Ever Cursed

by Corey Ann Haydu

  “Shut up,” I try. Words I have never said. Not together. Not to someone. A queen would never tell a prince to shut up. I move my head, working to get his lips to leave the place where they keep hitting my skin.

  “Fine,” Prince Felix says. “But I brought you a gift. I’ll leave it here.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tiny parcel. It’s wrapped in red paper. I don’t open it. I don’t need to. I can smell it. Sweet and rich and poking at a hundred happy memories.

  Chocolate.

  I keep it in my hand and do what I never let myself do—imagine eating it. I imagine a first bite, over and over and over until I can’t even see the rest of the room, until the Thirteenth Birthday doesn’t exist anymore, until all there is in the world is my mouth and the darkest kind of sweetness on my tongue and the desperation I feel at not being able to have it.

  The Prince of Soar approaches next and hands me another small packet, a hard chunk of cheese. The Princess of Nethering folds a tiny parcel of coffee into the palm of my hand. It smells the way being awake feels. I almost remember energy and verve and the brilliance of a morning that doesn’t feel so hopeless. Every royal in the room drops off raw almonds, ripe strawberries, a slice of salted ham.

  My hands are filled with everything I’ve ever loved to eat, but I’m too hungry to move from this chair, from this moment, from this horror.

  My father doesn’t notice, and I’m too ashamed to tell him we need him again and again and again. We are princesses. I am meant to be queen. I need to be stronger. I need to need less.

  So I let it happen.

  And the rest of the guests let it happen.

  They let it happen. And I think maybe they even enjoy it.

  6. REAGAN

  I mean to walk to the castle alone, but Willa appears beside me when I am halfway there. She’s faster than me, my young cousin. She has more skirts, but none are heavy. Mine from the Spell of Without never lets me move quickly, doesn’t let me run ahead.

  “You don’t want to go to this,” I tell Willa, who moves as easily as any subject of Ever. “It’s depressing.”

  “I’ve heard it’s beautiful. The princess coming of age. All the kingdoms gathered to celebrate.”

  “I guess,” I say. I can’t imagine the castle being beautiful. Nothing in Ever looks beautiful to me anymore.

  The walk to the castle isn’t long. We’re almost at the moat, which we will easily wade through without a problem. Witches aren’t scared of water. I take a look around for Abbott. Maybe he’s waiting by the moat to see me off, to wish me luck. Maybe he has more suggestions, more things I need to know about the Ever that he lives in. I’d like to see him here and now, just to get a glimpse of someone beautiful and true and real before I change everything.

  “You must be glad I’m here with you,” Willa says when I stall outside the door of the castle. I am, but I’m older and should be wiser and braver and able to do this on my own. Instead I’m some silly girl looking for a cute boy, clinging to my fourteen-year-old cousin like she’s a life vest, an anchor, my mother.

  “I’m fine on my own,” I say. I have said some version of this a thousand times over the years. It’s practically my mantra, words whose rhythm match the beat of my heart. I’m fine on my own, I’ve told my mother and my aunts and my grandmother and now, finally, my little cousin with wobbly knees that aren’t so wobbly anymore and a pretty pout that only ever gets prettier. I say it again, for good measure. Willa doesn’t always hear every word that’s said to her. “I’m fine on my own.”

  “I promised your mother,” Willa says with a shrug.

  “You promised?”

  “She said you couldn’t go alone. She said it wasn’t safe. She said she knows that better than anyone.”

  “Oh.” There’s the shiver of a memory that isn’t mine but lives inside me all the same. Popping up, tall and strange and awful and mysterious, like the castle itself.

  We are in front of it now, more quickly than we were prepared for, and though it’s where we knew we were headed, it feels surprising. A place we came to but somehow never really meant to arrive at.

  “You’re not scared?” I ask Willa. I don’t look at her. My eyes don’t move from the castle door.

  “I guess not,” Willa says. And like that, my heart surges for her and the way she is both clumsy and brave, a combination that seems impossible. I’d do anything to be more like her.

