Once again, I've been reminded of the creative power of walking away from the document. There are so many times that I've been struggling through a story, painstakingly writing sentence after sentence that just doesn't work, but as soon as I step away from the computer, the creative juices start flowing, and I find the perfect way to solve my problem. Even when I write something that I like, stepping away from the project usually means that within a few minutes, I've found a bunch of problems I hadn't noticed, which helps me improve the story. Like, obviously there are limits to this, but it's shocking how often it works.
I need to stop misreading titles, because it keeps giving me ideas for stories that I want to read and don't have time to write.
I just saw a fantasy novel that I thought was titled Death of the Mermaid Princess, and let me tell you, I am now desperate for a political intrigue murder mystery set in a cheesy fantasy world.
Whenever it would be appropriate and time-sensitive to focus on a Specific Story or Character of mine, creative projects I have not thought of since 2017 start climbing out of the mothballs and demand attention.
Once again, I'm astonished at how much more creative you can get with fairy tale retellings if you don't try to force everything into a YA romantasy box.
She was beautiful, of course. They all were, every girl who came through that gate holding a rose in her hand. I’d learned to look beyond that, after so many years. Behind their external loveliness, some girls were haughty, some were timid, some were greedy, some were bold, and all of them—all of them—fled before they finished a month in my company.
But there was something in this girl’s bearing that I’d never seen in any girl before. It made her seem brave, even while she was trembling. It lent elegance and grace to every cautious step. It made her look me in the eye when I appeared—all scales and claws and teeth—before her, and something about it made me want to shrink from her presence when we dined together that evening, as if I were the peasant and she the terrifying princess.
“Beauty,” I asked her (I’d long ago stopped bothering to learn each girl’s name), “are you afraid of me?”
She clutched the rose to her chest—she hadn’t set it down since arriving at the castle. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose I am.”
“That is very strange,” I said, “for I am also afraid of you.”
She looked at the rose in her slender white hands, then looked at the teeth that filled my monstrous jaw—each of them larger than her entire hand. “I can’t imagine why,” she said.
“Neither can I,” I replied. “Do you have fairy blood within you? Are you a siren, nixie, elf, enchantress, harpy or sprite who can take on some harmless shape and tear me to pieces with a wave of your hand?”
“If I were,” Beauty replied, “I don’t think I would tell you. So even if I tell you truly that I am not, I do not think you will believe me.”
Yet the strange thing was that I did. Whatever this unsettling something was inside her, it was no more magical than the salt cellar on the table, no less human than I once had been. Yet I could not taste, see, smell, hear, sense or otherwise define the smallest thing about it, so I—who thought I’d seen every kind of woman the world had to offer—was left utterly unsettled.
I tried to hide my uneasiness, in the weeks that followed. I spent every moment I could in her company, and every evening dutifully proposed marriage to her. Every evening, she kindly declined, and we’d begin the next morning all over again, I no closer to solving the mystery that was her. I never stopped fearing it, but I grew accustomed to it, and over time, began to hold it in a reverent sort of awe. This something kept her steady even when I felt ready to fall to pieces. This something made her gentle when she touched a beast that could crush her with one claw. This something kept her in the castle not just weeks, but months longer than any other girl had stayed before.
“Beauty,” I finally asked her, one evening six months after her arrival. “Why do you stay?”
She looked up from her dinner plate, now cleared of its dessert. “Because I am required to,” she said. “Was that not the condition you set upon me, to save my father’s life?”
“Even if that were so,” I said, for the wording of the conditions left that part intentionally vague, “there are many who would risk the consequences rather than stay so long in a castle with a beast like me.”
“I will not risk my father,” she said. “I love him too much for that.”
