Once Upon a Time: The Villains Read Online Free PDF

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    The creatures she had tended since she could toddle about the yard, they had helped her. I could feel their confusion. I could feel their love for my daughter. They had long ago abandoned me for her. I had never realized how completely. I had allowed the transfer, thinking it one more cord to bind her to me, but it had been the source of my downfall.
    “No more,” I shouted to the creatures huddling in their nests and hiding in their burrows. “No more will I tend to your needs. Look,” I yelled and pointed to the tower window and the couple within, “he has come for her. She will leave, never to return. You have sealed all our fates.”
    Bitterness seethed through my veins. I turned from the window and dashed into the dark corridor. My every nerve ending sparked with anger. I could feel the heat radiate off me. She would be better off dead than with that boy.
    I would stop them. And when my deed was done, the tower would become a quiet sanctuary, a tribute to my lovely daughter. I would keep her in a suspended sleep — keep her as I wished to see her. I would then visit her whenever I desired, talk to her, stroke her hair, see her delicate beauty, take pleasure in her innocence, find solace in her perfection the way I never had in my own life. She would never leave. Never.
    I raced to the tower and began my ascent to the uppermost room. I encountered cobwebs strung across the stairwell. They grew thicker and thicker. I raked my hands through the sticky threads and growled at the tiny insects responsible for them. They wished to protect my daughter from me. Did they not understand? I was saving her . I was keeping her here with all of us. Mice skittered under foot and owls dove at my head. I swatted and kicked and fought my way to the top. I threw off the enchantment and pushed hard against the door.
    I needn’t have been so rough. I tumbled into the room and fell to my hands and knees. Lifting my head, I spied what I most feared. An empty room.
    “No,” I sobbed, letting the tears gather in my eyes and wash down my wrinkled cheeks. “No!” I cried louder, unwilling to believe what my eyes were telling me. I was too late.
    I rose and went to the window. Attached to the shutters was a thickly-braided silken rope. The most unusual thing I’d ever seen. I looked beyond the casement and saw that the rope reached all the way to the ground. How had they done it? How? No tell-tale arrow stuck in the wall to deliver such a heavy object. I again looked at the rope, and my breath caught in my throat.
    It was hair. Rapunzel’s glorious, silky blonde hair. But how?
    As I pondered the enormity of the magic involved, I saw a gilded book lying on the bed. I picked up the tome of magic. It had my father’s smell all over it. What I had thought madness was magic. What I had deemed weak had turned strong. My obedient, placid, beautiful daughter had tricked me. She had used the special skills I had learned against me.
    Though I had sought to keep her safe in the tower, the tower had betrayed me. It had harbored secrets far deeper than mine. I stood by the window and opened the book. Pages upon pages of dark magic fluttered between my fingers. The spells called to me.
    Take revenge.
    Use me.
    I will be your love, now.
    She betrayed us both.
    This book. This evil thing had enchanted my daughter. “No,” I breathed against the horror it revealed. “Never,” I said harder. I slipped a page between my fingers and pulled.
    The ripping sounded more like a scream to my ears. I tossed the page out the window and watched the early morning breeze take it away. Again I ripped. Again and again. I ripped and tossed and sobbed out my heart. I took great satisfaction in flinging the evil out of the tower and into the wind to fall to the earth and dissolve into nothing. Or so I thought.
    “May you never find a soul to read you again,” I cried.
    The birds captured the pages and carried them away into the hands of another.
    Finally,