I'm lying in my bed beneath the covers.

My grandmother tucks me in. As she leans over me, she blocks out the light from my bedside lamp, and her wild tangle of flame red curls threaded with silver is lit up from behind. A halo fit for an angel. I must be about four years old. By the time I was seven, gran's hair had turned completely white.

The memories that flicker through my dreams are soft and shimmering. Everything glows brighter than its real life counterpart, bursting with radiance, swimming in muted light.

"So, what will it be tonight my bairn?" She asks, tucking a stray hair behind my ear. "Sleeping Beauty? Rapunzel? Or maybe The Little Mermaid? It's been ages since you last heard that one."

Most nights I'm perfectly happy to hear any of the countless fairy tales my gran tells. I've heard the same stories a million times over, and they never get old. But tonight is different.

"Tell me a new one!" I squeak from under the covers.

My grandmother gives me a disapproving look.

"I mean, tell me a new one, please." I say. "I want a story I never heard before."

"One you haven't heard before? That's no easy task." She walks over to my bookshelves; her fingers trail over Grimm's Fairy Tales, The Happy Prince, Collected works of Hans Christian Andersen. Even at that age, I had a huge appetite for fantasy. For the unreal.

Gran sits back down on the bed. She looks thoughtful for a moment, scrutinizing my face before nodding.

After a long silence, she gives me a strange smile – sort of sad, half-formed. "I was going to wait until you're a bit older to tell you this one," she says. "But I suppose it's time you heard it. No time like the present."

She tucks the covers tighter around me, pulling the quilt up from the bottom of the bed and smoothing it over me like a woolen shield.

"You'll tell me if the story is getting too scary, ok? I only told your mum this one when she was much older than you are now."

"Mommy knows this story?"

"Of course. All the women in our family know this story. And now you will too."

"Is it a scary story?"

"Sort of. It's scary, but you'll like it. And you need to hear it sometime anyway. Might as well be now. " Her expression is solemn. "It's very important."

"Why?"

"Because it's not just a story, my bairn. Not all fairy tales are made up. This one happens to be true."

Before I can get another question in, her voice changes into the special singsong lilt reserved for bedtime stories.

A long, long time ago, back when there were fairies in every forest, and princes and princesses ruled over vast kingdoms while dragons slept beneath the earth, there lived an old witch in a cave by the sea.

Although she was shaped like a woman, in truth she was more sea creature than human, and she was just about the ugliest thing you can imagine. Her hair was long green dripping seaweed, her face was scaly grey and wet to the touch, and her teeth were a row of jagged brown spikes encrusted with fish guts and slime.

Her heart was as cold as the murky sea cave she lived in, and when she wasn't brewing potions and poisons, she was using dark magic to stir up the seas and wreck any ships unfortunate enough to pass by her lair.

But there was one speck of light and warmth in the old sea witch's heart.

She had a daughter; a lovely human girl she'd found half-drowned on the tide as an infant. Some say the girl was shipwrecked royalty, marked as the heir of a kingdom, and that is why the old woman had kept her. Other versions of the tale say that the old woman was merely lonely, and kept the girl by chance as if she were a pet. Either way, the girl was as beautiful as her adoptive mother was ugly, with eyes the deep blue green of the ocean and long tumbling hair as pale and glimmering as moonlight on sea foam. The old woman dressed her in faerie fabrics – a delicate dress of enchanted spider's silk that grew as the girl grew, embroidered with tiny pearls and bits of coral.

As the years passed by on that lonely isle and the girl grew to be more maiden than child, the sea witch feared that her daughter would be stolen away by some human man or even a sea spirit or a warlock.

You see, the old witch had come to truly love the girl, and could not bear to be parted from her.

So she forbade the girl from ever leaving the cave. She kept her hidden away in the darkness, far from the eyes of any passersby.

Only once a month when the moon was full was the girl able to leave her prison – on these nights the old sea hag swam far out into the moonlit ocean looking for ingredients for her potions. Unattended, the girl would venture out on to the beach, or sit at the cave's entrance bathed in moonbeams. She was always careful to return to the cave's shadows before daybreak and the return of her foster mother.

On one such moonlit night, when the old sea witch was far out at sea, a young man happened upon the cave. He'd become separated from his comrades and –

"Was he a prince?" I interrupt the story.

"A prince?" Gran looks thoughtful. "Well, this is a very old story my sweet. There are many different tellings of it. Some people do say he was a prince. Others tell it that he was a wandering knight in service to some ancient king, or else an elvish noble of the Fairy Court, lost and far from home. Some people even say he had wings like a bird, and he'd fallen down from a country above the clouds just to meet the girl.

"An angel?"

"Yes, you could call it that. It's just one of so many tellings. I've even heard one version where he's a shipwrecked pirate with a heart of gold, saved from the tides by the old witch out of pity."

"That's silly. Pirates are the bad guys. He can't be a pirate."

"You think a pirate is bad? That's nothing, my bairn. There's a dark telling of the tale that has it he wasn't a man at all, but a creature of pure darkness. The prince of the Kingdom of Night, riding a pitch black steed."

"Why was he riding around on the beach?"

"There were many fishing villages along the coast of that land. Most likely, he was looking for a meal," she says, her eyes going dark. "His kind didn't eat regular food like you and me. He was out for blood."

"A vampire?"

She nods.

I shake my head, confused now, and more than a little flustered. "But which one's true? Was he a vampire? Or a knight or a pirate?"

"I suppose it's whichever version of the story you want to be the truth."

"But–"

She presses her finger to my lips and carries on.

