Archive of Our Own

In a kingdom deep on the other side of the woods, far from their homes, a Prince and a Princess from two different kingdoms had reunited after a long seperation adjudicated by their fathers. From there, they only had one final part of their story to accomplish: their return through the Woods of Desolate Darkness to the Prince’s kingdom.

It should have been straightforward. Easy. A denouement easily skipped and summarized in only a few sentences.

The most sought-after fairy godmother in all the lands, the Lady Clarissa Dovey, had neatly checked this adventure off her mental checklist. The two children were on their way to a happy ending and they wouldn’t be needing a fairy godmother again until their nuptials.

So when her body had vibrated from a summoning as she savored a pastry in her study, Dovey had thought it was a new person with a new story. She had been hoping for a longer break. Not too long, but just long enough she could finish her raspberry tart.

Instead, she disappeared sans tart and rematerialized in the forest.

Catching her balance, she examined the scene before her.

She was in a forest. It was brightly lit and filled with luscious greenery. Before her, there was a clearing. There lay the Princess Alathea, her Prince knelt beside her.

Dovey stepped toward them.

Princess Alathea was convulsing: her feet kicking against the ground, her head rocking from side to side violently. The veins in her arm were no longer faintly blue but rather a sickly dark green.

Prince Thomas had been holding her hand before the convulsions had yanked it out of his grasp. He was still there, but he was ready to leap back if he had to.

He looked up as Dovey drew closer. “Save her,” he begged. “Save her, please.”

Clarissa wanted to. That much was certain. It was how to save the princess that she was distinctly less certain about.

Prince Thomas was making a wish, but Dovey wasn’t his fairy godmother. Even if she had been, she doubted his wish could save Alathea.

“Have you tried true love’s kiss?” she asked, knowing even the stupidest prince would’ve already tried that.

Thomas nodded. Just to prove it, he moved forward, catching the girl’s face and kissing her again.

Dovey waited. She watched as nothing happened.

Thomas sobbed. “She’s my true love,” he said. “She is. She is.”

The magic seemed to disagree. They were both only children. What could they know of true love?

“Hold her down,” Dovey said, for something to say. She didn’t want Thomas to get hysterical. “I’ll try to heal her.”

She already knew it wouldn’t work. They’d been too hasty trying to find their true love, they were still just kids, and now the girl was paying the price. Dovey had rudimentary healing abilities—every fairy godmother did—but if true love’s kiss was ineffective, her magic wouldn’t make a difference. Alathea was meant to die and fairy godmothers were not to interfere in matters of victory and defeat.

Prince Thomas helped restrain Alathea’s upper body. Dovey knelt down, her dress sinking into the dirt. She put her hand on Alathea’s arm and let her magic spread through the girl’s body.

She could feel the poison there, angry and destructive, spreading out, sinking into every crevice. She tried to use her magic to trap it. It didn’t dispel the poison, but it put a damper on it.

Dovey opened her eyes. The convulsions were already dying down. She looked at the prince.

He was already looking at her with hope. False hope.

“I didn’t heal her,” Dovey said. “I simply dampened the effects of the poison momentarily.”

A solemn look appeared on his face but he nodded. “There’s nothing we can do, is there?”

Princess Alathea lay there, gasping for breath.

Dovey nodded to the boy. There was nothing any of them could do. Not anymore. The girl had lost pure and simple. The villain had won. But she didn’t want to have to be the one to tell Thomas that.

She looked at the ground. A rose lay on the ground, just outside Alathea’s reach, shimmering with magic. She must have dropped it there when the poison entered her system.

The tragic event wasn’t hard to imagine. No doubt, a villain had fashioned a poisoned rose. Perhaps, they had swapped it out for one the prince had left for her as he went to get water. Or placed it along the side of the path so it was impossible to resist. Maybe they’d even used a bit of magic to hide the thorns. Regardless, the girl had picked it up…

One prick… One prick and there was nothing to do.

True love’s kiss might’ve worked, but it seemed that the love between the two children was not strong enough.

