paint for 

decades. An ad in 1949 promotes “better 

‘slip’ and real anti-fouling protection” 

alongside a cartoon of sexy-cute “Minnie 

the Woolsey Mermaid” swimming behind 

a racing sailboat. The exasperated 

hobbyist-sailor screams at her for holding 

him back. She explains, “I’m not holding 

Timothy Schaffert is the author of five novels, most 

recently The Swan Gondola. He is a professor of 

English at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Learn more 

at timothyschaffert.com. 

you—I’m pushing you! Otherwise 

you’d be last!” 

While Minnie’s perky breasts were 

nippleless, the mermaid in a 1948 ad 

for Van Heusen shirts hides her nipples 

with a few carefully rippling locks of 

hair as she swims up to a fully dressed, 

professional gentleman cupped in an 

oyster shell. In a cartoon illustration 

for an ad for water heaters, a scuba diver 

sits at the bottom of the sea with a 

zaftig mermaid in his lap; the nipples 

of her ample bosoms are covered by 

twin starfish. 

A 1950 ad for Cock ’n Bull ginger 

beer features a cartoon mermaid with 

pointy nippleless breasts looking in a 

hand mirror and adjusting her pearls. 

The caption next to her reminds us she 

doesn’t exist: “Just another fish story. 

No angler ever caught one. Or saw 

one, either!” 

It’s worth noting that a Woolite ad, 

likely geared toward women, includes 

similar bare-breasted mermaids in its 

cartoon, and those mermaids are doing 

the laundry and hanging their pajamas 

on an underwater clothesline. The 

presumably male scuba diver, however, 

is washing his own socks. 

16 faeriemag.com 17

Faerie 

Knitting 

with 

Alice Hoffman and Lisa Hoffman 

Photography by Gale Zucker. Model Ali Weiss. 

Find 

Lisa’s vest 

pattern on 

page 94. 

This is the way she knew he was gone: The door was 

open. His boots were missing. The cage where he 

kept a hawk was empty. He’d never said a word. The 

night before he went missing he’d gathered the firewood, 

cleaned the pots, fed the hawk. 

She ran out the door, barefoot, crying his name 

so loudly that all the birds in the trees rose up in one 

achingly blue cloud. She went to the edge of the lake and 

saw him on the other side. The water was black that day. 

His boat was on the shore directly across from her. The 

hawk was on his shoulder, but it flew back to her. The 

hawk, at least, was loyal. He, however, did not answer her 

calls. And he wasn’t alone. There was a woman waiting 

for him. That was when her heart broke into two pieces 

that fell into the grass. 

She went home, her heart in her hands. She kept her 

broken heart in a glass jar on her bedside table. In the 

dark, the glass glowed with pale red heat. She shared 

her dinners with the hawk. Bones, turnips, onions, only 

bitter things. One night she dreamed the man who had 

left her told her he’d never really loved her. When she 

woke she took a knife and cut off her long hair. It was the 

part of her he’d said he loved best. He insisted she wear 

it long, and she’d done as he asked, even though it was 

often tangled and difficult to comb. Now it was in a pile 

in a corner. 

People started to talk about her, so she stayed away 

from town. Everyone knew she wasn’t the same. If you 

looked at her carefully you could see the space where her 

heart should be. It was empty, like a cloud inside her, the 

color a dim gray. To hide what she was missing, she took 

two sticks from the kindling and then reached for the pile 

of her own hair. She began to knit a vest so that no one 

could see what was missing inside her. 

Without her heart she could no longer feel and she was 

grateful for that. She had felt enough when she lost her 

heart by the black lake. She worked in the garden in the 

hot sun all day long and was never tired. She stood knee 

deep in the ice-cold lake to catch fish and didn’t shiver. 

When she knitted, her fingers never hurt even though the 

needles were made of splintering sticks. When it was dark 

she curled up in bed to knit by the light of her own heart. 

Moths were drawn to the red light. But she felt nothing. 

Brokenhearted 

A fairy tale by Alice Hoffman 

Her heart was like a caged bird. It called to her, but she 

didn’t answer. 

The vest was done in no time. She wore it day and 

night so no one could tell how empty she was. Then one 

day the hawk flew into the woods and she followed. She 

found a man in the woods whose legs had been broken 

when he fell from a tree. She helped him home. When he 

leaned heavily on her, she didn’t feel any pain. He was a 

carpenter who’d been looking for wood he would make 

into tables and chairs. She let him sleep on her porch and 

she didn’t feel a thing when he thanked her and took her 

hand in his. 

But the pieces of her heart encased in glass burned even 

more brightly through the night. 

The doctor came and set the carpenter’s legs and said 

he couldn’t walk for four months. He would be a burden, 

but she didn’t mind. She had no heart, she didn’t care 

about anything, not how handsome he was, or how kind. 

When the hawk ate from his hand, nothing bitter, only 

berries, the carpenter said nothing should be kept in a 

cage. She thought of her heart, that bird in a glass cage. 

The carpenter ate supper with her, and in the evenings 

he made a set of beautiful wooden bowls as a gift. He fell 

in love with her when the snow began to fall. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” she told him. She 

showed him her heart in its glass container. She said it 

could never be put back together. But he was a carpenter, 

used to fixing things. He shook his head and smiled. He 

vowed he’d find a way. 

“Impossible,” she said. The carpenter’s legs were now 

healed enough for him to leave. “Go before I’m awake. 

Don’t say goodbye.” 

Instead he stayed awake all night. He’d often watched 

her knit in the evenings, and now he took up the needles. 

In the morning she saw what he’d done. He’d cut off all of 

his hair and used the strands to knit a pocket on her vest. 

Into that he’d placed the pieces of her heart. The longer 

she wore her heart in the pocket, the more it mended, 

until one day it was a whole heart, inside her once more. 

She still wears that vest, even though she’s a married 

woman now, and her husband knows all there is to know 

about her heart. He gave it back to her, and no matter 

what happens, she doesn’t intend to let go of it again. 

Alice Hoffman is the New York Times best-selling author of over twenty books for adults, children, and young adults, including Practical 

Magic, The Dovekeepers, Nightbird, and The Museum of Extraordinary Things. Her latest novel, The Marriage of 

Opposites, was published by Simon & Schuster. Find out more at alicehoffman.com. 

18 faeriemag.com 

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19

VISIONS of ENCHANTMENT 

Sadie Stein Ventures Into Annie Stegg’s Mythic World 

A 

dragon-like sea monster rears above a ship, terrifying 

in its unleashed rage, yet beautiful—delicate scales, a 

sinuous grace to its form. 

A maiden cautiously steps into a fairy ring, her garments 

diaphanous, her expression concerned. Around her, fées, elves, 

and animals of the forest—each as clear as a photograph—look 

on watchfully. 

To enter Annie Stegg’s world is, like her maiden, to enter a 

world of enchantment. It is a universe populated with dragons 

and gnomes, flying horses and mermaids. And always powerful, 

intriguing women. Says Stegg, “Women have borne, nurtured, 

and raised every great figure the world has ever known. 

Women’s story, however commonplace-seeming when seen 

against the backdrop of great kings and terrible wars and the 

rise and fall of nations, deserves to be heard in all its humanity, 

beauty, tenderness, and strength.” However, Stegg’s vision of 

feminine power is expansive. “I don’t think you have to play up 

women as superheroes who go around fighting giants and killing 

bad guys to show them as strong. I think that sort of thinking 

is a trap that well-intentioned but misguided men have laid 

for women. They establish that strength in combat is the chief 

virtue, and then they throw a bone to women as if to say, ‘See, 

women can be cool too!’—if they are tough warriors in the 

masculine mold. But this is to deny that there is so much more 

depth to our humanity and that women have something unique 

and wonderful to contribute to our story.” 

These are lovely images, no question—Stegg combines 

the whimsical delicacy and sepia palette of Arthur Rackham 

with a rococo lushness. She cites Fragonard and Boucher’s oil 

paintings as inspirations, as well as the Pre-Raphaelites. But this 

world is not a safe one. A hint of darkness is always hidden just 

beyond the sightline. 

An artist from her earliest years, Stegg, who lives in Georgia, 

was drawn from childhood to fairy tales, folklore, and the 

nature of her native South. “Mythology has always fascinated 

me,” she says. “On the one hand it shows our common lives 

thrown against the dramatic and timeless backdrop of gods and 

angels, heaven and eternity. It gives us a glimpse into people 

from another time in a world that is often magical yet still not 

unlike our own. We get to see what the hopes and fears were 

for the people of that place and time, and by comparison, we 

can examine our own lives so that we can see what is mere 

superficiality and what is integral to our humanity. 

“On the other hand these are the stories that defined our 

early human culture. They are some of the most classic of tales, 

from a time before books and television, when people had to 

pass down oral stories from generation to generation as a means 

to impart wisdom from one generation to the next. I find that 

we as humans aren’t really so different from those people, and 

so I think there is a lot to be gleaned from mythology.” 

After graduating from the Art Institute of Atlanta with a 

degree in fine arts in 2004, Stegg began working in a range of 

media, including acrylics, oils, and watercolor. She does not just 

paint figures; she designs complete universes of fully realized 

characters—sometimes literally: Stegg is in demand as a 

character and story designer for gaming and publishing clients. 

Meanwhile, fittingly, in her work and the courses she teaches, 

Stegg combines traditional methods with the new visual 

opportunities afforded by digital technology. The results are at 

once modern and timeless. 

She and her husband Justin—a frequent collaborator—work 

from home. Her studio is a light-filled sunroom overlooking 

a forest and a garden filled with mossy boulders, ferns, and 

flowers. Says Stegg, “There are lots of little places for birds, 

toads, and lizards to make homes. So when I work I am mostly 

seeing the leaves swaying in the background, which is an ideal 

environment for the type of work I like to do.” (She is now 

working on a painting of a frog prince.) 

Stegg is inspired by well-known stories, but she looks 

beneath the surface. Long captured by the bittersweet story of 

Thumbelina, she cites one particular passage of Hans Christian 

Andersen’s: 

During the whole summer poor little Tiny lived quite alone 

in the wide forest. She wove herself a bed with blades of 

grass and hung it up under a broad leaf, to protect herself 

from the rain. She sucked the honey from the flowers for 

food and drank the dew from their leaves every morning. So 

passed away the summer and the autumn, and then came the 

winter—the long, cold winter. All the birds who had sung to 

her so sweetly were flown away, and the trees and the flowers 

had withered. 

This passage led Stegg to wonder about Thumbelina’s life, 

and to her series Thumbelina and the Four Seasons. “I couldn’t 

help but imagine all the adventures Thumbelina had on her 

own living in the forest—how a world that we know so well 

could become so different if we were miniature like her. How 

would she handle everyday problems? What creatures could 

she befriend? What places would she visit?” Her Thumbelina 

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21

Title 

Summer 2016 

lives in a world of imagination—imperious, beruffled toads, 

regal songbirds—yet her constant vigilance, the sense of powers 

beyond her control, are ever present. 

In her Daughters of Oceanus series, Stegg again extends her 

protection to young women. Taking her inspiration from Greco- 

Roman mythology, Stegg portrays the water spirits—daughters 

of Okeanos and Tethys who not merely looked after Earth’s 

water but after maidens. Each of her characters—the dignified 

Styx, the lovelorn Klytie, the direct Lilaia—is a fully realized 

personality, her mythological beginnings only the beginning of 

her ever-expanding story. 

Women in Mythology expands her influences to include the 

lore of many cultures: In this series, Stegg portrays the Syrian 

Atargatis—said by some to be the original mermaid—as well 

as the siren of Greek mythology and Blodeuwedd the Welsh 

owl maiden. And as with so many of her works, Stegg brings 

a sweet subversion to her re-imaginings. Her Leda is gently 

partnered with a swan, her medieval maiden carefully cradles 

a unicorn—not to entrap but to safeguard the creature. As 

she explains, “I wanted to illustrate an instance where someone 

didn’t want to give the unicorn to its captor and instead hid it to 

keep it safe, preserving the innocence of both involved.” 

Then there are the more contemporary influences. Her 

portrait of Daenerys Targaryen shows us the Game of Thrones 

character as mythological being, as timeless as one of Stegg’s 

classical subjects. The Mother of Dragons lies on a divan, for 

all the world like a Venus—but her hand is extended to an 

alert, adolescent dragon that, even pale and serene, hints at 

leashed violence. 

A painting of Odysseus menaced by the sea monster Scylla 

and the angry whirlpool Charybdis is genuinely terrifying. 

Even here, however, the focus is on the angered and transformed 

nymphs, once beautiful, now monstrous. There is an inner life, a 

deeper interest, the well-known mythology merely the beginning 

of Stegg’s universe. 

And always there is the backdrop of the natural world—alive, 

secret, captured with a naturalist’s eye and a poet’s sensibility. 

Her dragons, for instance, have the detail and delicacy of a 

paleontologist’s rendering, but the components—head, fangs, 

scales, tail, watchful eyes—are a product of her imagination, an 

imagination as inspired by the natural as it is by the enchanted. 

Says Stegg, “There are so many little dramas and tiny miracles 

going on all around us all the time. No matter what interesting 

fiction we might come up with in our imaginations, the actual 

world around us seems to always have something even more 

fascinating and inspiring happening in it, if we only take time 

to look.” 

P 

See more of Annie Stegg’s work at anniestegg.com. 

Sadie Stein is a writer and contributing editor to The Paris Review. 

Find her on Instagram @sadieo and Twitter @sadiestein. 

22 


23

The Mythic Geography of 

ALES 

by Massie Jones 

© Stockimo/shutterstock.com 

My mother imbued my childhood with fairy tales and 

stories of magic and noble deeds, so it’s no wonder 

I was attracted to Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising 

series in elementary school. The protagonist is a young boy 

named Will Stanton, who discovers that he’s the last of the Old 

Ones, a mysterious group who live out of time and have many 

connections to Arthurian legends. I learned of Bird’s Rock, a 

possible final resting place of Arthur and his knights. I read 

about the huge mountain Cadair Idris and the magical great 

gray foxes that lived atop it in the mist. I learned of the beautiful 

little Welsh town of Tywyn and the bottomless glacial lake Tal 

Y Llyn. I loved the Welsh language and took much pleasure in 

figuring out how to pronounce such names as Aberystwyth and 

Llanfairpwllgwyngyll. 

I remember walking across a field in my hometown when I 

faeriemag.com 

25 

was thirteen. It was nighttime, the end of spring. The wind blew 

my hair back. I lifted my head and looked at the stars and felt 

this power all around me and in me and on the wind and I could 

only think of the Susan Cooper books and how this is what Will 

Stanton must have felt like when he discovered that he was an 

Old One. 

As I got older, I read books like The Mists of Avalon, The Once 

and Future King, and Le Morte d’Arthur. I loved the stories of the 

magical sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, and Merlin. I 

wasn’t interested at all in Queen Guinevere, but I was fascinated 

by the complicated “evil” sorceress Morgana le Fey and all the 

mystery that surrounded her. I dreamed of riding horses through 

mountains with my friends, sleeping under the stars and cooking 

over a fire every night on our way to slay a dragon or rescue 

someone in danger.

Wales 

Massie Jones 

Last year, as I was contemplating where to go on vacation, 

it occurred to me that Wales is a real place. The places I’d 

read about in so many books actually exist, and I could go see 

places like Bird’s Rock, where Will Stanton went to meet with 

the Kings of Old. I could climb Cadair Idris and visit places 

where Excalibur might be hidden. My belly twisted with wild 

excitement as I bought my plane ticket. I couldn’t believe that I 

was going to a place where dragons once flew and King Arthur 

lived and might actually be buried. All these places were either 

in Snowdonia National Park or near it. But for some reason, 

my eyes kept returning to this tiny dot on the map marking the 

nearby town of Corris. As a firm believer in doing things that 

make no sense, I looked up places to stay in Corris and found the 

Corris Hostel, a vegetarian eco-friendly hostel that was smack in 

the middle of everything I wanted to see. 

Traveling to Corris was an agony of excitement. I flew from 

the United States to Manchester and then hopped on a train 

for a four-and-a-half-hour ride to Aberystwyth, twenty-eight 

miles from Corris but the nearest place to rent a car. I don’t 

think I blinked for the entire train ride, I was so afraid I’d miss 

the moment when England turned into Wales. I gasped out 

loud when I saw the first train station sign written in Welsh. It 

suddenly felt like every fairy tale I had ever heard was real—or 

could be real. 

The Corris Hostel is in an old slate schoolhouse that seems to 

grow out of the ferns and brambles. The owners, Michael and 

Debra, are delightful, enchanting hosts—literally. Michael is a 

geomancer who can talk to the Earth and will tell you all about 

it over a bottle of home-brewed cider. The pair live just up the 

road from the hostel and come by every evening to light a fire in 

the great room and chat about your day. Debra’s thirteen-yearold 

daughter Kimberly would sometimes come down with them, 

and I got some great information about jackdaws and the Welsh 

language from her. Every morning, one of Kimberly’s black cats 

would roam in from the woods and join me for coffee. 

The village of Corris is one narrow street lined with two-story 

stone cottages, tucked into a steep valley formed by the ancient 

Cambrian Mountains. A silver spring tumbles through the center 

of town and makes the air smell of icy water. The main street 

has a post office, an arts center, a pub, and a mercantile owned 

by Adam and Andy, who live up the mountain. Every day, they 

bring eggs from their chickens, vegetables from their garden, and 

pasties (or baked pastries) made from scratch to sell in the shop. 

After a restful first day in Corris, I had a long conversation 

with Kimberly by the fire in the great room of the hostel. She 

was born and raised in the town, and the magic of the land is 

so engrained in her that she is not even aware of it. I told her 

that I had come to Wales to see all the places I had read about 

in stories, and she told me that the most beautiful little waterfall 

in the country was straight up the mountain directly behind the 

hostel. I decided that this would be my first adventure. 

The Most Beautiful Little Waterfall in Wales 

After a Welsh breakfast of grilled mushrooms and toast, I 

left the hostel and headed up the mountain road. I went to 

where the road ended and the woods began to form a shining, 

green tunnel of ferns and trees. I walked on a wide path of 

pine needles with low antique slate walls on one side and the 

mountain sloping up sharply on the other. After about a half 

hour I was a quarter of the way up the mountain, and squarely 

in the middle of nowhere. There were no other people to be seen 

anywhere. So it was very odd when I looked up the hill and saw 

a little house drowning in four- or five-foot-tall replicas of famous 

structures from all over the world. There was the Leaning Tower 

of Pisa, overgrown with thick moss and jack-in-the-pulpits, the 

Parthenon, and the Arc de Triomphe. Bright scarlet viburnum, 

which grows everywhere in Wales, was bursting from the 

sculptures’ windows and doorways. 

I wondered at the sculptures for a long time. Why were they 

here, where only a handful of hikers would ever see them? 

Hundreds of structures being slowly consumed by the forest. 

This was Wales, where striking beauty is both everywhere 

and hidden. 

I continued up the pathway to the top of the mountain, with 

only the sounds of water tipping off silver leaves to accompany 

me. At the apex, a break in the tree line revealed a panoramic 

view of the valley and surrounding mountains. A large, flat rock 

sat in the tree-line break on the edge of the drop to the valley, 

and behind it, a gorgeous ruin of a slate quarry with arched 

doorways led into the forest. After poking around in the ruins, I 

sat on the rock and closed my eyes to let it all soak in. 

Just up the trail from the rock and quarry, I rounded a bend 

and came upon my destination—the most beautiful little 

waterfall in Wales. It wasn’t big, just a couple of feet wide, but 

it rushed down from high above me and spilled into a clear, 

quartz-colored pool where it stilled. Arcs of brambles shaded 

the pool from the summer sun, and purple foxgloves grew out 

of every possible crack in the rock. Carpets of soft moss formed 

hummocks all around the woods, and marsh hair moss, with its 

spikey pink spears, poked out of the underbrush. Kimberly had 

told me you could swim in the pool, and even though it was cool 

outside, I took off my boots and splashed around, feeling the 

smooth rocks at the bottom. When the sun made it through the 

leaves overhead, the water turned gold and the air smelled like 

dirt and trees and ozone. It’s difficult to feel separate from the 

Earth’s magic in a place like this. 

Craig yr Aderyn (Bird’s Rock) 

The next day, I decided to go to one of the places on my list, 

Craig yr Aderyn (Bird’s Rock in English), which I knew from two 

literary references. In The Grey King, one of the books in The Dark 

Is Rising sequence, Will Stanton finds a secret doorway in Bird’s 

Rock that takes him inside some of the oldest hills in Britain. 

And in the epic poem King Arthur, Edward Bulwer-Lytton has some 

beautiful verses that reference a battle fought on Bird’s Rock: 

So from the Rock of Birds the shout of war 

Sends countless wings in clamour thro’ the sky— 

The cause a word, the track a sign affords, 

And all the forest gleams with starry swords. 

Among some King Arthur nerds, Craig yr Aderyn is purported 

to be one of the possible final resting places where King Arthur’s 

knights are buried, entombed under more than 800 feet of 

solid rock. 

Using the hand-drawn map Debra made for me that morning, 

I drove into the Dysynni Valley on a road so narrow that my car 

was brushed on either side by tall grasses towering over the roof. 

The rolling green hills were dotted with sheep—hundreds of sheep. 

Craig yr Aderyn rises sharply from the south bank of the lazy 

Dysynni River and is the only brown in sight. It is a night nesting 

spot for thousands of cormorants and is eerie with their cries in 

the evening. 

