Reading Notes: Czech Folktales, Part B

The Man Who Met Misery

The actual story here didn't do much for me: a rich man's son decides to wander the road looking for this Misery he's heard of, and ends up finding in the form of an ogre who rips off the boy's finger. The title is more interesting to me, and the promise of personifying Misery in a fresh way, but that might be too loosely related to really call it a retelling, so it might not be the best choice for this assignment.


Nine at a Blow

In this story, a giant comes across the protagonist and challenges the man to a few contests of strength. The man wins through cleverness, but after the giant acknowledges that the man is the better of the two, they actually continue traveling together. I like the idea of a couple of boys becoming friends after beating each other up or competing bitterly in some kind of contest, then going on to work together, like the man and giant do in this story when they go to take on the dragon in the church.


A Clever Lass

This time around, a king takes a commoner as his wife because of her cleverness, but he warns that they'll have to separate if she ever gives anyone advice. Years down the line, when she breaks that rule, the king says she'll have to leave—but he'll let her take her favorite thing with her when she goes. She agrees, and drugs the king's wine at her farewell feast. Then she takes him with her to her old commoner home, where he wakes up confused. She replies, "Didn't you say that I could take the thing I liked best with me?"

If I were to use this for a story, I think I'd frame it around a slight tweak on that dynamic. I like the idea of a power couple who are constantly competing with and arguing with each other—but also clearly care about each other at the end of the day. It could be entertaining to work with, I think.


Old Nick and Kitty

In this one, the devil ends up dancing with an undesirable old hag named Kitty after she exclaims that she'd dance with even the devil, if anyone would just have her. But after the dance, Old Nick goes to leave, and he can't get rid of Kitty; she tags along no matter how he tries to shake her off. Eventually, he comes to dread Kitty just as much as everyone else does.

To mix this up and use it in my own story, I'd probably stick with the theme of this terrible, feared villain—some ice-hearted bad boy who supposedly doesn't care about anybody but himself—and his equally awful girlfriend, who isn't technically but is actually a much worse person than him. It could be a fun exercise about anti-villains and what little humanity they succeed and fail to bring out in one another.


The Knight Bambus

This story features a poor protagonist who stumbles across some old ruins, owned by a man who can transform into a large fox. The man reveals that he was a "robber-knight," and now he's been cursed—he has to watch over the grounds here as punishment until the curse is lifted.

I love the idea of a "robber-knight," though I'm quite possibly interpreting it differently than it's meant here, and I think a roguish anti-hero like that could be pretty fun to work with. Sort of a highway robber vibe; that same sort of flair. But I also really like the idea of an anti-hero having to live under some long, life-extending enchantment or curse as punishment, and using this not as some big plot point, but just an ongoing character trait he's constantly stuck carrying along with him.


Francis and Martin

In this story, Francis is a farmer's son and Martin is the farmhand, and they work alongside each other at their everyday jobs. They also work together to solve the mystery of where all the farmer's money is going, and why the old man is being so secretive.

I like the idea of using something like this as the setup between a protagonist and his best friend, his dad's other (and first) apprentice. Their dynamic could have sort of a Mark and Bryon feel, and I could take the old-school/medieval fantasy apprentice system and transplant it into a slick, ultra-modern setting, which sounds like loads of fun. Something like this would probably be best for a longer work, just because of all the world-building it would involve, so it's probably just a concept I'll file away for later. But it was interesting to think about.


Three Supernatural Stories

The last two stories didn't really interest me much, but in the first, a man learns of a group of witches that swarm a local area every so often, and he decides to put a stop to it. To do so, he brings a piece of  chalk along to a spot near the area and traces a circle around him. I know that's just a small detail, but that's what caught my eye in this short piece: the idea of witches being more creature than human, something you can ward away with the right charms and tricks and wards, just like a werewolf with silver. This version of witch is something I'd like to work with, because I find it a lot more interesting than just humans with special ingredients or tricked-out spell books.




Bibliography: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "Grayscale Photo of Woman Holding a Picture." Source: Pexels.

Reading Notes: Czech Folktales, Part A

Sleepy John

This story is centered around John, a kid who's constantly falling asleep, no matter where he is. At the beginning of the story, he crawls onto an empty cart in a barn and goes to sleep. But when the cart's owners take their vehicle and get back on the road, they don't realize for a while that John is in the back. When they do, they decide, "We'll put him in [this beer cask] and leave him in the forest." That's just what they do, ditching him in the forest, and the story goes on to say, "John went on sleeping in the cask for a long time. Suddenly he woke up and found himself in the cask, but he did not know how he had got into it, neither did he know where he was."

