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her mother was waiting for her. Knowing each moment that passed was a pain in her mother’s heart.
Snow suddenly felt like she had when she was very small. In the old castle where she had grown up, there had been a hallway that had always frightened her. There was no particular reason for her fear, aside from the fact that the hallway was always rather dark. Snow’s imagination had conjured up all sorts of nightmares living in the shadows. But she used to have to walk down that hallway every day to reach the classroom where she met her tutor. Some days, she was so afraid that she would run, even though she knew her governess, Verona, would scold her for her unladylike behavior. Snow hadn’t cared. She had felt compelled to run for safety even in the bright light of day. Snow White felt like that now. She tried not to look at what else was in the chest. She tried to suppress the pain surging through her heart. Snow removed the book as quickly as she could, trying not to disturb the other contents. Then she slammed the chest closed, causing dust to cascade into the air, where it glittered in the sunlight streaming through the little attic window. She looked at it for a moment, dazzled by the brilliance of something seemingly mundane. Snow mused about how something usually so ugly could turn into something quite beautiful. And she remembered her mother. Her mother’s transformation. Her mother’s beauty.
And suddenly, she wasn’t as frightened.
As the years passed, Nanny could tell the coldness inside Maleficent was thawing. Maleficent wasn’t sure if it was from Nanny’s love or the thing inside her that had been growing for some time—the terrible burning feeling she sometimes felt when she was angry or sad. She tried to banish it from her mind and focus on her magic. Her important magic, which she studied at every opportunity. On Nanny’s bookshelf, she had found several tomes written by the odd sisters, three witches named Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha. Their pages were filled with all sorts of dark magic that intrigued Maleficent. One of the spells was particularly interesting to her. It called for a smattering of herbs along with hair from the witch’s own head and instructions to be written in ink on a tiny slip of parchment. These ingredients had to be fed to a very large bullfrog, which the witch would command to find her victim. The bullfrog would then crawl into a sleeping person’s mouth and live in their throat, waiting on orders from the witch by means of telepathy. Maleficent had to look up what telepathy meant. When she did, she finally had a word for something she had observed in Nanny: the ability to read minds and communicate without speaking. From what Maleficent read in the book, she gathered that the gruesome spell was terrifying for the victim. The witch could command the person to do whatever she liked. The bullfrog would come out only at night, while the host slept, to report its findings to the witch, and then it would squeeze itself back into the victim’s mouth before morning. The victim was aware of something living in their throat but was unable to say anything about it.
The book also had a variation of the spell in which the witch would take something personal from the victim she wished to command, instead of using a frog. It could be anything, really: a teacup, a hairbrush, or a ring. And it seemed some witches collected such items should there ever be an occasion in which they needed them. Maleficent didn’t want to do such dark spells. They seemed rather ghastly and repulsive to her, actually. She just liked reading and learning about them. Maleficent also loved reading the lyrical and often hilarious notations in the odd sisters’ books. They were quickly becoming her favorite spell casters and her favorite witches.
Maleficent liked knowing things. It gave her power. It gave her confidence. The more she read and learned, the less afraid she was of the other fairies. She had a deep sense of pride that while the other fairies were learning how to enchant broomsticks, she was learning valuable charms and spells she could use when she finally ventured out of the Fairylands. Maleficent was learning real magic.
That was most exciting of all.
Snow White sat on a lovely red velvet chair that she had brought very close to an ornate gold-framed mirror. She held the book of fairy tales her mother had once read to her on her lap, flipping through the pages so her mother could see.
“All of our stories are in there!” Grimhilde said.
Snow turned to the last page of the Dragon Witch’s story, looking at it in horror. “Will this happen to your friend Maleficent?”
“I don’t know, my dear, but I need to warn her.” Grimhilde’s reflection flickered as it sometimes did when she was worried. “I haven’t been able to reach her in any of her mirrors. You must send word to Morningstar Castle. I think she will arrive there shortly.”
