by Chris Colfer
The Enchantress seemed tired. Her posture wasn’t quite as straight and her hair didn’t flow as freely as it had before. Ezmia had been planning this night for a long time, and it hadn’t ended the way she wanted.
Rumpelstiltskin immediately hopped out of the chair. “Princess Hope wouldn’t stop crying,” he said. “And I wanted you to have a silent home to return to.”
Ezmia scowled at Charlotte and she held on to the princess even tighter. The Enchantress moved toward the cage and peered in at them through the bars like a preying hawk.
“You’re awfully good with children, aren’t you?” Ezmia said suspiciously.
“I told you, I’m a nurse, it’s my job,” Charlotte said, shifting uncomfortably under the Enchantress’s gaze. “I take care of sick children at a hospital.”
Ezmia raised an eyebrow. “Interesting,” she said. “I never expected the Fairy Godmother’s granddaughter would be so old.”
“Well, not all of us have magic holding us up,” Charlotte retorted.
“You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that,” Ezmia said. “Perhaps this will humble you.”
Ezmia placed the glass jar she had been carrying on a small table close to Charlotte’s cage. Charlotte was horrifed to see a miniature ghostly version of the Fairy Godmother trapped inside.
“That’s my… my… grandmother!” Charlotte said, almost forgetting she was still pretending to be her own daughter. “What have you done to her?”
A smile appeared on Ezmia’s face, matching the satisfaction in her eyes. “I captured her soul,” she said.
The thought almost made Charlotte sick. She’d had no idea such a thing was possible, even in the fairy-tale world.
“What do you want with her soul?” Charlotte asked.
“It’s a bit of a hobby of mine, actually,” Ezmia said and walked to her fireplace. Displayed proudly on the mantel were five other turquoise jars, each containing a ghostly substance.
“You’re a soul collector?” Charlotte asked. “Is it to make up for being soulless?”
“What a clever play on words,” Ezmia said mockingly. “You know that phrase forgive and forget? Well, I always disagreed with it—I found it impossible, actually. People would do me wrong and then forget about me, as if their actions didn’t matter—because I didn’t matter. How was I supposed to forgive people like that?”
“So you imprisoned their souls instead of forgiving?” Charlotte said.
“Precisely,” Ezmia said. “I found taking away their life force to be much more appealing than simply forgiving. To forgive would be to allow them to continue living their lives, free of consequence. But by taking their souls and preventing them from all future happiness, I could heal and find peace.”
Charlotte couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“Do you honestly expect anyone to sympathize with that?” Charlotte asked her.
Ezmia stared into the fire at the burning skulls, almost in a trance. “I don’t want the world to understand; I want it to grovel,” she said.
The confession made Charlotte’s heart heavier. She wondered if she would ever escape the clutches of a person who thought like this. But thinking about her children, Bob, and the life she had been stolen from gave Charlotte the strength to survive the Enchantress’s imprisonment.
“I find it hard to believe that the Fairy Godmother, who is known for her generosity, would harm you in any way,” Charlotte said.
“Sometimes help can be just as destructive as harm,” Ezmia said. “But I imagine someone who helps for a profession couldn’t comprehend that.”
“Enlighten me,” Charlotte challenged.
The Enchantress raised her eyebrows. “The Fairy Godmother found me in the Otherworld when I was just a girl,” Ezmia said. “I was alone, orphaned, and starving. She brought me here to live with the fairies in the Fairy Kingdom. They gave me a home, taught me to use magic in a productive manner, and in time trained me to become one of the greatest fairies in the kingdom.”
Charlotte shook her head as though she had misunderstood. “That doesn’t sound like something to begrudge,” she said.
“Success can scar you as much as failure,” Ezmia continued. “The more I surpassed the other fairies with my talents, the more they resented me. Fairies are incredibly jealous creatures, although no one ever talks about it, because it would tamper with their image.
“When the Fairy Godmother declared me her protégé, all the other fairies distanced themselves from me. I had never asked for the attention, but they targeted their frustrations on me as if I had done something to personally offend them. Every spell I cast and every enchantment I performed was subject to an unjustified amount of criticism.
“Even though I was accomplishing incredible things left and right, my achievements were ignored because of the special treatment I received. I became ashamed of my gifts and mediocrity became my new goal—wanting to be in the same league as the others. Lowering my standards only aggravated them more, and by the time I reached adolescence I was alone and starving again, but this time for affection.”
The Enchantress gestured to the jars displayed on her mantel.
“Which brings us to these,” she said. “Now this section of the story is very close to my heart, you see, because inside the jars on my mantel are the souls of five men who unwisely broke it. One man who never loved me, one man who couldn’t love me, one man who loved me too much, one man who loved me in secret, and one man who didn’t love me enough…”
Ezmia picked up the jar farthest to the left and looked inside it. A figure of a young man wearing an apron appeared in the ghostly substance inside.
“The Baker was my first love,” the Enchantress said. “He lived in a small village in the Charming Kingdom and worked in his family’s bakery. He was the first person besides the Fairy Godmother to ever ask me if I was having a good day. I was so young and vulnerable—all it took was a shared smile to make me fall madly in love with him. We became very close and I confessed my deepest secrets and desires to him. I was positive our love would last forever.
