Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  “Hello, Willi,” you say. “You need a haircut. Your hair is falling into your eyes again.” You brush it aside affectionately.

  “Oh, Mother!” he says, as though exasperated, but he takes your hand and kisses it—son to mother, and to queen. The two of you have always had a good relationship.

  “All the arguments you make are sensible ones,” you say. “But there’s something Gerhard does not know. You see, I’ve been practicing witchcraft.”

  “Have you really?” he asks, a look of interest and admiration in his eyes. “You mean like grandmother?” Then, for the first time, he notices your companions. “Are those dwarves? Are they the dwarves, from ‘White-as-Snow and the Seven Dwarves’? There are seven of them, aren’t there?” He counts. “And is that a wolf?” He looks at Grimm with alarm.

  “That is my familiar. You know all witches have one. Sometimes he is a wolf, and sometimes he is something else altogether.” You smile at Wilhelm and pat him on the cheek. “Willi, would you like to be king after I defeat Gerhard’s army? I will give you his kingdom and keep this one for my own, but you must conclude a treaty with me, on my terms. Which include pledging fealty.”

  “Of course, Mother,” he says, looking down at you with amusement. “But how do you intend to defeat Gerhard? He has a real army, whereas you have a rag-tag collection of old men and young boys dressed in armor. Some of it rather old armor, visibly patched. I take it this is your general.” He looks at Henrik. “He at least appears competent and well-armed, but one strong man is not enough.”

  “Watch,” you say, smiling. Then you step back toward the cauldron, which Dorothea has brought to a rolling boil. “Grimm,” you say, “are you ready? Trondor?”

  The wolf and dwarf both nod. Trondor mounts on the wolf’s back and raises his battle axe, which is as large as his head.

  “All right, then. Franziska, add the final ingredient.” She shakes red powder out of a large box labeled, in ornate calligraphy, Feoderovsky and Sons Magical Supplies. Powdered dragon’s blood is expensive, even if you order it in bulk, but this is too important for inferior ingredients.

  The cauldron bubbles, and a gray smoke rises. You intone the magical words, which are in Latin, of course—it’s a good thing you received an excellent classical education at St. Winifred. Franziska and Dorothea fall back as the first wolf rises from the cauldron, gray and gaunt and snarling.

  “Olaf,” you say, and the dwarf mounts his wolf. Then Nilsen and Anders, Rolf and Ingar, and finally Kristof. They are armed with axes like Trondor’s, or battle maces. They are wearing leather armor. There is a fierce light in their eyes, which surprises you—are these the mild, gentle dwarves who took you in and raised you, when your mother was trying to kill you and your father was oblivious to the situation? You could not have had better parents. And yet, there are tales of dwarf warriors in the history books. They are said to be fiercer than eagles.

  “Trondor, lead the way,” you tell him. He throws back his head and shouts something in the ancient dwarf language that is no doubt some sort of battle cry. Then Grimm lopes down the hillside and the other wolves follow, with the dwarves mounted on them. Wolves stream out of the cauldron, each with a fierce dwarf warrior on its back. They look like running smoke, through which you can see the glint of weapons in the sunlight. Only the first wolf is real, only the seven dwarves can draw blood—it is mostly illusion, and yet it looks real enough.

  “Henrik, it’s time,” you say. Henrik mounts his horse, then rides to one side of the hilltop and then the other, commanding the men to charge. They move in formation down the hill on either side of the dwarf army, with Henrik and a few mounted men in the rear, the cavalry following the infantry.

  Reality and illusion: enchantment held together by force of will, a few magical powders, and words in a dead language. You have only had three months to learn, and you hope to goodness that your plan will succeed. But you have always been clever, as the Mother Superior knows. You have always attended to your lessons. And you are, quite simply, done. Done with listening to men who tell you what to do, whether the father who ignored you, or the husband who turned you into a fairy tale, or now a son. You are done with being rescued, done with obedience and gratitude.

