Once Upon a Time: The Villains (4 page)

Step, pull, step, pull. He climbed the side of the manor, heading straight for the tower with the help of a thick rope. But how?

I peered up toward the tower window and spied my daughter’s tear-streaked, yet happy face straining along with Arthur, her love. She eagerly pulled on the rope like a fisherman hauling in a precious catch.

“No!” I screamed. He would take her, and I would be left alone. Again. I couldn’t be left alone.

I called on the wind. I called on the rain. Lash! Whip! Drive him away! Arthur slammed against the tower; his feet desperately fought for balance against the slick stones. My efforts led to no avail. The boy who had declared his love had reached the tower room.

An inhuman scream wrenched from my gut and poured from my lips. I nearly doubled over with the pain of Rapunzel’s betrayal. How could she? How could my daughter, the only one I had ever lavished my love on, betray me like this? She was supposed to be weak from lack of food. She was supposed to be weak in mind. She was supposed to be weak in spirit, mourning the knowledge that her love was gone for good. I had been tricked most thoroughly, for she was strong, taking her lover into her arms and holding him tight.

I pounded my fists against the window sill. “Who fed her?” I cried to the forest. “Who gave her water?” I demanded.

The forest creatures were strangely quiet. Guilt had stolen their chatter.

The creatures she had tended since she could toddle about the yard, they had helped her. I could feel their confusion. I could feel their love for my daughter. They had long ago abandoned me for her. I had never realized how completely. I had allowed the transfer, thinking it one more cord to bind her to me, but it had been the source of my downfall.

“No more,” I shouted to the creatures huddling in their nests and hiding in their burrows. “No more will I tend to your needs. Look,” I yelled and pointed to the tower window and the couple within, “he has come for her. She will leave, never to return. You have sealed all our fates.”

Bitterness seethed through my veins. I turned from the window and dashed into the dark corridor. My every nerve ending sparked with anger. I could feel the heat radiate off me. She would be better off dead than with that boy.

I would stop them. And when my deed was done, the tower would become a quiet sanctuary, a tribute to my lovely daughter. I would keep her in a suspended sleep — keep her as I wished to see her. I would then visit her whenever I desired, talk to her, stroke her hair, see her delicate beauty, take pleasure in her innocence, find solace in her perfection the way I never had in my own life. She would never leave. Never.

I raced to the tower and began my ascent to the uppermost room. I encountered cobwebs strung across the stairwell. They grew thicker and thicker. I raked my hands through the sticky threads and growled at the tiny insects responsible for them. They wished to protect my daughter from me. Did they not understand?
I
was saving
her
. I was keeping her here with all of us. Mice skittered under foot and owls dove at my head. I swatted and kicked and fought my way to the top. I threw off the enchantment and pushed hard against the door.

I needn’t have been so rough. I tumbled into the room and fell to my hands and knees. Lifting my head, I spied what I most feared. An empty room.

“No,” I sobbed, letting the tears gather in my eyes and wash down my wrinkled cheeks. “No!” I cried louder, unwilling to believe what my eyes were telling me. I was too late.

I rose and went to the window. Attached to the shutters was a thickly-braided silken rope. The most unusual thing I’d ever seen. I looked beyond the casement and saw that the rope reached all the way to the ground. How had they done it? How? No tell-tale arrow stuck in the wall to deliver such a heavy object. I again looked at the rope, and my breath caught in my throat.

It was hair. Rapunzel’s glorious, silky blonde hair. But how?

As I pondered the enormity of the magic involved, I saw a gilded book lying on the bed. I picked up the tome of magic. It had my father’s smell all over it. What I had thought madness was magic. What I had deemed weak had turned strong. My obedient, placid, beautiful daughter had tricked me. She had used the special skills I had learned against me.

Though I had sought to keep her safe in the tower, the tower had betrayed me. It had harbored secrets far deeper than mine. I stood by the window and opened the book. Pages upon pages of dark magic fluttered between my fingers. The spells called to me.

Take revenge.

Use me.

I will be your love, now.

She betrayed us both.

This book. This evil thing had enchanted my daughter. “No,” I breathed against the horror it revealed. “Never,” I said harder. I slipped a page between my fingers and pulled.