I like the idea of someone—either superhuman in nature or some kind of creature—being forced into some kind of enchanted sleep for a long period of time, either by someone else or by circumstance. And when the character does wake up, they're obviously kind of disoriented; maybe they even woke up from some kind of "death." Someone else is right there when they wake, either the person who woke them or someone sent to guard them or kill them in their sleep—but that choice will depend on what kind of dynamic I want them to have. But I think it could be fun, this story of a lost, outdated guy from another world and the unimpressed, unflappable girl trying to move him from Point A to Point B.

That said, the queen's story is pretty interesting too: I'd be curious to do something with a character like her, find out why she visits "the green meadows of Hell" to feast and dance with demons every night. Maybe that's where she was raised, like a demon-human changeling, or maybe she's formed some kind of special alliance with them. Someday, I might be interested in writing something to find out.


Silly Jura

In this story, the destitute Jura wanders into a forest, where he finds the ruins of a once-grand castle. There's nobody inside but a cat, who says he can stay there if he'll act as her servant; he does, and finds that the castle is apparently enchanted to provide food and other necessities. All he ever has to do is gather firewood, and he and the cat have a good time there. But once the year is up, the cat announces that he has to build a big bonfire, then burn her alive—he can't let her escape the flames, no matter how much she struggles. He insists that he couldn't, since she's been so good to him, but she warns pretty ominously that he has to. So he does, and keeps the cat from escaping, and eventually passes out from the effort or the smoke or whatever. When he wakes, the castle is grand again, and filled with loads of servants, and he's approached by a beautiful woman. It turns out she was the cat all along, under a curse from a witch. Jura broke the spell by burning her.

The entire story was pretty enjoyable: it took all the interesting elements of Beauty and the Beast, but replaced the love theme with the much more interesting death threat to break the curse. I'd love to do something with this in the future, but it might be better-suited for a longer work than this assignment would allow for.


The Bear, the Eagle, and the Fish

In this story, a man bargains his daughters away to a bear, an eagle, and a fish, respectively. Later, they find out that all three animals are actually brothers, human princes cursed into these shapes by an evil magician; the girls' little brother works with their husbands to break the magician's curse and set the princes free. It's an entertaining story, and I was intrigued by the little brother's dedication to the sisters he's barely met—but what really interested me were the cursed princes.

I'd be interested in doing a story about two brothers, cursed princes themselves, and their dysfunctional relationship with each other and their cutthroat family and their kingdom. I'm not sure yet what sorts of curses they'd be under, only that they're probably either complementary or opposed in some way, and that they're probably not animal curses. Again, though, this might be more of a novel than flash fiction.


Kojata

At the beginning of this story, a king winds up accidentally promising his newborn son "to the thing in the well." If that doesn't sound like the seeds of an amazing story, I don't know what would.

This story ends up following the same plot as one I read earlier in the semester, though, in which the thing in the well turns out to be a wizard, and he sets a series of impossible tasks for the prince to solve. The wizard's youngest daughter hates her life and sees her opportunity, so she proposes that she and the prince escape together: she'll help him with the tasks, and he'll take her with her when he leaves. It doesn't quite go according to plan, though. She can't help him with the final task, so they decide to run away together instead, and the wizard quickly pursues them. But the daughter has her father's magic, and she shifts her own shape and the princes several times to evade her father.

The first time around, I loved this premise and wanted to put it in a more modern setting, but keep that fantasy element. The idea of a couple of young, shape-shifting runaways is great, and I think it could be a ton of fun to explore both their dynamic and the concept of a couple of young people constantly forced to be anyone but themselves if they want to survive. Plus, combining her street smarts with his princely, sheltered self could be pretty entertaining.


The Three Roses

This story is essentially Beauty and the Beast, but the Beast is a basilisk instead, and Belle is a girl named Mary. Rather than just coming to live at the castle, Mary has to stay there and take the basilisk in her lap every day and feed it. On the third day, he brings a sword with him, and tells Mary she has to lop off his head. She protests that she can't, but after some threats, she comes around. The decapitation ends up turning the basilisk into a beautiful young man, and he and Mary are married.

I'm not sure what elements of this I'd keep, but I like the idea of a girl and a cursed basilisk-boy winding up becoming friends or frenemies, and the girl killing him to save him in the end. So I'd probably play around with those ingredients and see what I could make with them.