  Gerhard’s forces stand fast for a moment, and then break. You can hear it even from here, his footmen shouting with fear and surprise, stumbling backward from the ghostly wolves and dwarf warriors. They run into the mounted knights behind, who urge them forward until their horses smell wolf and panic under them. Then all of Gerhard’s soldiers are retreating, and it is a great chaos of men and magic, a complete rout.

  “Well done, Mother,” says Wilhelm beside you. “Shall I ride down and deliver the coup de grâce? By which I mean telling Gerhard to surrender. I would not, of course, commit fratricide.”

  “Yes, I think that would be for the best,” you say. “Tell him I’m not going to execute him, just send him into exile.”

  “Will do,” he says, nodding. Then he leaves you on the hillside, alone with Franziska and Dorothea, the cauldron still smoking between you. The three of you, standing there, resemble the three Fates.

  “Well done, Your Majesty,” says Franziska, whom you intend to make a countess for her service and loyalty. She will have a lady’s maid of her own.

  “Mother, that was awesome,” says Dorothea. “Will you teach me witchcraft?”

  “Of course,” you say. “After all, you will be the queen of this kingdom after me. It’s much easier to be a queen when you’re also a witch.”

  VII. THE APPLE

  “Is that right?” asks Dorothea. She holds up the apple, which is red on one side and white on the other.

  “Quite right,” you say. “Now, can you make the red side not poisonous? It’s much more important knowing how not to be poisoned than knowing how to poison people. And harder.”

  “That was your mother’s spell, wasn’t it?” says Dorothea. She intones a few words in Latin while passing her hands over a bowl of red liquid that turns milky white, then dips the apple back into it. Her Latin is coming along well, as is her knowledge of various potions and their ingredients. You are proud of the fact that she is as good a student as you were.

  Grimm, who is lying at her feet in wolf form, whimpers softly in his dreams. A few days ago you asked him, out of curiosity, “Who is the fairest, anyway? The fairest in the land?”

  “At the moment? Anthea, the blacksmith’s daughter in Mallor, a village high on the slopes of Mount Gotteringen. She is admired intensely by the goats she’s herding. But last week she had the flu, so the fairest was Sister Maria-Josef, cloistered at the nunnery of Saint Edelweis in the port city of South Fardo. You were the fairest for a very long time, if that’s any consolation. Usually it changes at least once a month.”

  You and Dorothea are both in the tower for her daily magic lesson. A week ago you married your true love and were crowned queen. Henrik is now your prince consort. You are no longer dressed in black, but in crimson velvet edged with ermine, which is suitable for a queen as well as a witch. Wilhelm has pledged fealty to you and is establishing his rule over your late husband’s kingdom. Gerhard is in Hohenstein, plotting an invasion with Prince Ludwig, but Ludwig’s father, King Frederik IV, also known as the Rotund, is not at all sure that war with a neighboring kingdom is in his best interests and has so far refused them funding. If Gerhard does manage to raise an army, it will take a while, and by then you will have something even more effective to greet him with than wolves made of smoke. The dwarves have decided to stay with you in the castle, and you are glad to have your seven fathers with you, to counsel and advise. This is the closest you’ve ever come to having a family.

  “Yes, that was her spell,” you say. “Her third and final spell. The one that killed me, at least for a while. And now you know the antidote.”

  Dorothea looks down at the apple for a moment, then says, “Mama, why did you keep letting the peddler woman in? Rolf says they warned you, ov
er and over again, not to let anyone in at all.”

  “They did,” you say. “But you see, she was my mother. Oh, I know she was in disguise, but a child could have seen through that trick. I mean, what sort of peddler woman tries to sell stay laces in the middle of a forest? Who does she expect to sell them to? No, I knew who she was the moment I saw her. I let her in because she was my mother. I had not seen her in so long… And I wanted her to lace me up, to comb my hair. I knew there was something wrong with that apple, but the dwarves had saved me twice already. Why not a third time? And I wanted to share it with her, to take a bite right next to the one she had taken. When I woke up in the glass coffin, I realized that I could have died, truly died that time. I married Prince Harald because I thought he could keep me safe. She wouldn’t try to kill the queen of a neighboring kingdom, would she? But then Harald invited her to the wedding and had iron shoes heated on a fire… I still remember her screams. I never forgave him for that.”

