Today is part one of two where we are talking to Lilla Glass about her novels. Over the next 2 weeks you will hear about writing lyrically, learning the process of things as she went, pivoting as needed while querying, testing out plotting vs pantsing, knowing the major character points and plot points of the series, working with your narrator to nail down pronunciations and character voices, blending genre’s and developing as an author, pulling from folklore, learning and sticking to your voice and the rules for that voice.

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Lilla Glass is an author from Olympia, WA. Her darkly whimsical fantasy debut, The Unseen (Reel of Rhysia book 1) was released in July 2023 by City Owl Press.

Lilla’s short stories have been featured in several anthologies, including 13 by 11 and the Bells of Christmas 2 (published by Papillon du Pere), Enchanted Entrapments (published by Madhouse books), and Tale of Fire and Frost (published by Mystic Owl Press). Her fantasy comedy, “Best Spuds,” received a Silver Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future in 2021.

In the rare event that she isn’t writing, Lilla works one of those pesky day-job thingies, reads stories and poetry she wishes she wrote, hangs out with her husband and bunny, and plays the occasional tabletop RPG.

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Welcome to Freya's.

Fairy tales.

We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.

Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.

At the end of each episode, we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author's version as possible.

I am your host.

Freya victoria I'm an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales, novels and bringing stories to life through narration.

I am also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.

We have included all of the links for today's author and our show in the show notes.

Be sure to check out our website.

And sign up for our newsletter for.

The latest on the podcast.

Today is part one of two where we are talking to Lila Glass about her novels.

Over the next two weeks, you will.

Hear about writing, lyrically, learning the process of things as she went, pivoting as needed while querying, testing out, plotting versus pancing, knowing the major character points and plot points of the series.

Working with your narrator to nail down pronunciations and character voices, blending genres and developing as an author, pulling from folklore, learning and sticking to your voice and the rules for that voice.

The unseen Elwyn is remarkably unremarkable, and she prefers it that way.

What more could a thief hope for than to pass through life unseen?

Perhaps it is a talent owed to the training of the notorious syndicate that reared her.

Or it may be a gift from her invisible friend, a clever and capricious creature who, unlike most invisible friends, has only grown more real with time.

Either way, Elwyn's unremarkability is about to fail her.

Upon absconding to the tiny town of Amblewick in search of a quiet, uneventful life, she catches the attention of two feuding tricksters, each in the market for the perfect pawn.

Through either fate or magical machinations, she soon finds herself in the company of a cutthroat assassin, a wayward prince, and a little girl with a chilling secret.

Despite their differences, this ragtag group of rufians just might manage to save multiple worlds, provided they don't kill each other first.

So the name of the podcast is Freya's Fairy Tales, and that is Fairy tales in two ways.

Fairy tales are something that we either watched or read ourselves or had read to us as kids.

Also, the journey for you to spend weeks, months or years working on your book, to hold that in your hands, is kind of a fairy tale for you.

So I like to start off with what was your favorite fairy tale when you were a kid and did that favorite change as you got older?

All right, so I've listened to enough of your podcast to know this is a common answer, but The Little Mermaid is definitely up there.

I actually grew up with the original story first because my mom always got, like, the knockoff Disney movies that were more accurate from The Dollar Store.

And so I knew the original story, the sad one, before I knew the.

Disney one, but I love them both.

I really do.

And I think I'd like to add on that not Peter Pan as a whole, but very specifically.

Tinkerbell stuck out to me a lot as a kid because she's the first morally ambiguous character I ever good on the Good Guys team.

But she tries to get Wendy killed, like, instantly.

She set my bar for what Faye act like?

Very high.

Nice.

All right.

And so at what age did you start?

I actually I didn't start writing stories until just a few years ago.

I was an angsty amateur poet in high school, so I had a lot of that going for me.

Okay.

And it bleeds a lot into my writing.

I definitely a lyrical writer.

