Fairest of All

by C J Preece

  “Wait,” Kay said from the back of the room. “Why would she do any of this? She must be stalling for time.”

  “I don’t need time,” the Witch snapped. “Your only chance to defeat me died an hour ago, and a vial of his faithful blood was the last ingredient I needed. Well,” her smiled returned. “That and for you to enter my castle.”

  “What?”

  “Can’t you feel it? Coiling round your bones? Sucking at your blood? The pieces are useless if they cannot draw on the connection you share to them. Your own love, your own purity, that is what will destroy you. Now you are here the spell has been awoken. It will grow in strength until it can escape this castle, drawing power from every one of the Pure it finds until it has encircled the globe. And by then the world will be ash and dust.”

  Red squeezed the butt of her gun tight. “So you’ll die with us. Or be queen of the ash left behind.”

  “Oh no, I have much grander plans. I will leave this world behind and enter a new planet. One where I can begin again. You did find poor Rumpelstiltskin didn’t you? Did you know his power came from his ability to skip across the dimensions like a child jumping rope? This world meant no more to him than any of the millions he found. And now I can steal his power, when the world is at its most Corrupted. I will escape.” She threw her arm out, and from the centre of the plinth a cauldron emerged, hissing and sparking a putrid green, sickly blood-crimson smoke rising from it. “You have lost.”

  Red wasted no more time, turning to the other Pure. “We have to find some way out of this,” she said.

  Adam shook his head. “What can we do? Our connection to those items is unbreakable.”

  Goldilocks had appeared at her side, taking her hand gently. “If Red’s taught me anything, it’s that everything can be broken.”

  “But how?”

  “If we can’t break the potion,” Greta said. “I think I have an idea.”

  “Now’s the time,” Rapunzel said.

  She brought her bag around to the centre of the circle and opened it. Inside they could see the glint of the ice-glass. Every shard she and Kay had ever collected. “One in the heart, one in the eye,” she said. “It’s the only way.”

  “We won’t be able to come back,” Adam said, already taking two shards from the bag.

  Che reached in next. “There are enough of us outside. They will come for us. For now, Adam and I will keep the Witch distracted.”

  “Good luck,” Rapunzel said, taking her pieces.

  Adam and Che walked forwards, raising their rifles and firing in unison. The Witch batted the bullets away and they dived for cover.

  Kay and Greta had both taken their shards, leaving only Goldilocks and Red. Goldie took hers first. “We’ll see each other again,” she said as she held the first shard to her heart.

  Red leaned in close and whispered, “I love you.” Then stepped back and stabbed herself in the chest.

  It spread immediately, and she gasped as her heart seemed to stop beating in her chest. She reached out for Goldilocks but found only air. She collapsed to her knees and fought for breath, her arms crossed across her chest against the ice in her veins. Fearing she wouldn’t be able to move soon she took the other shard and thrust it into her eye. The pain hit her like a knife and she saw burning after-images from her blind side, the Wolf’s claw reaching forwards to scrape down her head, bone scratching on her forehead and a searing pain all through her body as her eye was taken. She clawed at her face, feeling her nails tearing skin. She had blinded herself completely now, she was sure.

  The pain faded, and she looked for the others, but the ice had spread through her entire body now, and she slumped to the floor, the fight drained out of her. A few feet away she could see someone’s boots, but she couldn’t remember whose they were. Looking up she could see a pool of blonde hair on the floor. She cocked her head and examining the face beneath. It wasn’t familiar, and besides it looked wrong somehow.

  No one else seemed able to move, but she found she could sit and look around. Another blonde haired woman lay nearby, but her hair was much longer. Clumps of it had been torn out, lying discarded by the body. Two more bodies next to the blonde, lying peacefully on their backs and watching the ceiling. She looked up to see what was so interesting, but it was bare wood. Her head dropped back down and she saw two more people, on their knees before a gigantic cauldron. One had a harsh and cruel face, scars criss-crossing his skin and blood soaking his entire body. Too much blood to be his, she knew somehow. She almost imagined she could see the weight pushing him to his knees.

  The other man wasn’t a man anymore. He looked like an animal, ripped clothes and dark fur coming through. His face was a twisted snarl, wolfish teeth bared in a roar. His eyes were red with blood fury, not a trace of humanity there. She didn’t know why she had thought he was a man at first. He growled and snapped at the people near him, but didn’t attack, frozen in place as all of them were.

