Miracles and Massacres: A Fairy Godmother's Tale

Creature had a name, long ago. It had been a grand name, he is sure of it. He remembers the fine, shiny things he wore when he had been dumped in the enchanted forest. There had been golden rings, fine brocade, a twisting crown with a single moonstone in the center. Certainly, all that finery would come attached to a good name.

Now, Creature has no name. Typically, he is called, “AHH!” or “Please, no, I beg you!”

Along with his name, he abandoned his clothes and jewelry. The shiny things were scooped up by crows and magpies. The garments shredded and added to nests. Creature had no need for any of it, with his thick fur. The only shine he carried was in the flash of his eyes or teeth. And such gleaming only meant one thing in the enchanted forest: a quick, thorough death.

Sometimes, as he curls up on his bedding of ice and burrows in his gray snow, he wonders what Named Creature was like. He wonders if he had been strong in the way humans think of strength. He wonders if he loved. Was loved in return.

But then he sleeps without dreaming. When he wakes up, he is hungry and all his questions freeze to dust in his tracks.

“You’ve got a little something...riiiiight...there!” The redcap gestures gleefully around the whole of Creature’s body.

Creature glares at Bobbin, who sits too high up in a nearby tree for him to reach.

“Get it? Because you’ve got a mess of guts all over you.”

Creature says nothing.

“You’re filthy, is what I’m saying,” Bobbin adds helpfully.

Creature continues to ignore him. Technically, the kill belongs to both himself and Bobbin, but Creature chooses not to acknowledge the “team effort” as Bobbin calls it.

Hunters have been coming more often to his territory in the enchanted forest, trying to collect his head for a gift or spell or some such nonsense. Creature typically doesn’t mind. He’s eating well because of it. But in this case, there were three hunters. Clever ones, too. They were outfitted with some kind of ward that stymied Creature’s ice-touch. In his frustration, one of them landed a cut above his right eye, partially blinding him.

Bobbin, nosey thing, had been nearby as always. While Creature dispatched the two that came at him with swords, Bobbin had pounced on the archer that hung back.

Now, the redcap sits on his branch, swinging his spindly legs, happily chomping on the archer’s severed arm. His tattered, fingerless gloves are sticky with blood and dirt. He hums a tune that Creature tries to drown out by digging his face deeper into his meal.

Once done, Creature tips his face up to the dense canopy. It is always twilight in the forest and caught in the damp in-between of fall succumbing to winter. The air is musty and slightly chilled, muted. It seems to Creature that the only clarity in the forest is his own power as it flurries in and out of his lungs and frosts the tips of his ears and toes. Gray snowflakes start to swirl around his muzzle in contentment as his body settles with his meal.

After a heavy belch, Bobbin resumes his chatter. “Why do you ‘spose you still have thumbs, then? You don’t even need ‘em. Seems a waste to me. You outta trade them for something.”

Creature scowls and proceeds to lick his fur clean. And not because Bobbin called him “filthy,” either.

“You could trade it for a hairbrush,” Bobbin goes on. “One of them nice ones what makes your fur all glossy.”

Creature turns his back on the redcap. He had never, in all his time since he was cursed, met a more talkative, irritating thing.

“Or a nice belt. Give some definition to your shape, eh? Less tree trunk and more hourglass.”

Creature gets up and starts to walk away, abandoning any further attempt to relax after his meal. His footsteps crackle a little as ice forms under his paw pads. Behind him, the ground begins to churn as the forest sucks the blood and bones into the soil.

“You could get yourself a hat. I should very much like a hat meself.”

Creature growls. “You’ve got a hat already. It’s in your name.”

Bobbin hops down and follows him. “Oh, sure, that’s what society wants me to wear. Why not a blue cap? Or a yellow one?”

“Leave me alone.”

Bobbin cups his hands close to his mouth and blows warm air into his palms. “You know what you could trade your thumbs for? A nice pair of mittens. That’d be a fine bargain.”

