'Selfish prince, you took me, yet I cannot be owned nor held in any prison you can create. You however, must remain in the prison of the body of a monster; For that is what you are, and always will be, until you shall teach another to love you as you are.
Look to the full moon, for only then shall you know all that you once were.'
-The Enchantress, the Tale of the Selfish Prince
Chapter 1: A Quiet Village
She wandered through the village just as the sun was peaking over the mountains. The grass was still dewy, wetting the hem of her dress as she crossed the field, a bucket in each hand. The buttercups and daises were still closed, yet to be awakened by the sun.
Humming as she walked, she made her way to the cowsheds, calling a greeting to Mabel and Greta, her father's two cows.
"I know, I know. I am early today," She conceded over their apparent grumbling, ushering them into the milking shed. "Sorry—got some errands to run in the forest, while Dad is feeling sick."
She thought of him at home, coughing and spluttering. She had to threaten him with camphorated oil to keep him bed bound for the day, promising to perform all his errands for him, and bring him breakfast.
That had seemed to satisfy him for the moment, she thought, chuckling as she set herself upon her stool. Swiftly braiding her waist-length brown hair out of her way, she set to work.
-0-
Her father's sickness worsened. She feared for his life so much that she did not leave his bed side day and night for a week, and her younger sister had to take care of her usual chores. With her mother gone, taken by the flux years before, and her father sick, she was head of the family now. She had to be strong.
She had to… he had to live! Her sister was too small to remember their mother, but the loss of their father would sap the rose from her cheeks and steal her smiles and laughter for the summers to come.
To ease her worries, she told her father stories. Most days he rarely stirred from his fever-induced sleep, though his mumbling and tossing seemed to still at the sound of her voice. She told him of the trolls in the mountains that jealously guarded caves heaving with the gold of stolen treasure; of lions that bore the wings of eagles and could speak, and spout flame from their jaws. She told him the story of the white stag, that prowled the forest- he who hunted it could cut out its heart and grant any one wish he desired above all else.
It saddened her that her sister, who was once so fond of listening to the fables and tales that their grandparents had told them, seemed angered by them. She would fold her arms in her bed at night, refusing to have Tifa tell her any more stories. They were all lies, she cried, knocking the book from Tifa's weary hands. She would not be lied to anymore.
So much like herself, she thought, yet so young… She only wished she had something left to believe in.
-0-
In her recent trips to the village, she had been subject to some uncomfortable scrutiny.
There were new faces in town, hunters they said, who were looking to settle here. Generally it took a while for the village to warm to outsiders, and she could not blame them. Who would choose to settle here, so far away from anywhere? Nothing exciting ever happened, unless it was a birth or a death or a marriage. It was the latter subject that reared it's head.
One of the men who were new in town, the hunter Gaston, had greeted her once day, offering to help her carry a sack of potatoes she was lugging home from the markets. Grateful for any assistance, though still wary that she knew nothing of this stranger, she politely and coolly accepted his offer for help, asking him to set it down a short distance from her home. She didn't quite feel comfortable letting him know exactly which house was hers, yet she didn't doubt he could find out if he tried. It was a very small town after all.
He tried to delay her, offered to carry the sack inside for her, though she refused his assistance.
Later that day, he had been asking after her name in the town Tavern, for she had not given it, asking if she were promised to another, if she were a maid and the like. She felt uneasy by these rumours.
She was old enough to marry, though no men in the village, least of all this stranger, captivated her in the slightest. He was tall, and handsome, sure, but there was just something that she couldn't trust. His eyes were black, his hands large enough to surround her waist and then some, and his manner was all too… manufactured.
That night, dressed in her long white nightgown and by the light of single candle, she tugged her favourite tome free of the bookshelf and huddled in the sphere of the flame to re-read her favourite tales. Fingers traced illustrations she had mapped to memory, of beautiful princesses with long golden hair, and regal princes astride noble steeds, brandishing gleaming swords at vile creatures.
There were no fairy tale endings, she knew, wiping away a stray tear. She would no doubt live and die in this village, as her mother had before her, and her mother before her.
