The scholars in this volume attempt to move beyond the sexually charged permutations of the “Carroll myth,” the image of an introverted man fumbling into literary immortality through his love for a prepubescent Alice. Contributions include an essay comparing Dantean and Carrollian underworlds, one investigating child characters as double agents in untamed lands, one placing Wonderland within the geometrical and algebraic “fourth dimension,” one investigating the visual and verbal interplay of hand imagery, and one exploring the influence of Japanese translations of Alice on the Gothic-Lolita subculture of neo-Victorian enthusiasts. This is a bold, capacious, and challenging work.
CONTRIBUTORS
Rachel Falconer
Cristopher Hollingsworth
Steve Hooley
Karoline Leach
Carol Mavor
Franz Meier
Stephen Monteiro
Helen Pilinovsky
Christine Roth
Rudy Rucker
Sean Somers
Elizabeth Throesch
Anne Witchard
Mou-Lan Wong
Daniel A. Rabuzzi, previous contributor to Cabinet fes Fées, has interviewed me on his new(ish) blog, Lobster and Canary. The blog itself is definitely worth reading, and Daniel’s questions were some of the most interesting I’ve ever been asked. One of the things he wondered was “what do you see as some of the true magic current and upcoming in fantasy and spec fic?”
I could have listed authors and titles, but I chose a more general approach. Part of my response was that “the true magic I am seeing is in the way authors today are embracing new media and using it to create methods of storytelling unheard of before the internet changed our lives.” I give you now a perfect example of what I mean.
According to the author, Catherynne M. Valente, “This is a book about a little girl named September who gets herself a ticket to Fairyland on the back of The Green Wind and a somewhat cranky Leopard. There she discovers the realm of the capricious Marquess and the dangers of the Perverse and Perilous Sea.”
In The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, we get to watch as the novel unfolds with another chapter going online every Monday. Not only is there magic in the story, but it also shows in the way authors are using the “cyberfunded” approach to creativity, which to my mind is a form of creativity in itself.
Welcome to the new Cabinet des Fées - after four years online, the website has finally received the upgrade it deserves. All of the content from the old site is here on the blog in what we hope are easily navigable categories, though because many people have linked to the site, the old pages are still there in the background. To celebrate our new look, we’ve added a new review of the 10th anniversary issue of Mythic Delirium (to be found in our Book Reviews category to the right). We’d also like to introduce you to the Carruth’s new Storyteller Series, which begins with the Volsunga Saga. This entry can be found in our Storytellers category, also on the right.
We hope you enjoy the new website. If you encounter any issues or have any concerns, feel free to send us a message. Our contact information can be found in the links at the top of every page.
Within the 10th Anniversary Issue of Mythic Delirium, not one single poem disappoints. Mike Allen has put together a stellar line-up of work from both regulars and new voices in the field. The feature of this issue is a poem by Neil Gaiman, an eerie and haunting contribution that sends cold shivers down the spine. Neil is best known for, well, everything he’s ever done, including Stardust (I refer here to the timeless graphic novel with illustrations by Charles Vess), Coraline and his recent The Graveyard Book.
Neil’s poem is not all Mythic Delirium has to offer, of course. As usual, Sonya Taaffe puts words together like diamonds on a beach, carefully choosing each for its lustre and shape. Erin Hoffman works a fairy tale into a brutal collection of stanzas, Darrell Schweitzer amuses while Catherine Knutsson brings tears to the eye. Danny Adams and Holly Dworkin Cooley give glimpses into the loneliness and fickleness of gods. Amal El-Mohtar and Jessica Paige Wick join forces in a brilliant duet between Apple Jack and Maidy Lac that is a testament to the power of obstinance and wit when dealing with a tricksy fairy. There is more, so much more, in this issue to love.
Issue 20 is, without a doubt, Mike’s mythic masterwork. What are these beautiful poems about, you ask? You’ll have to order your own copy of Mythic Delirium to see what the fuss is about.
Ben Carruth, in the Carruth’s new Storyteller Series, presents us with a glorious reading of the Volsunga Saga. The planned schedule is one part per week, and the first part is live now. From the website: “The Storyteller series is an experiment in rediscovering the art of public storytelling around the Internet campfire. These traditional stories are told from memory, without script or text, embellished in the telling. Performances are recorded in front of a live audience, edited for time and episodic presentation.”
