Once upon a time there were two girls who dearly loved fairy tales ... and as they grew, they never lost their taste for magical, mythical stories. The girl with hair as black as night loved the dark and tragic tales best--the ones where birds weep tears of blood, the wicked dance in red-hot shoes, and poor little match girls die in the cold embrace of winter. She grew up to be an editor of horror fiction, and lived in a New York City apartment filled with cats and stones and polished bones and art by Edward Gorey. Thegirl with hair as light as day loved bright tales of transformation--where seal maidens dance on moonlit shores and stubborn girls weave coats of nettles for men turned into swans. She grew up to be an editor of fantasy fiction and lived in a thatched-roof English cottage covered with roses red and white, like an Arthur Rackharn painting come to life. Ten years ago these women discovered they shared a love of fairy tales--the old versions, sensual and dark, before modern children's books and cartoons fumed turned them simple and saccharine--as well as a love for adult literature based on fairy tale themes. They decided that the time had come to rescue fairy tales from the nursery and bring them back to adult readers--and so, along with artist Thomas Canty (whose beautiful painting graces this book), they created a six-volume library of stones inspired by classic tales. The first volume in the series was Snow White, Blood Red, published in 1993. It was followed by Black Thorn, White Rose; Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears; Black Swan, White Raven; and Silver Birch, Blood Moon. The final volume, Black Heart, Ivory Bones, you now hold in your hands.

In this series, some of the finest writers of mainstream horror, fantasy, and children's literature gather together to explore the many pathways, dark and bright, leading to enchantment. The diversity and range of their wonderful tales demonstrates our central premise: that classic folktale motifs still have much to offer fiction writers, and readers, today. Fairy tales speak in a deceptively simple, richly archetypal language; their symbols have proven to be as potent in the hands of modem fiction writers as they have been to generations of poets, playwrights, and storytellers in centuries past. The very words "once upon a time" evoke a shiver, a frisson of expectation. The oral and literary traditions meet in those words . . . and create sheer magic.

As we move between one century to the next, it is interesting to note that the current popularity of fairy tale literature echoes the fairy tale renaissance that occurred at the turn of the last century. In Europe the art nouveau movement, covered buildings in Paris, Prague, and Vienna, with nymphs, fairies and goddesses--and inspired magical design in ceramics, metalwork, jewelry-making and other crafts. Composers brought old folk music themes into new classical, orchestral works, and "fairy" music for the classical harp became a popular trend. The Victorian genre of "fairy painting" contained adult and rather salacious imagery, as did the perverse fairy worlds drawn by Aubrey Beardsley and Harry Clarke. The mythic dreams of the Pre-Raphaelite painters and poets were enclosed in the briars of fairy tales, as were the bittersweet stories of Oscar Wilde and the poems of William Butler Yeats. In our own fin de siecle, adult fairytale imagery has been most thoroughly explored in women's literature and art. We find fairy tales on the "mainstream"shelves in the fiction of Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, A.S. Byatt, Sara Maitland, Marina Warner, Berlie Doherty, Alice Thomas Ellis, Elis Ni Dhuibhne, and Emma Donaghue; as well as in the literary fantasy of Jane Yolen, Patricia A. McKillip, Tanith Lee, Robin McKinley, Delia Sherinafi, SheriS. Tepper, and Lisa Goldstein; in the poetry of Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Lisel Mueller, Olga Breunias, Sandra G. Abert andGwen Strauss; and in the visual arts of Paula Rego, Leonor Fini, Yvonne Gilbert, Becky Kravetz, and Wendy Froud. Many women today as in seventeenth century France, where the term "fairy tale," clonte de fie was coined-have discovered that the startling, even brutal, imagery to be found in older versions of classic tales provides useful metaphors for the challenges we face in modern life. These tales come from, an oral tradition passed on for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years primarily by women storytellers--and their themes are as relevant today as they were in centuries past. Modern life is still full of wicked wolves, neglectful oreven murderousparents, men under beastly spells, and beautiful womenhiding: treacherous hearts. We still encounter dangers on the dark and twisty paths leading through the soul, as well as fairy godmothers; and animal guides to light the way.

In the pages that follow (as in the previous five books of this series) we welcome writers of both genders and from all areas, of the literary arts to explore those paths and to see what new twists and turns they have to offer. We invite you to join. us on this last excursion into the enchanted forest...laying a trail of bread crumbs and stones to bring us safely home, one last time.

Black Heart, Ivory Bones. Copyright © by Ellen Datlow. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.