by Alyssa Wees
Though in the minority, these maculae were feared and revered in equal measure. By royal decree, they were given a choice: have their wrists bound in chains made of iron, the bane of all magic, so that their abilities were kept contained until the king of the realm called upon them to use their powers; or remain independent but rendered magicless by the removal of their second heart, before being banished to the Heartless Hollow deep in the forest. In exchange for the former, they were given riches and honored in festivals. Titles were bestowed upon them—the more extraordinary the ability, the higher the ranking. They lived full and opulent lives, or so it seemed—as, remember, they just couldn’t use their magic as they pleased.
Immaculae, the king called his servants. Spotless, pure.
They are dangerous, yes, he told his people, but that is what the chains are for. This way, everyone is safe.
Our girl was a macula—but she did not wear chains, for she kept her powers a secret. Her grandfather was the king, and that made her a princess, the only child born to her father, the crown prince. Her mother, the future queen consort, had magic too—magic she also kept secret from everyone but the princess. If it were known they were maculate, each would have to make the choice, just like all the other maculae caught using their magic freely: accept the chains and lose their liberty, or keep their freedom but without magic. Rules were rules, and it did not matter that they were royalty.
But the princess did not want to hide away in her castle, gazing every day out her window at the woods where she knew, just knew, she belonged.
It isn’t safe there, her mother warned her, seeing that sneaking gleam in the princess’s eyes, the restlessness and the yearning for freedom.
For a long time, the princess refrained from leaving, but eventually her longing for the woods grew stronger than her fear. And so she cast a glamour over herself and snuck out of the castle at night, fleeing to the forest where the monsters lived. Where she could be a monster too.
On that first venture inside, when she was barely nine years old, she came face to face with a manticore not twenty feet into the shadows. The beast paced in front of a tree, glancing at the princess with each quick pivot of her paws. Her claws were long and glowed in the dark.
Hello, little one, and where are you going? Alone, I see, but unfamiliar with the ways of the wood.
Her breath smelled like blood blisters and worms and burnt flesh.
How do you know I’m unfamiliar? the princess said, doing her very best impression of bravery. I belong here, same as you.
The manticore raised her gold-gray eyebrows. Is that so?
I have magic.
Ah. That would be why you have brought no weapon. You think your magic is enough.
It can be if I need it to be. The princess eyed her. Will you eat me, manticore?
No, my sweet. The manticore stopped pacing and smiled at her with each of her three rows of teeth. We only eat the ones who think they can get away.
Oh, I see. You won’t eat me because I know I can get away.
The manticore threw back her head and laughed. A manticore’s laugh is not at all like their slippery, sliding voice. Their laugh is hard and abrupt, like stone clacking against stone, a tumble of pebbles into a stream. The princess loved it, immediately and immensely.
Come with me, my dear macula, and I will introduce you to the trees.
The trees?
You must make friends with them first. If you make a foe of the trees, you will never be allowed to come back.
The manticore introduced her to the trees and to everyone worth knowing in the woods, to the satyrs and sylphs and the sphinxes, to the shape-shifters and heart-wrenchers. Among them, two girls—one a gray gorgon, a girl with silver moonlight for hair. Any human who chanced to gaze into her amethyst eyes was instantly turned into shadow. The other girl was a nymph who made her home in the Grimly River that circled the darkest part of the forest. Here with them the macula was not royalty but just another bright creature trying to hide in a dark world, where their light made them suspect and easy to find.
The princess grew from a child to a young woman, and each night she went to the forest to see her friends and to practice her magic, to scream the words to make clouds gather and grate, make thunder without rain, make lightning without pain, conjured for no other reason than that she was alive and had magic inside her. The darkness concealed her as she slipped from the castle, swallowing her sighs and the patter of her slippered feet. She was far more afraid of her grandfather and his soldiers and what they would do to her if she were discovered than she was of any of the creatures living in the forest, but she sought solace in the fact that were her magic known, she would be the very thing they feared the most.
Often the princess ventured all the way to the dark center of the woods to visit a small group of orphaned maculae known as the Forest Forgotten, the older ones looking after the littlest among them. She brought food and water and other supplies, and helped to build and repair their modest wooden shelters. After the work was done, they played hiding and finding games, laughing as they weaved between the trees, hopping over logs and jumping in the leaves. When at last the children grew sleepy, the princess told them stories.
Someday, she promised with a wide, trembling smile, every one of you will live in the palace with me, where we will play all day and dance all night.
This was her life: Princess by day and macula at night.
It was exhausting, being two girls, living two lives. Her little moon heart began to swell, distending with secrets and raw with rage. She wanted to be a princess and she wanted to be free, and what was so wrong with that?
Her life might have gone on like this forever, half of her hidden, but one day a young Immacula with shining black hair and chains around his wrists approached her in the castle hallway alone.
Your Highness? he said, and her eyes were already drifting away, tracing a mental path to the nearest exit. My name is—
Excuse me, she said quickly, picking up her skirts and giving a shallow curtsy. She did not talk to the Immaculae if she could help it, for fear that they would divine her secret if they came too close. I have to—
Please, I need to talk to you, just for a moment.
