Mistress of All Evil

by Serena Valentino

  She didn’t feel evil.

  She felt like everyone else. At least, she thought she did. Come to think of it, she didn’t really know how everyone else felt. Maybe she was evil.

  My parents must have known I was evil. That’s why they left me in the crow tree. They wanted me to die.

  As the taunting continued, Maleficent was aware of something swelling up inside her, a horrible burning sensation she didn’t like. She felt like she was slowly catching fire from the inside, as if a flame was struggling to get out of her. Before she knew it, her entire body was engulfed in a stifling green blaze.

  Maleficent heard the other students screaming. But before she could process what was happening, she found herself alone in her tree house, confused as to how she had gotten there. She shook uncontrollably with rage and fear, crying harder than she ever had before. The shrieks of the other fairies were still echoing in her ears when Nanny appeared with a worried look on her face.

  “I didn’t…I didn’t mean it!” Maleficent stammered.

  “You didn’t mean what, dear?” Nanny asked.

  “To hurt them…” Maleficent cried.

  “You didn’t hurt them,” Nanny said reassuringly. “You completed a magnificent travel charm. It’s a difficult spell that’s way beyond your grade level. I’m very impressed!”

  “But they were screaming!”

  “Oh, yes, well, that’s young fairies for you. Dramatic and high-strung! You’re a smart girl, Maleficent. I’m sure you know this already.” Nanny paused for a moment and then continued. “I couldn’t be more pleased at how different you are from those fools, Maleficent. I truly couldn’t. Had you been an ordinary fairy living in that hollowed-out tree, I think I would have probably passed you by!”

  “If I was an ordinary fairy, I wouldn’t have been left in the tree.”

  Nanny nodded vigorously. “Too right! That’s one of the main reasons I don’t care for my own ilk. And why I don’t display my wings. Fairies can be a hateful bunch.”

  Maleficent smiled, her tears subsiding, as she listened to Nanny. She wanted to hug her. She wanted to tell her she loved her for everything she was saying, but she didn’t want to interrupt her.

  “Oh, they don’t realize how hateful they are. They think they’re full of magic and light and all things good! Like sugar and honey comes out of their…Well, you get my point.”

  Maleficent laughed.

  “Well, isn’t that a rare sight? In the years we’ve been together, I don’t think I have ever seen you laugh.” Nanny paused for a moment, deep in thought. “Hmmm, it all makes sense now.”

  “What? What makes sense?” Maleficent asked.

  “You’re seven. Seven!”

  “What’s so special about being seven?”

  “Seven is a very special age for fairies. Especially for fairies who aren’t like the others. Fairies like you and me, who are more like witches than fairies. Fairies who aren’t content with fairy magic and fairy life and understand there are other wonderful forms of magic in this world. Seven is just the start of your adventure. And I think we need to celebrate! Now, tell me all about that travel charm. I want to hear about how you learned it. You’re a fascination to me, Maleficent. You’re further in your schooling than anyone in your class. And if that stack of books of mine you have hidden away is any indication of the style of magic you intend to employ, we have a lot of work to do. I think you’re up to the task. I really do! You know what? I think it might be time to take you out of that school. I can’t have your spirit and potential squelched by those dimwits. Let them fumble with their silly fairy magic. Let them spend their days complimenting each other’s wings. You have real magic to learn. Important magic.”

  Important magic. Those words echoed in Maleficent’s ears and filled her with confidence.

  That was how it was with Nanny. A flurry of encouraging words and love thrown at Maleficent from every direction. Nanny never missed an opportunity to heap love upon the girl. And if Maleficent sometimes felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of Nanny’s affection, or occasionally grew stiff at Nanny’s touch, it wasn’t because she didn’t like the attention. Maleficent loved Nanny, more deeply than she expected she might.

  She just wasn’t used to being loved.

  “Well, I’m going to bake you a marvelous cake for dessert,” Nanny said, clapping her hands excitedly. “I want to hear all about this travel charm and how you managed it. I really am impressed!”

