Little Red Cinderella and the Three Beanstalks

The Queen herself did indeed help me prepare a bath, despite my assurances that I could manage it myself. It was probably a good thing that she insisted though, since apparently taking a bath in medieval times is way more complicated than I realized. The water had to be heated, which was a whole process with boiling kettles over the fire in the queen’s own bed chamber, which were then carried pot by pot over to a linen lined wooden tub, which was actually pretty big but definitely not what I had been accustomed to in my old life.

Awkward silence filled time it took to wait for each kettle to heat up, especially on my end since up until this point, every queen I’d met so far had been hell bent on murdering me.

Then, after a few polite attempts at small talk, the Queen suddenly asked in a tone that made it clear that she wasn’t sure if it was polite to talk about it,“You say that you have aided others as you have us?”

“Um, yeah,” I replied, a little hesitantly myself. “A few people, anyways.”

“Are you a knight on some kind of quest, doing good deeds in the name of your lord?” she asked, rather doubtfully. I’d warrant a guess that lady knights weren’t exactly a common sight around these here parts. I was about to laugh and tell her no, not in the slightest, but then I realized… that was sort of what I was, wasn’t I? I mean, sure, my “lord” was an enchanted book, and I didn’t think books could knight people… but then again, Prince Charming had officially knighted Jack, Ezu and I.

I shrugged. “More or less, I suppose. Though I’m mostly doing the good deeds in the name of the people who need help than the name of… my lord. I am on a quest, though.”

I fell silent, my mind turning to the final part of my quest, the part that I now had no choice but to face. God, how I wished there was another princess to save, so I could put it off just a little longer. Maybe there was some princess out there kissing frogs who needed my help, or a whiny girl on a lumpy mattress.

“You seem very tired,” said the Queen, looking solemnly at me with grave eyes. “I have seen knights on long quests before. Is yours nearing its end?”

I nodded, feeling as weary as I ever had. “I’m almost done. I just have… one more thing to do.”

“Is there any way other we can help you?” asked the Queen. “We are eternally grateful for what you have done for us, breaking that dreadful enchantment. We would be honored to help you on your journey in any way we could.”

I opened my mouth to thank her for the offer but say that I didn’t think there was any realistic way they could help, unless they could scrape together a ragtag army with which I could storm the witch’s castle, when I suddenly realized that I didn’t actually know where that was. Not only that, but I didn’t really know anything about her at all. She had lost her powers at some indeterminate time in the past, and somehow my arrival in this fairy tale world had set into a motion a chain of events that would lead to her rising once again, presumably to terrorize villagers and kick puppies, and whatever else evil witches did in their spare time. Heck, I didn’t even know why she was considered evil in the first place, or what she would do if she regained her powers, or how her powers had been taken from her, or how exactly I was supposed to stop her from coming back into power, or where she was or what she looked like or even what she was called. I’d just been thinking of her vaguely as “the witch” or “the sorceress” in my head this entire time, if I even stopped to think about her at all. It seemed like I was always getting so absorbed in whatever princess themed quest I was in the middle of at the moment that I hadn’t bothered to stop and consider what this was all leading up to. I’d just been putting it off, putting off even thinking about it; figuring that future me could deal with it when I got there. That I’d cross that bridge when I came to it.

Well, now I was standing on one side of a chasm only to find that the bridge was rotten, missing half of its planks, and that I had no legs.

Oh, and there was an evil witch standing on the opposite side with a machete waiting to cut the rope once I made it halfway across, assuming I even got that far.

For a brief moment I felt like crying. It wouldn’t solve anything, but it might make me feel a little better.

Or it would just make me tired and sad, and make it harder to keep my wits about me when I needed them the most.

I heaved a sigh, and forced the tears back. If I survived this, I’d have a good cathartic cry once it was all over, I promised myself.

“I don’t think you can help me much, apart from giving me a place to rest for the night and some supplies when I head out tomorrow. What I really need right now though is information, I guess.”

“Oh dear, I don’t think we can help you much at all then,” the Queen replied, looking troubled. “We’ve all been asleep for so long ,I doubt anyone on our grounds will know anything that could be of use to you now.”

“Yeah, I figured-” but then I stopped mid-sentence, a sudden thought occurring to me. It might be a long shot, but then again, this was a fairy tale, after all. Maybe providence made Sleeping Beauty be my final princess for a reason. “Actually, maybe you can help. There’s a witch, see. Some kind of super powerful witch, who had her powers taken away from her somehow, a long time ago. Well, somehow she’s breaking free of whatever is keeping her powerless, or captive, or whatever it is, and I’m supposed to stop her before she can come back. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you? I thought, maybe, since your natural time is a century ago, and she’s supposed to have been sort of hidden for a long time…”

I trailed off, forced to admit to myself what a long shot it was asking her as I heard myself say it out loud. I had no idea when the witch lost her powers, it could have been twenty years ago or a thousand. And as for a description of her, all I had was “some witch who was bad”. You couldn’t swing a cat in this place without hitting a magical matron with a grudge and an itchy trigger finger.

But to my surprise, the Queen suddenly paled, as if all the blood had drained from her face.