The Twin Brothers

In this story, twin brothers own a couple of enchanted swords that guarantee them victory over everything, so they decide to part ways to conquer both halves of the world. They promise to check their swords, which will begin to rust if the other brother is in trouble, every day. That much is enough setup to get my interest: I'd be down to do a story that follows what happens when the two brothers do meet up again. As much as I'd just like to follow a couple of brothers working together against the world, the "victory over everything else" swords kind of require that the brothers end up fighting each other, and there could be some good drama there. I'd be curious to see how the fight pans out, when these two can wreck everything (including themselves—maybe even especially themselves) but each other.


The Twin Brothers (Part II)

In this installment, one of the brothers visits an enchanted black castle, where people are rumored to have entered but never returned home. He quickly learns what's up with that: all the people who have gone there have been turned to stone by the old hag inside, and she wastes no time in turning him to stone.

Of course, the real story here is the prince's twin brother coming to save him. But it's the setup that interests me. Swap out the kingdom for a forgotten stretch of road in the middle of nowhere—the castle for a desolate, Bates Motel-like tourist trap off an abandoned highway—and the non-statues for non-wax figures, and I'm officially sold.


The Waternick

In this story, a brother and sister are kidnapped by and forced to live with an old couple who collect human souls. That's fine and dandy and all, but after reading it, I really just want to take the souls concept and do a story about a noir-like antihero who happens to be a soul-broker, and the kinds of trouble he manages to get into because of it. I feel like a setup like that calls for some sort of complication surrounding his own soul, or lack thereof, but we'll see.




Bibliography: The Key of Gold by Josef Baudis. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "Fun with Dry Ice (7 of 9)" by Shawn Henning. Source: Flickr.

Story Planning: Based on "The Dog and the Corpse"

I’ve got a couple of different tests this week, so the story planning option is definitely a miracle, and I’m taking advantage of it.

This week, I went with the Russian Folktales Unit for my reading, and it’s probably the best choice I’ve made in this class so far. It’s the one unit I’ve read where I actually enjoyed every single story, and each of those stories had the right genre elements and twists to be right up my alley. (Even the titles were all perfect.) There’s a lot of supernatural and monster elements at play here, which means there’s a lot to love.

That said, one of the stories stuck out to me above all the others—“The Dog and the Corpse.” In that one, a man and his dog are attacked by a waiting corpse, which is apparently a regular Tuesday night in Russia. The dog rushes to bite at the corpse and protect its master, but the master ditches it as soon as it buys him an opening. When the dog escapes and finally catches up to its master, it’s furious that he left it to die, and it tries to attack the master now. The man’s family chains the dog up for a year, but any chance it gets, it still tries to break loose and kill the man. So eventually, the family is forced to kill it.

As I initially read through this, I was thinking it could be a good empty frame for a loosely interpreted revenge story—and yeah, it still could be. But I also think it could be something more. The dog’s fate reminded me of a darker version of Old Yeller, and I think it has loads of potential if adapted to a story about people instead.

At this point, my plan is to feature a protagonist with an ex-best friend (or just someone she used to be really close to) who’s somehow undergone some kind of brainwashing. Probably a magical variation of brainwashing, because my brain slants more fantasy than sci-fi, but we’ll see. Anyways, the ex-friend has been reprogrammed to hate and attack the protagonist, and it’s gotten to the point that the main character realizes she needs to put the ex-friend down. There’s some nice internal struggle and a window with a view of how things used to be, just to make the potential death and the old friendship meaningful. And then the protag goes to put the old friend down, in a more danger-heavy take on the Old Yeller tale. But in the end, I think she can’t follow through with it, and she ends up letting the friend live—even though that means she herself will get infected, or (probably better yet) they’ll both die together.

I’m still working out the kinks and details, but I think it has potential, so this is probably what I’ll wind up going with.

Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by W. R. S. Ralston. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "Vintage Photo of Exposed Wooden Coffin and Cross" by Rhode Elaine B. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Reading Notes: Russian Folktales, Part B

The Witch Girl

In this story, the daughter of a somewhat local family is actually a little witch girl, and she goes around terrorizing the other families in the area: "In our village Death goes about at night. Into whatsoever cottage she looks, there, next morning, one has to put all the people who lived in it into coffins, and carry them off to the graveyard." The witch girl, Death herself, is interesting, and I think she could make for the seeds of a good story—but the people taking her very look as a curse, dressing themselves in their finest and bundling themselves into coffins for the trip to the graveyard? It could make for a great horror story—an isolated little town stuck in its superstitions and the old ways—and I love the concept.


