Poor Unfortunate Soul (Villains 3)

Ursula’s arms were outstretched, ready to embrace them. The sisters scuttled tentatively as one into Ursula’s embrace, which eased their concern and relaxed them with the fact that Ursula was not cross with them.

“I see you are wearing our gift,” said the sisters in unison, spotting the golden seashell necklace around her neck. All were worried Ursula would be enraged if she ever learned it had been stashed away in their pantry half-forgotten all that time.

Ursula laughed, this time at the sound of the sisters’ scratchy voices and at the state of the drooping feathers in their pitch-black hair.

“Thank you, my dear friends. You will have to tell me how you got it back from my brother at some point. Or was it Circe? I didn’t ask her when she brought it to me. And where is Circe? I’m surprised she isn’t with you.”

Circe.

The mention of her name was like knives being plunged into the odd sisters’ hearts. She had been a source of heartbreak for them, the reason Lucinda had called on Ursula for help. Circe was the reason the odd sisters cried endlessly, vainly crying her name into the darkness, hoping she would at last return on account of their pleas for forgiveness. Circe hadn’t answered her sisters’ calls, so they summoned the sea witch for help. Of course, Ursula would want something in return. She always did.

She was the maker of deals.

Lucinda spoke first. “Circe, our beloved, has gone far from us….” Her deep red satin gown was stained with tears, and like her sisters’, her eyes were smudged with black coal makeup that had streamed down her cheeks from long hours of crying.

“She’s so angry with us! She’s ventured where our magic cannot follow,” continued Ruby.

Martha’s sobs were almost too violent for her to speak. “That’s why we’ve come to you, Ursula. We want to see our little sister again.”

Ursula asked the obvious question: “Have you tried to summon her, dears? In one of your many enchanted mirrors?”

The sisters broke down crying again.

“She must have done a spell when she left that keeps us from summoning her!” Martha’s sad bulging eyes, which were so much like her sisters’, were filled with grief and fear.

Ursula could tell they were truly afraid. She couldn’t recall ever seeing her friends in such a state, so full of regret and so grief-stricken. “I promise you, Martha, I will help you find Circe. I promise each of you, my dearies, you will see your little sister again.”

Then Ursula smiled one of her magnificent grins, which slowly transformed into something a bit more mundane as she used her magic to assume human form and took the sobbing Martha into her arms. She knew the sisters would give anything to see Circe again, and as much as she wanted to help them—and of course she would be happy to do so—she just so happened to be in need of the odd sisters’ special brand of magic in return for her favor.

The dark green gingerbread-style mansion with gold trim and black shutters was perched precariously on the rocky cliffs. Its roof, shaped like a witch’s cap, was obscured in mist and encircled by screeching crows.

“Is the Dark Fairy to join us?” asked Ursula as the four witches made their way to the odd sisters’ home.

“No! No! Water and fire do not mix!” said Lucinda as Ursula laughed. Ursula wondered why the sister witches so feared a convergence between her and the Dark Fairy.

“We fear nothing, Ursula, but we see and hear everything,” Lucinda said casually, giving her the side-eye as they headed up the crooked staircase, which creaked with every step.

Ursula mused over the many locations in which she’d visited the house. She wondered if it grew chicken-like legs and moved on its own steam or if the sisters just conjured it wherever they desired. Surely it was simply summoned, but she loved the image of the sisters riding in their witch’s-cap house powered by giant leathery chicken legs, the witches cackling within the entire way. The thought made her laugh as they entered the queer little house in which she’d so often been a guest. The location might have changed often, but the house, with its quaint little kitchen, remained the same.

The sun shone through a large round window on the main wall that looked out over the old queen’s apple tree and the waves crashing onto the rocks. The shelves were filled with beautiful teacups in differing patterns, as if collected from various sets. Ursula wouldn’t be surprised if the sisters simply slipped cups they fancied into their purses. She wondered if each cup had a unique story—the story of its owner and of its encounter with the dreaded sisters three.

Which of those cups, Ursula wondered, belonged t

o the old queen, or to the horrible sisters Anastasia and Drizella? And which belonged to Maleficent?

Off the kitchen was the main room with a large fireplace. Its mantel was imposing and flanked by two enormous ravens that gazed out into the nothingness with steely eyes. The room had an eerie light, colored by the stained glass windows with images of the witches’ various adventures. One of the windows had a simple red apple. It was lonely and sad, Ursula thought, but perhaps that was because she had heard the old queen’s tale from the sisters many years before.

How many stories had she been told sitting near that fire when she deigned to take human form? That human form—that creature, she thought—it wasn’t at all to her liking. She felt small and weak when hiding in her human shell. Her voice also sounded different—not as booming or demanding. There was no power in it.

No majesty.

She couldn’t fathom how humans had survived as long as they had in those weak sacks of flesh, always in pain, always walking or sitting on hard furniture. It was horrible, that human nonsense.

At least she had Lucinda, Ruby, Martha, and their charming cat, Pflanze, to distract her from the pains of being human. Pflanze, the sisters’ tortoise-shell cat, blinked her black-rimmed golden eyes slowly at the witches in salutation.

“Hello, Pflanze,” Ursula said, smiling. Pflanze adjusted her paws and blinked again, welcoming Ursula to her home. Pflanze could see through the sea witch’s human form to the creature she really was. And the cat thought that creature was even more beautiful than the form the sea witch had taken so she could walk among humans.

Oh, it was beautiful enough, Ursula’s human guise. She had large dark eyes and full deep-brown hair that framed her heart-shaped face. Anyone would find her beautiful, but Pflanze loved the sea witch’s true design, and it was easy to see the witch preferred it, as well.