There are two pathways up Bird’s Rock, a hard one and an easy 

one. I didn’t learn that until later, so I unwittingly took the hard 

one. Sometimes it is better to do your research instead of trusting 

the magic of the Earth. 

As I labored up the side of the rock with the sun beating down 

in my face, I heard an odd (and slightly alarming) rustling in the 

gorse. Suddenly, a sheep poked her head out of the thick brush 

and said, “Baaaaaaaa!” in a very annoyed tone. 

The top of the rock is all crags and nooks, so I wandered about 

looking for a crevice that might be the doorway into the oldest hills 

and sleeping knights. I wedged myself into lots of little places that 

day, but alas! No secret doorway, no knights. Just epic, sweeping 

vistas of the valleys and mountains and the incessant bleating of 

sheep hidden in the bushes. 

I have to admit, I was sunburned, exhausted, and heat sick by 

the time I got to the top of Bird’s Rock. The weather in Wales is 

notoriously gray and drizzly, so I hadn’t planned on the possibility 

of a blazing summer afternoon. On the way back down, amid the 

clumps of shed sheep’s wool that drift about, I found a small stone, 

a piece of Bird’s Rock that I put in my pocket to take home. 

Llyn Barfog (The Bearded Lake) 

I spent the next day lying around the hostel, reading, grilling 

some vegetables from Adam and Andy’s, generally recovering 

from being sun sick, and planning my next day’s adventure to Llyn 

Barfog. This is the story of Llyn Barfog: 

Once upon a time, in a lake so overgrown with lily pads it was 

given the name “Bearded Lake,” there lived an Afanc, a magical 

creature made of clay and water who was given life by a sorcerer. 

The Afanc caused many troubles for the people of the valley. 

Its thrashing about caused the waters of the lake to overflow 

All photos, except where noted, are ©Massie Jones. 

26 

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and flood the valley, and the people could not swim in the lake 

for fear the Afanc would eat them—it would sometimes even 

venture from the water to raid the countryside. King Arthur 

heard of the misfortunes of the valley people and decided to 

slay the Afanc. He rode up the mountain on his horse, Llamrai, 

threw a great chain around the Afanc, dragged it from Llyn 

Barfog, and killed it. Llamrai strained so hard to pull the Afanc 

from the lake that he left a deep hoof print in the rock. 

Today, there are no marked paths to Llyn Barfog, so I checked 

with my lovely hosts and got some general driving directions to 

the base of one of the hills nearby. I parked at a farm, and 

found a sign for Llyn Barfog—an arrow pointing up. There 

are no designated pathways, no markers, no people to ask 

where to go, just sheepfolds and the low stone walls that mark 

ancient boundaries. 

I had this feeling that I would just know where to go, so I 

clambered over the stone walls and climbed the nearest hillside 

and roamed, startling the ever-present sheep. I roamed for 

many hours in the gray drizzle of the afternoon and began to 

wonder why on earth I thought I would know where to go. As I 

questioned my sanity, I crested the top of a hill and there it was! 

Just beyond a rusted-out sheep gate, I could see the waters of 

the lake and the lily pads. The place of so many of my waking 

dreams, waiting for me. 

I scrambled over the gate and down a sheep path to the reedy 

banks, where I sat down and listened to the wind and the water 

and the skee-skee of water bugs skidding across the lake. In the 

distance, I could see a cairn, from which, once I ascended the 

hill to reach it, I could see another cairn, in the distance, on 

another hilltop. As I stood by the cairn with my hand on a cool 

rock damp with rain, I imagined a line of men, an army, King 

Arthur’s army, standing here and looking for the next marker 

that would guide them through the hills they had to climb. 

I left the cairn to wander across the hilltop. Little caves are 

tucked into the sides of the hills, their entrances obscured by 

tall grasses and bell flowers. I wondered if any of them could 

be where the greatest wizard, Myrddin Emrys, or Merlin, lay 

sleeping. There is magic at the top of the hill where Llyn Barfog 

lies. You can feel it in the wind that sweeps across and smell it 

in the air, like lightning. My skin was tingly from the soft, misty 

drizzle, and everything felt vaguely electric. There is wild magic 

there. Many sites claim to be the resting place of Merlin, just as 

many claim to be the resting place of King Arthur, but I know 

that if I’m ever in the presence of one of these places, the magic 

will let me know. 

Just beyond the crest of a rise, I saw a rectangular slate 

marker in the middle of a field with the word echo and an arrow 

scratched into it. Of course, I headed off in the direction of the 

arrow, yelling every few hundred feet to see if there was an echo. 

I yelled off and on for hours, but I never found the place. Gazing 

from the tops of the hill out all the way to the sea, past green 

mountains upon green mountains, I wasn’t too sad though. 

On the way back down from the hilltop, I saw the rock where 

Llamrai left his hoof print and stopped by the banks of Llyn 

Barfog to pick the most perfect lily pad to press and save. 

Almost nine hours had passed since I parked at the base of 

hill; it felt like only two. 

Cadair Idris 

I spent the evening enjoying a few pints at the pub in Corris. 

I’m not a big drinker, but the beer in Wales is irresistibly 

delicious. When I entered the pub that evening, a raucous game 

of dominoes was going on, and it seemed like the whole town 

had turned out to watch. I took my beer out to the sidewalk and 

chatted with some locals about my next day’s adventure. 

There’s a lot of folklore about Cadair Idris. In Welsh, Cadair 

means “seat” and Idris was a medieval Welsh king who was 

also a giant. Idris was said to have studied the stars from the top 

of Cadair Idris. It is well known that if you spend the night at 

the summit, you will wake either a poet or a madman. 

In the Susan Cooper books, a great evil known as the Brenin 

Llwyd, or Grey King, lives at the peak of Cadair Idris and can 

summon a thick fog that completely obscures vision in seconds 

and leads the unwary to their deaths. The milgwn, or huge gray 

foxes that live on the mountain, have been bent to the will of the 

Grey King and attack when no ordinary fox would. 

Cadair Idris is also translated as “Arthur’s Seat,” and in some 

stories it’s where Arthur made his kingdom. Llyn Cau, a glacial 

lake that lies just below the summit, may be a final resting place 

for Excalibur, King Arthur’s famous sword. 

The way to Cadair Idris is well marked. I was a little 

apprehensive about the long climb up the mountain, as well as 

the presence of other tourists. My trip to Wales thus far had been 

quite solitary, and I liked it that way. I felt more able to connect 

with any magical kind of energy when there was silence. But 

how could I pass on climbing a beautiful mountain that has so 

many legends surrounding it? 

It was a cold, dark, rainy afternoon when I headed over to 

the car park at the base of the mountain and started up with 

a handful of other people. Fortunately, I am slow and lazy, so 

the other hikers quickly left me behind to enjoy a little peace 

and quiet. 

The walk up the mountain was long and relentlessly sloping. 

A creek with small waterfalls accompanies you and provides 

beautiful little resting spots on your way up. I ambled up the path, 

climbing over slippery rocks as the mountain mist grew thicker. 

The thing I love about walking in the rain is how green and lush 

the plants and mosses and leaves look. The closer I got to the top, 

the thicker the mist became, and the more the feeling of magic 

in the air became palpable. A little bit of fear crept in … would I 

see a milgwn? Was there an evil residing in the mist? 

As I breathlessly clambered toward the freezing peak, the 

trail dipped down to a rocky beach and the shores of Llyn Cau. 

This would be a magnificent place to swim, but not on a cold 

rainy day. 

There is a lot of speculation about which lake in Britain holds 

Excalibur in its depths. Llyn Cau is one that’s always named. 

According to some legends, the Lady of the Lake—some say she 

was the high priestess of Avalon, or possibly the Lady Nimue, 

lover of Merlin—gave Arthur his sword, which was imbued 

with a magic that allowed him to win so many of his battles. 

Because Excalibur had so much magical power, the Lady of the 

Lake asked that the sword be returned to her upon his death. In 

Arthurian legend, Sir Bedivere and Arthur alone survived the last 

battle, the Battle of Camlann. As Arthur lay mortally wounded, 

he commanded Bedivere to throw Excalibur into the lake. 

With the heavy mist clinging to my hair, sticking my clothes 

to my body, I slipped and slid down the little rocky trail to the 

lakeshore. I could easily imagine an exhausted, battle-worn 

Bedivere catching sight of a lady’s arm rising from the waters 

of Llyn Cau to catch Excalibur as he threw it into the lake. The 

fog hanging low over the lake and crowning the summit above 

me increased the undeniable feeling of otherworldliness … the 

breath of the Brenin Llwyd. 

After spending a day at Cadair Idris, I could see how a night 

there would make me a madman or, more hopefully, a poet. The 

wild magic is strong, despite the cadres of hikers milling around. 

It’s in the mist that covers you like a wool blanket. The tiredness 

I felt from climbing seemed to run out of me and into the Earth 

as I sat and imagined all the stories of the giant King Idris, the 

Grey King, and Sir Bedivere. I found a perfectly oval gray rock 

and tucked it in my pocket, then sat for a long while until the 

cold forced me to my feet and back down the mountain. 

This was my trip of a lifetime—to see places that I could not 

believe actually existed and to take little pieces of them home 

with me, to remind me every day that legends and fairy tales 

are real. 

Learn more about the Corris Hostel at corrishostel.co.uk. 

Massie Jones is a fiber artist, gemologist, and seeker of mythological 

adventure. She’s currently pursuing a degree in cellular and molecular biology. 


29

Baltimore Knife and Sword 


As you wind through Patapsco State Park, just north of 

Baltimore, passing a flagstone-encrusted quarry and 

crossing a defunct train track that parallels a charming 

stream, you come to a quiet little valley where sparks fly and 

hammers forge. Stepping into a rustic blacksmith shop, you 

might be going back in time. Pieces of suits of armor hang from 

the walls and detailed, hand-forged hunks of metal are scattered 

around, in various stages of refinement. Massive machines 

from bygone times loom over everything, like creatures from 

the deep sea. 

This is where, on any given day, the smiths at Baltimore Knife 

and Sword craft everything from traditional pirate cutlasses to 

Renaissance-era Katzbalgers to Japanese katanas to the kind 

of broadsword King Arthur might have wielded. Last year, 

they introduced their version of a Khopesh—a “really wildshaped 

Egyptian sword,” as co-owner and smith Matt Stagmer 

describes it. This year, they’ll reproduce a 400-year-old Chinese 

sword that a friend found described in an obscure fight manual. 

As Stagmer says, the smiths at Baltimore Knife and Sword are 

“literally bringing history to life.” 

Imagine living in medieval Russia or during the Revolutionary 

War. Or imagine running with the elves in The Lord of the Rings 

or trying to rescue the princess in The Legend of Zelda. To bring 

the weapons from these periods and stories to life, Stagmer and 

the other smiths imagine that they themselves inhabit these farflung 

times and places. “Say I want to make a Scottish baskethilt 

sword, which was made famous in Rob Roy,” Stagmer says. 

“I’ll look at fifty different types of Scottish basket hilts and then 

use that inspiration to create my own design. What we do most 

of the time is take a large body of historical references and then 

imagine we’re actually blacksmiths working in that culture.” 

Not surprisingly, the smiths at Baltimore Knife and Sword are 

obsessed with history and have a huge library between them of 

not only historical weaponry texts but also books of paintings 

and textiles and anything else that might offer a glimpse of some 

gleaming long-lost blade. “You have to be a bit of a Sherlock 

Holmes about some things here and there,” Stagmer says. 

“You’ll see something like a coat with some striking embroidery 

pattern and then, later, find an unclaimed suit of armor with 

the same pattern and start putting pieces together.” 

Occasionally, dipping into history can come full circle. “One 

piece that I first saw in one of my favorite books, Blades of the 

American Revolution, was just a normal-shaped cutlass guard from 

the Revolutionary War. Nothing fancy about it. But it had two 

very distinct hearts cut out on either side of the blade.” Stagmer 

made a replica of the sword, and it became hugely popular for 

a number of years with both male and female clients. “And then 

recently I visited the Howard County Historical Society and 

that exact sword was there sitting in a case,” he says. “It was 

really neat to see the sword I’d copied from a book right there in 

front of me. When I held it, I was just like, Wow.” 

Not all the swords made at the shop are historical. Many 

come straight from fantasy, whether from a beloved book, film, 

or video game. The Lord of the Rings has been a huge inspiration 

for “just about anybody” doing swords and armor. “Everybody 

read The Hobbit in school,” Stagmer says. “In Maryland, you 

read it in sixth grade and again in seventh grade and eighth 

grade. For people who grew up as Dungeons & Dragons fans, 

The Lord of the Rings is kind of like the Holy Grail. You don’t 

only get knights; you get dwarves. You get wizards. You get 

elves.” Stagmer himself watched the movies “more times 

than I like to admit—really, at one point, every night.” He 

is inspired by the work of Peter Lyons, who designed the swords 

for the films. Indeed, one of the more popular swords the shop 

makes is the leaf blade based on Gandalf ’s sword, Glamdring. 

“We make between three and a dozen leaf blades every week. 

They combine Western-style sword mounts with your classic 

cruciform cross guard and pommel, all on a long, slender 

leaf blade, which is a beautiful thing. You don’t see too many 

of them.” 

While he’s clearly passionate about his work, Stagmer didn’t 

always plan to make swords. The company began when, in 

the early 1980s, his oldest brother Emory and a friend started 

making chain mail and selling it, first on the Ocean City, 

Maryland, boardwalk and then at the Maryland Renaissance 

Festival. Matt was just an infant when they decided to move 

on to other things, but another older brother, Kerry, took 

over and opened up Baltimore Knife and Sword. In the early 

days, Kerry focused on stage combat swords for jousters at 

Renaissance fairs. “For many years,” Stagmer says, “when the 

business was just Kerry’s, he made primarily two swords: a 

hand-and-a-half thirty-two-inch-long sword and a one-handed 

sword with rapiers.” 

Kerry was almost 100 percent self-taught, learning through 

trial and error and the occasional expert whose help he’d 

seek. “When he started, he just used a hand grinder to grind 

blades out of chunks of steel,” Stagmer says. “He didn’t know 

anything about heat treating or anything like that.” But slowly, 

his skills evolved—into a business with thousands of swords in 

its repertoire. 

What was it like to grow up around a blacksmith shop and 

those brilliant, shining weapons that might have been carried 

by Lancelot or Sir Gawain? As a kid, Stagmer loved the 

Renaissance festivals where Kerry hawked his wares—not only 

was he transported back to the world of the King Arthur books 

he loved so much, but he was adorned in elaborate custommade 

armor. “Little kids weren’t really allowed to wear armor 

and stuff at the fair,” Stagmer says now, “but I was Kerry’s little 

brother, and so nobody messed with me. And if the king or the 

queen of the fair were walking by with their armed guards, they 

would all bow to and acknowledge me. I grew up there, and 

I was spoiled a little bit because of it.” In that environment, 


BRinging Legends to Life 

BaltimoRe 

Knife aNd SwoRd 

by Carolyn Turgeon and photography by Steve Parke

Stagmer “wasn’t the weird kid anymore.” He was fifteen 

when he started rollerblading to his brother’s shop after 

school and working until late at night. For a long time he 

figured it was just a hobby. He thought he’d pursue a career 

in computers or art or even the military, but one day he 

woke up and decided that he would just devote himself to 

the work he’d been doing all along, work that allowed him 

to visit other worlds every day. 

Today, each smith in the shop—which remains small, 

with every sword guaranteed for life and passing through 

both Matt and Kerry’s hands—has a different specialty 

and different passions that drive them. After all those early 

years of trial and error, Kerry went on to become classically 

trained in metal work, studying with, among other masters, 

Valentin Yotkov, the world’s best at repoussé and chasing— 

ancient techniques for creating intricate, detailed designs 

on low-relief metal. Kerry now makes high-end jewelry in 

addition to working with swords. 

Another of Baltimore Knife and Sword’s smiths, Ilya 

Alekseyev, immerses himself in different cultures and is 

currently obsessed with Japanese katanas, even having 

learned to smelt his own steel according to traditional 

Japanese methods. As a result, the shop now offers “a 

pretty-close-to-traditional Japanese piece that’s all made 

here. And it’s from scratch, starting from iron-rich sand,” 

Stagmer says. Stagmer himself remains dedicated to sword 

making. “That’s what drives me. Sword making will never 

get boring because there’s always something else to do, 

something new to learn.” When asked about his favorite 

weapon, he does not hesitate to name the legendary sword 

of Charlemagne, Joyeuse, which was said to shine more 

brightly than the sun and could blind one’s enemies in 

battle. Plus, there are dragons—open-mouthed, forming 

the cross section of the grip. When asked if he’s ever tried 

to make the Joyeuse himself, Matt admits he hasn’t. “I think 

every artist puts certain things on a pedestal and always 

intends to get there—their thesis statement or their final 

project per se.” 

All the personalities and passions of Baltimore Knife 

and Sword’s smiths come to life on the shop’s hit YouTube 

show Man at Arms: Reforged, which features them all working 

together to build one fan-requested over-the-top fantasy 

weapon each episode. They’ve tackled swords like Loki’s 

staff from the Avengers movie, Arya’s Needle from Game 

of Thrones, the Green Destiny sword from Crouching Tiger, 

Hidden Dragon, the Gravity Hammer from the Halo video 

game, Hattori Hanzo’s katana from Kill Bill, and many 

more that your average person would never get to hold. In 

one episode, the team imagines what kind of sword Iron 

Man might carry (one designed in the software program 

AutoCAD, it turns out, and “so heavy it would take an 

exoskeleton to wield”). Translating each piece from fiction 

“Sword making will 

never get boring 

because there’s always 

something else to do, 

something new to learn.” 

—Matt Stagmer 

faeriemag.com

Baltimore Knife and Sword 


The 12th Annual 

to actual object requires all kinds of creativity, and each smith 

adds his or her own expertise to the mix. While Alekseyev may 

forge the metal, it’s Matt who usually grinds the blades, Kerry 

who operates the machines, Lauren Schott who does the casting 

(for special parts like the bright glass bulb on Loki’s staff), Sam 

Salvati who does general blacksmithing, and John Mitchell who 

helps in the fabrication. 

Man at Arms: Reforged illuminates every aspect of building 

a sword—from forging the blade to making the handle and 

pommel to the final assembly. Each build poses its own set of 

challenges, forcing the team to come up with solutions on the fly. 

Stagmer emphasizes problem-solving prowess as fundamental to 

a sword maker’s skill set. “My advice to aspiring sword makers 

is to, first, join the local blacksmith guild and, second, get really 

good at Sudoku and word-problem games,” he says. The show 

has a passionate fan base, with nearly 400 million views and 4.5 

million subscribers. 

And to think it all started with two friends who loved 

Dungeons and Dragons and started making chain mail by hand 

to bring that world to life. “I think there’s a resurgence in this 

country and worldwide of handcrafted goods,” Stagmer says. 

“These days, if you want to learn how to craft something and 

you’re sitting on your hands, then you’re a fool, because you 

can go onto YouTube and say, ‘I want to know how to make my 

own shoes’ and find a thousand different people who’ve posted 

about making shoes.” The most rewarding aspect of the show, 

Stagmer says, is hearing from those people. “I’ve gotten tons of 

emails from fans saying, ‘Hey, I know this has nothing to do with 

sword making, but watching your show really inspired me to 

dig out grandma’s sewing machine. And I’m making costumes 

now.’ Because they see someone literally starting from scratch 

and creating, and they realize, ‘I can do something like that too.’ 

And they look around and see what they have, and they do it.” 

Learn more about Baltimore Knife and Sword at imakeswords.com. 

Find Man at Arms: Reforged on YouTube’s Aweme channel. 

Follow Carolyn Turgeon on Instagram @carolynturgeon. 

See more of Steve Parke’s photography at steveparke.com. 


June 11-12, 2016 

Celebrating GNOMES! 

Arts & Crafts, Unique Vendors 

Live Music, Fun for All Ages! 

SPECIAL Evening Festivities. 

All weekend camping & 

cabins available. 

In DARLINGTON, Maryland 

Bring this ad for $1 off. 

www.marylandfaeriefestival.org 

A 501c3 non-profit organization

The Last Dragon in the World: 

Bavaria’s 

Drachenstich 

by Jill Gleeson 

Photography by Andreas Mühlbauer, 

Furth im Wald

Bavaria’s Drachenstich 

Jill Gleeson 

There’s a slight air of melancholy about this dragon, a 

sorrow born of disappointment in humans and the wars 

we make on each other, the fear that so often rules us and 

the brutality of which we’re capable. She’s no mere monster, 

despite the massive eyeteeth, nearly as long and thick as a man’s 

arm, and the claws that appear wicked enough to slice through 

flesh without the least pause. History says that this creature, 

once sympathetic to the populace of the land she roamed, gave 

them the gift of fire. 

But they’ve taken this offering and turned it into a weapon, 

using it against each other, and their bloodlust and pain have 

awakened the dragon from her peaceful slumber. Enraged, she 

spreads her magnificent wings, lets out a terrible, beautiful roar, 

and turns her fiery breath upon the people whose cruelty she 

could never surpass. Her judgment of mankind is as pitiless as it 

is unwavering. Unless someone stops her, she’ll lay waste to all in 

her path, innocent and devil alike. 

For more than a half-millennium this rousing parable of good 

versus evil has been performed each year in Furth im Wald, a tiny 

Bavarian town of 9,000 located a mile from the Czech border. 

