I learned about book birthdays off a podcast interview with a writer. She keeps a record of the publication dates of all her books and celebrates each anniversary on social media. "I can do that!" I thought.
Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers is edited by Kate Wolford, who also edits the Fairy Tale Magazine. Mothers of Enchantment brings together twelve tales that reimagine the fairy godmother of classic fairy tales. Of course there are reimaginings of Cinderella, one a regular at Starbucks and another lurking in the forests of historic Russia. There’s also a fairy godmoth - that’s right, a winged insect - plus several diaphonous beings inspired by Pinocchio and two fairy godfathers. My own favourites are the first and last in the anthology.
My own contribution is “Returning the Favor”. I really should have been editing a novel at the time I saw the call for submissions, but it was too good an opportunity to miss. Unusually for me, I drafted and edited something I was pleased with in less than a month.
I pondered the different fairy godmothers in fairy tales. In their purest form, there aren’t many that feature in the current canon. (The stories that came out of the French salons of the 17c and 18c were full of them, but few of these are popular these days.) But the fairy godmother is a type of magical helper, and fairy tales are crowded with them. The one that caught my interest was “The Iron Stove”, a lesser-known Grimm story that is a variant of the beast bridegroom story. But this prince hasn’t been turned into a beast. He’s…an iron stove. Of course…And the helpers who advise the bride when her lover has vanished aren’t the sun, moon and stars, or the winds, or wise old women. They are three toads.
And so I began with a toad godmother, hiding in the woods. She hasn’t always had bulging eyes and powerful back legs, though. As I wrote, I found another fairy tale weaving itself in with it, one with its own fairy godmother of sorts. And so a story formed about how the office of fairy godmother is passed on, like that of a priest.
To quote a reviewer on Goodreads: “I suppose we never think about how fairy godmothers do eventually need replacements and that they need to be people with the right selfless heart.”
Fairy tales tend to feature young protagonists - the put-upon sister, the boy who everyone dismisses as stupid. There are a few older heroes, like soldiers returned from war. But older women in classic tales are likely to be vain, wicked and prone to cannibalims. The fairy godmother is a rare exception. Maybe this is why the women of the French salons put so many of them in their tales? As an older woman myself now I relished the task of writing a story around a good, powerful, older woman.
“My friends were happy to knit socks by the fire, its light making a halo of their beautiful white hair. For me, though, it was time to return to the forest, my silence this time of my own choosing, to be broken when the moment required it. I hunted out the cottage where I’d first found my brothers, hiding from the cruelty of our step-mother.”
from Returning the Favor
Mothers of Enchantment: New Tales of Fairy Godmothers can be found on Amazon.
Lynden Wade lives in England near a haunted wood and two castles. She writes about history, folklore and legends. She has had a number of pieces published in journals and anthologies or on websites: more details on her website but here’s one you can read for free.
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I absolutely loved this anthology, Lynden! And your story was one of the top most enjoyable ones.
I bought that anthology, and your story was one of my favorites among the others.