There, at last, was the name of the something that had unsettled me for so long. The thing she had, that every other girl lacked, was love. The other girls had come by invitation, by accident, drawn by curiosity or by the magic surrounding this place. She, and only she, had come to this place because she loved another more than herself. It had given her strength, ennobled her soul, utterly baffled one who’d been monstrous as long as I had. This love was not the mere heart-fluttering that I thought was necessary to make a girl decide to bind herself to a man as wife. It was something that tore apart every scrap of the self in service of another.
I could not live with myself, keeping such a woman in a cage. I let her go home that very night.
Her eyes were luminous when I told her the news. “Do you mean it, Beast?” she asked me. “Am I free to go, with no harm done to him?”
“Nothing from this palace will harm a hair on his head,” I said. “You are free to return to your home. I only ask…” And here I looked down, bashful for the first time in my life, the words sticking in my monstrous throat. “I ask that you might return someday, to visit a beast with no one to share his palace with.”
“I will, Beast,” she said, placing one small hand on my enormous claw. “I promise I will.”
I didn’t believe her, of course, and when she left, I tried to plan for what I’d do the next time another beautiful girl came through my castle door. Yet I found that I could picture no face in these halls but hers, imagine no voice that I wanted to hear across the table at our nightly meals. I had sent away the only girl I’d ever loved in those long, long years—and doing so was the only time I’d ever shown that I knew what love was.
I think there may have been something in the magic of that place that knew she took my heart with her, because I began to weaken almost as soon as she left. I was strong enough the first day or two, but after I spent a week alone, I was barely able to hold my horned head upright. I collapsed in the garden sometime around sunset, and the sun had risen before I found the strength to open my eyes.
I was dying, then, I knew—dying for love of her. It seemed an excellent reason to die. If I had to leave this mortal realm, let me do it so that she—with her wild, wondrous, awe-inspiring soul—might live to share her love with a million people she might meet throughout her long and happy life. If my life was the price I had to pay to give her goodness to the world, I was more than glad to give it.
I fell into a fitful slumber, and when I next opened my eyes, I saw her face before me. I thought she was a vision, another wishful phantom conjured up as comfort in my final moments before death, but then I felt her fingers on my cold and clammy claws, and felt her hot tears dripping down the scales on my face.
“Beauty,” I breathed—for the name was hers now, and could belong to no other. “Why did you come back?”
“My foolish Beast,” she sighed, laughing and crying as she buried her face into my neck. “I came because I love you.”
There was that word again—given now to me. I think my heart returned with it, because I was able to breathe again, found the strength to raise my head and look into her beautiful face. “How can that be?” I asked. “How can a creature like you love a...thing like me? I am a monstrous, worthless wretch who has lived for countless years and only a scant few days ago even learned what love means.”
“It means we give,” Beauty said. “It means we choose. And I choose to give myself to you—in marriage if you wish it—because you’ve shown love more deeply in these few days than most men show in a lifetime. I am glad of your company, grateful for your goodness, and I think I’d like to live in love beside you, if you’ll have me to stay as your wife.”
“I wish it,” I told her. “I wish it with all my heart.”
The pain that tore through me then cannot be described. It tore apart my flesh and bone and seemed to turn my very spirit inside out before piecing it back together. When I came into myself again, I was whole in a way I’d never been before, even when I’d been a human untouched by fairy magic. The piece that I was missing had been made whole by her—my heart filled in because I’d given it away.
We were married afterward, of course, in the very garden where her father had first stolen a rose. We had her father to live with us, had countless children of our own, and constant visits from the children of her many brothers and sisters. I, who’d been loveless for so long, have love surrounding me every moment of the day.
I do not deserve it. I never did. But I try to show my gratitude by letting love transform me into a better man each day.
Behold my Bee Dress, as photographed on my trip to Italy. It was a happy coincidence that my dress this year thematically aligned with my vacation plans!!!
The snow queen's tale from the pov of kai, if you so wish?
Cold as Ice
I... I don't like to think about it. It...it was so cold and bleak, and now there's warmth, and light, and love...
