One fine day, an eyeless man with a mutilated face arrives in a village by a pale gray sea.

The white-skinned man unrolls a blanket. He arranges himself on it. He sets a small metal monkey beside him. He winds something in its back, a black iron key topped with a glass eyeball.

The monkey extends an uncanny metal hand. The man sets a coin on the monkey’s palm. Its fingers snap closed; its hand moves to its mouth; the coin drops in. It’s a show. A nudge. A hint to passersby.

Clink, clink. “Feed the monkey a coin and see what happens.”

People always do, and the eyeless man offers them a tale in return. His face might be startling, but his voice is beautiful. People stop when he speaks. They listen. Gasp. They feel as if the skin of the world has been peeled away and they are seeing the truth that lies beneath for the very first time.

He knows this. He uses it.

“Once upon a time, there was a queen who gazed into her enchanted mirror and asked if she was the most beautiful in all the land.

“Every day, the mirror set her heart at ease, until one day, the mirror’s answer changed, filling the queen with envy and rage.

“This is because women cannot help but be creatures of vanity. And this vanity is dangerous, for it leads women in power to destroy that which they are bound to protect: their queendoms, their thrones, their own daughters …”

Mesmerized, the people pass along the tale, from lips to ears to paper to eyes, across acres of land and oceans of time again and again until eventually the man’s tale becomes truth.

I know otherwise. I know what really happened. I was there.

This is the story of a werebear and her brother, one of whom will inherit a kingdom …

It’s the story of another werebear who wanted to burn it all down …

Of a sister who traded everything to spin grass into gold …

Of an angry musician who loved a gentle werewolf …

Of a girl who loved a singing forest more than life itself …

And of a kingdom shattered like a mirror, the pieces of which can be put back together, but only by someone brave enough to look.