  The cauldron in front of them was shaking violently, and she found herself watching it as a crack appeared in the metal. Beside it was a thin figure garbed in a tattered robe. A high keening wail reached her and she thought it came from the thin figure. The robes swayed and caught as the figure tried to run, but was held in place. The smoke seemed strangely to be seeking out the figure, even though that was impossible. It wasn’t magic smoke.

  Something clicked back into place. It was magic smoke, and it was consuming the thin figure of the witch. The Witch who was screaming and cursing and coming apart as the smoke ate her from within. It poured into her mouth and around her eyeballs, steam pouring out of her body from every pore as it burned through her. Her screams cracked and broke, then became pitiful moaning as the last of the smoke emptied from the cauldron and surrounded her. Somewhere deep within her a spark of joy coursed through Red as she watched the smoke settle heavy and toxic around the Witch.

  More and more was reaching her. She was Red. She was facing the Witch. The Witch had to die. The smoke seemed to be doing the trick, but she wanted to be sure. An impulse deep beneath the human emerged, giving her the strength to reach out and pick up the revolver next to her hand. Red got slowly to her feet and pushed forwards, the effort of putting one foot in front of the other almost too much effort. She looked down at her own hands and they seemed to flicker and fade before her eye, becoming in one instant a wolf’s paws, then long and skeletal, the armoured sleeves black robes of layered silk. The gun was a claw, a sword, a scythe. She looked up and saw the flash of robe through a doorway. The cauldron was empty, broken in two along the crack. The smoke had disappeared, and so had the Witch.

  She followed through the door, the sharp scent of burned flesh guiding her path. She crouched so low she was almost on all fours, eyes sweeping left and right. Part of her clung to the room she had left behind, but the ice around her heart allowed only the hunt. At the bottom of the spiralling stairs was a long, high-ceilinged hallway, covered in paintings of destruction and death. A young girl lying dead with an apple at her side, a woman collapsed by a spinning wheel, a tall tower, two children being eaten alive. She felt like the images should mean something to her, but ahead the scent changed sharply and she hurried forwards, knowing the hunt was reaching an end, one way or another.

  Ahead was a huge door, stretching many times as tall as she and wide enough to allow three men on horseback through. It was made of cast iron and looked invincible. But it was cracked open and a beam of light escaped from the room beyond. Red slipped to the crack and peered through, able to make out a black marble floor and a high-ceilinged chamber, almost entirely in blackness. She entered and saw that the light came from a gap at the very top of the room. It shone down directly onto a black metal throne which was twisted and sprouting spikes from every angle. The throne was set upon crooked and uneven steps. She could see blood and scraps of roasted flesh on the steps, as though someone had crawled up them.

  She followed the scent of blood
, one hand steadying her progress up the stairs while her other was held up in anticipation of the death to come. At the top, seated on the throne, was the Witch herself, broken and near-dead. Her robes had been melted to her skin, which was coming off in thick patches. She dragged her nails down the arm of the chair when she saw Red, but the nails simply came off the ends of her fingers, leaving ragged holes. The Witch collapsed back onto her throne. “How?” She croaked.

  Red barely understood the word. She raised her gun and aimed for the Witch’s head.

  “Of course.” The Witch laughed, a harsh retching bark that brought blood. “The ice-glass.”

  Red continued to watch her. It was fascinating to watch the body disintegrating. Her left arm was almost entirely gone, stripped down so far that the bone showed beneath. She wasn’t moving it, and beneath the robe when she shifted in the chair the arm didn’t move with her. Maybe it had fallen off entirely and she hadn’t even noticed.

  “So you can see the true faces of your friends and lover. And your heart is too cold to even know it.” The Witch sneered at her. “At least I can feel my defeat. You’re dead to it. I hope it’s worth it.” She coughed up a torrent of blood that spilled onto her filthy robes.

  Red frowned. Friends and lover? She thought of the people in the room she had left behind. The Beast. The soldier soaked in blood. The girl with the blonde hair. Something in her mind tried to make itself heard. She remembered faint memories of fighting alongside a man who was like a Beast. Or was he just called Beast? The name Adam floated by and she lowered the gun to think. There was a woman with the Beast, she remembered through the fog of her memory. A long time ago she had spoken to the woman and gone out to find someone else. Another hunt.

  Gold.

  She cocked her head at that thought, stepping down a couple of steps towards the hall and the room with the blonde girl in it. Gold and Red.

