Thursday, August 6, 2020

Dave’s Anatomy: My History as a Writer #139. Finding the Lost Mother: “The Fairy Godmother."



Revisions of fairy tales are popular today. There are journals and anthologies of them, and as a writer I’ve done written some. I’ve published revived stories about Rumpelstiltskin, the Magic Mirror from Snow White, A Christmas Carol by Dickens, Sleeping Beauty, and others. This particular story was on old French fairy tale, very well-known due to the cartoon version of it (which I saw at the theater when I was a kid), Cinderella.

Cinderella, Poor
“Cinderella” follows a familiar fairy tale pattern. The mother dies and is replaced by a cruel stepmother. In Cinderella’s case, she is made a servant answerable not just to her stepmother but to her stepsisters. This trio treats her with contempt until a fairy godmother appears, enables her to attend a royal ball, and she ends up marrying the Prince. They lived happily ever after, but my story begins where the Grimm story ends.

Yes, Cinderella is happy. She loves her husband. She bears four healthy children. Still, she finds that life at the palace is not all gold and glass slippers. She learns how people start rumors about her, accuse her of everything from unchastity to sorcery, even plot attempts upon her life. She uses the survivor skill she learned growing up to thwart them. Secure in her position as queen, however, she wonders about her mother. She summons a woman she loves and trusts, Élodie, and asks her if she knows the identity of the fairy godmother who used magic to free her from her former life. Élodie says she doesn’t know, but the two of them are aware of a sorcerer named Burnell who can tell them. Élodie warns Queen Elaine (Cinderella) that she must be careful: if it is known she has consulted with Burnell, her enemies will use this against her.

Burnell
Elaine has occasion to go to Burnell’s town when her husband, Oslac travels to another country. Burnell appears to her and warns her that Bertrand, the Grand Duke of the Land, is plotting to take control of the kingdom and has suborned a servant girl to murder her at breakfast. He also says her mother’s name is Alura, she is not dead, and that she in fact is the Fairy Godmother who dispensed the magic that made Elaine queen. When she asks where she is, he simply says, “All things are revealed to her who seeks.”

Things unfold just as he says. A servant girl tries to kill Elaine. The Grand Duke says she and her husband have been killed and he is taking control of the country. He also has captured her children.

Elaine takes decisive action. She rides from village to village rallying militia. Loyal troops join her. She rides to the fortress where Burnell told her her son was being held by Bertrand’s brother, Guthrun (her other children are being kept at a nearby convent). By appealing to the loyal troops there, she frees her son and effectively ends the revolt. Her tenacity shows in the action she takes after the loyal troops rally to her:  Two of Gudrun’s troop had been killed already. The loyal soldiers brought the ones still alive and decapitated them in my presence. I fought with all my strength not to vomit or swoon at the sight of it (I had sent Auturic back to the convent). I ordered the heads of all the traitorous men sent to the place and to the Grand Duke.
Guthrun was still alive. I ordered my troops flay him. He was not hurt so badly that he would not feel it. I would send his head and his hide to the Capitol.
My actions later earned me the epithet, “the Bloody Virgin” which made me laugh because by the time I order those killings I had been fucked from one end of my bedchamber to the other and had given birth to four children. Still, it stuck and became a by-word. Others called me Queen Elaine the Just because I had ordered the executions in response to the crime of treason. That caught on as well, and I became known by both titles through the years. Paradoxes come at us in this manner. It’s something that keeps life amusing.

The revolt collapses. Elaine and Oslac return power and co-rule the kingdom. She still wonders if she will be able to find Alura, her mother.

Later, an incident occurs in the north that puts her contact with a sorceress who is able to take her to
Sheena, the Sorceress
her mother, who is under an enchantment and asleep. Elaine is unable to wake her mother and decides it would be proper to let her sleep. The Sorceress appears to her and tells her she has done right and a council of magicians will awaken her mother. She returns home.

Here is where I came up with a beautiful twist. Shortly after she arrives home she receives a note from her mother telling her where she is staying. Elaine goes there, sees her, but when she does she gets the idea that she is growing smaller. Her mother tells her that through magic she will give her daughter the true desire of her heart. Elaine realizes she has reverted to the girl she was at age five, when she lost her mother. With her child’s body, she approaches Alura and puts out her arms. Alura picks her up and gives her heart’s greatest desire:

Nights when I lay on my bed of reeds by the hearth, exhausted from work, lonely, miserable from the insults, taunts, and mockery of my stepmother and stepsisters; hungry and dirty; despairing and, like any other child, wanting to be cherished, I would imagine sitting on my lost mother’s lap in a rocking chair by a warm fire. I would imagine her holding me and loving me. I would imagine how sweet and beautiful that would be. I envisioned warmth and sanctuary. Many nights I drifted off to sleep with this picture in my mind. I imagined it even when I grew into womanhood. I went to sleep with this vision in my mind the night mother came to transform me so I could attend the royal ball.
And now the dream had become reality.

Queen Elaine—Cinderella—receives her heart’s desire. Her mother assures her that she will return her to her adult self. The circle will be completed. She will return to her adult life, this time with her mother at her side.

The story appeared in an anthology, The Fairy-Tale Wisperer. Get a copy here. 

For another revised story, this one from the New Testament, read The Prophetess. Here is a link to the novella:  The Prophetess.

Enjoy!