Love Wins

by David C. Dawson

  “Not so loud, my dear,” said Miss Persimmon. “The spell, if you please?”

  “It’s for me,” Aubergine explained. “So I can’t get out of the tower by myself. Someone else has to rescue me.”

  “How very old-fashioned. I don’t suppose you have a rope of bedsheets to hand?”

  Aubergine checked, in case her bedding had multiplied in her absence—stranger things had been known to happen in the tower, due to long exposure to magic. “No, just two blankets. Sorry.”

  “Not to worry.” There was a scuffling noise. “One moment. Stay back from the window, please.”

  Aubergine kicked some of her hair away and scooted farther into the center of the room. Various thumps and muffled scraping noises made their way up the outside wall of the tower, until the top of Miss Persimmon’s head appeared over the ledge, closely followed by the rest of her personage. She hauled herself onto the ledge and sat, catching her breath and wiping perspiration from beneath her glasses.

  “Did you just climb that wall by yourself?” Aubergine asked, awed. None of the princes had ever managed to get even halfway without ropes and crampons.

  “Rock climbing is an essential part of a lady’s education,” Miss Persimmon said. “Also, magic.”

  Aubergine stood up and came closer. “So you are a witch.”

  “I am indeed, but you mustn’t tell anyone. Witchcraft has been outlawed, except for use by the monarch.”

  “What use has my father for magic?” Aubergine asked. Miss Persimmon paused, the hands that were polishing her glasses falling still. Aubergine swallowed. “He’s dead, isn’t he.”

  “No. No, he isn’t dead.” Miss Persimmon reapplied her glasses and swung herself into the tower. “Your father is a dog.”

  Aubergine huffed. “We’ve had our… differences, but there’s no need to be insulting. I quite like dogs.”

  “Good, because your father is, literally, a dog. A bluetick coonhound, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Oh. My.” If there had been a chair, Aubergine would have sat down in it. She settled for leaning on her hair.

  “Exactly. All of which is part of why I’m here.”

  “You’re here to rescue me, aren’t you? You promised.” Aubergine sidled past Miss Persimmon to peer out the window. “Where are your students?”

  “They are in bed,” said Miss Persimmon. “They aren’t coming.”

  “Quizzical look?” said Aubergine.

  “The plan they devised proved unsound. I believe they intended to use a catapult to some effect. However, now that we all know of your existence, you are in great danger and cannot be left in this tower a moment longer than necessary. Therefore, I am here to assist you in your escape, by the simple, expedient use of highly illegal magic. But first”—she rummaged in the folds of her ample blouse—“you requested scissors.”

  Aubergine made an encompassing gesture at her hair, which meant it encompassed the entire stone cell. “Magic is all very well,” she said. “But I won’t fit through that window without a haircut.”

  Miss Persimmon slid her glasses down her nose, peered at Aubergine, slid them back up, and tried again. She shook her head, murmured a few words, and pressed her now-glowing hand against the stone wall. A handprint of golden light radiated from the surface, like a press-in-place nightlight. She repeated the gesture until the room was lit in a soft glow and they could clearly see each other.

  Miss Persimmon regarded her hair. Aubergine could feel herself blushing hotly under the scrutiny. She wanted to snatch the scissors from Miss Persimmon’s hand and hack off all her hair in one go, just to be rid of it.

  “Right, very well,” Miss Persimmon said at last. “Sit down, my dear.”

  “I can do it.” Aubergine’s voice sounded very small, even to herself.

  “I don’t doubt it, but it will go faster and be easier if I assist you.”

  Aubergine sat. Miss Persimmon sank down at a right angle to her, squeezing herself in beside the hair.

  “Couldn’t you just magic it off?” Aubergine whispered.

  “I don’t believe that would be very comfortable for you, my dear. Magic burns. Besides, I must have enough energy left to get us both out of this place.” She shifted. “There is a hole in your floor, did you know?”

  “That’s where I dug out stones to throw at the princes,” Aubergine said.

  “Ah, of course.” Miss Persimmon slid her large warm hands beneath the tangles closest to Aubergine’s scalp, feeling her way along. The scissors made a rasping snip-snip sound. Aubergine shivered.

