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Once upon a time…these old words invoke magic and mystery, a spell of faeries and witches, princes and princesses, of cursed castles and legendary heroes. And this is where our story begins, in the palace of a King and his young Queen, who is as bright and beautiful as the dawn. He saved her from the stake, this golden girl, an innocent who was to be burned by hungry villagers who, in desperation, sought an end to their troubles, for their crops were failing and their wells had run dry. Indeed, in times of duress, even the strongest minds can falter. And so it was, that this girl was accused of being a witch, for surely her very beauty meant that she had unnatural powers. Why else would she flourish in famine and drought?
This village was quite remote from the King’s castle. Indeed, she ought never to have been saved from the flames, if not for one small thing; the King searched for six swans as a gift to his mother, who was growing old and could no longer leave the palace to feed the swans that swam on the lake nearby. He thought to capture several to keep captive on his castle grounds, and in this way let his mother still enjoy one of her favorite pastimes, for her eyes were weak and she could no longer sew the way she once had. It was this hunt that brought him to the little village, and the angered shouts of the villagers as they led their victim to certain doom brought him to the village itself.
“Stop!” he cried, but the villagers paid him no heed. How were they to know that the true king rode in their midst upon a fine black stallion? In their madness they barely knew their own names, so hungered and feverish were they. “Stop in the name of the King! Stop, I say!”
And his hunters laid about with their weapons, careful not to maim the villagers, until the mob regained some semblance of sense.
“My Lord King—” the headman gasped, finally realizing who this well-dressed man was. No mere lord was this, but the King himself! “A thousand apologies, Your Majesty,” he stuttered, but the King waved his hand and the man closed his mouth so quickly that the King winced at the sound of his teeth snapping together.
“What are you doing here?” the King demanded, his eyes landing on the bound and filthy girl. Yet, for all the dirt and dishevelment, she carried herself proudly. “What is her crime?”
“Why, she—she is a witch, sire,” the headman stammered, refusing to meet the bright eyes of the girl with the golden hair. “She has cursed us, caused our crops to fail and our wells to dry up. We must cleanse our village of her evil.”
The King dismounted and walked over to the girl, who held six shirts in her clenched fists. “And what are these shirts?” he asked.
“Yesterday we found her turning creatures into men to do her bidding,” the headman answered. “They’ve escaped us, Your Majesty, but with her death they will become swans once more.”
“Swans, you say?” the King asked. “Find them, and bring them to me. I will take the girl as my bride, for surely a Queen who can make men of creatures can create for me an army of mice.”
In his arrogance the King did not ask the girl if she wished to wed him, for surely every girl wanted to be a Queen. So she held her tongue as his men untied her, smiled beatifically at him as he helped her onto his horse, and gave him the six shirts she carried, telling him that as long as he held them, the swans would obey him and him alone. When asked if that meant that she held no sway over them, she laughed and told him that nothing could destroy the link between a witch and that which her magic had touched. No, the swan-men would obey her, too.
“Why does one yet have a wing?” the King asked when the swan-men were brought before him, handsome and strong, but without words, an artifact, perhaps, of their origins. They looked eerily similar to his bride-to-be in features and coloration, but the King did not ask. Perhaps all of the creatures she created looked so.
His bride-to-be lowered her eyes, veiling them with those long, curling lashes. “If I had been able to complete his shirt, he would have been as the others,” she answered, “but the headman interrupted my sewing, and alas, once a spell has been released, I cannot change it. To give him an arm now would require a year of silence.”
“I would rather a soldier with a wing than to be bereft of your voice for a year,” the King declared, so besotted was he. As long as she professed to love him, and as long as she used her witch’s magic for his purposes, he would make her his Queen.
