Page 5 of Wickedly Ever After
Dear Horrible Hector,
Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m healthy as a horse and so are my roses—your plagues never amount to much in the great scheme of things.
My Cinderella pumpkins are thriving and will be ready in time for the contest, not to mention the Unicorn Jubilee parade for the Common Princess. I must say that infestation of vine borers was beneath you—such a small-scale attack on your part—are you feeling well?
By the way, have you prepared the chosen dragon for his role in the upcoming Happily-Ever-After? I expect you to uphold your end of the magic and provide a suitable reptile for the occasion, not like the miserable excuse for a dragon we had last time. Hopefully this one will breathe a little more fire and less poetry.
Sincerely wishing you the worst,
Ida North
Hector’s letter lay open next to Ida’s mother-of-pearl penknife, stained the most appalling shade of green-black. She’d learned to be careful opening his letters. Hector liked to send hexes bymail and she couldn’t always remove them by first counter-cursing the envelope. He’d always been clever, she’d give him that, even if sometimes he acted nine years old and not nine hundred ninety. She rubbed the blister on the tip of her index finger with a smidge of calendula cream.
She rose, folded a letter precisely into thirds, and set it aside to ripen. Potent charms like the one she’d added needed time to embed properly in the paper.
“Nearly noon—oh, goodness.” She pulled her dressing gown over her shoulders and slipped out onto the balcony where she always took breakfast, a very late breakfast. At her age, she’d long since resigned herself to the flipping of her days and nights, a chronic insomnia that, over the last four hundred years, had become her normal. She rose around eleven, ate breakfast, then saw her appointments from noon to four. After lunch, she took a nap, and worked in her garden or greenhouses until nine, at which point she’d eat dinner and retire to her spellroom for the remainder of the evening and go to bed around three in the morning. No one minded this unusual schedule. She was the Good Witch of the North—her castle, her rules.
Northern spring days were chilly, but the noon sun warmed her face. The twinges of pain in her hands and wrists began to fade with the calendula cream she’d worked into her skin. Getting old didn’t bother Ida greatly, except for the damned arthritis. She sat in her chair and gazed proudly at her garden. The Happily-Ever-After rose was in full bloom. The enchanting fragrance wafted on the cool breeze, some musky, others sweet. The red roses sprawled wildly through the trees and over the garden walls, tenacious as any weed. It always made her happy to think how well they’d naturalized since she’d planted that seedin the ground—the first magic her mentor had entrusted her with. Now everyone could have one of these roses in their own garden. Granted, they weren’t magical like hers, but still, they smelled and looked good, a constant reminder of how beautiful Happily-Ever-After was.
“Aren’t they lovely, Hari?” she asked the gnome when his light footfall pattered up the stairs.
“Yes, my lady,” came the glum reply. He was definitely unhappy about something. Hari was one of the few servants who heeded her when it came to not calling her that.
She half rose from her chair. “Hari, what on earth are you wearing?”
He stood before her in a brown hunter’s jacket, a tight white shirt, brown breeches, and shiny black boots, a huge change from his usual flowing tunic and smart red-and-blue trousers. With his long brown curls and deep brown eyes in his pale face, he resembled a pert mushroom. She would’ve laughed if he didn’t look so miserable.
He set the breakfast tray on the table. “Will that be all, my lady?”
“Don’t you ‘my lady’ me, young man,” she scolded. “Why are you wearing that ridiculous outfit?”
“With the princesses coming this week, I was told to wear a uniform.”
Ida shook her head. “You know I don’t insist on uniforms for anyone, least of all you.”
A small smile appeared on his face. She smiled too. Hari looked so much like his great-great-great-great grandfather. She could admit she missed old friends. That too was one thing she didn’t like about the immortality that came with being a CardinalWitch. After the first eighty years or so, everyone she’d ever loved had died. The only people left were her colleagues. And Hector. He hardly counted. But she always made new friends. Like young Hari.
“Go change, immediately. You look like a starched fungus.”
The smile broadened to a grin. “I feel like one. I won’t bother to tell you where this outfit rides up, but it’s not pleasant.”
“I need to have a talk with the housekeeper about you.”
He winced, pouring her cup. “I wish you wouldn’t. She already calls me your favorite, and I don’t think you talking to her would make it any better. I’ll change and tell her you asked me to water the roses.”
“Well, go and do it soon,” she said. “You’re a cloud on a sunny day when you frown, Hari.”
He chuckled. “I’ll try to frown less, my lady.”
“I ought to make you wear a tie for that.”
“Don’t tell her. She’ll take it as a command. How are your hands?” He reached out and took them in his tiny ones, massaging the bones gently.
“Better,” she said. “Your calendula cream worked wonders.”
“It’s a friend’s recipe. He claimed it would even soothe a dragon burn,” he said. “Got to keep your fingers nimble if you’re going to keep writing letters to his Wicked Witchness.”
“Speaking of Hector West, did you get the last of the moth larvae out of the vines? I can’t lose anymore coaches to that pestilence of a man.”
