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Snow clenched her jaw, determined. “You’re not packing me off to my mother. Listen, Circe. I know you and Nanny are worried about me, but I am older than you, and as much as I appreciate the love and care you have given me, I need you to understand that I am a grown woman and I can make my own decisions. I am going with you to the dead woods. I know I’m not a witch, but I have a feeling more answers are there.”
“I believe you. I feel the same way,” Circe said quietly. Snow wondered if this was the right moment to tell Circe about her suspicions. Those missing pages she was looking for—what if they were in the dead woods? Perhaps they were with the books Jacob had hidden away from Gothel after her sisters died. Snow didn’t know, but she felt as if everything that was happening was leading them to the dead woods.
Circe took something out of her pocket. It was a locket of sorts, a tiny silver flask connected to a
chain so it could be worn like a necklace. “Snow, I want you to wear this.”
Snow took it into her hand and looked at Circe questioningly. Circe could see that she wanted to ask what was inside but decided against it. The look in her eyes was clear: Snow trusted her cousin. She didn’t need to know what was in the flask. She loved her and wanted nothing more than to go on this adventure with her.
“I’m happy you trust me, Snow. And I hope I’m making the right choice bringing you with me. But promise me you will do whatever I say.”
Snow White smiled at Circe, taking her by the hand and squeezing it tightly. “I promise, because I do trust you.”
As they hugged, Mrs. Tiddlebottom came into the room. The large hamper in her arms was overflowing with more food than they could possibly need.
“Well, my darlings, please be careful on your journey. Old Mrs. Tiddlebottom isn’t a witch, she doesn’t pretend to know things the way witches do, but she can smell a fairy tale when it’s happening. I’ll tell you what I told Primrose and Hazel. My story is at an end, but I feel it’s just beginning for you two beauties. Don’t let yourselves get caught up in someone else’s story. Stick to your own tale, my darlings. Write your own ending if you need to.”
Circe gave Mrs. Tiddlebottom a queer look as Snow kissed the old woman on the cheek. “Mrs. Tiddlebottom, there was a mirror in the cellar I asked Snow to bring up for you. If there is anything at all that you need, just call my name and I will appear in the reflection. It’s quicker than sending me a message by owl or raven.”
Mrs. Tiddlebottom smiled at Circe and Snow. “I don’t think I will need it, but I have a feeling you will feel better knowing I will use it if I need to, and you’ve done so much for me, sweet Circe. This is the least I can do for you. Now go! Let old Mrs. Tiddlebottom rest.”
Snow White and Circe packed everything into the odd sisters’ house: the hamper of food, the crates of books from Gothel’s library, and various trunks. Primrose and Hazel had left everything behind—even their fortune. Circe left Mrs. Tiddlebottom a small chest of coins in her bedroom, enough to keep the woman happy and well fed for many years to come. She didn’t think Primrose and Hazel would mind. The woman had cared for them all those years they were dead, after all. It was the least they could do.
After everything was packed and settled, Snow and Circe stood on the front stoop of the odd sisters’ house and waved at Mrs. Tiddlebottom, who was standing in the garden. She looked impossibly old to Circe—older, even, than Nanny. “Good-bye, sweet Mrs. Tiddlebottom. Thank you for everything.” She looked at her, standing in the sea of magic rapunzel flowers, and wondered if Mrs. Tiddlebottom would ever use them on herself. Wondered if she would choose to live another life. Somehow she doubted it.
“Good-bye, my darlings. Remember what I said: write your own fairy tale, my dears! And take a page out of Mrs. Tiddlebottom’s book: stay clear of cellars and bloody chambers!”
Circe and Snow smiled, not knowing quite what to say. They waved good-bye as they went into the house, ready to embark on their own story.
After being violently ripped from the dreamscape, Lucinda found herself under a large dead tree, its branches twisted and bare, reaching in every direction like grasping hands. The odd sisters knew exactly where they were. This was the place between the world of the living and the world of the dead. The place just before the mists. She and her sisters had been here before.