The Headless Princess

In this story, a young boy is charged with reading the psalter of a witchy princess's body for three days after she dies—but because she's a witch and wants revenge on the boy, she spends each night rising from her coffin and terrorizing him. At twelve o'clock each night, the lid of the coffin flies up, and the princess leaps out and throws everything she has at the boy. But because he's been advised by an old woman, he traces a circle around himself with a special knife and stays inside it, and he's safe. It's the little elements I liked in this: the special knife he uses to carve a safe-haven circle around himself, the way the princess was secretly a witch, the way she flies out of her coffin when midnight strikes. I might use this to explore a type of monster who only comes out for the protagonist at a certain time every night, or I might do something else with the knife/circle concept; not sure yet.


The Warlock

This one would make for the seeds of a good horror story too, I think, or an interesting character study of the warlock father-in-law. He lives a long time, and just before he dies, he requests that each of his three daughters-in-law spends a night with his body, without a cross on her, and knits a wool caftan for him. But when the first daughter-in-law comes to sit watch with his body, he actually talks to her; she's freaked out, but tries to play it cool, and after a while he rises from his coffin and strangles her. The same happens with the second daughter-in-law, though the third daughter-in-law secretly wears a cross and is able to defeat him.

For the purposes of this assignment, though, I think I'd narrow in on my favorite part of the story: when the daughter-in-law is sitting by the coffin knitting, and he asks quietly from the coffin, "Daughter-in-law, art thou there?" She replies that she is, and he asks, "Art thou sitting?" She is. "Dost thou spin?" She dost indeed. "Grey wool?" Grey. "For a caftan?" For a caftan. I love this exchange, and the idea of sitting with a loved one on his last night, when he's technically dead but isn't quite gone yet, and filling him in on what's going on—one last evening together, one long goodbye.


The Fox Physician

The fox in this story cons an old man, claiming she'll help him bring back his deceased wife. Really, she just eats the meat off the wife's bones and makes off with the tools she told the old man she'd need for the job. A con artist of some kind would clearly be my first interpretation for this one, not just because it's the obvious conclusion, but because I'm always down for a con story. But I'm not sure what kind of format or shape it would take for something this length, so we'll see.


The Fiddler in Hell

In this story, when a fiddler accidentally falls down a hole in the ground and into hell, he tries to make up an excuse to escape. But the demons (called fiends) fear he's trying to trick them and won't come back, so they send a fiend along with him to be sure he makes it back. I love the idea of a human with a fiendish bodyguard for some reason, and I think it could be fun to explore that dynamic.


The Two Friends

In this story, two friends promise each other that they'll invite each other to their weddings someday—no matter what. So when one of the friends dies and the other later prepares to marry, the groom stops by to visit his grave and invite him to the wedding. The dead friend invites his friend to share a drink with him, so the groom steps into the coffin; with each toast they make, a hundred years pass. After the third drink, the dead friend wishes the groom well and sends him on his way—but the groom emerges and finds that the graveyard and town have changed completely, and he doesn't know anybody there. Three hundred years have passed, and everyone he knew has come and gone, while he hasn't aged at all.

First off, I have to say: the idea of two friends, close as siblings, sticking together even once one of them dies—it really appeals to me. But I also love the idea of someone who gets trapped in some sort of pocket dimension in which time passes differently, only to return home and find that everything has changed. I feel like that would give the protagonist some kind of Peter Pan crisis, and I'd be curious to watch that unfold.


The Shroud

In this one, the protagonist is lazy but brave, pulling off stupid dares to her friends just to prove she can. If I were to spin this one into a story, I'd probably put an unimpressed, impossible-to-scare protagonist in a horror setting: it could be a lot of fun, and also a great chance to play with genre conventions and a genre-savvy character. Even though Halloween's over now, I'm always in the mood for a horror spoof, and this could be a golden opportunity for that.


The Coffin-Lid

In this story, a corpse rises and kills two teens, and when threatened by a witness, he reluctantly offers up a way to bring them back to life: go to the house where the kids were killed, then put live coals and part of the corpse's shroud into a pot and lock the door. The witness follows the instructions, and the teens are revived—but I have to wonder what kind of condition they'd be in. Probably pretty messed up, either emotionally or physically or both, and something like that would surely be a bonding experience. Could be interesting to play around with.