  You are silent for a while. The only sounds in the tower are Grimm, who is evidently chasing a dream rabbit, and Dorothea munching her apple while she pages through a leather-bound volume of magical botany.

  “I’m glad you’re not that sort of mother,” she says, looking up at you from a page on Agrimony. “When I grow up, I want to be just like you, Mama.”

  She won’t be, of course. She won’t have a father who ignores her or a mother who tries to poison her, because Henrik is positively doting and you are not that sort of mother, as Dorothea said. But she won’t have a cottage of dwarves to raise her either, although you hope Trondor and the others will teach her some of the things they taught you, about the forest, and kindness, and home. You sincerely hope she won’t have a prince to rescue her, because princes are not to be trusted and their services come at a high price. You will teach her to rescue herself, and you hope she will be better, smarter, stronger than you were.

  You smile at her across the table, with its bowls of potion, its magical powders, its leather-bound books. Your beautiful, talented Dorothea. This is how you became a witch-queen. She will have to find her own path, as you are certain she shall.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Born in Ciechanow, Poland, ANIA AHLBORN has always been drawn to the darker, mysterious, and morbid side of life. Her earliest childhood memory is of crawling through a hole in the chain link fence that separated her family home from the large wooded cemetery. She’d spend hours among the headstones, breaking up bouquets of silk flowers so that everyone had their equal share. Ania’s first novel, Seed, was self-published. It clawed its way up the Amazon charts to the #1 horror spot, earning her a multi-book deal and a key to the kingdom of the macabre. Eight years later, her work has been lauded by the likes of Publishers Weekly, New York Daily News, and the New York Times. She hopes to one day be invited to dinner at Stephen King’s place, where she will immediately be crushed beneath the weight of her imposter syndrome.

  KELLEY ARMSTRONG is the author of the Rockton crime thrillers. Past works include the Otherworld urban fantasy series, the Cainsville paranormal mystery series, the Darkest Powers & Darkness Rising teen paranormal trilogies, the Age of Legends fantasy YA series and the Nadia Stafford crime trilogy. Armstrong lives in Ontario, Canada with her family.

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  As an actor, AMBER BENSON is best known for her role as Tara Maclay on the hit television show Buffy The Vampire Slayer. But since then she has become a notable novelist/director/screenwriter. She co-created and directed the animated supernatural web series Ghosts of Albion for the BBC (with Christopher Golden) and co-directed the independent feature Drones. She is also the author of the bestselling Calliope Reaper-Jones series of novels and the Witches of Echo Park trilogy for Penguin.

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  CHESYA BURKE is a doctoral candidate in the English department at the University of Florida. She received her Master’s degree in African American Studies from Georgia State University in 2015. Currently, Chesya is a double fellow, and she teaches such topics as Black Women Spec Fic Writers, The Racial Dynamics of Nationality Politics and The Literature of Resistance: From Nat Turner to Black Panther. In addition, Burke wrote several articles for the African American National Biography published by Harvard and Oxford University Press. Burke is an award-winning writer, who has published nearly a hundred stories and articles, leading Grammy-nominated spoken word artist and poet Nikki Giovanni to call her work “stunning.” Her story collection, Let’s Play White, is being taught in universities around the country and her novel, The Strange Crimes of Little Africa, debuted in Dec 2015 to great reviews. She edited the Locus nominated anthology, Hidden Youth, with Mikki Kendall, and Samuel Delany called her “a formidable new master of the macabre.”

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  RACHEL CAINE is the #1 bestselling author of more than fifty books, including the Morganville Vampires series, the Great Library series, the Honors series in YA; she’s also known for the urban fantasy Weather Warden series, and the Stillhouse Lake thriller series on the adult shelves. She’s published in thirty languages around the world, and lives in Fort Worth, Texas with her husband, artists and golden-age comic dealer/historian R. Cat Conrad.

