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I will search every face for Lucinda’s
And she will go off with me down to hell
—Tom Waits, “Lucinda”
My mothers, Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha, are by definition odd, and they are sisters. Identical triplet sisters, to be exact.
Many have remarked on their appearance over the years. The Dark Fairy, Maleficent, thought they were the most bewitching creatures she had ever seen. Others have compared them to broken, neglected dolls left out in the wind and rain to crack and fade. The most thoughtful observation was made by the great and terrible sea witch Ursula. She said the odd sisters’ beauty was so entirely out of proportion it made them compellingly grotesque.
I always found them beautiful, even in their mania. Even when they made me angry. Even now, disappointed and heartbroken by them, knowing just how cruel, destructive, and foul they really are. I still love them.
In reading my mothers’ journals, Snow White and I have learned there is no witch alive who is more powerful than my mothers—except for one. Me.
If you are acquainted with the odd sisters’ story, then you know long ago they had a little sister named Circe who was tragically killed when the Dark Fairy, Maleficent, destroyed the Fairylands in a fit of rage on her sixteenth birthday. This was a secret they kept from Maleficent. Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha were so desperate to bring their little sister back to life that they gave up the very best parts of themselves to create a new Circe. A replacement for the sister they had lost.
Me.
I was no longer their sister, but their daughter, a daughter created by magic and by love. My mothers would do anything to protect me—and they have, unflinchingly, over the ages. They’ve wreaked havoc and chaos, destroying everyone and everything in their path all in the name of protecting me. Their Circe.
All my life I believed them to be my sisters, and they were there to watch over me, keeping me safe, even from the smallest things. I always thought they were just doting and protective older siblings because they were forced to raise me as their own daughter after something horrible happened to our parents, something too awful to tell me about. While we were growing up, Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha refused to tell me about our mother and father. They said they were protecting me from the truth. But the truth was they were my mothers.
Growing up with such protective mothers was a challenge. But their unwavering love and willingness to share their spell craft made me thrive magically. From a young age I could do magic that older witches could not, and my mothers always remarked that they thought my gifts were stronger than even their own. As I got older I realized they might be right, because I was constantly surprised by my ability to do spells and cast magic so effortlessly. The problem is that it never occurs to me. More times than not, someone will have to bring it to my attention, the idea of using magic, or the fact that I’ve just performed a spell or magical feat without even knowing it. My mothers were always there to remind me and to protect me from any harm that might come to me.
It wasn’t until I was a bit older and found myself in love with the Beast Prince that my mothers’ overprotectiveness became brutal and vindictive. The Prince broke my heart, and my mothers, well, they wanted to destroy him in return.
I remember the day I told them I had fallen in love, and how they flew into a panic. They convinced me to partake in a ruse that would prove to me this man wasn’t worthy of me. I went along because I trusted his devotion to me and I would do anything to convince them of his honest intentions. So I dressed like a pig farmer’s daughter, and I mucked around with the beasts and waited for my prince to find me. It was he who ended up being a beast. He reacted exactly as the odd sisters had expected. He was disgusted by me and withdrew his love. He was so vile and so cruel to me I cursed him.
With every foul deed he committed, it would be written on his face. If he changed his ways, then the curse would not mar his appearance. I gave him an enchanted rose from his garden to remind him of the love we once had together. When the last petal dropped, he would remain in the form of his own design forever.
Like many witches and fairies before me, I gave him a chance to break the curse by finding and receiving true love. I thought it was fair. I thought I was giving him the opportunity to redeem himself. But the odd sisters had other designs. They drove him mad and lured him to the path of destruction at every turn, making sure he would turn into the horrible beast they saw residing within him. All this I could have forgiven if they hadn’t involved Princess Tulip Morningstar and Belle. My mothers drove the Beast insane with their constant torments. He treated Princess Tulip so abominably and cruelly that she flung herself off the rocky cliffs and into the sea witch’s tentacles. Ursula spared her life in exchange for her beauty and her voice. Well, I retrieved both for the poor princess, by trading them for Ursula’s seashell necklace my mothers had magicked away from King Triton. I couldn’t forgive them for putting Tulip’s life in danger. And I couldn’t forgive the horrors they put poor Belle through all in the name of destroying the Beast for his mistreatment of me.
