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    I Stole You: Stories From the Fae
    I Stole You: Stories From the Fae
    I Stole You: Stories From the Fae
    Ebook111 pages1 hour

    I Stole You: Stories From the Fae

    By Kristen Ringman

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    About this ebook

    You might get stolen too.

    In these wide-ranging stories told from the perspectives of a Thai ghost, an Irish fairy trapped in a dog’s body, a crow fae, an Icelandic birch tree elf, a dream thief, and other shapeshifting creatures, Kristen Ringman examines whether these fae would love a human or kill them after a close look into their hearts.

    “Ringman achieves a haunting, sexy, and visually stirring collection that explores the tension of identity, longing, and the intricacies of connection and obsession in this series of beautiful, complicated settings populated by a both magical and deeply frail, human cast. She effortlessly severs the line between mythology, the supernatural and practicality, and the reader recognizes that desperation to be known, to be understood, to be considered unique to an otherworldly presence, and to ourselves.” —Hilaree Robinson, co-author of The Distance

    “The true wondrousness of Fae is as sly as it is innocent; it is magical and grounded, brutal and graceful, edgy and tender. Through a blend of fantasy, horror, and magical realism, Ringman digs around in the human condition, unearthing truths of the psyche, the body, and the spirit.” —Kate Evans, author of Call It Wonder: an odyssey of love, sex, spirit, and travel

    “Dark and haunting, yet beautiful and hypnotic. Ringman brings poetry and beauty even to the monstrous.” —Christopher Jon Heuer, author of Bug: Deaf Identity and Internal Revolution

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHandtype Press
    Release dateJul 12, 2017
    ISBN9781370570768
    I Stole You: Stories From the Fae

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      Book preview

      I Stole You - Kristen Ringman

      I STOLE YOU

      stories from the fae

      KRISTEN RINGMAN

      HANDTYPE PRESS

      Minneapolis, MN

      * * *

      ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

      Makara: a novel

      AS EDITOR

      Everyday Haiku: an anthology

      * * *

      COPYRIGHT

      I Stole You: Stories from the Fae.

      Copyright © 2017 by Kristen Ringman.

      Cover design: Mona Z. Kraculdy

      Cover art: The Nightmare by John Henry Fuseli (1781)

      Author photograph: Robert Lusignan

      A Handtype Press First Edition

      SMASHWORDS LICENSE STATEMENT

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission. Please address inquiries to the publisher:

      Squares & Rebels

      PO Box 3941

      Minneapolis, MN 55403-0941

      squaresandrebels@gmail.com

      handtype.com

      A Handtype Press First Edition

      * * *

      STORIES

      The Meaning, Not the Words

      Nang Tani

      The Vampire from Vondelpark

      A Real Dog

      Floating in the Sargassum

      The Dream Thief

      A Murder of Two

      The Art Lover

      Love within Tangled Branches

      Shining Orange

      For My Mother

      Huldra

      So Many of You Want to Die

      Seed

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

      * * *

      Where the wave of moonlight glosses

      The dim gray sands with light,

      Far off by furthest Rosses

      We foot it all the night,

      Weaving olden dances

      Mingling hands and mingling glances

      Till the moon has taken flight;

      To and fro we leap

      And chase the frothy bubbles,

      While the world is full of troubles

      And anxious in its sleep.

      Come away, O human child!

      To the waters and the wild

      With a faery, hand in hand,

      For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

      — W. B. Yeats

      * * *

      for Willow,

      you stole me from 2002 until 2012

      I’d like to think I’ve stolen you forever

      * * *

      THE MEANING, NOT THE WORDS

      I stole you from your tent.

      I’m not usually so impulsive, but your eyes—one hazel and one green—were so beautiful I couldn’t help myself. You never actually saw me, not then. Not while you zipped your tent shut or while you lay down on the top of your sleeping bag because that night was humid. Not until my hands were in yours, my body against your body, pulling you outside with strength I only have in those moments. Strength for taking humans. I am otherwise made of slim bones, pale white skin, and red fur. A fox who is sometimes a girl.

