Blackest Spells

by Phipps, C. T.

  We’d just have to figure out which ones were safe to sell and which ones needed to be dumped into a black hole.

  The Witch Queen

  By Michael Pogach

  Long ago, when it was still good to wish for a thing, a black-bearded conqueror built a castle by the sea. With iron and grace he ruled his lands, and his subjects loved his unbending will, the more so when, after many years, it was announced the king’s wife was with child.

  The queen gave birth before dawn on a mid-winter morning to the blackest-haired girl the lands by the sea had ever known. Before the girl’s naming ceremony, however, it was announced the king’s wife had died of fever. Even so, the king declared the birth day celebration for the princess would last a year and a day.

  And it did.

  The king, all smiles despite his loss, hosted banquet and ball and masquerade. Hardly passed a day without celebration. Gifts were sent from the many corners of the world. Baubles from the cold lands to the north. Gold from the mountains to the east. Diamonds so clear they could be water from the coasts far to the south. And roses from the most distant lands of the dwarves, brought by seven of the stocky fellows who planted them around the castle walls.

  It was said in whisper and in song, despite the king’s loss, this year was the happiest any kingdom had ever known.

  Like all things, however, happiness has its cycles, and soon the king returned to lordship and governance. The raising of the princess was left to the wise old crones who shuffled about the castle. Under their care, the princess grew bright and tall and inquisitive and headstrong, and she loved the crones and they loved her.

  In time came the princess’s twelfth birthday, the day a laurel crown like her father’s would be fitted to her sable-haired head. She woke earlier than usual this day, before her father knocked on her door or the crones prepared her breakfast.

  “Come, crones,” she shouted, excited to finally see her crowning dress. “It’s time. It’s time.”

  And a-shuffling came the crones.

  “Settle, princess,” said the first.

  “You cannot wind the clock faster,” said the second.

  “Patience keeps the Witch Queen at bay,” said the third crone.

  Though she was twelve and scoffed at the invocation of a childhood bogeywitch, the princess composed herself and let the crones attend to her. So enchanted were they, princess and crones, with their preparations before the large looking glass they never thought to open the balcony doors. Thus, none realized the time for dawning came and went without the sun.

  Only when the king’s voice bellowed through the castle, calling for his adjuncts and servants, did the princess break free of pins and yarn and spindle. Curious as ever, she ran into the hall and was nearly crushed by the press of servants rushing this way and that. Only the hands of the crones pulling her back into the room saved her.

  “Prepare the guard,” the king shouted, his voice carrying from the throne room. “Assemble the lancers. And bring torches!”

  Torches? But it was day.

  The princess flung wide the balcony doors. All the world was in gloom. Neither the distant mountains, nor the plains below could be discerned. Not even the rose vines which, in twelve years, had grown impenetrable around the castle, could be spied more than a few feet below.

  The night was absolute.

  Until a star shone upon the earth, at the edge of the plains, where the gold of wheat began to shimmer. Only it wasn’t a star. It was a woman, tall and radiant in a gown of white.

  “The Witch Queen,” said the first crone as they shuffled to the balcony beside the princess.

  “The roses will keep her at bay,” said the second.

  “No, there will be war,” said the third.

  “War?” the princess asked, knowing the word only from the crones’ tales, for few remained in the castle who had ever seen combat.

  “Yes,” said the king from the doorway, in his hands the princess’s two best dolls: Hero, the woolen knight; and Mare, the wooden horse. “War.”

  Her crowning dress trailing uncinched behind her, the princess flew to her father. He raised her high and kissed her on the forehead and said, “I love you.”

  The princess knew from the crones’ tales that a soldier off to war was to ask forgiveness of a cleric for his sins, yet there had been no clerics in the castle in her lifetime, and it was not her place to hear her father’s transgressions. So, the princess said the only thing she could.

  “I love you too, Daddy.”

  To the crones, the king said, “Protect the princess.”

  They nodded in turn as he placed his daughter on the ground.

  “Don’t go,” she said.

  But the king was already out of the room, calling like thunder, “Adjuncts, fetch my armor and arms!”

  Back to the balcony, the princess went, her two best dolls clutched to her chest. Below, the Witch Queen’s light blanched the plains.

  “Will he win?” she asked the crones.

  “If he is true,” said the first.

  “If his love is pure,” said the second.

  “It is war,” said the third.

  Curious and afraid, the princess watched as the vines opened below and forth rode her father and his army as if belched from the castle. Like ants to lines, they ranged upon the plains, men and boys barely older than their king’s daughter, battle anticipation trembling their knees and releasing their bladders. Only the oldest among them remembered what it was like to parry death and to kill, and even these were memories of skirmishes not wars, for the kingdom had long known peace.

  Flanking these soldiers, the knights aligned, their steeds pawing the earth until a great cloud rose overhead. These men, at least, knew of battle in their foreign service to their king who rode before them.

  War is glorious, peacetime stories tell, but there is no glory in a girl watching her father die.

  “You wicked ogress!” the princess cried when the dust cleared and the king’s army lay scattered like so many of her toys, the king still before them, impaled upon a spear of night.