“Unfortunately for me, I learned his intentions were anything but genuine. I had been the subject of a practical joke—the Baker had pretended to have feelings for me only to report back to the other village youths everything that I had confessed to him. He had been playing a game with my heart the whole time.
“I went back to the Fairy Kingdom in tears. I was hoping for some kind of sympathy from them, some sort of compassion—but instead they just laughed at me. They were happy to see something topple me from the pedestal I had never asked to be placed on. You see, I had broken an unwritten rule: Apparently, a person of privilege is never allowed to complain about anything.
“With no one to confide in and no shoulder to cry on, I ran into the forest and collapsed onto the roots of a tree. I lay there for hours and cried my heart out into its bark. That tree was the only thing that ever comforted me from the pain… and I visited that tree quite a bit over the years.
“Over time I tried forgiving the Baker, but it only angered me more. I returned to his bakery and demanded an apology. He refused, saying the whole thing had been a childish prank. So I cast a spell on a gingerbread man he was baking. It jumped up from the tray and ran away from him. It became quite the ordeal; the entire village chased after it with no success.
“The Baker and his family became the laughingstock of the village and they lost their bakery… but it made me feel so much better. That’s when I learned that taking the high road would never give the same satisfaction as getting even.”
The Enchantress set aside the Baker’s jar and moved on to the one next to it. A man holding a hammer with a chain draped over his shoulder appeared in the jar.
“The Locksmith was a troubled man,” Ezmia said and shook her head. “A testament to his profession, he liked keeping his properties locked down, and I was no exception. I fell for him mostly out of convenience—needing something to repair my heart
from the damage left by the Baker. He was such a quiet man, he barely said a word to me. He never looked me in the eye and when he touched me… it was rarely out of affection.
“He definitely left his mark on me—several, actually. And, like a fool, I stayed, thinking it might be the only type of love I would ever receive. When I finally told him I was leaving him he didn’t even blink. He had so many demons already I didn’t feel the need to cause him more distress when we parted. I felt more anger toward myself than I did toward him for letting him harm me. I kept him as a reminder—to never let myself sink to such pitiful depths again.”
Charlotte and Rumpelstiltskin looked sideways at each other. They couldn’t believe the Enchantress was telling them so much, but Ezmia had completely lost herself in a stroll through the most painful memories of her past.
The trip down memory lane wasn’t entirely for them, however. Telling her captives the stories of her former loves appeared to gradually rejuvenate her from her long night. She stood taller and her hair flowed more vigorously above her. The purple flames in Ezmia’s fireplace even grew the more she reminisced. It was undeniable; the Enchantress was fueled by the pain of her past.
Ezmia picked up the third jar in the center of the mantel. A man playing a pipe appeared in the cloudy substance.
“The Musician was the lover I thought I had been waiting for,” Ezmia confessed. “I was so taken by his charm. He constantly serenaded me with songs and sonnets. He was so eager to confess our love to the world—too eager. I soon realized that it wasn’t me he was in love with—it was the idea of me. He wanted the world to know he was connected to the future Fairy Godmother, not Ezmia. He was using me like a ladder.
“However, I stayed with him despite knowing his true intentions, dreading the thought of being alone. I showered him with gifts—in particular, an infamous pipe he used to magically clear a town of rats. I had enchanted the pipe myself and had hoped it would equalize our statuses. I thought if I gave him something that made him feel as important as me, he would learn to love me for me and not my title.
“Sadly, the only thing that grew following his victory was his ego, and it led him to infidelity as easily as he had led the rats to the river. I transformed his new lover into an instrument, so he could forever play her in the same way he had played with me.”
The Enchantress picked up the fourth jar on the mantel. She stared inside at the soul of a man dressed from head to toe in armor.
“The Soldier was a very guarded man,” Ezmia said. “He kept our relationship a total secret. It was refreshing to be with someone so private after the Musician. Later I discovered his discretion was not to protect me but to protect himself. The Soldier was ashamed of our relationship. He thought if word broke that he was courting a fairy it would damage his career and he would never be promoted to a general.
“I cast a spell on him that flattened his feet and stiffened his joints. He spent the rest of his days guarding the entrance to a kitchen and never received any promotion at all.”
The Enchantress moved on to the final jar on the mantel. A handsome young man wearing robes and a crown appeared inside of it. Ezmia looked at him differently than she had all the others—it was clearly the hardest memory to relive.
“The King hurt me more than anyone,” the Enchantress confessed. “Unlike all the others, the King treated me with the compassion all the rest failed to. He was my best friend and the only person who I felt loved me back. Perhaps that common kinship is what made me fall for him more than the others and is why it still hurts to this day. However, he never loved me as much as I loved him. Friendship was the only thing he wanted from me.
“I visited him every day hoping he would change his mind. One day he caught me trying to give him a love potion. I had never seen him so angry; he shouted for the entire castle to hear that he would never love me the same way I loved him, even with all the love potions in the world.
