Marmalade's Love Potion

Despite the season, the garden air was warm and humid, heated by the glow of amber stones set along the pebbled trail. Even so, Penelope shivered with apprehension as she followed her family towards a distant corner of the gardens.

At last, they crossed a threshold into a circle of weeping rose trees, secluded from view of the ballroom terraces. Around them, the night was quiet but for the distant strum of music and the chorus of insects. Clarity began to dance between the trunks, spinning beneath bloom-laden boughs and stopping to occasionally inhale the scent of flowers.

Penelope and her parents stood looking at one another for long, silent moments. At last, her father spoke, gazing at her with heartrending affection. “Fates, how we’ve missed you.”

Penelope’s breath hitched at the warmth, the love, in his voice. She longed to stride forward and lose herself to his embrace.

Yet beneath the longing, twisting below the surface of her elation, was an agonising confusion and sense of betrayal. She could feel the brutal embers of rage in her throat, scorching through all feelings of safety, family, home.

Penelope gritted her teeth against it, desperate to bask in her parents’ love, in the pride and acceptance she had craved since the day she was sent to the woods. To allow herself, for just this one moment, to believe they truly loved her. Fighting for air, she dashed at fresh tears spilling down her cheeks.

“You truly missed me?” she whispered.

“Of course we missed you, starlight.” Her father’s eyes shone with tears as he moved forward to cup her face in gentle hands. “Every day, every moment, since you’ve been away. How we’ve longed for this, to see you again…”

“I don’t understand…” Penelope drew further back, reluctantly pulling away from her father’s grasp to look between her parents. Clarity settled on a nearby bench, her face morose.

“You knew where I was this whole time.” Penelope spoke the words slowly, uncertainly, suddenly questioning her every truth. “If you missed me so much, if you loved me so much, where have you been? Why did you send me away at all?”

“Starling…” her mother breathed, face lined with weary sorrow. “We didn’t want to send you away. Truly, it was the very last thing we would have ever wanted…”

“I don’t understand,” Penelope repeated, feeling increasingly confused, desperate. “If you didn’t want to… then why?”

Penelope thought back to a conversation with a witch on a boat under the stars.

Do you not think that perhaps your Seer Queen saw something which prompted her to send you to the Faewood?

“What did you See?” Penelope asked, half dreading the answer. “That night of the ritual, the one I…” Penelope swallowed against the rising flush of shame and guilt. “The one I ruined? When I ran away… You Saw something… What was it?”

Penelope’s voice was a quiet rasp as she stared anxiously up at her mother, her father, waiting for judgement, some long-awaited admonishment, for her failure that night.

That ritual was the reason she had been sent away, she felt the truth of it in her marrow, and she burned to understand why.

“Oh, darling heart, you never ruined anything.”

“What?” Penelope gasped. “But… I thought… I thought you sent me away because I messed it all up. I couldn’t keep still, or quiet, or… or do the one thing you had asked of me—”

“Treasure,” her father cut in. “You did nothing wrong. We never sent you away as punishment—”

Penelope’s nerves felt frayed. Something terrible and vicious erupted in her then, words spearing upwards from buried, bleeding depths.

“Then WHY?” she screamed. “WHY DID YOU SEND ME AWAY? You gave no explanation! You hardly EVER replied to my letters! You just… banished me and never even told my why! I thought… I thought I’d disappointed you—!”

“Never, never, have you disappointed us, Penelope—”

Penelope’s heart clenched at those words… words she had longed to hear her whole life, yet now wounded her all the deeper.

“Then WHY HAVE YOU BEEN SO CRUEL? Piece by little piece you took EVERYTHING from us! Our carriage—Sister Rosin had to make a cart herself just to reach the markets! So we could scrape together some meagre semblance of an income because you withheld any allowance!

“Even our horses—The Sisters worked themselves to the bone to make enough to buy Cynthia after you took away the Starwood mares! Our cottage is falling to pieces, the roof would have rotted away years ago if it weren’t for Rosin patching it herself. I was the laughing stock of every royal event because we could only afford the cheapest cloth. The tutors stopped coming, without warning, without explanation, I waited years before I realised they were never coming back—I never even knew what I was meant to do, what you ever wanted of me… And now, now, you just… just say things like… you missed me.”

Penelope’s voice cracked and she sank onto a bench, clutching her chest as she cried.

