I feel like I’m an extreme bloomer. I bloomed early when it came to some aspects of my life (love, motherhood, homeownership), and I feel like I have bloomed so, so late when it comes to other aspects. One of those late blooms has been travel. I didn’t get out there for years and years, and would have never been able to start traveling if not for the generosity of my trail-blazing siblings who gifted me a trip to Japan for a milestone birthday.
Michael Palin has said, “Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life.” It’s so true. The spring after we went to Japan, my husband and I took a second honeymoon to London. Again, due in no small part to the generosity of my siblings.
London is an amazing city, filled with amazing sites, amazing food, amazing history. There are so many standouts, but the sleeper hit for me has been the Victoria and Albert Museum. I don’t know how to describe it, it is just a magical place. And unlike other museums that I love, where the art is the draw, for the V&A it is just the V&A. I wander around. I get something to eat in the museum cafe. I enjoy the art without having a top ten list of pieces I _have_ to see. It is one of my favorite museums in the world, and I’ve been to a few of them now.
The V&A has some beautiful galleries. The first time I went in 2017, a patron was sketching a sculpture in the gallery that I’m pictured in above, and that academic study among all the gorgeous art was a lightning bolt moment of inspiration for me. It informed the second part of my novel, Smoke, Steel, & Ivy. The V&A also has a ceramics room that I’ve walked through without much thought. Ceramics are easy to overlook in a museum where there are life size statures or floor to ceiling paintings. I spent hardly anytime in this gallery, and thought nothing of it for years. I’m not even sure we made it into the ceramics room when we took the kiddos to London for Christmas 2022.
Anita Desai has said of travel, “Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.” I believe this is one hundred percent true. Let me explain by telling a seemingly unrelated story about my writing.
I’ve been busy writing short stories this year, discovering stories and points of view in well loved fairy tales that I’ve enjoyed exploring. I have a soft spot for lesser known fairy tales, and when I learned about a new-to-me fairy tale, from Kate Wolford’s newsletter for The Fairy Tale Magazine ‘s Fairy Godparents Club, I knew I wanted to retell it.
“Diamonds and Toads” is a wild fairy tale. If spoilers bug you, don’t read on. Subscribe to my newsletter and wait for my novella to come out, read it, and then come back here. I’ll wait. But if you don’t care and want a behind the scenes peek, keep going.
In original versions of the fairy tale, a virtuous sister is blessed by a fairy and a wicked sister is cursed. Diamonds and flowers will fall from the lips of the good sister. Toads and snakes will fall from the lips of the wicked sister. But to my mind both the blessing and the curse sounded gross because the process of stuff falling out of our mouths isn’t pretty, and trust a mommy who has cleaned up all the stuff that has come up and out of little people’s mouths for years–it doesn’t matter what that stuff is. It’s gross. No wonder this isn’t a popular retelling.
I don’t like the dichotomy of good girl/bad girl. So I began to ask questions. What if the wicked sister was simply a misunderstood hero? And where is the romance in this story? Not all the short stories I’ve written this year have a romantic arc as part of the HEA ending, but most of them do. So how would that even work with a heroine who vomits snakes every time she speaks? OH! She wouldn’t speak. She wouldn’t speak! But then how would she survive? What if she peddled the creatures she was cursed to vomit? But who would even pay for reptiles? Exotic pets weren’t a roaring trade in preindustrial fanciful facsimiles of Europe.
Remember Anita Desai’s quote from above? The V&A is part of me. Even the ceramic room that I breezed through without much thought all those years ago. And in their ceramic room are works form a French potter, Bernard Palissy. He cast live snakes, frogs, and other reptiles to make his earthenware. I’ve seen his pieces, even if I didn’t connect with them in big, memorable ways at the time. This is how I landed on my the character of Bernard (I’m not inventive when it comes to names), the handsome, inventive potter who needed a lot of reptiles as he is developing his methods for incorporating cast of lots of little creatures into his ceramics.
I had my characters. They had a common problem that would cause entertaining struggles, and the solution to this problem would require magic and courage and hope to overcome. I had a story because the V&A is part of me. The ceramics room with Bernard Palissy’s earthenware is somehow part of me, and when I needed to tell a story about navigating shame and the romance of creating a home with the person you love, the vague memory of some sort of pottery that had snakes and lizards all over it was there.
I am continually amazed by how one trip to the V&A resulted in so much inspiration for my writing, but it did. I have no doubt that there is more inspiration for more stories to come. Travel is the gift that keeps on giving, and I am a writer who keeps retelling fairy tales. So without any further ado, allow me to share a sneak peak of my Novella, Curses, Diamonds, & Toads by me, Amy Trent.
Speaking is a hard habit to break, even with an abundance of motivation. It took me three years and seven villages before I learned to school my tongue. Market days made me sweat before I was sure I had mastered my silence. The fear that impulse or habit would cause me to slip back into words made me nervous for days. Now, I sat in the alley in my tattered gray hood with my baskets of wares, preoccupied only with my empty purse and empty stomach.
“A new peddler?” A passing lady whispered to her gentleman. She giggled before addressing me. “Or are you yet another nameless wench trudged up from the coast to ruin our fair town?” She bumped one of my baskets with a careless step.