  Maleficent knew that Nanny was being sincere. She never said anything she didn’t mean like the other fairies. It was hard to tell Nanny was a fairy at all. Maleficent wondered if Nanny had also had a hard time growing up in the Fairylands, being so un-fairylike and having as a sister the famous Fairy Godmother.

  “No, dear, that part wasn’t hard at all!” Nanny said, reading her thoughts. “They don’t call me the One of Legends for nothing!”

  That was one of the best nights of Maleficent’s childhood—spent eating cake with Nanny and telling her about the travel charm. Describing the warm sensation and seeing the awe reflected in Nanny’s eyes when she explained it in every detail, just as Nanny had wanted.

  “You did exactly the right thing, my dear! If someone is treating you poorly or you feel yourself becoming angry and you start to feel that warm sensation, you use that charm. Go straight to your tree house, or straight to me and your crows. You just think of us, and you will find yourself with us before you know it. Promise me, dear, you will do what Nanny tells you.”

  “Of course, Nanny.” Maleficent wished she had Nanny’s power to read minds. She often wondered what Nanny was thinking. Was that concern in her eyes? Had something about Maleficent’s story upset her?

  “No, my dear. What you see is pride! I couldn’t be prouder of you. You’ve made me very happy today, my darling. Very happy indeed.”

  Snow White sat alone in the attic among her mother’s old belongings, remembering how things were long ago, in the time before her stepmother died and became the mother Snow White had always wanted her to be. Snow understood why her mother didn’t want to go up there. Those possessions reminded the old queen of the period when she had sequestered herself years earlier—the time when she had gone mad with grief and plotted to kill her own stepdaughter. Snow tried to compartmentalize her mother into three different women: the mother she had now, the mother who had loved her when she was very young, and the mother who had tried to kill her. Snow knew it wasn’t her mother’s fault. The queen had been tormented by her own father, heartbroken by the loss of her husband, and bewitched by the witch triplets. Snow had made the various versions of her mother over the years into imaginary dolls—dolls she kept locked away in a trunk in this room. Dolls she never wanted to play with or see.

  Dolls imbued with pain and covered in dust.

  Snow liked the mother she had now. She had no reason to revisit the others. Even the recollection of her sweet mother from her early childhood brought Snow heartache, because she knew all those terrible days that followed her father’s death would come tumbling down like an avalanche, reminding her of how grief had destroyed that mother.

  Yes, she liked to focus on the woman she loved dearly and depended on now. But she couldn’t look at her mother’s things without bringing those dolls into the light, taking them into her hands and dusting them off as she replayed the timeline of her life. Those dolls, those mothers marked the passing of beautiful yet terrifying times.

  With quiet, tentative steps, Snow went to one of the wooden chests that contained the artifacts of her tortured childhood. It creaked painfully as she opened it, like a warning. The book of fairy tales she was looking for was sitting beneath a small wooden box with a carving of a dagger piercing a heart. Something about the box sent chills into Snow’s own heart. She didn’t want to know what was in it. She didn’t want to see the pain on her mother’s face if she were to ask her about the box, so it would have to remain a mystery. It was enough that she was up there alone, knowing
her mother was waiting for her. Knowing each moment that passed was a pain in her mother’s heart.

  Snow suddenly felt like she had when she was very small. In the old castle where she had grown up, there had been a hallway that had always frightened her. There was no particular reason for her fear, aside from the fact that the hallway was always rather dark. Snow’s imagination had conjured up all sorts of nightmares living in the shadows. But she used to have to walk down that hallway every day to reach the classroom where she met her tutor. Some days, she was so afraid that she would run, even though she knew her governess, Verona, would scold her for her unladylike behavior. Snow hadn’t cared. She had felt compelled to run for safety even in the bright light of day. Snow White felt like that now. She tried not to look at what else was in the chest. She tried to suppress the pain surging through her heart. Snow removed the book as quickly as she could, trying not to disturb the other contents. Then she slammed the chest closed, causing dust to cascade into the air, where it glittered in the sunlight streaming through the little attic window. She looked at it for a moment, dazzled by the brilliance of something seemingly mundane. Snow mused about how something usually so ugly could turn into something quite beautiful. And she remembered her mother. Her mother’s transformation. Her mother’s beauty.