That said, I also love that corpses rising and causing trouble was apparently enough of an issue for there to be a routine solution to it: the townsfolk simply hunt down his grave, dig up his coffin, and drive an aspen stake through the corpse's heart. Like changing a car's oil or taking out the trash.


The Two Corpses

In this story, a corpse tries to catch and eat a soldier—but then another corpse comes for the man, and they end up fighting each other instead. It's a classic strategy, turning your enemies against each other to either weaken them or buy yourself a distraction, and it could make for a solid plot point in a short story. But I'm more interested in the soldier's words when he does escape: "I am saved from the wizards!" I like the idea that all these corpses wandering around used to belong to wizards, which explains why they're technically dead but can't actually stay properly dead. There could be a whole underground community of them.


The Dog and the Corpse

In this story, a man and his dog are attacked by a corpse; the dog rushes to fight the corpse off of his master, but the master ditches the dog as soon as it buys him an opening. When the dog escapes and finally catches up to his master, he's furious that the man left him behind to fend for himself, and tries to kill the man. The master's family chains the dog up for a year, but it still tries to kill its master any chance it gets—so eventually, they're forced to kill it. Initially, I was thinking this could be a good empty frame for a loosely interpreted revenge story, and I guess it still could be. But I really love the last twist with the dog: it's like a darker version of Old Yeller or something, and I think it has loads of potential. If I were to use this one for my story, I think I'd go with a protagonist dealing with an ex-best friend or someone she used to be close to, who's now undergone some type of brainwashing (a spell or some kind of sci-fi take would work) to hate and attack the protagonist. There's that internal struggle, in which the protagonist knows she needs to put her friend down, but can't bring herself to do it. In the end, I think she can't follow through and ends up letting the friend live, even though that means she herself will get infected or they'll die together or something.


The Soldier and the Vampire

In this story, a soldier returns to his home village and visits with an old friend till after nightfall. When he makes to leave, his friend warns that he'd better stay till daybreak—there's a Warlock attacking the area, and he strikes after dark. The soldier's response? “Not a bit of it! A soldier is a man who belongs to the crown, and ‘crown property cannot be drowned in water nor burnt in fire.’" While he was just making a joke, I love what this could be if interpreted literally: a group of super-soldiers, either bred and groomed or just transformed, in the service of some kind of king. They're strong and invulnerable and powerful, but they're also property, basically objects—so there are definitely some checks and balances there. I'm not sure yet what shape this story would take, just that I like the concept and think it has potential.




Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by W. R. S. Ralston. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "The Grave of Sarah Wrench (1833-1848)"; © Copyright Neil Theasby and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons License. Source: Geograph.

Reading Notes: Russian Folktales, Part A

The Dead Mother

My gosh, this story is up my alley. It genuinely feels like the setup for a Supernatural episode: a husband and wife are blissfully happy, and things are hunky dory till the wife dies just after the birth of their first child. The grief-stricken dad hires a nanny to take care of the infant boy, but the son refuses to eat and only stops crying for the same window of time every night. During that time window, three nights in a row, the nanny thinks she hears someone enter the baby's room and suckle it. She tells the dad, and they create a plan to figure out what's going on. The next night, they see a woman enter the baby's room: "They looked, and saw the dead mother, in the very same clothes in which she had been buried, on her knees besides the cradle, over which she bent as she suckled the babe at her dead breast." When the dad's candlelight hits the dead mother, she gives one last sad look at her baby, rises, and walks out without saying a word. The dad and the nanny run to the baby, but it's dead.

As I read this, I was initially struck by the idea of a kid raised and nurtured by a dead mom—not just because that's bound to mess the kid up emotionally, but because I wonder what other effect it would have on him. Would he have special death powers? Be a psychic, a medium? Be half-dead himself? Be able to go ghost like Danny Phantom? The possibilities are endless, and I dig all of them.

That said, the twist where the son himself is found dead is pretty great too. I could work with a ghost mom who goes around passing her deadness on to babies by trying to nurture them. I could also work with the idea that the kid was dead all along after his mom died, but that he was able to pass for alive somehow while his mom was taking care of him.


The Treasure

In this story, when the corrupt pope realizes that the old man has suddenly come into a bunch of money, the pope asks, "Where did it come from? Confess, friend, whose breath did you stop?" The phrasing of the question made me think about a story option in which few people have supernatural abilities or connections, and the only way for someone else to get those powers is to take it from someone else (stop their breath), since there's only a limited source of it in the world. But again, that feels more like a novel kind of story.

