The Forest of Looming Death was, as one might guess by the name alone, a dreary place.  To say the least.  Through it ran the Brook of Dashed Hopes, which was as bleak a brook as one could imagine, full of bony little inedible fish, which were the only creatures hardy enough to live there;  the brook was where the coal mine upstream dumped all the byproducts of its mining operation.  Since the fish were the only creatures living in the brook, they were cannibalistic by necessity. 

Just beyond this brook, and over the Bridge of Misery, it was just a hop, skip, and a jump to a cave which (unlike most landmarks in The Forest) had no name.  But if it did it would have been called The Dwelling Place of Mirabella the Traitor.  The Forest was where banished criminals of the land were sent to live out their remaining days, and Mirabella had been a resident of its shades for nigh on twenty years.  She was the sister of the Queen of the Land of Fritillary, and as if that wasn’t enough distinction and rank for her, she was also the only person in all the land who did not have a soul. 

At least, no soul that anyone could detect.

Most days since her banishment to the Forest of Looming Death, she spent her waking hours hunting, tending her vegetable garden, and fighting other criminals off her prime forest real estate.  Most nights (Mirabella didn't do much sleeping due to all the other banished criminals) she plotted her revenge.  She had been plotting for nearly twenty years, so it was as nice a revenge plan as ever a villain could hope to concoct, full of twists and turns and heartbreak and (for her) sweet, sweet justice for all the wrongs she believed herself to have suffered.

The day that she and her partner-in-crime were to set the wheels of their revenge plot in motion, Mirabella was bent studiously over a piece of paper on the stone floor of her cave, scribbling away energetically on the paper with a large black quill.  She paused, pondered for a full minute or so, and dipped her quill in the bowl of raven blood she used as ink.  She had made the paper herself by hand out of plant pulp and water, and -- since if you are going to do a thing you might as well do the thing well -- she had decorated the margins of the paper with various pressed wildflowers and pine needles, so it looked quite fancy and arty. 

Mirabella wrote a bit more, read it all over, and with a pleased smirk on her gaunt face (adequate nutrition is hard to come by in The Forest) she breathed, "It is ready.”  Then her creepily empty eyes turned their attention to a crudely-made sundial on a flat bit of rock just outside the cave entrance.  "And just in time, too," she added as she quickly scooped up the paper and added it to a stack of others that sat on a small wooden table near the wall.  She glided around the cave, drawing her two crudely-constructed chairs over to her table, then grabbed two cups from her meager supply of kitchen goods, and went to the cave entrance to wait for her guest and tend to the fire that was heating a kettle for tea.

As she waited she didn't fuss with her hair or worry about her appearance because, for one thing, she didn't care one iota about the opinions of others (a nice byproduct of her soullessness), and for another thing she was just one of those ladies who always looks good without trying.  Though she'd spent half her life in a cave being harassed by murderers and thugs of all descriptions, she had unnaturally good skin and long, wavy black hair that Paul Mitchell would have loved to stick in a commercial for an expensive new conditioning treatment that leaves your hair looking movie star fabulous. 

Her face was a bit lined from all her brow-furrowing and squinting through late-night plotting sessions by the light of a single thin-flamed candle, and her ratty old clothes were pretty filthy, and she was way too skinny since she'd never really gotten the knack of hunting even after all these years of banishment, but all in all it could safely be said that she looked a lot better than you’d think she should have considering her circumstances.  If she had only not had those soulless eyes…

But then if she had had a soul she wouldn't have been in a cave in the middle of The Forest of Looming Death and there'd be no need for me to be carrying on about how she looks pretty good all things considered.  She had found that the lack of stress and worry that accompanies soullessness did as much to ward off the effects of aging as Botox*.

