Fairy Tale

by Stephen King

“Help her.”

Lindy told me once: “You can’t take credit for sobering him up, because he did that. And if he starts drinking again, you can’t take the blame, because he’d do that, too.”

They were gray, but not as gray as Leah’s farmhands and maid. If that slate color was a sign of sickness, these people were still in the early stages… and, of course, Leah hadn’t been gray at all, just mouthless. It was another mystery.

These people are cursed, I thought. All of them. And it’s a slow curse. Which might be the worst kind.

No, because if wolfies came, these two had no house of straw or twigs to hide in, let alone one of bricks.

Help her, Leah’s maid had said, and there on the darkening road, I made up my mind to help them both—the old dog and the goose girl princess.

red shoes (like those worn by Dorothy in Oz)

I couldn’t get over the idea that when I was giving them to her, I was robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Not stars, I thought. Stories. An endless number of stories that pour into the funnel and come out in our world, barely changed.

It would probably be something unlikely, like Rapunzel’s tears turning out to have magical sight-restoring properties, but palatable to readers who wanted a happy ending even if the teller had to pull one out of his hat.

In the morning the fire was out, but the side of me she was lying against was warm.

When I reached what I was then thinking of as the City Road (there wasn’t a yellow brick in sight, so that name was out),

Here is something I learned in Empis: good people shine brighter in dark times. Help her, too, I thought. Help Dora, too.

But when you’re a kid it’s easy to believe that you will be the exception,

I was at an age when it’s possible to believe that fast reflexes and reasonable care can surmount most obstacles.

I thought I was one of those stars now. I thought I was becoming part of the story.

The gun on my hip was different.

Why do they know what a gun is?

“If it’s Seafront you’re going for, turn around, boy. The gray’s come there, too.”

First “save an animal who will help you later?”

“You’ll see what they do to ones like you if they catch you.” “Who will?” “The night soldiers.” “Who are they, and what do they do to ones like me?” He sneered. “Never mind. I just hope you can battle, but I doubt it. You look strong on the outside, but I think you’re soft on the inside. That’s the way folks are when they don’t have to struggle. Haven’t missed many meals, have you, young sir?”

Which was a mean thought. Then I had a meaner one: suppose I

reached out and grabbed the hand that had held the red cricket’s legs together and snapped it, as I had Polley’s? As sort of an object lesson: this is what it feels like. I could tell you it wasn’t a serious thought, but I think it was.

“Because he knows, a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread,”

A coward gives presents, he’d said.

“Hello, young prince. I’ve been expecting you. You are welcome here. Come in.”

He was blind.

Aloysius looked back just before we reached the gate, and Hana swatted his head from his shoulders.

Then there was that thing he’d said about the Rumpa Bridge. My mother had died on the bridge over the Little Rumple, and a Rumpelstiltskin kind of guy had almost killed me. Was I supposed to believe those things coincidences?

Which of em did your mother flip her skirts for to leave you fair of face?

And besides—I have to say this if I’m going to tell the truth—I was glad to be here. I can’t exactly say I was having fun, but yes, I was glad.

As we closed the distance between us, I saw the trike’s rider was a woman, and making good speed. She was wearing a black dress that billowed all around her, and it was impossible not to think again of The Wizard of Oz.

I smiled and gave her two thumbs up, trying to convey that I’d be fine. Which I was not, of course.

Cowards bring presents, I thought.

I thought my dark brown hair had lightened a bit. It did that in summer, after days in the sun, but there had been no sun here, only lowering clouds. Except at night, of course, when the clouds parted to let the moonlight shine through.

Their configuration made them seem almost like faces that were looking at us. I told myself that was an illusion, no different than seeing a gasping mouth in the knothole of an old tree or a cloud that looked like a dragon, but it didn’t work. Didn’t come close to working. The idea—surely ridiculous—crept into my mind that the city itself was Gogmagog: sentient, watching, and evil.

I KNEW IT

Water

“Traitor,” I said. “Traitor to all you swore.”

my face up a little to receive the blow. Something else had spoken through me, and it had spoken true words.

I looked at the shelf where sixteen washing buckets were lined up—yes, they had even put one out for Gully.

And because, I thought, you never use a hairdryer when you’re taking a bath. My mother told me that.

I’m so smart

I had just time to think of the Wicked Witch of the West screeching I’m melting! I’m melting!

He must have risen twenty feet in the air, intestines uncoiling as he went. I thought of Rumpelstiltskin again, was powerless not to.

I think…” He paused, frowning. “I think there’s always a reason for love, but sometimes hate just is. A kind of free-floating evil.”

The red cricket wasn’t a snab, but the Snab. Claudia called him the king of the small world.

Because, it said, the young man had saved its life and that sort of debt had to be repaid.

because they were too busy to listen. That much is true about songs (and many stories) even in my own world. They speak mind to mind, but only if you listen.

“In the old days it was told by men of wisdom that someday they’ll actually collide,” Woody said, “and both will be smashed to bits. They might not even need to collide for them to be destroyed; their mutual attraction might

pull them to pieces. As sometimes happens in human lives.”

passage—a scrap of green silk. I picked it up, looked at it, tucked it into the holster with the tin cup of matches, thought no more about it.