The ripping sounded more like a scream to my ears. I tossed the page out the window and watched the early morning breeze take it away. Again I ripped. Again and again. I ripped and tossed and sobbed out my heart. I took great satisfaction in flinging the evil out of the tower and into the wind to fall to the earth and dissolve into nothing. Or so I thought.

“May you never find a soul to read you again,” I cried.

The birds captured the pages and carried them away into the hands of another.

Finally, when the book lay hollow, my legs buckled beneath me, and I collapsed to the floor. This was all a terrible dream. A nightmare from which I must awake. Oddly, I barely had the energy to blink.

How long I sat numb and unaware, I do not know. I thought the nightmare had ended. I had destroyed the book. Would not life be better? Could I not now find my sweet girl and restore her to me?

Yet unbeknownst to me, the day had swiftly passed and the hour for nightmares was fast approaching. I had more horrors to see. While I had been in a trance, birds had entered the tower. Warblers. Mud nesters. While I had slouched in my own hell reliving the past, they had intricately built a thick plaster over the door frame. They used hair and mud and sticks and straw. The composition was interesting, beautiful in fact; the golden hair glistened within, creating a lively dance upon the wall, but not once in all that time did I recognize the omen of death in front of me.

Over time, the room darkened. Had night fallen so suddenly? I glanced toward the window. The mud nesters had been busier than I thought. I was being entombed in the tower. The birds, my dear old friends, had turned against me.

A warbler squeezed in and pushed a glob of mud and hair against the shrinking opening. I rose and peered through the tiny hole. There in the distance I saw my child, her hands full of pages steeped in magic. She spoke and magic swirled higher, hardening the newly formed walls. I drew back as a little bird poked a beak full of mud and hair into the hole. “Why do you do this, little friend?”

The bird cocked its head and looked at me, not pleasantly, and vanished through the hole. I stumbled back, clutching the empty book binding to my chest, and fell to the filthy mattress I had meant to replace. Unnatural sleep overtook me.

There, as I lay day after day in the suspended state between earth and sky, my mother appeared. She sang and brushed my hair and told me she would always love me. I died believing her.

If you pass by my manor, you will see the windowless tower, lonely and gray, stabbing against the sky like an angry, accusing finger. I found peace. I found my refuge. Because even in her anger, my daughter’s sweet nature still resided, my death had been easy. Not scary or even painful. I found moments of memories I thought long gone. Love lasts a lifetime. Love lasts even past death.

If you enter my woods, be wary of the birds. They have been enchanted and will fly at strangers, pecking and clawing until you leave. I like to think they protect me, as they used to do so long ago. But that is only a wish I have. Not reality. I am only a hag, after all. No one loves the unlovable. At least, not for long. But I remember a time…when love was mine.

Sliver of a Soul

A Tale of Revenge

I am a creature of the forest. A thing no one wants, hidden within the darkness of the night, slipping from tree to tree in the search of something I don’t understand. My desires are deep, yet I can’t name them. I want something that has yet to be found. When I find it, I’ll know. I’ll know.

Tree bark is my cloak, dirt my blanket. My fingernails are ragged and filthy, my hair thick with dried mud and vermin. I have embraced who I’ve become. My hands are thick fingered and strong; my legs squat and sturdy. I give no grace, and I receive none. I am my own — a creation of mankind’s defilement and fears. I have learned to accept my role even if the rest of the world has not.

The other creatures that share my domain tease me, call me ugly and unlovable. They are beasts of beauty, of fur and feather. They preen in meadows, forgetting they are vulnerable. Only when the scent of man comes do they hide. But when they hide, they are found. Their beauty is like a beacon, while my ugliness is a cloak. I’ve watched as arrow after arrow pierces flesh and they are destroyed. I still live. I think I always will.

Within my memory lies a secret. I am part man — a small part, almost non-existent, but still there — and part myth. Stories abound regarding creatures like me. Man is master of this earth while I am of this earth. I am misshapen, a creature of the clay and of fears. Man cannot see me. It’s not that I am invisible; I do not matter.

I once had a mother, a maid who bore a monster. She tried to love me, but my very existence was indecent, immoral, and unsettling to everyone. Even her. I was seen as a curse, the manifestation of the evil that lies within us all. My own father believed the lies. “Never would my seed take such unnatural shape,” he accused.