And so it was that they were wed. His mother cautioned him against trusting a witch, but he was ensnared by his bride’s eyes, such a curious shade of pink, and the way her honey-colored skin glittered as if she had been bathed in fine golden dust. When he questioned why she had not appeared so in the village, she answered that she was already to be burned for being a witch; giving them proof would have only prolonged her death. He did not ask why she had been so sure she would die, when she had magic at her fingertips. Ladies of his court attempted to mimic their new Queen, to no avail, their dull, human skin rejecting the shimmers they brushed on themselves in their endeavor to become as alluring as the witch. If her sparkling, otherworldly skin was beyond their reach, however, her tattoos were not.
Beginning on the backs of her hands and twining up her arms and across her chest, around her waist and down her long, supple legs, golden filigree shimmered and shifted under the light, as if she had been gilded by the finest painters. They were her witch-marks, she told him, a marker of her power. She didn’t say how much power she wielded. The court painted themselves with gold leaf to mimic her, threading it through their hair to recreate the way her hair captured the light.
The King asked once why the swan-men so resembled her, while the other creatures she transformed did not. She smiled and answered that she had created them to be so, to create for herself a family where she once had none, and this answer made him all the more anxious to make her happy. He plied her with jewels and rich silks, had fine gowns sewn for her, granted her every wish of her heart. She was well pleased with this, and blossomed at his court, settling in and finding her place—or rather, making her own, since no other Queen had been quite like her.
Her favorite thing to do was to capture a candle flame in her palm and carry it with her, as if professing her authority over that which would have consumed her if the King had not come across her. In this, the court refrained from copying her; they settled for flame-colored gems and jewelry, flashing elegant rings instead of true flames.
And the King’s mother? She shut herself away, afraid for her son and his kingdom, afraid of the presence of this beautiful, alluring woman who tamed fire and turned swans into men. The swans her son had promised her had been forgotten in his enchantment with his Queen, but she would not have found the courage to sit by the false lake he had created for her, not when the new Queen held court there.
Time passed, and the Queen’s sway over the King and his court grew stronger. She was intelligent and coy, skillfully evading divisive questions and making allies throughout the nobility. Her one flaw was that she did not seem to think often, if ever, of the common people, but this was overlooked in favor of her diligence to the womanly arts, and her devotion to her husband. Why should she think of the commoners, when her husband the King held all the answers? She was at his service, always, and used her skills only to help him. Even the inhuman soldiers who lined the castle walls were created at his behest. If there was fault in the royal couple, it was with the King, who in his greed forgot the very people that were the lifeblood of the kingdom. But he saw none of this, besotted as he was, and his distraction only grew when the Queen announced that she was with child.
On that fateful night, she dismissed all but her handmaiden, a creature who had once been a songbird but was now the Queen’s loyal servant. Not even the midwife was present; the Queen insisted that she was more than capable of birthing her own child. Did magic not flow through her veins?
In the morning, the door was opened to a dreadful scene. The Queen was pale and gaunt, her songbird awash in tears; the babe had been stillborn, and not even the Queen’s magic had been able to save it. Already the handmaiden had taken it away to be buried, for the Queen had lapsed into a state of great mourning, her lips trembling, her dress stained with blood where she had held her stillborn child close.
The King’s mother was the first to offer her condolences, but she didn’t trust the gleam in the Queen’s eye when she spoke of the soft, still-warm body of her unfortunate child. But she held her tongue, knowing that if she broached the subject, the King and his court would accuse her of jealousy and madness. Their beloved Queen could do no wrong.
When the Queen’s second child was also stillborn, also only in the presence of the Queen and her songbird maid, the King’s mother felt that she had to do something. One child was a devastating accident, but two? It was something in the way the Queen smiled, all teeth and dead-eyed, when someone offered their condolences, and the way she said that she supposed that it was not her time to bear children just yet. She would be patient, she said, and until then, she would serve her King as always. The King’s mother felt a tremor in her heart as she looked at the Queen’s bloodstained fingers and the way the songbird would not speak when spoken to. What secrets did she hide for her Queen?
