by Christopher Pate
Once upon a time, there lived a little sister and a little brother who loved each other with all their hearts. Each was fair-haired and fair-hearted, and some said they were touched with fae blood, as was their even fairer mother. For that alone, the children should have been shunned and mistrusted by the ignorant and superstitious villagers and countryfolk. Yet, they were so sweetly tempered, so delightful, and so cherubic that all who saw them perceived not an ouch of wickedness, not a dram of brooding malice, not a crumb of fae trickery, nor a grain of strange otherness—only the pure enchantment and innocence of childhood in full bloom.
Their mother, whom the children loved dearly, was more than a year in the grave. They often visited her plot, clearing it of briars and thistles and leaving flowers picked from the fringes of their father’s estate and along roadsides so that her grave was always tidy and bright. The villagers and woodfolk alike were often moved to tears to see the two children weeping over their mother’s flower-crowned resting place.
Their father was a landed baron of florid aspect, middling lineage, dull intellect, little curiosity, and even less emotion—except for his hunting hounds and his tax books. Treated distantly and often coldly by their father, the sister and brother were known to wander far upon the manse estate like elf children out of old tales, playing and singing in glade, grotto, and dappled woodland halls. Quick to laugh and quicker to smile, they were beloved by the servants of both house and grounds.
The manse had been without a mother’s guiding hand for more than a year when the baron decided to take a wife. He’d long craved a woman to once more tend to the servants, the house, and all the thousand petty things that kept him from his passions—ruthlessly hunting any creature upon his estate and gloating over his tax rolls. Oh! And, of course, someone to look after his children. Who were so loud, so incessantly cheery, so distracting that they proved a constant bother.
After a wedding in the estate’s little chapel, the children suddenly found they had a stepmother who took to the rule of manse and garden like a general takes the field: hard and with a jealous protectiveness of all her newly acquired things and territory. Openly, she was firm but not especially unkind to the siblings. But not having children of her own, she never understood the why of having shrill, irritating little creatures such as the sister and brother about. Yet such was the evident adoration for the children by peasant and smith, huntsman and miller, tailor, and cooper, that she could not but put on the face of a caring stepmother for all to see. Still, secretly, she schemed in her hard, flinty heart to be rid of them.
It so happened that the two siblings were playing with some of the village children in the meadow before the house one fine summer’s day. Set in the meadow was a pond that abutted one side of the manor, from which the baron regularly demanded fresh fish for his table. The children ran about the pond, chased and caught each other, and played loud, boisterous games so that the meadow rang with their bright, happy songs and cries. Such as,
“Fly away, fly away
Old gray goose
Loudly neigh, proudly neigh
Little black foal
Trout brown, swim ‘round
Old mossy sluice
Bolt down, slip down
Hare’s dark hole”
The one caught was ‘dragged down the badger’s hole’ with gleeful laughter and squealing giggles of pure joy and merriment. As they ran about so merrily and boisterously, the stepmother watched them from a window and grew angry. And still, the children played unaware and uninhibited.
Old cockcrow, strutting along plow furrow
Peck and cluck, old fat, speckled hen
Scratch and squabble in dark barn shadow
Greedy yellow eyes watch from fox den
Strong hands wring, and old hen squawks
Hoof stomps and eyes roll, nervous gray nag
Cook’s cleaver flashes and goes chop, chop, chops
For knife, fork, and plate of manor’s ugly old hag
Incensed, the stepmother decided to do something about her stepchildren at that very moment. Well-versed in the arts of witchcraft, the woman waited until the other children left and then bewitched her stepchildren with cunning and black words, changing the little sister into a lamb and the little brother into a fish. The fish swam here and there about the pond and was very sad, and the lambkin walked up and down the meadow and was miserable and ate not nor touched one blade of grass.
