The Wealdwife's Tale

The boundaries between present, past and future, between reality and illusion, are permeable and shifting in this eerie, convoluted version of a classic folktale. The holdings of the Eighth Duke of West Redding, Rudyard Riding Wenceslas (known as Waldo), border the Weald, a mysterious wood that no one has ever been able to enter. Convinced that the Weald holds his beloved late wife Elva, who died 11 years earlier giving birth to their daughter, also named Elva, Waldo builds wings to fly to her. He returns with a strange old woman named Avle and her daughter, who looks like the late duchess. When he marries the daughter, his three sons flee to the Weald. Elva discovers them there in altered form; one tells her she can save them if she keeps silent for a year. Fleeing the Weald, she finds herself in a place much like, but not the same as, the West Redding she left. There the Ninth Duke, Odlaw Wenceslas, seeks to wed her despite her silence and the suspicions of his people. Fantasist Hazel ( Winterking ) blends the earthy and spiritual with suggestions of mirror worlds and interwoven generations in this vivid but unwieldy concoction of greed, power, deceit and love. (Mar . )