Today, we’re delighted to welcome E. C. Hibbs back to the Hive, to celebrate the release of her latest novel The Shade Between Shadows with a guest post on fairy tales!

Before we hand you over to E, let’s find out more about The Shade Between Shadows:

“I didn’t think myself truly silent. I possessed a voice, as sure as any other. It was simply not the same as any other I had met.”

The year is 1838. Queen Victoria has ascended the throne. And within the United Kingdom lies Nightland: a sprawling forest filled with darkness and danger.

Beatrice has always been different. She has not spoken since childhood, communicates through drawings, and hates to be touched. And she is a grey: half-English and half-Nightlander.

When she is forced into servitude across the border, she hatches a plan to escape with siblings Anselm and Gretchen. But gaining her freedom will be no simple task, for first, she must unravel the secrets of her master, Prince Edward. A man rumoured to have murdered his wife – and who shares Beatrice’s ability to see people’s souls.

Enchanted History: Bringing Fairy Tales to Life Through Their Origins

by E. C. Hibbs

I love telling fairy tales – particularly ones which aren’t well-known – as well as looking into where they came from. I’ve been interested in folklore studies for years, which led me to completing courses from Odense University and the University of Newcastle AUS, as well as joining the Australian Fairy Tale Society (even though there isn’t a drop of Aussie blood in me!) And when you start to dig deeper, it reveals a treasure trove of other, hidden tales.

Stories provide a unique window into the lives of others, both past and present; their values, their histories. Sometimes, they are a product of a tale passing through multiple cultures and time periods. Sometimes, they can be traced to historical events or figures. Oftentimes, it’s a culmination of all these things, and more. Both in their themes, and their origins, fairy tales and folklore are like a spider web, connected to each other – and to us – in many, many ways.

I wanted to bring this web into The Shade Between Shadows, but not simply as a fairy tale retelling. I wanted to explore the connections which branch off the tales, make new ones within the framework of the novel, and in some cases, reference the realities which created them.

One of the strongest instances of this is the Pied Piper of Hamelin, which wasn’t only inspired by a real event, but an event which is documented to an exact date. To quote a translation of an inscription from Hamelin itself: “In the year 1284 on the day of [Saints] John and Paul on 26 June 130 children born in Hamelin were misled by a piper clothed in many colours to Calvary near the Koppen, [and] lost.” One of the strongest hypotheses about the piper is that he was essentially a medieval subcontractor, who encouraged people from the area to migrate into Pomerania.

Another argument is that the children of Hamelin were taken to slave markets, under the pretense of travelling to the Holy Land. Both of these arguments formed the concept of pipers in The Shade Between Shadows: bounty hunters selling half-Nightlanders into servitude – with the 1284 event being directly referenced at one point.

There are other historical notes which were incorporated into the novel, too. A hypothesis behind Hansel and Gretel is that it developed following the devastating famines of early medieval Europe, during which it was common for children to be abandoned. I adapted this into the depiction of Anselm and Gretchen, who explicitly mention that their sale to a piper was a result of the food and money running out after the Napoleonic Wars. And there might not be a gingerbread house, but the siblings’ surname is Becker: German for “baker”.

On the other hand, sometimes the history of a fairy tale uses broader strokes. The protagonist of The Shade Between Shadows, Beatrice, is loosely inspired by the heroines of such stories as The Seven Ravens, The Six Swans and The Twelve Brothers – all of which feature the male figures being transformed into birds. It has been suggested by folklorist Jack Zipes that this element developed in an area and time period when many men were drafted as soldiers by kings, leaving the daughters of a family as heirs in their absence. However, this practice allowed families to exert more control over the daughters, and the stories may have grown from the womens’ wish for their brothers to return, freeing their sisters as well as themselves.

There is also the suggestion that these stories allude to the practice of ultimogeniture, in which the youngest child inherits, rather than the eldest. Both of these hypotheses come together in The Shade Between Shadows. In the Nightland royal family, the youngest is the heir apparent, due to the elder siblings being active members of the country’s formidable military – including elder sisters.

Speaking of this brings me to the character of Princess Rosahild. Like many characters, she is a melting pot of many fairy tale elements, including the Big Bad Wolf, Little Red Cap, and Rose Red. But her name is a combination of both Rose Red – one of the most recent fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm – and the Norse origins of Sleeping Beauty, the Valkyrie Brunhilde.

Sleeping Beauty is one of my favourite fairy tales to explore, because it truly shows how a story can change to reflect the values, time and culture of who is telling it. Sleeping Beauty is arguably one of the most placid figures in any fairy tale, but in the earliest recorded variant, she was a dangerous and skilled warrior, surrounded by a wall of shields rather than a wall of thorns.

There is much more to these stories than meets the eye. They might appear simple on the surface, but the ways they connect to each other and the past fascinates me. When I realised I could use The Shade Between Shadows to explore this enchanted history in a fictional way, I could barely contain my excitement. It has led to not only the fairy tales mentioned here, but close to thirty of them woven throughout the entire Nightland Quartet.

I can’t wait to continue making those connections in the rest of the series. The possibilities, like the tales and the histories, are endless.

IMAGE CREDITS

1592 painting of the Pied Piper, copied from a stained glass window in Hamelin. Artist unknown. Public domain.

Brunhild by Gaston Bussiere. 1897. Public domain.

The Twelve Brothers by Henry Justice Ford. Public domain.

E. C. Hibbs has lived all her life in Cheshire, northwest England. A lover of stories from an early age, she wrote her first ‘book’ when she was five, and throughout school was a frequent visitor to the younger classes to read her tales to the children. Living so near the coast, she loves anything to do with the sea. She studied Animal Behaviour at university and longs to work with marine mammals in the future. As well as nature and animals, she also has a soft spot for history, and loves paying visits to castles, cathedrals and museums. There are many things she could be without, but writing isn’t one of them. She carries a pen everywhere, in case an idea appears, and takes pride in still seeing the world as brimming with magic. Besides writing, she reads obsessively, her favourite genres being the classics and all kinds of fantasy. She also enjoys Disney and horror films, practising Shotokan karate, drawing, archery, and playing with her very cheeky kitten.