the bird on fire

Graphic also by Harlow Berny

Retold by Harlow Berny

Centuries ago, in a long forgotten kingdom, there was a willful daughter of a single peasant woman. She refused to do even the simplest things that her mother told her, no matter if it was something that the girl liked to do or would keep the child healthy and safe. For this reason, the girl went and ran through the house of an old man who had recently died, and she contracted some horrid illness that had killed him. No doctor could heal the child as she fell into her death-bed. Soon the peasant’s daughter was lain in a coffinless grave and was covered in dirt, until suddenly her arm burst through the ground and stood tall, grasping for the sunlight. When a mound of new dirt was placed over the arm, the arm pushed it away, time after time again. Eventually, the girl’s mother was brought and made to strike the hand down with a rod. Upon doing so the hand shot back into the ground and the daughter’s soul finally left her long-dead body. While we know that the little girl’s soul abandoned her body, we do not know if the soul flew to the gates of heaven for the fact that she was but a child, or sank to the gates of hell for never obeying her mother and causing her own death in her careless actions…

Editor: Brennan Nick

A Re-Telling of Grimm’s

Graphic design also by Harlow Berny

Retold by Harlow Berny

Centuries ago, in a long forgotten kingdom, there was a simple mother who had a child of seven years of age who was so handsome and lovable that whomever crossed his path and saw him would immediately have a smile upon their face. His mother had cherished him above all else in her life. It just so happens that this child became sick with a common cold; God had decided to bring the child to himself, and the mother could not contain her grief and wept both day and night. Soon after the funeral, however, an apparition of the child would appear at night in places that the child had been when he was alive. Whenever the mother wept, the ghost would weep as well, and he would disappear when the sun rose. The mother still wept day and night, but on one of those nights, the ghost appeared in the white shroud he was buried in with a wreath of flowers on his head. He walked to the foot of his mother’s bed and said to her, “Mommy, please don’t cry for me at night anymore, or I may never rest in my coffin, for my shroud will not dry in the cold, sunless night whilst your tears fall upon it.” When the mother heard this, she immediately choked back her tears and took deep breaths, waiting for the sun to shine until she wept again. The next night, the child came back, this time holding a bright, glowing cloth in his hands. ”Look, Mommy,” said the child, “my shroud is dry, now I can rest and go to heaven!” The mother hugged her child, said one last goodbye, and saw her child’s ghost fade away as the sun shone upon him. She continued to cry in the day, but she cried less knowing that her son was in a brighter, dryer place.

Editor: Reneé Vazquez

Re-Telling of Grimm’s