Chapter 15
Fifteen
Everything had fallen apart in a matter of days.
Red had disappeared in the Dark Forest. Her son was still alive.
Her geist had broken free from her control and torched a good chunk of the palace.
The Queen’s rage knew no bounds. For days, she locked herself in her chamber and would not open the door for anyone.
But the servants could hear screams and the sound of breaking glass quite frequently.
No one dared go near her. Nearly all of her meals remained untouched outside her door.
Only her gemstones and other items she used in making her magical potions were accepted, the door opening quickly before being slammed once more with a thunderous crash.
Her huntsman had been a weak-willed man, his heart too feeble for such an important job.
Her geist would have finished the task but for the magic that bound him to her being broken, and she could not recall him to her service, no matter how many spells she tried.
It seemed that she was now on her own. Never send a man to do a woman’s job, she thought to herself, especially one that you want done right.
She would go herself and kill Makellos with her own hands.
Then she would know the job was complete and done to her satisfaction.
No frail shreds of sympathy, no unlucky ties being broken.
Once her mind was made up on this matter, she searched and searched through her books for weeks on end.
She had to find the most appropriate and effective way to bring about Makellos’ demise.
Something simple. Brute force had not worked, nor had stealthy silence.
It was time to try a more tender approach.
Perhaps the only time she had ever considered being tender to her son, the radiant boy that had grown to outshine her.
She needed something that would be easy to transport and that would hold its magic until it was called upon, for she would have to travel and search for him.
Her Shadow had only told her the mountain foothills, and that spanned quite a long part in the south of the kingdom.
She finally found a manner that would be simple and effective.
A poisoned brew that would bring about the Sleeping Death.
It could be administered in a multitude of ways, but she already knew exactly how she could do it.
Makellos loved apples. He always had, ever since he was a child.
The beautiful ruby red ones were his favorite; he could never resist them.
It was perfect. She would poison an apple, then travel the mountain range until she found where Makellos had hidden himself.
She read down the page to where the antidote was written.
Every magical spell or potion could be reversed in some way, so she had to ensure that it was not a simple process to bring him back.
Very few people, if any, would know the remedy for a black magic spell such as this, but there was certainly a chance at pure luck.
At the bottom of the page, she read aloud to herself.
“The victim of the Sleeping Death spell may be revived by True Love’s Kiss. ”
She laughed a horrid laugh. No fear of that.
She knew there was no one in the palace that he considered a True Love.
She had seen to that throughout his childhood, that he never got too close to any of the servants, never spent a long time with any foreign nobles.
Any love that he might have had in the palace would be unrequited; no one in the palace knew where the prince was anyway.
And with luck, Makellos might be entirely alone in his hiding place.
Even if he was not, surely whomever found him dead-asleep would bury him, or, better still, burn him upon a pyre.
Once his eyes closed forever, she need not concern herself with what happened to his body.
She spent a sleepless night mixing the exact potion needed for the Sleeping Death.
She summoned a servant to bring her a basket of fruit along with the most beautiful red apple in their storeroom.
When the servant returned, the Queen took the single red apple into her hidden chamber where she had the bubbling concoction ready.
She dipped the apple into the swirling mixture.
The sickly, viscous fluid clung to it like a coating of sugar.
It seeped into the apple’s tender skin like sand absorbing water, the apple shriveling like a shrunken head, turning black with withered pits like empty eye sockets in an ancient skull.
Then it turned completely red once more, rosy bright. The perfect temptation.
She would need a disguise, for she could not go in her true form.
The irony of shedding her beauty to track down Makellos was not lost on her.
But it would be only temporary, and once Makellos was dead, she would never have to worry about him again.
She found a spell to transform her queenly raiment and astonishing beauty into the guise of an ugly old peddler woman.
She took the crushed gemstones and other elements needed, blending them together into a potion that she swallowed with no consternation.
The world began to spin, and she collapsed to the floor of her chamber.
Her limbs twisted and became gnarled, like branches on a lifeless tree.
Her golden hair turned a dull silver. Her butter soft skin with her rosy cheeks, ruby lips, and shapely eyes sunk and distorted, the hollows within them making her unrecognizable.
Her elegant gown shriveled and darkened into muddy brown and midnight black, her shoes aging into patched and worn buckskin that barely covered her liver-spotted feet.
She rose to her feet and looked into her magic mirror.
The face that looked back at her was hideous, twisted, and asymmetrical.
Her stooped waist and hunched back gave her the appearance of an old, feeble woman.
She shuddered, for she had never been more hideous in her life.
But it was the perfect disguise to entrap the kind-hearted prince.
She placed the poisoned apple into the basket of fruit before she slipped out of the palace via one of the servant stairwells.
She took one of the horses from the stable and rode it off into the darkness toward the south.
The foothills would take time to search, and she did not wish to be slowed by guards or alert others to her presence.
She would travel for days, weeks, months, for as long as it took until she found him.
And when she did, she would complete the job the others had failed to do.
Makellos, the fairest of all, would not live to see the next sunrise.