Magdalena Books

“The tailor sidled forward, his long, multi-joined fingers caressing the dress form closest to me.
"Ah, yes," he said. "Beautiful, isn't it? The color of storms and oceans, or so we've been told. This dress," he continued, "belonged to Magdalena. She was beautiful- the way you mortals reckon, anyhow- beautiful, but stupid. Oh ho, we had fun with this one, we did, but we used her up too soon. Her fire died, leaving us cold and dark."
The dress form beneath the gown was tall and well-formed, the bosom and hips generous, the waist tiny. The dress, a robe à la française, was made from a deep, jewel-toned blue silk, and I could imagine the dramatic coloring of the woman who had worn it: pale skin, dark hair, and blue eyes to match her gown. A breathless beauty, a glittering jewel, and I imagined the Goblin King partaking of her loveliness over and over again, biting the sweet peaches of her cheeks until she was gone.
"And this one," Thistle chimed in, pointing to another dress form, "belonged to Maria Emmanuel. Prissy, she was. Refused to do her duty by her lord. She was consecrated to someone else- a carpenter? Something like that. Don't know what the king saw in her, but they were both possessed of a strange devotion to a figure nailed to a wooden cross. She lasted the longest, this prudish nun, not having given herself to king and land, and during her rule, our kingdom suffered. Yet she lasted the longest for that, although she too died in the end, pining for the world above she could see but not touch."
This dress form was slim, the gown that hung on it made of an austere gray wool. I could imagine the woman who wore this dress- a pious creature, veiled like a bride of Christ. No beauty, but her eyes would be a clear, luminous gray, shining with the fervor of her passion and faith. Not like Magdalena, whose loveliness would have been carnal and earthly; Maria Emmanuel would have glowed with an inner light, the beauty of a saint or a martyr. The Goblin King was a man of varied tastes, it seemed.”
― S. Jae-Jones, Wintersong