And so the King’s mother convinced her son that as the King, he should be able to demand to see his wife, to ensure that she was safe and not in need of help that a creature-woman could not provide. She was his Queen, and she deserved the finest doctors in the land. If she refused them, well, that was her prerogative, but surely she could not deny her own husband in an hour that had resulted in tragedy twice before. When the Queen’s screams ceased, she convinced him that he must force entry into her rooms and verify her health for himself; what if she had died in the birth? Did he want her to die alone, save for her loyal handmaiden?
So he himself forced the doors open, and stood shocked and dismayed at the grisly sight. For the Queen had birthed her child, yes, but she was eating it as a wild animal might, blood dripping down her chin as she froze, her captivating eyes wide as she realized that she had been caught.
“Demon!” the King cried, beside himself. He could no longer explain away her odd behaviors, could no longer deny that perhaps the villagers had been right when they had sought to burn her. He seized her by the shoulders, shaking her until her teeth clacked together as her handmaiden screamed for help in a tongue that was not of this earth. Immediately, the creature-men that the Queen had made for her King turned on their human comrades, obeying the order of a witch who supped on her own flesh and blood to preserve her own power. Her tattoos turned black as the battle raged, the soft, piercing pink eyes turning sharp and hard with fury as she spat spells at the King, who, realizing that he had one weapon left, thrust her into the arms of one of his most trusted guards and sprinted to his rooms, where in a chest at the foot of their bed lay all of the shirts she had crafted for her transformations. They were akin to the creatures’ true forms, she had said, binding them with needle and thread and stripping them of what made them animal, and not human. Damage a shirt, and the man himself would be turned part creature once more, and so she had cautioned him to keep the garments safe, or it would take a year to repair the damage.
Seizing these garments, he threw them into the fire, every last one, and watched as they burned. The sounds of battle ceased; he could hear her enraged screaming as he returned to her chambers. There was but one creature left, her loyal songbird, whose transformation was sealed in a girdle the Queen wore every day without fail. The King tore it from around her waist, and the songbird screamed in pain, sprouting feathers along her neck as the girdle ripped. When the King thrust it into the fire, her screams turned to shrieks as she returned to her natural form and fled through the open window. The dogs and swans and hawks and mice and rats and cats that the Queen had transformed fled, too, until all that was left was the Witch-Queen, her mouth gagged with a strip of her own pillowcase, her eyes murderous.
The King’s mother had not been ready for such a revelation, knowing only that the Queen had been doing some harm to the children she had borne. Still, with the strength of a mother, she urged her son to kill his erstwhile Queen, before she could do more harm. Yet he could not bring himself to murder her in cold blood; he had loved her, he was sure, although how much of that had been infatuation caused by her spells, he did not know. No trial for her, but isolation; he ordered her locked up in a castle tower, deep in the woods, her windows barred and shuttered locked, the men who brought her food carefully watched in groups of no fewer than three at a time. One guard was not enough; two could still be overcome by her magic. But surely with three men she would struggle to charm them all at once and make her escape.
Six years passed like this, and still she did not falter. She was given no thread or needles, for was that not how she had created men from creatures in the first place? But she seemed to have no cause for boredom, uttered not a word of complaint. Indeed, she had fallen silent as soon as her songbird had been freed, and not a syllable had crossed her lips since. The King visited her from time to time, to gaze upon her beauty and wonder at how he had failed his people so completely. For he saw, now, the harm that had come to him while he had dallied in the high court, concerned only with nobles and diplomats, and not the daily struggles of his kingdom.
One other thing needled him; the six shirts for the swan-men she had first created were missing, although he held the men captive. They did not seem to be inclined to rebel; indeed, the six men, so similar in features and coloration to the former Queen that they could have been her brothers, seemed to want her imprisoned as much as the King and his mother did. Still they did not speak, although the man with a swan’s wing often uttered strange sounds that sounded like he was being strangled. Perhaps he was trying to communicate, but nobody thought to give them pen and paper to communicate their desires. They had been creatures once; why would they know how to read and write? After six years, the King decided that they had proved their loyalty enough, and released them, under guard, to work for him once again. He had relied too long on his Queen’s creations, and his ranks were still spread thin. If they meant him no harm, then they would serve him. This they did willingly, without complaint.