Of course, the pope's ultimate fate is pretty perfect, too, in a cringe-worthy kind of way. He kills a goat and wears its skin and horns in order to scare the poor man out of the money, having his own wife sew the goat skin closed around his back so it doesn't slide off. After they've scared the man and taken the abandoned money for themselves, he tells his wife to cut the goat skin off from around him—but when she goes to snip the skin off, she ends up cutting the pope, too. As punishment, God has fused the goat skin and horns and everything into the pope's own skin. He's stuck as a monster now, and it's horrifying and perfect.


The Bad Wife

As much as I love the bickering, contrary dynamic between the husband and the wife at the beginning of the story, or the fact that the wife gets trapped with demons and it's the demons who end up begging to be released, I'd probably use the concept of the husband tricking a demon as the inspiration for my story. I'd probably take a more crossroads approach to it, either someone getting out of their bargain or summoning the demon to trap it instead of the other way around, but we'll see.


The Three Copecks

In this story, the protagonist is sent to a few brothers working a field, so he can ask them the answer to a question. When he asks, the brothers say they aren't sure, and for him to ask their eldest brother—but when the protagonist goes to the eldest brother, it's only a little three-year-old. The story doesn't address how or why the oldest brother appears to be the youngest or how he got this way, but I think it could be fun to explore that in a story. I like the idea of a family that rejuvenates itself, reincarnates into itself, starts over again after every life cycle—and a family like that could mean all sorts of trouble.


The Miser

In this story, the titular miser was pretending to be dead, and a group of grave robbers paused over his coffin to split their spoils. A story in which the protagonist and a partner play dead and effectively rib grave robbers could be fun, but I also like the idea of a dead character who comes back to life for a period of time each night—I'm not sure yet what I'd do with that, but designing my own monster seems fun. So that's always an option.


The Water Snake

This time around, a snake basically blocks a girl's path, and says he'll only move if she agrees to marry him. She agrees, because it's a snake, and it's not like he can actually marry her. Then she goes home and forgets about it. But later, a huge group of snakes break into the girl's house and carry her to the lake where the snake lives; they bring her underwater with them, where they all turn into men and women, and she marries the snake-man. Tragically, the story glosses over what's going on with the snake people or their realm under the water or how the girl adjusts to life there, which are the most interesting parts to me. But I love the idea of these snake people, and I think they could make for a fun, darker version of a mermaid story.


Friday

In this story, a woman doesn't respect "Mother Friday" enough, so Friday comes and punishes the woman in her sleep: she takes the dust from the flax the woman was spinning, and stuffs it into her eyes. The woman wakes up blind and panicked. I think the dust-blindness is interesting enough, and I might do something with it someday, but more than that, I like the idea of personifying Friday and building a story around that character.


Wednesday

This story is similar to the Friday one, only Mother Wednesday approaches the woman directly, and has plans for a harsher punishment than Mother Friday did. The story itself didn't do much for me (except for the idea that Mother Wednesday is actually an Unclean Spirit, and can be driven away by signing the cross and drawing symbols in chalk), so again, I'd probably focus on personifying Wednesday as some kind of minor deity or something, then seeing what happens.


The Léshy

In this story, a girl wanders into the woods and disappears for three years. Eventually, she's found by a hunter, who kills a léshy and tracks it back to its house: turns out the missing girl's been there the entire time. The description of the léshy is interesting, and kind of begs for a story itself—the hunter comes across a young man in the forest, but is confused by the fact that the youth has grey hair. The youth basically replies, "Of course I'm grey—I'm the devil's grandfather." Like I said: interesting.

But I also think it could be cool to look at the story of a human girl who's been raised by a léshy or demon or whatever kind of monster—not because she's been kidnapped by it, like the girl in the story, but because it took her in and raised her when she was an abandoned little kid. The dynamic itself could be entertaining to experiment with, and I like the grey area it would let me dabble in.


Dnieper, Volga, and Dvina

Dnieper, Volga, and Dvina in the title are actually the protagonists of this story—a brother and two sisters—who end up choosing to become rivers. That much itself has potential, but it's the setup at the beginning of the story for this development that really gets me: "The Dnieper, Volga, and Dvina used once to be living people. The Dnieper was a boy, and the Volga and Dvina his sisters." As someone who didn't realize these were the names of Russian rivers, I found that opening really compelling, and the questions and possible scenarios it made me think about had plenty of potential for stories of their own.

Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales: A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore by W. R. S. Ralston. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: Man Holding Umbrella by Adrianna Calvo. Source: Pexels.

Story: Long Way Down

Once Henry Nolan had been dead a whole year, he started appearing in my house.

Like, I’d be wandering aimlessly around the kitchen, microwaving popcorn or something, and there he’d be—lurking in the space between the back door and the cabinet, tall and pale and thin. Or I’d be camped out on the living room floor, math homework spread out in front of me like I was actually going to do it, and I’d look up, and Henry Nolan would be sitting on the couch across from me, hands folded patiently in his lap.

I guess I should’ve been surprised, but I wasn’t. Weird things had been happening in Caldwell for as long as I could remember. And you don’t move into a dead boy’s house without at least wondering what would happen if the dead boy had never quite moved out.

But if I turned away from him and started rummaging through the fridge, or turned the TV volume up really loud and stared intently at the pages of my trig book for once, he would just sit there, like he was waiting for me to notice him.

And eventually, just as suddenly as he’d shown up, he would disappear again.

***

After about a month, I’d gotten used to our little routine. Sure, it still didn’t do my heart rate any favors to look up and see someone skulking around the dining room or framed outside my window—but it wasn’t too much of an adjustment.

And then one night, under threat of death from my mother, I was slumped over the desk in my room, pretending I had this Pythagorean Theorem thing in the bag and that I wasn’t totally doomed for tomorrow’s quiz.

And a low, scratchy voice said, “You do realize these are all wrong.”

I whirled around despite myself. Henry Nolan was leaned over my shoulder, hands clasped neatly behind his back, blue button-up and khaki slacks just as neat as they’d been when the high school had bussed all of us out to his funeral. His messy brown hair had been carefully parted then, but now it was sticking up a little.

“Like, all of them,” he added, frowning down at my trig worksheet.

“Since when do you talk?”

He straightened, but kept staring abstractedly down at my homework. “Since I built up enough strength to, I guess.”

“Why are you even here?”

Instead of answering, he looked around the room. I hadn’t done much to change it when we’d moved in, just added some posters and a few medals I’d won with the girls’ swim team. But even that seemed kind of tasteless now, watching a dead boy gaze around at what used to be his.

“Where’s my dad?” he finally asked, voice raspier than ever.

I stared at him. His dark eyes were fever-bright and surrounded by bruised-looking circles, and his skin had a sickly bluish tint to it, but he seemed calm. Careful. Nothing like I would’ve been if I’d kicked the big bucket a few weeks into the summer before my senior year.

Maybe it was that collectedness that made me feel like he wasn’t going to freak out and go all vengeful spirit on me, but I shrugged. “He moved out. A little bit after...you know.” Henry’s mom had died maybe a decade ago, so now that Henry was gone, his dad was the only Nolan left. “He lives on the other side of town now.”

I’m not sure what kind of response I’d expected. But he only stood there, looking skinny and lost and too boyish to have been cut down in his prime like that.

After a minute, he knelt down beside my desk, looking over my worksheet again. “My God, you suck at math.”

He spent the next hour alternating between ragging on my math skills and helping me work through all the problems again, and then he flickered out and disappeared.

***

Eventually, when it looked like Henry had decided he was haunting my house for the long haul and my math grades had picked up enough to make me grateful, I decided to learn a little more about him.

I’d just finished ninth grade when he’d died, so I’d been kind of self-absorbed. But I remembered he’d been the hero of the baseball team, had worked after school at his dad’s auto shop. He’d wanted to win a baseball scholarship and get out of Caldwell.

And now he was stuck here. All the stuff I found online said spirits stuck around if they had revenge or unfinished business to deal with. But all Henry seemed to want to do was haunt the fridge and fix my math grades.

I learned he’d apparently started having seizures a few months before he died. A few people said his dad must’ve gotten drunk again and finally pushed him down too hard.

But most people figured he’d had one of those seizures and bashed his head on the way down.

***

“Trevor Marshall got a tattoo for you,” I told Henry one night, while he looked over a practice test for me. “It’s pretty cool.”

He was quiet for a minute. “We were always going to get matching tattoos once we turned eighteen.”

“What kind?”

He unbuttoned his sleeve, bared his forearm. Little pink scars dotted the pallid skin. “Right here. We were—”

But I was still looking at the cigarette burns.

“Henry?” I said after a minute. “How’d you die?”

He paused. Rolled the sleeve back down, careful as ever. “That seems rude to ask.”