Dovey thought. A commonfolk doctor would be less useful than she was. There were healers with powerful magic in the rich cities built on fairytales but they were inaccessible here, while they were in a story.

They wouldn’t be in a story for long, she thought dryly. The princess had lost. The prince would fade into obscurity. In the minds of their people, it was as simple as that.

This was the part of the job that Dovey hated.

Dovey looked at the poison seeping through the girl’s body. The poison, the vehicle, the prick mark. Dovey knew the handiwork. Maleficent. Maleficent was the expert in poison delivered through disguised pricks. Though it seemed this rendition had been inspired by the rose in Belle’s story.

It wasn’t hard to imagine how that had occurred either. No doubt some young witch training under Maleficent had determined an elegant way to combine two of the most successful methodologies. Or possibly Maleficent had imagined the idea and simply given it to the young witch to implement. Dovey didn’t know how witch apprenticeships operate.

Dovey looked at the girl. She wished that any of her knowledge would help. In this moment, all her training as a fairy godmother felt quite inadequate. What she had done was only the bare minimum and if she had any real talent for medicine, she’d recognize the poison. A healer would have a guess as to what to do, probably a fancy all purpose poison-fighting magic. Even a low level witch’s apprentice would know what to do.

A real witch though, a real witch would know more. They’d be able to tell which poison was used and by whom and which antidote was appropriate. They’d mix a cauldron and then dump a spoonful of frothing liquid in the girl’s mouth and then… and then…

Dovey looked at the prince. She should send him home. She shouldn’t let him hope. She bit her lip.

She looked at Princess Alathea. She was dying. Her color was fading.

“Go into town,” she instructed Thomas. “See if you can fetch a doctor.”

The boy nodded. He leapt up, mounting his horse, and taking off through the trees.

Dovey wished he’d taken a quick glance behind himself. It was the last time he’d see Alathea.

When he was safely out of sight, Dovey looked around the forest floor. At the edge of the clearing, she found a walnut that had fallen early from the tree. It was prickly and green and a chunk was missing from one side, but it would do. Then she called out quietly.

A mouse exited its burrow. He twitched his nose at her and squeaked indignantly at her proposal. She pleaded with him and, for his time and discomfort, she promised him the most delicious serving of cheese at the end.

The mouse, being a forest mouse, didn’t know what cheese was, so she had to use other foods to bargain. In the end he agreed, but only in exchange for berries and his choice of cheese and bread, depending on which suited his most refined pallet.

Dovey nodded. Then she summoned her wand and closed her eyes.

Mice into horses, walnuts into carriages… She had been doing this for years. Pumpkins worked better but they were a very seasonal plant. It was too early in the year for them.

She opened her eyes, the walnut had become more of a wagon than a carriage, brown and wooden, with an uneven bowl shape. It didn’t matter, it was good enough. The mouse, now horse, was examining his hooves with confusion and obvious distaste.

Dovey led the mouse-horse over to the princess. Then she opened the door on the wagon. It shook a bit on its hinges and was not smooth. Dovey didn’t care.

She moved back to the girl. It took all her strength to lift her and Dovey kept stepping on the hem of her own dress while she did so but eventually, she was able to load Alathea into the cart.

Then she climbed in through the wooden door. She had to pull with all her might to get the door shut.

Then she turned to the mouse-horse. With utmost politeness, she asked the mouse-horse to transport them to the home of Dovey’s dear friend. The mouse-horse whinnied softly in affirmation, and then Dovey whispered to it the directions to where they were trying to go.

The ride was less than an hour, though that was because their mouse-horse was going as fast as he could with his new legs, excited by the freedom that came with size and swiftness. No longer did he have to fear foxes or cats or coyotes. Ordinarily Dovey would warn him to slow down, to not exhaust his strange new muscles. But one look at the girl beside her told Dovey they didn’t have time.

As they reached the area they were headed to, the mouse-horse slowed. He kept glancing behind himself at Dovey, his gray mane rustling with the motion. Dovey nodded encouragingly. She knew he was uncertain and lacked confidence in her directions.