She pivoted and made to leave, but then, just loud enough for her to hear, he said, Your Highness, I know you have magic.
At this she stopped. Slowly she turned back around. Obviously this changed things. She stared at him, her mouth, her throat, her heart going dry. He stared back, but she saw no maliciousness in his dark eyes, only an eager desperation, his brows drawn together. He bit his lip as he waited for her answer.
Come with me, she said, breaking the silence. Follow at a distance, so that no one sees us leaving together.
Discreetly trailing behind, he followed her out of the hallway and through the castle, all the way to the north wing. It was old and crumbling, the only part of the castle still made of stone. The king had told her never to go there, but she often did anyway, drawn to the dark and the damp. Only once they were alone did the princess stop and look at the boy.
How do you know my secret? she demanded at once, and he visibly shivered in the chill air of the stone hallway. He glanced around, as if he’d had no idea this part of the castle was there. Who have you told and what do you want from me?
I have told no one, he rushed to assure her, rubbing unconsciously at the iron cuffs around his wrists. I have this ability—I can see a macula’s magic through their skin, the slither and the hiss of it. Yours glimmers gold all around you like a halo—the brightest aura I’ve ever seen.
The princess eyed him for a long moment, thinking of her similar ability to feel a macula’s magic through their skin if she touches them. Then she leaned against the wall, exhaling. If you have known since the first time you saw me,
why approach me now?
I’ve tried many times to reach you, he replied with a small smile, but you’re always running to your room when you see me coming.
Abashed, she began to return his smile, before she remembered herself and forced her expression to remain neutral. Well, so what do you want with me?
She listened, then, as he told her his story, a morose tale of his parents, whose macula hearts had been cut out of their chests, and his undetected maculate sister hidden away in the Hollow, stuck in an attic lest anyone discover her magic.
I am sorry, she said when he had finished, lowering her eyes and fiddling with the fingertips of her silken gloves. For you and for them.
Then help me, he said, taking a small step toward her. Help my family, and bring down the king.
I’ve tried again and again to convince him that the maculae are not dangerous, she said quietly, but he refuses to believe me. What more can I do without violence? There are curses for those who would harm their kin.
That may be true, he said, with such sorrowful understanding that her gaze snapped up in surprise. But the king is not your kin. We, the maculae, are your kin. I am your kin. I have two beating hearts, same as you. You are not alone.
She shook her head. When I am queen, I will change things. When I am queen, people will listen.
Your Highness, we cannot wait that long.
When next the princess spoke, it was in a whisper. What if my light is not bright enough to sever this darkness? You may think me the sky, but I am only one small star.
The Immacula bowed his head, and lowered to one knee before her. I know you are powerful—I sense it. Together we can change things. Now, not later.
Slowly, her breath tangling in her throat, she peeled off her gloves and pressed her hands to his cheeks. At once she felt his magic, sparking, golden and sure, warming her palms and sending a gentle tingle up her arms. She hardly knew him, and yet she found she did not want to let go. No one had ever asked for her help—or offered theirs in return.
You are not alone, she said to herself, and the words felt false in her mouth, like smoke, like ash, like things long dead. But then she thought again of the manticore, the gray gorgon, and the nymph, who were her friends. She thought of her mother, and of this boy’s sister, and she thought of the world she ached to see, all of them free.
She had no plan, no strategy, and she was not prepared to seal a promise she was not sure she could keep. But maybe, maybe this was a beginning.
I will, she said to the boy at last. But not quite yet.
Your Highness—
Please. I need just a little more time. I must make preparations and consult with the others of the forest who would fight for our cause. We will fight this war only when we know we can win. She dropped her hands, and already missed his warmth. It is best if we do not speak again. Not until I call on you. Not until I am ready.
The princess led the Immacula out of the old part of the palace, making him vow he would not return there again, not without her. She hardly knew him, and didn’t know if she could trust him—but his vow would have to be enough for now.
He knows my secret, she thought, and there was something thrilling in this, even as it frightened her that he had the power to reveal her truth to the king. She went back to her room, already thinking of when she would call on the black-haired Immacula again.
Only, the next day, the princess found her mother in the rooftop temple, laid out on the altar with her throat torn open, the violet wound gleaming like a rain cloud obscuring the moon. Her body exsanguinated, drained of both blood and magic.
The princess screamed, loud, louder, loudest—and once she had started, she could not stop.
Murder, murder, murder.
The king searched in vain for the assassin. Rumors rippled through the city; the princess heard whisperings that the woodland creatures had conspired to kill the future queen, to instigate a war.
The princess heard these rumors but did not know what to think. They would not kill their own. In her grief, she could hardly think straight at all. For days she spoke to no one.
And then, in a trance, the princess confused misted sunlight for bright starlight and a corpulent cloud for a full ivory moon, and she stumbled to the forest not at nightfall but at noon. She pressed her forehead to a tree and scratched at the bark. A wild thing, lost.
That’s when she was caught.