“You know of someone?” I asked her quickly.

“I… may,” she replied, her voice dropping almost to a whisper. “By the grace of God, I do hope I am mistaken, though. The thought that she had been lost to the ravages of time in the intervening years was one of the few positive outcomes of sleeping for a hundred years. If we have been woken only just in time to see her wrath rise anew…” she shuddered, and passed a trembling hand over her face.

“Well,” I said with a grimace, “let’s not get too over-dramatic about it now. I’ve faced my fair share of psychotic supernatural despots in the past couple months, and I’m sure one is a lot like another. Her wrath can’t be any worse than, say, the wacko Ravena, who took over Weissland and was turning people into animals and trapping teenage girls in coffins. Or the lady who turned her step daughter into a pumpkin and tried to murder me in a graveyard. Or the fairy who held a kidnapped girl hostage in a tower for her entire life and then tried to throw me out of the window. Wow, what is with these women? Is there like a switch that flips when you’re not young enough to be a waifish princess anymore, and you just wake up one morning and decide to get into black magic and go rogue?”

The Queen was staring at me as if I’d started speaking in tongues. Maybe I had, I could hardly be sure of anything anymore.

“The point is,” I said hurriedly before I could scare her and whatever information she might have away, “I’ve escaped from wolves and giants; outwitted a kidnapping gnome; befriended thieving marauders; conned my way into and out of a king’s castle; climbed two towers; kidnapped a fairy; battled two witches and a different fairy; and stole a cloak from a little girl. There’s nothing I haven’t already done, and nothing I won’t do at this point. I’m sure I can handle whatever this sorceress of yours can throw at me; and if I can’t… well, then we’re all probably screwed anyways, so at least this way, we all stand a chance. So lay it on me, before I chicken out. Who’s this sorceress, and where can I find her?”

The Queen seemed to mull over my words for a good long while, though I couldn’t tell what she was thinking through her grave and unchanging expression.

“She may have had a name once, though if she did, it has long since been lost to time,” the Queen finally began to speak, her voice low and still a little hesitant. “To me, she was known only as the Enchantress. Even in my own time, a hundred years ago, she was old, though you would not know it to look upon her. I learned about her in my history lessons when I was a girl, for she was a threat to all the kingdoms back then. Little was known about her, but some things, some aspects of her life, had been passed down from those few who had known her, and by those who recorded the histories of evil things.
“She had been a witch once when she was young; not an evil witch, just a healer, who used the knowledge of plants and a little earth magic to cure and charm. She was talented, and she was ambitious. By her twentieth year she had gained herself a place in the kitchens of the royal palace in the kingdom of Lapwall, which used to be where Wiessland would eventually come to be. There she used all of her magical talents as liberally as possible, until eventually the word that a skilled young witch was living on palace grounds came to the court wizard himself.
“The court wizard eventually came to see this young witch for himself, curious about her talents, and he found in her a remarkably intelligent and naturally gifted pupil. He took her out of the kitchens and made her his own personal apprentice, which was by all accounts exactly what she had been hoping for. She learned as quickly as he could teach her, and soon had flown far past the paltry kitchen magic she had learned on her mother’s knee. And word of her magical abilities spread swiftly; before two years had passed, she was already being invited to the courts of other kingdoms, being offered position of court wizard herself at such a tender age. But she chose to remain in Lapwall, at least until she could finish learning everything her master there had to teach her.
“No one is entirely certain what happened. There is black magic, as well as white; magic created with the intent of causing pain and misery, magic that destroys instead of creates, or creates in perverse and unnatural ways. Perhaps the court wizard told her of these magics in an effort to instruct her on what to avoid. Perhaps she came across them herself in the vast library that once existed there. Perhaps that black magic was always in her, and she only needed to learn how to harness it properly to set it free. All that is known for certain is that all of a sudden, where she had once been a formidable young wizardress, her power swelled seemingly overnight and she revealed herself to be a terrifyingly powerful magician. She slew the court wizard, her mentor, and set fire to his chambers. Perhaps she only meant to destroy his research and magical artifacts, perhaps she intended more. Either way, the fire she summoned was of a dark and wicked nature and it raged out of control, filling the castle and burning to ash everything and everyone that stood in its way. Few escaped, but those that did reported seeing her standing before the castle gates, lit up by the flames all around her, laughing in joy like a little girl.
“From that point on, she could use her magic to get herself anything she wanted, anything at all. She charmed and married kings, living in unsustainable luxury until her demands for obscene riches bled the royal coffers dry. She wanted more of everything, more money, more power, more magic, and she sucked and sucked until the well ran dry. Then her unwitting husband, who would invariably begin neglecting his royal duties upon meeting her and become little more than a love sick slave to her whims, would fall ill, waste away, and die. And by the time his body was found the next morning by the servants, she would be gone, off to the next kingdom, the next victim, while the country she left collapsed into civil war and poverty.
“She was a master of illusion, and could slip into any house, and palace, disguised as a beggar woman, or a nursemaid, or a sickly child, or even a cat. People all across the seven kingdoms became fearful, mistrustful of their kings, their lords, their servants, of anyone at all for you never knew who might only be a mask for that awful woman, and you never knew what kingdom would fall to her next. I know what you are going to ask, and yes, of course people tried to stop her. Generals tried to assassinate her, court wizards tried to duel her, but do you think she only worked her charms on the kings? She had entire personal guards of men who were little more than willing slaves, charmed or enchanted by her in some way, willing to die in droves in her defense. And if they failed, her own magic was always enough to destroy anyone who got in her way.
“Decades passed, and by some wicked sorcery she remained unchanged, still a youthful girl of twenty two. And the seven kingdoms were in utter chaos, plagued by was a disease, and there was nothing left for her to take. So she disappeared, into the Grim Woods, where only the dark things live. She would surface again, every decade or so, like a slumbering dragon awakening to ravage and plunder. Often no one would realize it had been her until she came and went, until they recognized the pattern of her black magic after she had fled the damage she caused. She would duel and slay the most powerful wizards and sorceresses of the time, she would suck up the wealth of an entire kingdom like a great leech, she would learn about new forms of wicked magic to add to her already terrible knowledge. And then when she was bored she would vanish again, back into the Grim Woods, like some kind of natural disaster. It was as if the entire world were just an apple tree in her own backyard, and she felt as if she could wander out to it an pluck off an apple, or all of them, at her own leisure. “