Known as Drachenstich in German—Slaying (or Spearing) of the 

Dragon in English—it quite possibly may be Europe’s oldest folk 

play. Over the centuries it’s evolved from a simple reenactment 

of Saint George’s legendary battle against the dragon into a jawdropping 

three-hour Broadway-worthy spectacle that draws an 

audience of more than 1,600 people nightly. 

Boasting a sprawling cast of 300, Drachenstich’s undisputed 

star is its dragon, known as Fanny to the town’s residents. Built 

in 2010 by a consortium of twenty companies, she’s the world’s 

biggest walking robot according to Guinness World Records. Nearly 

fifteen feet tall, more than fifty feet long, and twelve-and-a-half 

feet wide, she weighs eleven tons and has a wingspan of almost 

forty feet. She’s longer than a whale shark, taller and far heavier 

than an elephant. But it’s more than Fanny’s size that dazzles. 

Throughout the course of Drachenstich she roars mightily, 

exhaling flames from her nostrils and spewing fire out of her 

mouth some thirteen feet into the air. Her eyes roll and narrow, 

her brows raise and furrow; sometimes, it seems, she grimaces 

with displeasure. Part of Fanny’s magic is indisputably born of 

her environment. Watching Drachenstich on the night-shadowy 

cobblestoned square of this ancient little town tucked away deep 

in the Bavarian forest helps give her life. 

Here under the stars, the blue air tinged with the scent of 

smoke drifting from torches held aloft in the play, the audience 

is whisked back to a long-ago time. For audience members who 

speak only English, sitting wide-eyed and breathless alongside 

equally enthralled German and Czech citizens, it matters not at 

all that the play’s lines are uttered in German. The old language, 

guttural and urgent-sounding, suits the material perfectly, and 

the meaning of the words is usually clear. Fear and hatred, love 

and sacrifice are universal conditions requiring no translation. 

The outdoor setting draws the audience in, too: There are stage 

lights but no stage separating viewers and actors, and evening 

birdsong competes with the actors’ amplified voices. For a 

few precious hours in Furth im Wald—for centuries known as 

the City of Dragons—the past becomes present and dragons 

become real. 

While the exact year Drachenstich was first performed remains 

unknown, historians believe it began as part of the Catholic 

Church’s Corpus Christi procession, evolving over time to 

include the archetypal “brave knight rescuing the fair maiden 

from an awful monster” plot that remains at its core. Bavarians 

and residents of Bohemia, as the Czech Republic was once 

known, flocked from the neighboring countryside each year 

to attend the play, thrilled to see the dragon—little more than 

burlap and leather at that point—die at the end of the hero’s 

lance. According to legend the spilled dragon’s blood could heal, 

and audience members sometimes soaked handkerchiefs in it. 

But the more popular the increasingly secular Drachenstich 

became, the more it angered Church hierarchy, until eventually 

the Bishop of Regensburg forbade its staging. Townspeople 

rioted, breaking the parish house windows and forcing the 

Church to relent. In 1879 the play was forever separated from 

the Corpus Christi procession, morphing into its own special 

event held each August. Some three decades later, the first 

modern dragon appeared in Drachenstich. The star of Richard 

Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, he’d been purchased from the Royal 

Bavarian Court Opera for thirty gold marks. Like any celebrity, 

the dragon traveled in style to its new home, making the journey 

from Munich to Furth im Wald in a reserved railway car. 

There would be two more dragons to menace Furth im Wald 

before Fanny’s arrival. The town blacksmith crafted one in 1947 

that was longer than Fanny and took four men inside to operate. 

At the end of each performance, a cow’s bladder filled with 

bovine blood was split open to simulate the wounded dragon’s 

sanguineous fluid. In the new model that debuted in 1974, that 

bladder was replaced by a tank near the dragon’s mouth that 

pumped out stage blood. Moved by a forklift hidden within, the 

dragon was installed with exterior cameras so the machine’s 

operators could safely pilot it. 

More than the drama’s title character has changed over 

the centuries that Drachenstich has been performed. The 1920s 

marked the debut of the “black knight,” a malicious oppressor 

devoid of mercy, while the heroic “white knight” was dubbed 

Udo. (Both characters remain in the play’s present version.) 

Following a long hiatus during World War II, the play returned 

with not only a new dragon but eventually a new script as 

well. It was heavily influenced by the Cold War, depicting the 

medieval people of Bohemia—whose modern-day counterparts 

were now behind the Iron Curtain—as villains. The backdrop 

was the violent Hussite War of 1431, when followers of the 

murdered Bohemian reformer Jan Hus battled knights leading a 

38 

faeriemag.com

With a history dating back a thousand years, Furth im Wald 

offers a myriad of pleasures in addition to Drachenstich come August. 

Take a self-guided tour following the dragon footsteps through the 

town’s charming center, with stops at dragon-themed fountains, 

murals, museums, and more. Or visit the Dragon’s Cave, dedicated 

to telling the story of Drachenstich, the Furth im Wald dragon, and 

the technology that brings it to life. Exhibits include images of the 

play’s white knight and fair maiden dating back to 1882. 

There’s also a cheery carnival on the festival grounds across from 

the Dragon’s Cave in August and a parade featuring more than 

1,400 costumed participants, 200 horses, and dozens of historically 

themed floats that meanders through the town center. The third 

weekend of the month a medieval encampment takes over a 

nearby park, with hundreds living in tents as if in the Middle Ages. 

There’s a sprawling medieval market, and historically accurate 

drink and food stands, with minstrels serenading it all. 

For more information about Furth im Wald, visit furth.de. 

crusade against them along the Bavarian border. 

In 2006, with East and West rejoined and Furth im 

Wald no longer a lonely outpost at the edge of the 

free world, Drachenstich was once more amended to 

reflect Europe’s geopolitical evolution. In this latest 

incarnation, the town is portrayed as an all-important 

link between Bohemia and Bavaria, a bustling stop on 

the trade route between the two countries. Although 

the play is still set during the last Hussite conflict, the 

Bohemians are no longer evildoers but instead fully 

formed characters given the opportunity to impart 

their viewpoints. Bigotry has been vanquished in 

today’s Drachenstich, and the moral is that only love and 

respect for all people can defeat evil. 

It’s a powerful message, and it has a powerful 

production to communicate it. The residents of 

Furth im Wald have always devoted themselves 

wholeheartedly to Drachenstich; there is perhaps no 

greater honor here than to be cast as the dragon 

slayer or his damsel. But with the play’s revamp there 

has been a greater emphasis placed on historical 

accuracy. The hundreds of costumes—all sewn within 

the town—are meticulously crafted, with the nobles’ 

garments made of jewel-toned velvets and sleek, 

shining satins. The towering set, constructed outdoors 

on Furth im Wald’s square, replicates two stories of a 

castle edifice, gate included. It is through this portal 

that the dragon first appears, moving inexorably 

forward, its great, horned head lowering—the better to 

gaze at the tiny, terrified mortals before her. 

Over the next few hours Drachenstich transports 

its audiences with thrilling sword fights and chilling 

horseback derring-do, gallant knights, virtuous ladies, 

and a malevolent aristocrat who will stop at nothing 

to increase his wealth and power. The mighty dragon, 

however, remains at the play’s heart. Driven mad by 

the human savagery that surrounds her, she cannot be 

appeased, even consuming one of the townsfolk before 

the widened eyes of all. Despite the carnage of which 

the dragon is capable, it’s impossible not to feel regret 

when the hero fatally injures her and her lifeblood 

streams red and copious from her mouth. But there is 

solace to be taken: Come next summer, the last dragon 

in the world will rise once more. 

Drachenstich runs this year from August 5 to 21, with 

previews August 3 and 4. For more information or to 

purchase tickets, visit drachenstich.de. 

r 

When she’s not at her computer, independent journalist 

Jill Gleeson tirelessly roams the globe in search of oddball 

adventures she can’t tell her mother about. Find her on 

Twitter @gopinkboots and at facebook.com/jillgleeson.9. 

The Girl Who 

Circumnavigated Ferryland 

Voyaging to Catherynne Valente’s Imaginative Island Habitat 

by LAURA MARJORIE MILLER 

Photos by BRITTANY RAE PHOTOGRAPHY 

faeriemag.com

eaks Island, in Casco Bay off the coast of Maine, is a 

place rich with complex and fabled history. A History 

of Peaks Island and Its People (1897) opens with a tale 

of uncanny violence: A merman tries to pull himself 

up into the canoe of an early white settler, and the 

settler chops off one of the merman’s hands. As the merman 

sinks, he dyes the water “with his purple blood.” 

Such a tale definitely creates an expectation that strange 

things can happen here, on this island and in the waters around 

it, which are still frequented by dolphins and seals, even if the 

merfolk now keep to themselves. So Peaks seems the perfect site 

for a speculative writer of unorthodox genius to set up her home 

and central command—and for that writer to be Catherynne M. 

Valente, mistress of Fairyland. 

In addition to the Fairyland series of novels, which concluded 

with its fifth volume this spring, Valente invents many other 

realms and dimensions of the fantastic: Six-Gun Snow White, 

The Orphan’s Tales, Palimpsest (whence the idea of the Fairyland 

series originated), and Radiance—fiction that has attracted such 

illustrious recognition as the Tiptree Award, the Andre Norton 

Award, the Hugo, and the Nebula. Her short work is featured 

in such publications and sites as Cabinet des Fées, Goblin Fruit, and 

Clarkesworld. Valente is always creating. Through her Twitter 

feed and at her blog, she generates cultural commentary that is 

incisive and wise: “On Valentine’s Day: Rules for Anchorites” 

and “The Way of the Tinder Warrior” are two such essays. 

It was from this island in Casco Bay that Valente composed 

the entire Fairyland series, chronicling the challenges, friendships, 

victories, and coming of age of September Morning Bell, a girl 

from World War II–era Nebraska who has the fortune to be 

swept away by the Green Wind into a realm of decidedly more 

active magic. So who wouldn’t want to journey to meet Valente 

here, to experience her version of such a wildly creative place? 

Peaks Island is a twenty-minute ferry ride from the State 

Pier in Portland, Maine. The island is its own entity, yet also 

a neighborhood of Portland—just a neighborhood that you 

happen to take a boat to instead of a bus. An attorney who 

lives on the island kayaks to the city and back in his wetsuit 

every day, in all kinds of weather, and adults bond with each 

other depending on the time of the ferry they take for their 

morning commute. 

Ferries run from six in the morning until eleven at night, but 

there is definitely a sense of island-ness on Peaks, that after a 

certain time of night and until dawn, you are on your own—a 

fact that Valente documented last year on Twitter when she was 

up late at night writing, craving potato chips, and couldn’t get 

any. “I love chips,” she wrote with mournful resignation. 

Valente was born on the West Coast, alongside a different 

ocean, splitting her time persephonically between her parents: 

“Six months in Seattle with my dad in the winter when it 

was cold, six months in Sacramento with my mother in the 

summer when it was hot.” She studied in Scotland for a year 

while earning her classics degree and also lived in Japan. 

Before moving to Maine, she lived in Cleveland, but “I’m not a 

landlocked kind of girl,” she admits, “even though it was on the 

shore of Lake Erie—and the Great Lakes are basically oceans. 

They used to be called sweetwater seas.” 

Having arrived at a point in her career at which she could 

decide where she wanted to live, Valente conferred about a 

move with her then husband. “I said, ‘I want snow, I want four 

seasons, and the ocean.’ So that is pretty much New England!” 

she grins. “And then I realized, I could live in … Maine.” 

“When I was a kid I read a lot of Stephen King,” Valente 

explains, “and I loved blueberries. I was convinced that Maine 

was where they kept the magic in the America.” As a sailor, she 

wondered what it would be like to live on an island. 

Yet she had never actually been to Maine. She and her then 

husband found a rental on Peaks and moved into it sight unseen. 

“That seems insane now. I was 29 and a half, so it might have 

been a Saturn-return thing. It was almost to the day.” 

Since she moved there, Maine has made good on its magic. In 

response to her childhood obsession, Valente and a friend made 

a pilgrimage to Bangor, the haunt of Stephen King, in 2012, 

the year the cycle in It started up again. And beyond the magic 

she as a child dreamed of, Valente has conjured her own actual 

magic of an adult life here. She now lives with her partner, 

“We humans have a very fairy mindset in many ways, that everything is for our use 

and our amusement. And I think that we access that Unseelie side more than we access 

the Seelie side, the good-magic part of ourselves. And I think that is very sad.” 

Heath Miller, in a rambling house at the edge of a forest, named 

The Briary after Fairyland’s central palace. Her yard is lively 

with “champion-laying” hens and crocuses that neighborhood 

kids know are the first to bloom on the island—an arrival 

Valente privately celebrates as “First Bloomsday.” Her sailboat, 

The Persephone, rests close by in the cold season and meets the 

water in the warm. 

And for half a year—again persephonically—during the 

off-season, she inhabits the island’s Umbrella Cover Museum 

(an entire museum enshrining those sleeves of fabric that mostly 

get used once), which looks out over the water, as her writing 

studio. Ministry of Stories, Winter Office, the sign reads: 

C. Valente, Anchorite. 

The interpersonal relating that comes with living on a 

landmass barely a square mile in size has trained Valente’s 

writing muscles in certain unanticipated ways. “I end up writing 

about villages and close-knit communities now,” she reflects. 

“I might not have done that if I hadn’t moved to an island. 

You have a random sampling of people who happen to live 

next to you, and you have to create a world from that. There 

are folkways and traditions here that aren’t in Portland—for 

example, we all know to go down to the inn if the power 

goes out.” 

As a transplant, Valente felt she truly became accepted 

into the Peaks community when she rounded up people from 

the island to do a reader’s theatre of Under Milk Wood as a 

canned-food drive. After that, she smiles, “I was ‘the girl who 

did the play.’ ” 

Now she is integrated into the subtle reciprocities, the give 

and take of island life, which she compares to a medieval 

village. “I’ve traded chicken eggs for Concord grapes,” she 

relates. “I’ve even traded eggs for light. We can only grow greens 

and not vegetables because there are too many branches over 

our garden. So last year I traded a dozen eggs every week for 

someone’s patch of light to grow tomatoes in.” 

Valente’s love for Maine shows up in her fiction in surprises, 

grace notes, and flashes. The Model A Ford that is September’s 

ride in The Girl Who Soared Above Fairyland and Cut the Moon in 

Two is named after a potato sack from a farm in Aroostook 

(pronounced a-ROO-steck) County, Maine. “Maine used to 

be the biggest producer of potatoes in the United States,” says 

Valente, “so I named the car after it. I was surprised to learn 

what an incredible agricultural place this used to be, that there 

was this previous universe where Maine was a breadbasket.” 

The lobster cages from which September rescues Saturday 

the Marid are also quintessential Maine. At the time Valente 

began inventing the Fairyland novels, she had just arrived on the 

island and was fascinated by the strange beauty of the lobster 


43

Catherynne Valente 

Laura Marjorie Miller 

traps piled along the shoreline. “I hadn’t even lived here a year, 

yet one thing that really struck me was how in winter, the snow 

collects in them, so they look like snow cages, meant to capture 

the snow. Then in the spring, flowers come through them, and 

it looks like you’ve been fishing for flowers.” 

Valente’s favorite features of the island reflect the array 

of its natural and cultural history. She takes us on a tour of 

Battery Steele, a World War II fortification on the ocean 

side of the island. When you first see it, Battery Steele is an 

imposing blockade built into the side of a hill that yawns its 

maw at you from the wetland surrounding it. But inside is a 

warren of chambers that every year at harvest-moon time is 

gloriously transfigured by the islanders into a combination of 

art installation, performance, and ritual space for a festival 

called Sacred and Profane. One year, for example, Valente 

explains, three redheaded women floated nearby in a wooden 

boat, singing “The Lady of Shalott.” And every year, this raw 

concrete cave is beautified with brightly colored graffiti of the 

highest caliber. 

“Battery Steele is constantly changing,” Valente says. “It’s a 

palimpsest. Some of that graffiti is really old, and some of it, I 

know at which festival it got added. There is always something 

new on the walls.” She describes her favorite graffiti: a passage 

from C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, and a quotation she 

herself wrote out from Mike Ford’s “Sonnet: Against Entropy,” 

which we can’t get to at the moment because that room is 

flooded. As we explore the dark passages, our flashlights 

illuminate modern cave paintings that leap out at us in bursts. 

“Some of the graffiti is really cool, by art students,” says Valente, 

“and some is like “Van Halen 1984!!!” and I love that.” 

Peaks Island is a compact world full of such juxtapositions of 

art, history, and even microclimate. The part of the island that 

faces the Atlantic is primordial Maine coast, boasting a geologic 

feature called the Whaleback—a twisting spine of rock that 

surges from the ocean like a stranded whale. Yet Peaks’s interior 

is thick forest, where sea crows gather at night. At the base of 

some trees you can find piles of gleaming shells left over from the 

mussels that the crows gather and shuck in the branches. 

Valente rattles off some of her other favorite features. “I love 

the back shore,” she says. “There is a little beach there that is 

not there at high tide, only at low tide. I love the very, very end 

of the boat dock at sunset—I like to take picnics there in the 

summer.” The Puritan names in the graveyards intrigue her— 

Thankful Griffin is one, a woman with a first name to evoke a 

virtue—as do the barrow mounds that shelter some of the dead, 

for the soil is often too rocky here to dig a deep grave. 

As homey as Peaks is, Valente has to leave it often to go 

dashing around the country and globe on book tours. The 

Fairyland novels have strong elements of travel narrative, with 

September encountering different characters, cultures, and even 

dimensions within that parallel universe. So what is the author’s 

feeling when she goes traveling? 

“I like to have days off in various cities, which is wonderful 

for feeling like you’ve gone somewhere,” she answers. “On the 

last tour I went to Petoskey, Michigan, the furthest north you 

can go without being on the Upper Peninsula. It’s not even 

near an airport—you have to drive an hour to get there. This 

is the first time in my life I’d boarded a plane to a place that I 

didn’t know where it was: Traverse City. But I felt like I did get 

a sense of Petoskey. The bookstore people insisted I go eat at 

this particular restaurant, which is the nice restaurant in town.” 

Valente describes an awkward yet ultimately connecting moment 

with the kids at the reading: “I was talking about my office at 

the Umbrella Cover Museum, and I started explaining what 

‘the season’ was. And they just gave me a look, like, Why is she 

explaining what a season is to us? And I realized it was literally insane 

to explain this concept to them. ‘Oh, right! You are on the Great 

Lakes, and you have the season too!’” She laughs at the memory 

and at herself. 

There are many more places in the world Valente wants 

to explore: Andalusia in Spain, Poland, Argentina, and 

Newfoundland—particularly Ironbound Island, with its 

“amazing Game of Thrones name.” And Maine itself, vast and 

wild state that it is, beckons with much more to offer: “I want to 

go way up north, to Bucksport, where the sun hits the U.S. for 

the first time.” 

There truly is magic everywhere. But far from being an 

escape, travel in Valente’s fairy realm is laced with responsibility 

and presence, learned from places the author has lived and from 

places dear to her. There are natural laws with consequences 

by which even the fairies, larking and dazzling, must abide, as 

well as humans. The residents of Peaks keep raised gardens, for 

example, because of the heavy metals left behind after World 

War II, when the soldiers, rather than convey much of their 

equipment back off the island, ground it up and distributed it 

into the soil. And in Western Australia, where Valente’s partner 

Heath Miller hails from, there is a high rate of skin cancer 

because of the hole in the ozone layer directly above. 

“We broke the sky,” states Valente solemnly. “And we’re 

probably not going to be able to do anything to fix it. We 

humans have a very fairy mindset in many ways, that everything 

is for our use and our amusement. And I think that we access 

that Unseelie side more than we access the Seelie side, the goodmagic 

part of ourselves. And I think that is very sad.” 

Valente’s fairies are fundamentally alien creatures, who started 

out as frogs yet evolved by stealing the best parts of other species: 

If you have something and they want it and can take it, why 

not? So they help themselves to physical attributes, to talents, to 

magic from other worlds. When put like that, the notorious fairy 

amorality does not seem so alien after all. 

“I wanted them to be just human enough that I could say 

something about our world with them. I wanted to address 

colonialism through fairies—I wanted to use fairies to access 

that relationship,” says Valente. With changelings and otherwise, 

“they seem to enjoy messing with human hierarchies and 

replacing them with something entirely their own”—not too 

unlike a colonial Mainer claiming the sea from a native merman. 

Just like the ecology of Fairyland needs both light and shadow, 

in Valente’s writing, a sense of purpose is inextricable from 

beauty, play, optimism, and joy. “There is a huge responsibility 

in writing for children,” she says, “because you are shaping the 

psyches of actual people. If you think about the books you read 

as a kid, they had a tremendous effect, from what you went on 

to do for a living to what you sought to fill your life with. And if 

I can say something about the way we treat the earth, in a way 

that’s just cloaked enough … Fairy stories have always given us a 

way to talk about those things.” 

Follow Catherynne Valente’s Twitter doings @catvalente. Her blog writings 

can be found at catherynnemvalente.com and the Peaks Island ferry schedule 

at cascobaylines.com. 

Laura Marjorie Miller writes about travel, magic, myth, ocean conservation, 

the arts, and other soulful subjects. Her work has appeared in such places 

as Parabola, Utne Reader, Yankee Magazine, and The Boston 

Globe. Find her on Twitter @bluecowboyyoga. 

Find out more about Brittany Rae Photography at 

brittanyraephotography.com. 

