The hunting party returned to the palace early that day.

The sorceress shut herself in her tower room. Then she summoned the huntsman from his place of healing.

He knelt on the ground, weeping profusely. “Thank you, my lady…” he sobbed. “Thank you… I don’t deserve to live… You should have let me die…”

She couldn’t bear to see his wretchedness. “Stand up,” she commanded.

He obeyed.

“I saved your life because I am compassionate,” she said. “And I am loving. And you…” Here she paused. “You are still useful,” she concluded. “In fact, I have something in mind right now…”

“What is it, my lady?” he asked eagerly. His tears were gone, though his cheeks were stained. “I’ll do anything, anything for you!”

The sorceress smiled. “I’ll hold you to that someday. But for now… I want you to become my most loyal companion… my most trusted advisor… my best friend.”

The huntsman gazed at her with shocked, bright eyes. “Truly, my lady?” he asked softly. “Do you truly trust me?”

She nodded at him. “I do.”

A bubbly red liquid appeared in a glass on a nearby table.

“Drink that,” she ordered.

He slowly picked up the glass, and, with no hesitation, gulped it down all at once.

The effect of the magic was instant.

The huntsman began to vibrate. Then he began to spin. He spun faster and faster, until he just became a blur.

Then he stopped.

The huntsman’s body was no longer free. It was in a mirror, a lovely, black, radiant mirror…

The sorceress gazed at it with soft eyes. “At last…” she whispered. “At last!” her voice rose to a cry of delight. “At last! A mirror… once more I have power.”

The huntsman, on the other side of the glass, looked at her with mild alarm. “My lady?” he murmured. “My lady… What – what am I?”

She smiled at him – a charming, beautiful, graceful smile. “You,” she said, her voice as light and sweet as could be, “You are magic.”

The sorceress used her new mirror right away. She knew exactly how this worked.

“Mirror, mirror, in the air, how can I be rid of the queen most fair?”

And he replied, his eyes wide with the knowledge flooding into him, “You can strangle or poison her – choking works well – just be sure that no one the king does tell…”

His mouth gaped open. “My lady… That was incredible! The knowledge! The words! The rhymes!”

“The magic,” the sorceress added. “Yes, it is empowering, is it not? And now you can chase all the knowledge you want… All that I ask in return –” here she gazed at him with penetrating eyes – “is that I can ask you any question I please, and be given the answer.”

“Of course!” he cried.

The sorceress nodded curtly at him, but she was secretly pleased. The huntsman had been much more willing to become a mirror than she had expected, which gave her less work to do.

But she still had to hide him. No one could find him, discover that the beloved, charming, beautiful princess was the evil, fear-inspiring witch.

Her eyes flashed, changing from green to red and back again, and the mirror shimmered out of tangibility.

And then she smiled. She laughed. She let her joy overtake her. She still had to kill her stepmother, but after that her plan could still proceed. And it would be closer than ever to being complete.

Soon she would be the one jeering. Soon she would be in control of whether the people lived or died. Soon she would have her revenge.

While she was laughing, sparking balls of red electricity formed in her hands.

This happened to her whenever she was excited. It had happened before she had been captured as well, but now it was much more powerful.

She stopped laughing and gazed at the spheres. They were crackling, popping, writhing in her hands. They wanted to be free.  

She couldn’t refuse that, could she?

She clasped her hands together, and flung the balls out of her huge window. They merged in the sky and formed a zig-zagged line of pure energy. It was like lightning, except more. And red. And rawer and purer than lightning could ever be.

In the king and queen’s room, the king was pacing nervously. He stopped and gazed out of the window just as the red lightning struck. Then he sat down and put his head in his hands.

“What’s wrong?” his wife asked.

“She’s back, she’s back…” he muttered.

The queen was very confused by this. “What do you mean? Who’s back?”

He looked up at her, pain clearly visible in his eyes. “A long time ago,” he said, his voice raspy and dry, “my previous wife and I did… cruel… things. We imprisoned a sorceress… We tortured her… We wanted her to tell us how to obtain magic… But of course she didn’t tell us. She couldn’t. So… we put her in an animal cage and hung it from the Great Hall. Everyone there jeered at her… The nobles, for her stubbornness and unwillingness to cooperate. The commoners, for withholding all that power from them. The disguised sorcerers and sorceresses, for letting herself be caught.”

Here he closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before continuing.

“The queen and I were so naïve. We thought that we could weaken her, force her to give up her secret. But of course we couldn’t. Now I know there is no secret… She was just born with magic.

