The strings of something kindred to a setar strummed a tune wholly unfamiliar. Even as her conscious mind recessed, she recoiled in recollection of her distaste for troubadours. Her contempt for the artful creatures sufficed in providing passport to presence of mind. She could not bring herself to decide what rankled more—the plaintive moan in which the crooner beseeched his audience to imagine foolish things of dreamers, or that the rapt listeners filled his upturned hat with silver coins and mysterious green notes. As she collected herself from the vertiginous fugue that confounded her only moments ago, the Mistress of All Evil was almost felled by a very human emotion—angst. Even so, the novelty of discomfiture was no distraction from the pelting torrents of water that almost succeeded in drowning her exactly where she stood.

The grandeur of the arc, just feet away, stood as a monument to the complacency of the comfort one finds in the familiar—a solace amid strange things in even stranger places. Strangest yet were the people, all of whom contributed, in some fashion, to the commotion surrounding her. The maelstrom only confirmed suspicions too strong to deny: she was in a world not her own. The peculiar reactions from the odd garden’s colorful band of patrons, onlookers and passersby was all the more bizarre. Never had she been in the presence of so many jesters and harlequin fools at a single time! Alas, perhaps this was no garden at all, but the Court of Miracles. She thought she recognized the Church standing across the road, although it was not quite as it once was. Before she allowed herself the distraction of further perusal, a cacophony of weirdly sounding horns drew her attention to a cavalcade of the most unusual horseless carriages. While she pondered if the metallic hulls were drawn forth by magic, memories rushed in at once with such intensity that it shook her, impelling her to give flight. She magically summoned her wings sprout from her back, not for an instant doubting their conjuration. As she propelled herself forward, she fell over the edge of the circular fountain and onto the park’s pavement, for her wings never came. Smarting in pain, ugly memories transported her to the events that consequenced this very moment, with her on hands and knees and sopping wet.

“My demise—it was by mortal hands, served to

me.”

Her final thought was punctuated by the enchanted blade piercing through the glistening mosaic of reptilian scales, and directly into her heart. It was then, in a cloud of the blackest smoke, that she came undone, parting from the world she had fashioned in her own terrible image. She was magnificent and vainglorious—a horrifying beauty who proudly basked in her own splendor with her realm being nothing but an altar for all to genuflect in reverence.

Although hubris led to her undoing, her pride was not without merit. The majesty of the trees in the Dark Forest were but a quaint notion when she came to be. Winged as she was, most believed her to be of the Fae. Maleficent was, in fact, begat by the fallen archangel Lucifer and the serpentine siren, Mélusine. Legend tells that so great was the suasive power of her song, that it was in the thrall of her melisma where Lucifer sealed his fate in eternal damnation. She was a harbinger of death with her dulcet tone luring all who heard it to a watery grave. Lucifer, however, was himself in possession of an unnatural beauty, and for the first time, Mélusine was herself equally bewitched. Taken as they were with one another, he took her as his consort, and so too, she took him to her subterranean lair.

Hidden from the feeble sight of man, within the shimmering waves of the Caspian Sea, there was a hell mouth. They married there, and on what would become Walpurgisnacht, Mélusine birthed Maleficent, her second daughter and Lucifer’s only child. Their offspring was a cataclysm, a collision of Old World paganism and the burgeoning Christian faith. Red turned the skies upon her arrival and remained so for a moon. It did not rain for a year and the harvests to be reaped were pestilence, plague and famine. Surely thought to be the fiendish work of witchcraft, legions of accused women perished at the hands of vengeful mobs. The bloodshed provided no reprieve from the hell released upon Earth.

Maleficent spent her formative years above ground, orphaned of true parents and oblivious to the chaos her birth unleashed. Deep in the Dark Forest where Lucifer left her, she lived in a hovel surrounded by saplings; it provided shelter, and the illusion of a home. Maleficent lived with three women. There was a young maiden—not much older than she—who provided sorority, a woman of middling age who reared her as a mother would, and an elder who freely passed on her wisdom to her heritors. Maleficent was comfortable, but never enough at ease to consider herself truly content. Her quiet turmoil was a constant companion throughout her childhood. It remained so until the fortnight preceding her sixteenth birthday, when a bewitching dirge came to her every night in dream.