I have one character who can speak only in couplets.

Oh, my gosh, that sounds really poetry.

Background is there, so I actually prefer one of the authors I narrated for talked about that's.

How she got the flow of her book writing was by reading a lot of poetry.

And actually, I like lyrical writing, but not when it goes, like, too over the top crazy, where you're like, could you please just get to the point?

So you said you didn't start writing until a couple of years ago.

I'm guessing that means on novels.

You didn't start writing on novels until a couple of years ago, right?

Well, I guess a couple of years ago now is about five or so years ago.

My very first manuscript is the first book I ended up publishing.

And I apologize for all the, UMS and, errs it's very early here.

I'm on my coffee still.

You're totally fine.

So you said you started it about five years ago?

Yes.

How long did that take you to write?

It took me forever.

I had no experience in writing stories and the story structure, so my first draft was just a paragraph here or there.

I wasn't sure it was anything that I ever wanted to do anything with.

And then when I was finally done with it, I let a friend read it and she's like, no, get some beta readers to look at this and then rewrite it as an actual story.

I think this will do well.

And I listened to her advice and I don't know if it's doing well or not.

It just came out a couple of months ago.

But it did get picked up by a small press and I feel incredibly blessed for that.

So your first draft was more or less a buffed out outline, right?

It's what I now call a skeleton draft, but now skeleton drafts take me like a month back then, the skeleton draft, I was like a full time crisis therapist and full time at school, so I just wrote a paragraph like a week.

So it took a really long time.

That sounds like that would take a very long time.

When I sat down to actually write the book from start to finish, I think it took me about eight months once I had a good feel for what the characters.

Okay.

I feel like very rarely does someone's first book happen very quickly.

I feel like it's always that first one takes forever, and then you're like, oh, I've done this already.

And then it kind of like you're rolling downhill now it's going faster and faster.

I feel like most authors I talk to, there's the rare one where it's like, oh, it took me three weeks to write my first draft.

And I'm like how but how?

Because I spent like 15 minutes a day working on mine.

And that's not a lot of time.

I mean, I got more than a paragraph a day done, but it's not a lot of time.

How long did it take you to actually get that first draft totally done?

You were writing it a paragraph at a time.

Sounds like that would take a really long time.

I think it probably spanned out over a year for that first draft.

But like I said, I didn't know that was anything I wanted to do.

And then I just attached to the characters.

Yeah.

So then did you rewrite it first and then take it to beta readers or beta readers and then rewrite it?

So I rewrote it first, and at first I didn't actually know what beta readers were.

Okay, fair.

Let a couple friends look over it and I consider them my alpha readers now.

I actually let them look over my first drafts of everything just to see consistency in characters and things.

But I tried submitting it, I tried querying it before I had real beta readers looking at it, and that was a huge mistake.

One, because I had no idea how to query, and two, because I started the novel in the entire wrong place.

There was a lot of filter language, there were so many littler problems that were really easy to fix, but I had no idea what I was doing.

So once I found out about beta readers, I paused the querying process, had three beta readers look over it, traded manuscripts, and then when I went to query again, it did much better.

That's good.

So then you rewrite it, you have it go to beta readers, and then how long I've heard a very wide range of answers.

How long did the querying process we'll ignore the paused failed query section.

Okay, yeah, ignore that first.

Terrible.

Ignore that.

How long did the better query process take?

So it actually only took three months.

Oh, that's not bad at all.

So the reason in that.

So I started getting partial and full requests after two months, but then I'd also started looking at small presses and I had seen a Pitch festival online where there was a really reputable small press.

I was nervous because they mostly specialize in romance and I didn't write a romance.

I had a romantic subplot, but it isn't a romance.

But there was one editor on there that was looking specifically for found family, morally ambiguous characters and just a splash of romance, which is exactly what I wrote.

So I submitted it to her and within weeks, she had asked for the full and it took only a couple of weeks after that for her to get back to me and request a series synopsis.

