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By Root 1072 0

the Farm, because some of it has indeed been cultivated. And some of it is occupied by a quaint, rural village of huts and houses, barns and stables. But most of the Farm’s uncounted acreage has been left in its original wild state. The Farm is Fabletown’s sister community, its upstate annex for housing all of the Fables who also fled their Homelands for this world, but who can’t pass as human. Where the human-looking Fables are largely free to come and go wherever in the world they wish, Farm Fables are confined in this one place for all time — a large and comfortable prison to be sure — but a prison just the same. They’re confined to the Farm because the most vital of all Fable laws strictly forbids anything that might reveal their magical nature to the mundys. And nothing is more immediately and unmistakably identifiable as magical than a talking duck, with a penchant for discussing the collected works of Jane Austen, or a moo-cow who can leap over the moon. Granted it was the moon of another land, which was both smaller and nearer than ours, but still an impressive feat, all things considered.

You can’t find your way to The Farm, even more so than to Fabletown proper, because many more-powerful concealment and misdirection spells protect the place, deflecting all nosy mundys away or around it. But if you could, if you could bring yourself, by some tremendous act of will and raw, stiff-necked determination, to drive along that narrow old road, by the low, moss-covered stone wall, and turn in on the dirt track, where the tired wooden gate sags against the ancient, brooding chestnut tree, you might possibly discover that the Three Little Pigs live in a piggy-sized house of bricks (they learned their lessons long ago) just down the lane from where the Old Woman dwells in her giant shoe. Being perfectly normal looking, she could leave the Farm any time she wished, but not with her beloved shoe-house, where she’d raised so many children, so she chooses to stay where she is.

Our tale, the one that couldn’t quite remain a simple love story, begins then in Fabletown and almost immediately moves up to the Farm. It happens because a witch learned something that she told to a beast, who phoned a wolf, who in turn called his wife’s twin sister, who never was a princess but perhaps should have been.

ROSE RED, THE NO LESS LOVELY BUT considerably less famous sister of Snow White, wiped the sleep from her eyes as she climbed into her rust-colored Range Rover; hers at least in the sense that she ran the Farm and this was one of the vehicles owned in common by all who dwelled there. She had glossy red hair the color of fire in the daylight and dark satin at night. She wore old boots and farmer’s clothes: denim pants and a flannel shirt, both of which started out in different shades of blue, but which had since been worn to the universal color of fade. Clara the raven, who’d once been a fire-breathing dragon, sat perched on the front porch railing of the main house, where Rose Red lived, and where she’d been sound asleep until just a few minutes before.

“You’re out and about early,” Clara said. Her breath sent a sharp flicker of fire and an attendant wisp of smoke into the brisk morning air. Having elected years ago to turn from dragon into raven, she nevertheless decided to keep the fire.

“I got a call,” Rose mumbled. “Have to deliver a message.”

“It can’t be good news then,” Clara said. “Nobody wakes someone to give out good news. Nobody civilized, anyway. Want me to go with you?” Clara served as Rose Red’s personal bodyguard, a job considered necessary due to an attempted revolution against Farm authority some years back. That was why Clara thought it prudent to hold onto her fiery breath. It was a brutal and devastating weapon which served as a no-nonsense deterrent against further uprisings.

“No,” Rose said. “I’m just the messenger. This business won’t put me in any danger, though I can’t promise the same for its recipient.” With a few light curses and some pleading, Rose Red coaxed the truck’s cold and reluctant engine