I couldn't believe in those things back then. I had them in abundance as a small child--when Gerda and I played among the roses. But as we grew older, we started to understand more of the world. Gerda learned to see greater depths of goodness, but I saw only the bleak depths of misery--the pain, sorrow, and suffering--and thought myself wiser for it. All the goodness we'd known seemed like a childish dream that Gerda couldn't let go of, while I was mature and wise enough to know how the world really was.
It made me miserable, and I was a little beast because of it--lashing out at Grandmother and Gerda. They were happy, and I wasn't, and I hated them for it, hated how they tried to fix me. Every time they tried to approach, I would fly at them, and add to the misery. Every time it happened, I hated myself more. People were too complicated, life was too messy, emotion was too powerful and painful. My only relief was isolation. Yet I longed for someone who could understand me, or, if I couldn't have that, something that could numb the pain.
The Snow Queen offered both. I first caught sight of her in a snowstorm on a bleak December night. She was beautiful, rigid, untouchable, unfeeling. I could not hurt her, and she would keep the world from hurting me. She called, and the empty parts of my heart cried out in answer. I opened the window, trying to go after her, but Grandmother and Gerda held me back. They cried and begged, tried to tell me to stay in the warmth and light. I hated them for it. They didn't know that I hated the warmth, and longed for the numbing cold. I cried and raged, and when the storm passed, longed ever more to get away.
The next time the Snow Queen called, I was outdoors on a snowy day. I climbed onto her sled before Gerda could stop me. Gerda called after me, desperate and pleading. It tore at what heart I had left, and for a moment, I wondered if going with the Snow Queen just meant trading one form of pain for another. The Snow Queen's kiss made it all go away. All the darkness of the world, all the pain, self-hatred, and regret, every one of my memories, was locked away behind a wall of ice. At long last, I felt nothing at all.
I can't describe...thinking back on it now fills me with horror. The desolation, the emptiness, the utter lack of hope. Her ice palace was hard, sharp, perfect, still, every detail crisp and unchanging. I can't say it was beautiful, because I couldn't see beauty there. I understood the mathematical perfection of the structure, but it gave me no sense of awe. It simply was, and the world would have felt the same if it was not. Facts were the only reality, with no need of emotion to muddy them up.
The Snow Queen understood all this, taught me all this. She placed me on her frozen lake, her Mirror of Reason, where puzzles were my only playthings. I thought I had at last become a man--leaving behind the sentimentality of childhood for pure logic. My head was alive, and my heart was all but dead.
There must have been some spark deep within me--some inner flame locked away beneath the ice, but not stifled--because after a time, I longed to leave the Snow Queen's palac. Logically, I knew there was more to the world, and wanted to see something beyond the cold and snow. The Queen smiled and caressed me, and told me that of course I could have what I wanted--if only I was clever enough to get it. She set me yet another puzzle--a hundred thousand pieces of ice--and told me that if I could make a word of them, she would set me free to see the world.
Fool that I was, I thought I could solve it. I spent all my time at my task, hours upon hours, days upon days, weeks upon months upon years, using every bit of my brainpower, every ounce of my strength. I grew taller, older, thinner. My flesh wasted away as I refused food and rest, putting all my attention on my escape. My brain grew more clouded, as everything I thought I knew faded into the muddle of that never-ending pile of pieces. Yet for all my effort, all my cleverness, all the clarity of thought I believed I had--never did I get any closer to the solution. I should have known that I could not beat her at her own game--I could not escape Reason by Pure Reason.
Eventually, I gave up. I was alone, trapped, and could not escape by my own power. I stopped feeling, stopped thinking, stopped hoping, stopped wishing, nearly stopped breathing...when Gerda arrived.