“Why,” he grits, unable to keep himself from asking, “would I need mittens if I don’t have any thumbs?”

Bobbin’s tongue prods at some gristle between his front teeth. “Dunno. Just seems like a nice thing to have handy, what with your bandying about all this snow and ice.”

Creature starts to walk faster. “I don’t feel the cold.”

Bobbin keeps up. “And yet you’ve got fur. And thumbs.” He tucks his hands into the heat of his armpits. “What kind of curse landed on you anyway?”

Creature closes his eyes for a moment, can almost hear a voice from long ago calling a name. A fine, princely name. “A fair one,” he says.

Fairy Godmothering is more than just showing up and waving around a wand. It involves performance and ceremony. It takes planning and crafting the right blessing or spell.

It definitely does not include babysitting.

“Are you sure you won’t consider that nice prince for a husband?” Micelle asks again. She follows after the princess in her smallest form, no bigger than a shimmering butterfly, and keeps close to the girl’s shoulder.

Shauna hacks at the vines with her father’s sword. Each severed limb screams in protest, writhing angrily. “Which one?” Shauna pants, not looking at the fairy. “The one who didn’t know how primary colors work? Or the one who said to me, and I quote, ‘Show me yours and I’ll show you mine’?”

Mecille sighs. “It’s nothing a bit of magic can’t fix, dear.”

“I don’t want magic, Fairy Godmother.” Shauna swipes at the sweat and vine juice on her brow. “Father wants this beast killed so much that he’s willing to give me away to whichever idiot can accomplish the task. Well, just wait until I drop its head at his feet.”

Mecille rolls her eyes. “Don’t want magic, hm? Shall I just be on my shiny way then?”

“You know what I meant. I don’t want your magic for a happy union. I want a blessing to make me a great warrior so I can kill this thing, but since you won’t give it to me—”

“It just seems rather extreme,” Mecille interjects.

“—I’ll have to figure out a different blessing.”

“That’s not how we typically do things,” Mecille grumbles.

The vines finally learn to keep away from Shauna’s sword and part to let the pair through. “I know,” Shauna says a bit sheepishly. “Thank you for helping me anyway.”

Mecille resents the fondness twittering in her chest. She harrumphs. “Let’s just get on with it. This place is unpardonably dreary.”

Bobbin throws another rock at Creature’s head. It hits him right between the eyes. “Wake up,” Bobbin says urgently. “Wake up, wake up.”

Creature groans, pawing at his face and then arching his back like a cat. “I’m going to eat you,” he growls.

Bobbin plants his fists on his hips. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to eat your friends?”

“You’re not my friend.”

Bobbin’s bushy brows disappear under his red cap. “That’s rude.”

“What do you want, Bobbin?”

“Well, I don’t know if I even want to tell you now.”

“Good. I’m going back to sleep.” Creature circles his frost nest and starts to resettle.

“Wait, wait! All right, fine. Hunters, coming from the East. They’re maybe a day’s walk away.”

Creature yawns. “Let them come.”

Bobbin tugs the edges of his cap over his long ears, huge brown eyes bouncing with worry. “There are lots of them this time. Apparently, some fool princess took off into the forest, and there’s two dozen of them coming to rescue her. From you.”

A princess? Creature thinks. Gods, those things are more irritating than Bobbin. Creature sighs heavily, his breath swirling snowflakes. He may be large and fierce, but even he can’t hold back that many humans. “Fine. I’m up.”

“Goody!” Bobbin skips alongside Creature as he lopes away from his nest. “Will we get to set traps?” Bobbin asks eagerly.

“Yes.”

Bobbin claps. “The kind with spikes? And ditches? Ooh, and ditches with spikes in them?”

Creature smothers his groan along with his growing regret. “Yes.”

Bobbin cheers and runs ahead. Something itches the corners of Creature’s lips—an expression lost in the past decades threatening to resurface.