Just as the sundial struck 6:00 pm a great horrible swirl of smelly smoke appeared out of nowhere, startling a few chubby doves Mirabella had been eyeing hungrily, but not startling Mirabella in the least since this was the visitor she had been expecting, and his smoky mode of travel was nothing new to her.  Her eyes still following the doves, she almost lazily waved some smoke away from her face and finally turned her eyes from the doves to watch as the great evil magician, Farland Phelps, strode all smooth and fancy from the depths of the thick smoke, too cool to cough.  She had often wondered how long it had taken him to perfect that, not coughing as he walked out of his big magic smoke column.  Did he just hold his breath?  Did the smoke seriously not bother him?

“Mirabella,” said her partner-in-crime in his sleazy voice that you’d expect more from a Vegas magician than a real live wizard -- it made it sound like he was thinking all kinds of slimy thoughts, when in reality his thoughts ran more toward the chilling than toward the commonplace slime of the everyday degenerate.

“Farland,” she responded.  “The plans are complete.”

“Excellent,” he sleazed, and followed her into the cave to see what she’d put together.  She held out the stack of papers to him, and he began to scan them, cackling evilly at what he read.  He laughed harder with each page, until he’d flipped too many pages for that to be sustainable, and then the laughs remained at the same intensity for the rest of the stack.  It was really a pretty big stack of paper.  Again she suspected him of pretension and that those demonic chortles were perhaps rehearsed. 

It took him so long to peruse the papers that she had time to make a mug of tea for each of them, which she put down on the table just as he finished up and said, “Perfect.  Perfect.  These plans are all I could have dreamed of.  And,” he added, impressed, “the paper is quite pretty, too.”

“Oh, thank you,” she said.  “I made it myself.  Be careful not to touch the red flowers.  They’re poisonous.  Just a little safety measure to keep the information between us alone.”

He quickly and gingerly readjusted his hold on the papers and said, “Very clever.”

“Tea?” she asked, gesturing to the table.

“Oh, lovely!”

They sat across from each other and sipped in silence for a few moments.   Mirabella was thinking about her garden and wondering how the asparagus crop was faring, and Farland was thinking about Mirabella.  The closer they got to completing this revenge plot, the more acutely aware he became of the fact that over the span of these twenty years of plotting with her something had happened to him: he had fallen in love.  Or something like it, anyway.  She was smart and pretty and funny (if you liked mean-spirited sarcasm, which he did).  He had not analyzed his feelings too much so he wasn’t sure of whether it is love exactly, but he knew for sure that he really liked being around her and that all too soon he would no longer have a reason to be around her, and that knowledge made him gloomy.  She had never expressed any interest in doing anything other than plotting revenge with him; no walks along the riverbank, no picnics, no anything; so he had a good feeling that once their plans were completed she'd be fine parting ways forever. 

“Good tea,” he said, wishing she were weak-minded so that he could read her thoughts.  He could only effectively read the minds of people who weren't very smart, and Mirabella was the exact opposite of not very smart.

“It’s from my garden.”  Ack.  He was looking at her with that sappy expression that she'd been noticing on his face more and more in recent months.

“Ah.”  Pause.  “Weather been good out here in The Forest?”

“Yup.”  It had been a mistake to make tea and give him a reason to stay.  She sipped a small sip from her cup.  Stared at him witheringly over the rim. 

“Because it’s been raining like crazy in the capital.”

“Mmm.”  Sip.

He shuffled about uncomfortably on his seat.

She tapped her fingers on the table and stared at the roof of the cave. Stalactites.

“OK, well I guess I’ll be off then.  Gotta get these plans moving,” he said at last, looking toward the stack of poisoned papers.

“No time like the present.”

He set down his cup.  “I’ll come back in a week to keep you abreast of the developments.” 
Genius!  He'd manufactured a reason to see her again soon!

“No need,” she responded, looking at him coolly.

“But won’t you be curious to--”

“Nope.”

“But--“

“I don’t like you, Farland.”

His face turns red.  “I never said--”

“Your sappy eyes as good as said it.”

He stood up quickly, embarrassed and angry.  “I-- I--”

“It’s nothing personal.  Farland, you know I don’t have a soul.  I can’t like people.”  When she had been younger and hadn’t known herself quite as well as she did now she actually had considered him as a potential husband, but since her banishment she had had plenty of time to think it through and now knew that marriage (to him or anyone) was not for her, no matter how dreamy and smart he might be.

