Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch (2 page)

One wouldn’t know it by their frightful state, Ursula mused, but those witches were the things of legends. They were cousins to the old king, the father of the queen called Snow White. And they were great benefactors to the Dark Fairy and her sleeping princess. Though Ursula would never say so aloud, she owed her newly regained power to the odd sisters. They had returned her necklace. Although, she considered, it was a fair exchange for something their little sister had desperately wanted.

Lucinda gasped as water spilled from Ursula’s massive form onto the witches’ awestruck faces, their ears splitting with Ursula’s thunderous laughter and booming voice.

“I’m so happy to see you, sisters. It’s been far too long.”

The sea witch leaned down to be at eye level with the odd sisters. They were really quite striking, she thought.

But too much beauty without the proper proportions.

Ursula’s arms were outstretched, ready to embrace them. The sisters scuttled tentatively as one into Ursula’s embrace, which eased their concern and relaxed them with the fact that Ursula was not cross with them.

“I see you are wearing our gift,” said the sisters in unison, spotting the golden seashell necklace around her neck. All were worried Ursula would be enraged if she ever learned it had been stashed away in their pantry half-forgotten all that time.

Ursula laughed, this time at the sound of the sisters’ scratchy voices and at the state of the drooping feathers in their pitch-black hair.

“Thank you, my dear friends. You will have to tell me how you got it back from my brother at some point. Or was it Circe? I didn’t ask her when she brought it to me. And where is Circe? I’m surprised she isn’t with you.”

Circe.

The mention of her name was like knives being plunged into the odd sisters’ hearts. She had been a source of heartbreak for them, the reason Lucinda had called on Ursula for help. Circe was the reason the odd sisters cried endlessly, vainly crying her name into the darkness, hoping she would at last return on account of their pleas for forgiveness. Circe hadn’t answered her sisters’ calls, so they summoned the sea witch for help. Of course, Ursula would want something in return. She always did.

She was the maker of deals.

Lucinda spoke first. “Circe, our beloved, has gone far from us….” Her deep red satin gown was stained with tears, and like her sisters’, her eyes were smudged with black coal makeup that had streamed down her cheeks from long hours of crying.

“She’s so angry with us! She’s ventured where our magic cannot follow,” continued Ruby.

Martha’s sobs were almost too violent for her to speak. “That’s why we’ve come to you, Ursula. We want to see our little sister again.”

Ursula asked the obvious question: “Have you tried to summon her, dears? In one of your many enchanted mirrors?”

The sisters broke down crying again.

“She must have done a spell when she left that keeps us from summoning her!” Martha’s sad bulging eyes, which were so much like her sisters’, were filled with grief and fear.

Ursula could tell they were truly afraid. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her friends in such a state, so full of regret and so grief-stricken. “I promise you, Martha, I will help you find Circe. I promise each of you, my dearies, you will see your little sister again.”

Then Ursula smiled one of her magnificent grins, which slowly transformed into something a bit more mundane as she used her magic to assume human form and took the sobbing Martha into her arms. She knew the sisters would give anything to see Circe again, and as much as she wanted to help them—and
of course
she would be happy to do so—
she just so happened
to be in need of the odd sisters’ special brand of magic in return for her favor.

T
he dark green gingerbread-style mansion with gold trim and black shutters was perched precariously on the rocky cliffs. Its roof, shaped like a witch’s cap, was obscured in mist and encircled by screeching crows.

“Is the Dark Fairy to join us?” asked Ursula as the four witches made their way to the odd sisters’ home.

“No! No! Water and fire do not mix!” said Lucinda as Ursula laughed. Ursula wondered why the sister witches so feared a convergence between her and the Dark Fairy.

“We fear nothing, Ursula, but we see and hear everything,” Lucinda said casually, giving her the side-eye as they headed up the crooked staircase, which creaked with every step.

Ursula mused over the many locations in which she’d visited the house. She wondered if it grew chicken-like legs and moved on its own steam or if the sisters just conjured it wherever they desired. Surely it was simply summoned, but she loved the image of the sisters riding in their witch’s-cap house powered by giant leathery chicken legs, the witches cackling within the entire way. The thought made her laugh as they entered the queer little house in which she’d so often been a guest. The location might have changed often, but the house, with its quaint little kitchen, remained the same.

The sun shone through a large round window on the main wall that looked out over the old queen’s apple tree and the waves crashing onto the rocks. The shelves were filled with beautiful teacups in differing patterns, as if collected from various sets. Ursula wouldn’t be surprised if the sisters simply slipped cups they fancied into their purses. She wondered if each cup had a unique story—the story of its owner and of its encounter with the dreaded sisters three.

Which of those cups, Ursula wondered, belonged to the old queen, or to the horrible sisters Anastasia and Drizella? And which belonged to Maleficent?

Off the kitchen was the main room with a large fireplace. Its mantel was imposing and flanked by two enormous ravens that gazed out into the nothingness with steely eyes. The room had an eerie light, colored by the stained glass windows with images of the witches’ various adventures. One of the windows had a simple red apple. It was lonely and sad, Ursula thought, but perhaps that was because she had heard the old queen’s tale from the sisters many years before.

How many stories had she been told sitting near that fire when she deigned to take human form? That human form—that creature, she thought—it wasn’t at all to her liking. She felt small and weak when hiding in her human shell. Her voice also sounded different—not as booming or demanding. There was no power in it.

