History is Written by the Victors
And that was the end of it. Maleficent, Aurora, and their two kingdoms got their "happily ever after". And yet, that's not the version everyone remembers. A wise man once said, "History is written by the victors," and while you and I know Maleficent won, we also know that the tale was not written in her favor. Something happened after ever after that changed the story.
A Second Chance
No one attended his funeral. Stefan was the King in title, but his subjects had less faith in the man then they did in the quality of their water. His decline began after the christening of his daughter, the now Queen Aurora, and the curse placed on her by the moral but maligned fairy Maleficent. The first step was sending his daughter away. He knew the fairy's hated him for personal crimes committed long ago, so he felt that the only way to protect his daughter from any further harm would be to grant her care to three well meaning but completely incompetent fairies.
The second step was immediately burning all the spinning wheels in the land and prohibiting their use. This left the kingdom's seamstresses at a loss, unable to create new fabrics. Most had to purchase expensive imports, and some rebellious women kept hidden wheels in their cellars. Fashioned changed to require less fabric with shorter skirts and fewer layers, and second-hand clothing use boomed.
The third step was sending out daily troops to search for the evil fairy. Few men returned from these expeditions, and always with empty hands. To cover his losses, Stefan instated a draft, with all boys over age 17 called for service. As a result, the population plummeted. With the men all but gone, women began to gain power within their communities, taking jobs as shopkeepers, metal smiths, even doctors to some degree.
About 12 years into the Dark Times, King Stefan called on all of the remaining ironworkers to come to the castle. He granted them exception from the draft, even discharging those already serving, causing many young men to take on the profession. Foolishly viewing smithing as escape from the heavily risky military service, the boys received a shock upon entering the castle and having the doors bolted behind them. Stefan ran the men like animals, working them day and night in dark, sweltering sweatshops, beating glowing ore until they collapsed.
Stefan remained essentially oblivious to the unrest within his kingdom. With his mind poisoned by fear and hate, his sanity to slowly begin to slip away, like melting ice; going, going, gone.
His servants often caught him speaking to Maleficent's wings, the ones he brutally cut off to earn his crown. He believed they contained her spirit, and by speaking to them he actually spoke to her. He kept them in a glass coffin, wrapped in crisscrossing chains, a gruesome trophy of a half-done deed. In retrospect, perhaps his biggest regret in life was not killing the horned she-demon when he had the chance. Then, his heart swollen with the memory of young love was unable to end the creature. He remembered the iridescence of her eyes, like jewels glittering on her porcelain skin. He remembered her sweet, full lips, blood red and hot against his own. He could recall, even as he stared at them old and dusty in their glass prison, the softness of her beautiful wings. He knew of their strength and speed, more powerful than an ox and swifter than a stallion.
Now, he knew better. He knew that a demon could appear beautiful, just as the devil himself was once beautiful, for he once lay in heaven before God cast him out. And he knew to distrust what he saw, for when your heart is on fire smoke gets in your eyes.
He knew now, after she cursed his daughter with a fate worse then death, a frozen sleep so her kingdom would forever live in a desperate hope for her awakening, that he hated her. He hated her because she allowed the child to live her youth in happiness, until she just reached the peak of her life, then cruelly took it away from her. He hated her for the twisted "solution" she presented; he knew what she meant when she said "true love's kiss", and he knew for that, the witch must die.
Cue madness and paranoia. Cue the 16-year decent of a once promising man into darkness. As he fell from his ivory tower, so too did his subjects lose faith in their once lionized monarchy. By the end, their allegiance was purely formal. Though they wouldn't say it aloud, many rejoiced with the change in power following his death.
No one came to his funeral, not even his daughter. The one person in attendance was the customary priest, who read his last rights, and, of course, the grave digger. Sealed in a simple oak box with a plain marble headstone, his grave was indistinguishable from any other in the graveyard, save the inscription, which read:
"Let all who pass here read and know
From orphan to King this man did grow
But the lying, greedy ways of men
Kept him from what he could have been"
Late on the night of King Stefan's burial, a set of cloaked beings arrived at his grave with shovels. They quickly unearthed his shallow plot and lifted his coffin on planks. Clumsily, they replaced the dirt in a poor attempt at disguising their deed, and then ran off into the night with the King's body hoisted above them like the spoils of a hunting trip.
The next morning, as the church groundskeeper made his rounds of the land, he noticed heavy footprints in the fresh soil and a smaller mound than usual for a new grave. Though it seemed curious, the groundskeeper thought little of it. Who would care about a fallen King anyway?
