“Woman! Come out! I have—” She looked down at the bloodless grass, embarrassed. “I have come to rescue you,” she finally said, as if admitting that she were covered in boils. I was momentarily distracted by the delectable image of her covered in boils, but my reverie was rudely broken by the appearance of a head at the top of the tower.
It was crowned in hideous golden curls which fell in long braids down the side of the parapet, and possessed of eyes blue as a drowned eel, set in a face which was smooth and plague-rosy. The maiden’s bosom heaved in a most gauche fashion, bound far too tightly into a white dress which showed nothing of any interest to me. She was quite a spectacle, this maiden. Most distasteful. Perhaps she locked herself in the tower to save the world the sight of her ugliness. Certainly beside my ravishing Witch she was a toad, a wart, a pustule.
The creature pursed her lips curiously and spoke with a voice sweet as spoiled milk. “Certainly. Come up.”
A black arch appeared noiselessly in the flesh of the tower, a lightless curtain parting to reveal nothing but further and deeper darknesses. With a knowing glance towards me, the Witch entered the fissure, and I trotted in behind her.
“I know the dark well; it and I have become fast friends. If the old man seeks to frighten me this way, he is a great fool,” she whispered.
We ascended quickly, the liquid stone of a murky staircase sliding beneath us. I followed her scent in the black, the trail of her body heat lighting my way. For a long while there was no sound but our breathing, and the pattern of our feet on the rock like rain in a forest. It was not unpleasant.
As suddenly as we had entered the womblike shadows, we left them behind—stepping into a round room at the top of the tower which held the maiden in its center like a jewel in an iron ring.
“Welcome,” she intoned. “My name is Magadin.”
Her voice echoed in the chamber like an arrow glancing off its target. We could say nothing at first, so stunned were we at the girl’s appearance. Her head, which we had seen from below, was the picture of pearl-edged royalty, gilded and cool-skinned, repulsive to me but beautiful by mortal standards. Yet the rest of her body was terrifying and marvelous—her hands were covered in thick russet fur, tapering to jaundiced claws; her hips twisted into a deer’s delicate haunches; and turquoise wings jutted painfully from her shoulder blades, splitting the skin and drawing blood in great swathes. Her feet sparkled green as underwater opals, webbed and slime-filmed like a frog, yet her legs beneath the gauzy dress were silver as a fish, smoothly coated in translucent scales. Feather-fine fins sprouted from her heels. Her breasts, which below had seemed milky and unblemished, were actually furred in the patterns of a white tiger, dark and feral stripes beginning to show across her delicate collarbone. A wolfish tail thumped unhappily behind her, having torn through the beaded fabric. The ends of her braids appeared to be slowly flapping, the veined surface of dragonfly wings shining through her curls.
Worse, all around her were severed heads mounted on the walls, what once were maidens, each in various stages of metamorphosis: One was half covered in serpent-hide, her hair hissing violently; another had lost her mouth, a beak twisting out of her face in its place; another’s eyes had shrunk terribly, and dark hair covered her batlike features. The menagerie of beast-princesses ringed the chamber, watching us with eyes that seemed not entirely dead.
“You see,” the maiden admitted quietly, “why I have not been rescued yet. Why nothing guards the door. They come by the dozens, pretty knights all in a row, and run like frightened squirrels when they see what I am.”
I saw pity coalesce on the Witch’s face, and she took the maiden into her arms tenderly, as the girl wept great red tears, which fell on her dress like some unspeakable wine. “Tell me what he has done to you,” she said softly, stroking her veined hair.
“He is trying to change me,” Magadin squeaked, her voice cracking like a wounded hawk, “as he tried to change them. He took me from my father’s house…”
I WAS BORN FAR, FAR FROM HERE ON MIDWINTER’S Night, in the middle of a storm that tore the tiles from the roof and flooded the sky with clouds blacker than chimneys. I drew first breath in a tall tower wrapped with ivy and lilies like waxing moons, all of gray stone shot through with quartz. Wind battered at the windows; the sky boiled with thunder. The midwife placed me in my mother’s arms, wide-eyed and wondering. She smiled at me, her face tired and white, full of sorrow, and died with her finger clutched in my tiny hand.
