I’m excited to announce the upcoming launch of my new book, Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice, a fairy tale about three sisters on a quest to save their father, set to drop next week on Amazon. Today’s post offers a sneak-peek of the first chapter of this children’s story. Please spread the news and stay tuned for the official release announcement!

A Deep Sorrow

“To begin anew, to seek fresh adventures, to turn over a new leaf every day — that is the joy of life.”

Their father dwelt wild in the wilderness, hair flaming out in bank and burrow, eyes keen as a fencer’s blade.  He spoke few words and his greatest treasure in all the world was Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice.  Strange names for three little girls, you might say, but then, you have not met their mother, and so you know nothing of her peculiar habit of naming things.  Sadly, she has passed from this world, and yet in these vibrant young children dwelt the best of her.  The old man wept each day and sighed, pacing back and forth in tempo with the groaning boards beneath his feet.  At times he sat listless by the window.  His daughters, while they shared his grief, saw that their father’s spirit was crushed with the weight of this loss.  You cannot oblige a blaze, nor lay tears at hot gates.

Their humble home lay a month’s journey from any settlement, at the borders of a great forest.  The forest stretched for many miles to the inhospitable north, where a range of mountains unconquered by man touched the sky.  The peaks were capped with snow year-round, and in Spice’s words, “always seemed angry, like a family in the middle of a quarrel.”  Of course, mountains do not quarrel, but everyone who looked upon that great mass of rock grew hesitant or uncertain.  Equally alarming was the western region of the forest, which descended gradually into a boggy mass of vines, trees, and hidden grottos.  Whispers of unnatural spirits that lived at the edge of the mountains, in caves near the peaks, or in the darkest part of the bog spread throughout the district.  In one tale, a woodcutter returned to his logging camp and found a cord of wood piled neatly in a straight line. The pile, instead of being evenly stacked, descended from high to low one piece at a time, so that the forest appeared to be transformed into an endless stair.  A hazy, periwinkle streak – like the trail of some supernatural ant – wound its way down the pile, fading gradually until it dissipated at the last chunk of wood.  Each piece in the cord was marked with the faded silhouette of a woman. 

An old lady once claimed that she saw a host of powder-blue birds nestling in a great cedar tree while she was hunting for mushrooms in the late afternoon.  And as she looked on, the birds appeared to lean to one side in unison, so that the top of the tree bent down, down, down, and kissed the turf, groaning at the tension and pressure.  Suddenly, the straining tree snapped in half, and the mass of birds shot up into the air, vanishing in a cloud of smoke; the old woman swears that the lingering smoke coalesced into the face of a beautiful maiden. 

These stories were passed from family to family, and one figure emerged in every telling: the Grey Fairy.  She stoked every anxiety in the hearts of those old storytellers: to them, she was a frightful old woman; a sentient serpent that lay hidden under a rock; a wispy child whose high-pitched wails could be heard on the wildest nights, accompanied by a pale cerulean glow; she drank water and was poisoned by it; she could fly at night or perhaps only slither in the muck; she ate rocks and dust; she sometimes saved widows ill at home with mysterious poultices or left hot soup simmering on your front porch.  Hundreds of stories and half-stories lingered in the sap of the northern woods.  And while some of these ornery, cantankerous folk grumbled about the mysterious fairy’s malevolent tricks, the majority of the tales suggested the Grey Fairy was either benign in nature or outright benevolent.  What can heal a soul?  No mere soup or careful splint.   

Whether friend or foe, even the most stalwart settlers and brave farmers decided such mysteries were not worth the trouble; one by one they packed up their belongings and journeyed for miles, until they could feel warm breezes and free air.  Around their campfires, once they were far enough away to risk whispering their thoughts, the farmers would say things like: “that place was too heavy for thinking straight!” or “it’s like the soil itself was alive but full of grief – too sad to nurture a crop!” or “the wind aimed at your bones, it did, cut through the sturdiest cloth.”  So it was that these three girls grew up with few neighbours and many tall tales.  But their father, when he was well, would shake his head at such stories, or glance across the room at their mother with a smirk.  Even when their mother had passed, he would respond to their anxious narrations with a chuckle, or whisper, “The Grey Fairy is not like that.”  

In light of his grief, Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice resolved to seek some remedy that might restore their father to a semblance of his former self.  Spice, being the oldest and most driven to action, put it to her sisters in the following way:

“Father can’t go on like this much longer.  We need to get him help, but there isn’t anyone nearby.  We need to find the Grey Fairy and ask her for help.”  Nice and Sugar, at the mention of the Grey Fairy, kicked at the dirt and shrugged their shoulders meekly; none had set eyes on her, and each secretly doubted her existence.  But, they also felt the tantalizing mystery of her presence, as one both sees and feels the morning fog on a still lake, misty air for a moment suspended between touch and sight.  In their father’s telling, she lived in the Deep Bog on the far side of the forest, a place forbidden to them.

