Hey Twitter y'all have REALLY been hanging in with this month of bananas self-promotion. Launching two books within a month, during awards-nomination season, is truly a wild ride, and you have all been so kind and supportive, it blows my mind.

To say thank you for all your patience and kindness and signal-boosts and friendsome vibes, I have written y'all

a tale

GREAT NEWS! You’re a simple but kindhearted woodcutter who lives in the Big Forest with your wife! You’ve been married for many years & you love each other very much & one day, miraculously, she falls pregnant! WOW

You're both overjoyed by this very unexpected news. You, the simple but kindhearted woodcutter, go to the well to get some water so you can both celebrate the good news by hydrating

But before you can fill your fairy-tale hydroflask A CRONE APPEARS

“Would you be so kind as to help an old crone such as I?” she asks. You think she’s gonna ask you to fill up her bucket from the well, so you’re like “k."

she’s like “do u PROMISE to help me” and you’re like “...yeah sure, I promise”

A TERRIBLE MISTAKE

The crone whips off her crone-hood to reveal that she’s actually a POWERFUL SORCERESS with a hankerin’ for QUEST-GIVING and she has PULLED! YOUR!! TICKET!!!

If you complete her task within a fortnight, you’ll be happy and well-fed forever, and you’ll never need to use hair products again, and your gums will be healthy, and your handwriting will be good, and your baby will grow up to have really well-informed political views

BUT if you FAIL to complete your task on time, your beautiful wife and your miracle-baby and your cottage and your herb garden and your several dogs will VANISH FOREVER

FUCK
YOU WEREN’T READY FOR THIS

YOU JUST WANTED TO CHOP WOOD AND FRENCH-BRAID YOUR WIFE’S LUSTROUS HAIR AND MAYBE READ A POETRY ZINE YOUR FRIEND THE STONEMASON PRINTED UP

YOU DIDN’T WANT A QUEST
but no matter: a quest you shall HAVE

Quests are complicated & dangerous. The sorceress might want you to fetch a ruby from the eye of a dragon, or the tears of a mountain giant, or a ticket to a My Alchemical Romance concert. You are a simple woodcutter who loves your wife, & your entire life is about to change

The sorceress looks you in the eyes, and a strange light seems to come from within her throat, and her very bones radiate power, and she bestows your quest upon you:
“For your quest, you must fetch me…..

𝖆 𝖋𝖗𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖚𝖈𝖎𝖓𝖔”

You live in fairy-tale times. You have NEVER heard this word before. The sorceress is already vanishing into a sudden mist. “What... the fuck??” you cry, hoping she’ll tell you more. “What is that? Is it like a scarf??”
Her voice is faint as she disappears: “No…. whip……”

Okay so you have a fortnight — that’s fourteen days — to figure out what the fuck a “frappucinno” is, and then get one and bring it back to the woods.

Time’s a-wastin, so you stop at your cottage, tell your beautiful brilliant pregnant wife to keep a light on, pet the dogs, feed your sourdough starter, put a loaf of bread in the oven so your wife will have bread for later, and then: out you go on your QUEST

You stop in the local village to get your bearings and maybe drink your feelings a little because today has been a LOT, okay??

You walk into the tavern at the inn & immediately bellow "I HAVE A QUEST"

You're bombarded with questions.

What's the quest? “Get a frappuccino for a sorceress”
Is the sorceress scary? “Yes, in a threatening but hot way”
How’s your wife? “Pregnant, and annoyed that this is coming up at the last minute”
What are you gonna do now? “.......”

You have NO IDEA where to start! So you say that, & you get a hug from a stranger, & then you ask if anyone knows anything about this mysterious """frappuccino""" you need to obtain in order to save your future with your beloved wife

The barmaid, with whom you had a brief dalliance before you met your very capable and meticulous wife, and who you now both consider a dear and trusted friend, because exes don't have to be enemies, mentions that she’s head a word like that before!

“Ask the BARD,” she says. You groan. The bard SUUUUCKS, he’s one of those guys who really needs EVERYONE to know he's a Nice Guy, & he thinks he’s charming but actually he comes across super-fake, & weirdly a lot of people you know like him and you can’t figure out why.

Anyway, your dear friend the barmaid says the bard is currently mansplaining stew to the innkeeper. You go into the kitchen & sure enough he’s haranguing the innkeeper about peppercorns, which are a very new thing in the village that everyone's trying to get the hang of

“Hey bard,” you say, nudging his lute out from under him so he stumbles on his little baby legs, “what do you know about ‘frappuccinos’?” He’s a little indignant but he can’t pass up an opportunity to perform and/or explain shit so you settle in for an insufferable time

He spends forty-nine minutes singing you and the entire tavern a song about a faraway land called MIDTOWN.

Ten minutes of the song are about the women of "Midtown", and how he can see that they’re beautiful even though they don’t think they’re beautiful and that’s what MAKES them beautiful.

Eleven minutes of the song are about a rude guy who told the bard to stop walking so slow.

Twenty minutes go to pigeons. There’s an interlude of scatting. Everyone in the tavern is blaming you for this.

The last eight minutes of the song are about the tavern in midtown & the sorcerers who work there. He sings their tattoos & colorful hair, & their potions with fanciful names like “latte” and “arabica” and “macchiato,” and one of the potions he mentions is...

THE FRAPPUCCINO

Okay so now you have some information! It’s an elixir you need! You buy the bard a couple of drinks and pump him for information, and finally you learn the composition of the elixir.