      You weren’t like any other human I had taken before.

      You didn’t speak with your mouth; instead you used your hands. Your family, who seemed to have coerced you into their camping trip high up in the White Mountains, didn’t sign with you. But I knew of your hand language because of the way you used it with your friends in video chats on your phone when you were able to find a signal. You used every muscle in your face to add layer upon layer of inflection to the movements of your hands. The conversations kept cutting out, so you sometimes punched the side of a tree in frustration. I apologized for you, but I didn’t have to—even the trees understood: blood relatives surrounded you, but you were alone.

      We steal people like you.

      Humans who don’t just feel alone but are isolated. In a group of people, you go unseen like a fae creature, like a spirit. It’s easier this way. Not only because your friends and family don’t notice your absence at first. You’re our kindred and you don’t even know it. You ache for the magic only we can give you. The songs of trees and rivers. The lives of animals up close, sometimes right against your skin. Stars reflected in pools like so many shiny fish. A sky filled with bats and the unnoticed wings of the fae, blending in with the background, as we always do.

      I stole you because I fell in love with your eyes and the voice you kept in your hands like the glow of a firefly. Words I could understand better than spoken English. Not words—meanings. The way your dark hair always got in your face. The way you moved through the trees without caring what you were stepping on or how loud your steps were. I wore my fox skin during the day and I watched you, listening to the snapping of the branches under your feet as you walked away from your campsite and back, away and back. I felt the tension between you and your kin like a tightrope you walked with your arms out like wings. I don’t know how you crossed that line, back and forth, so fluidly, without stumbling. I wasn’t sure I could have done it, not like you.

      I had to wait until nightfall before I could take you without anyone else seeing. Lucky for me, your tent faced the dark grove of hemlocks, away from the campfire and the circle of voices who didn’t seem to care that you couldn’t hear. I shifted under the hemlocks: my red fur became a long mane of tangled russet, my small breasts stayed hard against my skin, my nipples perked up from the chill in the late summer air, my human ears pointed up ever so slightly. The only part of me that stayed exactly the same was the amber in my eyes that matched the color of my fur and hair.

      I knew my own beauty. I couldn’t take humans so easily if I didn’t have it.

      You didn’t hear me unzip the opening in your tent, nor did you hear me slip inside and take you in my arms. Once we touched, I knew it would be easy. Your skin sang against my skin as if it finally found something it had been looking for desperately.

      It’s not always that simple, the stealing of humans.

      Sometimes they fight the connection. They reach for their gadgets: the material possessions their inner psyche understands it is losing. Instead of reaching for their lives themselves, they covet the things inside them. It becomes hard for them but effortless for me. I don’t care about how pretty they are then—their souls are full of greed and plastic. It’s not an asset to our realm. It’s nothing that would make a good fae. Those are the humans that I take and I find a way of dissolving them. Of turning them into so many grains of sand at the bottom of a pond. Or I let them stay human. I let them go back to those objects they worship, the clothes they drape over themselves like capes, the phones they clutch in their small hands, the paint they smear on their faces. Humans like that—they think they’re witches, but they’re slaves.

      Other times there are people like you: the human I stole from a tent in northern New Hampshire on the eve of the August full moon. You were perfect.

      As soon as I released your body by the shore of the pond in the moonlight, you pulled off your clothes and dove into the shining waters. You thought I was a girl.

      Who are you? you signed.

      I understood you, but I couldn’t sign back. I could only mime things that made you laugh at me, or stare in wonder at my eerie accurateness, or nod with comprehension of the meaning behind the words. You understood me, too. I loved you more for that.

      We spent the night dipping in and out of the gray waters, walking the Moon’s path along the shore of the pond, watching the deep green pine trees sweeping themselves back and forth over the stars. I

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