The King had taken to wandering the forest where the swan-men had first been found, hoping to find some clue as to the whereabouts of the shirts. He felt, correctly, that they were the key to this whole business.
“What brings you here, my lord?” a soft voice asked one day, startling him out of his reverie. His hand went immediately to his sword, and the speaker laughed. It was a young woman, with the tanned, sun-freckled skin of a peasant girl and a snub nose. She was not beautiful like the witch had been, but there was an aura of friendliness about her that made her wide smile and slightly crooked teeth all the more endearing. This was not a girl bred for beauty, although she was pretty; this was a girl of practicality, from her tightly braided hair to her sturdy leather boots. Her eyes widened when she recognized his face, his clothes, and she dropped into a clumsy curtsy. “Your Majesty.”
It was then that he noticed the roses on the backs of her hands, one on her right and two on her left, and he drew his sword in a move so sudden that she threw up her hands and fell as she recoiled. “I mean you no harm!” she cried, flinching away.
He pointed his sword at her. “What kind of witch are you?” he demanded. “Show me your marks!”
Trembling, she dared to meet his eyes. “My marks?” she repeated, confused. After a second of hesitation, she pushed up the sleeves of her sensible dress and revealed that her witchmarks only extended up to her wrists, wrapping them in thorny vines. Only the most powerful of witches were able to hide their witchmarks or alter their appearance; this trembling peasant was no high-ranking witch. “I—I apologize for any offense I have caused,” she stammered, still sitting on the forest floor.
He lowered the point of his sword an inch. “Who are you?” he demanded, less harshly. She was far less powerful than his former Queen; surely she could do him no harm. “Stand up, girl.”
She obeyed. “My name is Fionnula, sire.”
“Begone, Fionnula of the Forest,” he ordered, and watched as she hurried away. He did not sheathe his sword until well after she was out of sight.
Witches. He should have had them all burned when his mother had revealed his wife for the monster that she was, and yet, he thought death too merciful for his former Queen. Even now, years later, she was as poised and beautiful as the day he’d met her, but with the sharp, wicked grin she had bared over her own bloody child. She showed no remorse, no guilt, only eternal patience. The witch had not aged a day since he had had her locked away—would she outlive him, and his men, and his orders? Would one day a son, or a grandson, or a great grandson, discover her here in the forest and seek to free her, not knowing the extent of her crimes?
Restlessly, the King returned to her prison, unaware of the bright eyes watching him from the woods.
He never stayed the night here, too afraid of the witch’s magic. His horse was saddled, waiting for him when he returned on foot, and he did not even enter the building but swung himself onto the stallion’s broad back, gathering the reins in his hands as the captain of his guard ordered his men into place. It was, perhaps, a waste of energy to come to this forest as often as he did, as he grew more and more preoccupied with finding the swan shirts, but he could not bear to stay under the same roof as the woman who had not only killed but eaten his children to serve her own selfish purposes.
The next time he returned, he found the witch Fionnula awaiting him in irons, his men stone-faced when they informed him of their prisoner. She had tried to visit the witch, they said, bearing a golden rose. Furious, the King demanded to know what she had been doing.
“What has been done by one can be undone by another,” Fionnula answered with more composure than before. “This rose is a gift from me to her, although her heart will determine the reward.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he burst out, his temper and nerves frayed beyond control. “Speak plainly, woman!”
“Black as her heart is, all her beauty and power cannot save her,” Fionnula answered simply. “We have all heard of her betrayal, my Lord King, even I. She gives me and mine a foul reputation that we do not deserve. The Council has spoken; Rowena must pay for her crimes.”