I didn't know her--I forgot her the moment the Snow Queen took me--but the sight of her woke me from my numbness. She was a woman, like I was a man, and nothing like the Snow Queen who'd been my only company for so long. In that cold, white, palace, Gerda was warm and pink. Her breath made warm clouds in the air. Her eyes sparkled with energy and hope. She was clad in layers of furs and wool, a chaotic combination so unlike the crisp elegance of the Snow Queen's white garments. Something in me wanted to run to her, but my body and mind had forgotten the habits of movement. I could only sit in desolation, knowing that things would never change.
Gerda tried to speak to me, to wake me, to make me move or acknowledge her. I only sat. She tried to bargain for me, and the Snow Queen gave her the same impossible terms that she had once given me. I expected Gerda to sit next to me, to dedicate her hopeless years toward failing to solve this impossible puzzle.
Instead, she started to cry. My unfeeling brain scoffed at that--what good would useless emotion do? Yet, as she cried, she hugged me, and her streams of tears fell upon my face, and they felt...warm.
The ice that had so long encased me began to thaw. I blinked. I moved. Seeing tears from one so alive and made for joy, from one who, I now knew, had spent years seeking me out of nothing but blind, illogical love...
I wept.
Something in my heart, my eyes, my soul, began to shift, to melt, and to at last disappear. I remembered Grandmother's cottage, the games I'd played with Gerda, the roses in the windowbox, the love we'd shared. The world that had been so empty and cold now held beauty and love--all coming from the the woman who'd saved me.
I returned the embrace, returned the love, and stood to follow her out of that place. I didn't need to look down to know that the puzzle had been solved, the pieces thrown together by the flood of our tears. The queen had her meaningless word--Gerda and I had love.
As we traveled home, we suffered hardship and pain--but now I had someone to suffer for, who made it worthwhile. I cared for her above myself, and she did the same for me. When we came home, it was summertime, and the roses were blooming. We wed before the winter's first snow.
Love was the solution to the pain that had plagued me for so long. I still see the darkness, but it doesn't overwhelm me. There is so much beauty to see, and now I can see it. When I forget, Gerda reminds me, and I do the same for her.
Sometimes, when it snows, I see the Snow Queen searching, calling, making her false promises. I never have any trouble turning away.
Rumplestiltskin from the POV of Rumplestiltskin OR Snow White and Rose Red from the POV of the old dwarf they keep "helping".
A Magician's Name
Fifty-seven years I served the crown! But did my experience get me any respect? Recognition? Loyalty? Not on your life! Just when my skill had grown to the point where I could really be of use, Old King Douglas died, and his son, now the Great and Illustrious King Wendell, decided that he'd rather not pay for the expertise of a trained court magician, so he sent me packing, and he hired five barely-magical boys off the street who'd work for a pittance.
I could have cursed him well and good when I went out the door, but I'm too much of a professional for that. He'd have punishment enough when he learned just how much I'd been doing to keep the kingdom running without his noticing--and then he'd be begging me to come back.
After a few months without my magic multiplying the castle stores, the king's expenses were growing and his coffers were shrinking. I kept watch for the king's messengers every day, sure that he'd be begging for my return. But wouldn't you know it, just as Wendell was getting desperate, he heard some miller boasting about how his daughter could spin straw into gold, and our boneheaded king thought this was the solution to all his problems. Why pay for a man who can subtly multiply your stores when you can get mounds of gold from a peasant girl for the low, low price of one threat of execution?
Anyone who knows anything about magic could tell you that no peasant's daughter, however magical, could create gold. It's a complicated trick that requires years of practice. I'd learned to do it only a few months before Wendell fired me. But if Wendell knew anything about magic, none of us would have been in this situation. Before you could say, "Alakazam!", the girl had been taken from her home and thrown in the dungeons with mounds of straw that she had to turn to gold by morning if she didn't want to lose her head.
Now, I'd have been happy to let Wendell learn his lesson by letting the girl fail, but with the girl's life on the line, I had to do something. So just after sunset, I came to the castle, cut a path through the magical defenses those idiot boys had set up--my grandmother's blind cat could have done better--and spirited myself into the dungeon where the girl was being held.
