It Has Come To My Attention
by `ursulav It has come to my attention that people like me are generally not welcome in fairy tales. It's the talking birds that do it. The minute a sparrow shows up to pipe a direful warning it's all over down at the first hurdle done The body in the fifty-fathom well will have to wait the old woman turned into a hare the murdered mother in the juniper tree as I whip out my Sibley guide and look for the entry with the fieldmark labeled capable of human speech. For this crime I have been accused of a failure of wonder of having chained up my inner child and sent her to work in the salt mines. But the truth (if you really want to know) is that I have read too many fairy tales and lived a bit too long to be surprised by anything that happens in the cottages of lonely woodcutters. I can even venture a guess to why the bear speaks with the voice of a maiden (my heart goes out to her) and why, when the animal has saved your life, you will be required to make a harp out of its bones. These are old familiar mysteries as love is an old familiar mystery the dwarf's name the contents of the enchanted walnut the thing which stands behind the mill. Fairy tales are human things which we have chewed over since before we could eat solid food. But a bird! A bird that talks! This is outside my experience this un-parrot-like fluency. I have so many questions— Where did you learn? and How do you make the P's and B's and M's with that stiff small beak? and most important, Are there more like you out there?
-Ursula vernon