The King drew in a sharp breath. His Queen had once spoken of them, this Council, with scorn, saying that they were fools blinded by their own self-importance to reach their full potential, but as with all her words, he had done his best to forget. The Council consisted of thirteen of the most powerful witches in all the lands, and it was they who doled out punishments to their sisters. Here, at last, was an answer. But then he stopped, all his wariness rushing back to the forefront of his mind.
“Prove that you are with the Council,” he demanded. “Prove that you are not a conspirator, seeking to free her!”
Fionnula loosened the collar at her throat and rolled up her sleeves, baring her arms. She stepped out of her shoes and tugged her stockings from her feet, standing barefoot on the cold stone floor. The roses that started and ended on her hands began to grow, swirling up her arms, around her throat, and across the arches of her feet. Even her face was decorated by the marks; one eye bloomed red in the center of a purple rose, the other remaining blue. As this transformation completed, she tugged a silver medallion on a silver chain over her head, offering it to the King, who took it hesitantly. Now he feared her, as he had not before, when she had been but a weak forest witch. On it was a seal, of crossed staffs over a crescent moon, encircled three times; first with mint, then with nettles, then lastly with rowan twigs. Engraved on the reverse side were the words Witches’ Council and The Rose Witch. This really meant nothing to the King, but it did go towards convincing him that she was either telling the truth, or was a very accomplished and tactical liar. He handed back the pendant, and she replaced it around her neck, leaving it to hang outside of her dress.
“Are you convinced now, Your Majesty?” she asked, somewhat impatiently. The trembling peasant girl was gone now, replaced by a confidant young woman who exuded power. Had she simply been biding her time, to observe him and judge for herself how he might react? “I am Fionnula of the Thirteen, the Rose Witch, and I am here by order of the Council to dispatch Rowena, the White Swan. I would rather settle this peaceably, but the Council will have our justice, whether you are willing or not.”
Seeking to maintain at least some of his dignity, he answered, “Far be it for me to forbid a member of the Council from executing its wishes. You may have your justice.”
Fionnula smiled, and that smile lacked the cruel edge he’d come to expect from his captive Witch-Queen. “A wise choice, my Lord king. And now, will you accompany me to see the deed done?”
He had to admit that he was curious to see how it would be done; Fionnula made no move to hide her medallion nor her witchmarks, and surely Rowena would know her at once for what she truly was. If Fionnula was so powerful, why did she not pass judgement immediately, rather than letting an enchanted rose determine his former queen’s fate? But he held his tongue, not wanting to tangle with a witch, particularly not one of such power.
When they entered the former Queen’s chambers, she turned those pink eyes on them, and smiled, all teeth and no joy.
“So the Council has finally grown a spine,” she observed, unflinching. She stood, crossing the room to them. Her hands were bound with chains behind her, restricting their movement forward and out so that she might not lunge at a guard and attack him. A length of chain stretched out from beneath the hem of her dress, anchored into the floor at the center of her chamber. “How typical, that it took a Council of bleating lambs six years to come to an agreement. I hope you realize, Rose Chair, that I do not intend to come quietly.”
“Rowena the White Swan of Finreagh, the Council finds you in contempt of the Council laws and the edicts by which all witches must abide, in contempt of the First Rule, that the dark magic of human sacrifice must never be enacted, and in contempt of the duties that bind a Crown to the land over which it rules. For these crimes in sum, your black heart will grant but one fate. Either take the rose from my hands or have it thrust upon you by force,” Fionnula warned, standing taller than her true height as the power of her words filled the room. The King pressed himself against the door with the realization that the witches truly did have a society all their own, with its own governing laws and system of justice.
Rowena raised her chin, proud and regal as ever. “The Council is weak,” she sneered. “Six years, and this is all you could conjure? A paltry rose? Take my life with your own hands, coward!”
