Caged: A Twisted Fairytale Retelling

by Lena Mae Hill

  “Right,” I said, adjusting my weight on the vine. “Want to come down so we can talk without having to yell at each other?”

  “Oh, I can’t.”

  We stared at each other for a good ten seconds. “You’re stuck up there?”

  “I’m not allowed to leave,” she said, like that was different from what I’d said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because someone might steal me,” she said. “Mother Dear says it’s the only place that’s safe.”

  I was starting to get a really weird feeling about this mother of hers. “When was the last time you left?”

  “When I was a baby,” she said. “I wasn’t born here.”

  “Wait, you’ve never left? Ever?”

  “There’s no door,” she said. “That’s so no one can get in and get me. But it also means I can’t get out. It’s unfortunate, but that’s the way it has to be.”

  “You’re not a shifter?”

  “Mother Dear says I’m not supposed to tell anyone anything about me,” she said, looking truly regretful. “She went to get more water for washing, but she’s on her way back, so…”

  “I should go,” I finished for her. I had no desire to meet this crazy mother of hers, but I wanted to stay. I wanted to figure out who she was, and why she was there, and what the hell she was doing up there. I couldn’t wait to go home and tell my brothers about this. There wasn’t just a lighthouse with no doors on top of the mountain. It had a crazy girl living in it.

  “I’ll ask Mother Dear if I can come down next time,” she said. “Since you’re not a stranger now.”

  “I don’t know if I should come back,” I said. “I mean, I didn’t get your name. So, you’re a stranger to me.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh,” she said. “That’s true. In that case, I’m Astrid.”

  “Hi, Astrid,” I said, trying out her name. “Nice to meet you.”

  Nice wasn’t quite the word I was thinking. More like surreal and bat-shit crazy.

  “Hi,” she said, beaming at me. “I’m so happy you came to visit. I’ve never had a visitor.”

  “You’ve lived up there all your life without ever seeing anyone?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “I see Mother Dear. And a couple times, Father Dear came to see me.”

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “Okay, Astrid. Well, I’ll come back, okay? If you want me to.”

  She nodded vigorously. Suddenly, her gaze flickered to the woods behind me, and her eyes widened even further. “Hide,” she said, her voice nothing but a gasp.

  “What?”

  “Mother Dear is coming,” she said. “Hide in the leaves. Otherwise she’ll kill you.”

  The urgency in her voice said she wasn’t kidding around. Shifters were pretty rough, but people didn’t just kill each other. But the way she said it, well, I wasn’t going to wait around and see which one was crazier, the girl or her dear mother.

  “Astrid,” a high voice called from a little way off.

  Cursing quietly, I started down, lowering myself hand over hand.

  “Hide,” Astrid hissed. “You don’t have time.” She was right. Even if I reached the bottom, I’d have to run into the woods to hide. The trees were starting to leaf out, but they weren’t thick enough to hide me yet, and there weren’t any good boulders close by. I wondered what her mother thought of this miraculous bean plant, but I wasn’t about to ask. Instead, I followed Astrid’s orders and burrowed into the leafy vines.

  “Why didn’t you answer me, silly girl,” said her mother’s voice, closer than I liked.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Astrid said from above.

  “We’ve got to do something about these vines,” her mother said.

  “Oh!” Astrid said as something large and brownish red fell past me. “Sorry, Mother Dear. I didn’t mean to drop that on you.”

  At first, I thought she’d dropped more of her wet laundry to distract her mother. It worked, but it wasn’t laundry. Her mother picked up the huge, flexible basket and set a bucket of water into it. I looked up to see Astrid leaning out her window, arranging the rope attached to the handle. When she leaned back inside, the basket began to rise.

  And I’d thought we had it bad going to a laundromat.

  After a couple minutes, the basket lowered again, and the woman climbed into it. I flattened my back against the tower wall, praying to Odin, Zeus, Ra, and all the other gods I could think of that she wouldn’t turn and look straight into my face. There was a gap in the leaves I’d been using to see everything, but that meant she could probably see me. As she rose past my hiding place, a splash of recognition hit me like she’d dumped the bucket of icy spring water on my head.

