One sunny afternoon eight months after the wedding Mimi sat on the sturdy limb of a maple tree to reread for the fifth time a book of local plant life. She was barely three chapters in when Lavender appeared at the bottom of the tree.

That was odd, though Mimi. Lavender was breaking the unspoken code of leaving her stepdaughter alone.

"Mimi," Lavender said in a sweet voice. "What are you doing?"

Was it not obvious? "Reading."

"Why?"

Mimi shut one finger in the book. "Why are you asking?"

Lavender smiled. "It's about time to start dinner."

That made no sense. The invisible servants did all the cooking. "Fascinating." She returned to her book. This was a very odd conversation.

"Aren't you going to help prepare it?"

"Why would I do that?"

Lavender's smile shook. "Mimi, I think it's time for you to learn certain domestic skills your dear father never bothered to teach you."

Eight months and suddenly this. Mimi sighed, closed the book permanently, and met Lavender's eyes. "What domestic skills?"

"You're approaching a marriageable age. How can we hope to marry you off if you are incapable of running a household?"

Mimi was speechless. In all her fantasies, actually getting married had never come up. Any small musings of anything close somehow involved the life she had here, including the invisible servants who did everything for her.

"Come down here," Lavender said.

Mimi obliged, slipping down from the tree in an unladylike fashion. For the first time since the wedding, she was embarrassed in the presence of Lavender.

But her stepmother's smile was now strong. "I only apologize we did not do this before."

Mimi could only nod. It was such a strange departure. She was actually doing something with her stepmother. It did not seem bad. Now that Lavender mentioned them, cooking skills were indeed something useful to have. But the situation certainly was odd.

Lavender led her into a room Mimi had never seen before—the kitchen. It had an oven and a wash basin and several smooth tables and all kinds of knives. And it smelled strongly of food.

"So this is where the food is made," she said for lack of anything else to say.

"Yes," said Lavender with a laugh. "My poor, dear girl. When I was your age I was in charge of preparing at least one meal a week."

"But my father has servents—"

"Magic." Lavender shook her head. "Useful magic and I am impressed with Weatherbold's skills. But it's just a trick. Don't worry, you're not taking their place. You are just going to learn how to do a few things in the kitchen. We'll begin by shelling peas."

Shelling peas? Mimi looked around, wondering just how she was supposed to begin this mysterious task. Peas grew in the garden, that much was known. But after that…

"They were just brought in from the garden." Lavender pulled a small basket bursting with peas from under the table. "Here. Just break open the pod."

Shelling peas turned out to be rather enjoyable. The invisible servants left her alone while she worked. Later on, Lavender showed her how to boil them with a bit of butter. Within two weeks, Mimi could bake bread. Not very good bread, but it was edible and Lavender seemed proud enough. Mimi liked working with her. The tasks of cooking were hard, but it made sense to learn them. Soon, Mimi was learning cleaning, washing, all sorts of useful household tasks that for so many years had been the domain of the invisible servants. Mimi wasn't a servant, of course. She was merely a girl learning proper woman things, so Lavender said. They were certainly were novel.

At first, Weatherbold didn't like the idea of Mimi working. "No daughter of min was raised to be a servant." He would run his hand through her hair, something he had done since she was a baby. She liked it. It made her feel safe.

"Father, I'm not a servant," Mimi would respond.

Lavender would laugh. "Mimi's mother died too early. I'm sure she would be teaching Mimi the exact same things."

"I suppose you're right," Weatherbold would finally say before returning to his dungeons.

As time went by, he spent more and more of the day there. Fewer and fewer travelers were coming to ask for things.

But Mimi was busy learning woman's things, the tasks of running a household. She hardly thought a prince would be impressed by such things, but practical was practical and she wasn't a princess anyway. She was learning them and had no time to notice how her father was always working and how visitors were fewer and further inbetween.

She didn't even notice how the invisible servants stopped doing their tasks.

By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late.

The morning was overcast. Mimi could feel the gentle weight of the clouds even before she opened her eyes. She did not mind. Overcast days were more interesting than others. She pushed the sleep away with a few choice words—morning was morning and up was up—and rolled from her bed onto the floor. Barely sunrise and clouds had made their mark. Usually she would have made some prediction of the day's fate but today she did not bother. She merely stretched, switched from her night dress to an old blue work dress, and gazed sleepily into her dusty mirror.

She was eighteen now, had been for several months. Her hair was still as yellow as ever, but the curl had developed into a constant and impossible series of kinks falling to her waist. Oh, well, who cared? She tied it into a thick, messy braid and called it good. That cute little girl of so many years ago had lost a fair amount of cuteness over adolescence. It was not as if Mimi considered herself ugly or even especially plain. It was just that old wishes of becoming a princess did not do much good in the matter of beauty. But again, oh well.

There were chores to be done.

Mimi slid her feet into some old shoes and headed down to the kitchen. She soon had a fire going for boiling water. Then she grabbed a basket and headed out to the herb garden.

In some ways, maybe some of her old princess dreams had come true.

Mimi was under a spell.

It was not a particularly obvious spell; after all, it had taken her several years to even become suspicious. Her wicked stepmother Lavender had taught her a few domestic skills. Mimi had caught on. Soon she could care for half the castle on her own. But why was she doing this? In the beginning it had been fun and unique, even romantic in a way. Then she came to her senses and realized the daughters of powerful sorcerers had no earthly for reason for needing to clean anything. So why did she keep doing it?

Lavender had been clever in casting the spell, that was for sure. Princesses were usually subject so spells much more dramatic. Maybe there was something to be said for something so sneaky as to keep a girl cleaning and cooking for years before she caught onto anything.

Weatherbold was also under a spell. Working and studying and all else in his precious dungeon. Mimi had not seen him in weeks. He loved his work but she knew perfectly well he loved her enough to at least make an occasional appearance.

Mimi was not gifted in magic, not like her father. She did not know how to go about breaking spells.

And that left her helpless to do anything but pick mint from an herb garden on a cloudy morning.

She had always liked herb gardens. Weatherbold, before he had all but disappeared, had allowed them to grow haphazardly about the castle for convenience's sake of grabbing what was needed when it was needed. Disorganized, yes, but Mimi was able to put up with it. The task of picking, sorting, and drying all fell upon her as well did pretty much everything else, and this little burst of the wild was a treasure. She liked bending down to the earth, wrestling leaves away from their plants, even the way the end of her braid trailed in the dust.

Her basket was barely lined with mint when she saw something rather strange.

A squirrel.

Now living in the middle of supposedly haunted woods did make the appearance of a squirrel rather un-extraordinary, but squirrels were not the kind of creatures to sit and stare at one for long periods of time. This one stared at her. Not out of the usual woodland creature curiosity. It stared at her and she stared at it and it stared back at her. She had the feeling it had been watching her pick mint for quite some time.

"Hello," she finally said, feeling rather stupid. Then again, there was no one else around for conversation.

The squirrel lifted one paw and distinctly waved.

Mimi gasped and dropped the basket. This was not normal. Even though the forest was supposedly enchanted, she had never heard any stories of enchanted squirrels waving or giving any other sort of human greeting.

The squirrel hopped closer to her, refusing to break the stare.

Mimi backed away. She must be seeing things. She must have accidently breathed in one of her father's potions. Or perhaps she had merely misinterpreted the squirrel's movements. It certainly could not have waved.

Then the squirrel did something she could not rationalize. It picked up a stick. It placed one tip of the stick in the ground.

It traced, quite distinctly, the word RUN.