And the father, too enthralled in his books and chasing through the woods after reynard and hart, missed the dear children not. When he did, the stepmother merely demurred they were playing, or about the things children do that could not interest a nobleman like him. The baron, being of small heart and smaller still imagination, accepted these evasions and turned back to his books, or his plate, or his hounds. And the stepmother governed manse and ground with a gimlet eye, pinched heart, and barbed tongue. Only the servants missed the children, but too daunted were they of the new tyrant of the estate and only whispered forlornly among themselves about the rumored fate of the two children.
Thus passed a long time, with the sad little lambkin in the meadow, often lying alongside the pond so that it might, in the way of strange and unknowable magicks, share sorrows and griefs with the little fish who frequently swam to the pond’s shallows, poking his head above the waters.
The little lamb bleated:
“Ah, brother, in the pond so green and deep,
How sad is my poor beating heart!
I can neither eat, drink, nor find sleep,
While this awful curse holds us apart!”
The little fish burbled:
“Ah, sweet sister, so far and yet oh so nigh,
How weighted and anguished is my poor soul!
While in this cursed pond, I swish and ply,
When I wish only with you to once more to stroll!”
And so the two siblings, cursed and changed and with no hope, wept and wailed in their own ways for the sweet days in the arms of their long-dead mother. The lambkin baa’ed forlornly with great tears rolling down its face, and the fish burbled and wallowed in the shallows.
Then, one day, three strangers came as visitors to the manse—merchant, banker, and guildsman—bringing gifts to curry the baron’s favor and play to his petty vanities for their miserly ends. The devious and devilish stepmother pondered, “This is a good opportunity,” and called the cook and said to him, “Go and fetch the lamb from the meadow for butchering. It will make a fine feast for our honored guests.”
Then the cook went away and got the lamb, carried it just outside the kitchen, and tied its feet, which the little lambkin bore patiently, if sadly. But when he drew his knife and was whetting it on the doorstep to kill the lamb, the little beast wailed pathetically, and great tears once more rolled from its large, pleading eyes.
Then, the cook noticed a little fish swimming to and fro in great agitation at the pond’s edge, and looking up at him.
And the lambkin cried:
“Ah, brother, in the pond so dark and still,
Even now, the cook whets his knife!
Its keen edge my blood to spill,
And roast me and steal away my tender life!”
The little fish bubbled:
“Ah, poor, sweet sister, destined for the hearth,
Our cruel mother hungers, your flesh to fancy,
How broken and sad is my poor heart,
Please take not hers but my life, I plea!”
When the cook heard the lambkin and the fish speak, he was terrified. In his fear, he thought these could be no common creatures but must be bewitched somehow, and he grew even more afraid. Being a kindhearted, sensible, if simple, man, he conveyed the lambkin to a good peasant woman, to whom he related all that he had seen and heard.
The peasant was, in fact, a sage woman who had long known the baron’s first wife, and in the telling of the strange little tale, she suspected at once who the lamb was. The wise woman went to the manse with the cook and the lamb and pronounced a blessing over the lambkin and the little fish. As her lips dropped the blessed words, the curse laid upon the children by the stepmother was undone, and the little sister and little brother took their true aspects once more as lovely, unblemished children.
Thanking the wise woman and cook with many a kiss, hug, and tear of joy, they heard from within the manse their crude father, cruel stepmother, and all the greedy guests loudly clamoring for the lavish feast they’d been promised while much wine was guzzled and slopped upon the rush-strewn flagstones.
The children, who were smart and bright and perhaps touched with a little fae blood, remembered the words whispered by their stepmother and shooed away the wise woman, cook, and all the servants of the manse. Then, they quickly gathered their friends for another game—a brand new game. They held hands as they raced about their father’s mansion and sang in high, bright voices words of fae make with fell undertones but which sounded so fair and playful falling from the mouths of children playing.
Squeal, little shoat, squeal,
Bring to the board a sumptuous meal!
Rave, little plump piggy, rave,
And give greedy guests what they crave!