  I knew the woman. Well, I didn’t know her. But I knew who she was—everyone did. She was the only witch who came into the shifter valley. She and the deadbeat shifter king had a thing going on. Which meant that Astrid wasn’t a shifter. She was a witch.

  A chill shivered down my spine.

  “I brought some things for dinner,” her mother said.

  “Can you stay?” Astrid asked, her voice full of a heartbreaking amount of hope. The girl really didn’t see anyone else. I tried to comprehend that, to wrap my head around how absolutely lonely it must be. I had three brothers around me, and though they could be pains in the asses more often than not, I couldn’t imagine not having them.

  Sure, they teased me about being a cow, always having my nose buried in a book of legends, and striking out with every girl in the Second Valley. But if I needed them, they had my back. When I got picked on at school for being scrawny, they told the bully that the four of us together were still three times as big as him. When my one girlfriend in high school broke my heart, Jack said he’d try to make her fall in love with him so he could break her heart in return. Hell, when Dad took off and Mom worked nights, they’d fed me bottles and changed my diapers. We ate together, drank together, got in trouble together. If I had to live in a lighthouse all by myself, I’d have gone totally bonkers, too.

  When I heard them talking above, I dared to slide a foot down the vines a bit. The leaves shook, and I froze, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “Did you hear something?” asked the mother witch, Yvonne.

  “Just the wind,” Astrid said.

  “It’s that damn vine,” Yvonne said. “I’d better cut that down. I didn’t think it would grow so tall.”

  “Let’s make dinner first,” Astrid said. “What did you bring?”

  I breathed a sigh of relief and made my way one agonizing, slow step at a time. Astrid might be a witch, but she was definitely protecting me. I just didn’t know why.

  Chapter Seven

  Astrid

  I loved cooking with Mother Dear. Usually she left me food and had to rush off to see Father, or work in the First Valley, or whatever else she did. My bed was big enough for both of us, but more often than not, I slept beside an empty body. They weren’t dead, just sleeping deeply. They still breathed, so it was almost like having a real person there. That’s why I talked to them. Still, it was nice to have Mother Dear there to answer when I talked to her.

  “Mother Dear,” I started. “Where do the bodies come from?”

  “What?” she asked, pausing with the chopping knife poised above a beet.

  “The bodies you use as disguises,” I said. “Where do you get them?”

  “Oh, different places,” she said with a tinkling laugh. “Sometimes, like the last old lady, she had died. I gave her life for a few more days.”

  “That’s nice of you,” I said, tossing some onions into the pot. It wasn’t exactly like Mother Dear had given her extra life, though, was it? She had slept here, or she’d been taken out as a disguise. She hadn’t actually experienced those extra days—Mother Dear had experienced them while inside her body. It was kind of like what I did. I got to be here, breathing and reading and eating, but I didn’t actually get to experience anything new. It was the same thing day after day for sixteen years.<
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  “Do you think I could do that?” I asked.

  “Do what, dear?” she asked, slicing into a thick red slab of beet flesh.

  “What you do?” I said. “Think about it. I know I can’t leave here because someone might see me and take me. But if I was in someone else’s body, no one would recognize me, so I’d be safe.”

  Mother Dear scooped the chopped beets into her hands and dropped them into the pot. My eyes fell on the silver blade, now smeared with red juices.

  “I’m surprised at you,” she said. “After all I’ve done to make this place perfect for you, this is the thanks I get? You have untold riches at your disposal, Astrid. You’re probably the richest girl in the world. You use drops of gold as your playthings, and you want to walk away from it all to mingle with the commoners? They’re dirty, half-starved, depraved hoodlums, Astrid. They’d take one look at you and set upon you like vultures.”

