IX
Their paths converged at the place where the stream leapt into the light through a fern shrouded cleft in the rock. A lad of six dressed in whitest wool, his boots embroidered with dancing hare and reindeer, stood gently stroking the tightly furled fiddlenecks.
“Are you the whortleberry child? Have you a home?”
He gave her no [...]
Archive for the ‘fairy tales’ Category
Nora of the Mountain (Conclusion)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged child, fairy tale, lady, reindeer, writing on July 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Nora of the Mountain (part 8)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged blacksmith, children, fairy tale, market, spring, writing on June 28, 2008 | 1 Comment »
VIII
Spring’s first market day is given over to all things young and new. Tender greens, their leaves tightly whorled, tiny berries, spring peas, and fresh herbs crowded together with newly turned birchwood spoons and burlwood bowls and woolens and willow baskets woven in the slumbering months of snow. Lambs and calves and colts, trailing their [...]
Nora of the Mountain (Part 7)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged banished, exile, fairy tale, frog prince, princess, writing on June 22, 2008 | 2 Comments »
VII
The deeper pools, in which a frog might find refuge from the herons and kingfishers that ruled these watery reaches, lie under the bridge, shadowed by willows. The bank is steepest here. Nora tied up her skirts with her belt and began to make her way down the bank’s makeshift steps of roots and stones, [...]
Nora of the Mountain (part 6)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged cow, fairy tale, frog, mystery, true love, writing on June 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
VI
The path below the meadow is less steep, the brook less leap and tumult, more eddy and swirl. Here Nora and the cow could walk companionably side by side, Nora’s quick hands braiding a buttercup wreath for the cow to match her own. They had nearly reached the place where the path divides, one branch [...]
Nora of the Mountain (part 5)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged cow, fairy tale, gnomes, mystery, writing on June 12, 2008 | 2 Comments »
V
Halfway down the mountain, the path entered a woodland meadow, nodding with buttercups, which the cows won’t eat, and bluebells, which they will. There was the roan cow, quite contentedly and daintily plucking and chewing her way through them, one by one. Nora placed her hands on her hips and with a quick exhalation,”Ha!”, [...]
Nora of the Mountain (part 4)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged cow, fairy tales, gnomes, mystery, writing on June 10, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
IV
The walk to the village was long, lined with and occasionally barred by tangles of newly exposed roots and hoary boulders shouldering aside mantles of moss and lichen. Nora named them for the gnomes that were fabled to live just below the summit of the mountain – Nipingr, Hornbori, Finnr, Eitri, Brökk – and began [...]
Nora of the Mountain (parts 2 & 3)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged fairy tale, goat, mountain, mystery, wolf, writing on June 4, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
II
They lay in her hand, the three sleeping forms, roan red, leaf green, moon white. Weighty stone, warm as embers, they nestled in her hand and seemed to breath a sigh of relief.
She would set them beside her mug and, much as when she was a child on her mother’s knee, tell tales [...]
Nora of the Mountain: A Fairy Tale (part I)
Posted in fairy tales, writing, tagged fairy tale, mystery, writing on June 2, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Nora of the Mountain*
I
The day was dark; the sun an hour or so behind Nora’s rising.
Crumbs of fire nestling among the cinders burst into life as she threw a handful of kindling on them. A log or two of seasoned hickory wood followed. She slipped the kettle onto it’s hook with practiced ease. [...]
