The Twisted Ones

The Twisted Ones is a reimagination of Arthur Machen’s influential 1904 short story, “The White People.” In her author’s note, T. Kingfisher confirms that the mysterious “Green Book” found by the protagonist is the same Green Book that features in Machen’s text. “The White People” presents the Green Book in full (though the story itself is fragmented and unfinished), framed by a discussion between two men, Cotgrave and Ambrose, reimagined by Kingfisher as Mouse’s step-grandfather and his old friend. In Machen’s story, as in Kingfisher’s, Ambrose gives the Green Book to Cotgrave as an example of what he terms “sin”—a violation of the natural order, often through the pursuit of esoteric knowledge. The story that follows is largely as The Twisted Ones describes: A girl becomes enmeshed in a hidden world, partly through her nurse’s influence, dabbling in witchcraft and encountering mysterious “white people.” These supernatural beings are variants on the fairies of European folklore, originally conceived of as, at best, amoral creatures known to kidnap human children and replace them with “changelings”—fairy children with strange and unnerving traits. Machen’s story concludes with the girl’s death by poisoning; her pregnancy, a key plot point in The Twisted Ones, was inspired by writer H.