It was the eighth day she had lived without her mother. The guards noted her strange behavior, the sparkles on the ground marking her footsteps. The guards fetched the king, and the king then went with his soldiers and the crown prince to the forest, where the soldiers seized her as she slumped against a tree. Their armor glinted in the dull sunlight threading through the clouds, and she knew, though she wore only a simple summer dress of deepest scarlet, that her armor was stronger than theirs.
What is this? yelled her grandfather. What is this all about?
The girl raised her palms in the air. Rain fell, swift and silent, tiny cold drops that stuck to her chin and her hands and her neck and her hair, glittering like diamonds on her skin. She opened her mouth, and laughed.
What devilry is this? Her grandfather slapped her, wiping the sparkly drops from her cheek. Stop this at once.
She stopped, but only so that she might see his face better, a short white beard and withered blue eyelids, quivering. And his soldiers, unmoving—they didn’t scare her. Not anymore. The thing she had dreaded her whole life had finally come to pass, and there was relief in that.
Like all captured maculae, she now had a choice. Except this time, her grandfather made the choice for her. Her father begged the king to reconsider, but his pleas went unacknowledged. Two soldiers held the prince back while another stepped forward with a fire-hot iron and branded the backs of her hands with the mark of the Immaculae: on the right an eye wide open, and on the left an eye shut tight. She screamed as the blistering heat seared through her.
The king said, You are hereby accused of maculacy, which you have hidden for eighteen years, and you will forevermore be inducted into the ranks of your kind. Your royal lineage is now a lie. You are my servant, and shall be so forevermore.
The girl rose to her feet, glistening. There was another lick of laughter crouched in her throat, but this one was black and barbed, and if she let it out, the world would snap in two. A swift severance, a clean seam: magic on one side, majesty on the other. She wanted only to be whole.
You do not understand—I have always been in thrall to you. Tethered to your fear, bound by your hate. I am a princess and a macula both. I have many faces, not just the one I wear day after day, to fool you. I am showing them all to you now. In the maculate style of making a vow, she put both her hands to her heart. My magic is like a sunbeam, able to warm and to burn, to illuminate and to blind in equal measure. Under your control I would become a weapon against the forest and the people I love. I will not serve you, and I will not let you use me.
She took a step forward, and the soldiers flinched. Only the king stood tall and firm and unblinking.
From this day on I will be in Graiae Forest, at its very center, under a sleeping spell, she said, and her father cried out for her not to do this. But the princess pressed on. He couldn’t save her now. The only way to wake me is with a kiss. Yes, just that—a kiss. But know this: Whoever puts their lips to mine must pay a price, and that price is their life. Whoever tries to wake me will die, as will anyone whom that person holds dear.
She turned in a circle, staring at the soldiers, who stared straight ahead and did not see her. She turned to her father, who reached for her but could not touch her. Finally she turned to her grandfather. She looked at him, and he looked back. She said, Who will pay the price of a life? Will you?
The king said nothing. She knew he wou
ld not risk his own life for her, and that was the way she wanted it. She wished only to sleep in peace.
With that, she ran. The soldiers chased her into the woods, but she knew the woods better, and soon she left them far behind.
As she ran she murmured a somnolence spell, one so powerful and old it had a tinge of red magic, like blood spilled on white silk. She whispered all the way to the center, where at last she closed her eyes and collapsed on a bower of brambles and leaves, lush and green. At once they withered to brown and gold, curling at the edges where her bare skin touched them. Hair splayed, darker than dirt, hands folded over her heart, on her back she lay in the quiet, in the darkness, in a dream.
And in deepest sleep, she smiled.
The Fox Who Is No Fox twisted on his knees to face the Witch.
“Did you like that story?” he said, so gently she thought she might cry, and she did not even know why. She had never cried before, ever. She had no reason to—not in her castle in a dream in the Woods.
The Witch only shrugged. “I enjoyed it some,” she said. The ivory enamel of her throne was slick against her spine, wet with her own sweat.
“There’s more of the story to tell.” He exhaled, shaking the floral crown from his head. “Do you wish to hear it?”
“It grows late,” she replied.
“Do you wish for me to stay?” he asked.
The Witch said nothing.
“Do you wish for me to come back?”
The Witch said nothing.
The Fox Who Is No Fox stood, pressed his fingertips beneath the Witch’s chin. She did not move. He dropped his hand, but she still felt it, five warm points constellated on her skin. Everywhere else, she was cold.
He left, slowly. Waiting for her to call him back, to bid him to stay.
But she did not.
And, she thought, I never will.
A smaller part of her thought, But maybe, maybe I will.
The breeze blew and the tree branches shivered and the night was long. It reached on and on and on. The Witch sent the children away. Every single one. Sent them away with empty fists and sores on the insides of their cheeks where melting wishes should have been. Her altar was empty, depleted of scabs and baby teeth and shadows. She could not bear and did not dare to open her heart to them, and she was sickened at the thought of sewing her skin back together. Uneven, ugly stitches, for she had no mirror and she had no help. Save for the foxes, which were loyal but told her no stories, she was alone, all alone, and she wanted to scream, but instead she danced, wobbled, and whirled while the foxes watched. Screams scared people, woke them. Even if the only person around to scare or to wake was herself.