  Of the Witch Queen’s army, if an army she ever had, there was no sign.

  “He deserved his fate,” the Witch Queen said, her voice carrying like heat in the summer. She floated across the plains over the blood of the dead, her gown brilliant and unblemished. “As did the men who followed his treacherous authority.”

  The princess snugged her dolls between her elbow and armpit and climbed the balcony rail.

  “Stop,” said the first crone.

  “It is dangerous,” said the second.

  “You’ll fall,” said the third.

  But the princess would not fall. She knew her responsibility. With her stockinged feet upon the narrow rail, she announced in the custom of story and of the land, “In the name of the king, my father, I challenge you to battle.”

  The Witch Queen paused. If she hadn’t been so far below, the princess would have believed she saw a smile cross her face.

  “The king is dead,” the Witch Queen said. “Long live the queen.”

  Her words struck the princess like a tempest gale. She stumbled and nearly fell, but though she was still young and still small, she was no weakling and no coward. And she knew her responsibility.

  “I challenge you,” she repeated.

  “Think on your words, girl. Go back to your room and play with your dolls. Wait for my coming.”

  With that, the Witch Queen pointed a long finger at the castle. The rose vines below shuddered but did not part. The Witch Queen appeared neither surprised nor daunted. She stretched her finger once more, this time at the balcony, and spoke an incantation that scuttered into the princess’s mind like insects seeking her soul. Frightened, the princess rushed inside and closed the doors, the vines swallowing the balcony behind her. A blast hit the castle, shaking it from foundation to spire, but it held strong.

  “Wait for my coming,” the Witch Queen’s whispered voice repeated,
prompting the princess to retreat into the castle’s embrace.

  Through corridor and hall the princess ran, seeking refuge. Seeking protection. But all the soldiers had gone forth. There remained not a single man with sword or shield in the castle. Only the crones and the squires and the adjuncts. And the princess.

  Before long, she found herself in the throne room, weeping and clutching to her empty chest the laurel crown that had once been her father’s.

  “I can bring your father back,” a little voice said.

  The princess looked around expecting to see the Witch Queen come for her. She was, however, alone.

  Again she heard, “I can bring your father back.”

  The princess looked deep into the corner shadows expecting to find a dove or a fairy or a talking mouse. She was, however, alone.

  “If you love him,” the voice said.

  The princess’s eyes fell to the crown in her hands. Entwined in its beautiful strands, flexed a tiny spider, its eyes glossy and wide.

  Spiders, the princess knew from the crones’ stories, were almost as dangerous as the Witch Queen herself, plundering the souls of the innocent with their many legs and eyes. But she could not resist the temptation of saving her father.

  “Of course I love him,” she said.

  “Then you must do what I say,” the spider replied, “but quickly.”

  “Tell me.”

  “First, collect the king,” the spider said. “Bring him here so that I may work the few magics I have left.”

  “But the Witch Queen,” the princess said.

  “Even she cannot penetrate the shell of rose and thorn that protects this place. She has departed. The sun shines once more. Go, order the adjuncts and squires to collect the king.”

  And the princess did.

  The king was lain upon a bed of gold and crimson within a glass coffin before the throne as was the custom of the lands by the sea.

  “Now,” the spider said when the adjuncts and squires had departed, “I cannot bring him to life just yet, but I can keep him from death.”

  “You promised,” the princess wailed, fearing she’d been tricked by the enduring nature of spiders.

  “And I will fulfill my promise. This is not storybook magic. It requires more than I alone can do. Tell me again, do you love your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you sacrifice for him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you do as I ask, even to your own peril, if it can restore him?”

  “Yes. Tell me what I must do.”

  “Fetch your crones,” said the spider.

  Though she couldn’t fathom what help her crones could be, the princess left the throne room a-calling for the crones who came a-shuffling.

  “Oh my,” said the first crone when they entered the throne room.

  “The king,” said the second.

  “It is done,” said the third.

  “Not done yet,” the spider announced, revealing itself. From the crown, it wriggled. To the floor, it dropped. Before the crones, it rose upon its four hind legs.

  As one, the crones gasped. The spider, quicker than any could prevent, threw filaments to the ceiling and swung upon them from one crone to the next, impaling the left of eye of each with one of its tiny legs.

  “I’m blind,” cried the first crone.

  “It burns,” cried the second.

  “We are betrayed,” cried the third.

  A wind blew through the throne room, and the three crones collapsed. In their places, three piles of dust.

  Came a second wind and blew away the dust.

  “Now,” said the spider when it had returned to the crown, three globules of eye jelly on one of its limbs, “I can save the king.”

  The words the spider next spoke, as it gesticulated with its many legs, made the princess’s stomach quease and her head swim.

  In time, silence returned, and the princess remembered where she was. She stood, wanting to find and squash the spider for its treachery, but when she saw her father in his glass coffin, his chest was rising and falling softly.

  “He’s alive,” she said.

  “He is,” the spider said from the weaves of the laurel crown the princess still held to her chest. “But he is not waking. This is all the power I have. He will sleep for a hundred years. After that, he will pass beyond all magic and alchemy. To wake him, you must help me.”