Close your eyes and imagine yourself in the old halls, where the fires are blazing and a hush has suddenly fallen.
The 7th issue of Scheherezade’s Bequest, CdF’s biannual online offering of fiction and poetry is now live, with work by Daniel A. Rabuzzi, Helen Ogden, Mari Ness, Shira Lipkin and more. Thanks to the efforts of our reviewers, we have an ever-increasing number of book reviews, including fairy tales classics such as Fitcher’s Brides by Gregory Frost, Tam Lin by Pamela Dean and Little, Big by John Crowley as well as the more recent Lament by Maggie Stiefvater and A Curse Dark as Gold by Elizabeth C. Bunce, and more. We chat with Mike Allen, editor of Mythic Delirium, as he celebrates the forthcoming and very exciting release of MD’s 20th issue, which includes an original poem by celebrated author Neil Gaiman. We’d are also pleased to announce that Donna Quattrone, a regular contributor to CdF and long-time supporter of our efforts, has come on board as assistant editor.
We are currently waiting for the cover art for our third print issue, which has been severely delayed (as usual!). As soon as we receive the art, the issue will be prepped for print and sent off to Prime, who has graciously published CdF since 2006. We will let you know the publication date as soon as we do. Just last month, Charles Tan reviewed our first printed issue, declaring it a weird animal but a refreshing and welcome one, especially when it comes to the content. Mr. Tan, a self-confessed geek, seems to appreciate our mixture of academia and fiction. Grace Andreacchi, one of our contributors, gives us a mention on her blog as well, in an informative post called Away With the Fairies.
This makes it even more difficult to announce that 2009 will see the last “annual” printed edition of Cabinet des Fées.
While we love printed matter with a passion, it has become more important to us — especially in the face of this brave new economy — to support authors in the field of genre fiction. It has always been my hope to increase the amount CdF pays our contributors, and if ever there was a time to do it, that time is now. In order to make this possible, CdF has been officially taken over by Papaveria Press. Beginning with the 8th issue of Scheherezade’s Bequest, regular editions of CdF will be online only. We will now be paying $5.00 per poem and $.01 per word for fiction. Please see our updated submission guidelines for more details about this change. We will publish the occasional fairy tale anthology in print, but those submissions will be called for separately. As a result of this change, CdF is going to ask for your help.
There are several things you can do to help CdF thrive. You will now see a paypal button on the site, which you can use to make donations to CdF. All donations received will be used to offset the costs of maintaining the site. You will never see an ad here, nor will we do anything resembling fund drives. Send what you will as you can. Titles reviewed will eventually be linked to Amazon, so if you purchase a copy through the site of something we’ve reviewed, we’ll get a small amount from the Associates Program. You can also help by distributing a copy of our flyer at whatever conventions you attend: download a copy here. We know ink is expensive, so even if you can only print 10 or 20 copies, it will be most appreciated. This latter option is probably the most important to us, since neither Helen nor I can appear at every convention we’d like to.
Last, but not least, by the time our next issue goes live, the entire site will have had an overhaul. We’ll be using Wordpress, making it easier for everyone to follow our updates and for us to update the site. We’ll keep our LJ as well, and may even create an account on Facebook, since apparently the entire internet-using world is there.
As always, we thank you for your interest in Cabinet des Fées and look forward to many more issues to come, online and — finally — on time.
With love,
Erzebet
She dreamed herself back in the garden again, crying over the dead beast. It was all as she remembered it: the buzzing flies, the stink, the matted fur, the dying roses. Only this time, her tears washed the blood from his oh so soft fur, her kiss raised him from the dead, and her hands felt one beat, then another. And then she was in his arms, his paws running up and down her back, his claws digging into her, and she had raised her soft lips to meet his, part of her mind screaming animal animal the other half remembering their endless conversations over dinner, or in the garden, the way he had brought her half torn books in his large paws, the way he had flooded her room with roses every morning, the way she had dreamed of him, night after night, even safe at home with her sisters, dreamed of his laughter and jokes and his terrible, beastly face. And then she was kissing him, kissing him, feeling him change, feeling him shorten, feeling the fur beneath her hands shift into skin, smooth and damp and oh so human, and now she was really kissing him and he was really kissing her, both of them pausing to murmur words of love and desperation and devotion and then her shift — for she was no longer wearing the elaborate silk dress she’d been wearing when she found the beast, a dress she’d put on to awe her older sisters, to say see, see, I did do better than you, I did, I did, but a simple grey shift that hung straight from her shoulders to the floor — her shift was ripped and torn and lying in the ground and she was tumbling with the beast no not beast not beast not beast the man, the prince, over the garden, and the roses were blooming, blooming, then falling, failing, their thorns piercing her skin until she cried out and awoke, back in her ordinary room with its grey walls and shuttered windows, gasping, remembering the feel of the cold unmoving body beneath her hands in that garden. And she raised her hands to her face, looking at the blood there, at the thorn jabbed in her palm, and she wept in her grey shift as the familiar walls of home closed about her.