  Website: rachelcaine.com

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  KRISTIN DEARBORN has been writing since before she could hold a pen, dictating stories to her mother. Thanks to nefarious influences like Scooby Doo and Bunnicula, her tastes turned to the macabre at an early age. A graduate of Seton Hill’s Writing Popular Fiction MFA program, Kristin works in finance during the day, and plays with monsters at night. When she’s not reading or writing, you can find her riding her Harley, rock climbing, or striving to summit the New England high peaks, no matter what the season. Kristin is the author of Stolen Away, Sacrifice Island, Trinity, Whispers, and Woman in White.

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  TANANARIVE DUE is an author, screenwriter and educator who is a leading voice in black speculative fiction. Her short fiction has appeared in best-of-the-year anthologies of science fiction and fantasy. She is the former Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at Spelman College (2012-2014) and teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror in the Department of African-American Studies at UCLA. She also teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Antioch University Los Angeles and the screenwriting program at Antioch University Santa Barbara. Due is an executive producer of the Shudder black horror documentary Horror Noire.

  The American Book Award-winner and NAACP Image Award recipient is the author or co-author of twelve novels. In 2010, Due was inducted into the Medill School of Journalism’s Hall of Achievement at Northwestern University. She also received a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Fine Arts from the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation. Her short-story collection, Ghost Summer, won a 2016 British Fantasy Award. She has been named to the Grio 100 and the Ebony Power 100.

  Due also co-authored a civil rights memoir with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due, Freedom in the Family: a Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights. (Patricia Stephens Due took part in the nation’s first “Jail-In” in 1960, spending 49 days in jail in Tallahassee, Florida, after a sit-in at a Woolworth lunch counter.) Freedom in the Family was named 2003’s Best Civil Rights Memoir by Black Issues Book Review. Her parents, including her father, attorney John Due, were recently inducted into the Florida Civil Rights Hall of Fame.

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  THEODORA GOSS is the World Fantasy and Locus Award-winning author of the short-story and poetry collections In the Forest of Forgetting (2006), Songs for Ophelia (2014), and Snow White Learns Witchcraft (2019), as well as novella The Thorn and the Blossom (2012), debut novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), and sequel European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman (2018). She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her work has been translated into twelve languages. She teaches literature and writing at Boston University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program. Visit her at theodoragoss.com

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  KAT HOWARD is the author of the novels Roses and Rot and the Alex Award-winning An Unkindness of Magicians. Her short-fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, is now out from Saga Press and she’s writing The Books of Magic for Vertigo Comics. Her novella, The End of the Sentence, co-written with Maria Dahvana Headley, was an NPR Best Book of the Year in 2014. She currently lives in New Hampshire, where she is working on her next projects.

  ALMA KATSU writes historical fiction with elements of horror and the supernatural. The Hunger (Putnam) was named a Best Book of 2018 by Barnes & Noble, Powells, and The Observer; one of NPR’s 100 Favorite Horror Stories; is a nominee for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel; and won the 2018 Western Heritage Award for Best Novel. Her first book, The Taker, was one of Booklist’s Top Ten Debut Novels of 2011.

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  Defying all odds is what #1 New York Times and international bestselling author SHERRILYN KENYON does best. Rising from extreme poverty as a child that culminated in being a homeless mother with an infant, she has become one of the most popular and influential authors in the world (in both adult and young adult fiction), with dedicated legions of fans known as Menyons–thousands of whom proudly sport tattoos from her numerous genre-defying series. Since her first book debuted in 1993, while she was still in college, she has placed more than eighty novels on the New York Times list in all formats and genres, including manga and graphic novels, and has more than seventy million books in print worldwide. Her current series include: Dark-Hunters®, Chronicles of Nick®, Deadman’s Cross™, Black Hat Society™, Nevermore™, Silent Swans™, Lords of Avalon® and The League®.