“Yeah, but I thought maybe, given time...”

She laughed.  “Right.  Whatever.  Look, you’re a good-looking guy and I like the way you think, but I--”

He cut in sharply, unable to take the embarrassment of rejection a moment longer.  He grabbed the papers.  “I’ll be going now.”  And he went.

Poof!

Mirabella gave a cry of frustration and made her way, coughing and bumping into things all the way, out of the smoky cave.  He could have at least had the decency to have disappeared outside the cave; now it was going to take ages for the place to air out.

*****

You’re probably wondering at this point about the revenge thing, so let me give you some backstory. Come with me now, back, back, back through the shades of time. Back just a bit more, to when Mirabella and her twin sister Lillian were wee toddlers. Lillian, chubby and sweet, Mirabella, distant and (even at two years of age) gaunt, though their parents gave them both the same meals and snacks and such so her gauntness made no sense. Both girls were early talkers, Lillian’s first word being “Mama” and Mirabella’s being “never”. Sentences were soon to follow, and with language came proof their parents feared that something was not right with their surly, withdrawn toddler. For, with speech came nothing but insults, precocious and snappy comebacks, and unsettling observations.

Their parents requested the assistance of the great wizard, Wendel, to do some magic and see if he could find a glimmer of a soul in the empty-eyed little bad seed. But when he had finished waving his wand, muttering under his breath, and sprinkling all sorts of shimmery powders on her, his results proved inconclusive. However, considering that in all her life she had never said a kind word, and caused nothing but heartache, calamity, and trouble wherever she went, the general public decided that for all practical purposes Mirabella the Traitor was soulless.

Though at this point she was not yet a traitor. That came about when she was nineteen. She and her sister (who would one day be the Queen of the Land of Fritillary but was at this point just a lowly peasant), lived with their parents on a small asparagus farm in the South of Fritillary. Their asparagus crops were known far and wide as being the most crisp, and the most pure. Even if you boiled them too long they didn’t go all mushy, which, if you’ve ever over-boiled asparagus, you’ll have to agree is pretty neat. The reputation their asparagus had was a point of pride in a land where asparagus was as essential to the daily diet as grain products are to you and me.

Also, asparagus tips, when dried and powdered, were essential elements in the highest forms of magic. So perfect were Mirabella’s parents’ asparaguses that the majority of their crop went straight to the Magical Commerce Division at the Capital, where it was then numbered, cataloged, and distributed to wizards who were lucky enough to be able to afford such top-of-the-line goods.

The day that Mirabella earned her suffix “The Traitor” started out like any other day down on the farm. Lillian woke with the sunrise and hummed a contented tune as she prepared for the day. She combed her long, black hair until it shone, which didn’t take much time because she was always brushing it. “Get up, Lazy Bones!” she laughed with a musical trill that had been likened by many to the merry tinkling of fine crystal wind chimes. “How can you lay there abed while there is such beauty in the world?”

She then flung open the window of their bedroom. “Oh dear, dear sunshine, blessing us with your warmth!” she said as she spun around in its rays. “Lovely, lovely little robins serenading us with your sweet songs!” she added as she spotted one representative of the species perched on a tree branch just outside their window. It eyed her distrustfully and gave a chirp. “Mirabella, look! Look and hear! This little dear is singing us a song!” She extended a gentle hand, crooning softly to it, her finger offered as a perch.

It flew off, alarmed. No matter how kind you are, a wild animal is not going to sit on you.

Lillian gave a pout, then flounced off to find her apron.

Mirabella abandoned her pretense of sleep, opened her eyes long enough to give her sister a cold stare, then rolled over and stared at the blank white wall, her back to the sunshine.

“Oh, Mirabella,” Lillian sighed. “You silly. Well, if you don’t care to see this beautiful morning, and if you don’t want to go out and pick asparagus in the sweet sunshine, then it’s all the more for me!” With that, she giggled and skipped out the door.