  “Why is my father a bluetick coonhound?” Aubergine asked quietly, returning to the abandoned subject to distract herself.

  “Because he married the witch from the neighboring kingdom,” said Miss Persimmon.

  “Madame Prunella?”

  “Queen Prunella now. She married your father seven months after you were imprisoned here and promptly turned him into a dog so that she might have full control of the kingdom. She was unaware of your existence until afterward, however, and only your father knew the location of this tower, having made finding the tower part of the challenge of winning your hand.”

  Aubergine felt a breeze on her left ear for the first time in years as a section of tangled orange-brown hair collapsed to the floor. Miss Persimmon scooted behind her and continued speaking as she snipped.

  “Reversing a Transmogrification spell results in the caster absorbing the spell, so Prunella issued a bounty on you instead. No, don’t turn your head, please.”

  Aubergine shivered again. Her scalp itched terribly, and the feeling crawled down her back as well, at the thought of a price on her head.

  “Prunella couldn’t very well open it up to the princes again—they’d expect half the kingdom as part of their ‘prize’—but neither could she leave you as a threat to her throne. Only the back-channel assassins know of it at all.”

  “Then why have I never met any of these assassins?” Aubergine asked, unable to refrain from turning to look at Miss Persimmon. “And why do you know so much about it all?”

  “Because I am also an assassin, in addition to being a witch and a teacher.” Miss Persimmon laid down the scissors and firmly met Aubergine’s gaze. “More precisely, I am an anti-assassin, although I keep that part of my business a secret. I help intended targets escape and start over elsewhere with the money from their own bounty. They disappear all the same, and no one is the wiser.”

  “And that’s what you’re going to do with me?” Aubergine did not know how to feel about this. A mixture of touched and flattered was warring with residual fear, and a building frustration that everyone seemed to think they knew how to manage her life better than she did.

  Miss Persimmon nodded. She raised the scissors again, and Aubergine turned back around to let her continue. “Finding you has proved more difficult than I thought, especially without the aid of magic. I cast a Confusion spell to deter other assassins, since Confusion spells are, by their very nature, confusing and hard to detect, but I could not cast a Find spell without being, well, found.

  “I then set up a cover identity as the headmistress of a ladies’ academy and have been leading hikes and conducting clandestine searches in order to try to find you. You are a difficult woman to find, my dear, but I’m glad I was able to do so at last, before anyone else did. I daresay there are a number of other assassins still wandering the woods in circles, and I can’t say I’m at all ashamed.”

  “How long have you been looking for me?”

  “Eight years. Ever since I found out about the job, I determined to take it, but I had to finish a previous engagement first.” A great swath of hair dropped behind Aubergine. She felt the top of her head release from its tugging, pulling prison of hair. Miss Persimmon moved around to Aubergine’s right. “And how have you been occupying yourself all these years, my dear?”

  Aubergine thought. “Horticulture.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ve studied
birds. I’ve read the same book five hundred and twenty times.” The right side seemed to go faster, and Miss Persimmon’s scissors snip-snip-snipped along, hanks of hair falling and brushing against Aubergine’s arms. She thought some more. What had she done, beside sleep and stare out the window and think? Endless thinking….

  “I’ve become very flexible,” she offered.

  “An admirable trait,” said Miss Persimmon. “Turn, please.”

  Aubergine turned and bent her head, letting Miss Persimmon trim the edges up and dust off her shoulders. At last her hands stilled and she laid aside the scissors. Aubergine stared at their mingled skirts in the glow of Miss Persimmon’s handprints—dirty green diamond-dusted silk around her own skinny legs, soft blue and black flannel radiating out from this strange and briskly gentle witch.

  “I have been very lonely,” Aubergine said quietly.

  “Yes,” said Miss Persimmon, “I thought you might be.”