“We thought that we would let her go, once she was too powerless to do any harm. We thought that we would forget it… But of course we couldn’t. It was too painful… Too evil of us… Too memorable…

“And now she is strengthened. Now she is more powerful than ever. That lightning – that used to happen when she was caged. It was never that big, that bright. It was always just a little trickle… Until it wasn’t, and she managed to break the bars of her cage. She put on a show. Sparks, smoke, threats... There was hate in her eyes. You could tell just by looking. She hated us. She hated the people. She hated the nobles.

“And I don’t blame her.” He opened his eyes once more, and gazed sadly out the window. “I wish we hadn’t done what we did. I wish I could apologize…”

The queen put a hand on his arm sympathetically. “It’s all right if you’re scared,” she said.

He glanced up at her.

“No, I’m not mad,” she said, “though I do wish you had told me this earlier… Perhaps we could have thought of a solution before she returned.”

“A solution?”

“Of course,” she said, as if it was obvious. “As is, I think we should go somewhere else. Hide for a bit. Perhaps she’ll settle down. Won’t hiding from her feel safer?”

“Yes it shall,” the king admitted.

“Good,” the queen said. “Then hiding is what we shall do. I shall go fetch your daughter, and we must leave at once. I’m sure there’s a little, out-of-the-way village somewhere.”

The sorceress calmed herself down quickly. She must not get excited. It was all right for her to drop small hints that she had returned – in fact, that might be useful – but she couldn’t let anyone know where she was.

She gazed in a mirror – a normal mirror – to check that her disguise was not too rumpled. It wasn’t – she still looked like the little princess.

She heard a knock at her door. “Who is it?” she called.

“It’s me,” her stepmother’s voice floated through. “May I come in?”

“Of course!” the sorceress said.

The heavy door opened, and her stepmother slipped in.

“Fae,” she said softly, “We need to talk.”

“What about?” the sorceress asked, easily hiding her thought of the irony of the name. Fae… Magical beings who used to live throughout the kingdom. Now they were gone. Hunted. Made to hide, to disguise themselves.

Just like her.

“A danger has arisen,” her stepmother informed her stepdaughter. “And the royal family must go into hiding. It’s for our safety.

“Now come with me. We are going to leave as soon as it gets dark.”

“Shouldn’t I pack?” the sorceress asked, looking rather befuddled. “And where are we going?”

The queen gazed at her. “I don’t understand fully,” she said after a pause. “But I do know that we must go. So come.”

She left, and the princess followed.

They left in the dead of night. No servants were alerted. No guards were summoned. They rode in a plain, wooden carriage, rather than the decorated royal one.

They had all changed clothes – they were now dressed like peasants.

The sorceress was amused by this. She was now pretending to be a princess pretending to be a peasant.

Even through pretending twice, she was nowhere close to what she really was. Magical. Powerful. Vengeful.

It was very slow going. It seemed as if everyone was holding their breaths. But at last they made it out of the main city, and the king exhaled a long sigh.

The sorceress noticed this and kindly asked, “What is it, Father?”

He gazed up at her, then glanced to his wife, then back to her. He sighed. “Fae, do you remember the stories I told you about the wicked sorceress?”

The “wicked sorceress” nodded innocently. She remembered more than he knew. “The one who threatened you and Mother, right?”

He nodded as well. “Yes… Well, I’m afraid she has returned.”

The sorceress widened her eyes. “Returned! To carry out her threats?”

And here, she forced her face into a scared expression, while trying not to chortle.

The king sighed again. “I am afraid so.”

The sorceress was silent. At last she said, “Well, that’s not very good. Where are we going to avoid her?”

“To a little, out-of-the-way village,” he said, copying his wife’s words from earlier.

“Oh,” the sorceress said. Then, after a pause, “Will I have my own room?”

Even though frightened, the king managed to cast an annoyed look at his daughter. “Yes. I suppose.”

Her face brightened. “Oh good!” At least I can summon my mirror.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

It was just after dawn the next morning when they arrived. It was a small, quaint village, with thatched roofs on every cottage, and smoke curling up from the clay chimneys. There were children playing in the streets, and flustered-looking women calling for them to get out of the road.

There were no men in sight.

“Off to the mines,” they were informed by a woman with a baby on her hip. “We have to earn a living somehow, out here.” Then, “Tommy! Get back here!”

She stormed off after her child.

The sorceress’s stepmother looked around uncertainly. “Well, it’ll work.”