  And suddenly, she wasn’t as frightened.

  As the years passed, Nanny could tell the coldness inside Maleficent was thawing. Maleficent wasn’t sure if it was from Nanny’s love or the thing inside her that had been growing for some time—the terrible burning feeling she sometimes felt when she was angry or sad. She tried to banish it from her mind and focus on her magic. Her important magic, which she studied at every opportunity. On Nanny’s bookshelf, she had found several tomes written by the odd sisters, three witches named Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha. Their pages were filled with all sorts of dark magic that intrigued Maleficent. One of the spells was particularly interesting to her. It called for a smattering of herbs along with hair from the witch’s own head and instructions to be written in ink on a tiny slip of parchment. These ingredients had to be fed to a very large bullfrog, which the witch would command to find her victim. The bullfrog would then crawl into a sleeping person’s mouth and live in their throat, waiting on orders from the witch by means of telepathy. Maleficent had to look up what telepathy meant. When she did, she finally had a word for something she had observed in Nanny: the ability to read minds and communicate without speaking. From what Maleficent read in the book, she gathered that the gruesome spell was terrifying for the victim. The witch could command the person to do whatever she liked. The bullfrog would come out only at night, while the host slept, to report its findings to the witch, and then it would squeeze itself back into the victim’s mouth before morning. The victim was aware of something living in their throat but was unable to say anything about it.

  The book also had a variation of the spell in which the witch would take something personal from the victim she wished to command, instead of using a frog. It could be anything, really: a teacup, a hairbrush, or a ring. And it seemed some witches collected such items should there ever be an occasion in which they needed them. Maleficent didn’t want to do such dark spells. They seemed rather ghastly and repulsive to her, actually. She just liked reading and learning about them. Maleficent also loved reading the lyrical and often hilarious notations in the odd sisters’ books. They were quickly becoming her favorite spell casters and her favorite witches.

  Maleficent liked knowing things. It gave her power. It gave her confidence. The more she read and learned, the less afraid she was of the other fairies. She had a deep sense of pride that while the other fairies were learning how to enchant broomsticks, she was learning valuable charms and spells she could use when she finally ventured out of the Fairylands. Maleficent was learning real magic.

  That was most exciting of all.

  Snow White sat on a lovely red velvet chair that she had brought very close to an ornate gold-framed mirror. She held the book of fairy tales her mother had once read to her on her lap, flipping through the pages so her mother could see.

  “All of our stories are in there!” Grimhilde said.

  Snow turned to the last page of the Dragon Witch’s story, looking at it in horror. “Will this happen to your friend Maleficent?”

  “I don’t know, my dear, but I need to warn her.” Grimhilde’s reflection flickered as it sometimes did when she was worried. “I haven’t been able to reach her in any of her mirrors. You must send word to Morningstar Castle. I think she will arrive there shortly.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re friends with her after what she’s done to Aurora,” Snow White said, shaking her head.

  “She has her reasons, my dear,” Grimhilde replied. “Reasons that are not mine to share with you or anyone else. I have been her friend and confidant for many years, Snow. I can’t turn my back on her now just because we don’t agree with her choices. Perhaps I will be able to talk her out of hurting the girl and save her from sharing my fate.”

  Snow considered that for a moment. “But I don’t understand. This book was written long before Maleficent ever considered putting the princess to sleep. How is it that everything that has been written in it has come to pass?” Snow turned to another page. “And look! Here is a section about you and me! It details everything, even you coming into the mirror and being my protector. How is that possible?”

  Grimhilde looked concerned. “I don’t know. Our story wasn’t there when last I read this book to you. The book may be writing itself like a history, or perhaps the sisters were able to see into the future and wrote down their prophecies.”