44 


45

The Woodland Magic of 

FROG HOLLOW 

by Grace Nuth 

Jen Parrish-Hill’s aesthetic is truly one of a kind. Her jewelry, made under her business name Parrish Relics, incorporates the 

mystery and imagery of the medieval past with the sensibility of a modern romantic, and is avidly collected by her followers around 

the world. Her work has appeared in television shows (Ugly Betty’s “B” necklace) and films (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), 

but her home décor is every bit as stunning as her jewelry. Photographs of her interiors elicit numerous re-pins and shares whenever 

they appear online. Two years ago, she and her husband, David, purchased a rustic house in rural Massachusetts called Frog Hollow; 

the home and the grounds teem with a magic that has only doubled under their loving attention. We recently sat down with Parrish- 

Hill to ask her a few questions about the enchanted space she calls home. 

Faerie Magazine: Can you tell us a little bit about Frog 

Hollow? Does it live up to its name? 

Jen Parrish-Hill: Driving down the long path to the house, 

past the untamed wild patches of blackberry bushes, I instantly 

become relaxed. It lives up to its name in both ways: We have 

an abundance of frogs, toads, and other lovely visitors— 

or we are the visitors. They have always been here. The 

house is set back from a dirt road on the side of a hill, between 

forest and stream. There are many circles to the landscape, 

an open circle of grass, open circles to each path into and 

out of the woods and down to the water. Magic. I immediately 

felt it. 

FM: Who have been some of your favorite animal visitors 

to Frog Hollow? 

JPH: We love to eat breakfast in the screen house and watch 

the little red squirrels, chipmunks, chickadees, blue jays, juncos, 

and one big gray squirrel all competing for the many feeding 

stations filled with birdseed and nuts. One night while watching 

TV, we noticed a curious toad looking in at us from outside, or 

perhaps admiring himself in the window’s reflection. Recently 

we had a little gray fox or two come into the yard. 

It is important to me to be offering a place where they can 

be safe along with deer and wild turkeys. Hunting and trapping 

breaks my heart to pieces. It is hard to pick a favorite, but I 


happened to glance out the window one winter and see an otter 

bounding down by the stream. I yelled with surprised joy so 

loudly that I scared my husband. 

FM: What was it like getting married at your forest home? 

JPH: An absolute dream come true. We kept it small, which 

was hard, as there were so many people I wanted to share 

that day with! It meant so much to have people travel to our 

remote hilltown to be with us that day, to introduce them to 

Frog Hollow. During the ceremony a bee circled the flower on 

my headpiece, and a tiny green inchworm was inching down 

David’s collar. I was so distracted that I had to pick him up and 

put him on my bouquet so that I could focus on my handsome 

husband-to-be. 

FM: Can you tell us about your workspace? 

JPH: I claimed a little balcony area that seems made for 

making things: a long stretch of desk with storage underneath 

overlooking the living room and with a view of the rock garden. 

I am going to have to be very focused to not watch the animal 

antics instead of being productive up there! 

FM: Do you think living at Frog Hollow full time will influence 

your designs? 

JPH: It definitely will, and I am already so inspired by it in 

so many ways. I would love to do more botanical-style stained 

glass and pictorial pendants, and of course pay tribute to all the 

animals we are sharing the land with. 

FM: Have you done any gardening or landscaping at Frog 

Hollow, or is nature the landscaper? 

faeriemag.com 

47 

JPH: It was already so beautiful to begin with, but I have 

always loved dogwood trees, and we happened to find someone 

selling one at a local yard sale. Have I said how much I love 

yard sales? David is looking after two young apple trees. We put 

in a grapevine under an arbor, and some blueberry bushes— 

and one wisteria to hopefully grow at the front door. We 

definitely want to start a vegetable garden soon. 

FM: When you first arrived, the cabin was a bit of blank 

canvas. How did you balance your gothic aesthetic and love of 

the medieval with the cabin’s natural rusticity? 

JPH: That has been so much fun and also quite a challenge. I 

was used to decorating little connecting boxes of Victorian-style 

rooms, hallways that lead to separate areas that didn’t really 

relate to each other. This open post-and-beam frame built out 

of an older woodland cabin was new to me, but I fell in love 

with the open balconies, the stone chimney they built around 

the fireplace. They tell a story of their travels … where they 

have been, and memories in stone, brought back home to be a 

part of it all. 

I have always decorated organically, starting with one piece of 

art on the walls, or one piece of furniture, 

and just sprouting around it little 

collections of things. I am really lucky 

to have a partner who can do just 

about anything home-improvementwise 

by watching a YouTube video 

or reading a little bit. We have 

worked together to put our own 

stamp on the house, pulling up 

beige carpet and pouring cement

Title 

Summer 2016 

that we stained with an airbrush to mimic the stone of the chimney. 

We tore down panels of wood that lined the upper balconies. Now 

they look more eclectic Bohemian—decorated with pages from a 

water-damaged botanical-print book found at a yard sale—and less 

Swiss chalet. 

FM: What advice would you have for anyone wanting to create a 

similar fantastical and intimate feel with their home décor? 

JPH: Ignore the rules and go with your emotions. Surround yourself 

with things that make you happy or remind you of what you love 

out in the world. Use favorite colors, textures, prints. I do like the 

suggestion of creating visual pyramids or triangles, and try to do that 

with surface decorating and sometimes on the walls as well. Décor 

doesn’t have to be expensive—you can find bits and pieces at thrift 

shops and even online. 

FM: Does Frog Hollow have any other secrets you want to share? 

JPH: I am forever in awe of the tiny changes in the landscape and 

nature surrounding Frog Hollow as the seasons shift—the return of 

the eastern phoebes each spring, who add to their mud and moss 

nests on the side of the house. The emerging of the red efts—a 

bright-orange juvenile stage of the eastern newt—that forces me 

to walk very carefully, as they do not move very fast and are so 

vulnerable to human footsteps. The first snowfall that shows me the 

path every animal has traveled on land and over the frozen stream. 

Then the cycle begins again. There is always something to look 

forward to, as each new season brings both expected magic and 

fascinating surprises. 

¢ 

Cordelia, or the Price of Salt 

by SARA CLETO 

All photography by Jen Parrish-Hill. 

Follow her adventures at Frog Hollow on her blog, froghollownotes.com. 

Grace Nuth is a blogger, artist, and model living in central Ohio with her 

husband, black cat, and a garden full of fairies. To follow her projects, please 

visit gracenuth.com. 

Photography by Bella Kotak 

faeriemag.com



Sara Cleto 

Sara Cleto 

Father loved me better than my sisters. 

That sounds desirable, yes? To be best loved, to be the 

one desired? 

The dresses he gave me were golden as the sun, luminescent 

as the moon, bright as the stars. They weighed more than the 

sum of their gems, and Father smiled when I trembled under 

their spangled bulks. I gave them to my sisters; Goneril let out 

the hems, and Reagan tucked in the waists, and they wore them 

and wielded them and hated me for having them first. 

Divested of finery, I sat on the hearth, imperfectly skinning 

tough vegetable roots, while Cook told stories in time to the 

crackling fire and the boiling pot. Riddles were her favorite 

seasoning, after salt. 

O what is longer than the way? 

Even my plainest gowns were too fine to withstand the tide 

of spattering oil and ash, and so Cook gave me an apron, 

heavy with patches and mending. In the firelight, some squares 

gleamed with phantom jewels. Others prickled like fur. While I 

wore this fanciful, shabby garment, every tale seemed probable, 

if I could find the right words. The words to tell my story. 

Every time I felt them gathering, sparking on my tongue, 

Father summoned me. As I washed soot from my skin, my 

words mixed with lye and pooled around my feet. 

But even as I stood motionless and smiling beside his throne, 

his hand a claw at the center of my back, I knew the price of 

salt. And love. 

What is deeper than the sea? 

The night Burgundy and France called for me, I washed my 

face in clear water and took off my apron, but left a smear of 

ash along the back of my hand where I knew they would kiss 

me. Would they recognize a cinder-girl? Or would their lips 

hover over my skin instead of risking an unscripted word? 

Burgundy held my hand like a dead thing, his nose bobbing 

above my knuckles, and he put too much salt in his soup. He 

and Father sat close at the table, punctuating their conversation 

with clinks of their glasses. Though his gaze found me again 

and again, he did not speak to me. 

France kissed my hand and smiled at me with silvery lips. 

As we ate, he asked me if I liked to cook, what books I read 

most often, whether I liked the garden best when it bloomed in 

the summer or slept in the winter; and he listened when I said 

yes, fables that end well, neither—but autumn, when the leaves 

are most brazen in their dress and the air tastes like a green 

apple. The way his hand lingered on the salt spoon made my 

heart pound. 

“Burgundy, though not a king, is far richer than France,” 

Father told me. “His fields are wider, his wine more costly, his 

doublet twice as thick with gold thread. You will catch him, 

Daughter, if you can.” 

But France had silver on his mouth, salt under his fingernails. 

What is louder than the horn? 

After supper, my sisters sang, while I plucked at my harp. 

They sounded sweeter than a pair of poets’ nightingales. 

Reagan’s eyes scratched, delicately, over France’s high forehead 

and his cheekbones, while Goneril bit into her lips as if they 

were marrow bones. 

What is sharper than a thorn? 

Later that night, I slipped out of bed, wrapped the apron 

round me, and crept into the kitchen. I curled my fingers 

through the ashes, drew stars and whorls on the hearth. 

Sometimes, I would trace a word and then quickly dash it out. 

When the door creaked open, I whirled round, clutching the 

fire poker. 

The King of France slipped past the door, the light of his 

candle illuminating his bare feet. 

“What do you want?” I asked, lowering the poker but holding 

it steady in my hand. 

“Cordelia.” My name in his mouth sounded like waves in a 

quiet cove. “I was thirsty,” he told me. “There was no water at 

supper, only wine.” When he stood there, still and quiet, I put 

the poker down and took his hand. 

I could have poured him water from a jug, but instead I led 

him outside and drew him water from the well. When I moved 

to ladle the contents to a cup, he stepped closer and took a sip 

from the dipper in my hands. 

O love is longer than the way. 

“If I were a fairy, I’d have to grant you a wish,” he told me 

with a smile. 

“I would ask you to take me away from here,” I whispered, 

then covered my mouth. The ladle clattered to the ground. 

And hell is deeper than the sea. 

“Where would you wish to go?” 

“Anywhere. Anywhere with a clean, bright room, kind hands, 

and a soft sea.” 

“A sea full of salt,” he said, and smiled. “Your dressing gown 

is most remarkable.” 

“It’s full of stories,” I admitted. 

Gently, he touched a blue square near my throat. “Tell them 

to me.” 

And silence is louder than the horn. 

And so France and I sat on the cool grass, and I spread my 

patchwork garment between us. Tales of goose girls and witch’s 

gardens and stone soup surged from my lips, my words eddying 

round us. When my fingers slid from satin to fur, I told him 

about the princess and her father, her gowns and her cloak 

woven of rushes and patches. About how she forgave him in the 

stories and went back home. 

“But she doesn’t have to,” France said. 

“What?” 

“She doesn’t have to forgive him. Or to go back home. Even 

if that’s an easier story to hear.” He retrieved the ladle, dipped 

it into the bucket, slid a ring from his littlest finger, and dropped 

it into the ladle. “I already drank all my soup, so this will have 

to do,” he told me. 

In the moonlight, his eyes shone the blue-gray of the sea. 

His hands were steady on the ladle, holding it close but not too 

close. I leaned forward and drank until the ring pressed against 

my lips like a secret. It slid comfortably onto my finger, a plain 

silver band. 

“I know your father prefers Burgundy for you. He is richer, 

and he might be kind to you.” 

I thought of Burgundy’s cold hands and the distance he 

maintained from ashes, and I shook my head. 

“Perhaps he will let you choose.” 

My fingers clenched on fur. Again, I shook my head. 

He took a breath. “My army is strong. I could—“ 

“No.” I bent toward him till our foreheads touched. “I know 

what to say.” 

“What? What could sway a king?” 

I smiled. “Nothing.” 

And Father’s love is sharper than a thorn. 

When France’s ship sailed, I stood at the bow. The wind 

painted my hair with salt, and my plain, white dress blew 

behind me like a wave. As the coast grew small behind us, I told 

France a new story about a princess who took no dresses from 

home, only an apron and a ring, and who never, never returned 

to her father, who loved her less than salt. 

W 

Sara Cleto is a Ph.D. candidate at the Ohio State University, where she 

studies folklore, literature, and the places where they intersect. When she 

isn’t writing her dissertation, she writes fairy tales, devours books, and 

travels as often as possible. 

See more of Bella Kotak’s photography at bellakotak.com. 

52 faeriemag.com

Water and Sky FableS 

T 

by JOHN W. SEXTON 

THE WOMEN WHO MARRIED MEN 

In the city they have sealed the sea in a box 

so that none of us may return. 

We travel to the ocean by bus 

but it is never the same as we remember; 

the sliding doors of sunlight are dark, their panes 

fractured into shattering waves. 

Beneath this we’d be crushed for it is nothing 

but water: mundane, ordinary, wet. 

In the autumn we congregate 

in local parks. In the thin water 

of the ornamental ponds we watch the sticklebacks 

in their shoals of pins. They weave in and out of existence, 

totally at one with the consciousness of their element. 

We envy them and stare for hours. 

Children laugh at us, run from us. 

As the days grow colder we venture 

into the brittle nights. When fog slips from the sky 

we stand inside it lost, mercifully, 

in its total swallowing of existence. 

This is the nearest to the ocean’s floors 

of memory that we can get. 

When the fog lifts we stumble once more 

into the mundane world. Ordinary. Dry. 

THE MAN WITH THE 

LADDER OF LONELINESS 

I know a man who cried a ladder of loneliness. 

Silver steps fell down his face, 

stretched across the ground and over the park 

to the streets of the estates, encroached 

the borders into other countries. 

Armies were called in but stood their distance. 

When he had stopped weeping he lifted 

the ladder to the sky. By this time it was night. 

The ladder was as long as a month of weeping 

and it reached all the way up to the moon. 

Moonlight and starlight lit up its rungs. 

He began to climb then, climbing 

to the height of what he felt, climbing up 

and all the way out of it. 

Photography by Ewan Adamson. 

Learn more at mandlenkhosi.com.

THE BIRD PRINCE 

by JOHN W. SEXTON 

The cloudy sky his fraying coat 

buttoned at his navel, 

each November of the Dead 

he danced the lanes of hazel. 

A cap of sparrows on his head 

chirping through his skull, 

all that’s said he left unsaid, 

his empty pockets full. 

With curlew’s beak a key for sand, 

and finches opening sunshine, 

the doors of earth could not withstand, 

nor daylight undermine. 

He shattered himself though winter skies 

in flocks of myriad thought; 

his songs were truths disguised as lies, 

few of which were caught. 

In dreams he’d flutter through our minds 

and roost inside our hearts; 

each dawn his voice would bid us wake, 

in stops and then in starts. 

The cloudy sky his fraying coat 

buttoned at his navel, 

each November of the Dead 

he danced the lanes of hazel. 

John W. Sexton is the author of five poetry collections, the two most recent being Petit Mal and 

The Offspring of the Moon. He is a past nominee for The Hennessy Literary Award and his 

poem “The Green Owl” won the Listowel Poetry Prize 2007. In 2007 he was awarded a Patrick 

and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship in Poetry. 

© Diana Elfmarkova/shutterstock.com 

“ 

The Riders of the Sidhe by John Duncan. 

Wikimedia Commons. 

the 

Passion 

of 

Fairies 

the 

he ocean is not so strong as the waves of thy longing,” 

the fairy whispered to the man she desired as a human 

lover. Was she casting a spell on him or helping him 

reconcile his feelings for an otherworldly being? This line of 

dialogue is from an ancient Celtic tale—“Connla and the 

Fairy Maiden”—and the rest of the story does not answer that 

question; it leaves it to play in the reader’s mind. Personally, I 

think the fairy was casting a spell, but what intrigued me more 

was the tale’s unchallenged premise that fairies could, and 

would, take humans as consorts. These fairies were definitely 

not the diminutive, shy creatures I read about as a child. 

My fixation with fairy history began, strangely enough, while 

hopelessly lost on a back road in County Clare. At least, that is 

how I would describe it to someone who does not understand 

that in Ireland you don’t get lost, you get pixie-led. If you keep 

your eyes and heart open, you will see what they mean for you 

to see, which is when true discovery occurs. In my case, they 

by Mark Tompkins 

led me to a small, lonely tower. 

Fairy is in my blood, or Ireland is, which is essentially the 

same thing. My mother is of Irish ancestry, and I had ventured 

to the old country with my parents. My first trip. I was alone 

that day, searching for an elusive graveyard when, instead, I 

was led to the tower. Feeling it wise not to anger the pixies, I 

stopped, dropped a euro in the wooden box beside the front 

door as the sign requested, and wandered in. Hanging on the 

stone wall inside the vestibule was the legend of Red Mary, 

written on faded parchment and framed. 

Red Mary was the woman who had once owned the tower, 

and the legend told of her efforts to protect her landholdings, 

including working her way through three husbands and casting 

enchantments. It was a compelling tale, I thought, but not 

reason enough to have been led here. There must be more to 

it, something lost or hidden. For Ireland is more than land, it is 

magic—the two are bound together. 

faeriemag.com 

57

The Passion of the Fairies 

Title 

Mark Tompkins 

Summer 2016 

Strange how sometimes we know things as if remembering 

something we have not yet learned. Maybe that is the origin of 

compulsion. It came to me that Red Mary must have been trying 

to protect Irish magic. Which meant she was also defending the 

Celtic fairies, beings that embody the very essence of magical 

Ireland. As I had been drawn to the tower, I was compelled to 

write Red Mary’s story anew. The problem was I knew little of 

fairies and suspected that what I did know was too sanitized and 

modern. So I began delving into the old lore. 

Soon I learned that the original fairies—pre-Christianized 

and pre-Disneyfied—were tall and powerful beings. The Book of 

Invasions, an 11th century assemblage of chronicles, old beyond 

history, tells how the fairies landed in Ireland and drove the 

Fomorians into the sea to become merpeople. Back then, fairies 

were large enough to fight in epic battles, ride full-size horses, 

and wield great swords. And they were incredibly passionate, 

running both hot and cold. 

In the strangely compelling tale of the Children of Lir, a fairy 

king and his queen were deeply in love and had four beautiful 

children. Following his wife’s death, Lir eventually married 

another, but the new wife was so consumed with jealousy over 

Lir’s love for his children that she cursed them to live as swans. 

The doom will end when a king from the North weds a queen from the 

South; when a druid with a shaven crown comes over the seas; when you 

hear the sound of a little bell that rings for prayers. 

When Lir discovered his new wife’s treachery, she felt the wrath 

of his fairy curse: 

She is herself ensnared, and fierce winds drive her into all the restless 

places of the earth. She has lost her beauty and become terrible; she is a 

Demon of the Air, and must wander desolate to the end of time. 

Yet revenge did not soothe his broken heart. Nor could he lift 

the enchantment on his swan children, only bless them as they 

flew away. 

May all beautiful things grow henceforth more beautiful to you, and 

may the song you have be melody in the heart of whoever hears it. May 

your wings winnow joy for you out of the air, and your feet be glad in the 

waterways. My blessing be on you till the sea loses its saltiness and the 

trees forget to bud in springtime. 

The Book of Invasions recounts how when humans arrived, 

Ireland was divided to maintain peace between the races. The 

Celts were granted the surface while the fairies manifested a 

hidden parallel Ireland, the Middle Kingdom. Fairies, and 

occasionally gifted humans, could travel from one land to the 

other through magical doorways set in fairy mounds. 

Even with this separation, the Celts were irresistibly drawn to 

the amorous fairies. The language from “Connla and the Fairy 

Maiden” is filled with desire: 

I love Connla, and now I call him away to the Plain of Pleasure, 

Moy Mell. Oh, come with me, Connla of the Fiery Hair, ruddy as the 

dawn with thy tawny skin. A fairy crown awaits thee to grace thy comely 

face and royal form. 

Connla’s human family sought to stifle their romance by 

having a druid cast spells to drive her away; however, druid 

enchantments have little effect on fairy passion. Connla cried 

out, “A longing seizes me for the maiden,” and ran away with 

her to the “Plain of Pleasure.” 

Throughout the centuries, scores of humans succumbed 

to the allure of fairies, even having children with them. One 

of those unions occurs in the history of the fairy flag of the 

MacLeod clan, a gift to their chieftain from a departing fairy 

lover, the mother of his hybrid son. Today the flag can be seen 

in Dunvegan Castle, and it is said to increase the chances of 

fertility, among other magical powers. 

Another illustrative tale is that of the strong-minded fairy 

princess Rhiannon, the oldest written version of which appears 

in the 12th century Mabinogi. Rhiannon rejected the betrothal 

thrust on her by her fairy family and took the human Pwyll 

as her consort, bearing him a son who was then stolen by a 

monster. Even though Rhiannon was accused of killing the 

hybrid boy, Pwyll stood by her, steadfast in his love, until the boy 

was found and returned. 

Perhaps fairies have such a passionate nature due to their 

parentage. One of the many tales of fairy origin suggests they 

are the offspring of angels so consumed with desire they were 

willing to risk their place in heaven to possess mortal women. 

Interesting that this lore also uncovers the source of fairies’ 

magical abilities. 

The story begins in the first age of our world, and elements 

can be found not only in mythology but in the Zohar and two 

books from the Dead Sea Scrolls, Jubilees and Enoch. The story 

even lingers in an abbreviated form in Genesis 6:4: 

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when 

the sons of God [angels] came in to the daughters of man and they bore 

children to them. 