And so it went really fast at that point.

Typically, from what I understand, not the people that decide to self publish from the beginning, but typically that process can take years.

Right.

Many failed manuscripts.

I was placed two years out on the list, so I still had ways to wait until the actual debut happened.

So they got your manuscript.

Did they have you like in that meantime, while you were in your two year wait, did they have you doing other stuff to it?

Right, so I signed a it's a four book deal.

Okay.

So I was both writing my second book, which I'm a habitual rewriter, so I'm still only nearly done with it, but I did do some editing on it based on a little sheet that they gave me for just basic edits while I was waiting.

And then when it finally got around time to actually officially edit, it was in better shape.

So it was like, hey, could you please, on your own, look out for these things?

That makes sense.

I also got that.

I just finished my edits last weekend and I had along with all the I call them red line edits, but all the marked up edits that were in red on my computer, which is why I call them red line.

I'm like, I don't know what they actually call them.

Like the doc that has all the things crossed out and the suggestions added that are in red, that document.

I also had like a two pages of you may want to search through your word for the Word, or search through your document for the Word, like.

Said or says because you use it.

A bunch of times.

I feel that hard because I just had to do that.

There was also a lot of you should remove all these scenes that your beta readers told you to add.

Of course she didn't know that they but I'm like, no, I was told to add those.

I'm sorry, I'm not removing them.

The readers wanted it, so I wrote it.

So then your book released in.

The print version and ebook version, released in July, and the audiobook version just released two weeks ago.

Okay.

I was like, I know somewhere on your little scheduler thing you said October.

But I was confused about the rest.

So it released.

And what did you do after that?

Celebrated where I'm going to be incredibly unhelpful.

I had a bunch of things lined up for after the debut, for instance, in person events and things like that.

And I swear to you, every single thing has fallen through.

I think it's just part of the learning experience, right.

I need to learn to do what I've learned is to have backup events, right?

Have backup events scheduled or at least in mind.

Yes, I'm fairly introverted, so the idea of putting all of these in person events on my schedule is terrifying to me.

So it was just like, here it's one, and then wait a couple of weeks.

But yeah, when those don't go through, it's probably better to have more on your schedule.

So I'll know that, again, for when the second book launches to have just a few more things on my schedule there.

Most of it has honestly been interacting with people here on TikTok.

Well, I guess this is your podcast, right?

But I know you from TikTok.

That's where I found you and started listening to your podcast on TikTok and on Instagram.

Those are the main places where I've done marketing, and I found just wonderful supportive writing and reading communities there.

Now, you said that you found your publisher through, like a pitch thing.

The only pitch thing I've ever heard of was on Twitter.

Was it a Twitter contest or a different one?

It wasn't.

There is a website that is actually a fantastic website.

I don't do the official membership, but Savvy authors, have you heard of it?

Okay, so they do two main things that are really great for authors.

They also do workshops and classes.

But the two things that I think are great are they have a beta reading program.

So you switch manuscripts with other authors in your genre and they're chosen at random, and if it doesn't work out, you can switch back.

And the other thing they do is four times a year they'll have a pitch festival for small presses and agents, and you can do a three line pitch to whichever agents or editors seem to want your kind of manuscript.

Now, I'm sure there are people that don't listen to your kind of manuscript part of things, but I know I've seen a bunch of videos lately about that.

Yeah.

So they've gotten pretty specific about that.

They actually have a rule on there now where you have to reference something in the agents request list in your pitch, or you can't so you can't.

Just copy paste the same thing everywhere.

Right.

I know I've seen I don't know what her username on TikTok is, but there's a lady that goes through what agents are looking for and stuff like that.

And she's talked about recently, or I saw the video recently, I should say, about people pitching to agents that that's not what they represent.

But these authors thinking that they're like, oh, well, I'm amazing, so they're going to want to look at it, even though they're not looking for romance books right now.

