The Twelve Huntsmen: a Short Fairy Tale

by Mercy Loomis

A lot of the lesser-known stories collected by the Brothers Grimm are lesser-known for a good reason—they simply don’t satisfy the expectations of the modern reader. But they don’t have to stay that way…

When Princess Cyrene’s engagement to Prince Roland is derailed by Roland’s father, it’s up to Cyrene to win Roland back. Disguised as hunstmen, she and her eleven handmaidens join Roland’s household in order to discover whether his love was ever true. But just how far is Cyrene prepared to go to get her happy ending?

Available in the anthology Absent Mercies .

13 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 28, 2013

About the author

Mercy Loomis grew up in a haunted house, and has had quite enough of ghosts for one lifetime, thank you. Though she now lives in a 150-year-old house, it is remarkably ghost-free. (That, or they’re staying on the down-low. She doesn’t care which.)

Mercy finished writing her first vampire novel when she was in middle school, and hasn’t stopped writing about them since. She loves stories about the paranormal because monsters are scary, but less scary than real people. Or at least less depressing.

Mercy graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison one class short of an accidental certificate in Folklore. She credits her love of mythology to her mom reading Greek myths as bedtime stories, and her love of fantastical adventure stories to watching cheesy movies with her dad. Her love of history (and coffee!) is completely her husband’s fault, but she doesn’t know who’s to blame for the fascination with physics.

She guesses that hanging out with Dad while he butchered deer also had an effect on her character, but exactly what effect, she leaves up to the reader.

See what Mercy’s up to and find links to her other work at www.mercyloomis.com.