Driven to seduce the daughters of Adam and Eve, angels—all of 

whom were male—snuck out of heaven to infiltrate the human 

encampment east of Eden. Their hybrid children became a new 

breed of mysterious and magical beings. 

With regard to Irish fairies, the story of their bloodline is a 

bit more contorted. Eve’s son Seth, frustrated that the sisters 

he desired preferred angels over him, fled the camp and began 

wandering through new lands. When he arrived on the coast 

The Children of Lir, illustration from A Book of Myths by Jean Lang. 


of what is now called Spain, he spied three hybrid daughters 

of Lilith, a human created at the same time as Adam, and the 

fallen archangel Samael. The daughters were Banbha, Fódla, 

and Ériu. 

Aroused—perhaps bewitched—Seth left his hiding place and 

was immediately embraced by the women. Hungry for mortal 

touch, they held Seth in rapture, competing with one another to 

see who could lie with him the most. After six days, all four were 

exhausted. Seeing a number of logs washed up on the beach, 

they decided to make a raft to float in the sun upon the crystal 

sea. But God had witnessed this forbidden union, and after 

Banbha, Fódla, and Ériu had climbed onto the raft, he rose up a 

great wind to blow it away before Seth could join them. 

God would have drowned the three sisters, but he sensed 

that the seed of Seth was already set in each of them. So God 

drove the raft far across the sea to the shores of a large westerly 

island, where they each delivered twins, two boys and four girls. 

These hybrid children were the first Irish fairies. Once the fairies 

conquered the entire island, they named it to honor the last 

surviving one of their three mothers, Ériu Land, an ancient term 

for Ireland. 

Bearing the magical bloodline of angels, fairies inherited a 

Map of magical medieval Ireland courtesy of Laura Hartman Maestro. 

portion of the mystical abilities of their ancestors. With their 

gifts, they soon spread across the entire world, splitting into 

many clans. Their names varied by location, culture, and 

tradition but included devas, adhene, asrais, dryads, wichtlen, 

skeaghshee, and grogoch. 

Flush with the knowledge that ancient fairies were not 

diminutive in size or love or ferocity, I finally felt prepared to tell 

their story. My novel, The Last Days of Magic, is set in a medieval 

age when fairies still held sway in world events and interacted 

with humans in the royal courts, on the battlefields, and in the 

bedrooms. As for today, while fairies may have been driven into 

hiding, that does not mean they are gone. 

Mark Tompkins is the author of The Last 

Days of Magic, an epic novel of magic and 

mysticism, Celts and fairies, mad kings and 

druids, and the goddess struggling to reign over 

magic’s last outpost on the Earth. Learn more at 

marktompkinsbooks.com. 

58 

faeriemag.com 

faeriemag.com 

59

Things We Love 

Summer 2016 

Summer Lady 

Dress 

from PAM YOKOYAMA of 

4 Seasons Painting and Landscaping 

4seasonspainting.com 

HOW SHE DID IT 

For the skirt: 

1. Lay weed protector at the bottom of 

the dress form to collect loose soil. 

2. Insert a row of succulents, cover the roots 

with soil, and spray the soil with a water 

bottle so you can pack it to the roots. 

3. Continue inserting succulents into the dress 

form row by row. I used different succulents 

on each row. 

Summer 

Berries 

Three sweet and savory dishes 

featuring our favorite fruit(s) 

M 

Recipes and photos by Sara Ghedina 

(a.k.a. One Girl in the Kitchen) 

For the bodice: 

1. Create a shelf at the waistline that is 

strong enough to hold two small pots. 

2. Place your potted succulents into 

the pots and then cover the entire 

bodice, front and back, with dried 

green moss to cover the pots. 

Succulents from Succulents Galore on Etsy. 

©Kristi Yokoyama 

Who doesn’t love 

a gorgeous, bright bowl 

of lush, richly colored summer 

fruit—blueberries and strawberries 

and blackberries still hot from the fields 

and bursting with sweetness? No fairy can 

resist these jewel-like orbs, which are as 

healthful as they are enchanting. And they’re 

not only delicious swimming in bowls of cream 

or sprinkled over cakes and pies or even 

plucked straight from the garden. Blogger 

Sara Ghedina, a.k.a. One Girl in the 

Kitchen, shows us how to use them in 

savory dishes, too, for that perfect 

balance between salty 

and sweet.

FOCACCIA WITH BLACKBERRIES, 

THYME, AND GOAT CHEESE 

A joyful plate almost too pretty to eat! 

A sprinkle of sugar sweetens the blackberries, 

which highlights the rich, salty creaminess of 

the cheese. A main dish perfect for backyard 

gatherings on star-spangled summer nights. 

ISRAELI COUSCOUS WITH BLUEBERRIES, 

MINT, AND PRESERVED LEMON 

The raisins here enhance the sweetness of 

the blueberries—which contrast beautifully 

with the tartness and saltiness of the 

preserved lemon. Use capers instead of 

raisins for a more savory version of this 

fresh, mint-scented appetizer.

Strawberry Tomato Panzanella 

This radiant dish pairs the sweet strawberry with 

the acidity of those lush summer tomatoes—all 

absorbed by the bread to create an extra-flavorful 

treat. Use honey instead of agave for a more 

decadent variation. 

Focaccia with Blackberries, 

Thyme, and Goat Cheese 

(for two 8-by-12 baking pans) 

For the dough 

4 cups all-purpose flour 

1 cup 2 tbsp. lukewarm water 

1¼ tsp. active dry yeast 

¼ tsp. sugar 

1⅛ tsp. salt 

1 tbsp. olive oil 

3-4 fresh thyme sprigs 

For the toping 

2 cups blackberries 

½ cup goat cheese 

3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil 

1 tbsp. coarse sea salt 

1 tbsp. sugar 

4 or 5 fresh thyme sprigs 

For the dough, dissolve yeast in water with ¼ 

teaspoon sugar. 

Mix flour with thyme leaves, place it in a large 

bowl, and make a well in the middle. Add salt 

and olive oil, then slowly pour in the yeast-andwater 

mixture and start kneading until all liquid 

is incorporated. Add more water if necessary. 

Roll the dough on the working table and knead 

for about 10 minutes until it’s smooth and 

elastic. Return it to the bowl greased with some 

oil, cover with a damp cloth, and let it rise for 

about 2 hours. 

Divide the dough in half, form two loaves, and 

place each one on a baking pan lined with 

parchment paper. Flatten it using a short rolling 

pin and the palm of your hand until it covers 

the bottom of the pan almost completely. Let 

rise for another 30 minutes. 

When ready, wash blackberries, sprinkle with 

the sugar, and distribute them evenly on the 

focaccia. Push the tip of your fingers into the 

dough, forming deep imprints until you can 

almost touch the pan. Drizzle with olive oil 

mixed with 3 tablespoons of water, fresh thyme, 

and salt. Let focaccia rise again for about 1½ 

hours, sprinkle generously with goat cheese, 

then bake at 390° for 25 to 30 minutes until 

golden. 

Israeli Couscous With 

Blueberries, Mint, and 

Preserved Lemon 

(serves 4 as appetizer) 

1 cup Israeli couscous 

½ red onion 

½ cucumber 

1 cup blueberries 

¼ cup raisins 

1 preserved lemon (rind only) 

juice of 2 lemons 

3 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil 

5 or 6 fresh mint sprigs 

salt and pepper to taste 

¼ cup almonds, sliced and toasted 

Bring 1¼ cup of water to boil, add 

couscous and cook on low for 8 to 

10 minutes until water is absorbed. 

Fluff with a fork, add salt, and set 

aside. 

Meanwhile slice the onion very 

thinly and let it sit in the juice of one 

lemon for about 15 minutes. 

Wash the blueberries, peel the 

cucumber and cut it in small cubes. 

Chop the preserved lemon’s rind 

and drain the onion. 

In a large bowl, place the cooked 

couscous and add all the remaining 

ingredients. Dress the salad with the 

olive oil, salt, pepper, chopped mint 

leaves, and juice of the remaining 

lemon. Mix gently, top with the 

toasted almonds, and serve. 

Strawberry Tomato 

Panzanella 

(serves 4 as appetizer) 

3 thick slices of day-old country bread 

2¼ cups strawberry 

2¼ cups cherry tomatoes 

4 tbsp. agave nectar 

2 tbsp. balsamic vinegar 

juice of 1 lemon 

1 small shallot 

4 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil plus more 

for brushing 

1 cup arugula 

½ cup basil leaves 

salt and pepper to taste 

Brush bread, sliced, with some olive 

oil, place on a hot grilling pan and 

cook for 3-4 minutes each side until 

slightly charred. 

Cut it in cubes and set aside. 

Wash strawberries and tomatoes and 

cut them in slices. Mince the shallot, 

wash arugula, and chop the basil 

leaves. 

For the dressing, whisk together olive 

oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, 

and agave nectar. 

In a large bowl, combine bread 

cubes with the rest of the 

ingredients, pour over the dressing, 

and mix gently. Add salt and pepper 

to taste. 

Let the panzanella sit for about 30 

minutes before serving, allowing 

bread to become moist and flavors 

to mix. 

When she’s not at farmers’ markets, or stirring yet another jam, or photographing an artichoke, 

Sara Ghedina a.k.a. One Girl in the Kitchen, might be running in Golden Gate Park or in 

warrior pose. Find out more at facebook.com/onegirlinthekitchen. 

faeriemag.com 

65

Title 

Summer 2016 

Title 

Summer 2016 

in the 

LABYRINTH 

A Celebration of the Classic Film 

by GRACE NUTH 

66 


67

Twilight in the Labyrinth 

Summer 2016 

On June 27, 1986, audiences across the world got 

their first glimpse of a fairy realm imagined by 

artist Brian Froud and realized by Jim Henson 

and his team of puppeteers. For many, it was 

a glance inside a universe that would inspire and inform 

the rest of their lives. Although the film, Labyrinth, may 

not have been considered a smash hit in the theaters, its 

lasting legacy outshines many other box-office sensations 

from the same period. 

This year, on January 10, David Bowie, who played 

Jareth the Goblin King in the film, passed away just a few 

months shy of its thirtieth anniversary. Bowie, of course, 

was known for an entire life’s worth of musical and acting 

performances, but to a fairy-tale-enchanted audience, the 

role of Jareth is among his most memorable. A few weeks 

after Bowie’s death, a team of creative professionals 

arranged a photographic homage to the film and the 

man who so inspired them. Among the participants were 

photographer Bella Kotak, actor Ian Hencher, model 

Jessica McClellan, and costumers JoEllen Elam of Firefly 

Path and Daisy Jane Turner. 

Hencher conceived of this shoot when he heard of 

Bowie’s passing. “I knew I had to somehow manifest a 

tribute in memory of a brave and powerful artist. He 

challenged almost every aspect of manhood and broke 

the guidelines in a way that continues to massively inspire 

artists today. He’s a hard act to follow but a great one 

to channel.” 

Hencher contacted Kotak, who admitted that she had 

never seen Labyrinth before. “Ian spoke so passionately, 

I knew I had to give it a watch. As I watched and fell 

into the imaginations of the insanely creative people 

behind the movie, I felt excited to create my own take 

on it.” From there, Hencher and Kotak got in touch 

with actress Jessica McClellan, whose dark hair and large 

eyes evoked the innocence of the character of Sarah, 

played in the film by Jennifer Connelly. McClellan was 

thrilled by the opportunity. “Labyrinth was the defining 

film of my childhood. As an adult, it is still my favorite 

film and probably the most inspirational fairy tale in my 

creative life.” 

The team decided to shoot in the woods. Kotak 

explains, “We felt the tall trees and foot-trodden path 

created a sense of journey.” They contacted costume 

creator JoEllen Elam, better known by the name of her 

business, Firefly Path. Her gowns have been featured on 

many online news sites and shared feverishly on social 

media, and she just created a new pattern for Simplicity. 

But for her, it all goes back to Labyrinth. “To this day, the 

ballroom scene is in the back of my head every time I 

design a new gown,” she says. “When I first saw Jareth 

dancing with Sarah in her opalescent gown, it sparked so 

much wonder in me. It showed me a world that I never 

knew could exist.” She happily provided a breathtaking 

gown with layer after layer of sheer fabric, making the 

shoot feel like a crystalline dream. 

Hencher’s wardrobe was provided by costume designer 

Daisy Jane Turner, who was excited to explore the world 

of David Bowie with her design. “As a designer, I love 

to play with conflicting characteristics. I intended to 

represent the regal and almost intimidating elements 

of the Goblin King while expressing the vibrancy and 

flamboyance of Bowie himself, using my main inspiration 

from the ballroom scene in all its wonder and opulence— 

two features that Bowie had in effortless abundance.” 

The team shot the images at the cusp of twilight. 

“It’s my favorite time of day to shoot,” explains Kotak. 

“The magic hour infused the pictures with a sense of the 

otherworldly.” And Hencher was elated with the results 

Kotak shared. He explains, “It was important for me to 

take inspiration from this beloved movie and not replicate 

or destroy what’s already legendary. When embarking 

upon this journey I couldn’t have felt more lucky to have 

the opportunity to collaborate with these immensely 

talented people. It was almost effortless and pure magic 

to watch this happen. I hope your readers can spot the 

tribute elements from the movie and even see their very 

own story within our tale.” 

Photographer: BELLA KOTAK 

Skin Retouching: PRATIK NAIK @ Solstice Retouch 

Costume Designer of The Goblin King and Stylist: DAISY JANE TURNER 

Models: JESSICA McCLELLAN & IAN HENCHER 

Makeup: DAISY JANE TURNER & IAN HENCHER 

Gown: FIREFLY PATH 

faeriemag.com 

69

“When I first saw Jareth dancing with Sarah in her 

opalescent gown, it sparked so much wonder in me. 

It showed me a world that I never knew could exist.” 

—JoEllen Elam, Firefly Path 

faeriemag.com 

71


Interview with Toby and Sarah Froud 

The Babe With the Power: 

TOBY TODAY 

Photo by Pixie Vision Photography. www.pixievision.com. 

Many of us who follow modern fairy culture already know 

what happened to baby Toby from Labyrinth when he grew up. 

Toby Froud, son of artists Brian and Wendy Froud, was only 

a year old when he donned his red-and-white-striped pajamas 

and danced a magic dance with David Bowie and a host of 

puppet goblins. Now thirty-two, he continues the work of his 

parents, most recently creating a short film called Lessons 

Learned in which a small Froudian fae creature of unknown 

origin receives a box in which to keep the lessons he learns, 

and proceeds to learn something worthy of putting into it. 

We asked Toby Froud and his wife Sarah (yes, Sarah!) a few 

questions about their enchanted lives. 

Faerie Magazine: If we’re talking about the impact Labyrinth 

had on artists’ lives, perhaps the best example of this is yours, 

Toby, since you’ve been immersed in the world of your father 

and mother’s imagination since you were born. 

Toby Froud: My journey certainly started with Labyrinth. 

Being a part of it and growing up around it—watching the film 

and behind the scenes, having my parents’ art around me—was 

definitely inspirational, but I also felt it was normal. The idea of 

fairies, goblins, and creatures of all kinds were in my everyday 

life, so it was natural for me to create those beings. I feel this 

experience has given me a fantastical vision of reality. Even 

when I was asked to sculpt something “realistic,” my creations 

always came through with an otherworldly presence. 

FM: You now have a son who is only a little older than you 

both were when Labyrinth was filmed. Has this given you a new 

perspective on the story? 

Sarah Froud: I’ll just say, the words “I wish the goblins would 

come and take you away right now” won’t be spoken aloud in 

Sebastian’s presence—although I often threaten Toby with this 

when we argue about household chores. 

FM: In 2013, Toby started a Kickstarter campaign to produce 

a short Froudian puppetry film, Lessons Learned. The result 

was acclaimed both by fans and critics. What’s next for you in 

your personal projects? Any chance Lessons Learned will have a 

companion film? 

TF: The Kickstarter and resulting film was an absolutely 

amazing experience, and I am truly grateful for the support and 

interest it evoked. My dream is to create more, explore more in 

the world of Digby, the Boy, and Grandfather. I have about ten 

story ideas surrounding these characters but also many other 

new ideas/creatures. I’m certainly interested in learning why 

Digby doesn’t speak and what the fate of the Boy may be. 

FM: Toby, your art style looks like it belongs in the same 

universe as your parents’, and yet I can immediately distinguish 

between a sculpture from you and one from your mother. What 

do you feel is your unique contribution to the Froud visual 

universe? 

TF: I do feel I bring my own personal, slightly darker and 

strange twist to the world. I find myself especially fascinated by 

darker creatures and dark points in history and mythology. 

FM: Sarah, it seems like quite a coincidence that Toby from 

Labyrinth wound up marrying someone named Sarah. But it’s a 

perfect metaphor too, since by marrying into the Froud family, 

you were dropped into the middle of a new world of fairies, 

goblins, wonder, and a bit of mischief. What has it been like 

entering the world of Froud, and how have you learned to 

adjust to, or to love, the world of Faerie? 

SF: I think the name coincidence is quite funny, but watching 

Labyrinth now is very different for me. I find myself getting 

really concerned any time Toby cries in the movie, and since 

Sebastian joined our world, baby Toby’s cries are even more 

unsettling. I don’t know if that’s a general mom reaction or just 

me being connected to him. 

My world was quite full of fantasy and wonder before I 

entered the world of Froud, though I always tended toward 

mermaids over any other creature. I have fallen in love with 

and learned to respect and appreciate the fae since joining the 

family. There was no way I could avoid it, between hearing 

stories of them over family dinners, being surrounded by them 

in the Froud home, and feeling their presence in Dartmoor. 

P 

72 faeriemag.com


Interview with Cory Godbey 

Artist Cory Godbey is participating in our upcoming multi-artist fairy coloring book (out soon!), but he 

has also done his share of drawings and paintings from the world of Labyrinth—most recently in stories 

for comic books distributed on Free Comic Book Day. We recently asked him a few questions about his 

work and his Labyrinth-ine inspirations. 

Faerie Magazine: Can you tell us about the comic you 

created based on the world of Labyrinth? 

Cory Godbey: I’ve followed a long and winding path toward 

Labyrinth for many years, even before I began to work on Free 

Comic Book Day stories for Archaia/BOOM. Originally, I had 

illustrated a Fraggle Rock story, and I’m told that I was noticed 

from that and considered for Labyrinth work. From there, I’ve 

illustrated the Free Comic Book Day stories for the past five 

years (with the exception of 2014), and in fact I’ve also had the 

opportunity to write the past three stories as well as illustrate 

them. 

My most recent story (to be released in May 2016) is titled 

“Stone Cold” and features everyone’s favorite nice beast Ludo 

as he deals with a particularly vexing sniffle. 

to approach it respectfully. At the same time, I can’t help but 

bring my own style and essence to the work and not lean 

too heavily on the reference. It’s a delicate balance, trying to 

create something new while honoring the original work. I’ve 

been gratified to see fans have enjoyed my take on these classic 

characters! 

FM: Is there a release date for the longer length Labyrinth book 

project? Can you tell us anything about it? 

CG: Well, I’ll say that there are some very exciting plans in 

the works. Sorry for being vague and evasive! Look, I just 

don’t want the Goblin King to show up at my studio and make 

trouble for me. 

FM: What has Labyrinth meant to your personal life and your 

creative life? 

CG: Perhaps surprisingly—or perhaps shockingly—I didn’t see 

Labyrinth until I was in my mid-twenties. I was about the right 

age for it, but growing up, I was only interested in animation. 

If it was live action, sorry, little Cory just couldn’t be bothered. 

Undoubtedly, my first brush with Labyrinth must’ve been through 

the Muppet Babies episode—animation, you see. 

I love the Frouds’ work, and Brian, especially, has been an 

influence on my own work. In fact, I believe that we share many 

of the same historical artistic influences, and that’s helped me 

take apart and understand the complex visual language they 

developed for the film. 

Ultimately, I feel incredibly grateful that I’ve been given the 

opportunity to put my thumbprint on the world of Labyrinth and 

in some small measure add to the Henson legacy. 

FM: What was it like creating new images and stories in the 

world that’s so familiar? Were there any new characters you 

created for the story that you especially loved? 

CG: I work hard to be certain that I’ve gathered 

appropriate reference for the characters and the world 

itself. When I’m working on one of the stories, I always seek 

Cory Godbey creates fanciful illustrations for books and films. His award-winning work has been featured in many esteemed annuals, including Spectrum: 

The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art and The Society of Illustrators. Find out more at corygodbey.com. 

74 faeriemag.com

The Pixie , s Pantry 

Aemen Bell and Luis Mojica of The Pinecone Apothecary in Catskills, New York, make elixirs and beauty 

sprays infused with gems and botanicals, and herbal chocolate too. We want and need them all! 

Story by Laren Stover. Photographs by Kelly Merchant. 

it was the fairies, says Aemen Bell, a shaman, crystal worker, 

certified herbalist, and healer, that led her to the house 

in the Catskill Mountains where she and her husband, 

Luis Mojica—a holistic nutritionist, herbalist, and member 

of the band Rasputina—live with their one-year-old baby, 

Lyra Bell. 

The fae are quite picky about humankind, and Bell the 

gem whisperer and her organic-vegan-chocolate-making 

husband have a fairy-friendly life respectful of nature’s wizardry 

that few humans within driving distance of Manhattan 

can rival. 

