Author's note: Oh, there was so much I wanted to tell you in this first note… about how long it took to finish this story (18 months), and how I hated it so much at some points (and still do, sometimes), but now that it's time to upload, all the poetic things I was going to say just vanished.

So, let's instead proceed with a stark warning and a thank you note:

The stark warning: There are graphic depictions of violence in this story. So if you are of a nervous or impressionable disposition, look away now.

The thank you note: I dumped this story, all 120.000 words of it on the doorstep (which is to say, the inbox) of the beautiful, wonderful, patient, clever Inkfiction. I cannot thank her enough for her help with this story, for pointing out inconsistencies and many, many typos. Thank you kindly, my dear.

And now, on with it. There is much to tell. I hope you enjoy.

Much love

Jane

… … …

This world or any other

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. […] But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things."

Henry David Thoreau

Preamble

In land far, far away, where happy endings had once bloomed like wild flowers with every story, war and famine, death and misery tolled like bells for every being, ignorant of rank or age, promise or failure.

A curse, born of despair, opened the doors to all that is evil. And evil didn't just walk through: it barged in.

How ironic then, that it should be the Evil Queen, caster of the curse, nightmare of the Enchanted Forest, all that stood between evil and those that were its sustenance.

Chapter 1

The fog shrouded the land rolling in low, low waves, dissipating behind her worn duster leather jacket and closing again behind her. The warrior stood and smelled the musty air, studied the roll of the land, the absence of life and waited for her cue, for respite. And hunted.

The hills rolled rounded and barren at her feet, peaceful from a distance, stretching into the dark edges of the Endless Forest. The air smelled of battle and blood and defeat. The animals were silent in their burrows, waiting it out. If she could, the Evil Queen would have done the same, but she had no such luxury. She'd lost that right 28 years ago.

She planted her feet firmly on the ground, listening for the imp with her ears, with her whole body.

It wasn't far. She'd gotten a dagger in. She could smell its blood, its fear. Alone and wounded, the imp was no great challenge and still it was taking her time to find it. She was tired. Exhausted. A weariness that went all the way to her unaged bones.

A change in the wind brought a new scent, a suggestion of noise. She took a deep breath and braced for the chase. The imp was wounded but imps don't give up. She wiped her palms on her leather pants and unsheathed the daggers at her chest harness and moved towards the sound.

The village bloomed like a dead flower out of the grey morning fog and there was nothing welcoming about the darkened windows in the winter dawn or the empty chimneys or the unnatural silence where children should have been running and screaming after each other. This too was her doing.

The imp had left her a trail of black blood into the fallow fields and the rickety wooden silos that had stored nothing but air and fear for the last twenty-eight years. Starving peasants were easy prey for imps, trolls and ogres. A pig squealed as the wounded imp tried to stealthily feed off its blood in a bid to gather strength against her. The only option was to move fast towards the sty before it could fully regenerate and become unbeatable in her state of exhaustion.

The creature's trail was hot and pungent, the blood and the brimstone smell an infallible beacon and she was on the imp in a short stride, her dagger aiming for its stocky torso. The small impfed off the emaciated pig still, even as it saw her approaching, and the stench of fear was ripe in the air, from the dying animal and the imp alike. The imp's eyes were alight, red in the feeding frenzy and she made her first mistake of the night: she did not sever its head off immediately.

"Have they abandoned you, imp?" The Evil Queen taunted, "Left you wounded behind?"It was a weakness and she would pay for creature was small, even for an imp, little more than the height of a 10 year old, weak, emaciated, afraid. She knew that underestimating an imp was a mistake. She knew, but she lost her focus momentarily. She knew alone. She knew wounded and alone and in all her impromptu training, she had never been able to eliminate all the empathy from where her blackened heart had once beaten. And fate saw it fit to punish her for it at that exact moment. The imp's eyes glowed bright red, and it straightened its frame. Fortified by the meagre feeding, the span of its leathery wings dwarfed her and it was only when she lunged for it, daggers at the ready, that she knew she had been set upon.

She sliced through the skin and flesh of its neck but already behind her there was movement and she was out of time.