It was easy to tell why the mouse-horse was worried. The trees around them had become darker and the canopy tighter knit. They were gray and angular, lacking most of their leaves. Lichen dangled from the branches, creating forboding fingers that reached down from the tree top above them. The ground was rocky and uneven in places, then marshy in others.

Sometimes, the trees parted slightly and became more spread out revealing landscapes covered in large boulders. It was less muddy in these areas but more windy. The wind was biting and chilly. Dovey shivered as it blew over her bare shoulders and seeped in through the fabric in her dress.

Once again, the mouse-horse turned to look at her, whinnying as though to ask if she were sure. He told her it was too cold for the likes of her and that there was no one out here that could help her. He warned her that this area would be full of wolves and even worse creatures. Goblins, wraths, dragons. Dovey knew this was mostly exaggeration. No creature would be foolish enough to invade a witch’s territory. Dovey bid him on.

He bit the side of his lower lip, disaligning his jaw before cautiously moving forward.

They were not far from their destination but the terrain was becoming more treacherous. The boulders were larger here and the windswept open rock terrain was colliding with the marshy forest. They skirted boulders only to end up in thick mud. The mouse-horse neighed loudly, voicing hiscomplaints.

It was dark. It felt like dusk but Dovey knew it always looked like dusk here.

As they rounded another large boulder, Dovey looked into the darkest part of the woods. There she saw the cottage.

“There it is,” she told the mouse-horse.

The mouse-horse stopped. His feet pawed the ground and he squealed not like a horse but like a mouse. “That’s a witch’s cottage,” he told her.

“Yes,” Dovey said. “Yes, it is.”

The mouse-horse whinnied. He started backing up. It didn’t work, not with the wagon attached and the thick mud.

“It’s alright,” Dovey said, reaching out and patting him. “As soon as you stop at the door, I will turn you back to a mouse.”

The mouse-horse looked back at her as though she were crazy. She nodded encouragingly.

Tentatively, the mouse-horse moved forward, as though expecting to be fried at any moment.

Dovey knew that if the witch had wanted them fried, they already would be. The witch had seen them coming long ago as soon as they had crossed the barrier a good hundred meters back.

The mouse-horse stopped in front of the door to the cottage. Sort of. It was as close as Dovey suspected the mouse-horse was willing to go. The land there was less boggy and Dovey suspected this was by magic.

The cottage itself was nothing to write home about. It was a bit elevated off the ground, no doubt in an attempt to avoid the worst of the mud. There was a small wooden door, in a wooden frame, in wooden walls and a thatch roof.

To either side of the cottage, there were small gardens growing a variety of plants. Behind the cottage, there was a little fenced in area. From it, a goat stared at them, slowly chewing brambles. It was watching Dovey with a critical and suspicious eye.

Dovey pushed open the door of the wagon, carefully removing one foot from beneath her skirt and extending it toward the ground. It was a bunny-nose pink kitten heal and she’d prefer if it didn’t get completely ruined. Peering over her plentiful skirts, she selected the piece of ground she hoped was least muddy and descended from the carriage. She was happy to note that her shoe didn’t completely sink into the ground. Keeping her skirt lifted, she put her other foot on the ground. It could have been worse, though her shoes would have to be salvaged with magic anyway she suspected.

She looked back at the mouse-horse. Keeping her word, she closed her eyes and focused on transforming the mouse-horse back into an actual mouse.

She wasn’t sure whether she expected the mouse to squeal and run away or hide under a rock. Instead, it approached her, pawing at her shoe. Dovey knelt down, wobbly and with her skirts thrown over her knee. She lifted the mouse up and put him in the folds of her skirt.

Then she turned to the door. She smoothed out her skirts, doing her best to remove as much dirt as she could without magic. It was not very effective.

She took three steps forward, and put her hand on the doorknob. It was a loose piece of metal. She twisted it, and pushed forward.

The door didn’t budge.

The door itself was usually unlocked. The witch didn’t even bother to lock it when she went out. Only a fool would enter a witch’s cottage uninvited. Therefore, if it was locked now, that meant for certain that a particular someone was home.