“I lost my temper and I cursed the King to live as a hideous beast, turning him into the monster I thought he was. Eventually he found a girl to love him despite his animalistic features, and my curse was broken. The story of Beauty and the Beast has been exaggerated over time, but the King never told a soul I was the one who cursed him—he was still a friend after everything I had done to him.
“The King’s rejection was the final break my heart could take. I thought if the King was incapable of loving me, then no one could. The Fairy Godmother says I changed over that period of time, and she’s right. I represented ‘happily ever after’ but couldn’t find a happily-ever-after for myself. Everywhere I went I was expected to solve problems, but I couldn’t salvage my own. I began hating the world I stood for—I hated the fairies, I hated the pathetic people they helped, and I hated myself for being one of them.
“I stopped pretending I belonged among them. For the first time I began to say and do what I wanted to, rather than what I was expected to. If the other fairies were going to condemn me regardless of what I did, I figured I might as well give them valid reasons to.
“When they replaced me on the Happily Ever After Assembly and gave my seat to Emerelda, I can’t say I was surprised. I was furious and hurt, but I knew the fairies had secretly been waiting for an excuse to take something away from me. Emerelda had never been as gifted as me, but she had always been so loved by everyone she met—the fairies knew appointing her would hurt me the most.
“I ran into the forest and found my trustworthy tree to cry into. I stayed and cried for days and days—I felt as if my soul had finally been crushed, as if my entire life had been a cruel experiment to see how much heartbreak I could withstand.
“When I finally dried my tears I looked up at the tree—it was significantly taller than all the other trees in the forest. After all the tears I had shed over the years into its roots, the tree had surpassed all the others surrounding it. I was so ashamed of myself; I couldn’t believe what I had let the world do to me. I cast a spell on the tree, causing it to curve and loop like a vine, until it was the same height as all the other trees and the evidence of my heartache was gone.
“That’s the moment that the fragile heartbroken fairy inside of me died and the Enchantress was born. I decided from then on if the world was going to speak of my name it would be whispered in fear rather than mocked with envy. If the world was going to take all the joy from me, I would simply take away all the joy from the world.”
Ezmia had almost forgotten she wasn’t alone. All the pain from her past was what had created the person she was today, so it was difficult for her to realign herself with the present.
“Everyone goes through heartache,” Charlotte said. “I’ve been through my own share of loss, but I got over it. I never plotted a ruthless revenge scheme or held the world responsible for it.”
Ezmia jerked her head toward her. “Really?” she said angrily. “Have you ever felt loneliness so strong that it hollowed your soul with every heartbeat? Have you ever hated the sun for rising and forcing another day of solitude upon you?”
“I suppose not,” Charlotte said. “No one ever had trouble loving me.”
Rumpelstiltskin gasped at Charlotte’s bold statement. Ezmia was almost impressed by Charlotte’s fearlessness.
“Careful,” Ezmia warned her. “There’s a thin line between bravery and stupidity.”
Charlotte turned away, unable to look at her anymore. Ezmia placed the jar containing the king’s soul back on the mantel. “I should retire for the night,” she said. “I know I make it look so effortless, but world domination is exhausting. I’m going to rest for a bit before continuing my attacks across the kingdoms. I want to be at my best when I cause the world’s worst.”
Ezmia headed toward her chambers for the night, but Rumpelstiltskin stopped her before she left the room.
“Ezmia?” Rumpelstiltskin asked, carefully filtering any judgment in his tone. “Are you sure you’ll ever find peace? Even after taking over the world, are you certain you’ll b
e satisfied?”
Charlotte turned back, interested to hear the answer. A malevolent smile appeared on the Enchantress’s face.
“Silly Rumpy,” Ezmia said with a laugh. “Who said I only wanted this world?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE WAND OF WONDERMENT
The carriage ride back into the Red Riding Hood Kingdom was a difficult trip to make. Witnessing the Enchantress take their grandmother’s soul was the most devastating thing the twins had ever seen.
Alex cried into her brother’s shoulder for most of the trip back to Red’s castle.
“She has Mom, she has Grandma, and soon she’ll have the whole fairy-tale world!” Alex sobbed. “She’s taken everything from us!”
“Not everything, Alex,” Conner said. His was the only reassuring voice in the carriage. “We have each other—and we’ll figure out a way to get them back.”
Although they appreciated his optimism, Froggy and Red couldn’t help but have doubts. The world had been counting on the Fairy Godmother for a solution, and now that she was gone, nothing seemed powerful enough to stand against the Enchantress.
“I’m not sure we can fight this one, Conner,” Alex said with tears spilling out of her eyes like a leaky faucet. “For the first time, I think the bad guy may win this story.”
The despair grew inside the carriage with every mile it traveled. The twins, Froggy, and Red racked their brains for a solution but couldn’t come up with anything. After a day and a half of traveling and worrying, they were very eager to reach Red’s castle.
“That’s funny,” Red said, looking out the window. “I would have expected to be past the wall by now.”
Froggy and the twins looked out the window, too. They were surprised there was no sign of the wall in the distance. It did seem to be taking longer than usual to get back to the Red Riding Hood Kingdom.
“Wait a minute…” Conner said and squinted at something in the distance. “Does that say what I think it says?”