(Let me take this moment to point out, before we get too far into this, that neither Mirabella nor Lillian are the heroine of this tale. I hope you are relieved. Mirabella is too mean and soulless to be much of a role model, or to garner much sympathy, except for in the case of only the most jaded of adolescents; and Lillian, while mighty kind and positive, is quite sickening, and as far from intelligent as hydrogen is from Lawrencium (see Appendix A for periodic table).)

As the door shut behind Lillian, Mirabella rolled onto her back and regarded the ceiling as she listened to her sister in the next room. “Good morning, Mama! Good morning, Papa! No time for breakfast now; that asparagus won’t pick itself!” They all shared a good chuckle. How the two girls could be related at all, let alone identical twins, was beyond Mirabella’s ability to comprehend.

After a few more minutes, she could hear through the open window Lillian singing as she went (probably skipping or dancing with a basket in her hand) over to the asparagus field. Mirabella shuddered and decided she’d might as well get out of bed. If she didn’t, her mother would soon be knocking on the door insisting that if her industrious sister was already up and picking asparagus then she should jolly well be doing the same.

She slowly got into her clothes for the day, but unlike her sister who wore her hair down, Mirabella braided hers tightly and wrapped it into a knot on top of her head, making her appear even more severe than she naturally did. Stalking out into the main living area that was combination kitchen, dining room, and family room, she nodded slightly in response to her parents’ greetings. Then she went straight out the front door without touching the breakfast that her mother had set out for her like she did every morning - no matter how often her daughter ignored it. Mirabella shut the door behind her and picked up her asparagus basket from its place on the porch, then walked out to the field, starting in a row so far from her sister that they wouldn’t be able to speak.

The morning progressed uneventfully for two hours or so, Lillian and Mirabella harvesting asparagus while their parents took the wagon to the market. Mirabella worked mechanically, never once pausing to look up and admire the beautiful countryside stretched out below their hillside farm, or to appreciate the majestic mountain range looming behind them in the distance. Lillian, on the other hand, often took little breaks to enjoy the scene and breathe the crisp air happily. In spite of all this shillyshallying, Lillian still somehow always managed to pick more asparagus than Mirabella, who rarely even looked up from her task. It was a great source of frustration for Mirabella that Lillian so constantly outshone her at every task, since the fact so often meant unwelcome comparisons from their parents and neighbors. Why couldn’t people just leave her alone?

She stood up to stretch her back and saw a regal procession making its stately way down the dirt road that led to the farm. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun, she detected tan banners with puce dragons embroidered on them. She smiled a creepy smile (the only kind of smile she had). It was the prince, coming to visit her sister. And that meant...

She searched the procession again now that they were close enough that she could make out the faces of the individuals in the party, and sure enough, at the prince’s right side dressed all in black with his long black hair shadowing his face and his black hood shading his face even more, was the Prince’s personal wizard, Farland Phelps. At this point in our tale Mirabella was still young and didn’t yet know herself too well, and Farland hadn’t yet lived long enough to get too pretentious; Mirabella knew that her dark heart was incapable of love, but, if it had been, she would have pledged it to Farland Phelps. He was the second greatest wizard in the whole Land of Fritillary (the first being, of course, Wendel), and he was young, intelligent, and (as was the talk of all the royal court) both available and quite a looker.

All around a prime slice of fella if you were a young lady of the court who was not quite so delusional as to hope to sink your talons into the prince himself, but still delusional enough to think you could sink one of his most powerful underlings.

But all these fine qualities of Farland’s aside, the true reason that Mirabella would have loved Farland if she could was that he was pure evil, and if she was ever to pledge her affection to a man he had to be evil. It was #1 on her list. A young lady should have a pre-set list of priorities when man-hunting so she can refer to it when her head gets clouded. Man-hunting is a most dangerous game, after all. You’re welcome for that advice, girls.

