Chapter 7: The Trespasser


As he ran, night gave way to dawn. The sun bled onto the trees ahead. Henry's scarf, flecked with water, whipped up in the wind to brush his face. If he could only clear the town's borders, escape the boundaries of his dream into hers, he might stand a chance.

He needed to turn this nightmare around and enter Maleficent's mind. Not to control her dreams the way she was controlling his. This place belonged to her, she wouldn't let him do that. But, just maybe, he might find something there to sway her, and get her to help him.

It wasn't much, but it was all he had.

Henry bounded off the streets and into the forest. He didn't know how long he ran for, and he had no memory of how far he'd travelled. The sun came up into midmorning, and the downpour turned to a drizzle and then to a clear, dry day. It might really have been hours. But time is fickle in dreams, and Henry didn't think he'd been running for nearly as long as it felt.

After all, if he had, he'd be long dead.

The peace, the sudden change of mood, compelled him to slow to a jog. Gone were the ghouls of his funerary nightmare. Birds chirped, the forest air smelled fresh. Henry came to a complete stop and looked about. There was something different about this place.

Not a thing he could see, or hear or touch or smell. Really, it was more of a hunch. An impression, like things were different here. More magical, even.

Could this be the enchanted forest?

If it was, then it had worked. It had really worked! He was inside Maleficent's dream.

Now he just had to find her, and convince her to help him.

When he looked down, Henry saw a trail leading on.

Excited, letting himself dare to hope, he followed it. It wound its way through a gateway formed of two titanic trees, the kind he never would have seen in the world he came from. It led, soon enough, to a wide clearing filled with nothing but grass and a humble cottage.

Henry made to run forward. But he'd barely taken a step when the cottage door opened, and a hooded figure stepped outside. Beneath his peasant's robes the man seemed to float, and he moved so quietly and deliberately that he radiated with malevolence.

Henry froze for the slightest second. Then he stole off the track, and ducked behind a canopy of rocks to watch.

The man stopped. His gaze turned to the spot where Henry hid. He couldn't have seen the boy... but he still took a moment, as if checking the air, as if he could smell him.

Clutching one of the rocks, Henry kept his head low. He knew this was only a dream, and anyway, at this point he had nothing left to fear. Still despite everything he'd been through though, even the car crash and being turned to stone and walking a street full of ghouls, all he knew was he didn't want this man to see him.

You're running out of time, he reminded himself. But something told him to wait.

In the clearing, the figure drew back his hood, and Henry breathed out in relief. Just an ordinary man. Balding and with a beet-red face and perhaps overly intense eyes, but nothing to be alarmed about.

"Daughter!" the peasant called. "Daughter!"

Almost at once, a girl maybe thirteen or fourteen came running from the bushes. Her hair was blond, and curly like what remained of her father's, and – though Henry had to look closer to believe this – she had a huge black lizard with yellow spots perched on her shoulder.

She stopped before the man, and seemed to curl up meekly under his gaze. They started talking. Henry couldn't make out the words, only that her voice was timid and his, deep and foreboding. Henry chewed his lip, but ended up deciding to move closer.

Going prone by a log at the edge of the clearing, he noticed something didn't quite seem right about the peasant. The shade of his skin was a sickly greenish-yellow. And his eyes kept bulging out like they might pop.

He was saying, "Next time, you must tell me when you leave home."

"I will, Father. I promise."

He peered at her for a long time. It reminded Henry of Regina, how she would let a silence drag out long enough to make him shift on the spot, trying to guess at what she was thinking, and whether she really saw straight through to what he was thinking, as she appeared to.

At last the man said, "Go inside. It's time for your lesson."

The girl wavered on the spot. In her face Henry thought he saw the slightest hint of defiance.

But then she turned and made for the cottage, with the lizard scurrying from one shoulder to the next.

The peasant followed after a pause, and closed the door.

Henry wasn't sure what to do next. Had he even come to the right place? If not, he'd already lost what little time he had left.

Eyeing the hut anxiously, he hopped the log and dashed forward. He kept away from the window's line of sight until he reached the wall. His heart pounded. Not the poison, he told himself – just that getting so close to this figure felt like dancing around a snake.

Fingers on the windowsill, Henry peered inside.

The interior was unremarkable. A single room with two straw beds led into a medieval kitchen, with berries in a basket on the counter. The girl sat on a stool by one of the beds and watched her father apprehensively. The lizard ran down her arm to curl up in her lap.

Her father was pacing, appearing half-mad as he wrung his fingers together. Henry couldn't help feeling intrigued.

"Magic," he said to the girl, "is all about power. And power, power is all about control."

Then he swept his hand, and the lizard levitated off her lap.

The girl leapt up. "Father, no!"

The lizard was thrashing, sinuously twisting and coiling itself in mid-air. It hissed, and – Henry watched this in amazement – it started spitting tendrils of fire from its mouth.

"Control is being able to command your surroundings, to always do as you please," the man mused, turning the lizard through the air with his hands. "It means you need never fear pain again, for pain is yours to wield."

"Father... please..."

"It means being able to punish for transgressions."

When a fork of flame caught on to one of the straw beds, the man – the sorcerer – snuffed it out with the most incidental brush of a finger. The girl dropped her gaze. "I'm... I'm sorry. Please."

At once, the lizard fell to the floor. She knelt to scoop it to her chest and hugged it tightly, as a child might a teddy bear.

The sorcerer regarded her for a moment. "Do you see? Do you see what I'm trying to teach you? With this power you can do anything. You never need to fear the way you feared now, not ever again. You are the one in control. I want that for you, child."

The girl mumbled something.

