The Flower Children & The Enchantress

It was a sultry summer day and Lilly, Rose and Violet were out gathering apples for their mother Clara to bake into one of her delicious cinnamon and apple pies and Violet was singing,

“Here is a penny,
my poor pretty Jenny
and when I am willing
you shall have a shilling.
If we go to town,
I’ll give you a crown
but sing me a tune
and I’ll give you the moon”.

when they heard a young woman’s plaintive cries.

“Help me!”, she was yelling, “Please!”.

Following the cries to their source, the three girls then saw a beautiful brown haired woman in a cage with two long poles on either side, like a sedan chair, and the cage was being carried by two strong blind men. One in front and one behind.

The moment that Rose and Violet looked at her, however, they became mesmerized by her supernatural beauty and wanted desperately to free her from the cage.

But then one of the blind men carrying her said, “Pay no attention to this villainess. She is an enchantress. Her beauty mesmerizes people but she is evil in her heart and only leads people to ruin”.

“Perhaps they are telling the truth”, said Lilly who seemed to see something cold and mean and deceitful in the woman’s eyes.

“They are not”, said the woman in the cage, “I am a poor victim. They are the servants of a cruel ogre that, infatuated with me, sent them to abduct me”.

But when the woman said this it only caused pain to Lilly’s ears, “Oh that terrible sound”, she said, wincing in pain, “She’s telling such awful lies”.

But Rose and Violet wouldn’t listen to their sister.

“I believe her”, said Rose, “We have already seen, with those hunters, what wickedness men are capable of” and then Rose raised up her right hand that crackled with blue lightning and let out a thunderbolt that knocked the three cornered hat off of the blind carrier at the rear of the cage then, fearing for their lives, both blind men fled into the forest.

“Thank goodness”, said the woman in the cage, a wicked smile appearing on her face, “Now, please, help me get out of this awful prison. The blind men had the only key and they have run away”.

And so, against the protestations of her sister Lilly, Violet called upon the strongest bear in the woods to bend the bars of the cage so that the slender woman could slip out between them.

“Oh, thankyou so much”, said the woman once she was free, “My name is Zavina and I am so happy to have been saved by such lovely young ladies”.

“You were not saved by me”, protested Lilly, to whom the strange woman was starting to look more and more ugly and repulsive, “I don’t trust you at all”.

“Don’t listen to her”, said Rose, pushing Lilly aside and taking Zavina by her left hand, “I trust you”.

“So do I”, said Violet, taking hold of her right hand, “You can come and live with us in our mushroom house if you want. Our mother, Clara, will be so happy to meet you”.

“Oh, I’d love to come home with you both”, said the woman to them.

And so, continuing to ignore Lilly’s reservations, they took the woman back to their house near the edge of the forest and told their mother Clara all about the cage and the blind carriers and then Lilly, butting in, told her mother about her doubts and about the warning that the blind carriers had given them.

“Well”, said Clara, who seemed neither mesmerized nor repulsed by the woman, “Time will tell us the true colour of her heart but, until it does, she is welcome in our house”.

However, Clara couldn’t fail to notice that strange glazed look in both the eyes of Rose and Violet. They both certainly seemed to like the strange woman a lot and so, taking Lilly to one side, she in-structed her, “Go into the forest, my dear, and fetch me a sprig of the herb called ‘open heart’”.

And Lilly, happy to be out of the company of Zavina, did as she was told and ran into the forest to where she knew clusters of ‘open heart’ grew.

And, when she returned with the herb, Clara put it in her mixing bowl and mixed it together with the ingredients of her cinnamon and apple pie and, when the pie was ready, she cut it into five pieces and gave one to Rose, one to Violet, one to Lilly, one to herself and one to Zavina.

And Zavina was so hungry or perhaps so greedy that she not only gobbled up her own piece but also Rose’s and Violet’s too which they were both happy to let her have.

But, when Zavina had finished all three pieces of the apple pie, Clara said to her, “Now Zavina. You will tell us all the truth because I have put herb of ‘open heart’ in that pie which prevents anyone who eats it from telling a falsehood. So confess. Are you an enchantress? Have you cast a spell upon my two daughters?”.