When the wild milkwoods and chestnuts had bloomed twelve times and withered, my father married again, a woman of radiant face and hair like a river of fire, her body like the living sun entering our hall. Her name was Iolanthe. She was a young widow with vast lands, and had two daughters of her own, Isaura and Imogen, somewhat older than I, each more proud and beautiful than the other.
I see you smile, Witch. You think you know how these stories go.
But they were not like their exotic mother; they were exceedingly dull and stupid, their only worth lying in the golden shades of their practiced curls. They were little golden birds, chirping and empty-headed, always together, clutching each other’s little pink hands. I quickly became my stepmother’s favorite, quick and clever as I was. She was an imperious woman, and my father obeyed her every whisper as eagerly as a colt its master.
I adored her.
Obviously, my new sisters hated me.
My only notions of my own mother were stories my father had told me of that last smile, soft and sad. These melted like tea steam in the face of Iolanthe who blazed so brightly, whose laughter lit the chandeliers, whose great dark gowns swept majestically along our halls, filling the house as my mother’s ghost could not.
After a time it became clear that she favored me even over her own children, who grew purple-faced with hate and envy. For my part, I cared nothing for the simpering fools. My stepmother was my world; she had enchanted me completely. I took on her mannerisms, became haughty and fierce, but captivating to all. I was the wonder of the Palace, my father’s pride. I grew up and grew older, more beautiful and wiser, devouring our libraries with delight. I was dark where my stepmother was light, pale as a winter wind where she was rosy as summer dusk.
On my sixteenth birthday, when such things usually occur, a herald announced at every door in the land that the royal Wizard sought some worthy young girl as his apprentice, and that all families of suitable blood were to present their daughters at some appointed day and some appointed time. Of course, we were all thrilled as lambs with a mouthful of alfalfa—each of us certain we would be chosen, and our days filled with riches and power.
Iolanthe heard the summons, and her face darkened. She was heavily pregnant then; her black gown rippled loose behind her. She closed the door after the well-meaning herald, and forbade all three of us to try for the apprenticeship. Instead, she took me up the stone stairs to a high tower, all wrapped with ivy and lilies like waxing moons. She leaned into the heavy door and it ground open, showing a room now filled with decrepit books and ancient scrolls. Nevertheless, it remained, my birth-bed and my mother’s deathbed, facing the long, tapered window, smooth and cleanly white, as though it had never tasted our blood.
“My daughter,” she began, her voice like water over river stones, “for so I hope I may call you, my own girl, as though I had given you life in this room where your true mother died. I wish that I had, and saved you those years of loneliness. My own blood, as you know, did not fare so well.” She shrugged, raising her eyes to the ceiling with exasperation. “They are lovely girls, and I raised them as best I could. Perhaps I indulged them. They will make good marriages to enrich our lands, but though they will be your father’s heirs, they can never be mine. That does not mean, however, that I will stand to see them shipped off to a filthy Wizard with a collar of iron.”
Her eyes glinted with fury like campfires on a winter’s night. Without tensing or moving from her chair, she made a quick gesture at one of the shelv
es, and a heavy, scarlet-bound volume flew obediently into her long, white hand. I gasped, goggle-eyed, and her dark, musical laughter filled the air.
“Didn’t you know? All stepmothers are witches. It is our compensation for remaining forever an intruder in another woman’s house. That, daughter mine, is an estate lonely beyond description. Even this,” she touched her belly warmly, “will not earn me peace. It is a son to till the fields and battle infidels, and yet still your mother will be the Lady of the House, and I only a tenant. Everywhere, your mother’s shade outranks me. I call you my daughter and it freezes in the air, it angers her beyond endurance. But what can she do, the poor wretch? She is long dead, and I live. Daughter, daughter, daughter,” she chanted throatily, as if challenging the dusty breeze. “In this, at least, you can be my true and devoted child. If you want to know magic, I will teach it, and I will teach it without a collar. You can learn the secret things that lie in these volumes and in my own breast. When you are captive in a husband’s house, it may pass the time.”