He leaned closer. "What did you say?"

She looked up. Henry thought that, amongst the fear, there was bravery in her eyes too. "I said I want you back to the way you were before."

The man sighed. "I see you're still not listening to me. If that is what you want – then make it so. Learn this power, and bend me to your will."

The girl petted the lizard. "Mother said there were other things you could use magic for. She said you can use them for good."

"Do not speak of that woman in front of me."

A deeper darkness had fallen over the man and his next breaths came heavy with malice.

"I permit you to see her once to a season, dear girl, out of my love for you. If you would have more than that, then you will need to take it with this power. Else quieten your tongue, or you shall not see her at all."

Henry could barely hear the girl when she said, "You loved her before, too."

Suddenly the scene had changed. Henry looked around to see the grass in the clearing had grown shorter, and frost bit at its tips. Snow had begun to line the branches on the trees, and the forest was as white as it was green. It was a different day, on the steppes of winter.

He was startled back to attention by a shuffling noise in the cottage. Henry ducked down, thinking the dark sorcerer must have seen him. But when he hesitantly raised his head again, the man wasn't even there. Instead, there was a woman kneeling by the girl's bedside, robed in a thick winter cloak, with black hair lacing out from beneath her hood.

The girl was sitting up, wiping sleep from her eyes. "Mother? You're not supposed to be here now, it's only been two moons! If he sees you –"

"He won't. But there isn't much time. You need to come with me, now."

The breathless look on her face was one Henry thought he might be familiar with. "We're leaving? But... he'll kill you."

"First he'll have to find me. Come."

Henry watched. The girl was putting on boots, while her mother scanned the windows as a wizened sentry. Henry managed to duck just in time to avoid being seen. Then the cottage door opened, and mother and daughter fled across the field, with the girl pausing only to scoop up her salamander lizard.

Henry didn't hesitate this time. He followed.

They were heading up the trail he'd come from. Henry darted into the bush again, and followed them stealthily along the road.

"We must move quickly," the woman was saying, her voice both maternal and strong. "There is a boat, it sets out in a day's time and where it sails, even he won't be able to follow. We must –"

"Mother!" the girl shouted.

They came to a halt, and so did Henry. On the road ahead, with arms folded across his robes and chin jutting out from the hood, stood the sorcerer.

As if to enunciate his presence, a roll of thunder shuddered through the earth. There were storm clouds blowing in.

Henry skirted closer, nimbly, unseen. On the road, the woman stepped in front of her daughter. "It doesn't have to be this way. You don't have to do this."

Beneath his hood, the sorcerer's voice was deeper, gravelly, and utterly unyielding. "First you tried to steal my power with a kiss. Now you want to take her from me too?"

"Zoso. You don't have to do this. Remember what I told you. You can control it. You're the one in control."

"Yes," he said. "I am."

His eyes flared, and a ripple of energy warped the entire road. The woman was raised off the ground, head peeled back and grimacing against pain.

"Father!" the girl screamed, running forward to pound his arm. "No, you can't, you can't!"

He threw her to the dirt with a shrug, and started forward. "I lived my entire life with nothing but the power to beg," he said. "The girl needs to see." And as he walked, he reached into his robe, to draw a twisted knife with a word embroidered into it.

Henry gripped the tree he was leaning on. He'd seen that dagger before, in a drawing. This was only a dream, but... as he watched, the terror in the young girl's voice from where she lay cut straight to his heart.

"I won't go with her! I'll stay with you, just let her go! You can't do this, no, please!"

"Zoso." With her own hood cast back, the woman had colour flushing her snowy cheeks, but those austere features didn't show a trace of fear. She had Regina's pride, but none of her pettiness. "I know the love you once had for me won't move you anymore. But, for the love of our daughter –"

He stabbed her through the chest.

Henry recoiled. He covered his mouth with his hands to keep from shouting out.

The girl screamed. She shrieked so loudly there wasn't a coherent word to be heard, just hysterical pain as she bent over in despair. Henry's eyes were wide open in shock. His legs went weak and he had to hug the tree to stay up. This violence was like nothing he'd ever seen... to him it was almost supernatural, a violation of his world, the blackest magic.

The man coldly watched as the life drained from her heart and eyes, before he drew back the dagger. Her body slumped to the earth.

The girl was crying "No, no," in between tears. "Bring her back. You bring her back!"

But the man only peered down at his blade, where the engraved name 'Zoso' glistened in blood.

He spared his daughter a glance, and began walking slowly back to the village.

The girl sat there, her dress in a heap, rocking back and forth as her grief turned from screams to mere sobs. She crawled, as though the weight of what had just happened wouldn't allow her to stand. She fell over her mother's body and buried her face in her arms.

Henry's mind reeled. He felt he'd just witnessed something that could never be unseen. The knife, tipped red with murder, would leave an imprint on his memory forever.

There came another roll of thunder, and rain fell at once.

Over the two bodies. Washing blood away in a stream.

The girl made no sound, but sobs racked her where she lay.

The lizard climbed up onto her mother's body. When its claws touched the girl's skin, she looked up and hugged it close once more.

"Diablo," she said. A strange look stole over her face. "Oh, Diablo. That man wasn't my father. My father would never, never..."

And with each word, the loss in her tear-streaked eyes gave way to something colder. She was breathing raggedly not with grief, but with hate. A brooding hate that stilled the crying, stilled all but the darkest emotions. Until there was nothing else left, because all the other feelings were broken.

As she looked up, fallen there over her mother's body, Henry knew she was going to see him. But he couldn't move. From the road, Maleficent locked eyes with him, and she was a shadow of what she was to become.