Something safe for the picture frame.

I determined I'd stop with the obscurites, until I got swept up in The Courtship of Regina. There's a dapper housespider in the crook of our bathroom. I named him Charlie and then promptly went about the business of matchmaker. It was a fine romance (minus the problems that a few extra limbs are bound to cause) with dizzying highs and lows--a few speckled dramas, an entanglement or two. Stuff for the ages.

Of course, as they didn't sit well on the page, I had to substitute the ever-willing Beauty and the Beast.

Children of the Night.

I tried, I really did.

The enduring (and, to my mind, mistaken) image of the Beast has been that of a big cat. Ferocious, to be sure, but also powerful, sleek, attractive--watered down and prettied up to romance an audience of fourteen-year-olds. I always liked to think I'd resist the urge to, well, lionize him in the Disney sense. Rackham did, and Dulac--forgoing fashion and form and arriving at something resembling more Murnau's Nosferatu--something nearer the ugly truth. (The three were comtemporaries--did one inform the others? was there something in the postwar waters?). But has a grace been lost and are you plucked from the story because of it?

So maybe I didn't try at all. I clearly don't have the stomach for the unsettling, so here he is--curried and cleaned for easy viewing.

Bird Maiden

Day One, Part Two

A bit of sheepishness for the story that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

Book of Five Rings.

The castle spread out from an ancient center in a series of concentric circles decreasing in age. Each circle was separated from the others by stone walls--more labrynthine than fortress, clasping and overlapping like petals. Each wall was carved in fantastic bas relief showing scenes of the hunt. None was ever still.

The outermost ring depicted the FoxHunt. Costumed men and women armed with tiny bugles. Terriers made dainty attempts at capturing a thinking, reasoning prey. Within these walls was the library, the greenhouse, and a handful of tea-rooms overlooking a lawn. Here she read and studied and was left to herself.

The second ring was the StagHunt. King and retinue, faithful dogs and hawks. Bows and arrows, long-legged steeds, and a quarry that would rather run than hide. The killing blow was always left to the King--possession of land and beast unquestioned, even in stone. Within these walls were the kitchens, the gardens, the aviary. Here she walked the grounds with him and ate with him every night.

The third ring was the BoarHunt. Warlord and men at arms. Long lances, hounds like horses, horses like harts. Success was no certainty and more often than not the warrior king went abidingly to death--staked to the ground by a tusk and snout that demanded sacrifice. Within these walls was a wood and a hall. Here she danced with him, at first unwillingly, but he would always escort her back.

In the fourth ring, the Hunt was reversed. Men of stone, armed with stone, backs to a fire and eyes fixed on the descending pack. Here she did not go, but she could see the tops of oak and black pine over the wall and a host of invisible gardeners was always set to pruning the barriers.

The fifth ring was seen by only one and depicted no Hunt at all. Only a mass of creatures running, running. Some ran on four legs, some ran on more, and there were those that ran on two, but they were no less animal than the rest. Who is to know what this wall contained? It is only left to say that the roads that led inward were many and the road that led out was one. And when The Change came about he could not find any of them and he did not try.

Where the drifts get deeper.

The wood grew wilder, her mood milder. And winter eventually cracked and bled the color of roses.

Castle onslaught.

There's been a recent trend dealing in the debunking of fairy tales. I'd go so far as to say that the modern writer considers it his duty to participate in the demystification of myth. And while there are a few commendable reasons for doing so (historicism, humor, feminism), the market has been overrun with retellings--some with premises so superreal as to be mundane. Bookstore aisles are swirling with narcoleptic Sleeping Beauties, compulsive Cinderellas, and wicked witch chem majors. I read a version of "Tam Lin" set at a college where the beloved was captured by study, and a modern day "Red Riding Hood" where the wolf was merely a predatory man.

Many are clever, some are brilliant, most are filtered through a sharp, skeptical lens. Precise, but narrow.

"Just" a rose.

I could agonize a few days more over something to say, or I could just post the damn pic.