And I'm just like, Why would you do that?

I think it's a misunderstanding.

It's not about necessarily what the agent likes, at least from the agents that I've spoken to.

The manuscripts they look for aren't necessarily just the genres and books that they love, even though they do love being passionate about a project.

It's also about the connections that they have and the people that they normally work with.

So if they have really good relationships with fantasy editors, they're not going to necessarily want your murder mysteries because they won't know how to sell that.

So it's about their skill set too.

Someone who's never been agented, so take it with a grain of salt.

I didn't even think anything about some editors may not like certain genres until I talked to an author on here that was like, she had a fantasy book and sent her book to a person who doesn't like fantasy.

And then they didn't really edit it that much because they don't like fantasy.

And so she had to find a different editor because she needed someone that read fantasy and would edit fantasy well.

And I'm like, I never would have even prior to that conversation, never would have even thought, make sure that the editor edits in your genre, right, especially.

For developmental edits, because then they're looking for story beats and character arts and things like that instead of just grammar.

So they wouldn't know what those character arcs are necessarily supposed to look like or what magical systems need to look like if they don't read fantasy.

Right?

Well, that's part of the scenes that my editor told me to remove.

It was like, there's too much she's not a developmental editor, but she's been writing fantasy books and romance books for a very long time.

And so she was like, you have way too much family interaction scenes for a classic fantasy romance.

And I was like, but it's also set at Christmas time, and the readers requested it.

At the end of the day, the readers are the ones that buy the book, not the editors.

Right?

And I have read quite a few.

I didn't used to read a lot of fantasy romance.

It's not something that I connect with very easily.

But I've been reading a lot more lately because I've made a lot of friends who are fantasy romance authors, and they're incredibly talented, and I want to support them.

And there's one series that I actually really ended up loving by Luna Joya.

I forget the name of the whole series, but if you look up her up, it's her most popular series that has a lot to do with the sibling connections.

There's a romance in each book, but it's so much about the sisters and their family connection, and that's what resonated with me.

So I think that different readers just find different things that resonate with them.

Right.

Well, and at the end of the day, too.

And this is something that I learned more.

I mean, I'm on TikTok and I listen to authors say this all the time, but something that I really learned with reviews for my audiobooks, where I was like, oh, I'm going to read the reviews because I need to know if I need coaching for something to fix some big flaw or whatever.

But I would have like one review would be like, oh my gosh, I hate that she does blah, blah, blah.

And then the next one would be like, I love the exact same thing that the other person and so I'm like, I can't get coaching for posting opinions.

I feel like that's going to be the same.

My book is about to release.

I think by the time this airs, it will have released.

That's exciting.

Sorry, what's it called?

So my book is called The Forgotten Beast.

And it's a Beauty and the Beast retelling that is part of an overarching fantasy.

It's like half of it takes place in our world and half of it takes place in a fantasy world.

So I'm like it's between genres somewhere.

I know as soon as that launches to expect some people are going to love some parts and then other people will hate the same exact parts.

And that is life where people all have their own brains and biases and all these things.

I found that most of my favorite books end up usually getting like a 3.75 to 4.2 on goodreads because they are unique enough that they have people hating the same thing that other people love.

I have this theory now that makes me feel better about bad reviews.

That is, if nobody hates what you wrote, nobody really loves it either.

Nobody wants to be average, right?

No, that would be awful to get three stars for everything.

I remember seeing, oh, gosh, I am terrible.

Harper Harker is it?

Harker McNair just released a book and she was literally like, I need someone to go leave one star reviews that doesn't like the book because everybody's leaving five star reviews.

I'm like, man, oh, to have that.

Like, I mean, mine so far of the five people that beta read it and the one person that alpha read it, I'm like, so far those six people have loved my book.

But it's about to go out to 120 people on Monday and I'm like, exciting.

Congratulations on your upcoming debut.

