Fractured Fairy Tales by Alma Alexander

Author:Alma Alexander [Alexander, Alma]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fairy tale, fairy tale retelling, once upon a time, fantasy, magic, power
ISBN: 9781611389616
Publisher: Book View Cafe
Published: 2021-04-02T00:00:00+00:00

Witches

THE WEDDING OF THE WEED WITCH

The thin scratch at the door came very late, but Sibella was still up. There was little sleep in their cottage in those waning days of her mother’s dying; the woman about to enter her last sleep fought with astonishing strength against slipping into lesser slumber, and only permitted herself an occasional snatched catnap before waking and demanding that Sibella talk to her, or feed her, or sponge her down, or otherwise remain within earshot and arm’s reach and awake and alert. Sibella’s mother was dying, but it was Sibella who was pale and exhausted, dark shadows under her eyes, the skin on her face drawn too tight over her sharp cheekbones.

Her mother had finally drifted off, when Sibella became aware of the noise at the cottage door, and she almost considered ignoring the quiet summons completely and trying to close her own eyes for a few precious moments. But there was something insistent and urgent about it, and Sibella finally sighed and gathered her skirts and walked over to the door, to crack it open a little.

“Who is there?”

“Sibella. Can you run?”

The voice was a whisper, but Sibella recognized it – she didn’t have many friends, but she counted Marian as one of them, and it was Marian out there in the night, wrapped in a dark shawl, cradling a travelling bundle in her arms.

Sibella stole a glance back into the room. Her mother still sat with her eyes closed, breathing shallowly.

“Run?” Sibella questioned bleakly. “How? Why? Where?”

“The black banners are up on the towers,” Marian said. Only that.

The tenth wife was dead, then. They will be coming for the next one.

“Jenessa and Saira and Lyd have gone already,” Marian said urgently. “The roads won’t stay open for long, now. And if you stay too long…”

“I may be the only one left here, when they come,” Sibella said, more to herself than to Marian.

“Will you come?”

“And abandon her?” Sibella said, with a quick tilt of her head in her mother’s direction.

“You owe her much, but do you owe her that much?” Marian asked.

Sibella hesitated. It sounded very sweet all of a sudden – she had a reason to go, to leave the cranky dying old woman to her own devices and to flee, before the Keep sent out to gather in the next wife for the dark king who brooded on the throne carved from a single bone torn from a creature long since lost to this world. The dark king who had now taken and devoured ten women from his realm. Women who had been spirited off into the Keep, and used, and burned up, and when each had been destroyed in the crucible of the king’s power and his passion, the black banners had been flown from the high towers to mark her death… and the need for a replacement.

“If you stay, and they take you, then you will leave her anyway,” Marian said, her voice urgent.

“I know,” Sibella said. “And I… I wish I could…”

“I cannot linger,” Marian said.

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