“You specimen of beauty,” said the wicked woman, “now you are finished.” And she walked away.
—“Little Snow-White,” the Brothers Grimm, translated by D. L. Ashliman
1.
Once upon a time, there lived three wicked women. An abusive stepmother who tried to keep Cinderella from her Prince Charming. An envious queen who tried to kill Snow White with a poisoned apple. And a kidnapping witch who locked Rapunzel away in a lonely tower.
No doubt you’ve heard about these women—their villainy, their treachery, their evil. Everyone has. We definitely had. Their stories, after all, have been told time and time again.
Except for this one. Which begins one nondescript day in the waiting room of Dr. Youngblood’s Miracle Spa, where these three women, known throughout our kingdom as the Wickeds, went each week to have their wattles sucked out, their wrinkles erased, their undereye bags lightened. Such flaws are unwelcome to any woman, but for the Wickeds, with their sullied reputations, they were a particular liability. Optics can be a bitch.
The Wickeds knew of each other, but in all their years at Dr. Youngblood’s, they’d never spoken. Instead, they cast sidelong glances as they leafed through issues of Modern Princess or Her Majesty, skimming fawning articles about the daughters who had disavowed them.
But on this particular day, as they were paying for their treatments, they saw the nurses giggling and pointing while reading an old issue of Today’s Royal. Now, the Wickeds had been on the receiving end of such cattiness on countless occasions, but this was the first time the laughter had been aimed at them collectively, so maybe that explains what happened next.
“What are you sniggering at?” demanded Cinderella’s wicked stepmother, whose real name, by the way, is Gwendolyn. Queen Elsinora—whom you probably know as Snow White’s murderous stepmother—snatched the magazine, which was open to a feature entitled “Wickeds: Ugly Is as Ugly Does.”
“Oh, this is beyond the pale,” Rapunzel’s abductress, whose real name is Marguerite, exclaimed. “My nose does not look like that. I had it reshaped by a piranha years ago—dreadfully painful,” she added, touching the small scars left by the fish’s sharp teeth.
“If you think that’s bad,” Gwendolyn countered, “look at what they did to me. They gave me pockmarks and made my eyes bloodshot. Who has eyes that red?”
“Ahagh,” answered Elsinora. Her mouth was still a bit paralyzed from the snake-bite treatment, and her lips were swollen from the bee stings, so her words were garbled, but Marguerite and Gwendolyn got what she meant: a hag.
Villain was one thing. But hag? And after all the gold they spilled at Dr. Youngblood’s!
“I need a drink,” Marguerite said.
“Me too,” Gwendolyn agreed.
Elsinora gave a thumbs-up, and so that afternoon, instead of retreating to their drafty castles, their decrepit homes, their remote towers, the three women went to the Bramble Inn. After a stiff round of spindle pricks—Elsinora’s sucked through a porcupine quill because her mouth still would not fully open—they pulled out the copy of Today’s Royal.
“Maybe it’ll be less painful if we read each other’s?” Gwendolyn suggested. Marguerite and Elsinora agreed. Gwendolyn went first. “‘Looks like karma has caught up with Rapunzel’s Evil Abductress. While the notorious kidnapper was pardoned by her former captive, Mother Nature has shown the so-called Mother Gothel no such mercy. Her face is ravaged by time and evil.’” Gwendolyn shook her head. “Oh, heavens to beanstalk.”
“Please. I’ve heard it all before,” Marguerite said. “I wish they’d stop calling me Mother Gothel, though. It makes me sound like a prison warden. Though I suppose that’s the point.” She reached for the magazine. “Shall I read yours, Elsinora?”
Elsinora nodded. “‘The Crazy Catwoman of the kingdom continues on her surgery rampage.’” Marguerite paused to check in with Elsinora, whose grimace was a tad feline, a side effect of the pecking-crows eye treatment. “‘With a face like that, one wonders if she ever looks in the mirror.’”
“Every single day,” Elsinora said grimly, the spindle prick having loosened her lips. “And my magic mirror tells me much worse.” She reached out for the tabloid, eager to switch to someone else’s misfortune. “Let’s see what it says about you, Gwendolyn.”
“Have at it,” Gwendolyn said. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard.”
“‘Too bad the birds didn’t peck out Lady Gwendolyn’s eyes,’” Elsinora read, “‘for it might have spared her the mortifying sight of all those chins she keeps growing.’” She paused to look at Gwendolyn, who, in spite of her bravado, looked quite pained.
“My poor girls,” she said.
“So it’s true?” Marguerite asked. “The birds pecked out your daughters’ eyes?”
“Not the birds. It was Cinderella. They were doing her bidding. Typical! That girl was always enlisting animals to do her dirty work. Not that the stories mention it. No, it’s all about me, the abusive stepmother, who forced her daughters to cut off their toes and heels.”
“Well, I saved Rapunzel from untold danger, gave the girl a loving home. I kept her safe!” Marguerite said. “But do those tell-alls ever mention that? No, they do not. They just paint me as a vain, childless crone.”
“Oh yes, they do love to play up the childless bit, don’t they?” Elsinora said. “As if we weren’t the ones who raised the brats. That whole business of me trying to murder Snow White because I was jealous of her beauty is pure fabrication. I grounded her after I caught her sneaking out to meet a prince.” Elsinora sighed. “I was trying to set some boundaries—lord knows her father wouldn’t. But then she ran away into the woods and told everyone I’d tried to kill her.”
“Believe you me, I know Rapunzel is behind my bad press. And for what? Because I made her cut her hair! And I’m the vain one?” Marguerite shook her head. “I tried telling my side of the story, but no one believed me.”
“Nor me,” Elsinora added.
“No one believes any of us,” Gwendolyn said.
They were right about that. No one did. Certainly not us.
2.
After that, the Wickeds started meeting regularly at the Bramble Inn. A few dates in, however, they noticed the horses all staring, the birds peering at them from the window ledges, songless and flightless.
“If you ladies don’t mind a hike,” Marguerite said, “I have a nice bottle of briar rosé chilling at my place.”
And so the three Wickeds decamped to Marguerite’s. It was quite a ways out of town, shrouded in a copse of oak trees. But the tower itself was in a sunny clearing, the air fragrant with wild jasmine. Marguerite yanked on an old rope ladder, and the three climbed up to the tower. Once inside, Gwendolyn and Elsinora gushed over the view, the light, the puffy white couches, the bowls of fresh fruit. “This place should be featured in Royal Home,” Gwendolyn said. “Not that it ever will be.”
“Thank you,” Marguerite said. “I chose it so the girl would have expansive views, and I tried to make it as homey as possible.” She uncorked the wine and laid out a platter of spicy dragon cheese. “We used to have such fun, singing songs, making up skits. I’d spend hours brushing her hair. She’d cry when she was little. ‘Mama,’ she would protest, ‘I have a sensible scalp.’”