Fionnula smiled, and this one was cruel. “You would not survive in a duel, Rowena. I will not give you the honor of a battle-death. Take the rose.”
Chained as she was, the King had not locked away her powers, for he had not known how. He only knew that as long as she was kept isolated and alone, she had not attempted a single spell; if she had, his men were to kill her. Now, however, she took advantage of this failure, and lashed out, casting them into a deep, eerie gloom that snuffed out the bright light of Fionnula’s rose, if only for an instant. The Rose Chair, however, maintained her calm, even as Rowena’s magic began eating away at her, and forced it back with a single gesture, a mere flick of a finger. Tilting her head to the side, she met Rowena’s furious eyes, and spoke a Word. A Word of power, meant only to be used by those strong enough to withstand the onslaught of raw power channeled through the speaker, a Word that drove Rowena and the King and the guards to their knees, tears streaming down their cheeks.
As the former Queen kneeled on the floor, her fingers digging into the cold stone, Fionnula strode forward and, true to her earlier words, thrust the rose into Rowena’s face. As the golden petals made contact with the Queen’s gold-dusted skin, she screamed, her body contorting as something—not death—claimed her. Her form twisted and warped, becoming, in an instant, a spool of coarse black thread.
“An interesting choice,” Fionnula said, apparently unperturbed. She picked up the spool, examining it idly before pocketing it and turning to leave.
“What did you do to her?” the King demanded, half furious, half afraid, half relieved. A half too many, but a half all the same.
Fionnula considered him for a moment. “The rose was my own creation, a tool to bind a soul to a form that best fits its punishment. Even I do not know the outcome, although I may guess. Your erstwhile Queen has become a guide; unspooled, this thread will always lead the bearer home.” Then she smiled, reading his face correctly. “No, she does not live on in this object. Rowena is gone, and thinks no more. An object my have a soul but not a conscious; all things have souls, in a way, but it is only animated creatures that we think of as having them.”
There were many things the King wanted to ask, but he dared not question her further. He let her leave with no more interruptions, and retreated to his palace to consider her words, and her actions, and the justice she had meted out. It wasn’t until morning came that he remembered the swan-men, and summoned his captain of his guards to learn of their fate. Had they reverted to bird form?
The answer, when his captain arrived with the swan-men, was not what he expected. Instead of six swans, before him stood six men, still as alike in look and color as any brothers could rightfully be, still too similar to Rowena’s strange coloring to be unrelated to her. The only difference now was that the youngest was whole and human, rather then possessing one swan’s wing. That is, until they began to speak.
In voices that had been silenced for too long, they revealed that they had been Rowena’s brothers, once, long before she had made a deal with a witch and become one herself, for there were two ways to become a witch; the most powerful were born, and their witchmarks appeared over time as they grew into their powers; others could learn to be witches, although they would never be as powerful as a natural-born witch. Their sister had been one of the latter, a learned witch who was so bitter at her lot in life, relegated to the sidelines as a royal pawn to be married off, that she had turned against her family. Her brothers she turned to swans, a creature she thought amusing because they were a symbol of their kingdom; her father, a King himself, had been left to die a slow death. He had been beneath her vengeance, for her anger was placed squarely on the shoulders of the six brothers who had so overshadowed her.
They had hunted her to the village where the King had found her, and had demanded that she change them back, but in her sneering contempt, she had instead cast a new spell upon them, one that was only meant for creatures, not humans turned creature; they resumed human forms once more, but now they were bound by her will as they had not been before. The shirts had been for show; she had left her youngest brother with a swan’s wing to remind them of her control over them, and only her death had set them free.
Their father was long dead, their kingdom passed to a new family, and the former Princes had no desire to return home. Instead, they wished to stay at the King’s court and serve him as they had been for so many years. The King granted this wish, and resolved to become a better man, one who examined a person’s heart rather than their appearance to judge their true character.
And what of Fionnula, and the Council? Well, that is a story for another time, another place.