-0-
Her father's health peaked and troughed. In the troughs, he could barely raise his arms to feed himself, though in the peaks he would visit the tavern, much to her dissatisfaction. He deserved a drink, he would tell her, ruffling her hair, as if she were still a small girl underfoot.
She would retort that Mother had let him get away with too much, and now she and her sister were paying the price. He wouldn't like that, but he still went to tavern regardless, returning home very late into the night.
On one such evening, he returned earlier than she had anticipated. She set aside her sewing; she had been repairing her sister's favourite bonnet in time for summer. "You are home earlier that I expected," She said despondently, rising to assist her father to the armchair. Once he was settled, she busied herself with the fire.
Tonight she felt angrier than usual with him. They were becoming steadily poorer, surviving only on the money they made selling cow's milk and cheeses that Tifa and her sister had gotten rather skilled at making using goat's milk. Their chickens yielded some eggs, though of late a fox had taken two of their six. Her father spent what little money she had left aside on ale, and goodness knows what else, in the tavern.
"Tifa, do come and sit by me. I need to speak with you about something important."
She raised her head at this, frowning, though she acceded, seating herself upon the small stool at the side of his armchair. She would sit there as a girl, listening to her mother read.
Her father reached out to touch her cheek gently, a soft smile upon his lips. No doubt he was recalling the same memory. "I met with a gentleman in the tavern this evening- a monsieur Gaston- Big handsome fella- do you know him?"
Her frown did not lessen. "Yes, I know of him and his party- the hunters from out of town."
"That's right. I was speaking with him for some time- he is quite taken with you, you know?"
"With me?" Her father's expression told her he had expected a more agreeable reaction. She did not blush or smile. Rather her frown deepened and her heart quickened its pace in her chest.
"Do not look so frightened child! You have done nothing wrong- he was merely enquiring if you were still a maiden, and if you were looking for a husband. He is looking to settle here in town – looking to build a lodge a little way up the mountain trail. He could be a good match for you."
"I don't know what to say…" Her fingers fluttered near her throat. "I barely know him."
"Nonsense- you have enough time to get to know him, while you are so young! I have told him I will consider his offer carefully and—"
"You told him?!" She bolted to her feet, fists curled tightly at her side. "What offer did he make? Am I some cattle that you are taking to market, father?!"
"Hush child-"
"I'm no child, father! I am a grown woman, and I will make my own choice-"
"Don't you dare raise your voice to me, young lady!" Her father wobbled to his feet also, outstretching her. "Do you think marriage is about choice? What about your sister- what about me?"
"What's going on?" Tifa closed her mouth, turning her head sharply to register her younger sister in the doorway, clutching the edge of her nightdress worriedly. "Why are you and Papa shouting?"
Tifa shot her father a glance, as if to say, this isn't the end of this matter before crossing the room towards the stairwell, where Rosa lingered. "Come now – father and I were disagreeing about something to do with the farm- weren't we Papa?" She shot a glare over her shoulder, and he nodded after a moment.
"You should both go to bed," He muttered, slumping back into his armchair. "I need to sit and think for a while more."
Happy to relieve herself of the unpleasantness of the situation, she gripped Rosa's hand and led her up to bed.
"You weren't really arguing about that… were you?" Rosa's eyes were wide and full of unshed tears, the covers pulled up to her chin. Tifa sighed, halfway towards leaning to blow out the candle. Instead the flame flickered in the wake of her expired breath.
"No, Rosa. Papa… Papa wants me to get married." Privately she wondered what had been promised, what words they had exchanged to make her father trust a stranger so readily?
"Well, that's good news, isn't it?"
"I… I don't know." She drew her shawl tightly about her shoulders, trapping out an unseen chill. "I don't want to get married. Not to just anyone, at least… I want…" She thought about the princes and the princesses in their finery, within the ink drawings of her storybook; there would be nothing like that for her, a peasant from a mountain village.