  “Help you?”

  “With my cauldron, I can distill a potion to restore your father, but the Witch Queen stole it long ago. Fetch it for me, and I will help you even before removing my own curse.”

  “What is your curse?” the princess asked, a fancy rising within her so ludicrous considering the situation, but she couldn’t help its surge.

  “Why, I am a prince, of course.”

  Of course! As all the stories told. As all the curses demanded. A prince in the form of a spider, awaiting a true love’s kiss, no doubt.

  “A prince,” the princess repeated, surprised at the hunger in her words.

  “With my cauldron and the Witch Queen’s blood, I can restore the king and remove my curse. Will you do as I ask?”

  “But she is so powerful.”

  “Do not fear. She has returned to her tower on the other side of the Faraway Forest. She will never suspect your approach. Go and fetch my cauldron and a single drop of her blood, and all will be made right.”

  “But I am only a girl.”

  “You are the king’s daughter!”

  “I am the king’s daughter,” the princess repeated. A princess who knew she must one day marry a prince.

  “Will you do this,” the spider asked, “for my sake and for his?”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it please, so I know your heart is true. Speak your name and say it.”

  “I, Zahra, princess of the kingdom by the sea, pledge to retrieve your cauldron and a drop of the Witch Queen’s blood, so that my father and I can be together once more.”

  “You will be together,” the spider said. “Now go.”

  The princess bid the spider farewell and made her preparations. She gathered a pack of food and water and her two dearest friends: Hero and Mare. Then, still in her crowning dress and stockings, she set out for the castle gates.

  As they had for her father, the roses parted at her approach. On her way through, however, a thorn caught her pack, threatening to prevent her quest. She tugged until the bag came free, and then she was out on the plains, the roses sealing the castle behind her.

  It was the first time the princess had been out in the world, and the size of it frightened her. Moreover, the smells—wisps she’d only noted before—came at her like tornados, and the brightness of the sun was like a thousand blades to her eyes. Upon the same plains which drank the blood of her father’s army, she collapsed.

  “Fetch my cauldron,” the spider said, its voice falling to her like cold in winter. “For the king.”

  “Yes,” she told herself. “For the king.”

  She rose and began her quest across the plains to the golden wheat fields. A week she spent through these fields before the boundary of the kingdom was declared by the Murky Swamp. Never before had the princess smelled such stink, but into the marshland she trudged, time ceasing to matter in the swamp’s eternal shade. Days passed like hours and weeks like days. Seasons may have come and gone while the threat of stingbuzzes hung in the air the way the stench of the bog clung to her.

  In time, the stingbuzzes grew bold, sneaking into the princess’s camp at night to sniff at her and test her alertness. This continued until her crowning dress was blackened and tattered and her stockings no longer covered her feet. Finally, an audacious stingbuzz with knotty, stringed wings and a proboscis like a spear came for her.

  “I wish I had a knight to protect me,” the princess whispered, clutching her pack and bracing for the pain.

  At her words, Hero leapt from her pack, alive and full grown, a knight armed with
both sword and shield.

  Wordlessly, Hero engaged the stingbuzz, slashing off its proboscis and stabbing it through its bloated belly. Thick ochre spewed forth, splashing the valiant knight. Wordless still, he shriveled and contorted until he was once more a doll, floating in the morass, torn and ruined.

  The princess buried Hero upon a hammock of moss and mushrooms, and she wept until the din of night creatures gave way to the hisses of daytime ones. Sad but determined, she made a pair of boots from the stingbuzz’s wings and kept on her quest.

  The Murky Swamp gave way, eventually, to the Burning Mountains. Over their peaks, she trekked as the crags around her vomited up fire and molten stone. Here, years passed like seasons before she found the foothills on the other side. And from the foothills onto the wastes of the Endless Desert, slow and careful, wary of the snake’s legend said moved beneath the sands like continents.

  It was not, however, the snakes which caught her. It was the swallowing sands. They opened beneath her at midday when she knew she should have been resting. At first, she thought it was fatigue making the going difficult. Soon, however, she saw the sands had risen to her ankles. Then mid-calf. Then, at knee-depth, she understood. The sands were taking her.

  “I wish I had a noble steed to pull me from this tomb,” she cried.

  At her words, Mare leapt from her pack, alive and full grown, a war horse determined and devoted.

  From the higher sands, Mare lowered her reigns so the princess could grab them. With a strength the princess believed must have been love, Mare pulled. Inch by inch, until the princess felt herself coming free. But the sands betrayed Mare as well. Now, they were both sinking. Undaunted, the horse clutched and pulled, yanked and thrashed, dragged and hauled until the princess felt the firmness of earth beneath her.

  Gasping for breath, she rolled over only to watch helpless as Mare sank deeper and deeper until there was nothing left but the hungry sands. And then, beside her lay the wooden doll, its legs splintered and its eyes closed.

  She buried Mare beneath a stunted palm and wept. In the morning, she striped down Mare’s reigns and re-stitched her dress and continued her quest.