“And then?” I asked, my voice high and tight.

“And then all of the fairies, all of them, good and wicked alike, came together for the first time in living memory, and put a curse on her to make her sleep until the end of time. She was too powerful for them to kill, even with all their own power combined, but they could make her sleep, lost somewhere in the heart of the Grim Woods.” The Queen shuddered, and closed her eyes. “But enchanted sleeps can be broken,” she added, almost in a whisper, turning to face me again.

I knew that all too well, didn’t I?

“How, though? How was she wakened?”

The Queen shrugged, a strange gesture on a royal figure. “I cannot guess. I know little about magic, and nothing of what has come to pass since I fell into my own cursed slumber. I could not tell you if she has truly awakened, or how, or how to put her back to sleep. All I can tell you are those stories, half history half legend, that have been passed down and whispered at firesides since my own grandmother was a child. All I can say for sure is that the Enchantress is a terribly powerful sorceress who made prey of the most powerful people in the land, and that she dwells, or at least dwelt at one time, somewhere in the Grim Woods.”

I was quiet for a long while, listening to the water in the kettle bubble as it started to boil.

“Do you know where the Grim Woods are?” I eventually asked.

The Queen hesitated. “I did,” she said. “I could show you where its borders were in my day, though perhaps they have changed over the century, I do not know.”

“I just need an idea of where it used to be. And… can you tell me, how long do fairies live for?”

“I-I am not sure,” the Queen said looking a little surprised. “Many long years, certainly.”

“Could any of the fairies that helped put the Enchantress asleep still be alive?” I asked.

“Perhaps,” hedged the Queen. “Though I know not how you would find any of them. Fairies are not particularly known for being easy to arrange meetings with.”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. I’d already met two fairies so far, and Ezu had stumbled across another one years before, that had gifted him his enchanted house. If I wanted to meet a fairy, all I had to do was wander around a forest looking poor but noble. Or throw a party and “forget” to invite one of them. Or talk really loudly to myself about how I’d give anything, even my first born child, in exchange for something trivial but difficult to come by in my current circumstances. Or wander around stealing vegetables from back gardens until I pissed off the wrong old woman. Or lose a tooth and hide it under a…

Actually, that wasn’t an altogether bad idea. I mentally shelved that one away for future investigation.

“Alright then, your highness,” I eventually said, pulling myself together. “Once I’ve had a bath and a decent rest, I’ll be out of your hair. All I’ll ask for before I leave is some provisions, a horse if you can spare one, and a map, with directions to the Grim Woods on it. Just those things will be more than I could have hoped for.”

“Certainly you shall have them, if that is all you ask for,” the Queen agreed, still looking slightly troubled that I wasn’t demanding my body weight in gold, or half the kingdom, or her daughter’s hand in marriage or whatever. Prince Justin certainly would be getting all of those things anyways, so no point in asking even if I was so inclined.

By now there was enough water to fill the tub, and the Queen politely excused herself. I stripped and settled into the water, which was almost hot enough to scald on the surface but had cooled to a pleasant temperature beneath. Once I’d eased myself in all the way, I could immediately feel the hot water working wonders to relieve the aches and knots in my muscles. Sitting cross legged, the water came up nearly to my collar bone, and the sides of the tub were high enough that I could lean my head back and rest it on the edge. I refrained from closing my eyes, worried that if I got too comfortable I might fall asleep. Drowning in a bath tub would be a pretty inglorious way to end this whole adventure.

After I let myself soak until my fingers were pruny, I’d give my hair a good washing with the strange excuse for soap that the Queen had left me (a vague memory about early soap being rendered animal fat nagged at the back of my mind, but I ignored it), and then I’d throw myself into that very inviting looking feather bed and probably have the best sleep of my life. Maybe, if I was very lucky, I’d wake up feeling halfway human again. And then, I’d be off, most likely to my certain death.