Miles from Aurora's kingdom, away from the magical Moors and mires, deep, deep into the surrounding wood began another kingdom, singly ruled by a beautiful yet vain Queen. Everyday, she would travel to the north tower and look into a vast, dish-like mirror hung upon her castle wall, asking it who was the fairest in the land. For years the mirror responded with one name; her own. Recently, the mirror began to recite a new name, the name of the girl she inherited from her late husband's previous marriage. Desperate to regain her status, yet unsure of how to do so, she called upon a relative, King Stefan, the man who married her cousin, the late Queen Leila. The two met at her late uncle-in-law, King Henry's funeral, and had been in contact ever since. Distraught after hearing of Stefan's untimely end, she determined that he could not die by this cruel twist of fate and instead she would take matters into her own hands.
The cloaked men arrived by late afternoon. The Queen met them in the yard and instructed them to bring the body down to the room deep in the castle's cellar. In the cold, stone-lined room she had already begun to concoct the brew that would return the color to Stefan's cheeks.
The men lifted the body onto a wooden table, posing him in a position of quiet repose. As they gathered the empty coffin and planks, the dark Queen pointed a slender finger at one of the men.
"Not you. You stay."
She had the man sit on the floor and gave him a metal cup of clear liquid to drink from. Thankful for her generosity, he quickly threw it back, parched from the long journey. A minute passed and his eyes began to droop. Eventually his fingers lost sensation and he dropped the cup. Not two minutes later, the bearded man slumped over himself, asleep. The Queen managed to drag his body onto an adjacent table, with much huffing and puffing. She plucked a greasy hair from his newly unconscious head, and then turned to pluck one from the former King's greying scalp. Quickly, she threw the two strands into a bubbling cauldron at the end of the room, producing a curling, yellow smoke. Giddy, she grabbed a bottle from her shelf, throwing in three mermaid's scales, and then from a jar she poured glittering powdered unicorn's horn. She hovered over the roiling stew, mumbling a slew of words in a forgotten tongue. The mixture calmed, slowly fading into a muted gray. She smiled devilishly, staring into the pot, as she realized the potion was working.
"And finally," she whispered, looking up at the two bodies ahead of her, the fire below her casting eerie shadows on her sculpted face, "a sacrifice."
Opening the door, she called up the stairs to Aden, the young boy who tended the castle fireplaces. In less than a minute, a small, dirty looking boy of eight bounded down the stone stairs, his hands stained black from soot and charcoal.
"Aden, I need help with my fireplace," she purred, gesturing for him to come inside. Unsuspecting and innocent, the boy wandered in, only noticing the purple, bloodstained body after hearing the lock click behind him.
In a sudden burst of savagery, she grabbed the boy by his sandy blond hair and dragged him with her to the seemingly innocuous cauldron at the end of the room. Amazed by her own cruelty, she was aware of her own action yet had no no control over them, and no intention of stopping. It was as if the fumes from the cauldron produced a sort of intoxication, where she lost control of her own functions. As she drew nearer, she produced a dagger from her hip. Holding the squirming, tearful boy up tall, she took it and sliced open his throat, allowing the first drops of his dying blood to spray into the pot. Immediately, the boil began again, and the color changed from dull dishwater blue to almost blinding silver. Gritting her teeth, she heaved her former fire boy away, no longer gurgling from choking on his own blood, and stepped over his limp, scrawny legs to get to her ladle faster.
Dipping it into the mixture, all the color became concentrated in the one dose, shining brighter than the crown on her head. Carefully, she carried the ladle to the deceased King Stefan, the key for her future. Lifting his head with one hand, she tilted half the liquid into his slack jaw, adjusting so she made sure it all fell down his throat.
Next, she moved to the still breathing man beside him. She remembered hiring him for the job. He was a huntsman and, like the others that retrieved Stefan's body, known for his stealth. She lifted his head and poured the rest of the silver liquid down his throat.
Stepping back, she watched as their bodies began to glow from the inside, like a candle flame hidden by walls of wax. The glow began to ball itself in King Stefan's throat, and from his still cracked mouth a golden wisp emerged, warm and glimmering as it slowly rolled through the air towards the huntsman's body. Twisting gently, like a leaf on a breeze, it slipped through his parted lips and mingled with his still swimming glow.
The Huntsman shot upright and heaved a strangled breath, sound as if he'd just emerged from the depths, having nearly drown. He turned to face the woman standing beside him, smiling like a crook that got away with it.
"Who are you?" he whispered, hoarse from his sleep.
"I am the one who will change your story."