Whispers Between Fairies

Whispers Between Fairies

Nathan Caro Fréchette

Derek Newman-Stille

WHISPERS BETWEEN FAIRIES ©2020 by Nathan Caro Fréchette and Derek Newman-Stille. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or repro­duced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews. For more information, contact Renaissance Press. First edition.

Cover and interior design by Nathan Caro Fréchette. Art for Self-Made Man by Nathan Fréchette. All other interior art by Derek Newman-Stille.

Edited by L.P. Vallée.

Legal deposit, Library and Archives Canada, November 2020.

Deluxe Colour Edition 978-1-990086-02-1

Paperback ISBN 978-1-990086-00-7

Ebook ISBN 978-1-990086-01-4

Renaissance Press

http://pressesrenaissancepress.ca

[email protected]

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Contents

Content Warning

Cinderfella

Once Upon a Disability

Prey

The Beast

Sleeper’s heart

Spinnerets

Ash

Emberella

Wolves

Bloodied

Glass eye

Ice Heart

The Snow Queen's Son

Still Got Strings

Self-Made Man

Ink

Off to see the witch I go

The witch in the woods

Unjust Desserts

Safe

Locks

Foundlings

Toxic

Migrating Home

The Nettle Witch

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

Content Warning

Please note that these stories contain discussions of suicide, animal cruelty, conversion therapy, abuse, trauma, transphobia and homophobia, ableism, abandonment, violence, sexual assault, illness, and death. Please read with caution and care.

Cinderfella

Nathan Caro Fréchette

Ialways believed in magic. I still do.

Growing up, it wasn’t so much a flight of fancy as it was a necessity. Reading fairy tales and fantasy was like breathing air after being submerged under water far too long. I needed to be able to imagine that there was a place where I would not be spit on because I was different, where I would not feel this ache, this wrongness about everything that I was. Fairy tales and fantasy were such a safe world for me; tales of transformation in particular gave me hope that someday I could grow into myself, that someday I might find my true body, my selkie skin, that a blue fairy would descend from the skies and make me a real boy.

I carried that hope in every book I read, every word I wrote, every illustration I produced, and eventually, my wishes came true. Just like a fairy tale, I found true love, I lived happily ever after, and I transformed my body to reflect my true self.

Just like a fairy tale, though, everything came at a price. There were trials, and I had to prove my worth, mostly to myself. Just like the little mermaid, I had to sacrifice my voice and endure pain as my transformation got underway. Just like Pinocchio, I had to struggle through the lies I told myself to find my truth and be worthy of the change. Just like Cinderella’s prince, I had to see through the appearances and misconceptions of the world to find and embrace my love.

I was seven years old the first time I wanted to die. I didn’t even have the words to describe what was wrong with me; all I knew was that what kept me alive was the hope that Peter Pan would come to my window and take me away to Neverland, and I would become one of the Lost Boys. I wasn’t yet able to articulate that it was the being a boy part of that fantasy that made me feel sane; I wouldn’t be able to articulate that for another thirty years. I’m not lost any more.

THERE ONCE WAS A LITTLE boy whom no one could see. All who looked upon him could only see the girl he appeared to be. The illusion was so complete that even the boy could not perceive his true nature, only a sense of discord and discomfort with his false skin, and an uncontrollable, unfathomable, and ever-growing rage.

As the boy grew, so did the rage; it coiled and twisted inside him until it distorted his very being, slowly turning him into a monster. He lashed out at his friends and loved ones, constantly and with very little cause, and even he could not explain why.

At night, he prayed to the Blue Fairy to come and make him a real boy, to discard this shell of lies he was trapped in, but still, he could not see the connection between the rage slowly twisting him and the false skin he was trapped in.

As the boy grew, he heard of other boys like himself, rumours on the wind. He heard he could perhaps transform himself if he worked hard at it, plucked the nettles with his bare hands to weave himself a shirt that would transform his body. He thought about it, hesitating. He was afraid of the pain, afraid of the regret, afraid it would not be worth it. So, he didn’t touch the nettles, but he always noticed whenever he saw them or heard about them, filing the information away in case it would be useful, in case his pain grew wider than his fear.