“But why do you object to the Wizard? Isn’t the magic he would teach as good as yours?”
Iolanthe ground her teeth. “I thought you were a wiser child, Magadin. Did it never seem odd to you that he wants a girl, when most will take only students of their own kind, girls to women and boys to men? Or that he wants an apprentice at all, when he is a slave, doulios, marked by his collar as one whose power has been sold, son back to father back to father, as long as there has been any strength in his blood? He can do nothing without the leave of the King; they are bound together. And I will not barter away any of my girls to that place.”
“And you are not a slave? A doulios?”
“No, my girl, that I am not.”
And so, over the weeks before the appointed day, as the apple groves yielded their musky ciders, I learned from her—small, halting things. Mostly I read her books. I rarely saw my father or my stepsisters, cloistered as I was in my birth-tower, my fingers acquiring the ink stains of a clerk and my clothes growing plainer and less colorful as I tired quickly of the brocades and ribbons that enchanted my sisters. When my brother was born, I stayed in the tower, my hair all dusty and uncombed. They called him Ismail; I took no interest. When she recovered, my stepmother and I spent our hours with heads bent together over concoctions and pleasant, trifling charms, and I was happy. I was sure true knowledge would come later.
Deep in the blue-tongued winter, the Wizard’s day came, and I was to meet the payment for that happiness.
I hid in the stairwell as Iolanthe told me, while Imogen and Isaura were secreted away in a tall armoire. My sisters held each other in terror, huddled side by side like tender fawns left in the bower by their doe. They did not extend their arms to me, but shut the doors abruptly. I folded myself up under the stairs. We were not to squeak, we were not to sneeze, and she would tell the messenger that her daughters had caught chill and died in the frost. I peered through the cracks in the wood to watch my stepmother lie for us.
But it was no messenger who came, but the Wizard himself, his blue and brown robes streaming behind him, his long hair twisted and gray, a heavy iron collar hanging around his neck like a noblewoman’s jewelry. He seemed not to notice it—and he carried a second one, alike in weight and color, in his veined hand.
“There are three girls in this house, yes?” he said imperiously, looking down his aquiline nose at my stepmother. She bent her shining head in grief.
“My daughters all perished in the first snows. A chill took this house; I was lucky to keep my child, so many died—”
“Oh, stop it.” He interrupted, his voice cutting across hers like a ship slicing through a foamy wave. “I don’t have time for this. There are three children in this house, and if you do not produce them, I certainly can. I can hear two of them scratching at that great closet like hungry little mice. Want to come out, hungry mice? I won’t hurt you, and if you are good girls, I may give you a nice cheese.”
The armoire cracked open. My sisters were nothing if not curious, curious and stupid. Hesitantly, the golden-curled girls stepped out of their hiding place and clung to each other, staring shyly at the floor.
Iolanthe’s face showed nothing. She bent even lower, nearly bowing to the tall man. “I meant no dishonesty, you must believe me,” she wept, and genuine tears splashed onto the flagstones. “What I told you was true—the frost took my eldest daughter, who was dearly beloved in this house. I could not bear to have either of my other girls, clever as they are, risk trying for your honors—I could not lose them, too!” My stepmother actually crumpled into a heap at his feet, crying pitifully and clutching at his boots for mercy. I could almost laugh, but I was not as stupid as my sisters.
The Wizard seemed to believe her, as he drew her up to her feet again and wiped the tears from her face. “There, there. You are very ugly when you cry, you ought to try not to do it. Let us see about these two lambs of yours, shall we?” He held up the iron collar and Iolanthe flinched ever so slightly. “It is a simple test. Each of them will try my collar, and if it should be fortunate enough to fit one of them, she will come with me and learn all sorts of wonderful things and live a life that even a queen would envy. That does sound nice, doesn’t it, girls?”
My sisters nodded, but they trembled with fear like leaves blown across an empty street. He approached them as a man will approach a horse he wishes to break, and his long, pale fingers settled first on Imogen.
“Please, sir,” she whispered, “I don’t want to.”