  She murmured a spell over her hands again and brushed her fingers through the short fuzz of Aubergine’s hair, rubbing out years of dirt and strain. The magic did burn, but Aubergine somehow felt that Miss Persimmon lessened what it might have been, until it was only a soothing warmth beneath her fingers. Her hands slid down to cradle Aubergine’s face, and she pressed a kiss to her clean, shorn hair. Aubergine felt lighter than she had in years—lighter, even, than before she’d been banished to the tower. She leaned into Miss Persimmon’s chest, and Miss Persimmon drew her closer still, pulled her into her lap, and held her within her strong and capable arms. And Aubergine did one thing she had never yet done in the tower, not in ten years—she cried.

  ONLY WHEN she woke up did Aubergine realize she’d fallen asleep. Miss Persimmon’s regular breathing ebbed and flowed beneath her, hitching slightly when Aubergine shifted. She pressed a kiss just above Aubergine’s ear and sat up farther from where she’d been resting against the tower wall. Aubergine slid out of her lap and shook herself awake. “Yawn,” she said, yawning.

  Miss Persimmon laughed, a deep and vibrant sound. “I’m right here, my dear. I can see you.”

  “And I can see you,” said Aubergine. She reached out and ran her fingers along Miss Persimmon’s braid, a thick rope of white and brown and silver, twisted over her shoulder. “Pretty.”

  “Thank you, dear.” Miss Persimmon stood up and stretched, then reached a hand down to help Aubergine to her feet. “We must be going now.”

  “Sorry.” Aubergine looked around. The handprints on the wall had faded, and gray morning light was reaching in through the window.

  “Don’t apologize. We both fell asleep.” Miss Persimmon smiled at her and brushed her thumb beneath Aubergine’s eye, wiping away a stale tear track. “Now then, if we—”

  Rustling and thrashing noises sounded from the woods outside. Miss Persimmon pushed Aubergine flat against the wall. She positioned herself between Aubergine and the window, fished a small mirror out of her blouse, and held it up to reflect the view outside.

  “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your long hair!” called a strident female voice. “No, wait, that’s the other one.”

  “I’m right here, Mother,” sighed another woman.

  “Just as you should be, too. Now, what’s this one’s name again? Does anyone remember? Eggplant, Eglantine…”

  A dog barked three times. Someone shushed it.

  Aubergine squeezed her eyes shut. Miss Persimmon shifted beside her, and she felt her grab for her hand, but Aubergine slipped out of her grasp and faced the window.

  “Good morning, Madame Prunella!” she called in her best greeting-the-birds voice.

  “Well hello, my fine young thing! Still alive, are we?” The dog started barking furiously. “Somebody shut that mutt up. And it’s Queen Prunella to you, child. Stepmama, if you prefer.” Queen Prunella smiled then, and Aubergine whispered “shudder” to herself.

  The Queen Witch stood at the front of a crowd of people, tall and dark and dressed inappropriately for hiking in black velvet and silver lamé. Diamonds dangled from her ears and fingers, including an enormous flower-shaped ring on her right hand. The effect was almost blinding in the sunlight. A handsome blonde woman hefting two toddlers on her hips waited with the group of Miss Persimmon’s students from the day before. Miss Vervain fished a piece of oak tag out of her satchel, wrote on it hastily, and held it up. “We’re sorry,” it read, “we tried to stop them.”

  Behind them, clearly in a guarding capacity, were a handful of armored men with walking spears and shiny swords. A ragged-looking young boy in a jester costume stood off to the side, barely holding on to the leash of a large bluetick coonhound. The dog strained once again, then gave it up for a lost cause and panted happily at Aubergine.

  “I know you’re not alone up there,” Queen Prunella continued. “Why don’t you come on out, Miss Pomegranate-what’s-her-face. I don’t like spies in my kingdom.”

  Miss Persimmon stepped in view of the assembled crowd. Aubergine leaned back slightly into her solid warmth, and it quieted the shaking in her stomach just a bit.

  “You don’t like spies, and yet you’d condone the killing of an innocent young woman just to keep your throne?” Miss Persimmon’s voice boomed out of the tower. The dog barked once in agreement.

  “Rex! Shut it! And you too, my fine lady!” Queen Prunella aimed her right-hand ring finger at the tower window. “By the power of diamonds and flowers, I curse canine upon you, this and each hour!”

  Aubergine heard a sharp yelp behind her, and Miss Persimmon’s warmth at her back disappeared. She spun around. Miss Persimmon was gone—but sitting on the floor at her feet was a sturdy brown-and-white spaniel.

