The thirteenth tale Read Online Free PDF

much as the contents of the entire rest of the shop, more even.
     
    The book that I was after—a small hardback, about four inches by
six, only fifty or so years old—was out of place next to all these antiquities.
It had appeared a couple of months ago, placed there I imagined by Father’s
inadvertence, and one of these days I meant to ask him about it and shelve it
somewhere. But just in case, I put on the white gloves. We keep them in the
cabinet to wear when we handle the books because, by a curious paradox, just as
the books come to life when we read them, so the oils from our fingertips
destroy them as we turn the pages. Anyway, with its paper cover intact and its
corners unblunted, the book was in fine condition, one of a popular series
produced to quite a high standard by a publishing house that no longer exists.
A charming volume, and a first edition, but not the kind of thing that you
would expect to find among the Treasures. At jumble sales and village fetes,
other volumes in the series sell for a few pence.
     
    The paper cover was cream and green: a regular motif of shapes
like fish scales formed the background, and two rectangles were left plain, one
for the line drawing of a mermaid, the other for the title and author’s name.
Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation by Vida Winter.
     
    I locked the cabinet, returned the key and flashlight to their
places and climbed the stairs back to bed, book in gloved hand.
     
    I didn’t intend to read. Not as such. A few phrases were all I
wanted. Something bold enough, strong enough, to still the words from the
letter that kept going around in my head. Fight fire with fire, people say. A
couple of sentences, a page maybe, and then I would be able to sleep.
     
    I removed the dust jacket and placed it for safety in the
special drawer I keep for the purpose. Even with gloves you can’t be too
careful. Opening the book, I inhaled. The smell of old books, so sharp, so dry
you can taste it.
     
    The prologue. Just a few words.
     
    But my eyes, brushing the first line, were snared.
     
    All children mythologize their birth. It is a universal trait.
You want to know someone? Heart, mind and soul? Ask him to tell you about when
he was born. What you get won’t be the truth; it will be a story. And nothing
is more telling than a story.
     
    It was like falling into water.
     
    Peasants and princes, bailiffs and bakers’ boys, merchants and
mermaids, the figures were all immediately familiar. I had read these stories a
hundred, a thousand, times before. They were stories everyone knew. But
gradually, as I read, their familiarity fell away from them. They became
strange. They became new. These characters were not the colored manikins I
remembered from my childhood picture books, mechanically acting out the story
one more time. They were people. The blood that fell from the princess’s finger
when she touched the spinning wheel was wet, and it left the tang of metal on
her tongue when she licked her finger before falling asleep. When his comatose
daughter was brought to him, the king’s tears left salt burns on his face. The
stories were shot through with an unfamiliar mood. Everyone achieved their heart’s
desire—the king had his daughter restored to life by a stranger’s kiss, the
beast was divested of his fur and left naked as a man, the mermaid walked—but
only when it was too late did they realize the price they must pay for escaping
their destiny. Every Happy Ever After was tainted. Fate, at first so amenable,
so reasonable, so open to negotiation, ends up by exacting a cruel revenge for
happiness.
     
    The tales were brutal and sharp and heartbreaking. I loved them.
     
    It was while I was reading “The Mermaid’s Tale”—the twelfth
tale—that I began to feel stirrings of an anxiety that was unconnected to the
story itself. I was distracted: my thumb and right index finger were sending me
a message: Not many