  I haven’t been here for five years. I’d forgotten she would greet me. The queen in her box.

  I bow my head. Even I’m not sure if she can see, if she knows we’re here, if she knows she’s here.

  Even I don’t know what I’ve done.

  We use a Spell of Above to cross the moat, and when we’re on the other side, we show the silver invitation to a horseman at the gate. It is addressed to the Witch of the Spell of Without, so he knows who we are when he looks it over. In a breath we see him go from bored to scared. A man trained to fight other kingdoms, trained to protect the king, scared of two young witches.

  It feels a little bit good. Willa and I are both in our black wool capes with large fur-lined hoods. I’ve seen royalty with similar garb—the king in his robe, the visiting princes draped in fur. We fit in, dressed like this, and I tell Willa to keep her hood on until it’s time.

  “When will it be time?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I guess when I say it’s time.”

  Once inside, the party is bigger than it was in my head. More absurd. My first breath is one of rage. That they live in this opulence while their subjects beg us to cast spells that would allow them to grow three potatoes instead of two, a spell that would fix their broken shoes, a spell that would rid their children of lice. The subjects don’t know what’s in this castle. They guess at it, but they don’t come close. Abbott never came close. He wouldn’t know what to do in this grand hall, surrounded by delicacies and jewels and laughter.

  He’d hate them even more. I know I do. It’s hard to feel bad for princesses who have everything except the one thing I took from each of them. It’s hard to want to fix the only thing wrong with their perfect lives. My magic would be better spent giving Abbott’s family a cherry orchard, a herd of cattle, a home in a different kingdom.

  But he’d never take it. Abbott wants to fix Ever, not just himself. Probably he should be king.

  “Let it turn True,” I say under my breath. Words that escape before I’ve had a chance to think them through. But Willa hears. Of course she does. She hears nothing that our grandmother asks her to do; she hears none of the details of how to cast this spell or that. But she always hears when I show my worst self.

  “You’re going to let the Slow Spell turn True? Without giving them a chance?” Willa asks. She grips my arm, and her voice shakes. “Did you ask Grandmother if that’s okay?

  “Give me a second, Willa,” I say. I need to take it in without her fluttering next to me. I need to let myself believe, for a moment, that I could let them suffer forever. My gaze flies over attendants adjusting napkins and candles and princess hair. There’s something in the way their eyes flit to the king, the nervous energy of their hands, even how close they stand to one another, like they’re safer that way, that makes my palms sweat.

  I keep my warm hood on, though. I need time to see them without them seeing me.

  The scared movements of the princesses and attendants and a candle flickering by the throne are the only familiar things in this whole room aside from heaps of fabric hanging from every surface. So many different weights and textures and colors, just like our skirts. Fabrics and colors and patterns that they’d never wear but have crowded their castle with. Chiffon hangs from the windows; silk lines the tables; even the throne is draped in a thick velvet.

  “It’s even prettier than I thought,” Willa says. She has always loved princesses and castles and silk gowns.

  “It’s exactly how my mom said it would be,” I say.

  “Why was she eve
r here anyway?” Willa asks. She knows what the king did to my mother; she found out when I did, that awful day when I cast the spell. But we’ve never spoken about it.

  “What do you mean?” I ask. At first glance the question feels like an accusation, like my mother is to be blamed for the king’s actions. But after a breath I know what she means. Witches don’t go to castles. There would be no reason for her to be here. Not ever.

  It’s funny how what he did was so big my mind didn’t ask any more questions aside from How can I hurt him? and How will he pay? I never asked how it happened.

  Not funny, actually. Enraging. Impossible. Exhausting.

  My fury is rising again, taking up too much space for me to theorize with Willa, shivering my insides, making my fingertips itch with the desire to cast another spell, to try again and again and again to make the king suffer. I want to care about the things Abbott and Olive and even my own mother told me matter. But remembering what the king did nearly wrecks me. Willa must notice the change in my temperature. She puts her hand in mine.

