The night. The crossroads. The cauldron. The witch. The fairy.
The witch and the fairy are snarling at each other.
“You can’t interfere, you bully, you must let her make her own choices!”
“You are the bully here, taking advantage of the poor darling in her fraught state! I am only helping her see the truth. Love will always triumph in the end. But I don’t expect you to understand, you bitter old prune, no one has ever loved you, no wonder you hate all men.” The fairy godmother faces me, her hands clasped in supplication. “I beg you, sweet child, cease this rash foolishness. Let me take you back where you belong, back to your happy marriage.”
“Two or three happy years don’t yet a happy marriage make,” interrupts the witch.
“Well, of course, one must be a bit more flexible after a decade together,” the fairy godmother admits, somewhat deflated. “Marriages are work.” She makes a visible effort to rally. “Still, whatever happened later, my child, I’ll help you move past it. The important thing is, you and the prince had such love between you once. You just need to keep the memory of that beautiful beginning alive in your heart.”
She has a gift, it seems, for saying precisely the wrong thing.
I am newly seared with anger.
“Does anything other than platitudes ever come out of her mealy mouth?” the witch asks with disdain. “Just throw in the lot and be done with it, madam.”
“No, child, no!” the fairy godmother wails. “Think of your little angels if nothing else! They need a wholesome family, they need their father!”
And just like that, the long-forgotten vision of Roland with little Angie laughing on his knee thrusts itself, unbidden, vivid, into my mind.
My fury is dampened. I look down at my hands.
One, three, five, eight, ten. And a half. Ten and a half hairs left.
Perhaps I should count again, just to be sure.
“Well, what are you waiting for, madam? You still want him dead, do you not?”
I do, indeed I do; but my daughter’s laughter continues to sound in my ears, guileless and carefree like her very childhood, which I want to protect with all my heart—which I am trying to protect, in truth, by doing this.
But what if this destroys her childhood, their childhood, instead?
Would they even understand I am doing this for them?
Would they still love me?
Anxiety tightens my throat.
“Perhaps not all at once?” I mumble.
“Once you decide to cut off a dog’s tail, you don’t hack it away chunk by chunk,” the witch notes with disapproval. “Moreover, my rheumatism is starting to act up.”
“Whatever happened to letting her make her own choices?” the fairy godmother cries. And immediately they are squabbling again. All at once I am starting to slide toward panic. I close my ears to their bickering, and next I close my eyes—and, with a feeling much like stepping off a roof, toss a bunch of hairs into the cauldron, without counting, without thinking.
Then, my heart pounding, I open my eyes to see what I have done.
Five or six strands are spiraling down into the potion.
Less than half are now left in the palm of my hand.
The Beginning of the Middle
Time had a mysterious habit of flowing faster the fewer events occupied it. The palace shone blue on summer mornings and glinted white on snowy afternoons. She turned twenty-six. Princess Angelina turned three. Prince Roland took frequent trips. She gained some weight, made preserves, presided over mouse polkas on her fireplace rug. Life was peaceful, pleasant, and predictable. On the occasion of her twenty-seventh birthday, Angie gave her a charming present: a tiny ballroom shoe that the child had painstakingly, if rather unevenly, carved out of pink soap. She ran to the west wing, to Prince Roland’s quarters, to show him, only to be told that he had departed on a mission to a nearby kingdom and was not expected back for several days. She stood before the closed door to his study, feeling the unaccustomed sting of disappointment, chewing on her lip. Then she clapped her hands in delight—she knew what she would do. She would give in to the marvelous spontaneity of this day.
She would surprise her husband.
And so, she ordered a carriage, kissed Angie good-bye, and, gently cradling the child’s soap carving in her hands, left for the neighboring kingdom, with just one aged groom minding the horses and only her trusty Brie and Nibbles in attendance. (These mice were cousins in the next generation. Brie the Third was much fussier than her mother, always anxious about everyone’s health, constantly nagging Nibbles to wear warm scarves and beware stealthy drafts. Brie was badly frightened at the prospect of leaving the palace, but Nibbles magnanimously promised to protect her. He thought her infantile and helpless, and saw himself as a fierce, even heroic, mouse; and indeed, his squeak did sound much like the roar of a lion, albeit a tiny one. Needless to say, he was thrilled to venture out into the unknown. He nurtured a secret hope that the princess might get ambushed by some ruffians along the way, and he would enter legend by rescuing her in some spectacular fashion.)
It was a bright winter day. The road snaked from the palace gates and past the town. Beyond it, landscapes became unfamiliar. There were frozen streams to be crossed on rickety bridges, falcons swooping over snowy meadows, copses of silent trees with icy branches glittering clear and sharp in the sun. Now and then, a dazzling unicorn pranced by, or a thin needle of some solitary wizard’s tower rose tall on the horizon. She sat leaning far out the window; she had forgotten to wear a hood, and her ears soon burned with the cold, yet she did not heed Brie’s admonitions to draw the curtains closed but looked and looked, drinking everything in with something much like greed—for it suddenly came to her that she had never traveled anywhere, anywhere at all. By the time the old groom guided the horses through another town, up another hill, to the gates of another palace, she was in a state of childlike excitement.
When she was announced, there appeared to be some confusion as to the prince’s whereabouts, and she, in turn, was surprised to discover that this was the domain of the Duke von Lieber, the jocular nobleman who had paid them a visit some seasons before. The duke himself was away on a weeklong hunt, she was informed by the pomaded butler with a measured gait who showed her in, but the duchess would be overjoyed to see her imminently, or almost imminently, once Her Grace arose from her midday rest. Alone she sat in the reception chamber (Brie and Nibbles had gone off to explore the kitchens) and smiled, imagining with what delight the prince would greet her. The butler brought her a cup of weak tea with too much sugar in it; once the man’s departing steps faded away, there were no sounds save for the ticking of a clock in the corner. The thrill of the ride through the brilliant countryside was still making her blood run faster. And as the minute hand crawled to mark another quarter of a drowsy afternoon hour, she did something out of character: she set down her empty cup, and rose, and walked out of the room, mischievous laughter bubbling up inside her.