  “But if I was in a disguise—”

  “Why are you doing this?” Mother asked, whirling on me. Her eyes flashed, then narrowed, and I was sure she could see the deception on me like a stain. She’d told me about the liars and thieves down there in the valleys, in the rest of the world. Here, things were good and pure and honest. Here, I never lied.

  But I had. I had deceived her with a spell on the vines, and now with the boy who had climbed them. Maybe I wasn’t fit to be the princess after all. Maybe, deep down inside, I was just like everyone else in the world out there. Maybe Mother Dear had the wrong person. I didn’t feel like a princess. I just felt scared.

  “I just wondered,” I said. “It’s okay, Mother Dear. I don’t have to go out. I just wanted to know what it was like out there. Really know.”

  “It’s awful, that’s what it’s like,” she said, her fingers clenching around the handle of the knife. “And why you would think of betraying me after all I’ve done for you…I can’t imagine. Did I teach you to be this selfish and ungrateful?”

  “No,” I said quickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be.”

  “Haven’t I fed you every day of your life, brought you clean water and given you the safest home in all the world? I sacrificed my own place in your father’s life, so I could stay close to you even when he moved away. I’ve saved nearly every tear you’ve ever cried, going without while you wallow in riches, all so that you’ll have something to bring the shifters when you become their queen. Do you think the coven would simply look the other way if they knew what you can do? No, they would take your treasure and take you with it, milking tears from you like a cash cow.”

  “Yes, Mother Dear,” I said. I knew not to argue once she got going.

  “Once people found out, they would never let you stop crying. They won’t see you as a beautiful princess, as I do. They will see you as someone who can give you all they’ve ever dreamed of. That’s how the world will see you, Astrid. That’s why I must keep you a secret.”

  “Yes, Mother Dear.”

  “No one will love you if they know,” she said. “They’ll only use you. Even when you are married, you must only give your husband a bit, and never tell him where they come from. There is no end to human greed, and even if he loves you at first, once he knows what you can do for him, he will see you differently. He will see you as less than human, and you will become a slave to your own tears.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “What would I do without my precious daughter?” Her voice softened, and she set down the knife and took my hands in hers. “I would die without you, my dear. You’re my whole life.” She pulled me in and pressed my head to her chest, stroking my hair.

  Tears of shame burned at the back of my eyes. Mother Dear had given up her life for me, and she’d given me a wonderful life, and I knew that she would die if she lost me. She told me so all the time. If I kept a secret, she might die, too.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said, choking back a sob and clinging to her. “There was a boy here. He was climbing the vine, and he saw me. I talked to him.”

  Mother’s shoulders went stiff, and her hand stilled. “What boy?”

  “He was a shifter,” I said. “His name is William.” The terrible, smothering weight of my deception lifted as I spoke, and I could breathe right for the first time in weeks, when I’d first seen them planting the seeds.

  “Is that right?” she asked through clenched teeth. Her voice remained sweet, though, so I wasn’t afraid.

  “I won’t do it again,” I said. “I promise. I’ll hide like you said, even if he sees me.”

  “Yes, you will,” she said. “I’ll get rid of the vine, so he can’t come back.”

  “No,” I gasped, gripping her shoulders. “It’s… I like the vine.”

  “I know, dear,” she said. “But would you also like to die?”

  I pulled back, my eyes wide as I shook my head. “No, Mother Dear. But he wasn’t going to hurt me. He said so.”

  “Oh, my beautiful, dumb daughter,” she said, stroking my hair behind my ear. “Boys will say anything to get what they want. They’ll tell you one thing, but they actually mean the opposite. When he says he’s not here to hurt you, what he means is that he’s actually here to do much worse. He’s here to steal your treasure and keep you from taking your rightful place as queen.”

  I nodded, wiping away a tear. If I wiped them before they fell, they never turned to gold. “Okay.”

  “If you want to live, you’ll have to scare him away. Now that he knows you live here, he’ll be back. A young body like yours is a siren song in itself, especially to greedy men like him. I’ll cut down the vines, and you must dump boiling water on him if he comes back.”