It was deep in her sleep Maleficent learned the truth regarding the three women who had reared her. She did not take what she considered to be the utmost betrayal lightly, and it served as a catalyst for what was to come. For four days she seethed, avoiding the traitors she once thought to be her kin. On the eve of her birthday, she sat on a rock in a clearing not fifty yards behind the cottage, pondering the falseties of her life thus far. Lost in thought, she had not noticed the black goat emerging from the adjacent thicket. She was startled, but not frightened by the small beast. As it approached her, she notice a rounded reddish fruit in its mouth. She first thought it an apple, then settled on it being a radish or beet as the goat closed the distance between them. Just the night prior she had supped venison with beet juice and a portion of apple pie. “Even the goat has had its fill of the Forest’s monotonous offerings,” she thought to herself before turning away in disinterest. As if it read her mind, the goat snapped the fruit in half. The cracking sound of the hard rind splitting open returned her attention to the creature, and at her feet, she saw the most delightfully strange pome. The seeds of the pomegranate glistened like rubies and she could not help but take directly to her lips the half which had fallen. The sweet tartness of its juices bade she gorge on the fruit down to its skin.

As she finished its very last seed, the light of true knowledge, sight and intuition flashed brightly from within her chest like a fallen star. Her three companions flitted from the shack as their true selves—three immortal faeries: the youngest with a magical affinity for animals, the second for vegetation and the eldest for weather. Before they could blandish any words of conciliation, Maleficent vowed revenge and galloped away on the back of the obsidian beast she now understood to be her sire.

When she reached the Underworld, she encountered and embraced her true mother for the first and final time. With a kiss on the forehead, Mélusine imprinted the gift of magic onto her second-born. She then wrapped her serpentine tail around her daughter, encasing her in a cocoon—an impenetrable husk of reptilian hide, eldritch in constitution. There, Maleficent remained dormant for one hundred years. When that time passed, it was the exuberance of her new majestic wings that blew her shell to smithereens. She emerged with two imposing horns crowning her head and the yellow eyes of a snake. Her razor-sharp talons held a scepter with all the powers of Hell, and just as she knew the black goat from so long ago to be her father, she also apperceived she would never find a permanent home in Hell. This was no matter to her—revenge bore three faces and they were unwitting in the wait for their comeuppance above on land.

Upon departure, she noticed the River Styx, once of unfathomable depth, barely kept afloat the gondola that could solely provide her passage to where she needed to be. Her precognition alerted her to the significance of the drying river; Paganism was waning under the looming shadow of Christian dominance. She also knew where she must go, and wondered the entirety of her destination if she could withstand having to acclimate herself, yet again, to foreign conditions. Throughout the crossing, an enchanted mist shrouded the vessel from sight.

Maleficent reached The Isle of Apples on the thirteen night and during her sojourn learned Avalon was special for many reasons. Not only was it the last Pagan stronghold where magical creatures freely cavorted, but most importantly, her three nemeses had returned there after she fled their shanty a century ago. Nevertheless, her vengeful quest was thwarted by an admonition served to her by the Lady of the Lake, the mystical Isle’s guardian: “Any blood spilled here, whether human or Weird, will damn your soul eternal.” Maleficent acquiesced in silent fury and for centuries to come, she would assuage her lust for vengeance with the tyrannical use of her formidable powers, claiming her throne amongst Avalon’s magic-folk.

Her reign of terror came to an end, when out of sheer spite, she cursed to a deathlike sleep a princess by the name of Guinevere. Guinevere possessed ravishing beauty and bewitching traits, all gifted to her upon her nameday by the three faeries Maleficent most abhorred. The alarum to rescue the princess reached all the corners where gallant princes are wont to dwell, even resurrecting interest in a long-forgotten enchanted sword arcane magics had stubbornly wedged in a stone. The true heart of one Arthur Pendragon, the once and future king, released the sword from its prison, and with it in hand, he braved all manners of dark enchantments to face the insufferable sorceress.

He found Maleficent in her castle in the Forest of Thorns, and valiantly made his way in to confront her. What he found instead was a magnificent dragon with scales of onyx, bellowing clouds of fire. Quickly locked in battle, neither had realized the three faeries had remained steadfast at his heels. As he used the sword to fight off Maleficent’s massive tail, they lifted their wands in unison enhancing its magical properties with “true aim.” He hurled the blade in her direction mortally wounding her, disgorging the infernal flames that consumed her, and leaving only a miasma of sulphuric smoke. The evil witch was no longer, and Avalon rang bells in rejoice.

As Maleficent walked along West Fourth Street, anxious and cold, a sigil of green and white stopped her. Incorrectly believing it depicted her mother, her hopes improved. For a moment, she forgot herself, pushed through the door of the establisment and shoved several customers waiting in line while shouting her mother’s name. A very young man with a black shirt and a green apron with the same sigil emblazoned on it politely informed her that no one by the name of “Mélusine” worked there and demanded she remove herself from the premise.

With absent powers in mind, she honored his wishes. She stood in front of the Starbucks window, noticing what she had not just moments before. Her horns and piercing yellow eyes were no more and her scepter was gone. The translucent glass faintly reflected the image of a normal woman with tears outpouring from ordinary hazel eyes. Devastated, Maleficent realized the fact that she too had always been a victim of impermanence and the whims of others. She slowly walked away from the window—mortal and alone.