Once, in a time when fairies were still the preferred godmothers and the air was so think with magic that people didn't wear top hats for fear rabbits would fall on their heads, there lived a king who ruled a small forest kingdom. The king was quite fond of the forest, but his kingdom being so small and so wooded provided several problems. He had few subjects, so he had little tax base, and his palace was made of wood because the ancestors who built it had been too cheap to import stone. Beyond that he had seven children, who were getting harder and harder to feed from the money in the royal treasury as they grew older. The king finally had to resort to trying to cut the national expenses, which mostly involved hiring huntsman to save grandmothers and children form the insides of wolves. He decided that he would cut costs by hunting the wolves himself.
This worked very well for him for a time, until one unfortunate day when he lost the track of a wolf a few miles in to the dark wood. The king was in the middle of a litany of curse words when an old woman stepped out of the trees to his right. The king stopped cursing, swallowed and forced himself to smile at the woman. He didn't much care for randomly appearing old women; they tended to be witches. Witches rather bothered the king for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that he was fairly sure the late queens mother had been one.
"Good day, madam." He stammered "I don't suppose you've seen a wolf…"
She shook her head.
"Ah. Well then….good day." He began to tug his reigns to turn away from the woman.
"Wait." Her voice put the king in mind of crows.
He stopped and turned back to her "Madam?"
"If you leave this place you will wander the wood forever and starve."
"Oh." By now the horse was facing her. "How do you figure that?"
"I am a witch."
"I see." The king smiled at her and scratched the back of his neck. "Well…thanks for the heads up…"
"There is a way to avoid this."
"Oh?" something about the situation felt ominous to him. Ways to avoid death were seldom fun. " and what's that?"
"I can tell you the way out."
"Oh." He tries to look charming. "Will you?"
The woman's scarves flapped and her wrinkles shook as she nodded. "For a price."
"Yeah." The king sighed. "I figured."
"You must marry my daughter."
"Great." He replied, wondering if she would worse than her first mother in law. As the woman led him back to her cottage he wondered I maybe she hadn't been lying about the whole starving thing in the first place and if he shouldn't have just consulted his compass, but by the time he had decided that he'd been had he was inside the cottage and her daughter, who was surprisingly only about thirty was packing up her things.
"Are you sure you want to marry me?" He asked her, as she handed him a suitcase. "I am a king, but my palace isn't much to look at, it's wood, and the lifestyle isn't particularly lavish…what with the seven children…"
"You have children?" the woman smiled at him. She was rather pretty really, with very pale skin, red lips, long dark hair and almost glowing ice blue eyes. Still, it was an unnerving sort of beauty. When she smiled he found himself looking for fangs. "I love children, they are so adorable. Children and swans."
"Oh…" The king took her second suitcase. "Well, we don't have any swans, and the children aren't exactly what you might call children these days….my oldest is twenty five and the youngest is fifteen."
She grimaced, then a slow smile spread across her face. "Well…I am sure eventually they will suit me just fine."
"They're good kids..." the king replied, leading her out to his horse. As he helped her mount he wondered if this was such a bad price to pay after all. She was pretty.
When they arrived at the (wooden) palace the king's six sons all came out to greet them He introduced them from oldest you youngest as Tom, Don, Jon , Ron, Rob, and Edwin. (The king had loved his first wife, but names had never been her forte) There was a great deal of hand shaking, and not a few dubious looks. The boys knew an evil beauty when they saw one.
The children, from oldest to youngest, were a blessed with their mother's straight, dark red hair which looked very handsome on all of the boys, especially with their deep dark eyes, but loveliest of all was their sister, the kings youngest child and Edwin's twin, Wynned, called Wynn. While the boys always came to meet their father Wynn seldom was paying enough attention to realize he was coming in. When her stepmother arrived she was holed up in royal pantry looking for chicken necks. Her maternal grandmother had sent her directions for a potion to make her nose smaller, and she had decided it would be funny to try it a large dose of it on Jon, who had always been so proud of his looks.
Meanwhile, in the courtyard, a number of things were happening. First the king rode back out to the forest, hoping to find the wolf still at large and leaving his wife in his sons' capable hands. Immediately afterwards Rob had the audacity to ask her if she was evil.. This had led to a lot of hurt feelings and a bit of sons being turned into swans. Quite a bit actually. This left the kings poor fiancé to drag the bags in herself, but she managed somehow.
When the king returned home he found Wynn in the yard, squatting in front of a chicken and examining its neck. She looked up and smiled at him. "How did the hunt go?"
"Oh…alright dear." He replied,, absently "What are you doing?"
"Looking at chicken necks."
"Oh." The king accepted this. Wynn's late mother had, after all, called her a free spirit. Half the time he didn't expect her to make sense. "Where are your brothers?"
Wynn shrugged.
"Do you know where those six swans came from?"
She shrugged again.
"Have you met your future stepmother?"
She fell over. "My what?!"
"Your stepmother." He offered her a hand up. " I'll take you in to her and explain the situation. We'll have dinner together when I find your brothers. "
They ended up eating dinner without the brothers. Wynn sulked most of the meal and wished she too had been smart enough to get out of it. She didn't really mind the fact that she seemed to have acquired an evil witch for a stepmother, but she did mind that she had to try to make small talk with her while her father went on about trying to find his wolf and her brothers were probably out having all kinds of fun without her. She consoled herself by retiring to her chambers early, read until it was too dark, and fell asleep on her writing desk.