Eventually the boy met a princess in disguise, trapped in a false skin of her own, her true shape invisible to those around her. Their vision of her had ground her down to an angry shell of herself, and she thought she was not allowed to love. Slowly, and with great care, he helped her shed her false skin, so that the world could see her as she truly was. Together, they built her shirt of nettles with their bare hands, and doing so made the boy think that maybe, just maybe, with her help, he could weave his own nettle shirt, could see his own transformation take shape. Still, he was too afraid, afraid of the pain, afraid of what others would say, afraid he was wrong.

One fateful day, an evil witch came into the boy’s life, cursing him with more pain and illness, with no end in sight. The boy’s pain reached a critical point, and the anger that twisted him up inside grew to be too much to bear. The boy decided that his days were done, and that he could not go on any longer.

On his way to the end, he spied a patch of nettles, and he seized his opportunity. If this was truly the end, then he had nothing to lose anymore. He started picking, and weaving.

For almost forty years, he had been afraid, but the transformation came quicker and a lot more painlessly than he could have ever imagined. The Blue Fairy finally came for him, and told him that she never needed to make him a real boy because he had been real all along; he had just needed to be truthful to himself and the world.

Magic does exist in this world, but it is our responsibility to make our own.

Once Upon a Disability

By Derek Newman-Stille

Once upon a time in a city very much like this one, there was a little boy, only 5 years old, who was sent to a psychologist because he was weird.

If you could be anything, what would you be? The psychologist asked the boy.

If I could be anything, I would want to be a boy fairy The boy said.

The psychologist wrote in his report, avoiding eye contact with the little boy who would be a fairy. The psychologist clipped his wings, pathologized his desire to imagine something new, an escape from an abusive home. The psychologist said that the boy was lost in a realm of fantasy, that he needed to grow up and realize the realities of the world, that he had become immature because his mother shielded him from the realities of the world, and that his father is the authoritarian and he should be enforcing more authority around the house. He needs a strong role model

What the psychologist didn’t realize was that the father had been beating the boy. The boy used fantasy as a way of distancing himself from the realities of being abused in the real world. His real world was all about violence.

When the psychologist told the father that he should be more of an authority, it reinforced the father’s idea that he could beat the feminine out of the boy, that he could beat the queer out, that he could beat the nonconformity out. He would have believed this anyway, but now he had explicit permission to beat the child.

The boy craved being a fairy, craved that moment of transcendent change and escape, but every day his wings were clipped. Every day, they were trimmed down to painful stumps that could only dream of flying away from the pain.

No matter how many cocoons of safety he wove around himself, trying to change from caterpillar into butterfly, the cocoons just ended up being torn, ended up confining him more than they protected him.

THIS IS MY FAIRY TALE, and, like most fairy tales, it is a tale of change.

Our bodies are always in change, always altering, changing, metamorphosing into something new. We age, we change, our bodies modify through things like growth, puberty, accident. Life experience is written on our bodies, changing them as life happens... but bodies also write upon our lives: they shape the stories we can tell about ourselves and the types of experiences we have. There is a conversation that happens between body and narrative.

My disability and my queer identity are intricately linked, and not just because they are both Othered identities. I acquired my spinal disability due to being beaten by my biological father. He beat me partially because he thought he could beat the femininity out of me. He believed he could remake me into what he thought was right. It’s not a narrative that I share regularly because it is my history and history can shape the way that people perceive us, the way that they know us. But it is also a narrative that needs to be told, that asks to be expressed.

My biological father believed he could make me conform through violence. Believed that he could beat my body into the shape and typology he thought was appropriate. He believed that he had a moral duty to force that change, and he took to his believed responsibility with gusto.

When people think of abusers, they often think of someone who impulsively acts out of anger, beating someone else because they can’t hold back their rage. But this wasn’t a Beast. This wasn’t a fairy tale creature waiting to be tamed. This was someone who used cold human calculation for his violence. He would only hit in areas that could be hidden by clothing. He always punched in the stomach, always kicked in the chest and stomach. It made it harder for teachers and doctors to notice signs of abuse, and I learned to be silent. Bringing it up only meant more violence and risk.

I finally acquired my spinal injury when he threw me out of a boat that was parked in our driveway onto the cement front step and my back landed between the cement and the gravel. I crawled away from him, trying to escape, but he was someone who always wanted to get one last kick in. He stomped on my back as he followed me and as I crawled to the front door of the house, hoping I could lock him out.

I couldn’t.

He hauled me up by the throat and began smashing my back against the stairs, another of those images of ascending disrupted for me.

