Introduction

Before I tell the tales I know you’re curious about, let me first introduce you to a real, for sure, card carrying fairy. Her name is Flora. I’ve known her ever since I was very small. She, being a fairy, has always been very small.

It’s not commonly known, but everyone has their own, private fairy. I had the pleasure of knowing mine and she told me these stories. When I grew big, and had a small child of my own, Flora came to see us.

She said she was afraid he wouldn’t believe, that the children of the world today wouldn't believe, the stories of our world's golden age if I didn’t pass these along. Believing, you see, is the very most important thing about fairies and all other sorts of magic too. They have always existed, but they will only appear as long as children believe in them.

These are the stories Flora told me. Fairy tales, of course. A little like the ones you’ve heard – more like the very oldest ones than the newer versions you’re probably familiar with. And here's the most surprising thing of all, they began as religious stories. They really did. What we now know as myths. But they were made up so long ago, most of the myth has been lost.

But we do know what the earliest stories might be. They are very different from the ones you see in Disney movies. Did you know, for instance, that an old, old Snow White, the wicked witch is given shoes of red hot iron for a present at Snow White’s wedding. She’s made to ‘dance’ until she dies.

Or have you heard the part of Cinderella where the girl plants an ash tree on her mother’s grave and her ball gowns appear there? If you have, you’ve been at least close to your own private fairy in some way – she was near enough to have someone tell you, or have you find, the real stories yourself.

These stories aren’t those. The ones you already know. Some of the characters are the same, yes, but often the minor ones, (rather, the ones you thought were minor). Even these aren't the old truths.

You see, the Fairies don’t want you to know everything. We've lost so much wisdom since they were thick as thieves on earth, that they think we won't understand. So they usually don't tell those.

They mostly tell deliver shadow stories. They're like blurred images of the truth. Why, you may ask? They’re their mysteries. Even the majority of Fairies don’t know the whole truth. But I do. Flora told me.

So why did Flora tell me and ask me to not write them all down. f they’re so mysterious and well guarded --- well, I’m only allowed to tell a few of them at a time you see. Flora says the whole truth might come out, depending on how everyone takes these.

For now, a few at a time will have to do. But they are the real, true, original myths, fairy tales. The world they happen in is real. It’s the place you see in your happiest dreams and darkest nightmares. It’s where shadows breathe and statues turn to men.

It is called Illiodd, after Isodore the Ill and Otho the Odd, Fairy Queen and Elfin Overlord (that’s what they call their rulers) at the time of the creation of the Kingdom. It’s borders are bleak, the Mountains of Despair, the Woods Outside of Time, the Endless Ocean and the Dismal Dunes. A river, called the River of Everlasting Sorrow, flows throughout.

Every magical creature you ever heard of, (and some you haven’t heard of yet) lives there. Centaurs, goblins, elves, gnomes, trolls, unicorns, everything. There’s even a chimera or two. People live there too. Sometimes people from our world get lost there (the Fairies say that’s how people came to Illiodd to begin with), just like Hansel and Gretel did in the woods.

It really is all villages and castles, just like in the stories you’ve read. Famine sometimes sweeps the land, so do plagues. Their medicine, however, is quite advanced. Magical powers are commonplace, even among humans.

All of the animals talk and some are fantastic hybrids of those in our world. Most have something a little different about them. Sheep, for example, are violet.

The climate is mostly cold and damp. In the northernmost part of the mountains of despair and throughout the foothills of forgetting it is icy winter year round. It stays warmer by the endless ocean of the south but wind blows constantly through the dismal dumes, making visits there unpleasant and full of sand storms.

That’s right. The real fairy land. And these are it’s real tales. Oh, you may wonder why they all rhyme instead of plodding along paragraph by paragraph like most books do. It’s because the fairies talk that way of course. They’re much too beautiful to speak in anything less than verse.

So, forget the usual towers, briar bowers – they’re here but don’t believe the eye of newt hype. These magical creatures aren’t quite the fairy tale type.