I steadied the basket, my skin pricking at the thought of it toppling over.
“Well?” the lady demanded, adjusting her parasol.
Of course I was from the coast, my sun kissed skin and dark hair made that fact apparent, but I was hardly nameless.
Astird Lucia. Astrid Lucia. My name rattled in my head, tempting my tongue, but my stomach knew better. It twisted and writhed, recalling the shrieks and disgust that ensued whenever I spoke. Nameless and speechless was a small price to pay if it meant not being run out of another village.
My tongue remained pressed to the roof of my mouth. My lips would not part, but the lady was dumber than the lace parasol she twirled about. So I shook my head and tapped the front of my neck with my hand.
“I think she’s mute, dearest,” the gentleman said. He dropped a single half penny in the dust at my feet. “Come now. Much more to see in the square.” He offered his arm to the lady, who smiled, swung her parasol to her other shoulder and flounced away. Of course not before kicking up an abundance of dust as I stooped for the half penny.
Traffic would be better in the bustle of the cobbled square, but I didn’t want to risk a fuss. Word would spread soon enough. All it took was one curious child. I swatted my cloak clean and adjusted my skirts, being careful to shake them free of dust, before I dozed against the cool plaster wall behind me. I stirred only when I heard the clink of coins. I never heard many. Shrieks and gasps on the other hand, those were common. As were the boys who laughed and jeered when an unsuspecting villager lifted one of the lids of my baskets. Most didn’t take kindly to the shock of my wares. I’d learn caution when larger footfalls and deeper voices approached.
“A surprise?” The tanner was being dragged by his son down the alley. “Am I to guess?”
“Yes!” The boy was all giddiness.
“Strudels and tarts, is it?” The tanner caught his son and tossed him in the air. “Tin soldiers?”
“No!” the boy laughed.
The tanner saw my baskets, his smile still fixed on his face. “Surely not pups and kittens again.”
“Better!”
““Dragon’s teeth and unicorn hair?” He lifted the lid of my largest basket and yelped before laughing loud and long. “Snakes?”
“And lizards and toads!” the boy, who had peaked inside my baskets when he thought I dosed, said with earnest delight
“May I have one?”
“What? Pay for vermin?”
I bristled. If I could have spoken, I would have told the tanner that the black snake ate vermin, hunting mice and rats that plagued barns like his. The spotted toad the flies that vexed his sows. The lizards would make quick work of the slugs on his squash vines.
“I’m not parting with coin for beasties you should be digging out of the garden. Come along. We can’t waste time on market day.”
A couple of half pennies and the assurance that I’d be digging forest roots for supper for another week, was all I’d earned by dusk. I was tying up my basket when the potter found me. Easy enough to spot potters. Clay clings to them, even when they scrub up for market, just as tannins stick to tanners. Clay smelled so much nicer than leather though. Not as nice as flour and most assuredly not as nice as sugar, but there was still a sweet earthiness about clay and the men that worked it.
Before I crossed the vile fairy, I used to daydream about the type of man I might marry. While potters were not at the top of my list, the way a baker, a merchant, even a miller were, they definitely merited my consideration.
It was with some of that lost fondness that I appraised, perhaps too generously, the man approaching me. Narrow but strong shoulders. Tall with no paunch protruding from his middle. No streaks of gray in his windblown blond hair either. His beard was a darker shade than his hair, and could use a trim.
“Thank heavens, you’re still here.” He jogged a step closer. He was a young man, probably only a handful of years older than me, but even so creases were forming at the corners of his blue eyes and full lips. “I was worried I missed you.”
I frowned. No one ever missed me.
“May I?” he gestured to my baskets.
My brow furrowed, but I nodded, marking how his deft, competent hands made quick work of the knots I’d tied. He lifted a lid, his eyes growing wide like a bull frog’s, before a grin broke across his face.
My stomach turned, not out of fear and certainly not out of disgust.
“These are exceptional,” The potter said, sifting through the basket. He pointed to the pink and white striped snake. “Is that a corn snake?”
I nodded.
“I’ve never seen the like.” He continued to inspect my baskets of toads and snakes, skinks and salamanders, lizards and frogs. His hands, though not caked in clay, still bore mud under the fingernails. “May I?” He gestured to one of the small ribbon snakes.
I kept my lips sealed tight, but allowed the request.
He picked up the snake gently, without even the hint of a grimace or shiver of suppressed revulsion. “Remarkable,” he stretched the snake out long before coiling it and returning it to the basket. “How much?”
I held up a single finger, before pinching my forefinger and thumb together.
“A half penny?” The potter laughed. “Forgive me, I meant how much for these baskets?”
All of my baskets? I nearly gasped, but three years of being run out of towns had schooled me well. I held up two fingers before touching my ring finger to my thumb.
“Four silver crowns?”
I nodded. It would be enough coin for me to buy bread for a month and then some. It might even be enough for me to buy a wheel of cheese. It’d certainly be the first streak of good fortune I’d had since the curse began.
His purse rattled as he counted out the coins. “A hard but fair bargain.” He dropped the coins directly into my hand. “Do you think you could find more?”
I smiled. Of course I could find more.
“Excellent. My house is at the top of the hill, past the meadow. Can’t miss it.”