Everything they create for The Pinecone Apothecary—from 

beauty sprays that soothe, brighten, and bewitch to Astral and 

Chakra Essences (pictured above) to herbal vegan chocolate—is 

infused with an enchantment of natural elements. The chocolate 

is wrapped in compostable cellophane and laced with burdock, 

ginger, seaweed, roses, or lavender. Bell’s Praecantrix line of 

essences embody the vibrations of precious and semiprecious 

gems and are made under specific sun and moon cycles. Theirs 

is a sort of perfumed poetic philosophy of remedies. 

If you’ve just sprayed your face with Moon Glow (to illuminate 

your hidden beauty), you might chance to read this quote on 

the bottle: “The moon looks upon many night flowers: the night 

flowers see but one moon.” It contains frankincense (there is even 

some resin rolling around in the bottle), treasured for 

the glow effect it has on mature skin, and the fragrant elixir 

will not only send your spirits soaring rapturously into the stars 

but mist your skin with Artemisia (mugwort, the wild queen 

of dreams), aloe, moonstone gem essence, and ionic silver. And 

the moonstone bead you see in the bottom of the bottle next 

to the resin has been bathed in moonlight in the woods near 

their house. 

Bell, who began fasting and became vegan at thirteen to cure 

a mysterious illness, met Mojica in an herbal apothecary in 

Brooklyn seven years ago. They fell in love to a song. “ ‘Emily,’ by 

harpist Joanna Newsom, came on while I was on a sliding ladder 

like they have in the library in Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast,” said 

Mojica, “and I was sliding back and forth across the room on 

that ladder, and we were singing to each other—we both knew 

all the words.” 

But Mojica says he was magically initiated 

into “Bell’s realm” years before they met. 

“I apprenticed with a witch in Pennsylvania, 

and she prescribed Pink Heart, one of Bell’s 

chakra gems essences,” he said. 

Pink Heart is one of the first elixirs 

Bell created while apprenticing at Flower 

Power, Herbs and Roots, Inc., a shop 

in Manhattan’s East Village that also 

holds classes. “I use heart-healing herbs 

daily,” says Bell, who formulates Pink 

Heart with wild roses she gathers on the 

summer solstice, rose quartz crystals, and 

Herkimer diamonds. 

Pink Heart has a cult following that 

includes Chloë Sevigny, who shopped 

at Flower Power, and her friend, model 

Shalom Harlow. 

Bell began collecting crystals and rocks 

as a child, and when they weren’t magical 

enough on their own, she painted rocks with 

clear nail polish and pulled them around in 

her wagon trying to sell them to neighbors 

in her hometown in Connecticut. 

“Then I forgot about crystals until I 

was twenty-one,” she says. “Kundalini 

yoga awakened intense rushes of energy, 

and I started having awake dreams. I 

dreamed my grandfather, who had just 

passed over, told me to start working with 

colorful crystals, to wear them and have 

more color in my wardrobe. I was a punk 

and a goth wearing a lot of black, so that 

was a shock, and my grandfather wasn’t 

the kind of man to talk about these things.” 

Crystals gave Bell even more intense 

dreams, and Lucid Dreaming, her chakra 

essence, can help you have them too. 

Lucid Dreaming (for the third-eye chakra) 

is assisted with a wild mugwort tincture 

and gem essences of moldavite and 

Herkimer diamond. 

Some of us, on the other hand, need 

a little help with our root chakra to stay 

rooted in this realm. You’re Grounded uses 

extracts of wild oak bark and gem essences 

of black tourmaline and red jasper. Birds 

Tea, healing for the throat chakra, helps you 

“speak up” with wild mullein flower extract 

and gem essences of shuttuckite, amazonite, 

and amber. 

And then there are her four Astral 

Essences: Wolf ’s Milk uses extracts of 

Solomon’s seal and gem essence of 

labradorite to help with addictions and 

strengthen astral boundaries for all those 

psychic sponges out there. 

Flowering thyme, mint, and serpentine, 

the ingredients in Fairy Drops, will boost 

your ability to communicate with the plants 

and harmonize with the faerie realm. 

Baby Lyra, who is decidedly not a 

changeling, is already being initiated into 

the faerie realm by helping pick dandelions 

for remedies. She also shares Bell’s book 

collection, which includes fairy tales and 

folklore from around the world, including 

books on the Inuit. “But no books that 

portray witches negatively,” says Bell, 

“because witches are powerful feminine 

archetypes who work with the natural 

healing energy of the earth.” 

Mojica makes up fantastical songs for 

his daughter, and when he sent a file for us 

to hear, we got chills of the most beautiful 

kind. Lyra was, in fact, serenaded with a 

song called “Dear Little Meow” before she 

was born at home. 

“Aemen was one month late delivering,” 

said Mojica, “so I thought I better play a 

song for her on the piano to make her come 

out. The song began, ‘Dear Little Meow 

swim on out from your mama’s belly mouth, 

because for you there are flowers as smooth 

as a crystal mountain green lagoon.’ ” 

Mojica continued, “I painted a decadent 

landscape with my song because she’s a 

Pisces. We thought she was a mermaid or a 

dolphin, and she loved her water comfort, 

and I wanted her to know life was just as 

magical outside of the womb.” Three hours 

after his song, Bell went into labor. 

The musical, crystalline, mountain home 

of Bell and Mojica, with its ferny woods, 

moonlight-strewn meadows, streams 

shimmering with shiny stones, mountain 

flowers, and woodland creatures, is that 

magical place. And Bell is sure the fairies 

are there too. 

Learn more at thepineconeapothecary.com. 

Find Kelly Merchant at kellymerchant.com. 

Follow Laren Stover on Instagram @faerie_style. 


77

Sami is a young Arab-American girl whose Lebanese immigrant grandmother, Sitti, inexplicably began 

speaking nonsensically about two years ago. In an attempt to find a cure for her, Sami stumbled over a spell that 

“opened” her mirror and pulled her into SilverWorld. Now she is traveling with four new friends, creatures also 

known as Flickers, in this world that reflects Sami’s own (the Actual World). They are en route to confront 

the dread Nixie, the queen of dark forces who is slowly taking over SilverWorld, when on an empty island they 

discover a special reflecting pond that the Flickers call a “doze pool.” 

DIANA ABU-JABER/Excerpt From 

SilverWorld 

©Kevin Findlater Photography 

The deeper they pressed into 

the Bare Isles, the less anyone 

spoke. Yellow glints shone in the 

overgrowth, and sometimes jagged, 

wild laughter erupted from the bushes. 

Dorsom kept a hand on his knife at all 

times. They swished through long feathery 

sea-green blades growing straight out of 

the ground. They pushed aside branches 

draped with blossoms like golden spheres 

or sugar cones or lilac bells. On the next 

isle, tiny animals peeped at them from 

the branches; they looked like fur-covered 

snowballs with great round eyes and tiny 

mouths, and they clucked and chortled 

and giggled as Sami and the Flickers 

passed underneath. 

“This doesn’t seem so scary and 

terrible,” she whispered to Natala, who 

had caught up to Sami, while Dorsom had 

fallen back to help Voir. 

Natala’s lilac brows lifted. “Be deceived 

not,” she murmured. “Shadow Nixie is a 

queen of illusioning—if little else. These 

islands she contrived and strewed up to 

her own purposes suit.” 

“Entrance and enfuddle she will,” 

Bat confirmed. She turned to face them 

yet kept walking backward as easily and 

naturally as walking forward. “The more 

she can mystificate her prey, the easier to 

capture they are.” 

“Are we walking right into her trap 

then?” Sami stared into the woman’s gray 

eyes and felt the kind of pull that made 

her feel, once again, off balance—the way 

so many things did in this world. 

“No other way is there,” Bat said 

casually. 

“Enter the trap, Flicker must, in order 

to break the trap,” Natala agreed. 

Behind them, Voir whimpered. He 

no longer spoke so much as emitted 

occasional sounds of pain and fear. Sami 

turned and took his limp hand. “It’s all 

right,” she said softly. “I promise. We’re 

going to make this right. I swear it.” 

A glint of hope kindled in his eyes, but 

faded just moments later. Sami looked 

back and realized that Bat had stopped 

before a dense, switching stand of trees 

with thick, olive-colored leaves. The 

narrow trunks rubbed against each other, 

making a squeaking, grunting sound, and 

the leaves rose and twitched, buoyant 

and alive. 

“What is such place?” Dorsom frowned 

and shaded his eyes, again scanning their 

surroundings. Sami was hungry again 

from all the walking, plus she was sticky 

with sweat, her feet ached, and her back 

was sore. She was hoping for some more 

of the roots Voir had found as well as a 

place to sit and put up her feet. 

“Wait!” The woman threw out her 

arms. Sami saw her pupils slide into slits 

and her body seemed to clap into itself, 

like a bursting bubble. Suddenly there 

was a frantic flapping as Bat whittered 

above the treetops and sailed in circles. 

Light spangled off its wings so it looked 

like a piece of wax paper, crumpling and 

tumbling through the air. After a few 

moments, the bat returned, light folding 

into a slit, expanding into a woman. 

“T’is a doze pool,” she said, running 

her hands over her silver-blue hair. “Go 

around we should, if we—” 

“No. No, t’is Night-wane, nearly. We 

must needs find place for stops and rests,” 

Natala said, shaking her head. “And for 

Sami Actual foods.” 

“T’isn’t a Flicker doze pool,” Bat said, 

her deep face furrowed with concern. “To 

the Bare Isles this belongs …” 

“Of such we’re well aware,” Voir 

groaned. He ran one hand over the 

opposite arm as if it were sore, then 

opened and closed his fingers. “But 

Flicker Sami is not, much less a trained 

ReBalancer. Exhausted she is. As is myself. 

Worn through am I. We needs must stop!” 

Bat’s face went blank and cold, her 

small dark mouth getting even smaller. 

“As you like!” she said with a sniff, then 

turned and swept open a patch in the thin 

trees, bending them easily. She moved to 

one side, a curtain of trees gathered in 

her arm. The tree leaves made a hushed, 

serpentine hiss as the group passed 

through. Velvety, trimmed, emerald green 

grass rolled down to a perfect oval pool. 

The water was so flat and still and bright, 

it looked more mirror than pond. 

As they approached the water, Sami 

realized the pool was ringed with large 

round aquamarine and jade-colored 

stones, each about the size of a dinner 

plate, embedded in the narrow ledge. 

Up on the lawn, placed like rays around 

the perimeter of the water, were raised 

rectangular platforms, about waist-high. 

Each of the platforms had a canopy of 

sheer white fabric that glittered with 

late afternoon light as they floated on 

the breeze. 

“Oh, my gosh.” Sami went up to one of 

the platforms and touched the fabric: 

It was shot through with silver threads. 

“I wish my mom could see this back in the 

Actual World! It’s like someone’s dream 

vacation.” 

“Dream, yes,” Voir sniffed. The Flickers 

followed her, each gazing around warily. 

“When concerning Shadows that’s all t’is.” 

With a quiet sense of apprehension, 

Sami agreed and she, the Flickers, and the 

Shadow bat walked down the soft slope 

to the thing they called the doze pond. 

Hundreds of colors sparkled across its 

surface, reflecting the gemstones lining its 

edges. Sami couldn’t really take it in. She 

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SilverWorld 

Title 

Diana Abu-Jaber 

Summer 2016 

was too concerned about the “alteration” 

they kept referring to. 

Bat put her hands on her hips and 

arched her back, luxuriating in the balmy 

air. “Doze ponds are especially lovely— 

they’re built for napping. It’s the best kind 

of sleep you can imagine, being rocked 

by warm, soft currents.” 

“Come,” Voir said. “T’will work best 

if right down to the lip you come, here. 

Lean out until you see your reflection.” 

Tentatively, Sami leaned out, watching 

her watery refection begin to gradually 

unblur and come into focus. 

And then she stood straight up and 

with a shriek she clapped both hands 

over her face. 

She had diamond eyes. There was 

no other way to describe it. Her round, 

dark, brown eyes had turned into 

rings of diamond brilliance. Even her 

pupils looked like glinting black gems. 

“What—what is this?” she gasped, her 

voice wobbling. “What’s happened to 

me?” Sami stumbled back from the pool, 

holding her face. 

“Now, panic not.” Natala took her 

arm. “The doze pool reflects what it sees, 

not what we do.” 

Turning back toward the pool, Sami 

squinted and widened her eyes. Nothing 

in SilverWorld made sense to her. But it 

was starting to seem like, when absolutely 

everything in the world was unbelievable, 

it was almost easier to believe all of it. 

Then she noticed Bat standing quietly 

behind the others, staring at the grass 

as if she were fascinated by something. 

“Bat,” Sami said. “Do you know? Why 

do my eyes look like this? What does it 

mean?” 

Bat kept her face averted and spoke as 

if she were addressing the slim, bending 

palms. “I remember their songs,” she 

said. “No one should sing so beautifully. 

It’s painful, that much beauty. Even for a 

Bat.” 

“No-sense she speaks—as ever,” Voir 

snapped. 

“Attend.” Dorsom straightened to 

look at Bat as well. “Recalling is she. 

Remembering what is before us. Speak 

to us, Bat. If for Sami you care, tell us 

what’s within.” 

The woman pushed back her mass 

of silver-blue hair and glanced at Sami 

and then at each of the Flickers. “For 

diamond eyes the seamaids of the 

Mediterranean were known. True, t’was. 

Myself I saw them—as many upon the 

waves as blinkflies in the SilverNight.” 

“Saw them, you claim?” Voir breathed. 

“Claim and did,” said Bat. “Shall I 

recite their every name?” 

Natala lifted her eyes in surprise. 

“Extraordinary. For millennia some 

Shadows have endured. If true t’is, Bat is 

one of the oldest.” She inclined her head 

toward Bat. “Observed the merfolk she 

did.” 

“Hunted-starved to extinction were the 

merfolk,” Dorsom said. “They haven’t 

existed since past remembrance.” 

“Legend all, some say,” Voir added, 

though even he lowered his voice 

carefully. 

“Legend not,” Bat insisted. She lifted 

her chin and looked at Sami through 

lowered eyelids. “Your face t’is proof.” 

“I don’t understand,” Sami said at 

the same time some dawning awareness 

rippled down her spine. She touched 

the outer corners of her eyes. It was 

impossible, and yet … it echoed one of 

Sitti’s oldest stories. “My grandmother— 

she always swore we were descended 

from a mermaid. Magali, I think her 

name was. It was, like, supposedly 

thousands of years ago … But I—I 

just can’t—I mean, nobody ever really 

believed that stuff.” She shook her head, 

hands clasped together as if she could 

somehow cling to her beliefs about reality. 

Dorsom placed his hands on Sami’s 

and looked into her eyes. She saw 

sparkles dancing on the surface of his 

own corneas. “Time t’is perhaps to inlook. 

See what reflection tells.” 

Sami pressed her lips together, trying 

to resist another swell of tears. “I don’t 

know what that is—to in-look.” 

“An old ReBalancing technique,” Voir 

said. “To go-still, lessen the within-voice.” 

“You needs must look upon and 

beyond the surface. Quiet within and 

without, to see what comes,” Natala 

added softly. 

Sami looked at each of them in turn. 

“I don’t get it, but I guess I can try,” she 

said a bit hopelessly. 

“Getting it is not necessary.” Dorsom 

smiled. He looked back at the pond, then 

at Sami. “Again shall you try?” 

This time Sami approached the 

water with greater caution. Once again, 

Dorsom, Natala, Voir, and Bat flanked 

Sami as she crouched on the bank. She 

saw her own diamond-eyed reflection 

and realized with some surprise that the 

effect was rather lovely—if unearthly. 

She closed her eyes and said to herself, 

“I’m here to listen. I won’t run away.” 

She looked at the water but her 

reflection remained unchanged. Twisting 

a lock of hair around one finger, she 

wondered if she was losing her mind. 

What did she really think staring at 

the water was going to tell her? If she 

were back in the Actual World, she’d be 

rushing to an eye doctor. Overwhelmed 

by a sense of futility, Sami rubbed her 

eyes, trying to press away the tears, 

but they spilled down her cheeks. She 

watched them splash dreamily into the 

water in widening circles. 

Then she realized that something was 

happening to her reflection. Her breath 

caught in her throat but she tried to stay 

calm: She’d never learn anything, she 

reminded herself, if she kept running 

away. She watched her reflected hair 

twist into spirals of copper and cobalt, 

her diamond eyes tilted, fox-like. Sami’s 

reflection dissolved into that of a young 

woman. Or was it a woman? 

The diamond-eyed woman gazing 

back at Sami looked lovely and yet 

strange and unearthly, as if there was 

something deeply animal and wild in 

her face. She shifted her position and 

revealed a powerful, curving tail covered 

in turquoise scales swishing through 

the water. 

©Brenda Stumpf Photography 

80 

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faeriemag.com 

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SilverWorld 

Diana Abu-Jaber 

“Mermaid,” Sami breathed. She heard 

Natala, Voir, and Bat each murmuring 

and exclaiming behind her, yet their 

voices seemed miles away. 

Hair drifting, the mermaid swept her 

tail to and fro. She seemed oddly familiar, 

as if within the eerie, pretty creature there 

were glints of Sami—or someone close to 

her, someone she’d known forever. “I’m 

here, Sami,” the mermaid-reflection said. 

“Do you see?” 

“Magali?” 

“You may call me Grandmother,” the 

greenish face said. 

Sitti’s features echoed through the 

mermaid’s—the deep set of her eyes, 

the high cheekbones and delicate lips. 

“You look—like my grandmother,” Sami 

whispered. 

The creature gave a fluttery, burbling 

laugh. “I am your grandmother—one 

of them—from many centuries ago. 

And you, Samara, are the last of the 

imperial matrilineal line. Our last hope 

for release.” 

Sami felt drawn to the water. She 

crouched lower, frowning. “Release? What 

kind of release?” 

“Most merfolk transformed back to 

nature when they died—becoming fish 

or spume or seabirds. We didn’t shed our 

mortal bodies in the way other beings 

do—our bodies were integrated with 

our spirits. We are neither Flicker nor 

Actual but exist in both Worlds. My mate, 

however, was an Actual. And even though 

he was the finest of swimmers and loved 

the sea and myself and all the merfolk, 

he was still a human man, who stood on 

human legs, and our only child was born 

with legs as well.” 

For a moment, the mermaid’s image 

seemed to dissolve into watery shivers, 

then it reformed. “I’d fallen for someone 

that I wasn’t meant to be with—or so my 

mother told me. And thusly I paid the 

price.” 

Sami frowned. “If you loved him, I 

think that’s all that matters.” 

Magali laughed until the surface of 

the water was covered with tiny bubbles. 

“Perhaps you’re right. But I will tell 

you: When Camellia was born, her 

father changed. He forgot his love for 

me. Perhaps he could only love one at a 

time—in the way of some Actuals. He 

stole her away from the sea and raised her 

as a human girl. I nearly died from grief. 

The only times I caught glimpses of her 

were the rare times they came to picnic on 

the beach. They never swam. He told her 

the water was dangerous and she mustn’t 

ever go in.” 

“Did you ever try to talk to her—just 

tell her who you were?” Sami asked. 

Long spirals of hair floated across her 

face, but she didn’t push them away, she 

kept her hypnotic diamond gaze right on 

Sami. “No. Because at the time I felt I 

knew why her father had done what he’d 

done. The reign of the mer-people was 

at an end. We’d been driven into hiding 

and we were dying out. He’d wanted to 

protect our daughter from this terrible 

legacy—he didn’t want her to see herself 

as …” She stopped for a moment and 

finally pulled the hair away from her face 

with one webbed, blue-nailed hand. “As a 

monster.” 

Sami wanted to walk into the water, 

throw her arms around the fierce and 

beautiful creature, and say, How could 

you think such a thing? 

But she didn’t. 

Because she understood. 

There was the tiniest piece of her that 

had thought the very same thing about 

herself. Because that’s how you start to 

think about yourself when there doesn’t 

seem to be another thing on earth quite 

like you. Monster. When you’re the only 

kid with a mom and grandmother and no 

dad, when they speak the wrong language, 

when no one is quite the same color as 

you, or when you see way too much stuff 

in people’s eyes and can almost—just 

about—read their minds. It wasn’t just 

in SilverWorld. How many times had she 

known—so, so clearly, just exactly what 

someone was thinking—to the point of 

nearly responding or answering a question 

she saw written on their face? 

Not to mention being descended of 

mermaids. 

“Granddaughter?” Magali called, 

startling Sami out of her memories. “You 

were far away.” 

“I’m sorry,” Sami said. “I’m 

listening—I am.” 

The mermaid smiled, her sharp, 

beautiful face softening beneath the 

ripples. “Doze ponds will do that—they 

lift you out of yourself. But I must speak 

quickly—it was terribly difficult to evade 

detection—her eyes are everywhere.” 

A shiver ran down Sami’s back as 

she imagined whose “eyes” Magali was 

speaking of. 

“Have you managed to return to your 

World since arriving here?” 

“Twice—yes. It wasn’t easy, either.” 

She saw the mermaid’s eyes glow and 

her lips part, and for a moment, Sami felt 

hesitant, fearing the mermaid herself was 

an illusion or in disguise—like so many 

of the creatures in this strange world 

seemed to be. Then she realized Magali 

was gazing at her—almost as if she were 

proud. “You really did it,” the mermaid 

whispered. “You’ve passed between the 

Worlds. You’re learning how to control 

the passage.” 

Sami nodded and looked down shyly. 

“A few times I suppose.” 

“Listen now, granddaughter.” Magali’s 

eyes had narrowed, their light was knifeedged. 