I could tell at a glance that the girl had a spark of magic in her--she was a golden-haired beauty--and could also tell that she'd never done more than parlor tricks in her life. Having magic gives you beauty, using magic--well, it makes you look like me. Fifty-seven years as a court magician shows up on your face. It should have given me the respect my wisdom deserves, but people don't respect wisdom these days. The girl took one look at my face and screamed.
To be fair, that may have been partly because I'd shown up without warning. Once I explained how I'd come in and how I planned to help her out of her predicament, she turned friendly. I took a ring of hers as payment--an out-of-work magician needs to eat (I can't make food out of nothing)--and got to work. I was finished before the sun rose.
My good deed done, I left the dungeon, and hoped the girl would be home by the end of the day. But fifty-seven years at court should have taught me that monarchs never do the decent thing. By noon, I'd learned that King Wendell had declared the girl would only keep her head if she spun another room full of straw into gold.
Another night, the same story--straw comes, girl cries, I show up, take my payment, and do the work that should have been mine this whole time. I spent the whole night hopping mad over the king's idiocy.
The story ended the same way this time, too. Girl thanks me, I go home--and the king demands another room full of gold. This time, though, he sweetened the deal. He must have figured having that much magic in the bloodline wouldn't be a bad thing. If she did this deed tonight, he'd never make her spin straw again--he knew enough about magic to know that feats like this only come in threes--and, as a reward, she could marry the king's only son.
Well, I definitely had to show up for that. It would serve the king right if his son were forced to marry a common girl. And, well, you don't serve at court for fifty-seven years without getting a taste for well-wrought political revenge. A curse on the royal line would have been beneath me, but now I had the chance to demand payment. For my third and final performance, I didn't ask for a gold trinket off the girl--I demanded her firstborn child. The heir to the throne, the continuation of the royal line, would be in my power, and I could bring him back to make his claim on the throne whenever it suited me. You have to admit it was clever.
The girl agreed--what else was she supposed to do?--I spun the gold, the prince married her, and a year later--a newborn prince.
I showed up for my payment, the girl cried, the baby cried--and my revenge was looking a lot more complicated than it had at first. I'm a court magician, not a nursemaid. Besides, what I really wanted wasn't the child--it was recognition. Every magician wants to make a name for himself. Wendell had replaced me, erased me and my accomplishments from the court. I wanted him to know just who had truly been the wonder-worker. I wanted acknowledgement that I was a first-rate magician.
So I told the girl she'd be released from her bargain if someone could tell her my name. I figured Wendell would take a look at me, solve the mystery, and recognize my worth. I would have my satisfaction, and everything would be over.
It took them three days to remember my name! And even then, they only knew it because I practically spoon-fed it to an eavesdropping servant girl. I know that court magician names seem complicated to laymen, but by professional standards, Rumpelstiltskin is not a difficult name!
They did remember my story, though, and they weren't too pleased by my political plot, so I had to do some fancy maneuvering to magic myself out of there before I got a blade through my neck. Made it nice and fiery, too--a dramatic exit worthy of a master magician.
And that's how I cam here. Exile's not too bad. I've found contentment in a quiet retirement--especially now that everyone knows my name.
I want to read Shadowstruck so bad. For real, I love seeing your posts with storyplanning. Good luck!
This ask is almost a year old, but I thought I'd let you know that I've been wanting to do something with Shadowstruck lately. I don't know if I'll be able to make anything of it, but I'm definitely turning it over in my mind, and I'd love to come up with a complete version someday. (I might just have to scale it back to the key scenes and see if that makes my path clearer before I try to add in all the details.)
Reminder to self: A file folder of outlines and character notes and half-written scenes is the equivalent of an artist’s sketchbook and holds just as much value to the creative process.
If a framed canvas isn’t the only worthwhile expression of visual art, then a fully edited and polished piece of significant length is not the only worthwhile expression of writing.