More than that, this someone knew Dovey was here and was trying to prevent her from getting in.

Dovey raised her hand and knocked pointedly on the door. She didn’t like being ignored.

Silence.

She knocked again.

“No!” a voice called from within. No other sounds were made.

Dovey tried her best to knock even more pointedly.

There was a banging inside. Then the door opened, just a crack. “Absolutely not,” said Lesso.

She went to close the door. Dovey, without thinking, used her magic to transform one of the pieces of loose gravel outside the door large enough to block the door from closing.

They both looked down at the stone. Preventing a witch from closing her own door was a very stupid idea.

Dovey looked up to find Lesso watching her.

Now Lesso was the one being pointed. When she noticed she finally had Dovey’s attention, she said, “I am not getting involved in this.” She waved her hand indicating at Dovey and the wagon.

Dovey had expected her to refuse. She had expected it and vowed that she wouldn’t let Lesso’s refusal deter her. “Please,” Dovey pleaded, bringing her hands together. “I didn’t know what else t—”

“You brought someone here,” Lesso said, interrupting. She stepped through the crack in the door. Dovey looked at her clothes in assessment.

For a witch, Lesso had a remarkable sense of style. She was dressed all in black except for the silver of the chain at her waist. Her black coat was dramatic and flared at the back. It was in a men’s style but clearly fashioned for a woman’scurves.

“Yes, I know,” Dovey said. “But she’s—”

“We agreed,” Lesso said, taking a step toward Dovey. “We agreed when we started this: no one else gets—”

“She’s dying,” Dovey said, desperately. She indicated the wagon.

Lesso didn’t look. “Then that means Evil has won for once,” she said, raising her chin. Another step forward.

Dovey mirrored stepping toward Lesso as well. “Lesso,” Dovey said. “How could you… You can’t…”

“Yes, I can,” said Lesso.

“You wouldn’t,” Dovey said. “You wouldn’t let a child die. It’s.. It’s…”

“Wrong?” Lesso scoffed and stepped away. “What exactly do you think happens when Good wins? Do you think everyone on my side is perfectly alright? Or that we’re all monsters so it doesn’t matter that an Evil child die? That we don’t care?”

Dovey always tried desperately to not think about it at all. “Lesso!” she exclaimed. “You know I don’t think that!”

Lesso stopped and looked deep into Dovey’s eyes. “Then why do you expect me to save this kid? By the laws of yoursociety, she’s destined to die.”

Dovey looked down. “I know…” she whispered.

“Then why? Why her?”

Dovey looked back up. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

Lesso knew she was winning and pressed forward. “What about all the kids on my side? The ones that your Princes ruthlessly slaughter? Why not them?”

Dovey closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. She could see the bloodof slaughtered villains on the backs of her eyelids. Slaughtered children. “I want to save them too.”

Lesso ignored Dovey’s obvious distress. “Why does this girl get to live when we didn’t give any of the others that chance?”

Dovey finally looked up. “Because this girl we can actually save!” she exclaimed. “It’s a rudimentary poison! You could make an antidote in your sleep!”

“I could,” Lesso agreed. “But what then? What then? What do we do when she wakes up? It’s not like you can take her back to her home. No doubt she’s already been declared dead. And if she came back to life? What do you think would happen? Good would be angry. Evil would be angrier. She would no doubt be killed all over. And pray tell, Clarissa, what would happen to you? Think!”

“I would be fine,” Dovey insisted.

“You’d be accused of cheating the stories. The chit is already dead. Maybe not physically, but there’s no place left for her in this world anymore.”

“I’m sure there is something for her,” Dovey said. “And Lesso, they wouldn’t know it was me.”

“Oh, right,” Lesso agreed. “They’d think it was me.”

Dovey glared. “We’ll not let anyone find out. Please. We have to do something.”

“Short-sighted,” Lesso said. “Why are you goody-two-shoes types always so short-sighted? What do you expect me to do? Heal her and release her back into the forest to find her way home? She’d just die a day or two later. Wipe her memories and send her to live in a village? I doubt the villagers would appreciate an extra mouth to feed with no useful skills. Keep her here? She’s a princess, there’s no way she’d stay here and not try to run back to the glamour of her previous life.”