The place between.
There was one path in the place between, with only two directions: ahead and back. But there was always a choice.
The sisters would choose back. Back to their daughter. Back to their home.
But first they needed to rest. To recover. This was where all those who had lived too long went to rest their bodies and spirits. It was where Nanny had come to rest when she was tired of the world before she went to live with Tulip, and it was where Oberon resided when he took his long slumber. The place between had no mirrors. Lucinda couldn’t see what was happening in the worlds beyond. But she could hear if she chose to listen carefully.
She expected to see Maleficent here. They had told her many years earlier to wait for them in this place should she ever die, and they would bring her back to the world. But there was nothing of her here except for her ravens and crows, perched in the massive dead tree, silent specters waiting for their mistress to come back to them. The only one missing was Opal, though they felt as if she had been there. Lucinda knew Maleficent and Opal shared a special bond, forged in childhood and in magic. If anyone could lure Maleficent from beyond the veil, it was Opal. Lucinda looked up at the darkness. The sky resembled a black moth-eaten curtain, scattered with tiny pinholes of light. It didn’t frighten her that she couldn’t find her sisters Ruby and Martha in this place. They were here, somewhere, just not in her view. She felt them and knew they were well, and that was all that mattered. She needed to rest, and it was better they were each in their own corner of the place between. Thank the gods for Pflanze.
Pflanze’s magic was core magic—an unruly magic that resided within and wasn’t wielded often, if at all. Creatures with that sort of magic held it in reserve until the time it was needed most, and it usually took them a very long time to build up their reserve again. Lucinda was grateful Pflanze used her magic on this occasion, even if the magic was violent and untamed. Even if it was excruciating being ripped from the dreamscape. They were free, and they were in a place where they could rest and regain their powers. Pflanze had seen to that.
There was so much they needed to do after they left this place, once they were strong and ready to take their position in the world again. She was worried that Maleficent wasn’t here as they had discussed, and that Maleficent had found herself too far beyond the veil to come back. That was why they needed Opal. If anyone could lure Maleficent back to the land of the living, it would be her. Lucinda and her sisters would use whatever means were available to raise Maleficent from the dead—even the foul necromantic magic they had learned in the dead woods. They needed their old friend by their side so they could rule in their own lands as they were meant to.
They would take their daughter, Circe, back, and love her as they always had. And if that meant destroying everything and everyone she held dear, then so be it.
For now, though, they would rest. And wait.
Circe and Snow White perched the odd sisters’ house in the large courtyard below the crumbling mansion in the dead woods. It was as they had imagined. A dead place filled with beauty and steeped in sorrow. A place filled with magic, without its queen to wield it.
They looked out on the city of the dead, just beyond the dense tree line of weeping willows, their branches hanging low and crumbling to dust. The city was still and quiet, but Circe and Snow knew it was likely the dead still resided there.
The Gorgon fountain they had read about in Gothel’s story was still standing with its dancing nymphs frozen in time, as if the Gorgon’s enjoyment of their frivolities had inadvertently turned them to stone. Just beyond the courtyard, on the edge of the city of the dead, were Hazel’s and Primrose’s crypts. Snow and Circe were saddened to see them there, remembering how devastated Gothel had been when she’d lost her sisters. And Circe was sure her mothers had had a hand in their deaths. She just couldn’t say how. She thought perhaps she would find the answers in one of her mothers’ or Gothel’s books.
As she looked out over the woods, Circe was overcome by the destruction her mothers had caused—here and everywhere. There was so much blood on their hands. There had been so much death. And the solution was becoming clearer to her every day. She just didn’t have the courage to do it. Not yet.
It was strange for the women to see the place in such ruin, without Sir Jacob or the other minions they’d read about wandering the woods. They almost expected to see them peering out from behind the dead weeping willow trees or resting beneath one of Gothel’s weeping angels. They wondered how Primrose and Hazel would feel once they got here. Wou
