Circe could see her mothers slipping into and out of sanity. She saw the madness washing over their faces, overtaking them like a foul demon, and releasing them again when they heard Jacob’s voice. It was the strangest thing she had ever beheld, her mothers’ transforming like this before her eyes, returning to their former selves. She wanted Snow out of the room, away from her mothers. Hazel, take Snow down to my mothers’ house. Hazel nodded, hearing Circe’s thoughts. While the odd sisters were still being lulled by Jacob, she took Snow by the hand and led her out of the room.
“Mothers, listen to Jacob, please!” cried Circe. “He loves you. I know he does. Just listen to him,” she said as Jacob slowly made his way to his broken daughters, approaching them tentatively, like they were wild beasts that could attack at any moment.
“Lucinda, my girl. Can I please hold your hand? I felt so ashamed after I shunned you and your sisters all those years ago, when you came to the dead woods. But I was afraid.”
“I didn’t know who you were that day,” said Lucinda. Her eyes welled with tears. “We didn’t learn who you were until we read Manea’s journals many years later.”
“My daughters, please sit down with me. There’s so much I have to tell you. Come, let us sit and talk somewhere we will be comfortable.”
Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha let Jacob lead them into the large dining room. Circe watched, stunned at how calm they were in his presence. How willing they were to do as he asked.
“Come along, my little girls,” he said as he helped them to their seats, pulling a chair out for each of them, treating them as cherished daughters with tender touches and a loving look in his eyes. Circe stood in the doorway with Primrose, amazed by the scene, waiting for something to go wrong, worried the odd sisters would fall back into delirium, worried Hazel wouldn’t get Snow White to the safety of the odd sisters’ house before the odd sisters lost their minds again. “My girls, sit down. I need you to listen to me. All of you,” he said, looking at them.
Circe and Primrose took seats across from the odd sisters, eyeing the doorway as they waited for Hazel to return. Jacob was sitting at the head of the table, and the stone harpies that dominated the room loomed over them. He was smiling at Lucinda, lost in the beauty of her face, lost in the memories of their mother. “You’re so much like them, my daughter, so much like your mother and her mother,” he said, looking at all the witches. “And when I was brought back to life as a servant to the queens of the dead woods, and you were made three, I loved you even more. But the ancestors were angry with your grandmother for her plots to extend her reach outside of the dead woods and became convinced you would do the same. They foresaw that you would destroy the dead woods if allowed to stay within its thicket. I see now how mistaken they were.” Jacob seemed to drift off into a place only he could see, a place they couldn’t follow him to. Perhaps he was remembering those days, or perhaps he was just happy to be in the company of his brood of witches.
“Your grandmother Nestis once tried to extend her reach beyond the dead woods, just as you are trying to do. She wanted to make the world black, to unleash her creatures on the many kingdoms, but the ancestors stopped her and forced your mother to give you to the fairies. They convinced her it was the only choice.”
“But why didn’t you fight to keep us here? Why didn’t Mother?” Lucinda asked. She seemed like a lost, lonely child, not the terrible witch she had become.
“We did, my girl, we did! But your mother wasn’t strong enough. Not yet. She hadn’t come into her full powers, and by the time she was strong, she believed the ancestors. She found herself fearing you as much as the ancestors had. But I see now we should have kept you here, kept you close. We should never have unleashed you on the many kingdoms only to cause havoc and destruction! If it were up to your mother and I, you would have ruled here after your mother passed, not Gothel, not that poor wretched child, or her sisters here, as much as I love them.”
“Then why didn’t you tell us all of this when we visited here?” asked Ruby, not looking as convinced as her sister Lucinda that her father was telling the truth.
“Because, my girl, I believed the ancestors. And your mother believed them. I thought you would be the ruin of this place. I was bound to protect Gothel, as I am bound to protect all queens and future quee
ns of the dead, and to keep my mistresses’ secrets.” Jacob gathered the odd sisters’ hands and took them into his own. “Oh, my poor girls, you have been wandering the many kingdoms lost, forever searching for your true home, acting out your nature, the nature you inherited from your mother and her mother before her.”
Circe sat quietly, listening to Jacob. He was right. It made sense that her mothers would want to create a daughter in the same fashion their own mother had. But they had gone about it the wrong way. They had given too much of themselves away. They had lost too much.
“If you had been raised here, you would live within the confines of the dead woods. Here you would have had a purpose, a place to rule. The ancestors never should have tossed you into the unsuspecting world, where you are just chaos and destruction. Here you would have ruled after your mother.”
“You say our grandmother made us into three. What do you mean?” Martha asked, staring at Jacob with wide eyes. She seemed to be examining his every detail, as if the answer could be found in his face.
“What does he mean, Lucinda?” Ruby chimed in. They became manic, and Lucinda saw them spiraling into the same insanity that seemed to seize them more frequently than ever. “What does he mean?” they screamed, standing up and ripping at their black dresses and pulling at the feathers in their hair, tossing them onto the floor, and scratching at their own faces.
“Sisters, stop this at once! You will ruin the dresses I only just conjured for us before we left the place between. You don’t want to do that, do you? You don’t want to ruin your pretty new dresses.” Lucinda tried to calm her sisters in the best way she knew how.
Ruby and Martha stopped their fussing, but they still wanted to know what Jacob meant. “Lucinda, please tell us what he means. We don’t understand.”
“My dear sisters. My Ruby and Martha. I was born of our mother, Manea, and Jacob’s love, and Nestis, our grandmother, split me into three, creating you. She created you the same way we created Circe and helped Maleficent to create Aurora, don’t you see?”
“But it wasn’t quite the same spell, though, was it, Lucinda?” It was Hazel. She had been listening at the doorway, about to come in. Lucinda snapped her head around to look at Hazel.
“Another human with a witch’s blood! Blasphe-mous!” spat Lucinda. “At least Gothel was created by magic! We were her true sisters! Sisters in magic! You and your sister Primrose were taken from the village as babies by Jacob, did you know that? Taken away from your real parents, nasty human parents, and given Manea’s blood! To replace us! I should kill you where you stand!”
“You know that is impossible, Lucinda. We share the same blood. The blood of our mother!” Primrose stood up, clenching her fists around hexes, ready to defend her sister.
“Stop this, girls! Stop it at once!” Jacob’s voice boomed, but the witches wouldn’t hear him. Everything had fallen into delirium again. All the witches were wailing and screaming at each other.
“Did you know who you were when you came to us so many years ago? Is that why you took our sister Gothel from us and helped in destroying the dead woods?” asked Hazel, not hiding her contempt for Lucinda and her sisters.
“We took her because she was our true sister. Not like you. She was created with magic in the old way, as it was done for generations by the queens of the dead woods! We wanted her for ourselves. We wanted our family back!” hissed Lucinda, clenching her fists, digging them into her own flesh with anger.
“And then you abandoned her! You left her to go mad and wither to a husk while trying to bring us back, stringing her along for years, making her believe you would help her!”
“We wanted to help her! We tried. But we had to find a way to bring Circe back! We had to save Maleficent.”
“But if you had just used our mother’s spells, the spells used for generations by our ancestors, and not tampered with them, none of this would have happened. Instead you took our mother’s spell and made it your own! You twisted it and turned it into something destructive, like everything you touch, Lucinda. We loved you when you came to the dead woods, you know we did! You could have told us who you were and stayed to live here with us. We could have been happy together. We loved you so well, Lucinda. We were happy to have other witches in the dead woods. Someone to teach us magic. But you used Gothel, took our spells and twisted them, making them rebound on you and your dragon fairy-witch, and destroyed everything in the process!”