Mari Ness spends far too much time attempting to reason with cats, and convince them that even in fairy tales, no cats, talking or otherwise, were allowed to use laptops as cat beds. Her work has appeared in numerous print and online places, including Fantasy Magazine and Polu Texni. She lives in Central Florida.
Image: Beauty & the Beast, Walter Crane, Illustration for Beauty and the Beast. 1874.
Your head set on an ancestral server
lets the fables bleed from your lips to stain
silk coverlets — I’d swear to surrender
my kingship if I could to feed again
on your fabulous tales, your fantasies
as ornate as your strategies were plain.
I wanted to live as in your stories,
not droplet by droplet, not dawn by dawn.
I drank the wine whole with its mysteries.
I drank the dark, & as the darkness then
swelled into blood, I drank in its blood-thick
silence. I’ve tasted one thousand nights & one
since you sang me the tale of the lunatic
emperor & his beheaded courtesan.
Mike Alexander has published in numerous journals, most recently in River Styx, Bateau, & Borderlands. He also has a poem in the upcoming inaugural issue of Necrography.
Image: Illustration from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, ed. Andrew Lang. 1898
I think of her at all times. Each day when the sunlight teases me awake in yet another inn, in yet another land, her image comes back to me, just as I first saw her in my garden by moonlight. Her hair. The softness of her skin. The deep pools of her eyes, like tranquil gardens. So pure it breaks my heart. So perfect. Forgive me, my friend. The emotion overwhelms me.
I loved to watch her paint. The light movements of the brush between her toes; the delicate blush of cherry blossoms; the quick, black strokes of herons’ legs wading through water-faint pools. The paint box was my first gift to her. During those silent early months, I had it set beside her every afternoon. I knew she would learn to use it, although at first she did not like to be seen. In her country, she told me later, ladies did not sit upon the floor thus, their skirts spread behind them. It was considered indecorous.
“Be grateful, then, that you are here,” I smiled. But it was I who was grateful.
She cherished the long sleeves that hid her pain; the low tables with everything conveniently close by; the screens that could be drawn shut, hiding her. She kept her eyes down, letting the gold of her hair fall across her face. For months I longed to sweep it back with my fingers, to kiss the pale cream of her cheeks and the peonies of her lips.
When I brought her the silver hands, she wept. She was unworthy of such honour, she said. She had only sought to cover her shame; such a rich gift was beyond her station. But she needed no gift to honour her in my eyes. The first time we made love, I kissed the place where her arms ended and imagination began. For me, she was alive with possibility. She brought me alive. She made me worthy.
I should have known better than to leave her for a day, even for an hour. I still feel her tears on my hair, her trembling body in my arms at dark of the moon. The demon would come again, she said. This time he would take all of her.
“No, my love, that cannot be,” I would say, my heart against her heart. “I will protect you with my life. No one can harm you.”
Each morning those words return to me, words as false and hollow as silver hands.
It has been months now since I have seen my home. When last I turned my back on it, it was cold and silent, every last painting put away, every screen closed for the final time. I will not return there without her. Forgive me once more, my friend, if I seem too hasty to drink up and leave, but I have far to travel. There is no place on earth where I will not seek. Without her, I am incomplete.
Elizabeth Hopkinson’s fantasy fiction has appeared in several publications, including Strange Horizons, Interzone, DKA and Byzarium, and her story, “A Short History of the Dream Library” won the 2005 James White Award. She has been a fairy tale enthusiast ever since taking a module on “Romance, Ballad and Fairy Tale” as an undergraduate, and only hopes she can do justice to the amazing wealth of knowlege imparted to her. Visit her website at the Hidden Grove.