  “Oh no,” Aubergine breathed.

  “I’ll get you, my pretty!” Queen Prunella crowed. “And your little dog—”

  “Mother, please.”

  “Right.” A loud whooshing, and Queen Prunella appeared in the window. She grabbed the ledge and clambered inside the tower, pulling the rest of her velvet skirts in after her and giving them a good swish.

  “Now then,” she said. “What are we going to do with you?”

  “You are going to let me out,” Aubergine snapped. “I am tired of everyone else deciding what’s best, what I need to do next. Even she did it.” She pointed at the spaniel that was Miss Persimmon, who growled at Queen Prunella. “But at least she was trying to keep me safe. And now you’ve turned her into a dog.”

  Queen Prunella gathered herself for another villainous skirt-swoosh. She ran into a pile of hair. Scowling, she picked it up and lobbed it out the window. “That’s what happens to people who are in my way,” she said.

  “The dog spell or the window thing you just did?”

  “Both! Either! Where did all this hair come from?” She tried to stalk around the room and ran into another drift of tangles. These followed the first, and she circled Aubergine and the spaniel, angrily scooping and tossing and swirling her skirts. The velvet swept the floor and gathered up all the excess hair. Aubergine judged it imprudent to mention this fact.

  “I have built a queendom that is better than any in all the realms,” Queen Prunella hissed. “And you are not going to take it away from me or my daughter.” Her voice rose. “I am leaving her an inheritance of feminine superiority, such as has been denied all of us for centuries—”

  “Are you giving the inheritance speech again, Mother?” the blonde called up from below. “Because we’ve been over this, I don’t want the kingdoms.”

  “They are called queendoms now!” Queen Prunella corrected as she passed the window. She spun on Aubergine. “I can smell magic a mile away, you know. I could have taken care of you quietly, but now you and your little pseudo-witch spy puppy have made it that much harder—for yourselves.”

  She reached down and grabbed the spaniel, strode to the window, and tossed her out. Aubergine screamed.

  “The Confusion spells should wear off now,” Queen Prunella said with satisfaction. “You should
be getting a fine set of visitors at any moment.”

  Aubergine ran to the window and shoved her aside. “You can’t throw dog-people out of windows! You can’t throw anyone out of windows. Do you just not like people? How dare you!”

  Below, in the gigantic pile of Aubergine’s discarded hair, a sturdy brown-and-white spaniel floundered her way to the top. The blonde woman’s children wrested themselves from their mother’s arms and jumped into the hair pile to play with the dog.

  “Damn,” said Queen Prunella. “Defenestration never works out the way I want it to.”

  Aubergine turned to face Queen Prunella, her heart barely slowing from the fright of losing Miss Persimmon. “There must be a better way of settling all this.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Queen Prunella smiled. “I think a murder of assassins is the perfect way to settle matters. If you disagree—and if you survive—you may come to the castle and issue a formal complaint.” Her smile widened. “I’ve got you, my pretty, and your little—oh, never mind.” And she vanished in a weak vapor of purple steam.

  “Don’t worry, she does that a lot,” the blonde woman assured her from below. “Usually when I ask her to babysit. She’s always, like, I can’t be shackled to the trappings of traditional womanhood, and I’m all, like, they’re your grandkids. She never supported me and Hatch having children. Then she tries to get my stepdad to watch them. Which is fine when they’re in the yard, but he’s a dog. He can’t fix dinner. Anyway, she’s just gone back to the castle. You’re fine. I wouldn’t worry about it. Henna, don’t put the hair in your mouth! You don’t know where it’s been.”

  Aubergine shook her head to clear it. She had a feeling that later on, if she made it to a later on in this day, she would collapse from all the unaccustomed strain, but now was not the time to do so. “Excuse me,” she called. “Could someone help me get down from here? I think I need to go and retrieve my country.”

  The coonhound howled. Miss Persimmon the spaniel barked and returned to herding the small children out of the hair pile. Miss Calendula turned to one of the armored guards and tapped him on the breastplate. “Do you happen to have a length of rope and about three chairs?”