  “Look,” she says. She points across the room to a figure so slight I barely see anyone at all. “There she is. The oldest.” Her voice falters with heartbreak or surprise or some combination of both. My body reacts to Jane’s body with a stumble.

  She is not spindly or slim or small or skinny.

  She is dying.

  The look of her is unbearable.

  “Oh,” I say, a breath more than a word. “Oh.” The second “oh” is the sound of my heart dropping to my feet. It feels wrong. Cruel. I’m not a cruel witch. My magic isn’t cruel. But Jane’s ribs, the way her head looks too heavy for her neck, the collapse in her shoulders, is cruel.

  I did that, I think. My magic did that.

  I scan the room for the king. He is the same as he was this morning. Smiling. Strong. His head sometimes leaning back in a laugh, his shoulders carelessly low. I look back and forth between them. The king and his dying daughter.

  Already essential parts of me are shifting into new, awkward spaces. My heart in my throat. My fear twitching in my fingers. My thoughts racing up and down my arms. My memories rolling around in my stomach, giving me wave upon wave of regret.

  “He doesn’t care,” I say to Willa. I try to keep my voice a whisper, but it’s hard to get a hold of. “Look at her. Look. And at him. He’s—he was supposed to be—look at all of them. They like this. They like her like this.”

  Willa doesn’t say anything, but her hand stays in mine. I fight back a retch.

  In AndNot I imagined a hundred ways this would all go, a thousand ways to break the spell, a million glorious moments where I would be heralded as the witch who fixed everything. I dreamed of my mother, reborn as someone calm and fine and healed, and the king as shamed and regretting and wanting me to save his children. I imagined maybe the vanished princess might even return to see her glorious kingdom restored. I dreamed a fairy tale that was never real. Not this king. Not this kingdom.

  I make myself look at Princess Jane one more time. I know this is it, the moment I have to come forward and take the next step. I look at her head. It hangs, like her body can’t quite hold it up. And her eyes, which stare somewhere else entirely.

  If the king doesn’t suffer in her suffering, if even her slow, magical death doesn’t make him collapse, I know nothing will.

  All that’s left is to make them all see what I see. What I should have seen when I was thirteen and thought I knew everything.

  I can’t make him see his daughters; I can’t make him care about their pain or this spell or the hurt he’s caused.

  But maybe I can make them see him. Make them see their kingdom, their king, their truth. And mine.

  There’s a change in the music, one song ending and another beginning. A transition into a new melody, a new beat underneath it all.

  “Now,” I say to Willa. I walk her to the center of the room. I’m sure the king would like me to stand off to the side, but I won’t stay there for another second. This will not be a party any longer. There will be no more dancing or feasting.

  I am a witch. I have magic. I don’t need to ask permission. I didn’t need his last-minute invitation. My mother came here without permission, and I am her daughter, a witch with even bigger magic. I didn’t need a piece of silver to tell me to be here.

  We are in a room dressed up to be the night sky, and he has forgotten that we are the moon and the stars and the black of night itself. We are it. The witches of Ever. And we are here.

  When we get to the center of the night sky, we let go of each other. Our hands move to our hoods. We pull them off our heads, slip the cloaks from our shoulders, revealing our magical gowns, layers of skirts, the sign of witches. Of spells cast.

  It takes no time at all. Our skirts make us unmistakable. Princesses and duchesses and royalty from every kingdom wear sleek gowns in dull colors that hug their waists and slink around their legs. Only witches walk around bell shaped and draped in color.

  The room turns our way. Princes. Princesses. Queens and kings. Then our princesses. Then our king.

  “I’m the witch,” I say, my voice as strong as I’d hoped it might be, my words as sure. “I cast the Spell of Without.” I look at all of them in their dresses and unsettling joy. Then I look at Jane. At Nora. At Alice and Grace and Eden. And finally, finally at him. The king. “I’m back,” I say.