“We were ready to leave the woods, once… We were going to leave… but then you sent me one letter… you asked me to be brave, and so… I stayed. I made the Sisters stay…” Penelope’s guilt boiled to the surface as she scrubbed her hands over her face. “Why? Why? What was it all for, if not a punishment?” Penelope spat the last word between clenched teeth.

“Please…” Her mother’s voice was quiet with grief. “Please, allow us to explain.”

Unable to gather words to protest, Penelope simply raised her eyes to the woman she had so wretchedly missed for most of her life, the woman who was now a stranger.

Penelope waited for her mother to continue as she paced the gravel, yet the woman remained silent, her eyes shifting as if considering the measure of each word.

“What did you See?” Penelope pleaded as the silence stretched. “Tell me, please.”

Queen Theia sighed and closed her eyes before turning her violet gaze on Penelope with a look of deep distress.

“I saw a child… my child, claimed by the heart of the woods… I saw destruction, greater than this world has seen for aeons, should I not let my child to go…”

Ice gripped Penelope’s heart. “What do you mean? What destruction?”

The Queen deliberated yet again and Penelope glanced impatiently at her father, who was staring at her with open longing and regret.

“Since the Battle at Great Fall, the House of Grimwood has been undertaking every effort to protect against future Risings… Their work has been necessary. Absolutely necessary. For the survival of Edenwood… of our realms, our way of life…

“Yet, in time, their actions will lead to greater devastation as the forces they contend with will rise and consume our world utterly.”

Penelope shuddered as her mother’s voice echoed with the truth of prophesy.

“They harvest magics they do not yet fully understand, and in doing so disrupt the harmonies that keep our realms, keep life itself, in balance. And yet, without their efforts, our realms would even sooner fall prey to the creatures of the lower realms…

“And so we have kept close Watch on Grimwood’s progress, have offered them many of our own secrets, as we walk this narrow road between dooms.”

The Queen looked up to the stars, countless constellations veiled by thin wisps of cloud.

Penelope’s spine prickled with unease as she realised the implications. “More dragons, more ferrifae, will come?”

“Fae, yes… Dragons… and worse…” her mother murmured.

Penelope drew in a sharp breath.

Her father’s eyes were solemn as he seated himself beside Clarity. The girl swung her legs idly, though her expression, too, was grave.

“Grimwood have come far in their advancements. Their innovations will do immeasurable good for our world. Yet we are fast approaching a crossroads. If they continue, rampant and unchecked, we will all become lost to a greater wrath… That night, at the ritual, I Saw a way to avoid absolute calamity…”

The Queen turned her vivid gaze onto Penelope, and a fission of dread rippled through her.

“What way..?” Penelope whispered.

“I Saw you, my darling. I Saw that a child, one who was kind-hearted, and generous to a fault… one who was wild in spirit and impulsively curious… one who was courageous, yet utterly innocent in intent… one who was young, so very, very young… yet had something to prove…”

Queen Theia looked at her daughter with pride and misery both.

“That child could walk into depths of magic not even the most hardened of Rangers, nor the most learned of Seers, nor Alchemists, nor Artificers, could ever hope to broach. That child would become the Faewood’s own daughter, trusted above all others, and heir to its secrets…”

Penelope suddenly felt cold, fury licking like ice and flame across her fevered skin.

“I Saw,” the Queen continued, “that you had exactly the disposition, the raw potential, to win the loyalty of the most powerful source of magic in our world. And in so winning the trust of the woods, you would chart the course for the future of our realms… away from certain destruction.

“The forest has opened itself to you beyond any other. Beyond, even, that witch who has wandered its paths for lifetimes… You were raised by those magics, shaped by them… You,” the Queen’s eyes were shining with hope and something akin to reverence, “you will be the bridge between all realms.”

Penelope felt airless. The gardens around her whipped and snapped with growing agitation as Penelope’s thoughts swirled. Her mind was a fragmented, howling mass of questions and dreadful realisations.

She had been sent away, not as punishment, not out of her parents’ shame as she had always believed, but as the answer to a prophecy. She had been manipulated her entire life to remain within the forest, bathed within its magics, so the Faewood might claim her.

Penelope sprung to her feet. Gravel crunched under her heels as she paced, questions spilling from her mouth as her thoughts spiralled with anger.

“Why not… why not just explain what you wanted of me? Why ignore me, keep me in the dark my entire life?”

