Not The Fairy Tale You Remember
Once upon a time the wool merchant of Littleton was a very rich man, blessed with guile and luck, and a glass-windowed house, and a pretty wife who loved him well, and four healthy children. The wool merchant’s name was John, but Corbin called him ‘Da’ and believed him to be the bravest, most clever man in all of the world.
Twice a year – spring and fall – Da would travel through the great northern forest to the coast. There he’d meet the merchant marine at port. In the spring he’d offload the previous season’s wool, and in the fall he’d collect his earnings, in coin or fabric, or wine, or in tins of the foreign spices Corbin’s mother so loved. Sometimes Da would take Mother with him through the forest to the coast, because she adored the bustling port town, called Sweetmarch, and because Da would do anything Mother asked, just to see her smile.
In the spring of Corbin’s seventh year Da loaded ten bags of shorn wool into the back of the family cart while Mother kissed her children farewell. It was a pleasant morning, bright and warming toward the promise of early summer. Young lambs played in the fields behind Corbin’s house. The carthorse, called Snip for the white on his nose, stamped one hoof in impatience, making Mother laugh.
“Mind your Nan,” she said, kissing first her three girls, and Corbin last of all. “Be a good lad and keep your sisters in order. And the lambs.”
Corbin’s sisters were red-eyed and snuffling where they stood in the cottage doorway. Corbin awarded them a pitying glance before he hugged Mother around the waist and nodded against her skirts.
“I will,” he promised, dry-eyed. “I’ll make certain Beauty eats her veg and Hope tends the hens, and I’ll help Nan with Faith’s nappies.”
Mother laughed. She ruffled Corbin’s red hair. Then Da helped her up into the cart where she settled herself atop the wool. The cart had room enough only for Mother and the mercantile; Da, Corbin knew, would walk alongside Snip all the way through the forest to the seashore. Da clucked his tongue, long reins clutched in his right fist, until Snip started obediently forward. Da didn’t look around as the horse pulled the cart away from the cottage, but Mother twisted on her high perch and waved one hand in farewell. Then she looked through Snip’s ears, putting the cottage at her back. Corbin stood beside Da’s chopping block, watching until the cart and horse grew smaller and smaller and at last disappeared around a bend in the road.
Nan chased Corbin’s sisters back into the cottage. She swooped and clucked just like a hen herself. Corbin’s sisters stopped snuffling and giggled instead. Nan glanced over her shoulder at Corbin before she crossed the threshold.
“Go into town and fetch back some bread from Baker,” she said. “I’m near out and we’ll have kidney and toast for supper, I think.”
Corbin pulled his attention from his vanished parents. Littleton proper was in the opposite direction on the King’s Highway, which meant there’d be no chance to tail Snip and the cart all the way to the edge of town. He’d only been halfway considering the chase, because Da would beat him if he caught him playing at adventure. He glanced at Nan and saw she knew exactly what he’d been thinking.
“Go and fetch the bread,” she said. “Spare yourself a lashing. Wee mite like you has no place near the forest.”
Corbin was a red-headed lad with a red-headed temper, but he knew better than to argue with Nan early in the morning, so he took himself obediently past the cottage gate and onto the muddy road all along the swell of new barley toward town.
– BEASTLY MANOR, November 2015
This time around, it’s not Beauty who breaks the curse.
Read the Corbin shorts from Reuts and Madison Place Press, and look for the full length novel later this year.
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