Page 2 of Wickedly Ever After
The great northern witch sighs. “Not something I’ve been looking forward to,” she says, taking the knife from Gretel.
“Then get it over with.” Gretel smirks. “We both knew it would need this.”
“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” Hilde says. But she cuts her own heart out with a wince, and the boy wonders who might have part of Hilde’s heart for her to react that way.
All four witches approach the cauldron, two with dripping hearts, one with the crown, one with the hammer. Chanting fills his ears.
No longer will war take its toll,
Nor famine make the round
Two hearts combined do make a whole
When hammer weds the crown
Preserve this peace with truelove’s kiss
In a rose conceal
Red rose will bring eternal bliss
Black rose will make it real.
There’s a blinding flash, brighter than the sun at noon, a noise like ten thousand thunders shakes the hills, and the scent of roses fills the air—wild, intoxicating, magical. The blast throws the boy ten feet through the air, and he lands unceremoniously on his rear end in a puddle, but the witches and the elementalsare unmoved. The potion he labored on all day bleeds out into the fire through the shards of the cauldron.
He gets to his feet warily. Over the past four years, he’s learned several things about magical potion making: First, always wash your hands before and after; secondly, never, for any reason, stick your burned finger in your mouth when you’re stirring the pot; and thirdly, spells that explode often have a second stage. But nothing else happens, and gradually he approaches.
“Did it…did it work?” he breathes.
Gretel bends over the wreckage and takes something from the bottom of the shattered cauldron—two seeds. One red. One black.
She hands the red one to Hilde. “Well?”
“I thought it might be something like this,” Hilde says thoughtfully. “A thousand years is a long time after all. You’re right, Gretel. I need an apprentice.”
Gretel turns to her apprentice. “This is yours, Hector, dear.” She drops the black seed into his hand. It weighs next to nothing, but it feels like he’s holding the whole world.
“I…I’m not ready,” he says. “Maybe you’d better take it.”
Gretel smiles, but he thinks she looks sad. “Believe me, child, I wish I could. But Happily-Ever-After is your burden now. You might as well take care of it from the beginning.”
***
She was right, of course. Gretel usually was. But whenever I cut a bloom from the black rose that grew from what I planted, it feels just as heavy as the seed did so long ago.
A Thousand Years of Wickedness: A Memoir
Hector West
1
Hector
My Dear Detested Ida,
I hope this letter finds you poxed, feverish, and confined to your bed. Alas, I’m sure you are well and as hateful as ever.
Regarding the plague you’re complaining about, you didn’t need to flatter me, but I appreciate it. As to the illegality, I suggest you take it up with this year’s Witches’ Council after the Happily-Ever-After. Pestilence and natural disasters are an acceptable, if messy, means of balancing the good and evil in our world. I’m perfectly within my limits to send a plague when I feel like it, and if it happens to blight roses as well as people, I can only applaud my ability to wreak a two-for-the-price-of-one kind of havoc.
