A 1500 word short story from Fantasy-Faction's June 2016 Writing Contest!
Writing Contest Theme: Fairy Tales from a Different Point of View
My choice: Rapunzel
Writing Prompt: Fairy Tales from a Different Point-of-View
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The blood rites were finished, the words of power chanted, and the potion prepared. A drop a day would save the afflicted babe, but Ana felt ravaged from the inside out. This spellwork had stolen years of her life, but what alternative did she have? If she did nothing, she might as well murder the baby herself.
The sobbing parents arrived at dusk, motivated, Ana assumed, by fear. Everyone feared Dame Ana Gothel, and Ana bore the loneliness without complaint because the alternative was chaos. Her words of power would be used to kill, her runes to imprison, her magic plants to plague and poison.
No one else remained to protect the Walled Garden from men.
When the miserable couple reached the edge of her verdant estate, the mother's sobs matched her babe's. The smell of rotting leaves rolled off this mother, the stench of despair. Ana understood despair – she understood the pain of losing her only child – but this mother would not see her child die.
The father stank of frustration and regret, the stench of a bog mixed with the smell of iron and blood. He blamed Ana for this, of course, but Ana's focus remained on the babe, on the squalling her parents assumed was natural. It most certainly was not. This babe was in agony, spiky roots tightening around her heart.
The mother wailed and clutched her newborn daughter to her breast. "Why must you steal our child, Dame Gothel? How have we wronged you?"
"The babe was never yours." Ana maintained the stately pose she had cultivated to hide doubt and pain.
"I carried her!" the mother wailed. "I birthed her!"
"If you believe our bargain unfair, your quarrel is with your husband." It was the greed of this father, after all, that sentenced his child to death.
"A bargain is a bargain." The father motioned, impatiently, to the mother. "Give her the child, Nan."
His emotions now smelled like spoiled oranges - guilt. Ana knew then he had not told his wife what the stolen rampion had done to their child in her womb. Men like him did not admit fault.
"All we took was a plant!" the mother wailed. "Why must I trade my child for a plant?"
"Ask your husband." Ana stared at the man until his eyes fell.
"You'll kill her!" the mother shouted. "You'll sacrifice her in some blood rite! I won't let you!"
"Your daughter dies already. Do you not hear the truth in her cries?"
The mother gasped. "You ensorcelled my child?"
"The rampion you stole from my garden did that. The plant you so foolishly gorged upon is strangling your child's heart."
"That can't be true!" The mother's eyes welled as she glared at her husband. "Eddard! Tell me it isn't true!" The smell of her betrayal hung on the air, sickly and sweet.