Yes, Farland was evil. Even as he pretended to be the Prince’s best friend, he was secretly planning to murder the whole royal family, saving the Prince for last. Phelps didn’t even want to take over as the king when the dust settled; he just wanted the prince to suffer, consequences to the kingdom be darned!

The seed of his foul plan had been sown when he and the prince had been mere lads - it had been some youthful dispute on the croquet field - something to do with the prince picking the gardener’s son, Walter, for his team instead of picking Farland. But over the years the initial reason no longer mattered, morphing from revenge for the Croquet Episode to various different revenges for all kinds of accumulated little wrongs both real and imagined. Then, eventually, when he was in his young twenties and fancied himself a revolutionary, to the takedown of the entire monarchy, because monarchy just isn’t the wave of the future, man.

But don’t go thinking he’s some misguided progressive guy with the idea that the ends sometimes have to justify the means on the road to a greater society, because (1) Farland’s fancies ran more toward anarchy than democracy, and more importantly (2) killing people pretty much is never the best solution to a problem unless we’re talking Hitler or Pol Pot or some such. But in this case we are not; while the royal family was quite self-absorbed and entitled, one must admit that those qualities just go with the profession; there is almost no getting around that fact that royalty thinks more highly of themselves than they probably should. The meaner members of this particular royal family could be rather oppressive to their subjects, and had unreasonable taxes and laws, but no more so (and often less so) than their cohorts in neighboring kingdoms. Even the dungeon they spirited some of the more unruly citizens off to was smaller than most, and stocked with fewer sadistic employees than might be expected.

So yes, the royal family of the Land of Fritillary was sort of bad, but not bad enough to justify all this hoopla on Farland’s part. Mirabella knew his plans and was helping him to make his dream come true. How did she know, you ask? Well, let me tell you. The reason she knew he was evil at all when the rest of the kingdom thought he was a pretty awesome guy was simply that he needed her help. If he wanted to murder the royal family he needed a VAST quantity of powdered asparagus tips. He couldn’t just buy it because the sale and purchase of asparagus powder was closely monitored by the Magical Commerce Division. So he needed an accomplice on the inside of Big Asparagus. An accomplice who knew the best asparagus and could make the powder for him. An accomplice, also, who was evil, otherwise there was a risk of him being turned in by a repentant softie.

In his Evil Fortress, Farland had gazed into his magical pool of raven blood and asked it to reveal to him the person who would assist him in his evil plan. The magical pool of raven blood was quite temperamental and rarely condescended to divulge any information to Farland, so he was surprised and pleased when, as he stared into its deep red depths, he saw a vision of Mirabella shimmer into sight; then the magical bowl of raven blood had heartily warned him against confusing Mirabella with her twin sister who was the essence of all things good.

So that’s how the wizard Farland Phelps found, and then secured the help of, Mirabella. On his very first visit to the farm Prince Conroy came along on a whim in order to do some mingling with the commoners - his PR guy had been hounding him about rubbing elbows with the peasants lately, saying mingling was a good way to keep public opinion of him high without having to actually mess with things like taxes or employment or whatever else goes into making a populace happy through competent governance - Conroy had no clue since he’d totally zoned out when his private tutor had gotten into all that stuff. Boring!! So anyway, Conroy came along with Farland and there he met Lillian, and BAM! Love at first sight. Said love was deeply reciprocated so the prince kept visiting, handily supplying Farland with an excuse to come to the farm to collect powdered asparagus tips from Mirabella.

Fate can be quite convenient sometimes.

As Mirabella watched the procession draw nearer she became suddenly aware of her sister beside her, hopping giddily from foot to foot and clapping her hands.  “Oh, Mirabella!  It’s Prince Conroy!” she squealed.  “Oh, but Mama and Papa aren’t at home!  I cannot see him without a chaperone!”

“What are you blithering about?” Mirabella spat in her cold voice of venom, never taking her eyes off the ever-advancing face of Farland Phelps.

“People would talk if word got around that the Prince and I conversed without appropriate supervision!”