I'm so happy for you.

Terrifying.

Terrifying.

So you have the next book is coming out in a couple of months.

How has your process changed?

Oh, it changed a lot.

That two year waiting period was a very long time.

So I am a very I don't want to say a prolific writer because I do a ton of rewriting.

It's my biggest flaw.

But I write a lot.

I have averaged over the past five years about 6 hours a day writing.

Oh, gosh, yes.

But I'm trying to slow down now and do more reading because I got out of the habit of that.

So this past six months or so, it's been more of a two to 4 hours a day.

I'm also doing a lot more marketing and things like that, so that take up time out of my schedule.

But I tried to do an outline when I'm a panther.

I just wanted to try it out and see if that made things faster because everyone said it did and it did not, because I ended up reading every single thing that happened.

None of the characters were doing what they were supposed to do.

So I did have to fully rewrite.

And now I'm going through and just making the sentences pretty.

This is my final rewrite before it goes off to the editor.

But I'm just going to stick to my normal process, which is to write a really fast, sloppy draft and then take it from there and not worry about the outlining and hitting the beats because my brain doesn't work that way.

See, I've done it both ways now.

And I need to find for this third book, I need to figure out.

So I had one book I started beginning of 22, and that was completely pants, but I only got like 30,000 words into it before Beauty and the Beast took over my brain.

So for the Beauty and the Beast one, I was like, oh, we're going to use Christmas songs and we're going to use the themes of these Christmas songs to plan the chapters around.

So my plotting was like, meet female main character.

Enter male main character.

There was a battle scene there's, a drummer boy.

It was very basic plotting, but it was enough to where during the day, while I was doing my day job and my narrating and the other things that I do with my day, I could be thinking, oh, the next chapter is the Little Drummer Boy chapter.

How are we getting from I don't even remember what happens before the Little Drummer Boy chapter, but how are we getting from where I stopped writing to that what's the scenes that are going to bridge to where the Little Drummer Boy comes in.

And so I feel like helped me, but I don't even feel like my plot was a true plot.

I'm like it's somewhere in between the two.

But then my beta readers were like, oh, you got to continue the song thing for the future books.

And I found it very stifling because I'm very limited.

One pentatonix has a bazillion Christmas songs.

So I had a ton of options of songs to build this plot around.

And I had songs that I was able to cut out because oh, well, that chapter would be similar to this other chapter.

So we just cut the extra songs out.

What I did was I picked my favorite of the two.

If there was two songs that would work for war, I picked my favorite of the two and then threw the other one out.

But for other chapters.

This next book that I'm working on is the villain's perspective during the Beauty and the Beast book.

And so it'll be a novella.

But I needed something that's like a rock or a metal kind of harder, darker theme to their songs.

And I started outlining it trans Siberian Orchestra.

No, the band that I liked.

As far as the characters involved, I found the band that I liked and the characters that I liked.

But the issue that I was having is their songs.

They only have like three albums.

And so I'm like while the songs would fit perfectly, I'm trying to design the whole thing.

So I'm like, I think I'm just going to listen to that band while I write.

But I feel like because it helped so much to have that next chapter, I was reaching towards I need some kind of a plot.

But some of it will be from the first book because you're seeing the other side of the war.

You're seeing what the villain was doing at that time and all that besides fighting.

Well, that's such a cool concept and idea.

I haven't heard of anyone doing that before.

So this just really sounds interesting.

I enjoy hearing about it.

Where you get the other side of things.

Well, yeah, getting the other side of things and just the theming.

A novel around Christmas songs.

Oh, yeah, that was a very unique method.

I feel like it started as two different ideas.

Like I love Beauty and the Beast.

And then I was like, oh, it'd be cool to have a song with Christmas book with Christmas songs.

And then at some point the two just were like, we could just combine those two ideas together.

I don't know how that happened, but it did and it worked.