“I know,” Dovey said. “But she’s going to die.”

“Princess,” Lesso said. “This isn’t about her dying. This is about us. This is about what’s going to happen to me and to you! If anyone else finds out, they could kill us… or worse!”

But Dovey wasn’t listening anymore. Instead, she was looking at the princess in the wagon. Alathea’s breaths were shallow and weaker now. She was shaking still but with less intensity. It wouldn’t be much longer.

That was when Lesso made the mistake of looking at the girl. With her messy makeup and torn dirty dress, she didn’t look so different from a young witch. Lesso could see the pain on her face and the bruises that were forming on her arms and legs even as she was dying.

Then Lesso looked at Dovey. A mistake. She had meant to look away from the girl so she’d remember: no good would come of this. But there was Dovey, exhausted and upset, eyes begging Lesso to do something.

Lesso looked back once again at the princess and the visible poison in her arm. Lesso recognized it. It was obviously the work of Maleficent’s newest apprentice. She wanted to slap herself in the forehead; of course, Dovey had brought the girl here. Lesso had once spent an evening telling Dovey about how rudimentary Maleficent’s potionwork was. How even the simplest antidote would work nine times out of ten.

Lesso could tell just by looking that this was one of the nine times.

“I’m gonna regret this,” Lesso muttered.

But Dovey was smiling brightly at her and well, Lesso just couldn’t complain.

“Fine,” Lesso said. “Let’s get her into the house.”

Dovey jumped up and went to the door of the wagon. Lesso followed at a slower speed. Together, they finally got the girl into the cottage.

Lesso’s cottage was dim and damp inside. It was comprised of a main room and Lesso’s bedroom and nothing more. In the center, there was a big stove with an excessively large cauldron upon it. Against one wall, there was a rickety table with three chairs. Against the other wall, there was a workbench and shelves lined with potions and potion ingredients.

Notably, there was no couch or bed to lay Alathea down upon. “Where do we put her?” Dovey asked. She figured Lesso would say her bedroom but Dovey wasn’t about to go in there without permission.

Lesso shrugged. “The floor?” she said.

Dovey looked at the floor. It was covered in dust and various stains. She glared. “Really?” she said. Then she let go of the girl, leaving Lesso to bear her weight.

Dovey moved forward, pulled a chair from the table and moved it up against the backwall. She closed her eyes and focused. Slowly, the chair morphed into a small but ornate lavender fainting couch.

Dovey smiled to herself.

“Are you— nevermind,” Lesso said.

Dovey helped Lesso move the girl to the couch. They lay her down.

Then Lesso got up and went to the wall with the potions rack. Dovey expected her to grab several vials full of different ingredients. Instead, Lesso grabbed only a single potion.

Dovey couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed. She quite liked watching Lesso brew potions. But she also felt a slight vindication that she had been right. This was a very simple task by Lesso’s standards.

Lesso took a tiny pipette from another shelf and then brought that and the potion over. She undid the lid. “Here,” she said, filling the pippette with liquid and handing it to Dovey. “Just drop this in her mouth. Then, we wait.”

Alathia awoke slowly. Her limbs felt weighted and strange, aching as though she had a particularly bad flu. She didn’t seem to be in a bed—it was too small—but it was soft.

The room smelled strongly of herbs and she couldn’t quite place it. She didn’t think she’d ever been in a room that smelled like this. Not even the kitchens in her castle had this many scents.

And then there were muffled voices in the background. They were discussing something, perhaps bickering, but Alathia could tell they weren’t arguing. It reminded her of the way the head gardener and the cook talked to each other at home. They’d been bantering with each other her whole life.

“Lesso,” one of the voices was saying. “I am not using a cauldron to make tea.”

A laugh. “Well, why not?” said Lesso. “A teapot is basically just a cauldron with a lid.”

The first person huffed. “A teapot is not a cauldron with a lid,” she said. “I do not make tea where someone has previously concocted poisons and potions.”