“But we don’t even know if she is real,” said Everything Nice.  “Why don’t we go down the road and ask Mrs. Witherson?”  Mr. and Mrs. Witherson were, on the whole, rather unremarkable, but friendly.  They were childless, and often brought gifts to the girls at Christmas. 

“The Withersons left, don’t you remember?”

“Oh, right, I forgot.  What about Mr. and Mrs. Benson?  They are a bit farther, but we could probably reach their farm by nightfall.”

“Gone with the Withersons,” replied Spice.  Nice scrunched up her face and tapped her nose.

“But we don’t even know where the Grey Fairy lives,” she said.

“Remember that map under father’s bed?  He marked her house right next to the Deep Bog.  I saw it myself.  Don’t you remember?  I told you I saw him looking at it late at night a week after mother passed.”

“Oh, well, you said he was reading some old brown cloth.”

“I said it was a map.  I told you right in our bed that same night!” said Spice, exasperated.

“No, you didn’t.”

“Yes, I did!”

“I was tired, I don’t remember,” replied Nice.

“I don’t like her,” said Sugar, but she said this because she feared the Grey Fairy and thought a journey to see her would be dangerous.  Though Sugar enjoyed the beauties of the forest – teeming with blueberries, blackberries and raspberries; overrun with grand butterflies, dragonflies, or birds dressed in paradisal colours; home to caterpillars with plumes of gold (the envy of any peacock), rare azure squirrels, and countless species of untouched flowers – nevertheless, talk of the Grey Fairy conjured nocturnal images: of bats sojourning in spooky caves; of long-tongued toads with their bumpy bodies nestled in long grass; of haunted trees with scraggly arms lowering in silent pursuit, ready to snag you by the collar or sleeve.

“Me neither,” said Nice. “She scares me.  She isn’t very nice in any of father’s stories.”  Nice had an uncanny capacity for irony, and she frequently voiced the hidden thoughts of her younger sister Sugar.  Sugar nodded curtly in agreement with Nice, and added, “and she smells funny.”

“She does not smell,” replied Spice, her voice rising.  Her brown eyes flashed briefly at the languid nature of her two sisters, but she was in some manner accustomed to their passivity, and knew the ways of persuasion.

“Don’t you love father?” asked Spice.  Sugar and Everything Nice lowered their eyes and kicked the dirt with their soft, brown shoes. 

“Yes, of course we do,” replied Nice, “but how do we know the Grey Fairy can help him?”

“We don’t have a choice.  He is growing worse each day and, since most of the farmers have gone, she is the nearest neighbour for days and days.  Where else are we going to go?”  Spice trailed off for a moment, and a brief flicker of panic danced in the air.  Then, she continued in a steadier and more determined tone: “We have to try.  He stares out the window with those long eyes all day, and paces around the house at night.  His face is worn and his hands shake.  His beard is tangled and prickly.”

“Well, his beard is always like that,” said Sugar, tilting her head to one side and raising her brows.

“That’s not the point!” shouted Spice, throwing up her hands.  Sugar grinned, but hid the smirk from her older sister so as not to incur her wrath.

“Well, ok, I’ll go with you, but only if you promise not to be gone too long,” said Nice.  She was by far the most conciliatory of the three sisters, and more than once found herself pulling Spice and Sugar apart, arms flailing, hair wildly lancing like knights on a battlefield.

“Ok, I’ll go too,” said Sugar, and, true to her nature, perked up at the thought of an adventure and ran to get her flower basket.  She passed by her father, slumped in his wooden rocking chair by the window, and a shrill note of sadness passed through her dulcet soul.  She shivered and paused at the door to her bedroom, glancing back at the rocker with its frail occupant.  Books and papers stacked in precarious piles seemed poised to crash at any moment; candle wax and spilled ink ran together in frozen rivers across the floor; mugs of tea half-drunk congregated on the sill, bags of loose-leaf long sunk to the depths like tiny anchors lost to a whaling ship off the coast of Cape Horn.  All this, Sugar took in with one fraught glance, but, thrilled by the prospect of crocuses and lilacs, she pressed on to her little room, found the basket, and darted for the door.  She did stop long enough to hug her father with a brisk squeeze around his waist.  The man did not open his eyes. 

“Wait up!” said Spice, rushing after Sugar with Everything Nice in tow.  Sugar was already buzzing along the path to the creek before the words could catch her bright ears.

Todd Anderson (Stuff of the Rind, Sand and Sail, Collected Poems) writes the newsletter Mirth to share a behind-the-scenes look at his writing process as well as to offer readers the first fruits of his poetry and reflections. He grew up in the forests of small-town Ontario, contending against nature in all its beauty and harshness.  His training as a literary scholar of Latin and English literature inflects his love of poignant turns of phrase, but it is the influence of his family and their myriad adventures together that infuses his story-telling and poetry with its substance and power.  Todd lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and six children. If you are interested in supporting Todd’s work, please follow the links below to donate or buy his books.