My body was written over by him. He applied a new text to it, a text of disability. It was not an entirely new text for me. I have always been dyslexic, so I knew disability, but this was a different narrative, a new layer of understanding disability and encountering barriers.

I tell my story because it needs to be told. Because it was ignored, silenced. I speak up because my voice kept being taken away from me.

It may take a sea witch to take away a little mermaid’s voice, but our whole society is invested in taking away the voices of those who don’t fit into its mold of normalcy, those who are fish out of water in our own world.

Recovering my voice, like it is for others who encounter social oppression, was an act of battle, a struggle to speak back, to challenge other narratives. Bringing back my voice wasn’t like a fairy tale transformation. It wasn’t something that happened all at once. It was a slow act of recovery, a gathering of confidence to speak up. It took seeing oppression that others experienced for me to learn how to stand up against my own oppression. I needed to first stand up to injustices happening to others before I discovered that I was worthy of being stood up for, before I found my ability to respond to the violence that I experienced.

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE was a merman, not really at home in the ocean, never fitting in. He didn’t wish to fit in on land either. Land felt equally isolating, equally inaccessible. He didn’t give up his voice for legs like the other little mermaid, it was taken from him. His voice was stolen, and the parts that weren’t stolen were ignored. Even when he did speak, it was as though no one could hear, no one wanted to listen.

No one ever tells the merman that getting legs is painful. That every step is excruciating. That movement is pain and it doesn’t stop hurting.

No one ever tells the merman that numbness sets in. That you get used to the pain. It never really goes away, but it floats in the background, haunting every experience.

There is an ocean of pain, and like an ocean, it surges and withdraws, but it is always there. Currents and tides, always moving, never stable.

WE ESCAPED FROM MY biological father when I was 15. We were able to leave the space we were abused in, but abuse lingers. It lingers literally in my body - in the physical pain embedded bone deep. It whispers out through aches in muscles and neurons when it isn’t screaming.

Abuse is always there.

It alters the way we look at the world, always bringing attention back to itself. They call it Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, words that make it tame, that try to pathologize. It is like a demon that lingers behind every experience, always telling you that you are under threat.

We never really escaped my biological father. He would still stalk us, still find us. Even though he treated us as garbage, we were HIS garbage and he wouldn’t let anything go.

ONCE UPON A TIME THERE was a Beast, and he dwelled in a castle of his own hate and self-involvement. A palace of narcissism and violence. The Beast would stalk the halls, searching for someone to attack, hoping that his repeated violence would eventually cause his victims to feel like they needed him.

It worked for many years. We couldn’t see our way out. We couldn’t see a way to survive outside of the Beast’s protection, even though he beat us. We thought we needed that strength to protect us, to keep us safe from a scarier world outside.

We learned that the world outside was safer.

Many many years passed as the Beast roamed the empty halls of his palace, alone. He raged against the darkness within him, screaming out at himself because no one was left for him to threaten.

The Beast didn’t transform, didn’t change. He wouldn’t allow anything to modify him, to alter him. He wilted over time, eaten away from the inside, consuming himself to fill his hunger for flesh and blood.

THE ONLY REAL ESCAPE was when he finally died. I didn’t know how to feel about it. It felt weird to celebrate a funeral, but this finally meant escape from his violence. When he was alive, there was always a possibility that he could show up.

He haunted us more when he was alive, a spectral presence that could always arrive, bringing terror and violence. He lingered in the space of possibility.

It was only when he died that he was finally exorcised, a purge of that lingering haunting.

Able-bodied people don’t believe that those of us with disabilities ... or queer... can have a happily ever after. They frequently have queer characters or those of us with disabilities die off before the end of a story, uncertain how they can write us as having a happy ending AND a disability... and queer. They view disability as perpetual tragedy and can’t conceive of the possibility that we might be in constant pain and still capable of being happy.

Once upon a time there was finally the possibility of a happily ever after. I have been able to cultivate the growing of my wings, writing them into the world because I still need to fly.

Prey

By Derek Newman-Stille

Witch.

Even the word inspires fear.

We are written into tales as impediments, as obstacles for the hero to overcome, as villains, but stories need witches. The world needs witches.

Portraying us as antagonists of fairy tales is ridiculous. We ARE fairy tales. Our magic is words, the power of things spoken. We create through words - we aren’t created BY them.

Our role is more complicated than villain. Villains are too simple, too often reduced to easy motivations, shallow desires. We do some things that villains do - we punish, we curse, we hurt, we confine, and so we are read as villains.