“They don’t recognize us,” the king said. He glanced at the sorceress. “I don’t think you’ll be getting a private room, though.”

The sorceress sighed. She knew she must act upset – but the petty kind of upset, not the angry kind, which she actually was. Now how could she summon her mirror?

She spotted a woman selling homemade bodices, and a flash of inspiration struck her. She went over to the woman and purchased a lovely blue bodice that was clearly too large for the princess, and walked back over to her “parents”.

“Lynda,” she said to her stepmother, using the name that she was told to call her by, “I should like you to have this.”

The queen looked surprised, but took the gift. “Thank you, Fae. Whatever for?”

“For getting me out of my room and taking me here,” she simply replied. “It’s good for me to get out once in a while – and this place is so cute!”

In reality, it was so that she would strangle her – just like the mirror had advised.

The queen smiled and thanked the sorceress – then started tying the bodice around her waist.

This was when the sorceress struck. Her eyes flashed red, and the bodice straps flew upward and tightened of their own accord. They continued tightening, even as the woman’s fingers flew to get the bodice off.

“Help…” she cried, voice hoarse. “Someone… Help me!”

The king rushed to her side just as she collapsed. She was still. Her chest was not moving.

With a strangled cry, he frantically tried to undo the knots – but they were too tight, having been tied by magic.

After several minutes of failing to get the bodice off, he stood up and pointed a shaking finger at the woman who had sold it.

“You…” he started. “You killed my wife! You killed her!”

The woman looked startled. “I didn’t do anything, sir! I don’t know what happened! Nothing like this ever happened before!”

The king stood there, shaking with anger, with sadness. Then he dropped to the ground and wept.

The sorceress almost felt sorry for him. Almost. But then she remembered that this was the man who had caged her, laughed at her, tortured her, humiliated her…

Her sympathy was gone.

For the rest of the day, the king stood by the body of his wife, crying his heart out. Then, just as the sun was beginning to drop below the horizon, a song was heard.

“Hi ho, hi ho, it’s home from work we go!” and then a whistling tune accompanied it.

The sorceress raised her eyebrows. What could this mean?

Then several little men came marching into view. They were swinging pickaxes, lanterns, and coils of rope, and were urging a pair of mules hauling a cartful of coal to go faster.

They were about to begin again when they saw the scene. They stopped, then rushed to the body.

“What is this?”

“What could have happened?”

“Witchery!” This last cry was uttered by the shortest of them all, who looked very put out.

“Oh hush,” one of the women said.

One of the dwarves – for that is what these men were – produced a knife and began sawing at the ties. They came undone instantly, and the queen sat up, breathing once more.

The king thanked the men with tears in his eyes.

The sorceress silently fumed.

The sorceress made another attempt at killing the queen the next week, when she provided her stepmother with a lovely comb.

It was one of her own, not one of the women’s, so the stepmother accepted it rather gratefully.

Unknown to her, it was laced with a deadly poison that could kill a giant within a half hour.

As soon as the woman put it in her hair, she began noticing something was off. “Oh my, I feel… tired,” she said, and went to bed.

She didn’t wake.

Once again, she was saved by the dwarves, who could smell the poison once they came into the village.

“Exactly the same stuff we use to flush out the bats,” one cried, holding up the comb as far away from himself as possible. “Witchwart – powerful, nasty stuff.”

He eyed the sorceress suspiciously. “This was your comb?”

“Someone must have poisoned it!” she cried. “I would never try to kill my own mother!”

And it was true. She wouldn’t. She loved her mother. But Lynda, queen, was not her mother.

The next time she attempted killing the queen was right after she explored and found an orchard of apples growing wildly in the forest.

She spent a whole three days preparing this poison. She would not let her target escape. Not again.

The poison she concocted was so powerful, the apple soaked in it was reeking of the stench. It stunk of death. But also of revenge.

Yes, this would work, the sorceress decided. She could hardly bear to be near it herself, and she was powerful, magical, strong – and was not going to eat it.

Her stepmother, on the other hand, was powerless, common, and weak. And she would eat the apple.

She made an apple pie, placing the poisoned apple in the pie. If it killed the king as well – that would mean that she had less work for her later on.

Then she presented the pie to her family. They were pleased. “Perhaps coming out here was a truly good idea after all,” the king softly told his wife.

They ate the pie with supper.          

That is, the queen did. She took the first bite.

“Mm, this is really good -” she exclaimed, nodding enthusiastically, and then she stopped.

