‘The World’s More Full of Weeping Than You Can Understand’
— Reneé Bibby
When I was a kid, it was my dream to escape into a magical world—stolen away by the faerie, pass through a wardrobe, disappear down a hole—to escape the mundanity of life. (I suspect that is the wishing-well dream of many kids who immersed themselves in books and folklore.) I didn’t consider, even once, as a young person, what it would mean to return from a far-away-land. Lori Sambol-Brody’s flash fiction skips the enchantment of fairy-land, detailing instead, with a fairy tale-like imagery, a girl returning, and even more poignantly, the sadness of the girl who stayed. It could be that Oona, the stolen girl, is lying about her misadventures, constructing sugary crenellations of magic over something more mundane. Does it matter? In controlling the narrative of her disappearance Oona claims disproportionate power, overshadowing her sister to become the favorite—and there, the narrative loops back to my childhood, where the heartache of the left-sister echoes exactly the sense of longing that drove my desire to be chosen, stolen, and transformed.