Bloody the stone and bury it low and let the Night Women come” So it is free of any contemporary profanity or crudities.īloody violence and great pain, however, are always a part of the story mix There are heads and limbs slashed off (and in one case sewn back on). The narrative language and dialogue here are both reminiscent of old English: “Take a stone and prick their heels thrice. And happy endings are rarely a part of the ever after here. The stories tell of people’s lusts, illicit affairs and bottled rage, frustrations with being thought inadequate, fears of failing, and their hopelessness in the face of loss.

And another is shorn of her skin to make her a “better” and more obedient wife. Another woman makes a bargain with a clockwork toymaker and sells him her unborn child. A young girl named Ilsa, who can see Death, spends a night with him and learns his soul-harvesting ways. Three sisters prick their fingers and shed their blood on a briar patch gravesite in exchange for dreams of their future husbands. Another young woman must use her sister’s life blood to paint a doorway to a dark, empty dimension of freedom. She must seek out her imprisoned mother and cut off her hand if she hopes to set her free. We read, for instance, of a young girl named Hansa who is the product of a seagoing man and a star. The dozen fairy tales collected here are savage, angry, bitter and cruel. When that anthology was published in our world, its characters escaped from the pages into our reality. Alice’s grandmother, Althea Proserpine, was said to have authored a notorious collection of dark and twisted short stories called Tales From the Hinterland. Melissa Albert’s book The Hazel Wood introduced readers to its protagonist hero Alice, as well as a mystical other-world called the Hinterland.

Tales of the hinterland