Marginalia
Mary Robinette Kowal
A very good, but conventional, story
Marginalia, by Mary Robinette Kowal, is a finalist for the 2025 Best Short Story Hugo. You can find it in here in Uncanny. (By the way, Uncanny really cleaned up in the short categories this year.) It's a very good story. I ranked it second after Nghi Vo's Stitched to Skin Like Family Is, because I am a flaming neophile and Stitched felt more novel to me. Not novel for Vo-- it was recognizably the kind of thing she writes. But no one else could have.
Marginalia is a fantasy story set in the kind of faux-feudal/medieval world that so much of fantasy occupies. (European fairy tales and J.R.R. Tolkien.) If you read a lot of fantasy you will recognize the essential plot. In fact, Kowal herself puts that basic plot in the mind of a ten-year-old in the story and pans it. But then the story ends up being only a slight variation on it. (spoiler1)
Still, it's a well-done cover of a well-known old song, and I enjoyed it.