An impulsive child, a curious child…

Courageous, yet innocent…

A child with something to prove…

“Mercies…” Penelope breathed. “You let me believe it was my fault. You let me think I had done something wrong… So that I would try and… and prove my courage… my worth…”

Penelope felt sick as her parents remained quiet, the flicker of guilt in her mother’s eye confirming her suspicion.

“And you took everything away… so… so we would…”

“So you would seek all you needed, as much as possible, within the woods.” Queen Theia folded her hands together, her eyes swimming with sorrow, yet shoulders stiff and resolute.

Penelope wanted to scream. Every thought, every feeling, she had ever had, was a manipulation… One designed to push her further into the shadows of a wilderness they intended to exploit… Through her.

“Sweetheart…”

Penelope bristled at the term of endearment as her father approached.

“And you… you just went along with all this?” Penelope hissed, gut burning with betrayal. “You call me your treasure, your little star, your beloved north light… but you sent me away, letting me believe the worst of myself? How could you?”

Tears slipped down Penelope’s face, the salt stinging her chewed lips.

“Why didn’t you come with me? You wanted me to have something to prove? I would have done anything for you! I would have gone into the woods, I would have delved into its secrets, I would have faced every fear, I would have done anything you asked of me…”

Penelope pressed her hands to her stomach, folding over herself as the extent of their betrayal, their manipulations, seared through her like poison. King Obi stepped forward, hand outstretched. Penelope flinched away.

“I didn’t want to… I hated to send you away!” Her father heaved a breath. “I thought it all madness! Your mother and I…” The King glanced at his wife, who was staring down at her clasped hands. “We fought fiercely. I refused to let you go on the word of a vision. I was unwilling to lose you, my great love, to such a wild and dangerous place on something so… seemingly tenuous.”

“THEN WHY DID YOU LET ME GO?”

“I Saw what was at stake for myself!”

“You… you took the Elixir of Syvensia?” Penelope gasped, shocked to stillness. “But… you’re not—”

“Not of Starwood blood, no. I took it just the once, and it nearly killed me to do so…” the King raised his hands to his face, a haunted look in his dark eyes. “The things I Saw… I witnessed the truth of what your mother foretold… just a glimpse of the future to come, but…”

“But that was enough for you?” Penelope demanded, heart cracking. “A glimpse was enough for you to pack me off to the middle of the woods with barely a goodbye? You couldn’t even tell me… couldn’t even say that it wasn’t my fault?” Penelope’s voice splintered, and she felt like a young child, keening for comfort that would never come.

“I wish…” King Obi shook his head mournfully. “I wish there could have been some other way…”

“This was the surest path, Penelope,” Queen Theia said, voice beseeching. “We tried… We truly did try to maintain as much contact with you as we could. We wanted to, so desperately. We wanted for you to maintain your studies, to keep some presence in the courts, so we might not wholly lose you… Yet the more present we were in your life… the more you strayed from your path in the Faewood.”

“My path…” Penelope scoffed, voice thick with hurt. Another thought occurred to her. “Princess Ivy… she told me I’ve always been invited to every royal event… yet it’s been years since I ever received one. You declined them all…”

“You could not walk in both worlds, Penelope,” her mother said. “It was too… precarious a situation to risk.

“We could not explain ourselves to you, could not directly guide or instruct you, for your heart and mind needed to be clear of any such agenda. The Faewood would not have trusted you, had you ever intended to seek its power. We could not have gone with you for the very same reason. Your innocence was key.”

“And… the Sisters..?”

“They knew nothing of this. We entrusted you to them, for I Saw their loyalty… I Saw they would give you all the love we could not…” Queen Theia’s voice faltered as she raised her arm, as if to reach for Penelope, before dropping her hand to her side.

“Why… why even do all of this?” Penelope demanded. “All this to avoid the doom Grimwood is bringing? I don’t understand! Why not simply tell them yourself, this prophecy? Why not tell them how they must change?”

“We have, Penelope…” The Queen exhaled. “We have indeed forewarned Grimwood of the coming dangers… however, it has not been enough for them to change their path. Not nearly enough. And even if they were to do so, to alter their methods, or even stop their work altogether… It is your relationship with the magics of the Faewood… the Darkwood… which are essential to our shared future!”

Penelope crumpled over herself, feeling utterly torn, used, betrayed.