The stepmother, unaware her step-children led the verses and play, was irritated by the children’s song—which rose and faded as they circled the great house once, twice, and then thrice—made to close the window but as soon as her fingers reached out, she screamed in agony and shocked wonderment. Her hand was no longer a hand at all! Her fingers bucked, curled, and split apart until her hands looked like hooves. She turned to cry out to her husband, but only a bawling squeal poured out from lips that twisted and widened under a lengthening snout. She pitched forward on all fours and squealed piercingly once more. The guests, astonished and bewildered, blinked and gaped. The baron rose, face red with rage, thinking his wife was making some pathetic jest. But his angry words only spilled out in a raucous squeal as he fell to the floor and scampered about on all fours as his body, too, shuddered and shifted and changed.
Soon, before the bulging eyes of the three haughty guests, two piglets scampered from the clothing worn by the baron and his wife to scamper, snuffle, and grunt. Their pink hides were unblemished, and their bodies were as plump as the most prized and pampered piglets could ever hope to be.
As with the little fish and the lambkin, the forms of the baron and stepmother changed, but their minds remained. The full, awful realization of what they were, but not knowing why they were, made them scamper and scuttle in utter panic. Their hooves skidded on the rushes and stones as the merchant, banker, and guildsman gaped and cried out in astonishment.
The stepmother wailed (squealed), and the baron roared (squealed) when they heard the children’s song continue and lift, changing in pitch and mystic lilt.
Visitors’ brash and rude words peal,
Play upon lord’s vanity and conceit!
Avarice bright in their lustful zeal,
Greedy guests hunger for sweet, hot meat!
Then they, too, greedy-minded and rapacious guests, one, two, and three, shook, bucked, and cried out. Their gluttony twisted them into savage wolves with starving ribs, tented scabrous skin, and mangy hides. Long crooked fangs and lolling tongues slavered as they howled in pain and fright. Pangs of sudden savage hunger tangled their guts. And once they saw with bulging eyes, the piglets squealed in the extremity of their terror—trapped in the great room as a trio of famished gazes fell on their plump piggy forms.
The boy and the girl and all their merry friends listened with glee to the sounds of the ghastly feast within as the piglets were eaten alive, squealing and screaming as the wolves went for choice vitals first. Ripping open bellies and gorging on liver, kidneys, lungs, and heart. Tearing flesh from bone and finally cracking and gnawing bones to splinters.
When the children heard the grisly feast end and the wolves scratched and whined at the door for release, their mocking laughter drove the beasts from the goried halls of their father’s manse. Then, the children called to hunters in the nearby woods, who came running with their guns at the cries of “Help! Help! Wolf! Wolf!”
The wolves tried to lumber away, their bloated, sagging bellies dragging the ground, but the hunters blasted their hides with sure shots and then swept in with knives to sever their heads and cut off their tails. With savage blows, they peeled off the wolves’ hides and sliced them open. And out onto the green, green grass spilled the father and the wicked stepmother, piece by piece, chewed and mangled. Their terrified eyes were wide and staring.
The village hetman declared it all the work of foul witchcraft and had all the bodies burned and the ashes scattered in the river. Back to the manse came the cook, the old wise woman, and all the rest of the servants to care for the children and look after their inherited estate.
And the little sister and the little brother lived in their father’s manse and played all day with their merry friends. In the evening before supper, the servants taught them to be kinder than their father had ever been, and at bedtime, the wise woman told them stories that sent their dreams to wild and wonderful places where ofttimes they met and danced and laughed with their long-dead mother. And the kindhearted cook made them all manner of tasty dishes for breakfast, lunch, and supper for the rest of their days, but never, ever lamb and never, ever fish.
Pork was their favorite, and whenever it was served, the children cackled with glee and ate it like little starved wolves.
© Christopher Pate 2026
Christopher Pate, he/him, is a speculative fiction author whose work has been published in over a dozen anthologies, e-zines, and a podcast. His latest works include “The Red God” in Savage Realms, “Blessings of the Sea” in the Rogue Waves anthology, and “The Pact” in Black Cat Weekly. Born in rural Ohio, he currently lives with his wife, daughter, dog and three cats in West Virginia.