He took my mother to the priests and demanded justice. She was given a choice. Repent and destroy her child, or burn at the stake.

What choice did she have? In the end, she took me deep within the forest and placed me within the roots of an old oak tree. She backed away, begging the old wooden giant to help her. “I will burn. We both will if I do not leave him here. Live or die, it is now your choice.”

As she watched, the roots slowly covered me and I sunk into the earth. Without a backward glance, she ran back to the village. A fatal mistake. Within the tangle of roots and forest debris, I was abandoned and forgotten by man. But for my mother, it was too late. The whole village knew of my disfigurement, and their superstition urged my father to cut away the curse.

When my mother got home, my father went into a rage. He rushed forward and pulled her hair until her neck twisted painfully. “Where is the child?”

“Dead. I swear. Just as you asked. The babe died in my arms.”

He didn’t believe her. He wanted to see the cold blue shell of my tiny body, something she couldn’t produce. He shoved her to the floor as he had done many times before, for my father was not a kind man, and she screamed in pain. Within his clenched fist was a hank of her dark hair, ripped away by the roots. He shook the glossy fall in her face as she wept for mercy. “Deceitful harlot! Your lies rot your flesh. You shall die for bringing such a curse on our family.”

As he forced her toward the village square, she pleaded with my father and everyone else to listen to her. The forest had taken me. I was gone, no longer a threat.

No one believed her. They were smart after all.

That night, while the air trembled with the accusations that my mother was cursed, I lay safely hidden within a fox’s burrow, nursing my fill. When my suckling finally slowed and my eyes closed with contentment, the night sky gradually brightened as the fire licked at my mother’s flesh. Her cries of anguish became my lullaby as she writhed against the stake to which the villagers had bound her.

So, here I am. The spawn they fear. I lie in wait and watch man go about his life. I’ve embraced my fabled legacy. I’ve learned to play the game well. I’ve developed a magic, cruel and dangerous, that feeds my soul a black, hateful gruel. I thrive on its bitter taste. Mankind has made me what I am. Man will suffer for my misfortune, for I am injured beyond repair. I want what mankind has ... what man is. I want revenge. Humanity has been denied me, and I will make man suffer. I live, now, to trick him, befuddle him, and cause him pain.

The desire for revenge sparks my life, ignites my imagination and keeps me forever looking for that which I have not yet found. I feel it within my bones that I will soon be rewarded. I am patient.

Seasons are my time measure: winter chill, spring rain, summer heat, autumn bluster. For each season I have created a game. For each game there is a player, one who has foolishly wandered into my domain. Some seasons I see only one man. I start my game and watch as the intruder fumbles to understand the rules. Be it Conkers, Blindman’s Bluff or a rousing game of Huckle Buckle Beanstalk, man rarely wins, and in the end, a bonfire greets the end of his life. So my mother died, so shall he, leaving behind a confused family who wonders where their loved one has disappeared or if he’ll ever return. Oh, the stories my forest has generated. Oh, the fear men have when they must enter beneath its secretive boughs.

Today, not one, but three of man’s offspring take refuge under my tree. My wits sharpen. The challenge is accepted. I will play my game and see who triumphs as the victor. These men are big and beefy. They are the king’s guards. After a quick meal, they take to their horses. A hard winter has forced the creatures farther into the forest. Man must now delve deeper for what they desire. Today their pound of venison may cost a great deal more than a few arrows. I hold their lives in the palm of my hand.

These men have heard the stories. They are quick. They are cunning. As one looks for those creatures deemed weaker, one’s they can kill and eat, the other two stay alert for danger. I say my spell, weave my magic, and their horses spook. A kick and a buck and the men are thrown off. The horses race from my enchanted forest.

The three stumble for their weapons and collide. These men are buffoons, after all. I worry for nothing. They notch their arrows and peer about threateningly. I am not afraid. I call down a tree branch and slap one in the rump, flinging him to the ground. They yelp and huddle close together. I soften the ground beneath one and he sinks. The others grab him and pull. He flies free only to land on his companions. They all scramble to their feet, eyes wide, mouths stretched into thin lines of fear. I let out a quick bark and growl. They jump, turn and run. What fools. What fun. I like this game. I might even let them go free.