I've already told my team, I'm like, listen, I started outlining with the songs and I don't think it's going to work, but we're going to do a good book anyways.

So it did give me some ideas for the storyline though.

So still have to write it, though.

Still have to write it.

I've been focused on getting the first one out there into the world and then worry about something else.

Have you found that there's?

Well, I guess I should wait until your first debut novel comes out to ask.

But I found that there's a lot more pressure on the second novel, at least in my own head.

I don't know that yet.

I imagine it would be that way though, because if you don't have a backlist that they can go in and read, they're like, hey, I want to read.

If they like what you write, obviously if they like your style of writing.

If they don't like it, obviously they are going to leave all of your lists and never come back again.

Assuming they like your writing and they like your stories, if you don't have that backlist for them to go and read other stuff you've done.

Yes, I imagine I need the next thing would be I imagine that's the next question.

I was just speaking more on internal pressure.

I've noticed a difference just because knowing that somebody is going to read the novel makes me more picky about it than having it be some theory.

I've been very tight lipped about the series as a whole, but I have what's going to happen in each book, each of the four main novels.

I have what's going to happen already in my head.

And because of I had one beta reader that had some concerns about the first book, like dangling ends that I left hanging and she was trying to get me to tie them up in book one and I was like, no, there's reasons for it.

And so I ended up telling just one person the overarching storyline because she was helping me shape it and tie it up enough where it didn't leave people angry with the first book, but where you could definitely tell like, this is something that's coming later.

So there is me and one other person that knows the overarching storyline.

Actually, if you include my tattoo artist that's supposed to be plating a tattoo, he also had to know so that he could design the piece.

But he also got a disclaimer of like just so you know, there's only like six people that have ever seen all of these book covers.

There's only two other people that know the entire overarching storyline and you are one of two people, including me, that have seen all the character art.

So I'm like just know because I have all my character art picked and all my covers designed.

So I sent all of that to him.

But yeah, I was like, just so you know, don't be telling nobody because nobody else knows this.

Yeah, it's been a fun journey but yeah, because I'm still in the plotting out the second book.

I don't think I've felt that pressure yet because I've been so focused on because of the way my brain works.

I didn't want to step out of the world of book one and into the characters of book two, technically book one and a half until I had book one wrapped up.

So that if anything changed, I had that change in mind as I was stepping into the next book.

That makes absolute sense.

Especially since they're so directly I mean.

It would be different if it was something like Emily McIntyre's series where.

Each book is a standalone as part of a series, but that's not what mine is.

So I had to actually go back into book one and copy sections where the villains would have been influencing what was happening into a separate note in my scrivener document so that I could go in and reference okay, what chapter did this happen on and what chapter?

So I keep them all in order.

Also make sure to mention things if the villains are like moving their armies around.

You need to see that in the very I don't know why I did this to myself for the first series.

Well, it sounds fun to read, so I imagine it's fun to write as well.

Lila liked the Little Mermaid growing up.

Today we'll be reading The Bell by Hans Christian Anderson.

Don't forget we're reading Les Mort de Arthur, the story of King Arthur and of his noble knights of the Roundtable on our Patreon.

You can find the link in the show notes.

The Bell people said the evening bell is sounding, the sun is setting, for a strange, wondrous tone was heard in the narrow streets of a large town.

It was like the sound of a church bell, but it was only heard for a moment, for the rolling of the carriages and the voices of the multitude made too great a noise.

US persons who were walking outside the town or the houses were farther apart with gardens or little fields between them could see the evening skies still better and heard the sound of the bell much more distinctly.

It was as if the tones came from a church in the still forest.

People looked thitherward and felt their minds attuned most solemnly.

A long time passed and people said to each other I wonder if there's a church out in the wood?

The bell has a tone that is wondrous sweet.

Let us stroll thither and examine the matter nearer.

And the rich people drove out and the poor walked, but the ways seemed strangely long to them.