Her smile turned into a frown. Her eyebrows scrunched closer to her eyes than they should be. Her cheeks paled. Her eyes turned red. She put a shaking hand up to her mouth, then dropped it.

She moved no more.

This time, the dwarves could not save her. They sniffed the apple pie, scrutinized the body carefully for any sign of what the poison could be – but could not identify it.

The sorceress was ecstatic. She was finally, finally the fairest of them all.

She would be the most beautiful. The most charming. The most graceful. The most loved.

Soon, after many moons of waiting, watching, hiding… Soon she would have her revenge.

The queen was buried the next day, in the little forest. The king had told the villagers who they really were, figuring that the sorceress already knew where they were hidden.

He couldn’t have been more correct.

At the funeral, the dwarves presented the king and sorceress with a bejeweled coffin, plated in gold, shining like the sun.

The king had tears in his eyes. “Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you…”

The sorceress pursed her lips as the coffin was prepared to be lowered into the grave, dug by the dwarves’ pickaxes. She was thinking – thinking of all her struggles to achieve this one goal of revenge.

She had risked much. Payed much. Gained little. It will all be worth it, she thought as the scars on her back throbbed with remembered pain. And then, I will finally be free.

“Wait,” the king ordered as the coffin began to descend.

He walked forward and tenderly lifted the lid. “I just – I have to…” he sighed. “One last time.”

Then he knelt and gently kissed his wife.

The sorceress felt a shock go through her body. She gasped. She hadn’t felt anything like this since… well, ever. It felt too sweet, like a tropical fruit overripe. It felt sticky, like raw honey.

It felt evil.

The sorceress’s stepmother sat up in her coffin, breathing in deeply. “Where… where am I?” she asked. “What happened?”

She looked around, and her eyes rested on the sorceress. “I remember!” she gasped.

Here, the sorceress’s emotions overtook her. She had been working too hard for this, giving up so much… and now it was all set back. Because of this one woman.

She stood up straight, and let herself revert to her true form – the tall, light-skinned woman who had once knelt ragged in a cage. The woman whose red hair, red magic had threatened the royal family for years. The woman who had been hurt, tortured, mocked.

Now she was pretending no longer. Now she was real. Now she was magic.

The king gasped and drew his sword. “Fae! No… not Fae…” he looked into the sorceress’s eyes. “Where is my daughter, you witch?” he cried.

The sorceress laughed. Oh, it felt good to let herself laugh…

“Your daughter is locked away in a tower,” she said. “Alive. For now. But that is not important.”

She fixed her gaze on the king.

“You recognize me, do you not?”

A spark of fear flashed through his eyes, and she laughed again. “I see that you do. You are frightened. It is understandable. You saw my lightning the other night, didn’t you? Didn’t you see how I have grown, how I have been made stronger?”

She smiled coyly. “You know, I only have you to thank for that. If you hadn’t ever captured me… tortured me… Humiliated me… Where would I be now? Would I be weak? Hardly anything more than a commoner? No. Most likely not. But you fueled me… You inspired me to reach my full potential… And I have!”

Here she laughed again. Her eyes flashed red, and a dwarf who had been trying to sneak up behind her with his pickaxe raised was flung to the ground. The queen and king recoiled back.

“The one thing I don’t understand,” she mused, “Is how you managed to escape my poison. It was very strong, you know. I could hardly handle it myself. Which makes me wonder…”

She summoned her mirror.

“Mirror, mirror, of the night, how did the queen escape her plight?”

The huntsman began to speak, his voice a mixture of awe and fright. “The queen was almost dead, as dead as can be… Yet true love’s kiss broke the wickedest of schemes…”

The sorceress whirled around to face the monarchs. “So,” she mocked. “True love’s kiss. How sweet. I might just want to fix that…”

“Wait!” the huntsman cried. “There’s more. The true little princess has escaped her tower, and is on her way now with great power…”

The sorceress was stunned. It wore off after a few moments, and she let out a strangled cry. How could this have happed? That tower was shielded by one of her most powerful spells…

Then what her mirror had said struck her. She is on her way here with great power.

The real Princess Fae was a sorceress.

 She couldn’t take on another sorceress. Not now. She had been in hiding too long. She was weak.

The sorceress shot a venomous look at the king and queen, then vanished in a flurry of red sparks.

As she appeared in her old home, her magical home, she was thinking of true love’s kiss. There must have been a magic in that. Otherwise the queen would still be dead.

I will grow stronger, the sorceress promised herself. Then – only then – will I strike again.