On Reading the Fairy Tales Recently Recovered from the Municipal Archive of Regensburg, Bavaria

I.

It occurs to me that each story began with someone, though it’s easy to think they have always existed in our collective consciousness to pass from one hand to another, like warm clay fingerprinted by time and the private dust of bodies elongated by desire, the future. These new stories remind me of the first need—for invention and metaphor, to see the world as it isn’t. I need to see windows instead of puddles when this city we love in just rains and rains and rains. I need the comfort as those who first spoke fairy tales aloud as if they were spells.

Franz Xaver von Schönwerth recorded these stories as faithfully as he could, no poetic flourishes or polish, and they seem even closer to the original storytellers than do the romantic revisions of the Grimm Brothers I have loved since childhood. These stories are full of surreal plot twists, seven-league boots and leaps of logic, gratuitous vengeance, and marriages consummated early with unapologetic flair. Perhaps we have more in common with magic than we think, sweetheart. Perhaps it’s worth looking more closely at the puddles on these streets, the world reflected backwards beside our forwards-going feet.

So many stories are strange.

So many surfaces are capable of reflecting light.

II.

The weasel with fur as white as snow might turn into a prince if she offers him an egg to eat; its shell might harden into pure silver and make her rich.

A king might be obliged to hide his golden hair in a dirty kerchief and find work as a gardener, but she might recognize his goodness because of the bouquets of roses he hand-ties with strands of his hair. The mermaids keening with desire, languid in the transparent dresses of their midnight bodies, will float through the window to lie on the curtained beds, but might be consoled if she throws ripe plums into their cool hands. The hazelnut branch her father brought for her might turn into gold.

She might be transformed into a white calf but her mother will find and restore her.

Her brother might have the strength to kill a nine-headed giant. Her mother-in-law might be a witch but will eat suckling pig instead of her heart.

If she writes down her wishes with a quill made from the feather the crow offers her, she might never be hungry, and if she pulls the rusty nail out of the wall and places it under a turnip she might know true love. If she sprains her ankle and lets a dung beetle fly her to the doctor her life will turn around. If she finds a red silk ribbon she should take it. If she keeps her hair tied out of her eyes, if she really looks at things, if it occurs to her that which is ugly may be beautiful, the world might puddle with magic—she might feel it reverberating with the wide steps she takes, her huge leaps of logic.