“If they don’t listen to you… what makes you think they will listen to me? You’re the Seers,” Penelope spat.

“What you have accomplished tonight—” Queen Theia began.

“Grimwood do not trust us,” Clarity spoke, cutting over the Queen’s words. “Not since the Battle at Great Fall. Well, not truly ever, but certainly not since the Rising.”

“Clarity!” the Queen admonished.

Clarity turned her bright, wilful gaze on their mother. “She should to know—”

“It is not your place—”

Penelope watched the altercation in consternation.

“Why does Grimwood not trust Starwood?”

No one answered her. Clarity simply regarded Queen Theia with cool satisfaction, and their mother’s eyes widened with horror as her irises flickered.

“What have you done?” she hissed to Clarity.

“What you would not,” the girl replied, eyes narrowed in defiance.

“This is not why we brought you—”

“We cannot predicate a time of unity upon a foundation of dishonesties.”

The words sounded familiar to Penelope, something she might have read once in her history studies.

“This is no little game of political philosophy, Clarity!”

“Why do Grimwood not trust Starwood?” Penelope repeated. “Wait… Do they blame Starwood… for the… the Rising?” Penelope spoke slowly, haltingly, as her thoughts raced. “But surely… you would have warned them… had you Seen it? Did you not See… How could they blame you if…”

A terrible realisation dawned on Penelope.

“Oh… Oh fates… you Saw it! You Saw and didn’t warn them! Did you allow it to happen?”

“We allowed nothing,” Queen Theia’s voice was harsh, adamant. “There was no way to prevent it. There was only very slimmest potential to delay the carnage by a generation… if that. But then… all influence would have been beyond us, and the future ruin of all realms would have been a certainty.”

Penelope pressed her fingers to her mouth, feeling shaky and feverish.

“Penelope.” Her mother’s voice sounded desperate. “You must understand the responsibilities of our family… of our lineage. We deal in matters of centuries! We are guardians, protectors, we keep Watch and weave paths for the highest good of all realms—”

“Highest good! HIGHEST GOOD?” Penelope shouted. “A city was burned to ashes! How many people lost their lives because you chose—?”

“Sometimes there are no good choices, Penelope! Sometimes we can only choose the path of least waste, least bloodshed in the long term, that is our burden, our sacrifice—”

“Your sacrifice?” Penelope screamed. “YOUR SACRIFICE? To pull strings from your towers and crystal groves, crying helpless when no one TRUSTS YOU for the choices you make? Feeding your own child to the woods in the hopes of fixing the consequences of your heinous decisions?”

Penelope’s breath was harsh and ragged as she whirled across the stones, staring at parents she no longer recognised, at a young girl she never had the chance to know.

“What gives you the right to ruin lives? What gives you the right to weave Fate?”

“You would ask that question, daughter?”

Penelope drew back as if slapped, images of a depthless wishing well and a glowing coin spinning within her mind.

Queen Theia sighed, seeming weary, all fight leaving her gaze. “Penelope… Would you want to leave?”

Penelope halted in confusion at the question. “Leave..?”

“Would you want to leave the Faewood and come home to Starwood?”

“Are you serious?” Penelope snorted in incredulity. “Is that a true offer? Would you even allow me to return to Starwood?”

“If you would so wish… yes.”

Penelope ground her teeth, swallowing down the copper tang of her rage. It was cruel, so desperately unfair. They had poisoned her sense of home with their choices, their immeasurable cruelty. They had divested her of choice at every possible turn. They had condemned a realm to destruction through deliberate inaction…

And now, now they had the audacity to offer her all she had ever craved…

“No!” Penelope snarled. “I will not return with you. Starwood is not my home and never will be!”

“Then… that is your choice…”

“CHOICE? How dare you? My choice? I WASN’T GIVEN A CHOICE!”

“Would you unmake it? If you had the power, would you unmake your life as it stands? To have lived your life in Starwood Palace?” The Queen stared into Penelope as if she knew the answer and was wounded by it.

“How is that even a question?” Penelope spat. “Asking me now if I would unmake my life, as if that proves anything? As if that absolves you of your… your cruelty? Your deceit, your callous manipulations? No! No, I would not unmake my life, I would not unmake myself, but—”

“Then you, and you alone, must take responsibility for the choices you make walking forwards. It is imperative—”

Penelope snarled, her teeth itching as her canines lengthened. “Oh, must I?” Rage and the thrill of hatred burned beneath her skin, licking along the threads of her sinew as the call for blood drummed in her chest.

