I won!!!! My fairy tale retelling entry won this week!

I can't believe it. I won the fairy tale retelling contest this week.The judge was Mette Ivie Harrison. My daughters and I love her books. I went to a break-out session she gave about fairy tale retellings at a BYU conference many years ago. I think it might have been my first Children's Literature Conference I attended. I came home from that and told my husband that I really wanted to write.

And I'm shocked by the entry that moves to Play-at-Home because it was complimented many times in the comments and was very smart and clever.

I'm actually on vacation this week for spring break, but I'm going to the library with my daughters to check out a Mary Higgins Clark mystery to get some ideas for the next contest: a 750 word beginning of a murder mystery book.

You can read the contest results here: Throwing Up Words.

This is my entry from last week.
​
Storyteller
In my tree high above the forest floor, a fluff of snow drifts through the barren branches and settles on my hand, soft as a swan’s feather, cold as loneliness.
I sew and wish I was playing at hide-and-seek with my brothers.
They would count. I would run until my breath tore at my chest, then climb a tree until the branches were no thicker than my finger. With my cheek pressed against the rough bark, I waited to hear their song.
“Six brothers catch little sister.”
I would shriek when a brother climbed and caught my ankle.
“Did you see me? How long did it take? Let’s play again,” I said as my brothers covered their ears.
If only I could sing now.
Cold drives through the branches I’ve lodged as a roof between the limbs. The slanted floor is a shingle from the robber’s den where I found my brothers before they flew away.
I huddle over my precious shirts.
Ice bites at my neck, burning with its cold cruelty.
If I could laugh, I would repeat my brothers’ joke.
“Why did the swan cross the road?”
“To peck off your head.”
That was a good one. I keep the laugh in my belly.
If I could speak, I would count aloud my stitches. Three shirts are done. Half of what is needed to free all my brothers. Half plus the ultimate sacrifice for a chatty sister.
I stitch the seven petals using Poppa’s reel of thread. With the end knotted, the blood-red stitches transform to the pure white of the star flower.
A limb whips across my back and flies away.
Where do my brothers fly? Surely they do not miss my chatter.
Chase never said, “Stop talking.”
He found me in a tree where I’d fallen asleep, my legs swinging off a limb.
“Are you all right?”
I shrieked, a high piercing pitch with a drop like the scream of an eagle.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
I didn’t know what he would or would not do.
He waited below and whistled, mimicking my scream. I stayed until my legs and bottom were numb. As I descended, my gown caught on a jagged limb and tore.
“I’m Chase.” The young man stood and bowed.
“Anice.”
“Your dress is torn.”
“It is.”
“You don’t say much.”
My laugh burst out of my mouth.
After that, when I hid from my brothers, I whistled and if Chase answered back, we met and talked until I heard my brothers’ song.
If only I could laugh now.
Hiss. Crack. Roar. Wind flies down in a fury and seizes the shirts. I snatch at a sleeve, a collar. One flies over my shelter.
I can’t lose it. A shirt takes an entire year to sew. I stuff the two shirts, star flowers, and reel into my bodice.
With one foot, I search for a foot hold. I hear a whistle: high and sustained with a drop.
Chase.
I must not answer.
I slip, my bodice catching on a twig. The last two shirts fall out.
I clutch at the tree.
“I hope this is not all you were wearing.”
I must not speak.
“Anice? Is that you? You know I won’t hurt you.”
The reel of thread bruises my chest. Of course. A way to stay silent.
I pull myself back onto the floor of my shelter and with shaking fingers, thread the needle. I pierce my flesh. The bottom lip. Then the top. The stitches disappear as I tie the knot at the corner of my mouth.
I descend.