But, Zavina cleverly, though unable to bring herself to tell a lie, instead answered Clara’s question with a question, “Dear Lady”, she said, “Is not all beauty enchanting and is not all love a kind of magic spell?”.

And Clara, who had also eaten a piece of the apple pie with the herb of ‘open heart, could not help but answer, “Yes, ofcourse”.

And then, angry at how Zavina had been deceived by their mother, Rose and Violet spoke up in her defence.

“Mother! How could you?”, said Rose, “How could you treat a guest so unfairly. Zavina has done nothing to you”.

And Violet said, “Mother! How could you? Poor Zavina. It was quite wrong of you to try and trick her”.

Then Rose and Violet took Zavina out into the forest to pick flowers and to get away from their mother and Zavina grinned because she knew that she had got her way.

But this only made Clara more certain that Zavina was an enchantress and more determined to break her spell and so, going upstairs to her room, Clara took down something from the wall and wrapped it up in pretty lace tied up with silk ribbon and, coming back downstairs, handed it to Lilly.

“Take this to Zavina. Say that it’s a present for her. Tell her that you’re sorry that you were mean to her and that you want to be her friend”, she told her daughter.

“But Mother”, protested Lilly, “I hate her. She’s evil!”.

“Have some trust in the wisdom of your mother”, replied Clara, “Please”.

And so Lilly, because she loved and trusted her mother very much, agreed to swallow her pride and do as she was told, taking the prettily wrapped object out into the forest to give to Zavina.

And she couldn’t have done so at a better time for, as she was nearing the place where Zavina was sitting on a log laughing, she saw her two sisters Rose and Violet, on the ground fighting and arguing.

“Stay away from Zavina”, yelled Rose, pulling at her sister’s hair, “Or I’ll zap you with my lightning bolts”.

“No. You stay away from her”, said Violet, pushing a handful of mud in her sisters face, “Or I’ll get the bees to sting you”.

Lilly was really horrified to see her sisters fighting but Zavina just seemed to find it amusing and laughed so much that she almost fell backwards off her log.

“People do this over me all the time”, she said, “People are so stupid”.

But then, gritting her teeth, Lilly got down on one knee and presented Zavina with the wrapped up object saying, “Sorry I was so mean to you earlier. Please take this present. I really hope we can be friends”.

It was even harder for Lilly to lie than for most people because her lie made a terrible grating sound in her own ears but, luckily, Zavina seemed to believe her.

“Oh my dear, sweet girl”, said Zavina, grinning as she unwrapped the gift, “I can see my charms are beginning to work on you too”.

But then, too late, the wicked enchantress realized what was inside the pretty package; a mirror and, before she knew it she had looked deep into her own eyes and mesmerized herself.

“Who is that?”, she asked, beaming, her eyes glazing over, “That beautiful, ravishing woman?”.

“Don’t you know?”, asked Lilly, surprised.

“Why no, ofcourse not”, said Zavina, “I’d certainly know if I’d seen her before”.

But then Rose and Violet noticed their sister and the gift and, pushing her to one side, Rose said, “I see what you’re doing. Trying to win her over with gifts. Well, it won’t work. Zavina loves me”.

And then Violet shoved Rose from behind and said, “You must both be dreaming. I’m the one she loves”.

But then, hearing them, Zavina laughed and said, “You two? Why would I love either of you . It’s the woman in this mirror that I love”.

Hearing this, both Rose and Violet became very jealous of Zavina’s reflection and then Rose seized the mirror out of her hands and threw it down into a deep well that was nearby and, horrified, Zavina leapt after it into the well.

“Oh! What have you done?”, said Violet, grief stricken, tears running down her face.

But then her mother Clara took hold of her hand and turned her to look at her sister rose, “Forget about her. Look what you’ve done to your poor sister Rose. Fighting and putting mud all over her face. Don’t you love your sister?”.

And then, all of a sudden, Zavina’s spell seemed to shatter and both Rose and Violet returned to their senses.

“Yes!”, they both said, hugging each other, “More than anything”.