Mirabella doubted this.  If that is what counted as gossip these days, then life in the royal court was dull indeed.  But she didn’t bother wasting her breath trying to convince her sister of this.  For one thing, there was no use telling Lillian to do anything if she had already deemed it improper.  And for another thing, Lillian was already making a beeline toward the house, probably with the intention of barricading herself inside.

Mirabella strolled to the stables and waited there for the procession.  The Prince and the magician were the first to reach her.  They dismounted, and two pages who had been scampering along behind them scurried up to tend to their horses, who, in the presence of Mirabella, pawed nervously at the ground as if they were being circled by a predator.  Farland retreated to the shadows where he paced back and forth looking mighty out of place by a big bale of hay, waiting for the opportunity to speak to Mirabella.  The Prince strode toward her with confident, princely strides, head of golden shiny hair held high, broad shoulders thrown back, hand on the hilt of his fancy sword. His gleaming hair and sky-blue twinkly eyes made Mirabella squint, even in the shade of the stable.  His black boots shone and his purple cape fluttered in the almost-nonexistent breeze.  A cookie cutter prince if ever there was one, but no less impressive for the fact.

Mirabella gave a grudging curtsy as the Prince halted before her.  “Mirabella.  Good morning,” he said in a deep, smooth, manly baritone that was every bit as princely as the rest of him.  “A lovely day.”

She shrugged.  “Eh.”

The prince raised a royal eyebrow. 

“Is your sister home?” Prince Conroy enquired, choosing to change the subject from small talk to the real reason for his visit.  As much as he tried for Lillian’s sake to get along with Mirabella, he had to confess it was no cakewalk.  He could find no common ground with her, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t tried.  Also, he just couldn’t bring himself to look into those empty eyes of hers without shivering.  Eyes like that he had only ever seen on dead people, so it was, to say the least, disconcerting to see them in her head when she was quite obviously living.

“Yes, she’s home.  Locked herself in the house and will not see you,” she said, trying all the while to meet his gaze.  It amused her greatly to watch him nervously try to avoid her eyes.  Most - possibly all - people she encountered were repelled by her gaze, but for all his manliness the prince had an especially tough time of it.  The big tough military captain couldn’t even meet her gaze without quaking in his shiny boots.  She sneered.

“Ah, your parents are out then?” he asked the space over her left shoulder.

She nodded slightly.  “You must have passed right by them on the way here.”

Conroy thought back and remembered that not far from the turnoff to the farm he had seen a wagon with two old people who were assessing some damage to a broken wheel – the wheel had sustained damage after being driven off the road and into the ditch by his procession; the moment they’d seen him the couple had flown to ground, groveling in the dirt like the peasants they were.  Well, not dirt.  Mud.  He had smirked at them when he passed and thrown a few coins their way and not bothered to stop to try to make out the words they’d been speaking into the mud (they were too afraid to look up at his royal glory to speak in his direction). 

Now he wondered if those groveling peasants had been his future in-laws, and if they had been trying to tell him that Lillian and her sister were alone on the farm, and perhaps wondering whether they should abandon their cart and head back home.  Hmm.  Oh well.  “Your sister is quite a proper young maiden,” he said, his eyes glittering with love or something. Twinkle, twinkle.  Mirabella winced.

“Indeed,” she said and pushed a bit at the dirt with the toe of her shoe.  Her game had grown old.  Small talk, small talk, small talk.  When would she get the chance to give Farland the latest pouch of powdered asparagus tips she had prepared?

“Perhaps I’ll take a walk through your garden and wait for your parents to return...” the Prince said lamely, growing irritated with this small talk with the soulless girl.  Surely he had talked with her long enough to come across as sociable should Lillian be watching through a window.  Yes, he was through, but it would be rude to leave her with no one to talk to, so he signaled to his friend, Farland.  He was a wizard, after all, and thus surely knew more about sticky issues like talking to soulless people with fathomless eyes. 

As Farland glided toward Mirabella, arms folded and eyes glinting under the hood of his dark cape, Prince Conroy went off to pick some flowers for his love.