  “What if it’s a spell? What if the book is enchanted and anything that’s written within its pages comes true?” Snow asked.

  “Spellbound!” the old queen gasped. The thought sent chills through Snow. “If that is true, then no one will be able to protect those sisters from my vengeance! I’ve long accepted that I chose my own path down the road of regret. But if it was all designed by those sisters, if it was written by them, and I was simply their puppet, then there will be Hades to pay!”

  “Mother, no!” Snow pleaded. “I will write to Morningstar to warn them about the book. Now please, promise me you won’t hurt anyone.”

  “I can’t do that, my darling. I’m sorry. If they are the reason I tried to kill you, then no power will be great enough to save the odd sisters from my wrath!”

  Many years had passed since Nanny had taken the young Maleficent out of school so she could focus on her own brand of magic, giving her room to explore and experience the world of magic outside fairy lore.

  Maleficent had changed considerably from the little creature she had been when Nanny found her in the hollow of the crow tree. Though none of the other fairies would admit it, Maleficent was remarkably beautiful. Nanny had always known Maleficent would grow into her features. But beauty didn’t matter much to Maleficent. Her concerns lay elsewhere.

  One bright sunny morning, she and Nanny were sitting at the kitchen table. They were sipping their tea out of black-and-silver teacups and enjoying the black-currant scones Nanny had baked earlier that morning. Nanny could tell Maleficent had something she wanted to announce. Maleficent was always making declarations of some sort, about a spell she had just mastered or a new subject she wanted to tackle. But this particular announcement took Nanny by surprise.

  “Nanny, I think I would like to sit for the fairy exams,” Maleficent finally said.

  Nanny cast an uneasy eye on her daughter. “Why? Your magic far surpasses fairy magic, so why bother?”

  “Because I want to master all manners of magic! And I don’t want to give those flighty fairies an excuse to mock me. Besides, I’ve perfected my means of teleporting from one place to the next. Really, there’s no reason I shouldn’t become a wish-granting fairy if I chose to be one,” Maleficent argued.

  “Do you want to be one, my dear?” Nanny asked. “I never imagined
you would be inclined to such things.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? I am a fairy, after all, and I shouldn’t shrink from any school of magic simply because my old classmates were unkind,” Maleficent reasoned. “Besides, I’ve been practicing, and I think I’m ready for exams. I will be eligible to take the exam tomorrow, if I recall correctly.”

  “You do recall correctly, my dear, as always, and without fail,” Nanny said with a sigh. “And I don’t doubt you’re ready for the exam. You could have taken it when you were ten. Although now that you’re turning sixteen, it is the proper time to sit for the exam.” Nanny seemed lost in her thoughts for a moment. “If you wish, you may take the exam. Far be it from me to hold you back from furthering your education. Since most of your education has been either self-taught or taught by me, it’s not official. It will do you well to have a certificate to prove you have completed your fairy lessons. Though I thought we would spend your sixteenth birthday in some other fashion.”

  Maleficent smiled. “Did you hear that, Diablo? I’m going to sit for my fairy exams!”

  Diablo flew into the room, cawing in celebration, his wings outstretched.

  Nanny loved seeing Maleficent that happy. And Maleficent’s relationship with Diablo, a new acquisition for her aviary, made Nanny smile. Though Maleficent still held a very special place for her crows, she loved her raven, Diablo, who never seemed to leave her side for very long.

  “Come on, Diablo! Let’s practice wish granting in the garden! I need to be perfect for my exams tomorrow!”

  Nanny chuckled to herself as the two rushed into the garden. It had been a joke between the two of them that Maleficent had decided to name the raven Diablo. It was their way of poking fun at the fairies for having given Maleficent such a menacing name.

  Nanny had just stood to put another kettle on the fire when there was a knock at the door. “Come in!” she yelled in a cheery voice. It was her sister, the Fairy Godmother. “Ah, come in, Sister. I just put some water on for tea. Would you like to join me in a cup?”