  7. JANE

  She doesn’t look the way she has in my head all these years. In my head, she is tall and sharp faced. In my head, her hair is thick and wild and her eyes are narrowed and her chin points and her hands grip. In my head, she hates us.

  But she is looking at me from across the room, her white face soft featured, her hair straight and almost blond, standing next to a smaller witch with brown skin and worried eyes and wearing layers of light, airy skirts. They don’t look like they hate me. They look like they pity me.

  I know the look well. It took some getting used to. For years I was looked at with honor and respect and envy. Then, all of a sudden, it was there. On Olive’s face. The other attendants’. Sometimes a subject. Always my own sisters.

  Pity.

  “It’s going to be hard,” she says, the whole of her facing me and only me. Her gaze doesn’t drift to my other sisters. Her body doesn’t shift toward my father’s place at the head of the longest table. “My magic is stubborn.”

  I swallow what I want to say, which is that someone with stubborn magic shouldn’t be casting spells that could kill a person. One that could kill princesses. But the fight in me is fading. I’ve spent so much of the night hating Prince Felix that there’s not much left to hate this witch.

  “We’re ready,” I say. “We’ve been ready. We’re stubborn too.” I pull my shoulders back and imagine a crown on my head. Queens say things simply, if they say anything at all.

  “We’re ready,” Eden says. She is still shining and light. She is still filled with hope on her Thirteenth Birthday. The spell will hit the second she turns thirteen, and Dad couldn’t tell us when exactly that was. It’s hard to keep track, he says each time we’ve asked what to expect. Your mother would know. “Just tell us,” Eden goes on. Her chin sticks out. Her hands are on her hips. There’s a giggle traveling around the room at her precociousness, but people underestimate moxie.

  People underestimate Eden.

  “We’re not scared,” she says, and it’s not true, but it sounds true, the way she says it. “Right, Dad?” We all look to my father. He gives one silent nod. He doesn’t cower at the sight of the witch who broke us. He doesn’t rage at her either. He doesn’t do much of anything in her direction except shake his head a silent no and rub his chin in thought. I’ve seen him take that stance before, a shape his body finds when he’s waiting for the next thing to happen, when he’s being patient with something terrible.

  Don’t make decisions quickly, he’s told me during our talks in the library about what it means to rule Ever. Don’t let anyone tell you
who to be and what to do. If you are queen, you’ll know, if you wait and listen. I loved the advice. And the idea that Dad’s decisions come from a place of patience and searching. A place we can trust. A quiet place. Silence is powerful, he told me when I asked why queens weren’t allowed to talk to their subjects, why kings gave speeches but not queens and certainly not princesses. Silence is more powerful than any of the rest of it.

  I see now how true it is. His silence is hurting her. She rises up on her tiptoes, which is exactly what she did before she cast the Spell of Without. I take a step back, then another, as if a few feet could protect me from her magic.

  Eden doesn’t shift. She rises up on her toes too. “We’re royalty,” she says, and it sounds a little silly, the way she says it, but it’s true. I asked Dad once if being royalty made us better than everyone else. Of course not, he said in his slow way. But it makes us know better.

  Reagan’s witch friend grabs hold of her hand and says something into her ear. It changes Reagan, who takes a deep breath, brings her heels back to the ground, and turns to me again.

  “You’ll need to bring me a collection of objects,” she says. “You’ll need to gather them up and deliver them to me. Before I turn eighteen, of course. Because of the True Spells. Because of—”

  “You don’t have to tell us,” I say. I do not need a reminder of how close to death I am. “We know about Slow Spells and True Spells. We know about witches.”

  “Do you?” I can’t tell if it’s a real question or a challenge.

  “We know everything about Ever,” I say, bringing my shoulders back.

  “Well. You certainly know the inside of this castle well.”

  “We go outside.”

  “That’s true. You know as far as you can see.” She raises her eyebrows like a challenge, but I can raise mine, too, so I do. Princesses aren’t meant to wander streets and farms and Barren Fields. She’s welcome to traipse through Ever doing whatever her heart desires, but I take my job seriously.