Image: How the Girl Lost her Hands, H.J. Ford
“The Suevi and other uncouth tribes beyond the Rhine report that mother-dragons have been seen carrying their drakelets by the nape, just like a cat does with her kittens; I have myself seen, at Aachen, two of the smaller kind of dragon groom one another in precisely the manner of cats.”
—Sulpicius Alexander, Historia, vol. II (c. 380 after the birth of Jesus)
[i.]
In the worm-cote, high above the Moselle,
The dragoness draped slank and smeedy around her twin eggs,
Whispering to her children in their shells.
“Listen,” she said, her tongue washing the eggs.
“Cleave to the words of my mouth, wear my utterances like
A garland, the florilegia of your lives, little ones not yet born.”
“Listen, to the lore of the Koheleth, the wisdom of Moses,
Our own enchiridion.”
She spoke of the meeting eons ago, when God sent an angel
To announce the good news to all the creatures of the mountains.
The hoopoe was the messenger,
The raven was the scribe,
The magpie was witness.
Lind-worms like oiled whips wound about the cenotaph,
Griffons bowed in the garden, gerelings genuflected,
The basilisk shut his eyes, the manticore sheathed his sting.
“We were among the first, before the apple was tasted,
We honored and we obeyed,”
Said the mother to her mottled eggs.
“As you must, all the days of your long, long lives.”
[ii]
Argante and Ollyphant she named them,
Her children hatched from twin eggs,
A daughter and a son,
Who played hide and seek in the wind-shadows,
Flew merlew muses (krusediller in the air),
Tumbled over spalted rocks,
Hunted libbards on the snowy downs.
Every night, she taught them more,
Had them pray on a rosary she made
From the vertebrae of oxen she’d slain.
Always they said,
“Yes, mama” and “We will, mama,”
Blinking their lemony eyes,
Solemn as adolescence,
Rustling their great grackle wings,
Restless with iridescence.
“We will, mama.”
[iii]
Argante and Ollyphant buried their old mother in the mountain-side,
Shivering with cold.
The glaciers had come again,
Food was scarce,
They were alone and men feared them.
“Men claim we have no souls,” said Argante to her brother.
“But mama taught us better,” said Ollypant in reply.
They recalled their mother’s words:
How dragons had succoured St. Anthony in the desert,
Had helped build the cathedrals,
Been honored at the monasteries,
Helped Bishop Ossius write the Nicene Creed.
“Mama said that the Venerable Bede thanked the dragons,”
The sister told the brother, as they searched for rabbits in the valley.
“She said St. Jerome thought dragons descended from Raphael himself,”
The brother told the sister, as they gnawed on meager bones in the valley.
¬Ý
“Extra ecclesium nulla salus,” they said to each other
At night
As they counted out stations on the rosary
Made of ox-bones that their mother had given them.
[iv.]
The Cardinal in Trier preached a crusade against
Argante and Ollyphant.
Memory was lost,
Worse, replaced with another story.
The dragons, last of their kind along that border,
Fled to the highest caves above the river.
“The Morning Star stole our guise, and for this we are made to suffer,” said Argante.
“Let us petition God to intercede for us,” said Ollyphant.
They asked the magpie to witness, the raven to write, the hoopoe to speak on their behalf.
But the only reply they ever got
Was the belling of hounds and neighing of horses
In the mountain-pass,
The rattling of spears and the gearing of cross-bows.
Argante farewelled Ollyphant, making the sign of the cross with one talon.
Ollyphant hung the rosary from his sister’s claw.
“We will, mama.”
Daniel A. Rabuzzi’s majored in the study of folklore in college and spent two years doing graduate work at the Institute of Folklore Studies at the University of Oslo, Norway. He has collected oral traditions in Norway and England, with results published in journals of folklore in the U.K., Sweden and Denmark. His fiction has appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Shimmer, Sybil’s Garage # 5, ChiZine and Cabinet des Fées.
Image: Medieval Dragon, British Library, Harley MS 3244, Folio 59r
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Within the 10th Anniversary Issue of 
by Mari Ness
by Mike Alexander
by Elizabeth Hopkinson
by Daniel A. Rabuzzi
