Guest post written by The Redwood Bargain author Markelle Grabo
Markelle Grabo retells the fairy tales that frustrate her, which, based on that guideline, could include nearly all of them. Her YA fantasy novels, Call Forth a Fox and The Redwood Bargain, are steeped in woodsy atmosphere and sapphic yearning. She earned her master’s degree in creative writing for children and young adults from Hamline University and lives in the Greater Chicago Area with her husband and two very fluffy cats.
About The Redwood Bargain: From the author of Call Forth a Fox, comes a gothic fairytale in which a maid poses as her lord’s stepdaughter to fulfill his bargain with a dangerous lord of the woods, only to end up falling for the very lady she’s meant to impersonate. Brothers Grimm meets Downton Abbey. Released April 28th 2026.
I wonder how the cowherd’s daughter felt about that?
This was the first question I muttered to myself while reading the Brothers Grimm fairy tale, “Hurleburlebutz” for the first time, and it’s what ultimately led me to writing The Redwood Bargain, my queer gothic fantasy reimagining of the story.
But before we get to my version, let’s spend a moment with the original fairy tale. In “Hurleburlebutz” (also known as “The Dwarf, the Fox, and the Princess”), a king gets lost in the forest and promises his youngest daughter to a dwarf in exchange for a way home. The king is really upset about this, but his daughters have a plan. On the day the dwarf is meant to collect on his end of the bargain, the princesses dress a cowherd’s daughter in their clothes and leave her for the dwarf to find. The dwarf—well, actually, now he’s a fox—comes to fetch her and quickly realizes she’s not the princess he was promised.
The princesses attempt their trickery again with a gooseherd’s daughter, but that doesn’t work, either. So, the king and his daughters reluctantly send the real princess off with the fox. Spoiler alert: they fall in love and she breaks his curse by cutting off a dove’s head, transforming him back into a prince so they can inherit the kingdom. Because, well, fairy tales!
This story is classified as an “animal as bridegroom” tale, like “Snow White and Rose Red”, the inspiration for my first queer fairy tale, Call Forth a Fox. In that retelling, my aim was to bring the queer subtext of Rose Red to the surface, rebelling against the original fairy tale’s ending—in which Snow White marries the bear prince and Rose Red marries the prince’s brother, an off-the-page character we never meet—in favor of giving Rose Red the sapphic romance and bisexual coming of age she deserves.
In writing The Redwood Bargain, my focus switched from title to supporting character. Rather than write from the POV of the king or a princess, I chose the cowherd’s daughter (though I turned her into a kitchen maid due to my love of Downton Abbey). See, I couldn’t stop thinking about the cowherd’s daughter, or the gooseherd’s daughter, for that matter. I wondered how they felt, being used in the princesses’ scheme. I wondered if they were offered anything for their service, or if they were simply forced into the position of sacrifice because they were peasants being ordered about by princesses.
From there, I envisioned my main character—an indentured servant named Katrien—who would play along because of her class status, yes, but also because she’d have something to gain from the bargain too—the opportunity to free her beloved cousin from a contract with their lord of the manor, provided she successfully fools a creature from the forest (who, in my version, kills the girls who try to trick him).
The queer romance aspect followed quickly. I’ve always been a fan of “princess in training” stories and thought about how deliciously complicated it would be for Katrien to fall in love with Zaviera, the very lady she’s meant to impersonate. When you’re capable of same-gender attraction, sometimes it’s hard to tell whether you want to be with someone or want to become them. In Katrien’s case, it’s very much both.
Downton Abbey played a role in the romance too. I have a great fondness for the franchise, but the queer rep was rough in those early TV seasons. I wanted an Edwardian period drama where queerness isn’t a tragedy. Where the problem isn’t that two girls have feelings for each other, but that they have these feelings while navigating a sinister bargain, in which one girl is risking her life because of her class, while the other girl’s life is shielded by her class.
Queering this fairy tale also meant interrogating the purpose of the story’s antagonist turned prince—the dwarf/fox. Or, in my case, a tree creature known as The Redwood Man. Remember, the young princess and the cursed prince are meant to fall in love and live happily ever after. But the idea that the princess would fall in love with the man she was bargained away to by her father was something I couldn’t imagine in a modern retelling of this fairy tale. I couldn’t imagine my characters—Katrien or Lady Zaviera—falling in love with The Redwood Man. Yet, others probably could.
Another author might’ve kept the ending intact. It’s the perfect setup for a dark monster romance, after all. A girl falls in love with a murderous forest lord, yet the power of their love ultimately transforms him. I see the possibilities. And yet I hate them! While I do enjoy a morally grey romance on occasion, most often I’m in favor of just letting villains be villains. This is especially true in my own stories. The Redwood Man was never going to be the love interest. Instead, I saw him as the mirror to the father who bargained away his daughter. Two men choosing for young women because they want to, because they can, because they believe their needs matter most.
But in my fairy tale, it’s not the men who inherit the kingdom. To find out who does—and learn what becomes of my gothic girls in love—you’ll have to read The Redwood Bargain.