  She’s worth it.

  Her own voice, her own words. There was a sharp pain in her chest and she felt her heart beat again, heat rushing through her, too hot to bear. She staggered, hand on her chest, and felt the heat return to her body. She looked down and saw her own hands, covered in blood and becoming paws before her eyes. She squeezed her eye shut and let the warmth flood through her, bringing with it the memories she needed. She felt liquid drip down her cheek and brushed it with her hand, opening her eye to see her hands were her own again, a drop of black oil on the tip of her finger.

  She turned, gun raised and pointed at the Witch. Without a second thought she pulled the trigger. The bullet hit the Witch square in the forehead, putting a hole the size of a penny in the Witch’s skull. The bone was already breaking beneath, and as the bullet blasted through the fragile skin and bone disintegrated from the pressure. The Witch’s head came apart with a sickly wet noise, the body slumping on the throne, blood and brain and tiny fragments of skull staining the back of it. The left arm dropped away and rolled out of sight. Even as Red watched the rest of the body fell to pieces, a pile of rotted flesh and putrefying organs that should have died a very long time before.

  There was nothing more to do.

  Epilogue

  They stood before a massive gate of wrought iron. Beyond they could see an explosion of colour. Reds and greens and blues and yellows of flowers, trees. Life itself seemed to be held back by the wall. The sun shone brightly, the clouds moving round it.

  “Are we sure this will work?” Goldilocks asked. She was still a little on edge. She had seen Red through the filter of the ice-glass after all. But she hadn’t run away.

  “Honestly I’m not sure,” Belle replied, looking up at the lock. “But I don’t see why not. What’s beyond this gate is a purer magic than anything else left in the world.”

  “Why was it locked up?”

  “I found some fragments of the Witch’s journals. She wanted to destroy it, but she couldn’t. So instead she locked it and concealed its location. Now she’s dead the enchantment should be broken as well.”

  “And if she couldn’t destroy it, maybe it has the power to destroy her influence.”

  “Not alone,” Che said. “It can return the earth to fertility, and maybe its power can even help the people. But the effects of the Dreamscape are wide reaching.”

  “There’s a lot less of us as well,” Rapunzel pointed out.

  “No,” Philip said, a little sharply. “We can’t think like that anymore. People we thought were Pure turned out to be Corrupted before this, and people we thought Corrupted were still capable of bravery and selflessness. We can’t think of ourselves as being somehow better if this is going to work. That was the Witch’s mistake, it can’t be ours.”

  “Does this mean you’re finally going to step up?” Red said, smiling to take some of the sting out of it.

  He shook his head. “It means I’m finally acknowledging that I can’t, and facing up to what that means. I can help, but not as a ruler. Belle and Adam will still rule my subjects, along with the rest of Ateer until we can get it back on its feet.”

  Goldilocks had been more interested in what Adam was doing, high up next to the lock. “What abut Snow?”

  “Still hasn’t been seen after the fall of Charming. She definitely killed him though. And I think she was probably the one who killed his children and Cinderella as well.”

  “Can we trust her?”

  Philip shrugged. “We all knew Charming’s children were going to be a problem. In many ways she’s actually helped us. And Cinderella deserved a merciful death after all she went through.”

  “I meant from before.”

  “I honestly don’t know. But then I don’t think she knows either, which is why she’s gone. Maybe she’ll come back when she knows who she is.”

  “I think we’re ready,” Adam suddenly called down.

  Che and Red stepped forwards, each choosing one side of the gate and putting their hands on it. Above there was a mighty crack, and they pushed with all their might.

  The gate swung open easily, as if it had been waiting for the moment. They were assaulted by the smells within. Deep wet grass, sweet smelling pollen and a million flowers rolling over them. Inside it was even more beautiful than they could have imagined, and the sunlight struck them properly, for the first time in years untainted. Red dropped to her knees and let it wash over her, finally letting her cloak fall from her shoulders onto the grass.

  She felt an arm around her bare shoulders and looked up into eyes a more beautiful blue than even the sky above her. She smiled, a little unused to the movement, and stared up at the sky as the clouds surrounding the garden began to part.

  “I think it’s working,” Goldilocks said into her ear. Around them the others were whooping and cheering, jumping and cavorting like children in the grass.

  Red reached up and pulled her down for a kiss, deep and full of love. “I know it is.”

  The End

  © 2017 Christopher Preece

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.