“You must return to the Actual 

World once more. There is a treasure you 

must find there. It’s called the Sapphire 

Stone. The most precious. You must 

retrieve it before you go any further in 

these Isles. The stone belongs in this 

World—it’s the one and only hope against 

the Nixie.” 

Sami leaned closer to the water. 

“Sapphire what? What’s that? Where am 

I supposed to find it?” 

The mermaid’s eyes slid to the right—it 

seemed impossible, but at that instant, 

Sami sensed Magali was afraid—of 

something or someone. “It’s a—a weapon 

of sorts—a key.” 

A key? And a weapon? Sami frowned. 

“But I need help—I mean, I don’t know 

the first thing about any sapphire! How 

do I get it?” 

“It was given to the Actual World by 

the merfolk ages ago for safekeeping— 

forged into a particular, most hidden 

place. Now its time is nigh. As is mine. 

Time to depart.” The mermaid’s eyes 

gleamed—she seemed to be receding, 

sinking away from the surface. “I’ve 

stayed too long. Remember—the stone is 

hidden in plain sight.” 

“Wait, please—” Sami pleaded. “Can’t 

you tell me something—anything more?” 

“What I’ve said is already too much.” 

The pond grew brighter, light seeming 

to crackle and fracture into thousands of 

flecks. “I give you my blessings and my 

brightness, granddaughter. Remember 

who you are: Samara, descended of 

mermaid, warrior, and Bedouin. Of 

Flicker and Actual. Brave and strong to 

the limits, and then beyond.” 

“Magali? Oh, please wait,” Sami cried 

as the mermaid dissolved into blue light. 

“Grandmother!” And then she watched 

the diamond light in her reflected eyes 

fade back to brown. 

Diana Abu-Jaber is the award-winning author 

of Birds Of Paradise, Origin, Crescent, 

Arabian Jazz, and The Language of 

Baklava. Her new memoir, Life Without 

A Recipe, is described as “a book of love, 

death, and cake.” SilverWorld is being 

published by Crown Books in 2017. Find out 

more at dianaabujaber.com. 

Follow Kevin Findlater Photography at 

facebook.com/kevinfindlaterphotography. 

See more of Brenda Stumpf Photography 

at bstumpf.com. 

©Brenda Stumpf Photography 

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83

Joel Grey 

Laren Stover 

Wiz Kid. 

JOEL GREY 

Joel Grey is a shape-shifter. 

Whether playing the whirling 

Wonderful Wizard of Oz in 

the musical Wicked, a blackeyed 

demon in Joss Whedon’s 

Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or the 

decadent imp in Bob Fosse’s 

Cabaret, he morphs into roles 

with seemingly effortless 

abandon. Laren Stover 

chats with the Academy 

Award–winning actor on 

the occasion of his memoir, 

Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir. 


Joel David Katz (before he became Joel Grey) as a child performer at the Cleveland Play House, early 1940s 

Joel Grey has finally written a memoir. It’s candid, colorful, charming, and, as you’d 

expect, magical. It’s laced with affairs (from the slightly older elevator operator of the 

hotel where he lived as a child to the Vegas burlesque stripper in the club where he 

was performing) and charming stories about his comedian clarinet-playing father, Mickey 

Katz, with whom the young Grey performed in Borscht Capades. He also paints his mother’s 

envious sisters into characters that seem straight out of a fairy tale. By page 37 we learn that 

Grey, who turned eighty-three in April, started acting at the age of nine and got locked in the 

Cleveland Play House alone when his parents forgot to pick him up. He wasn’t at all afraid. 

In fact, he tried on costumes and practiced making entrances. “It was a dream come true,” he 

writes. “Onstage, illuminated only by a single ghost light, I recited to an imaginary, yet deeply 

enthralled audience the ‘Queen Mab’ monologue from Romeo and Juliet.” 

The one Shakespearean monologue he had memorized concerned a moody and malevolent 

fairy, “in shape no bigger than an agate-stone,” who is drawn in a hazelnut chariot by a team of 

tiny creatures with collars made of “moonshine’s watery beams.” 

Joel is—magical, and not just for his work in Cabaret. Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright John 

Patrick Shanley chose him to star in the New York Stage and Film’s 1993 production of his 

play A Fool and Her Fortune. “Joel is Hermes,” he said by email when asked about Grey’s iconic, 

quixotic qualities, “also known as Mercury, that androgynous pixie, the messenger from the 

Photo courtesy of Cleveland Play House. 

gods. He has gravitas, verve, and danger. 

He is the eternal boy, an archetype, and a 

hell of a nice guy.” 

As the girlishly dressed, longhaired 

Ghost of Christmas Past in the TV movie 

A Christmas Carol, Grey was flickering and 

ethereal. True to the Dickens tale, Grey 

“was a strange figure—like a child: yet not 

so like a child as like an old man, viewed 

through some supernatural medium. Its 

hair, which hung about its neck and down 

its back, was white as if with age; and yet 

the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the 

tenderest bloom was on the skin.” 

When asked about it, Grey said he’d 

rather not talk about his hair, which was 

long, luminous, and white. He was quick 

to change the topic to Patrick Stewart, 

who played Scrooge. In an interview for 

the New York Times, Christmas Carol director 

David Jones said he was worried “that 

it would be enormously frustrating for 

Patrick to watch actors do what he had 

done singlehandedly.” But Stewart, who 

had performed A Christmas Carol as a oneman 

show, said, “It was wonderful. It was 

like waking up from a dream and finding 

you’re still in the dream. The characters 

were more vivid than I could have 

imagined!” No one was more dreamily 

and dramatically transformed than Grey. 

Grey seems to gravitate to roles that 

require transformations. As the Wizard 

in the original Broadway cast of Wicked 

he had a mesmerizing, all too fleeting 

presence. How did he prepare for the 

role? “We had that movie,” he said of 

the The Wizard of Oz. “And I knew I 

wasn’t going to be like him. So I had 

to be like me.” The Wizard is a Grey 

invention, right down to the design of the 

long coat that swung out when he sang 

“Wonderful” and danced for Elphaba. 

The dance was his idea too, as was the 

heartbreakingly beautiful and all too brief 

song “A Sentimental Man.” “I wanted 

that character to be about a father who 

loves his daughter and can’t reach her. 

He wants to protect her. So they wrote 

that song ‘A Sentimental Man’ for me just 

to flesh out—because in a musical, the 

things you sing are the most important.” 

He was a light-footed and 

transcendental moment of light in Lars 

von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. It was 

choreographer Vincent Paterson (also 

known for his work with Michael Jackson 

and on Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour) 

who suggested Grey for the part, and 

after getting a call from Björk, who said 

little more than “You will come be in my 

movie?” Grey got on a plane and flew to 

Sweden without ever seeing a script. We 

learn in his book that he recorded the 

vocals in a bathroom, with one foot in 

the shower. “Well, that was a big surprise, 

but that was it,” he said. “There was no 

further recording. I love that movie. I 

thought it was unique in so many ways, 

and I was really proud to be in it.” 

While most people know that Grey 

starred in George M!, Anything Goes, Chicago 

and Stop the World—I Want to Get Off, in his 

memoir he mentions other enchanting 

parts he’s played, including Jack in a TV 

production of Jack and the Beanstalk, and— 

believe it or not—Billy the Kid. 

It’s not in his book, but he even made 

a guest appearance on Buffy the Vampire 

Slayer as Doc, a seemingly demented old 

man with dark powers who’s secretly a 

demon with a small reptilian tail. He’s 

got scary solid black eyes (which he could 

make appear human-like) and blue blood. 

Acting is a risky profession filled with 

uncertainties. Grey has always dug deep 

to create a character from the inside 

out—he’s like Carl Jung meets Sigmund 

Freud analyzing a character before he 

“becomes” it. 

Makeup—he does that too. If you’ve 

ever wondered just who dreamed up that 

slicked-down hair for the Emcee in Bob 

Fosse’s Cabaret, he explains in this book 

that it’s Dippity-Do pinched from the 

beauty supplies of his wife Jo Wilder, with 

whom he parented two children. The 

entire decadently glamorous androgynous 

look came from her theatrical makeup 

kit. He writes, “I started with a stick 

called Juvenile Pink … matted down with 

Johnson’s baby powder. I then drew thick, 

dark, slightly arched eyebrows … Jo’s old 

lashes were so thick with mascara that 

they looked like black construction paper 

or the lashes of a ventriloquists’ dummy 

… and for the lips, not a lipstick but a 

type of old German shading stick called 

Leichner’s ‘Lake.’ ” 

The effect was silent-film star melded 

(or maybe melted is more like it) with 

performing marionette in a nightclub 

painted by German Expressionist artist 

Otto Dix. 

His favorite fairy tale? “Rumpelstiltskin,” 

said Grey. “And my very favorite book 

was The Story of Ferdinand, about the bull 

who didn’t want to fight the fighters. He 

just wanted to sit outside and smell the 

flowers. I didn’t want to fight and do all 

that. I just wanted to smell the flowers, so 

he was my hero.” 

Grey has published four photography 

books and has a fifth in the works. The 

theme? Flowers. He captures them in 

intimate detail, sensual stamens like an 

invitation to bees and fairies, or wilting 

and dying with petals shown with a 

shimmering bruised beauty. SEXY 

FLOWERS Petals, Pistols, and Stamens, Oh 

My! (that’s the working title) will blossom 

in late 2016, or early next year. 

Master of Ceremonies: A Memoir was 

published by Flatiron Books in 2016. 

84 


85

Water Worlds 

of KELPIES, SELKIES, 

and SIRENS by Paul Himmelein 

e are taught at an early age that almost three 

quarters of our planet is covered by water. Water 

is where life began and where most of it still exists. 

Close to 94 percent of all life on the planet is made up of 

aquatic life forms. From invertebrates like the sea cucumber 

and vampire squid to fish like the sea horse and manta ray to 

mammals such as the unicorn-like narwhal and gentle grazing 

sea cow, the ocean is home to a multitude of creatures, many of 

which scientists say we have yet to discover. It only makes sense 

that the faerie realm would be just as abundant beneath the 

waves. Be it ocean, lake, stream, or spring, there are otherworldly 

inhabitants that share this watery world. 

Water is required by all life. It’s a source of food and 

transportation, but an ocean tempest can quickly sink ships, a 

rip current can drown swimmers, and tidal waves and floods 

can wipe out entire villages. Like the element itself, the spirits 

that are associated with water can be good or bad, serving to 

illustrate the power and dangers of the liquid realm. The water 

spirits revealed below are just a sampling of the diverse world of 

fairies known to live in the liquid element. Some of them will be 

quite familiar while others, although ancient, may be introduced 

to you here for the first time. But like all life, they first began in 

the oceans. So it is wise to inquire how the oceans came into 

being in the first place. 

According to Greek mythology, in the beginning was Chaos. 

From this void of nothingness came Gaea, mother earth, who 

created Uranus, the sky, to surround her, the mountains, and 

Pontus, the sea. From Gaea and her son Uranus were born the 

twelve Titans, which included Oceanus, who replaced Pontus as 

the new god of the sea, and his sister Tethys, whom he married 

and with whom he fathered the Oceanids, the first water spirits. 

They inhabited rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, springs, and even 

wells. They numbered 6,000 in all; half were female and half 

were male. Some were great and powerful deities like the Nile 

and Achelous, Greece’s largest river, while others were shy and 

unassuming. Most exhibited a seductive beauty coupled with 

deadly treachery when crossed. Traditionally, they are pictured 

as half human and half fish, like a mermaid. 

As if 6,000 water spirits weren’t enough, more were created. 

After sleeping with Pontus, Gaea gave birth to Nereus, the old 

man of the sea who had the gift of prophecy and could change 

his shape at will. Nereus and the Oceanid Doris got together and 

had fifty daughters, all sea nymphs and mermaid-like creatures 

known as the wet ones or Nereïds. One of these mermaid 

daughters, Amphitrite, became queen of the sea when she 

married Poseidon, the Olympian god and brother of Zeus who 

replaced the Titan Oceanus as king of the sea. 

And yet there were still more water fairies to come: The 

Naiads were nymphs of the liquid world, freshwater sprites 

and daughters of Zeus. Potamids were nymphs of streams, 

the Limnads were nymphs of lakes, the Pegaeae nymphs of 

springs, and the Eleionomae of marshes and swamps that would 

mislead travelers with their alluring songs or fake cries for help. 

In this respect they are very similar to the Scottish Shellycoat, 

discussed below. 

These are the marine deities that Poseidon ruled over. Also 

known as Neptune, the king of the ocean was a tempestuous 

water god personifying the might and power of the sea. Zeus 

had his thunderbolts, but Poseidon had his trident. Striking 

this terrible three-pronged weapon upon the earth caused 

earthquakes and tidal waves, giving rise to one of the god’s 

epithets: the earth shaker. 

A lesser sea god who dwelt in the ocean’s depths was Proteus, 

a member of Poseidon’s entourage and another old-man-of- 


A Mermaid, John William Waterhouse. 

Wikimedia Commons.

Water Worlds 

Water Worlds 



the-sea archetype that could also see into the future and change 

his shape. Perhaps due to the changeable nature of the element 

of water—the sea can be stormy or still, turbulent or tame— 

water spirits often have the power to change their appearance. 

Poseidon himself can shape-shift into the guise of a stallion, 

as the horse was sacred to him. He even seduced Demeter, the 

fertility goddess of grain and mother of Persephone, in the form 

of a horse and was often called the Tamer of Horses. It has been 

said that the whitecaps of waves are really Poseidon’s galloping 

stallions and mares. 

This ancient tradition of the Poseidon-horse connection 

continues in fairy tales and folklore well outside of Greece. 

There have been stories from Ireland where great stallions have 

charged out of the surf from Poseidon’s realm and have become 

helplessly trapped and tangled in fishermen’s nets. In Scotland, 

shape-shifting water spirits resembling horses live in lakes 

and rivers. These water horses, known by the Scots as kelpies, 

can transform into handsome young men when out of water. 

Though some say the seaweed tangled in their hair is a dead 

giveaway that they are water demons. 

As enchanting horses, kelpies entice unwary women and 

children to climb upon their backs and gallop to the bottom 

of the loch or river, drowning and devouring the rider and 

tossing the uneaten entrails onto the banks. According to Patrick 

Graham, author of Sketches of Perthshire (1812), “every lake has its 

kelpie.” 

The Scottish Romantic poet Robert Burns writes of this water 

spirit’s dangers in his 1786 poem “Address to the Deil” (Devil): 

When thaws dissolve the snowy hoard. 

And float the jingling icy surface 

Then, water-kelpies haunt the ford, 

By your direction, 

And travelers in the night are lured 

To their destruction. 

Other sinister water fairies lurk near the banks of stagnant 

streams and algae-covered ponds waiting for unsuspecting 

mortals to happen by. Long-haired, green-skinned hags with 

wide gaping mouths and razor-sharp teeth quietly slither out 

of the reeds and bulrushes to grab the ankles of their victims 

and drag them into the water to drown and feast on them. 

Peg Powler haunts the River Tees, and there is a well-known 

water hag from Yorkshire called Jenny Greenteeth; both have a 

particular appetite for children. 

Some water fairies are no more than public nuisances, such as 

the Shellycoat, which makes its home, some say, on a giant rock 

in Leith Harbour and haunts various streams and rivers. It decks 

itself out in waterweeds and shells that clatter as it moves. Its 

main occupation and delight is confusing travelers and sending 

them off in the wrong direction. A footnote in Sir Walter Scott’s 

Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (1802) tells of a particular prank 

Shellycoat played one evening on two gentlemen: 

Two men, in a very dark night, approaching the banks of 

the Ettrick, heard a doleful voice from its waves repeatedly 

exclaim—“Lost! Lost!”—They followed the sound, which 

seemed to be the voice of a drowning person, and, to their 

infinite astonishment, they found that it ascended the river. 

Still they continued, during a long and tempestuous night, 

to follow the cry of the malicious sprite; and arriving, before 

morning’s dawn, at the very sources of the river, the voice 

was now heard descending the opposite side of the mountain 

in which they arise. The fatigued and deluded travelers now 

relinquished the pursuit; and had no sooner done so, than they 

heard Shellycoat applauding, in loud bursts of laughter, his 

successful roguery. 

In Finland, shape-shifting water spirits known as the Näkki 

hide out around wells, docks, piers, and under bridges that cross 

rivers. They’re fond of pulling children to their death should 

they lean over bridges and docks too far. The Näkki in human 

form is said to be quite beautiful, at least from the front; his 

backside, however, is shaggy and grotesque. These male water 

fairies play the violin as well as Orpheus could play his lyre, so 

well that the trees dance and waterfalls stop to hear the music. 

But this was just a way to lure women and children into lakes 

and streams where they would meet their doom. The Norwegian 

Nøkk and Swedish Näck are similar water spirits, though the 

Nøkk was not always malevolent. A woman once fell in love with 

a Nøkk, and he agreed to live with her. But as so often happens 

with a fairy-mortal marriage, the Nøkk eventually returned 

home to his watery realm, having grown despondent after being 

cut off from his water source. 

It is easy to see that shape-shifting comes naturally to water 

fairies, and this is no more evident than in the race of sea spirits 

known as the selkies. They inhabit Scotland (especially the Outer 

Hebrides and Orkney and Shetland Islands), Ireland, and the 

Faroe Islands, and have even been seen on the coast of Iceland. 

They look like ordinary seals but can shed their skins and take 

human form when they come out of the water. Some stories 

say they are fallen angels that were too good to be sent to Hell 

and so fell onto the coasts of the North Atlantic. When walking 

among us humans, they are seen as handsome dark-haired, doeeyed 

men and women. 

When the empty sealskin of a selkie is found and possessed 

by a human, the selkie whose skin it is will have to stay with the 

mortal until the skin can be retrieved. Many female selkies are 

wed to humans and often bear children that are reported to 

have webbed fingers and toes, a sign of their fairy parentage. 

There is a well-known Scottish story of a fisherman of the clan 

MacCodrum who happened upon seven naked women dancing 

along the shore. Nearby lay a heap of sealskins. The fisherman 

grabbed one of the skins, and the selkie owner was bound to stay 

with him. She even gave him two children, but after many years 

her beauty began to fade and her life’s energy ebbed. Just before 

she was about to die, she found her sealskin hidden in a locked 

cupboard and was able to return to the sea and save herself. 

In one variation of the tale it is her son who finds the skin and 

gives it to her. Together, mother and son enter the ocean, and he 

is introduced to his selkie relatives. The son eventually returns 

home to his father, and the clan is ever after known as the 

MacCodrum of the Seals; subsequent generations were said to 

have the second sight of the fairies. One explanation for the dark 

features of the Black Irish is that selkie blood runs in their veins. 

The 1994 film The Secret of Roan Inish (Roan Inish is Gaelic 

for “island of the seals”) and the 1959 novel Secret of the Ron Mor 

Skerry, by Rosalie K. Fry, upon which the movie is based, tells of 

a young girl who discovers that her ancestry is linked to a selkie 

woman marrying into her family many generations ago and 

that her little brother was taken by these selkie relatives and not 

actually drowned as was originally supposed. 

The most popular of all the fairies or nymphs that inhabit the 

Hylas and the Nymphs, John William Waterhouse. 


watery realms is the siren or mermaid. Sometimes feared, other 

times adored, mermaids have captured the public’s imagination 

for centuries. A woman with a fish’s body from the hips down, 

the mermaid is as well-known today by the hordes of commuters 

sipping skinny lattes from cups emblazoned with the Starbucks 

mermaid logo (inspired by a 16th century Norse woodcut) as by 

the ancients over two millennia ago. 

However, the sultry siren with her seductive song wasn’t 

always the mythical underwater creature we think of. The 

original sirens were the children of Melpomene, the muse of 

singing, and Achelous, an Oceanid and the greatest river god in 

Greece. Achelous had a long serpentine fish tail and resembled 

a merman with the addition of a great horn protruding from 

his head that Herakles broke off in a wrestling contest over a 

woman. In an alternative story, the sirens are said to have sprung 

from the blood that dripped from this wound. 

In Ovid’s Metamorphosis (A.D. 8), the sirens are human-like 

playmates of Proserpine (the Roman version of Persephone) and 

pick spring flowers with her. After their friend, the daughter of 

Demeter, was stolen away to the underworld by Pluto, they beg 

the gods for wings so they might fly over oceans and search the 

88 

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Water Worlds 


world for their lost playmate. The sirens’ prayers were answered. 

Golden plumage covered their bodies, and their arms morphed 

into wings, yet they retained their female torsos and their sweet 

legendary voices. 

The sirens have also been referred to as servants of the Deathgoddess. 

Once Persephone was established as the queen of the 

underworld, she ordered the sirens to bring all approaching 

travelers before her by enticing them with sweet songs and music 

and sending them to the realm of the dead. 

The Argonautica (third century B.C.) by Apollonius of Rhodes 

names the island where the sirens settled as Anthemoessa, a 

mythical place that lies somewhere between Sicily and Italy. It 

was here that their irresistible voices lured sailors and mariners 

to their deaths. When Jason and his Argonauts rowed past the 

island on their quest for the Golden Fleece, Orpheus played his 

lyre and sang his own sweet song to drown out the enchanting 

yet deadly music of the sirens. 

Living a little more dangerously, the Greek hero Odysseus, in 

Homer’s Odyssey, desires to hear the fatal siren song, so he plugs 

his crew’s ears with wax while having himself bound to the mast 

as they near the island of the sirens. The sirens’ singing enchants 

Odysseus and beckons him to steer his ship toward their 

island. Struggling to writhe free, he begs his crew to sail toward 

the island, but as the wax has rendered them deaf, his crew 

successfully sails on without incident. According to an ancient 

prophecy, the sirens would die should a human ever ignore their 

song. As Odysseus’s ship sails toward the horizon, the sirens 

throw themselves into the sea and perish. 