“Would you unmake it all? Would you unmake your choices?” Penelope growled.

The Queen regarded Penelope for a long, unwavering moment. “No,” she whispered.

Penelope’s shoulders sagged with heartbreak, wrath boiling in her veins. Though the flowers of her gown were gone, their loss cold and empty within her heart, the rose trees around her began to writhe. Around them, the gardens rippled and shuddered, whispering promises of thorns to the lashing breeze. In the distance, dogs began to howl and a colony of bats took flight into the moonless sky. The vicious urge to rend and rip, to gnash teeth and curl claws into soft soft skin burned in the dark of Penelope’s heart.

“Then don’t you dare place your choices on me… I could unmake Starwood,” Penelope stated in a voice like yipping jackals. “I could hold you to account, I could make you responsible for all you have done! All you have allowed! I could be your ruin!”

Blood beaded along Penelope’s palms as she curled her hands into fists, the points of her sharpened nails biting into her flesh. The pain was grounding through the red haze of her rage.

“You could,” Queen Theia breathed, wonder in her eyes as she regarded her child. “You could indeed… you have that power. Such a gift…”

Penelope flinched forward with a snarl, hesitating when her mother held up a hand.

“But would Clarity deserve that? Would all the innocents of our realm deserve that?”

A yowl ripped through Penelope’s teeth, a harsh and helpless cry that softened to a vixen whine as Penelope looked over at her younger sister; Clarity stared up at Penelope in terrified fixation, shrinking into their father’s side.

“I already know you do not wish to harm the innocent… I know you cannot…”

The certainty in her mother’s voice drained the wrath from Penelope’s limbs. She sank to the pebbled earth, aching with grief and feeling utterly spent.

“We are nothing more than pips for you to bargain… are we? Are we? We are nothing to you…”

“You are everything, Penelope,” the Queen refuted, voice high with emotion. “Everything. I knew what I would lose the moment I sent you away… Yet I also knew what more other mothers, other fathers… What more our world would lose if we did not commit to this singular chance at surviving the ruin to come!”

The Queen of Starwood knelt to face Penelope, brushing curls and tears from her face. Against her own will, Penelope leant into the touch, hating herself for even now craving the love of her mother.

“Do not think me uncaring… However, I could not place my love, my happiness, nor even the happiness of my own children, above the future of all realms. I could not, in good conscience, delay what was already inevitable and forfeit the opportunity for us all to survive…

“I had to make a choice, Penelope… I could either live with the grief of a daughter who would grow to despise me, yet had the potential to live a long life… had the potential to ensure our world, too, would survive… or I could have kept you by my side, kept your love, and grieved the knowledge you would die before your time… along with countless others.”

Penelope whimpered and her mother inched closer.

“You may have been shaped for a certain kind of power, to walk a certain path… but only because you were truly born with the potential to bear such a mantle. You have the power to succeed where no other can…”

“Why… why now? Why are you telling me all this now?” Penelope sobbed.

“Because, darling,” Queen Theia smoothed a curl behind Penelope’s ear. “Because you’ve made your choice. Your path is set.”

“What are you even hoping I’ll do now?” Penelope peered at her mother’s face through the blur of tears, feeling broken. “What am I to do?”

“Nothing more or less than you have already resolved yourself to.”

“And the Sisters?”

“Are free to do as they wish…”

“You won’t charge them with treason if they leave the woods now?” Penelope glared at her mother with all the derision she could muster, though the Queen ignored it.

“No… no, of course not. Though I think you’ll find they will not want to leave. Not now.”

Penelope sobbed into her mother’s shoulder, spilling tears for the child she never had the chance to be. The choices she and the Sisters never had the chance to make.

“I will never forgive you.”

Her mother rocked her as though soothing a small child.

“I know.”

The garden fell still and quiet once more, filled only with the ragged breathing of a broken family.

“It is time for us to take our leave,” the Queen said, rising to stand. Penelope clambered to her feet, feeling numb with defeat and oceans of loss.

“For what it is worth… we do love you. So very, very much.”

Penelope squeezed her eyes shut as her father kissed her temple, as her mother brushed a thumb against her cheek, as Clarity wrapped her arms around her waist one last time.

And then she was alone, abandoned to the dark once again.