And when they came to a clump of willows which grew on the skirts of the forest, they sat down and looked up at the long branches and fancied.

They were now in the depth of the green wood.

The confectioner of the town came out and set up his booth there, and soon after came another confectioner who hung a bell over his stand as a sign or ornament but it had no clapper and it was tarred over to preserve it from the rain.

When all the people returned home, they said it had been very romantic, that it was quite a different sort of thing to a picnic or tea party.

There were three persons who asserted they had penetrated to the end of the forest and that they had always heard the wonderful sounds of the bell.

But it had seemed to them as if it had come from the town.

One wrote a whole poem about it, and said the bell sounded like the voice of a mother of a good dear child, and that no melody was sweeter than the tones of the bell.

The king of the country was also observant of it, and vowed that he who could discover whence the sounds proceeded should have the title of universal bell ringer, even if it were not really a bell.

Many persons now went to the wood for the sake of getting the place but one only returned with the sort of explanation, for nobody went far enough that one not further than the others.

However, he said that the sound proceeded from a very large owl in a hollow tree, a sort of learned owl that continually knocked its head against the branches.

But whether the sound came from his head or from the hollow tree, that no one could say with certainty.

So now he got the place of universal bell ringer and wrote yearly assort treaties on the owl.

But everybody was just as wise as before.

It was the day of confirmation.

The clergymen had spoken so touchingly.

The children who were confirmed had been greatly moved.

It was an eventful day for them.

From children they become all at once grown up persons.

It was as if their infant souls were now to fly all at once into persons with more understanding.

The sun was shining gloriously.

The children that had been confirmed went out of the town and from the wood was borne towards them the sounds of the unknown bell with wonderful distinctness.

They all immediately felt a wish to go thither.

All except three.

One of them had to go home to try on a ball dress, for it was just the dress and the ball which had caused her to be confirmed this time, for otherwise she would not have come.

The other was a poor boy who had borrowed his coat and boots to be confirmed in from the innkeeper's son, and he was to give them back by a certain hour.

The third said that he never went to a strange place if his parents were not with him, and he had always been a good boy hitherto, and would still be so now that he was confirmed, and that one ought not to laugh at him for it.

The others, however, did make fun of him after all there were three therefore, that did not go.

The others hastened on.

The sun shone, the birds sang, and the children sang too, and each held the other by the hand, for as yet they had none of them any high office, and were all of equal rank in the eye of God.

But two of the youngest soon grew tired, and both returned to town.

Two little girls sat down and twined garland, so they did not go either and when the others reached the willow tree where the confectioner was, they said now we are there.

In reality the bell does not exist.

It is only a fancy that people have taken into their heads.

At the same moment the bell sounded deep in the wood, so clear and solemnly that five or six determined to penetrate somewhat further.

It was so thick and the foliage so dense that it was quite fatiguing to proceed.

Woodriff anemones grew almost too high.

Blooming convulsions and BlackBerry bushes hung in long garlands from tree to tree, where the nightingale sang and the sunbeams were playing.

It was very beautiful, but it was no place for girls to go.

Their clothes would get so torn.

Large blocks of stone lay there, overgrown with moss of every color.

The fresh spring bubbled forth and made a strange gurgling sound.

That surely cannot be the bell, said one of the children, lying down and listening.

This must be looked to.

So he remained, and let the others go on without him.

They afterwards came to a little house made of branches and the bark of trees.

A large wild apple tree bent over it as if it would shower down all its blessings.

On the roof where roses were blooming, the long stems twined round the gable, on which there hung a small bell.

Was it that which people had heard?

Yes, everybody was unanimous on the subject, except one who said that the bell was too small and too fine to be heard at so great a distance, and besides, it was very different tones to those that could move a human heart in such a manner.

It was a king's son who spoke, whereupon the others said such people always want to be wiser than everybody else.

They now let him go on alone, and as he went, his breast was filled more and more with the forest's solitude.