Over time these classical myths became absorbed into other 

folk tales and legends, and soon the half-women, half-bird 

creatures who lured sailors to their deaths exchanged their 

feathers for fish scales and transformed into the siren we are all 

familiar with today—the mermaid. Even language supports this 

change: The French and Italian words for mermaid, sirène and 

sirena, are indicative of its origins, and an order of sea mammal 

that includes the manatee is called Sirenia, as these creatures 

were often thought to be mermaids by sailors long at sea— 

clearly a case of mistaken identity. 

These half-women, half-fish sirens still performed the same 

function of luring seamen to their demise. To even see a 

mermaid often meant that the end was near. According to Cap’n 

Bill in L. Frank Baum’s The Sea Fairies (1911), “nobody ever sees 

a mermaid and lives to tell the tale.” 

Sirens and mermaids were the personification of navigational 

hazards such as shallow waters, hidden reefs, submerged rocks— 

the dangers of sailing unknown waters. This is not unlike the 

Lorelei of the German Rhine. According to the 1801 poem 

“Lore Lay” by German author Klemens Brentano, a beautiful 

maiden begins bewitching men and leading them to their 

deaths after her lover betrays her. Instead of condemning her 

to death, the local bishop confines her to a convent. As she is 

being transported to the nunnery, she passes a great rock along 

the river and asks permission to climb it to view the Rhine one 

last time. Peering down into the waters from the precipice she 

believes she sees her lover and falls to her death. It is said that to 

this day one can hear the echo of her voice when approaching 

this 400-foot rock that bears her name. 

The Romantic poet Heinrich Heine builds on the myth a 

couple of decades later, in 1822, in one of his most famous 

poems, “Die Lorelei.” Here the maiden has been transformed 

into a siren sitting atop the great rock and is combing her golden 

hair in true mermaid fashion as she sings her mesmerizing song, 

causing ships to crash upon the rocks and shoals below. 

The loveliest maiden is sitting 

Up there, so wondrously fair; 

Her golden jewelry is glist’ning; 

She combs her golden hair…. 

I think that the waves will devour 

Both boat and man, by and by, 

And that, with her dulcet-voiced power 

Was done by the Loreley. 

This beautiful stretch of the Rhine—also its deepest and 

narrowest—was historically one of the most dangerous parts of 

the river to navigate. 

Mermaids and sirens haven’t shaken their reputation since 

the ancient days of Greece. Beguiling topless pinups combing 

their long strands on the shore, singing sultry songs, they are a 

combination of natural purity and the ultimate femme fatale. 

Does she have a heart of gold or is she a soul-stealing bad girl? 

Well … it depends. 

The image of the sailor-slaying siren is a tough one to break. 

Shakespeare shows how ruthless the Duke of Gloucester will be 

in stealing the crown in Henry VI, Part 3 (1591) when he has him 

say, “I’ll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall.” 

Even artists seized upon the siren’s horrifying power. In his 

1887 painting The Depths of the Sea, Sir Edward Coley Burne- 

Jones shows a quaintly smiling mermaid dragging a dead man’s 

naked body to the bottom of the ocean, a possession she will not 

release. It is the perfect metaphor to express the fin de siècle view 

of the damsel of desire hell-bent on devouring her man. 

An Edwardian mermaid drama plays out in H.G. Wells’s 

sometimes humorous romance The Sea Lady: A Tissue of Moonshine 

(1902). The story opens with a woman being rescued at the 

beach by the Bunting family. Actually, the woman is feigning a 

cramp in order to be “saved,” and when she is carried from the 

surf, she is discovered to be a mermaid. This is very different 

from the opening of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little 

Mermaid” (1837), as well as the 1984 movie Splash, where it 

is the mermaid that does the saving. The Buntings whisk the 

mermaid quickly inside their beach house, fearful that the 

neighbors will see her “flopping, dripping mackerel-like tail” and 

of the scandal it might cause. The Sea Lady charms them all: She 

is well spoken, with a posh accent, well mannered, beautiful, and 

graceful. The family is more shocked that the well-read mermaid, 

who complains that her lace and hair is always wet, has never had 

a cup of tea than by the fact that she has a fishtail. They call her 

the “invalid” until they give her a name, Doris Thalestris Waters, 

and get calling cards printed and bring her out into society in a 

wheelchair-like contraption to hide her lower half. 

What no one knows (or realizes too late) is that she’s come all 

the way from the South Seas to possess a man she once saw there 

years ago. Harry Chatteris, an up-and-coming English politician 

ready to campaign for Parliament, is engaged to a practical nononsense 

gifted English women, Adeline Glendower, a guest of 

the Buntings. Chatteris is an easy mark. The Sea Lady lures him 

with her refrain that “there are better dreams!” This is her siren’s 

song, and looking into her eyes is “like looking into deep water.” 

It’s not long before Chatteris breaks it off with his fiancée, while 

Miss Waters leaves the Buntings and sets herself up in a hotel. 

His friends see where this is all heading, and they confront him to 

no avail. They even try to talk sense to the mermaid. When she 

is accused of wanting to steal his soul, she denies it, saying she 

has no need of one. She is told she is not playing fair because she 

is immortal. But it is too late. The doomed Chatteris is blissfully 

lost, and on one “night out of fairyland,” he carries the Sea Lady 

down to the ocean: “They swam for a little while, the man and 

the sea goddess who had come for him, with the sky above them 

and the water about them all, warmly filled with the moonlight 

and the glamour of phosphorescent things.” 

But not all mermaids have such selfish aspirations. Perhaps 

the best-known mermaid tale of all is “The Little Mermaid.” 

Not the watered-down Disney version with Creole crabs singing 

feel-good calypso numbers to a red-headed Ariel, but the much 

darker Hans Christian Andersen original. In Andersen’s story, 

the little mermaid is all purity, from saving the young prince from 

drowning to suffering the loss of her greatest virtue—her magical 

voice—to silently enduring great pain with every step she takes 

once she trades her fishtail in for human legs and feet. It is a 

story of sacrifice for love, a love she will never receive in return. 

Even at the end of the story, when she has an opportunity to 

return to her underwater home if she stabs the heart of the man 

she loves, she refuses, knowing full well that if she does not kill 

him, she will die instead. 

In the short story “The Professor and the Siren,” written in 

1957 by Italian author Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, the 

siren says, “Don’t believe in tales invented about us. We kill 

none, we only love.” When he was a young student, the professor 

would take a rowboat out into the bay early in the morning 

and practice his ancient Greek for his upcoming exams. One 

morning he feels the back of his boat lower and turns to see 

the sweetly seductive smile of a siren hoisting herself out of 

The Depths of the Sea, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones. 


90 

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Selkie 

E. Kristin Anderson 

It’s not that I’m not comfortable 

in my own skin. It’s that I can’t 

ever be without it—it’s a harness 

in a handbag, holding me to the ocean 

with a hook and a thread. 

This is the life I wanted—a cottage, 

no Prince Charming but a kind heart, 

a cat and a home library. In the sea 

I can’t have any of this. Still, pink skin 

for its other self, wet and dark. 

Ulysses and the Sirens, Herbert James Draper. 


One day I’ll go to the beach, set a fire, 

throw in the bag full of everything 

I carry around. Driver’s license, 

lip gloss, cash, and the pelt, a last tie 

to the water, 

the water. She wraps her arms around the student’s neck and 

slides into the boat, surrounding him with a scent he has never 

smelled before, that of the “magic of the sea and youthful 

voluptuousness.” It is quite a different perfume from what Dante 

describes in a dream sequence of a mermaid in Purgatorio (early 

14th century). The stench that came off this siren’s belly was so 

strong, it awakened him from his dreaming. 

The professor’s siren is the daughter of the muse Calliope, 

and her name is Lighea. He spends three unforgettable weeks 

with her that ruin mortal women for him forever. After sex with 

a siren, no woman can compete. The siren invites the professor 

to come live with her below “the dark motionless waters.” He 

refuses, but she tells him it’s an open invitation: “I have loved 

you; and remember that when you are tired, when you can drag 

on no longer, you have only to lean over the sea and call me.” 

The professor remains a celibate bachelor ever after. In his 

old age, sailing to Portugal for a conference, he falls into the sea. 

Despite rescue efforts, no body can be found. Did he drown or 

did he finally join his siren lover? 

Apparently, trips to the underwater world of the mermaid 

don’t have to be one way. In L. Frank Baum’s The Sea Fairies, 

mermaids invite a little girl, Trot, and her peg-legged chaperone 

Cap’n Bill to visit their miraculous mermaid palaces at the 

bottom of the ocean. Trot and Cap’n Bill talk with various sea 

creatures and even the souls of drowned sailors. At the end of 

this fairy fantasy, when Trot and the Cap’n are returned to their 

rowboat, a mermaid named Aquareine gives Trot a pearl ring 

and says, “If at any period of your life the mermaids can be of 

service to you, my dear, you have but to come to the edge of the 

ocean and call ‘Aquareine.’ If you are wearing the ring at the 

time, I shall instantly hear you and come to your assistance.” 

There are many more water spirits that dwell within the 

fluid realms than is possible to mention here. There are the 

Asrai, little sprites that feed off the moonlight but will vanish 

into puddles should the sun shine upon them. There are the 

serpentine Nagas of India that live under the sea and in springs, 

and the Slavic Vodyanoy that seem to be the original “creatures 

of the black lagoon.” Water is nearly ubiquitous on this planet, 

and so are the fairies that live in it. We mortals have explored 

less than five percent of the earth’s oceans, so who can say what 

dwells there still, yet to be discovered? Surely creatures more 

fantastical and astounding than the ones that have already 

revealed themselves. 

Follow Paul Himmelein on Instagram @lordperegrine. 


©Kate Leiper 

to the split and to the lie 

that binds. 

E. Kristin Anderson is the author of seven chapbooks, including A Guide for the Practical Abductee; Fire in the Sky; Pray, Pray, 

Pray: Poems I Wrote to Prince in the Middle of the Night, and 17 Days. Learn more at ekristinanderson.com. 

Artist and illustrator Kate Leiper finds inspiration in myths, fairy stories, legends, and local and personal tales and aims to bring them to life 

through her artwork. Visit her online at kateleiper.co.uk.

Brokenhearted 

Vest 

by Lisa Hoffman 

MATERIALS 

6 (7, 8) 3oz/85g skeins (each 100yd/91m) of Long Island 

Livestock Worsted (75% Alpaca, 25% Merino) in color 

Naturally Dyed w Cutch. 

1 (1, 2) 3oz/85g skeins (100yd/91m) of Long Island 

Livestock Worsted (75% Alpaca, 25% Merino) in color 

Dirty Wash Denim. 

Or any worsted weight yarn that meets gauge. 

Size 9 (5.5mm) needles, or size to obtain gauge. 

Cable needle. 

4 Stitch holders. 

Darning needle. 

Sizes 

S (M, L) 

Go to 

faeriemag.com 

to find select 

knitting kits. 

Measurements 

40 (44, 48)"/101.5 (111.5, 122) cm Hip width, 23½ 

(23½, 25)"/59.5 (59.5, 63.5) cm Length. 

Gauge 

17 sts x 25 rows = 4"/10cm in Stockinette stitch. 

Abbreviations 

C6b: Slip 3 sts to cable needle, hold to back, k3, 

k3 from cable needle. 

C6f: Slip 3 sts to cable needle, hold to front, 

k3, k3 from cable needle. 

K: Knit. 

P: Purl. 

P2tog: Purl 2 sts together. 

Rem: Remain (ing). 

RS: Right side. 

Sts: Stitches. 

WS: Wrong side. 

©Gale Zucker 

Pattern Stitches 

K1, P1 Rib (over an odd # of sts) 

Row 1 (RS): K1, *p1, k1; rep from * to end. 

Row 2 (WS): P1, *k1, p1; rep from * to end. 

Repeat rows 1 and 2. 

Climbing Cables (multiples of 16 + 8) for sizes Small and Large only 

Row 1 (RS): *P1, k6, p2, k6, p1; rep from *, end p1, k6, p1. 

Row 2 and all WS rows: *K1, p6, k2, p6, k1; rep from *, end k1, 

p6, k1. 

Row 3: as row 1. 

Row 5: *P1, C6f, p2, C6b, p1; rep from * end p1, C6f, p1. 

Rows 7, 9, 11: as row 1. 

Row 13: *P1, C6b, p2, C6f, p1; rep from *, end p1, C6b, p1. 



Climbing Cables (multiples of 16) for size Medium only 

Row 1 (RS): *P1, k6, p2, k6, p1; rep from *. 

Row 2 and all WS rows: *K1, p6, k2, p6, k1; rep from * 


Row 5: *P1, C6f, p2, C6b, p1; rep from *. 

Rows 7, 9, 11: as row 1. 

Row 13: *P1, C6b, p2, C6f, p1; rep from *. 



Notes 

Selvedge sts are included for seaming the lower sections of vest. 

After the first bind offs, all outer selvedge sts are removed from the 

cables for a wavy edge on the upper sections. 

Instructions 

Back 

Cast on 89 (97,105) sts. Work in K1,P1 Rib for 4 rows. Increase 1 

stitch on next row to 90 (98,106) sts and work pattern as follows: 

Row 1: K1, p1, [k6, p2] 10 (11,12) times, k6, p1, k1. 

Row 2 and all WS rows: [K2, p6] 11 (12,13) times, k2. 

Row 3: As row 1. 

Row 5: K1, p1, [C6f, p2, C6b, p2] * to last 8 (2, 8) sts, C6f (0,C6f), 

p1, k1. 

Rows 7, 9, 11: As row 1. 

Row 13: K1, p1, [C6b, p2, C6f, p2] to last 8 (2, 8) sts, C6b (0,C6b), 

p1, k1. 



For small size only: Repeat rows 1–16 once more, then rows 1–8. 

For M & L sizes only: Repeat rows 1–16 twice more. Work should 

measure approx. 9 (10½, 10½)"/23 (26.5, 26.5) cm from cast-on. 

Bind off 18 sts at beg of next 2 rows. Continue in pattern as 

established on rem 54 (62, 70) sts until piece measures 24 (24, 

25½)” from cast-on, ending with pattern row 8 or 16. On separate 

holders place 14 (14,16) sts for right shoulder, 26 (34,38) sts for back 

neck, 14 (14,16) sts for left shoulder. 

Front 

Cast on 85 (93,101) sts. Work in K1, P1 Rib for 4 rows. Begin 

cable pattern on next row as follows: 

Row 1: K1, p1, [k6, p2] 3 times, [k1, p1] 16 (20, 24) times, k1, 

[p2, k6] 3 times, p1, k1. 

Row 2: K2, [p6, k2] 3 times, [p1, k1] 16 (20, 24) times, p1, [k2, 

p6] 3 times, k2. 


Row 5: K1, p1, C6f, p2, C6b p2, C6f, p2, [k1, p1] 16 (20, 24) 

times, k1, p2, C6f, p2, C6b, p2, C6f, p1, k1. 

Rows 7, 9, 11: As row 1. 

Row 13: K1, p1, C6b, p2, C6f p2, C6b, p2, [k1, p1] 16 (20, 24) 

times, k1, p2, C6b, p2, C6f, p2, C6b, p1, k1. 



For small size only: Repeat rows 1–16 once more, then rows 

1–8. For M & L sizes only: Repeat rows 1–16 twice more. Work 

should measure approx. 9 (10½,10½)"/23 (26.5, 26.5) cm from 

cast-on. Bind off 18 sts at beg of next 2 rows. Continue pattern 

as established on rem 49 (57, 65) sts until piece measures 21 

(21, 22½)"/53.5 (53.5, 57) cm from cast on. Divide fronts on 

next RS row as follows: Pattern 24 (28, 34) sts, Bind off 1 stitch, 

pattern to end. Working both right and left fronts at same time 

with separate balls of yarn, continue in pattern for 3"/7.5cm, 

ending with cable pattern row 8 or 16. On separate holders, 

place 14 (14,16) sts for each shoulder on holders, and 10 (14,18) 

rem sts at each front for neck. With wrong sides facing each 

other, join shoulders with 3-needle bind off. 

Neck 

Slip sts from holders onto one needle as follows: 10 (14,18) sts 

for right neck, 26 (34, 38) sts from back neck, 10 (14,18) sts for 

left neck. With RS facing, join yarn and work as follows: [P1, 

k1] 5 (7, 9) times, p2tog, continue in K1, P1 Ribbing to end of 

row—45 (61, 73) sts rem. Work even as established in ribbing 

for 5"/12.5cm. Bind off loosely in pattern. 

Pocket 

Cast on 40 (48, 56) sts. Work in K1,P1 Rib for 4 rows. 

Begin cable pattern on next row as follows: 

Row 1: K1, [k6, p2] 4 (5, 6) times, k6, k1. 

Row 2 and all WS rows: K1, [p6, k2] 4 (5, 6) times, k7. 


Row 5: K1, *C6f, p2, C6b, p2; rep from * to last 7 (1, 7) sts, 

C6f (0, C6f), k1. 

Rows 7, 9, 11: As row 1. 

Row 13: K1, *C6b, p2, C6f, p2; rep from * to last 7 (1, 7) sts, 

Lisa Hoffman’s knitting designs can be seen in Vogue Knitting, Interweave Knits, Knitwear Magazines, Alice Hoffman’s Survival Lessons, and 

many other publications. She currently teaches at String in New York City. 

©Lisa Hoffman 2015-2016. All rights reserved. Individual, non-commercial use only. Sale, any other commercial use and any reproduction, publication, or distribution of this pattern other than 

in Faerie Magazine is prohibited. For any pattern related inquiries please contact designer at lisahoffmanknits.com. 

Find photographer Gale Zucker on Instagram @galezucker. 

C6b (0, C6b), k1. 



Repeat row 1–16 once more, then rows 1–8 once. 

Finishing 

Seam sides. Attach pocket to lower front on center rib panel, 

with opening at top. Steam or block to desired measurements. 

Climbing Cables Chart 

Red lines indicate 16 st pattern repeat. 

Small and Large sizes only 

Medium size only 


95

Remembering 

PRINCE 

Photography by STEVE PARKE 

To end this issue, we wanted to share a few photos of 

Prince that were taken by our photo editor Steve Parke, 

who worked as Prince’s photographer and art director 

for over a decade at Paisley Park in Chanhassen, Minnesota, 

doing everything from designing t-shirts and hand painting 

guitars to enlisting every spare pair of hands to melt candles for 

an impromptu music video. A midnight request for a camel for 

a video shoot (a mountain lion had to do) or a 4 a.m. private 

screening of Interview with the Vampire at the local movie theater 

were not unusual events. One night, Parke and Prince stayed 

up until dawn dreaming up designs to make Paisley Park more 

magical—a waterfall mural behind the water fountain; a gigantic 

symbol inlaid into the marble floor; star fields, clouds, and piano 

keys on the ceilings; lyrics and symbols cut into the rugs—and 

Parke watched in wonder as workers flowed in over the next 

weeks and every one of those ideas came to life. That’s how 

things were in Prince’s world. And working with him so closely 

taught Parke “that pretty much anything is possible—and if it’s 

impossible at least you can try.” 

Attempting the impossible was everyday practice at Paisley 

Park. In fact, when Parke first got a call from Prince’s manager 

asking if he could design and paint a soundstage (after a mutual 

friend showed Prince some of Parke’s artwork), Parke said “sure” 

though he’d never done anything like it. He sketched out a plan, 

which Prince approved just before flying off to Paris for a show, 

then worked for seventy-two hours straight so that he could have 

as much done as possible when Prince returned. Parke seemed to 

pass the test, and was kept on to finish the job—and many more 

after. “Essentially Prince let me learn as I went,” Parke says, 

“trusting that I could pull it off. I don’t know if it was the fact 

that he was self taught (he never went to music school and never 

wrote music down), or simply that I kept rising to the challenge. 

Prince gave you a chance, and what you did with that chance 

seemed to define how things played out. 

“Prince wasn’t a workaholic,” he continues, “but a createaholic. 

He literally built a world around himself, a place to create 

all the time.” Parke would often work through the night with 

only Prince and the sound engineer Hans. “Sometimes I’d hear 

Prince playing the grand piano downstairs as I worked,” he says, 

“in the atrium just under my office. The doves—there were two, 

in a huge cage down the hall—would begin cooing along with 

the music.” Parke once blurted out that he felt Prince’s vocal 

arrangements were underrated; a day later Prince invited Parke 

into his studio. “He gestured for me to sit next to him and played 

me a song over the speakers. He said he’d just recorded it. It was 

an intimate and personal song, nothing but layers of vocals. Lush 

and yearning. Unbelievably raw and beautiful. I was stunned. 

When he finished I think I managed to say ‘thank you’ before I 

walked out, back upstairs to work. I never heard the song again. 

I have no idea what happened to it. But I will never forget it.” 

In 1997, Prince asked Parke if he could use a camera. Though 

he didn’t have a lot of experience, Parke said sure. The photos 

here are just a few captured moments from the extraordinary 

years that followed. See more at steveparke.com. 

96 faeriemag.com

Available from Faerie Magazine in June 2016! 

Winged Beauty—a very faerie coloring book featuring 

gorgeous art from Renae Taylor, Cory Godbey, Stephanie Law, 

Ruth Sanderson, and Charles Vess. Find it at faeriemag.com! 

FAERIE mag.com

FAERIE

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