The young man – or angel or elf or prince or whatever you will – saw the maiden as she sat at the entrance of the sea cave combing her long silvery locks that night, singing a song so forlorn his heart broke at the sound of it.

At that moment he completely forgot why he'd been traveling so close to the sea in the first place, all thoughts of his travels totally blown away in the winds of her sad song. He knew then that every path he'd ever walked, every step, had led him to her.

He stood entranced at the sound of her song for so long that eventually the first rays of morning light crept over the sands, and the girl began to move back into the cave's shadows. Broken out of his enchantment, he ran across the beach to the cave's entrance, calling for the girl to wait. No sooner had he reached the entrance than the old woman swooped up out of the waves and into the cave, pulling the girl far back into the darkness with her.

Unable to enter the cave, the young man set–

"Why?" I interrupt again. "Why couldn't he go inside the cave?"

My gran shakes her head and sighs impatiently.

"A witch's lair is always well protected, my bairn. The entrance was lined with magical powders... red chalk and crushed onyx and black pearls, and there were powerful incantations carved into the stone walls. Only the most fearsome of warlocks would have been able to cross that threshold. No more interruptions now. It's getting late."

From then on, the young man hid in the forest besides the beach, always watching the cave's entrance day and night for any sign of the girl. Many days later, when the moon was full once again, he watched as the old witch left the cave and sunk down beneath the waves, basket and knife in hand. Some time later the girl came to the cave's entrance once more and began to sing. The young man crept across the beach and stood before the girl, asking her name.

Although she was wary of the stranger at first, they spoke through the night. She had a hundred questions about the world outside the cave, and he had a hundred more about her life within it. As the sun rose and the old sea witch's return drew near, the young man promised to visit her again on the next full moon.

And so it was that every few weeks after the witch had left on her oceanic explorations, they would sit before the cave bathed in moonlight, hungrily devouring each other's company. Little by little, he stole her heart, and before long they'd pledged their love to one another.

They planned to run away together on the eve of the next full moon – he'd take her away from the damp and lonely cave forever.

Little did they know that the witch had begun to suspect that something had changed in her daughter, and she had taken to spying on the two lovers from the shallows when they thought she was far away combing the ocean's depths.

She took action swiftly. On the evening the two were to run away, the witch hovered at the cave's entrance. Taking her daughter's hand in her own, she told her that she knew everything, and all she wanted was her daughter's happiness. She gave them her blessing.

"She's lying." I say. I almost shout it, as if I could warn the girl in the story.

"Yes, quite right." My grandmother smiles before continuing.

The old witch, confident she'd won the girl's trust, said she had a wedding gift for her. It was a shimmering silver ring in the shape of a sea serpent, biting its own tail between needle-sharp teeth. The girl tearfully embraced her mother, promising to return after she was wed and visit her as often as she could.

But no sooner had she slipped the ring on her finger than silvery scales sprung up and enveloped her lovely skin. Her body shrunk into itself, and she was turned into a giant sea snake, glittering in the moonlight as she thrashed about at the cave's entrance.

"I wish I'd done this long ago," the old woman cackled. "I don't care much either way what form you're in. Girl or serpent, you are my daughter either way. Which is proof above all else that I, and I alone, truly love you – ungrateful foundling through you may be. My love is a thousand times stronger than his could ever be. You'll have to see it for yourself, my lovely. See through your own eyes how shallow men's affections are. He'll run a million miles the moment he sees you like this, if he doesn't die of fear first. After that, perhaps I'll turn you back."

And with that the witch swooped down into the waves and was gone, confident the young man would flee upon seeing her daughter's new form.

Some time later, the young man arrived at the cave's entrance, ready to steal away with his love. All he saw as he stood before the cave was a massive silver serpent, a monster to his eyes, coiling around the discarded robes of his beloved.

He cried out and the serpent darted out of the cave onto the beach, racing over the sand towards him. He swung his sword, slashed at the creature in wide deadly strokes. He plunged his sword into its heart, and at last the great snake lay still. The young man ran to the cave, called out for the girl over and over again.

When she finally answered, her voice was as soft as a dying flame.

She'd taken back her true form as she lay dying on the cold white sand.

Tears filled his eyes as he realized what had unfolded. She died in his arms, and he chose to join her without a moment's hesitation – he carried her lifeless body into the sea and drowned beneath the waves.

Much later, when the old woman found the lovers entwined, their bodies dancing together slowly on the currents caught in a forest of kelp, she wept for the loss of her daughter. She had only one way to undo the wrong she'd caused.

There is no reversing death, but it needn't be the end.

With a sweep of her hand she gathered up their entangled souls, and she cast a spell over them – the most powerful spell she knew. She freed the magic into the vast oceans, streaking away like shoals of darting silver fish.

She saw then that everything had played out just as it ought to.

True love lives forever – her jealous heart had helped them to discard the shells of that first lifetime, just as a snake sheds its skin, and they'd surely meet again many times over.

Some threads of destiny are wound together tight as the tapestry of the world.

The end is just the beginning. We all have a million paths, an infinity of beginnings. All she'd done was play her part. As I will. And as you will, too.

Silence. My gran watches me, as if waiting for a reaction. I bite down on my lip. My eyes prickle with tears.

I didn't totally understand all the stuff at the end of the story, but I did understand that both of the main characters freaking died.

"They're both... dead?" I whimper as tears well up in my eyes. "That's not how fairy tales are supposed to go." My gran gathers me up in her arms, smoothing down my hair, kissing me on the crown of my head.

"There, there. I'm sorry my sweet. Maybe I should have waited until you were older. I'm sorry I couldn't give you a happy ending."

A happy ending.

I wake up.