I stared. “If your dad really—if you’re here for revenge or tell people how you really died—”

“If I wanted revenge, don’t you think I would get it?” He looked away. “Being left to himself is already the worst punishment Dad could ask for. I don’t want anything else.”

I didn’t argue.

The fact that he was even here at all seemed to do that for me.



Author's Note: This week, my story was based on the tale of Andrew Coffey. In this story, a dead man from Andrew Coffey's town reappears to Andrew a number of times, after supposedly drowning years before. In the end, Andrew wakes up beside his horse, and realizes the entire thing was a dream. I took the main idea for my own story, but turned the dead man and Andrew into a couple of modern-day high schoolers instead.

Bibliography: Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "Math" by Akash Kataruka. Source: Flickr.

Reading Notes: Celtic Fairy Tales, Part B

King O'Toole and His Goose

In this story, the king meets Saint Kavin, who's disguised as a common boy and claims he makes his living "By makin' old things as good as new." I could definitely see that spun into an urban fantasy story, about a morally flexible guy who makes his money with a signature of old magic and street magic. I figure he'd end up taking on a job and not really giving it much in the way of a second thought—till it turns out he just rejuvenated something very old and very bad, and set the stage for all sorts of trouble.

The Shee An Gannon and the Gruagach Gaire

Try to say that one five times fast. Or even just once, kind of slowly. I wasn't sure about this story when I first started it, but it ended up being possibly my favorite I've read all year. I love the bones of the story: the idea of a cowboy in a fantasy world, mixing genres like that, and his team-up and dynamic with the Gruagach, the way he set off on a revenge plot for and with the Gruagach so readily. It would probably make for a longer work than this assignment allows, but I still think I could do something with the genre-mixing, especially the cowboy.

Beth Gellert

I think this is the third time I've read this story, and every time, it's even more frustrating than the last.    

But this time, it triggered a different thought. If the prince loved and treasured and trusted Gellert so much, how come all it took was the sight of a little blood on the dog's fangs to send the prince off on the idea that the dog had surely murdered the prince's infant son? I like the idea of the protagonist being allies with someone with this rough, disreputable history, working together and getting along well enough but still not quite trusting him. And I like the idea that when something goes wrong and circumstances make it look like he could be the one to blame, could've relapsed, the MC automatically suspects him despite herself. Could be a fun and messy dynamic to look at.

The Tale of Ivan

During most of this story, Ivan was just trying to get home, and all sorts of things kept getting in the way—robberies, murder, all sorts of stuff. If I were to use this tale as the basis for my retelling, I'd probably use that loose interpretation for the main concept, sticking with the idea of someone just trying to get home after a long and rough time away, but deterred by all sorts of stumbling blocks.

Andrew Coffey

When introducing Andrew Coffey, the narrator notes that the guy was "always stumbling up against some tree or stumbling down into some bog-hole that by rights didn't ought to be there." I like the idea of a protagonist who's attuned or connected to some kind of supernatural flux, and is constantly having to deal with weird occurrences that seem to crop up in his or her presence.

That said, I also love what happened next: Andrew Coffey hears a voice talking to him, and turns to see who it is. And we get this gem: "But when my grandfather clapped eyes on him, he knew him for Patrick Rooney, and all the world knew he'd gone overboard fishing one night long years before." The idea of someone who died in the protagonist's hometown suddenly appearing to the main character really appeals to me: it's practically calling out for a small-town setting where the otherworldly brushes elbows with the painfully mundane every day. The fact that it's not just the spirit of Patrick Rooney, but somehow his glaring, pallid reanimated body, is even better.

Brewery of Eggshells

I've always loved changeling stories, and the idea of twin changelings is even better. The first question is what would happen if only one kid got swapped, so one twin is human and the other is subtly but decidedly not. But that might not work out as well in a story this length, so instead, it might be fun to dig into the horror roots that're practically begging to be dug out of this story. The Wise Man said it best when he told the stressed out mom to listen to see if her twins said anything after she set up a trap: If you hear them speaking of things beyond the understanding of children, go back and take them up and throw them into the waters of Lake Ebyr." I like the idea of an older sister (or even a couple of older siblings) slowly realizing the younger siblings aren't who they're supposed to be anymore, and struggling to figure out how to grapple with that. Like I said, the key here is that slow-dawn horror atmosphere.

Bibliography: Celtic Fairy Tales by Joseph Jacobs. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: Pair of Flintlock Pistols by Gerrit Penterman the Elder, via Walters Art Museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

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