1. espresso (???) The bard advises you that this is like a strong version of coffee, which you’ve never heard of, and then spends an entire tankard of ale explaining how important it is to make the espresso exactly the right way. You hate him you hate him you HATE HIM

1a. You finally get the tipsy bard to explain that “coffee” is a drink made from beans, and “espresso” is “coffee” that’s roasted dark, ground fine, packed tight, brewed hot. You point at several types of regular eating-beans.

“No,” he insists, “coffee beans are DIFFERENT.”

2. milk.

no problem, your resourceful wife has a goat. The goat is named marigold and is loyal only to your wife, which you respect as a stance. marigold makes milk.

3. chocolate syrup (?!?!) Well, fuck. You live in fairy-tale times in a fairy-tale land. Nobody has chocolate. It doesn’t exist. You ask the bard if it’s strictly necessary, and he says that you can use other flavors if you want. You hope this part won't be a big deal.

4. sugar (???) You gather from the song and the bard’s descriptions that a frappuccino should be VERY sweet, so you’ll substitute honey, maybe? God, the bees have been SO grouchy this season, it's gonna be a pain in the ass to deal with them.

5. Ice. Fucking SURE, why not, why wouldn't you have to figure out ICE. This will mean a treacherous journey into the mountains, but whatever, you can deal with that. You just want to get away from the bard.

So you spend thirteen days gathering ingredients.

You use a special flute, carved by your artistically accomplished wife, to lull a cranky beehive into giving you a lot of honey.

You make nice with the goat, because you have to get the milk yourself (them's the Quest Rules).

You spend a week in the Scary Mountains packing ice in straw and dodging the attentions of the Ice Folk, who think you are really cool and would be a great person to start an improv troupe with

You gather hazelnuts from the forest and toast them over an open flame (built by your outdoorsy wife) and grind them down, and then you boil them in honeywater to make a flavored syrup. It's not chocolate. You'll just have to keep your fingers crossed.

Thirteen days it takes you to gather these ingredients, and now it's the last day. You have to deliver the frappuccino today. The only thing you don't have is the espresso. Where are you going to get espresso?

You pace back and forth in your cottage, stopping occasionally to admire the beautiful spongework your wife did when she whitewashed the walls. Where would you possibly find coffeebeans in fairytale land??

You examine every bean in your larder, but none of them seem… DIFFERENT.

They're just.

Beans.

*And that's when it hits you.*

“Hey, my stunningly attractive and muscular wife,” you say, and she looks up from her whittling with a smile. “You know that goat you love? The one I charmed with snacks and praise?"

"Of course," she replies, "Marigold is my closest confidante, besides you."

You are not threatened by your winsome wife having other friends, so she didn't really need to add that last part, but it's nice anyway.

You ask her a follow-up question: “Didn’t you acquire that goat from a doofy farmboy in a really spectacular deal?”

“Yeah,” says your savvy businesswoman wife. “I traded him a handful of magic beans for it.”

“Where,” you ask, tenderly regarding the love of your life, “did you acquire the magic beans?”

She shrugs. “Gregslist,” she says. “Greg the Bricklayer posted a list of things he was looking to trade for, and I saw that he wanted some hand-whittled spoons, and I had some extra hand-whittled spoons, so I traded him for the beans. Why, do you need some?”

You ask to see the beans, and she pulls them off a high shelf you can’t usually see (your wife is very tall). You open the burlap sack they’re in and an amazing smell hits you, one you've never encountered, and without knowing how you know, you KNOW: THIS IS IT. THIS IS COFFEE

You mentally thank the Bard for being an insufferable prick as you roast and grind and pack the beans exactly as he described. You bind them in cheesecloth and soak them in hot water because you don’t have a way to do the steam? pressure?? thing??? he'd drunkenly explained

The resulting liquid is bitter and terrible to your woodcutter-tongue but whatever, it’s a potion ingredient, those are usually gross, and you’re almost out of time. You have to make this work NOW.

You use a mortar and pestle to crush the ice. You combine the honey, espresso, hazelnut syrup, & goat milk in a vase your charming wife made at her weekly pottery collective. You add the ice to the vase, and you sprint to the well in the woods, THE SORCERESS IS WAITING, GO GO GO

THERE’S THE SORCERESS
She looks amazing! She’s holding an hourglass! The sand has almost run out!! Your time is almost up!!!

"Have you brought what I asked you for? Have you fulfilled your quest?"

"Yes," you gasp. "Here's a 'frappuccino', made with milk I took from my wife's goat, ice I crushed in my wife's mortar, hazelnuts I roasted over my wife's fire, honey I gathered using my wife's flute, & coffee made from my wife's magic beans."

You hand it over.
She takes a sip.

She smiles at you. "What you have brought me is not perfect," she says. "But it's your marriage, and no marriage should be perfect. You and your wife love each other so much that you will try together to complete an impossible quest, and that is enough."

And then she kisses your forehead, leaving behind a smear of Starlit Hyper-Glitz Lipstick from Fenty by Rihanna, and then she vanishes with a puff of gold glitter, and you know that you have succeeded in ways you didn't realize were being tested.

You and your tall, brave, strong wife have a beautiful gay baby, and your family and your goat and your dogs live happily ever after.

The End.

This is taking off and I am thus obliged to link y'all to my substack, where you can subscribe for more of my nonsense directly to your inbox:

http://Sarahgailey.substack.com/subscribe ?