She sighed heavily, smoothing her thumb over her sister's cheek. "I had hoped that things would be different, I suppose. But maybe… Maybe they just can't be the way I want them to be." Perhaps her father was doing as a dying man would- trying to sort his affairs and marry off his eldest daughter, setting up provisions for her future. A future she had no hand in.
-0-
A week or so passed, and her father's health deteriorated further. A day arrived when she could no longer put off doing the chores. The house needed firewood; she needed to gather mushrooms from the forest while the season was right, and before the snows came; there were also herbs that grew down by the river that would ease her father's pain.
She gathered her cloak, her hunting bow (it would be foolish to pass up the chance to catch some game, if the opportunity arose), and her basket, sweeping out of the house a little before noon. She had checked upon her father before leaving—he was still, and sleeping peacefully.
The air was heavy with moisture; the village was very high up in the mountains, and sometimes sat among the very clouds themselves. This was one such day. Her cloak and her hair quickly became dampened.
She took the forest path down into the valley, wading through the sea of ferns, swollen and greedily advancing due to a long season of wet weather. Within a couple of hours her basket was overflowing with mushrooms and berries, though before she could turn home she wanted to try to find some elderwort, a plant that grew near the river. Brewed with willow bark this tea would help to ease her father's pain.
Her boots caked with mud, she finally slid into the bottom of the valley. The recent rainfall had swollen the river, and it flowed swiftly past. Still so high in the mountains, at its widest found she could still jump over it, if she took a run up.
It while she scrambled on her hands and knees among the shrubs and river plants, searching for Elderwort, when something moving over on the far bank caught her eyes.
She release an audible gasp, causing the creature to raise its' head, ruby eyes boring into hers. An age seemed to pass in which they stared at one another.
A white stag!
Her lips parted- but surely it could not be real! She dared not move, her fingers coming to life, and twitching. Her bow was strung across her shoulders; though reaching for it would surely send the creature running…
The forest pulsed and hummed around her; a woodpecker tapped out his song against a faraway pine, the echoes like whispers in the gloom; a tawny owl hooted, and bird wings fluttered and flapped in the branches up in the canopy.
Still frozen, her grandfather's voice whispered in her mind. 'Remember Tifa, he who hunts and catches the white stag and cuts out its heart will be granted one wish.'
It had to be a fool's errand… but at the very least game was always a welcome bounty from a journey into the forest.
It was now or never.
She was half-way through drawing her bow when the creature bolted. She was ready for him, taking a leap of faith across the river and only stumbling a little as she nocked an arrow in place, sprinting in pursuit through the forest.
She left the path long behind, diving through the buffeting ferns and leaping over fallen pines. Always the stag's white tail flashed tantalisingly up ahead, disappearing beyond a copse of trees on a ridge. She gave chase still, breath coming in puffs and wheezes, low spiny branches whipping at arms and face and rabbit holes threatening to trip her or worse…
Still she battled on, always with him in her sights…
Suddenly she burst out from the thick trees into a glistening meadow. The creature stalled up ahead, flanks steaming from the exertion of the hunt, poised and ready to spring away should she make her next move.
Before she could catch her breath he was off again, and she hauled herself forwards, closing just enough distance to steel herself, squint along her arm and let one arrow loose and arching through the air . It found its home in the hide of the stag. It screamed, birds in the near radius taking flight at the animals' anguished cry.
Still it fled, limping and impeded by the embedded missile. She gave chase again, knowing that the creature must slow soon, the metal head of her arrow lodged deep within its flesh chafing with each step…
Still it ran, and still she followed, until she knew no more the terrain they crossed. The forest ceased, giving way to rolling, untilled pastures and finally she came to a great iron gate that must mark the beginning of some great estate. The walls either side were in ruin, and the gate itself was rusted open.
Fresh blood on the overgrown path told her that her quarry had come this way; then she must follow, regardless of the impending twilight, and, if the rumble overhead was any indication, the impending storm. Perhaps she would find shelter here for the night and make her journey back tomorrow; once she had found her stag and had her wish granted, she would need not rush home with the Elderwort. All would be well again.