The Journal of Mythic Arts: Fiction

Half Flight by Shweta Narayan

The boy with one wing does not fall asleep. He rises into sleep, lifts into sleep, sleeps high, high above the muck and drizzle. In sleep he soars over rippled clouds, wrapped in clean and comforting sky. The ground is an occasional patch of brown and green below. Until he wakes.

She has caught him in nettles and his feathers are falling, falling out.

The swan with one arm falls awake.

The boy with one wing loves his sister, who spun and wove and sewed for him, voiceless as any swan. The boy with one wing understands primogeniture, understands why he was last, understands that she loves him no less for that. The boy with one wing likes to wrap that wing around his sister, a hug like a cloak...More>>>

About the author: Shweta Narayan is a writer, academic, and cultural crazy–quilt. She was born in India and lived in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, The Netherlands, and Scotland before moving to California, and she grew up reading folk tales and fairy tales from all over the world...More>>>

The Princess and the Ghost by Jessie Suk Roy

There once was a princess," Rose says, "who was under a curse from the very day she was born. She grew to be seventeen and was very beautiful, but the curse made her prick her finger on a — a funny spinning thing like a rose thorn, and fall asleep." Rose doesn't know what the spinning thing was called, but it hardly matters. She still remembers the prick and the sudden dizziness as clearly as if it were yesterday.

"When she woke up, she was trapped inside a tower with only a white rose for company — the only white rose in the world. So every day she watered it and waited for her prince to come. All around the tower grew hundreds of wild thorny rosebushes whose thorns killed anyone who tried to pass. But after a hundred years had passed, a prince with a heart as pure as a white rose came riding by. He, too, tried to reach the tower, and because his heart was so pure the roses bloomed for him and let him pass safely."

Ah, the ghost says, recognizing his own part in the story. And what then?

"The princess," Rose says, then catches herself. "I don't remember," she lies... >More>>>

Briar Rose by Kim Antieau

She opened her eyes to white and realized she knew nothing. The nurse was white, too.

"Good morning, sugar," the nurse said. "Do you know who you are?"

She shook her head and wondered where the window was. Maybe if she saw the sunlight, maybe if she saw the world really existed, she would know. Silly thought. The world existed. It was she, she was certain, who was not supposed to be.

"Turn over," the nurse said. Her voice was as pretty as anything she could remember. Though that wasn't much. She turned over. The nurse threw off the covers and pulled up her hospital gown. "Lookie here, girl," the nurse said. "Maybe that will jar your memory."

She looked down at her own bare ass, twisting her head and arching her back. A small rose bloomed on her white butt, its red petals surrounded by a crown of thorns.... More>>>

King Rat by Karen Joy Fowler

...I decided to go to the basement where the animal lab was. My father might be there or one of his students, someone I knew. I took the stairs as far down as they went and opened the door.

The light was different in the basement — no windows — and the smell was different, too. Fur and feces and disinfectant. I'd been there dozens of times and I knew to skirt the monkeys' cages. I knew they would rattle the bars, show me their teeth, howl, and if I came close enough, they would reach through to grab me. Monkeys were strong for all they were so small. They would bite.

Behind the monkeys were the rats. Their cages were stacked one on the next, so many of them they formed aisles like in a grocery store....  More>>>

Godmother Death by Jane Yolen

You think you know this story. You do not.

You think it comes from Ireland, from Norway, from Spain. It does not. You have heard it in Hebrew, in Swedish, in German. You have read it in French, in Italian, in Greek.

It is not a story, though many mouths have made it that way.

It is true.

How do I know? Death, herself told me. She told me in that whispery voice she saves for special tellings. She brushed her thick black hair away from that white forehead, and told me.

It happened this way, only imagine it in Death's own soft breeze of a voice. Imagine she is standing over your right shoulder speaking this true story in your ear. You do not turn to look at her. I would not advise it. But if you do turn, she will smile at you, her smile a child's smile, a woman's smile, the grin of a crone. But she will not tell her story anymore. She will tell yours.... More>>>

Silver and Gold by Emma Bull

Moon Very Thin sat on the raised hearth—the only place in the center room out of the way—with her chin on her knuckles. She would have liked to be doing something more, but the things she thought of were futile, and most were undignified. She watched Alder Owl crisscross the slate floor and pop in and out of the stillroom and the pantry and the laundry. Alder Owl's hands were full of things on every crossing: clean clothes, a cheese, dried yellow dock and feverfew, a tinderbox, a wool mantle. She was frowning faintly all over her round pink face, and Moon knew that she was reviewing lists in her head.

“You can't pack all that,” said Moon.

“You couldn't,” said Alder Owl. “But I've had fifty years more practice. Now remember to cure the squash before you bring them in, or there'll be nothing to eat all winter but onions. And if the squirrels nest in the thatch again, there's a charm—”

“You told me,” Moon sighed.... More>>>

Wolf's Heart by Tappan King

Once, long ago, a woodcutter and his wife lived in a cottage by the edge of the wood with two young children, a daughter and a son. The couple was very poor, and there was barely enough food to keep body and soul together from year to year. One winter, a fierce snowstorm came up, cutting the woodcutter's cottage off from the road that led to the town. The woodcutter could no longer sell his wood, and so the couple's meager store of food dwindled.

One day, the woodcutter said to his wife,"Wife, I am hungry and sick to death of porridge. Go and kill the chickens and we will feast."... More>>>