Once Upon a Time: The Villains Read Online Free PDF Page B

when the book lay hollow, my legs buckled beneath me, and I collapsed to the floor. This was all a terrible dream. A nightmare from which I must awake. Oddly, I barely had the energy to blink.
    How long I sat numb and unaware, I do not know. I thought the nightmare had ended. I had destroyed the book. Would not life be better? Could I not now find my sweet girl and restore her to me?
    Yet unbeknownst to me, the day had swiftly passed and the hour for nightmares was fast approaching. I had more horrors to see. While I had been in a trance, birds had entered the tower. Warblers. Mud nesters. While I had slouched in my own hell reliving the past, they had intricately built a thick plaster over the door frame. They used hair and mud and sticks and straw. The composition was interesting, beautiful in fact; the golden hair glistened within, creating a lively dance upon the wall, but not once in all that time did I recognize the omen of death in front of me.
    Over time, the room darkened. Had night fallen so suddenly? I glanced toward the window. The mud nesters had been busier than I thought. I was being entombed in the tower. The birds, my dear old friends, had turned against me.
    A warbler squeezed in and pushed a glob of mud and hair against the shrinking opening. I rose and peered through the tiny hole. There in the distance I saw my child, her hands full of pages steeped in magic. She spoke and magic swirled higher, hardening the newly formed walls. I drew back as a little bird poked a beak full of mud and hair into the hole. “Why do you do this, little friend?”
    The bird cocked its head and looked at me, not pleasantly, and vanished through the hole. I stumbled back, clutching the empty book binding to my chest, and fell to the filthy mattress I had meant to replace. Unnatural sleep overtook me.
    There, as I lay day after day in the suspended state between earth and sky, my mother appeared. She sang and brushed my hair and told me she would always love me. I died believing her.
    If you pass by my manor, you will see the windowless tower, lonely and gray, stabbing against the sky like an angry, accusing finger. I found peace. I found my refuge. Because even in her anger, my daughter’s sweet nature still resided, my death had been easy. Not scary or even painful. I found moments of memories I thought long gone. Love lasts a lifetime. Love lasts even past death.
    If you enter my woods, be wary of the birds. They have been enchanted and will fly at strangers, pecking and clawing until you leave. I like to think they protect me, as they used to do so long ago. But that is only a wish I have. Not reality. I am only a hag, after all. No one loves the unlovable. At least, not for long. But I remember a time…when love was mine.

Sliver of a Soul
    A Tale of Revenge
    I am a creature of the forest. A thing no one wants, hidden within the darkness of the night, slipping from tree to tree in the search of something I don’t understand. My desires are deep, yet I can’t name them. I want something that has yet to be found. When I find it, I’ll know. I’ll know.
    Tree bark is my cloak, dirt my blanket. My fingernails are ragged and filthy, my hair thick with dried mud and vermin. I have embraced who I’ve become. My hands are thick fingered and strong; my legs squat and sturdy. I give no grace, and I receive none. I am my own — a creation of mankind’s defilement and fears. I have learned to accept my role even if the rest of the world has not.
    The other creatures that share my domain tease me, call me ugly and unlovable. They are beasts of beauty, of fur and feather. They preen in meadows, forgetting they are vulnerable. Only when the scent of man comes do they hide. But when they hide, they are found. Their beauty is like a beacon, while my ugliness is a cloak. I’ve watched as arrow after arrow pierces flesh and they are destroyed. I still live. I think I always will.
    Within my memory lies a secret. I am part man — a