No majesty.

She couldn’t fathom how humans had survived as long as they had in those weak sacks of flesh, always in pain, always walking or sitting on hard furniture. It was horrible, that human nonsense.

At least she had Lucinda, Ruby, Martha, and their charming cat, Pflanze, to distract her from the pains of being human. Pflanze, the sisters’ tortoise-shell cat, blinked her black-rimmed golden eyes slowly at the witches in salutation.

“Hello, Pflanze,” Ursula said, smiling. Pflanze adjusted her paws and blinked again, welcoming Ursula to her home. Pflanze could see through the sea witch’s human form to the creature she really was. And the cat thought that creature was even more beautiful than the form the sea witch had taken so she could walk among humans.

Oh, it was beautiful enough, Ursula’s human guise. She had large dark eyes and full deep-brown hair that framed her heart-shaped face. Anyone would find her beautiful, but Pflanze loved the sea witch’s true design, and it was easy to see the witch preferred it, as well.

Pflanze watched as her witches scuttled about the kitchen getting the tea ready for Ursula, who had her feet propped on a little cushioned stool Ruby had brought for her. Pflanze’s witches had been quite unlike themselves since their little sister, Circe, had left, and Pflanze was growing worried they would wither from their constant fretting. But what troubled the cat more was how quiet the sisters had become. She was used to their insane ramblings and manic chatter. But now the house was almost unbearably quiet without Circe to fawn over. Now the sisters would simply sit and mope, uninspired even to cause their usual mayhem. And when they spoke, they did so as coherently as they could manage, in an attempt to make their sister Circe happy when she finally came home. Pflanze presumed that if the sisters had hearts within their hollow, hateful shells, they had been broken the day the witches’ little sister left with hate in her eyes, anger in her words, and a deep sadness in her heart.

Circe wasn’t like her sisters, Pflanze mused. She loved. And Circe felt Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha had finally gone too far with their magic, hurting someone she had once cared for very deeply. Pflanze didn’t blame the sisters for what they had done to the Prince, the curse they had helped set on him, or the torments they had rained upon his head. They had almost driven him mad, and with good reason. He had broken Circe’s heart and treated her rather shabbily.

Everything they had done, all the meddling and scheming, was for their little sister. But Circe was terribly angry with them for the part they had played in the curse, which had sent the Prince further into his greedy, hurtful ways, nearly destroying kingdoms in the process.

No, Circe couldn’t forgive her sisters, and Pflanze was almost sure she would never speak to them again as their punishment. The beautiful feline hoped the visit from Ursula would inspire a wee bit of wickedness and bring her mistresses out of the deep depression they’d been suffering.

But Pflanze’s musings were shattered by screams that caused Martha to drop the glass teapot, breaking it into tiny shards on the black-and-white kitchen floor. Ruby was sobbing. The glass sparkled like diamonds, dazzling in Ursula’s eyes. Soon Ruby’s sobs were so severe she found herself in Ursula’s arms as the sea witch tried to calm her theatrical ravings.

“Pflanze thinks Circe will never speak to us again!” Soon all the sisters were screaming and crying, wringing their hands, and ripping their dresses. Martha started pulling her hair, and Lucinda was ripping at the feathers in hers, casting them about the room like a madwoman.

“Ladies, stop!” boomed Ursula’s voice, and the sisters could see, cast onto the wall behind the elegant human body Ursula was hiding in, the shadow of her true form, dominating the kitchen.

“Silence!” Ursula commanded.

The sisters fell quiet.

“You
will
see your little sister again, I promise you, but first there is something I will need from you.”

T
he witches were standing on the rocky cliffs, looking down on the small coastal town of Ipswich. Its little weather-worn cottages were barely distinguishable under the thick layer of soot. You could feel the hate emanating from the place, the pain and suffering that were not only inflicted but that imbued the magic that caused this nightmare.

The sisters were not only intrigued; they were impressed.

Like all witches in the land, they had felt the shudder of power when Ursula caused that ruination so many years before. The place stood like a monument to death, a reminder not to cross the sea witch. To the sisters it was beautiful.

Even Ursula’s brother could not cleanse that land. As pure as his magic was, it could not penetrate Ursula’s hate. Not even the old queen’s rage had caused that much destruction. Oh, she, too, had blighted the lands, but she had left one singular tree with a shiny red apple, a symbol of the tiny shard of hope and, indeed, love that remained within the Wicked Queen’s dark and lonely heart.

That was the old queen’s failing, the sisters thought: her love. She had never truly relinquished herself to grief and anger. She had never completely filled her heart with hatred. Even now the old queen looked in on her daughter, Snow White, stealing glimpses of her in an enchanted mirror, the sisters’ mirror! The thought of it filled the sisters with rage. Snow White still had one of their treasures and was therefore protected by the old queen and forever out of the sisters’ reach.

The old queen had failed them so miserably, allowing herself to be swallowed by grief, loneliness, and fear, and ultimately weakened by love. Even in death, she surrounded Snow White with her everlasting love and protection. The sisters often wondered what the old queen could have accomplished if she hadn’t destroyed herself for the love of her daughter. She was such a bitter disappointment. But Ursula was different. There was no one to distract her, no one for her to love. She was alone in the world, alone in her grief, and alone with her pain. No, she wouldn’t disappoint them. Unlike the old queen, Ursula would be able to fill her heart with hate.