“Well, little girls must learn to do things they don’t wish to do. It is the way of the world,” the Wizard said comfortingly, and opened the latch of the gray collar, fastening it around her neck.
It hung loose, limp as cabbage, around her collarbone.
“See? That wasn’t so awful. You are far too weak to be of any use to me. Next!”
Isaura nearly vomited on his feet. “Please, sir,” she begged, “I don’t want to.”
He chuckled and did not waste his breath on an answer. He clasped the collar around her slim little neck, soft as a swan’s.
It was so tight she could hardly breathe, and I saw that the collar was special, that it chose, and not the Wizard, for it shrank around my sister’s neck like a fist until she cried out and began to claw at it in desperation.
With an exasperated sigh, he removed the collar in one swift movement. “Let this be a lesson, woman. Lying nets nothing, just as spoons catch no fish.”
He turned on his heel to go, and I saw relief ripple through Iolanthe’s body. But my sister—oh, Imogen, you little viper!—my sister cried out after him.
“Wait!”
She glanced at Isaura for reassurance, and for a moment seemed to think better of herself.
“Yes? Is there something, little love?”
Imogen squeaked, and could not speak. Isaura let go of her sister’s hand and stepped forward as though reciting lessons.
“Mother lied. Magadin didn’t die—nobody died. She’s under the stairway, hiding like a rat.”
I believe that at that moment Iolanthe might have throttled her own child to death. But she did not protest; what protest could she offer?
Isaura bounded across the room with glee and threw open the wooden hatch that covered the space under the stairs.
“Hello!” she crowed.
“How could you?” I hissed.
“We are tired of your airs and your stupid black fingers and your secrets. You are a beastly girl. No one wants you here any longer.”
“Yes!” cried Imogen in her piping voice. “We hope that horrid collar does fit you, and you go away and never, ever come back! It’s what you deserve!”
“Why?” I asked, still crouched in my hiding place.
“You stole her from us!” Imogen cried out miserably, like an infant bird falling from the nest. “She is our mother, not yours, and you took her away! We were happy before we came to this awful place! And now she has another baby—she w
ill forget us completely!”
She wept bitterly, but Isaura did not shed a tear. She snatched me by the wrist and pulled me out of the dark, sending me stumbling to the Wizard’s feet. It was only then that she and Imogen saw their mother’s stare, cold as gallows. Imogen cried harder, and touched my sleeve imploringly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, try to understand…” she whispered. Isaura pushed her aside.
“Try it on. Try it on and rot, Magadin,” she hissed.
I drew myself up before the Wizard, who grinned like a jungle cat who has just made a meal of a particularly fat vole. He held out the collar but, with my stepmother’s eyes burning on my skin, I refused to bend my neck towards it. He pursed his dry lips and stepped forward, clapping the thing around my throat with alarming speed.
It fit so perfectly I hardly felt its weight. There was no sound in the hall, but I saw Isaura smile into her sleeve. The Wizard checked the joints of the collar and gave me over to his men, dropping three silver coins into Iolanthe’s hand in exchange for me.
As I was pushed out of my house, I heard behind me the soft thump of my stepmother collapsing onto the tile.
“SO YOU SEE HOW IT IS,” THE BEAST-MAIDEN SAID. “There was no apprenticeship at all. He locked me up here without even taking me to the Palace, and here I have been for fifty years and more. Each fortnight he comes and forces me to drink terrible concoctions, he rubs unguents over my body, causes the lightning to burn my veins. He keeps me young and strong, for I have lasted longer than any of the others, and he has never had so likely a subject. He cannot lose me to hag-hood. But it is not working, and soon I will be hung on the wall like the rest, and he will begin again with some other maid. I will be forced to watch her die as they watch me.”
The Witch raised up the maiden’s face and smoothed her tears away as though she was erasing a canvas. She smiled at the helpless girl, her face lighting like a midsummer fire. “He once held me prisoner to discover the same secret—the old man is obsessed with it—and I escaped. So shall you. Never put your faith in a Prince. When you require a miracle, trust in a Witch.”
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