  I nodded again. “Okay, I’ll do that. But can you just… leave the vines? I like them. They’re like friends to me. I talk to them. They like my songs.”

  “Don’t worry, my dear,” she said. “I’m working hard to get you out of here. You must be patient and wait until the time is right, when it’s safe. You’ll have more friends than you know what to do with when you’re queen.”

  “But I thought you said I couldn’t trust anyone down there.”

  “That’s why I’ll be there,” she said. “I know how to tell who can be trusted, and I’ll be with you every step of the way. I’ll never leave your side, Astrid.”

  “Promise?” I asked, thinking of the boy with luminous bronze hair and kind eyes behind his glasses. He had looked so sincere.

  “I promise,” Mother Dear said. “Now, wipe your face. You’re not a pretty crier, Astrid. You should avoid that. A princess must always appear young and beautiful and poised.”

  I nodded, turning away to go wash my face in the basin and dress like a princess, in one of the fine dresses Mother Dear had given me. Most of them were scratchy or heavy or hot, but it didn’t matter. From now on, I would be good and wait for my time, like Mother Dear wanted.

  Still, I hid in the bed and cried when she cut down the vines.

  Chapter Eight

  Astrid

  Days went by, and everything returned to normal. At least everything appeared normal. Inside me, a hole had opened, and nothing could fill it. I ate, and danced, and sang, and painted, and counted gold in the room full of treasure that was supposed to be mine. But nothing worked. I had grown dull. I would have traded the shiniest gold in the world for one afternoon with a human who talked to me.

  One day as I sat piecing a quilt, I heard an exclamation outside. I lifted my head from my work, listening. It was a boy’s voice, and my heart leapt in my chest before sinking back to my toes. I stared at the stitches I’d made, but my fingers refused to move.

  “Astrid,” he called. “Are you up there?”

  I swallowed hard and pinched my lips together, almost choking on the knot of longing lodged in my throat, rendering me silent. If I talked to him, Mother Dear might do something drastic.

  “If you’re up there, sing something,” he called. He sounded too close, closer than the ground. My heart lea
pt up and took off racing at the sound. He’d told me he was a shifter, but he hadn’t told me what kind. Maybe he was a bird like the man in the field, and he’d come up to see me. I’d told Mother Dear I wouldn’t talk to him, but I hadn’t said I wouldn’t look. To prove that I was following her orders, I put a pan of water on the stove. Then I crept to the window on trembling legs.

  It wasn’t William. It was one of the other boys, one with golden hair and blue eyes. “My brother has been raving about your voice for a week,” he said. “I swear, the guy’s obsessed. He can’t go five minutes without talking about you. Just sing me a note so I know you’re alive in there.”

  I had promised I wouldn’t speak, but I hadn’t said anything about singing.

  But what if he was there to steal my treasure? Or my life?

  “Okay, I knew it,” he said. “There’s no singing girl in the tower, and I’m out here talking to myself like a dumbass. Not to mention I’m fifty feet from the ground on a dead vine. I’m going to kill William.”

  “No,” I cried, leaping over to the window.

  The boy let out a yelp of surprise and jerked back, and the dead vine cracked. It began to slide slowly sideways. He grappled at the wall, terror taking over his expression.

  “No,” I cried again, my hand shooting out, though it was nowhere near him. Without thinking I grabbed my braid and tossed it down to him. His fingers closed around it, and his eyes locked on mine, full of blind panic.

  “Stay calm,” I said, gripping the sill with both hands and trying not to cry out in pain. I was afraid he was going to yank me right out the window. “You’re not sliding anymore. You’re not falling. Just calm down. Tell me your name.”

  “I’m stuck,” he said. “The vine won’t hold me. I can’t fall fifty feet. I’ll die.”

  “It’s more than that,” I squeaked. It was true. The vine seemed to have died, but somehow, had continued to climb. It was almost to my window. Maybe only ten feet below.

  The boy closed his eyes and whispered, “Fuck. William’s gone too far with the pranking.”