“Your loss. I always say a good cauldron adds a bit of spice to your tea.”

There was some banging of cupboards. “You do not say that, because you don’t drink tea unless I make it.”

Another chuckle. “Well, I’m going to start saying it now.”

As the first person moved around in the kitchen, Alathea tried to determine if she’d heard either of their voices before. She was almost certain she’d never heard the second person’s voice before. But the first person’s… She could’ve sworn they sounded familiar.

“No!” exclaimed Lesso all of a sudden. “No, no, no, no. You and your powers have already transformed enough of my house.”

“It’s a bowl!” said the person looking for tea. “Look! It’s even chipped.”

“I happen to quite like that bowl,” said Lesso.

Alathea just knew that the person with the bowl was glaring. Somehow. “You didn’t even know that bowl was here until I pulled it out,” she said. ‘But fine, you find a bowl you won’t mind me transforming.”

Alathea heard a chair push out. Then someone stand up.

Now the person that wanted teawas whispering. “Here you go, dear. Why don’t you try a bite of this?” she whispered.

There was a squeak.

“Yes, you’re going to love it. I know I do. Lesso here is one of the very best cheesemakers I know.”

A cupboard slammed shut. “I really wish you wouldn’t feed that vermin all my good cheese, Clarissa,” said Lesso.

“He deserves it,” said the other woman, Clarissa. “He carried both of us all the way here on very short notice! He is hungry.”

“And he would be just as happy with some slightly spoiled cheese, is all I am saying.”

“I am not feeding him spoiled cheese,” the woman said, and then Alathea recognized the voice. It was that fairy godmother! The one that had been helping her before… Before…

And then Alathea remembered. She remembered the rose pricking her. She remembered the way the poison made her veins burn. She remembered Thomas pleading for her life. She remembered… She remembered…

Dying. She should be dead. She opened her eyes, sitting bolt upright.

The talking in the room stopped. She looked out to see that she was in a small cottage. It was sparsely furnished, with a messy floor. At the table, there were two women who were now both staring at her. The fairy godmother from before, though now her lovely pink dress was quite dirty, was offering a bit of cheese to a mouse. And then a woman in a black coat with vibrant red hair.

“Oh, you’re awake,” said the fairy godmother. Lady Clarissa Dovey, Alathea’s mind provided.

Alathea felt somewhat dizzy, all of a sudden.

Then Lady Dovey was beside her, with her hand on Alathea’s arm. “Easy, dear,” she said. “You had quite an ordeal. There, just go slowly.”

When Alathea’s vision came back, she saw the woman in black, Lesso, staring at her.

Then she realized why that woman made her so uncomfortable. The cauldron behind Lady Dovey solidified her theory. “She,” Alathea said, “she’s a witch!”

She tried to stand up, but Lady Dovey put a hand on her shoulder to prevent her. “Yes, she is dear,” Lady Dovey said. “But she’s not here to hurt you, she’s the one that saved your life.”

Alathea didn’t know why she looked at the witch for confirmation, but she did. The witch nodded.

Alathea didn’t know what to think. All her life, she had heard that witches were bad. Evil and cold-hearted creatures who could only cause harm. And indeed, she was certain the person that almost killed her was a witch. But now her fairy godmother was saying that this witch had saved her.

Not that Alathea understood that either. It made absolutely no sense. Why did her fairy godmother know a witch? And not just know of the witch, they seemed to be friends. Old friends. Alathea had always been taught that proper Evers never interacted with Nevers.

Then Alathea felt a sense of weakness overtake her. This was too exhausting to think about right now. And she supposed that if one witch had killed her and another had saved her, in some strange way it sort of cancelled out.

“Now why don’t you come to the table and have some food?” Lady Dovey said. “That’ll make you feel a bit better.”

Alathea tried to stand, slower this time.

Dovey held out her arm. “There you go,” she said.

She led Alathea over to the table and helped her sit in a chair. The witch was sitting in the other one.

As Dovey went into the kitchen and began loading a plate with cheese and crackers, the witch gave a menancing smile.

“So,” she said. “Let us discuss your future.”