But there is a secret to witches.

We punish to teach. We curse to instill lessons. We meet people at the fork in the path and wait for them to treat us well, to show us basic kindness. That’s what we want, you see, a basic level of humanity from one person to another... and not one motivated by potential reward, nor by beauty, nor by anything selfish.

That’s why we can be ugly at times, poor at others, and always asking for compassion.

Non-witches talk all of the time about basic humanity as though it means compassion, but ask anyone else about humanity and you will hear that humanity only does things for its own benefit - for the individual, and if not, then for others who share some meaningless similitude.

That’s why we walk the Other path. We lurk in the shadows as outsiders, always betwixt and between, never too close, too comfortable, too the same. We want to see things from outside humanity. We don’t want to judge from sameness, but from difference.

We get humanity to look into its shadows and see what it has pushed there, what it has hidden, what it doesn’t want to see.

There is a reason why so many of us carry mirrors, and that is because we reflect truths back to humanity. We are their mirror.

Witches wait at the threshold and when you see us across that threshold, you should always let us in because we have a lesson to teach you and lessons can be learned through curiosity or through failure, but failure is always the more painful way to learn.

I had chosen curiosity to learn through. When the Coven approached me about becoming one of them, there was something appealing about being chosen. I felt as though I was special, different somehow. That was one of the first things they taught me to deal with - the feeling of being special. They taught me that everything had a place in the world and nothing was more important than anything else. Everything depended on everything else and something considering itself special would put everything else out of balance, cause that person who elevates themselves over everyone else to then only act out of self-glorification.

It is a lesson I am still learning.

It is a lesson I think I will always be learning.

I have a niche area that I focus on. A lot of us do. As much as we pretend we are altruistic, teaching through revenge, we are still motivated by our own vengeances, trying to right the wrongs that were done to us.

For me, it was family violence.

The Coven found me after I had run away from home, believing that the woods posed better chances for my safety than my home. Home had always been a complicated notion for me. Others seemed to think of it as a place of safety and belonging. For me, it was a place of violence and rejection.

The abuse stretched back as far as I could remember and every bit of my memory was tainted with it. I couldn’t remember everything that had happened and I knew enough to realize that this was my mind’s strategy for cutting me off from things that might break me.

I had always thought of myself this way, as something that could easily be shattered. Something fragile and easily broken. I suppose a lot of that idea of myself came from my father who constantly called me weak.

I think I still believe that of myself even now.

I walk with a cane because of him. Because of his abuse. He called me fragile so often, and yet it took him years to disable me.

And yet, the cane has become a focus for me, a receptacle for my strength. It helps to connect me to the earth. It has become a drum stick, pounding out a steady beat while I walk upon the earth, a melody that I made between my heart and the ground.

Witches have had so many stories told about them. Disabled people have had so many stories told about them. I wanted to be able to tell a story about someone else. I wanted to be able to make a story about someone else, and I wanted it to be a story that spoke back about family violence.

I wanted to teach, to make changes in someone’s life to veer them off course from their violence... but in doing so, I visited more violence on others, allowed others to get hurt. I brought forth a Beast, or at least allowed it to show itself on the surface, but he’s not the one I hurt. In making a prince into a Beast, I allowed others to get hurt. I still don’t know if he would have been quite the monster he was without my intervention. I hope I made him something better.

ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE was a prince, and like most princes, he was arrogant, self-indulgent, and completely self-involved. His parents had treated him like the centre of their universe, so he thought himself such. He grew up secure in his own role as ruler.

He viewed the people and objects around him as playthings, created only for his amusement, and even as a child, his amusement turned to the sadistic. He particularly liked to prey on those who he thought were weaker than himself, first hurting animals, and then the children of the palace staff, telling everyone that he was helping to make them stronger by beating them.

He had gotten a name amongst the castle staff - The Beast.

It was an ironic name considering the violence he visited on animals. He would tie cats together in a bag to see how much they would fight. He lit the tails of dogs on fire to watch them run wild in pain. He gouged the eyes out of frogs and poured salt into the wounds. He killed rabbits and put their heads on spikes around his fort in the woods. But what he liked best was to confine animals in small cages, to try to force them to acknowledge them as his captor by making them beg for food. He took joy in their dependency on him, on their need for him and total powerlessness.

No animal would show this degree of sadism.