Mecille knows they’re close when their breath plumes in front of them, and goosebumps ripple across her arms. She waves her wand and keeps a ribbon of sunlight arced over them, but there is no escaping the cruel winter wind curling around their ears and necks.

“Tell me, Fairy Godmother,” Shauna says quietly, her hands gripping the sword in front of her. “What do you know of this ice creature banished to the enchanted forest?”

Mecille searches her memory. “Well, I believe it was your standard variety tale. Spoiled prince falls in love with a princess but fails some test to gain her love, blah blah blah. Princess is a witch in disguise and poof! Ice monster thing.”

Shauna frowns up at Mecille who hovers by her head. “That is very unhelpful.”

Mecille shrugs. “I’ve been around for a long while, dear. All these curses and enchanted forests sort of blend together. Anyway, whatever curse this beast has, he likely earned it.”

Shauna stops suddenly, her expression incredulous. “And if he didn’t earn this curse?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Mecille, what if that man is innocent? People fall prey to the whims of witches and dark fairies all the time.”

Mecille shrugs. “I imagine that either way, he’s cursed until it’s lifted.”

“Could you lift the curse?”

“Yes, possibly. Why...” Mecille stops as realization hits her. Glitter shimmers off her hair as she shakes her head furiously. “No, Shauna. Don’t be absurd.”

But Shauna’s face is set with heroic determination, the kind that leads to stupid decisions. “If we find out the beast is innocent, I want you to take my blessing and give it to him. I want you to lift his curse.”

The words ring heavy as Shauna shifts the trajectory of Mecille’s blessing to another. Mecille pinches the bridge of her nose in irritation. “Shit.”

Bobbin’s laughter is incessant. “Look at him! Oh, you silly humans are so squishy!”

Creature cuts off the scream of a hunter by ripping out his throat. He looks over at Bobbin who shoves another hunter back with a kick to his chest. The hunter gives a yelp as he falls into one of Bobbin’s fondly named “Spiky Pits o’ Death.”

A few hunters got away, fleeing in the direction of the bog. Creature let them go.

The bog would take care of them.

Creature stands up among the scattered body parts and the ridiculous amount of spikes (some fastened to tree trunks, some protruding from the ground, and of course, the many, many pits). In some areas, the ground is already tugging severed limbs into itself with hungry, sucking sounds.

He winces when he accidentally touches a gash on his neck. Along with some deeper wounds, there are several arrows in his back. He would likely need Bobbin to help him remove those. He sighs.

“We make a fine team,” Bobbin says somewhere off to his right.

“We’re not a team,” Creature insists, but there is a thaw in his voice when he says it, a timid and gentle spring.

“You’re right!” Bobbin agrees cheerily. “We’re more than that. We’re—”

The sound is cut off with a high-pitched yell and the familiar sound of rended skin.

Creature whirls to see a human girl with a huge sword in her hands, the pointed end completely through Bobbin’s belly.

“NO!” Creature roars. He lunges forward and knocks the girl aside, her hands flying off the sword which stays firmly lodged. He scoops Bobbin up. “No, no, no.”

Something the redcap sees in Creature’s face makes Bobbin smile. “See?” he says weakly. “I told you we were friends.”

Mecille and Shauna gape. The hulking beast curls over the redcap as if they were mother and child. But covered in blood. And hideous.

“Look how he cares,” Shauna says, trying not to gag. “He’s a good man.”

Mecille shakes her head. “Are you not seeing all the bodies around us? The arrangement of human parts looks positively celebratory.”

Shauna refuses to budge. “No, he was protecting himself and his companion.” She throws her shoulders back and steps forward. “Beast.”

The creature ignores her, mumbling something to the redcap whose expression is both gruesome and unbearably sad.

“Beast, I can see you are a noble man beneath the trappings of this curse and—Oh, my stars, is that brain matter on your face?” Shauna turns away quickly to dry heave.

