The Otter
I have always been intrigued by the stories of the animal bridegroom, and the related tales where the bride is whisked underground, or overground, to a place where the bride is never allowed to glimpse her husband's true (and inevitably handsome) physical form. And yet the bride always wants to know, always wants to see, either from curiosity or fear, a fairie mirror, perhaps, of love. (Beauty and the Beast is a variant of this tale, although in the original French and later versions, the Beast does not come to Beauty in her bedroom at night, but only asks her to marry him. Or, in the Disney version, sings at her.) I first came across the tale when I was about seven, in a Sicilian retelling of the story from The Golden Ass, and madly collected others, until I decided to write a version of my own, which appears in Every Day Fiction today. You can comment on the story there or here, and/or vote on the story there, if you wish.