But he still heard the little bell with which the others were so satisfied.

And now and then, when the wind blew, he could also hear the people singing, who were singing at tea, or the confectioner had his tent.

But the deep sound of the bell rose louder.

It was almost as if an organ were accompanying it, and the tones came from the left hand, the side where the heart is placed.

Rustling was heard in the bushes, and a little boy stood before the king's son, a boy in wooden shoes, and was so short a jacket that one could see what long wrists he had.

Both knew each other.

The boy was that one among the children who could not come because he had to go home and return his jacket and boots to the innkeeper's son.

This he had done, and was now going on in wooden shoes and in his humble dress.

For the bell sounded with so deep a tone and with such strange power, that proceed he must.

Why, then we can go together, said the king's son.

The poor child that had been confirmed was quite ashamed.

He looked at his wooden shoes pulled at the short sleeves of his jacket and said that he was afraid he could not walk so fast.

Besides, he thought that the bell must be looked for to the right, for that was the place where all sorts of beautiful things were to be found.

But there we shall not meet, said the king's son, nodding at the same time to the poor boy, who went into the darkest, thickest part of the wood, where thorns tore his humble dress and scratched his face and hands and feet till they bled.

The king's son got some scratches, too, but the sun shone on his path, and it is him that we will follow, for he was an excellent and resolute youth.

I must and will find the bell, said he, even if I'm obliged to go to the end of the world.

The ugly ape sat upon the trees and grinned.

Shall we thrash him?

Said they.

Shall we thrash him?

He is the king of a son.

But on he went without being disheartened, deeper and deeper into the wood, where the most wonderful flowers were growing.

There stood white lilies with blood red stamina, sky blue tulips which shone as they waved in the winds, and apple trees, the apples of which looked exactly like large soap bubbles.

So only think how the trees must have sparkled in the sunshine.

Around the nicest green meads, where the Adir were playing in the grass grew magnificent oaks and beaches, and if the bark of one of the trees was cracked there, grass and long creeping plants grew in the crevices.

And there were large calm lakes there too, in which white swans were swimming and beat the air with their wings.

The king's son often stood still and listened.

He thought the bell sounded from the depths of these still lakes.

But then he remarked again that the tone proceeded not from there, but further off, from out the depths of the forest.

The sun now set, the atmosphere glowed like fire.

It was still in the woods, so very still, and he fell on his knees, sung his evening hymn, and said, I cannot find what I seek.

The sun is going down, and night is coming, the dark, dark night.

Yet perhaps I may be able once more to see the round red sun before he entirely disappears.

I will climb up Yonder rock.

And he seized hold of the creeping plants, and the roots of trees climbed up the moist stones where the water snakes were writhing and the toads were croaking.

And he gained the summit before the sun had quite gone down.

How magnificent was the sight from this height the sea, the great, the glorious sea that dashed its long waves against the coast, was stretched out before him.

And Yonder, where sea and sky meet, stood the sun, like a large shining altar, all melted together in the most glowing colors.

And the wood and the sea sang a song of rejoicing, and his heart sang with the rest.

All nature was a vast holy church in which the trees and the buoyant clouds were the pillars, flowers and grass, the velvet carpeting, and heaven itself, the large cupula, the red colors above, faded away as the sun vanished.

But a million stars were lighted, a million lamps shone, and the king's sun spread out his arms towards heaven and wood and sea.

When at the same moment, coming by, a path to the right appeared in his wooden shoes and jacket the poor boy who had been confirmed with him.

He had followed his own path and had reached the spot just as soon as the son of the king had done.

They ran towards each other and stood together hand in hand in the vast church of nature and of poetry, while over them sounded the invisible holy bell.

Blessed spirits floated around them and lifted up their voices in a rejoicing.

Hallelujah.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.

Be sure to come back next week for the conclusion of Lila's journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear another of her favorite fairy tales.