After several moments, she recovers and faces him again. “I came here to bring your head to the king as a prize, but I see—Please, can you maybe wipe that off? Just a quick brush—no? Never mind.” She clears her throat. “I am here to release you from the curse.”

That finally gets his attention. “You are a witch?”

Shauna looks at Mecille then back at him. “Well, no. But I have brought my fairy godmother and I have commanded that her blessing—”

The creature stands and holds the madcap’s limp body in Mecille’s direction. “Heal him. Heal him, and I will go with you to the king.”

Mecille purses her lips. “I grow very irritated at the number of people who think they know fairy godmothering better than I do.”

“Please,” the creature says, and somewhere in those dark eyes, Mecille can almost see the man that he was. “Let me give the girl’s blessing to my friend.”

Mecille’s silly heartstrings pull. “I cannot replenish his life,” she says gently. “He is already almost gone. Even if I healed him—”

“Then I shall give him my own life.”

Mecille rolls her eyes. “My goodness, so dramatic. If you’d let me finish, I would tell you that even if I healed him, he’d still die, unless he shares a life.”

“But I just said that.”

“No, you said you’d give him the whole thing. He’ll only need a bit. This is why we listen first, yes?”

The beast scowls but gives a nod of understanding.

Mecille gives herself a good shake and in the cloud of glitter she expels, she grows into her full size, the same height as the princess who, thankfully, remains silent.

“Kindly remove the sword,” Mecille orders to the beast, looking away until it’s done. When the disgusting sound of the act passes, she summons her wand, pinching it between thumb and forefinger.

“Now be still, all of you. This is a terribly grave spell.” She raises her wand, then gives them a wink. “And it will be absolutely gorgeous.”

Creature turns his face away from the sunlight that erupts from his chest and Bobbin’s. A distant memory flicks at his mind of a gentle sunrise and the warmth of summer. It’s gone by the time he opens his eyes and sees Bobbin staring up at him with an expression that can only be described as smug. In place of his gaping wound is a star-shaped scar.

“There’s no escaping me now, friend,” Bobbin says groggily.

“I have regrets,” Creature grumbles, but a smile stretches across his face, new and timid.

“Well, if that’s all,” Mecille says crisply, letting her wand disappear with a sparkle, “I’d very much like to leave.”

Creature looks at Mecille. “Thank you, Fairy Godmother. And you.” He turns to the princess who has a watery smile on her face. “Get the fuck out of my forest.”

The girl pales and backs away.

Mecille walks off after the princess but then stops and faces them again. “That was a great kindness you displayed for the love of your friend. A feat like that warrants all manner of things. Maybe even the lifting of a certain curse.”

For a moment, Creature can imagine walking out of the enchanted forest, back in fine clothes with a grand name. He thinks of sunlight on the bare skin of his face and a body free of winter.

Bobbin squirms out of Creature’s lap and stands off to the side. He pulls his cap low over his ears. “Now that’s a bargain,” he says too brightly. “And you can even keep your thumbs.”

Creature looks back to Mecille. “May I ask for something else?”

“I think it’s sweet,” Shauna says as they walk away from the massacre and the two friends in the middle of it. “Mittens that his friend can summon whenever he gets cold? That’s adorable.”

Mecille scowls. “I suppose. Just don’t tell anyone. It’s not dignified.”

Shauna smirks for a moment before she grows somber. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to marry after all. Thank you for coming with me. Blessing or not, I’m grateful you were there.”

Mecille pats at her hair. “Of course, my dear. All in a day’s work.” She tilts her head at Shauna. “But I must ask, have you considered simply not doing it?”

Shauna frowns. “Not doing...?”

“The marriage, darling. Or the whole princess bit, for that matter.”

The princess thinks so furiously on the words that she stops walking. “Is that something I can do?”

Mecille's laugh tinkles like starlight. “Of course, my dear. That’s the wonderful thing about choices. There’s no magic required.”