EXPLANATION: This story is set in the world of the Nine Kingdoms, from the TV miniseries The 10th Kingdom; however, technically, it's more of a fairytale TCP. In other words, this is not about anyone you know...but you may feel as if you know 'em anyway.

DISCLAIMER: The Nine Kingdoms belong to Viacom -- no harm is intended and no profit is being made, do not distribute without my permission -- but the concepts herein belong to archetype and legend.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Two more stories are planned. All three will be interrelated (even if it's not immediately apparent) and take place in the past -- about fifty years after the Five Queens came into power. Stay tuned.

"Tell me a story," she said.

I tell her a story every night. She's been raised on stories, as was , as was my mother and her mother before her. Before that...I don't know. Stories never say what came before grandmothers. But it's safe to assume that stories are older than that.

Stories are important. Everyone is part of a story.

"Tell me a story," she said, and I asked her what story she wanted to hear. She's old enough to choose her own stories now, or at least that's what she told me when I put her to bed on the evening of her fifth birthday, still sticky from her birthday cake despite a thorough wash in a tub before the fire. You don't say no to a request like that.

"What story do you want?" I asked her, and she told me. It was a new one, something she must have heard from one of the other children as they'd played on the verge of the woods where my husband earns our living with his axe and his traps. And, as often happens with children, her explanation of the story became a telling in itself.

At first I thought it was a new version of an old tale, but although it indeed offered a wolf and a woodcutter there was no sign of a red cape. In this tale the wolf lured the innocent girl off of the path long before she ever came within sight of the safety afforded by Grandmama's House. This wolf was an unnatural silver beast who could look like a man if he so chose -- an evil sorceror who placed the girl under a wicked spell that made her forget she was a girl at all.

"How do you know it was a spell?" I asked.

Because, she told me (in the tone children use to deal with adults who don't understand magic and never will), only magic would make a girl forget to go home to her mother.

"What if she didn't want to go home?" I asked.

"Who would want to live out in the woods with a wolf?" she retorted, as if it was silly to question the story. She was right, of course. Stories have their own rules and their own power. A story is a story -- right and wrong and how and why do not belong in it.

The rest of the tale was fairly straight-forward, as these things go: a youngest son, helpful animals, clever escapes, a daring rescue, and a happily-ever-after. Good triumphed over evil, as it always has and always will. By the end of all this excitement, however, my daughter's eyelids were drooping; it appeared that I would not be spinning a tale myself this evening, now that she'd accidentally snared herself in a wordweb of her own weaving.

She protested sleepily, of course, when I kissed her on the forehead and rose to blow out the lamp beside the bed. It wasn't much of a protest, but I could tell that I'd probably have to conjure up two stories tomorrow to appease my little one's thwarted appetite for magical fantasy.

I would not, however, be telling the tale she'd told me tonight.

Some stories are truer than others. Some are as false as a rotten apple. Some are both.

It is long after dark, and my husband has not yet returned. He could be out checking the traplines. He could be down at the village tavern. It doesn't matter. Hearth ashes swirl around my bare feet as I reach up in a gesture as familiar as a sigh to stroke the wolf pelt nailed over the fireplace.

In the moonlight, it does look a little like silver.

I close my eyes and press my cheek -- still mottled with bruises, but at least the stark outline of palm and fingers has faded -- into the thick, dead fur, and I wonder...again...if any of the other happily-ever-afters were real.