(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Language of the Night: Toads and Kisses [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-09-18 Okay, one kiss, but that’s all you really need for a fairy tale. T. Kingfisher’s latest book is a sweet take on “Sleeping Beauty” titled Thornhedge. This is not Kingfisher’s first treatment of “Sleeping Beauty” — that’s Harriet the Invincible, the first volume of her Hamster Princess series — but it’s rather an inversion of the traditional tale. In the Acknowledgements, she writes, ...as inevitably happens when you retell a fairy tale — or at least when I retell one — I found myself with all these extra possibilities in my brain afterward. Directions that I could have gone but didn’t . . . . So in this case, I started thinking, what if the princess was the villain? (p. 113 — yes, it’s short, about a 2 hour read at a leisurely pace). Neil Gaiman did a similar inversion of a familiar fairy tale in Snow, Glass, Apples, which is terrifyingly vampiric and cold. Kingfisher opts for a gentler approach (as gentle as dancing corpses and child-devouring monsters can be), positing that the beautiful maiden in the tower isn’t exactly malicious evil so much as she’s inhumanly evil: she’s a changeling. And there’s no one better to keep watch on a changeling than the child she was exchanged for. Enter Toadling, stolen by the fairies on the day of her birth: The goal of the thieves was to leave a changeling in the crib, and what became of Toadling afterward was of no concern to them. There are a great many things that can happen to an infant in Faerie, and most of them are bad. Toadling was, more or less, lucky. She was not harvested by the flesh-smiths nor devoured by redcaps, nor raised in the retinue of a great lord of Faerie. Instead, she was thrown to the greenteeth, the slimy swamp-dwelling spirits who devour unwary swimmers. Boy-children they eat, always. Girl-children they eat, mostly. (p. 27) They don’t eat her. Raised from birth among the greenteeth, Toadling absorbs enough of their magic that, when the hare goddess tasks her to contain the fairy child left in her place, she’s fit for the job. But then things go wrong. I’m not going to give away the plot, which you can almost guess but will still be surprised by — such is the malleability of fairy stories and their enduring ability to wear a thousand faces and speak in a thousand tongues — there’s a maiden in a tower, a hedge of wicked thorns, and a fairy guardian who watches over the scene for . . . well, for an unendurably long time, longer than kingdoms last. That much is canonical. But everything else is different, as if Kingfisher reached into the heart of the story and pulled a switcheroo worthy of a changeling tale, in every respect. The Sleeping Beauty is not the heroine. What we see of the her is a wonderful evocation of Faerie: unaccountable, un-moral, unconscionable, and entirely Other. She’s everything that fairies are traditionally supposed to be, including beautiful, heedless, and cruel. No, she’s not the heroine; she’s the reason the heroine stays, true to her task, even after everyone else has gone. Toadling, this story’s softly-beating and long-suffering heart, is the most retiring of heroines — humble, helpful, and compassionate in a world that is all too often none of those things. She’s also comfortable in toad form; while in human form The fairy was the greenish-tan color of mushroom stems and her skin bruised blue-black, like mushroom flesh. She had a broad, frog-like face and waterweed hair. She was neither beautiful nor made of malice, as many of the Fair Folk are said to be. (p.1) As she says, she’s not beautiful. No, a newcomer agrees, but she’s interesting. And sad. Like all fairy stories, Thornhedge doesn’t shy away from darkness, but in a tapestry of cruel choices, imperfect solutions, and mute grief, the bright spots and kindnesses shine all the brighter. Toadling has grown numb to her lonely existence, the acute ache of her failures, and the weight of her charge. All the while, the thorns grow longer, the hedgerow thicker, and time passes.When a knight turns up chasing an old story and bearing weapons that Toadling can’t counter — gentleness, sensitivity, and goodness — she doesn’t want to talk to him, but she does. She doesn’t want to trust him, but Halim is respectful and kind. He’s armed with advice from a rabbi, a monk, and an imam, he wants to help, and he loves his mother. Half the story is Halim’s quest and Toadling’s determination to thwart him. The rest is Toadling and her story — the fairy tale turned inside out, and entirely magical. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Kingfisher’s style, which is quite unlike the wisecracking deadpan heroines of many of her books. This is a fairy tale, told in fairy tale language with a meditative mood and lovely, spare cadences: She went fishing and brought back her catches, and at first the cook thanked her and threw the fish to the dogs, for fear of magic, and then the cook thanked her and cooked the fish, and eventually the cook no longer thanked her and would say, as she passed, ‘Fetch some fish if you’ve a mind, Toadling.’ (p. 55) It’s a small book, a lovely little book full of sharp edges and good intentions and heartfelt kindnesses, and a tale that sticks, right to the last lovely twist. I’m on a bit of a Kingfisher kick so, next week, it’ll be North Carolina horror and the awfulness that lurks in tract housing. And other places. Reference Kingfisher, T. Thornhedge. New York: Tor, 2023. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/9/18/2194001/-The-Language-of-the-Night-Toads-and-Kisses Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/