This was just the beginning of my disappointments in my mothers, and the start of my new role: righting the wrongs they had committed. I was so angry with them for putting Tulip’s and Belle’s lives in danger that I went away, refusing their summons. I hid myself from them in every way I knew. It was the only means I had to punish them: withholding my love in hopes they would change their ways.
Frantic, my mothers called on Ursula for help. She was a powerful witch, and they thought she could help them find me. Little did they know she had kidnapped me and reduced me to a mere shell of myself, thrusting me into her dark garden with the other souls she had reaped over the ages. Ursula agreed to help my mothers if they promised to forge a spell in hate to bring down her brother, King Triton. Ursula was within her rights to take her brother’s throne. Their father had left it to both of them, and Triton’s treatment of Ursula was horrific. Had Ursula brought this plan to me, I woul
d likely have rallied to her cause. But I would never have allowed myself to be bound in hate, or agreed to hurt Triton’s youngest daughter, Ariel.
Maleficent, my mothers’ longtime friend, warned them not to become entangled in Ursula’s affairs. She warned them that Ursula couldn’t be trusted, that the spell was dangerous. They didn’t listen—as they often don’t—ignoring the signs that Ursula wasn’t the witch they had grown to love over the many years of their friendship. Blinded by their obsession with finding me, they went along with her mad plan to destroy Triton. All this I could have forgiven if they hadn’t tried to kill Ariel.
Once my mothers found out Ursula had taken my soul and put me in her garden, they became enraged. They reversed the spell they had created in hate to rebound on Ursula, killing her and nearly destroying the lands and themselves in an attempt to save me. But they didn’t anticipate what it would do to them. They couldn’t predict that it would leave their bodies slumbering under the glass dome of the solarium in Morningstar and their souls residing in the dreamscape. That is where they remain to this day.
The magnitude of this spell brought Maleficent to Morningstar. She hoped to find someone powerful enough to make sure Prince Phillip would not break the sleeping curse she had placed on her daughter, Aurora, on the day of her christening. The curse was to take effect on her sixteenth birthday, which was fast approaching. Maleficent was afraid when Aurora turned sixteen, she would come into her powers, just as Maleficent had, in a blaze of anger and fire. She was terrified for her daughter and wanted to spare her the heartbreak of destroying everyone and everything she had ever loved, just as Maleficent had done.
I hadn’t known that my mothers were so close to Maleficent, that they had known and loved her when she was young. I didn’t know they helped her create a child: Aurora, Maleficent’s shining star. A spell that would be Maleficent’s ruin, as it has been my mothers’ ruin since they created me in the same fashion. So I decided to keep my mothers in the dreamscape until I could determine what to do. All I asked of them was that they sit and be quiet and not meddle. I needed time to help in the aftermath of Ursula’s and Maleficent’s deaths and the destruction they had both caused with my mothers’ assistance.
But they were not content with waiting. They were not content with sitting quietly while I cleaned up their messes. They meddled again, this time with Gothel, a childhood friend who was in need of their help. Gothel was a witch who lived in the dead woods with her sisters, Primrose and Hazel, and their powerful mother, Manea. While reading Gothel’s story in the book of fairy tales, with every flip of a page, I learned more about my mothers’ natures. I saw them as young witches full of potential and the capacity for loyal friendship—until they lost their little sister, Circe, the girl I used to be. That was when they started to change. The singular focus was on bringing her back to life. They succeeded, but the magic they used changed them. It changed me, too.
It led to their madness.
After that, every ounce of their beings was focused on protecting me. They refused to lose me again.
They used and strung along Gothel, making her feel as if they thought of her as a sister. They took her mother’s spells from the dead woods and used them for their own aims. When Gothel’s sisters were killed in an attack by their own mother, my mothers promised to help Gothel bring them back from the dead. My mothers swooped in, making promises I’m sure they never intended to keep, all the while plotting to take Gothel’s magic rapunzel flower for themselves. Their goal was to restore Maleficent from the degenerative effects of the spell they had cast to create Aurora. Meanwhile, I am sure they blame Gothel for my anger, because I caught them meddling once again.