“I don’t understand why you’re friends with her after what she’s done to Aurora,” Snow White said, shaking her head.
“She has her reasons, my dear,” Grimhilde replied. “Reasons that are not mine to share with you or anyone else. I have been her friend and confidant for many years, Snow. I can’t turn my back on her now just because we don’t agree with her choices. Perhaps I will be able to talk her out of hurting the girl and save her from sharing my fate.”
Snow considered that for a moment. “But I don’t understand. This book was written long before Maleficent ever considered putting the princess to sleep. How is it that everything that has been written in it has come to pass?” Snow turned to another page. “And look! Here is a section about you and me! It details everything, even you coming into the mirror and being my protector. How is that possible?”
Grimhilde looked concerned. “I don’t know. Our story wasn’t there when last I read this book to you. The book may be writing itself like a history, or perhaps the sisters were able to see into the future and wrote down their prophecies.”
“What if it’s a spell? What if the book is enchanted and anything that’s written within its pages comes true?” Snow asked.
“Spellbound!” the old queen gasped. The thought sent chills through Snow. “If that is true, then no one will be able to protect those sisters from my vengeance! I’ve long accepted that I chose my own path down the road of regret. But if it was all designed by those sisters, if it was written by them, and I was simply their puppet, then there will be Hades to pay!”
“Mother, no!” Snow pleaded. “I will write to Morningstar to warn them about the book. Now please, promise me you won’t hurt anyone.”
“I can’t do that, my darling. I’m sorry. If they are the reason I tried to kill you, then no power will be great enough to save the odd sisters from my wrath!”
Many years had passed since Nanny had taken the young Maleficent out of school so she could focus on her own brand of magic, giving her room to explore and experience the world of magic outside fairy lore.
Maleficent had changed considerably from the little creature she had been when Nanny found her in the hollow of the crow tree. Though none of the other fairies would admit it, Maleficent was remarkably beautiful. Nanny had always known Maleficent would grow into her features. But beauty didn’t matter much to Maleficent. Her concerns lay elsewhere.
One bright sunny morning, she and Nanny were sitting at the kitchen table. They were sipping their tea out of black-and-silver teacups and enjoying the black-currant scones Nanny had baked earlier that morning. Nanny could tell Maleficent had something she wanted to announce. Maleficent was always making declarations of some sort, about a spell she had just mastered or a new subject she wanted to tackle. But this particular announcement took Nanny by surprise.
“Nanny, I think I would like to sit for the fairy exams,” Maleficent finally said.
Nanny cast an uneasy eye on her daughter. “Why? Your magic far surpasses fairy magic, so why bother?”
“Because I want to master all manners of magic! And I don’t want to give those flighty fairies an excuse to mock me. Besides, I’ve perfected my means of teleporting from one place to the next. Really, there’s no reason I shouldn’t become a wish-granting fairy if I chose to be one,” Maleficent argued.
“Do you want to be one, my dear?” Nanny asked. “I never imagined
you would be inclined to such things.”
“Why shouldn’t I? I am a fairy, after all, and I shouldn’t shrink from any school of magic simply because my old classmates were unkind,” Maleficent reasoned. “Besides, I’ve been practicing, and I think I’m ready for exams. I will be eligible to take the exam tomorrow, if I recall correctly.”
“You do recall correctly, my dear, as always, and without fail,” Nanny said with a sigh. “And I don’t doubt you’re ready for the exam. You could have taken it when you were ten. Although now that you’re turning sixteen, it is the proper time to sit for the exam.” Nanny seemed lost in her thoughts for a moment. “If you wish, you may take the exam. Far be it from me to hold you back from furthering your education. Since most of your education has been either self-taught or taught by me, it’s not official. It will do you well to have a certificate to prove you have completed your fairy lessons. Though I thought we would spend your sixteenth birthday in some other fashion.”
Maleficent smiled. “Did you hear that, Diablo? I’m going to sit for my fairy exams!”