The imps were on her then and among them, Eketh, their current general. It rose to its full height, all five feet of it and its frame filled her vision. In the still air of dawn, she knew she was as good as dead if she couldn't eliminate it. She had made the mistake of underestimating imps only once, in the beginning. Small they might be, but they were hardy, stocky and, more importantly, poisonous. Her one advantage was that imps didn't fight without a leader. Killing their general- and fast- was her only chance. And also her greatest challenge, surrounded as he was by smaller yes, but equally vicious, equally deadly, imps. She turned, daggers ready, carefully controlling her breathing, wishing, as she always did, for her magic but wishes were no more hers than peace and in a moment, an imp's claws were on her flesh, ripping, cutting, poisoning as she turned and whacked and sliced. She was all there was. She was the army and the general, the captain, the soldier.

She was all there was against ReulG'horm.

No one would come to her aid. No one ever did. It was up to her, now. Gritting her teeth against the fire already running in her veins, the queen griped the daggers in hands slick with her own blood and plunged forward. She struck blindly, on instinct and need alone, on sheer stubbornness and by order of the reigning Queen. She hit flesh, the sharp blade slicing easily though the leathery skin and coming out of it slick with black imp blood. She had long ago lost the urge to gag at the feel of flesh giving under blade and at the smell of brimstone. There was only the instinct to force her muscles to plunge the dagger again and again and again until the wall of bodies thinned out and she was crunching body parts under her feet, swaying as her own blood seeped out of her. The imp general laughed, a sardonic rictus in what passed for a face. There was victory there though the imp too was wounded. The sound slithered through the morning and the dead fields, something pervading, a cold, harsh sound that was not imp. Or not imp alone.

"Why do you bother, Queen Regina? There is one of you and I am as many as I need. You cannot defeat me. Kill this one and there will be more. Always more."

Okay, so she'd been graced with ReulG'horm in the flesh. She should have been flattered that ReulG'horm chose to torment her personally. She wasn't. It did nothing to her. This was her job. One she had to complete before she could rest at last.

It was pointless but she plunged her right hand dagger into the imp's neck, gashing it swiftly into two lips of leathery skin from where black, thick, sulphurous blood ran.

ReulG'horm can't be killed, can't be defeated. Only his army can. Pointless, pointless, pointless.

ReulG'horm grabbed her wrist in Eketh's gnarly, dying hands and turned it, vein up, animating the dying general. "Come to me, Queen… come, come, come…" The words slithered like snakes between them, no longer imp, just cold. "I won't break you…" ReulG'horm brought her wrist to the imp's face and inhaled deeply, as if it had been scenting an exquisite wine. "…much. You're hardy…" The words uttered by the imp rattled her bones. "You wear well…" The imp's dead forked tongue came out, animated by ReulG'horm's magic and caressed her wrist like a lover or a snake.

No, the voice of what was still human in her screamed at the back her mind. Yes, a voice that promised relief replied. Yes. It would all be over soon, if she just gave in. Regina bit her lower lip between her teeth and the sharp pain of it revived her for a few precious seconds, enough to drag her dagger through the imp's neck, this time severing it from the torso. "No!" Eketh was dead, finally silent but in its stead another would rise, another face, another name. ReulG'horm's army was endless. "No, I won't!"

The remaining imps, the ones still standing surrounded her, safe in their numbers and a gnarly but powerful hand shot against her body and punched her four feet backwards. The imps were gone before she had finished falling. Small wonder imps were ReulG'horm's favourite weapon: small, compact but deadly.

The imps' retreat left behind the wounded, useless ones to finish dying by her side, food for trolls or ogres, whichever scented death first.

Disorientated by the loss of blood, she admitted- as she always would- that ReulG'horm was right. She was fighting a losing battle. She was but one against an ever replenishing source. And yet she had no choice but to fight.

It was her punishment, after all.

Her body gave up the battleagainst the deadly poison coursing through her veins and she slumped into the mud of the pig sty wishing that this time, there would be no salvation, even for her. She wished with all her might never to wake up again.

She surrendered.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

Stand up!

She tried because it's impossible to not obey when your master whispers to your heart in their hands. It's not possible to just let yourself fade if such is not their will.

Stand up!

The Evil Queen tried. Her arms unfurled from the heap she'd fallen into and she tried to push herself up. It burned. That was her first conscious thought. It burned as surely as if she had been lit aflame. It hurt all over: it was crippling and she wanted to go back to where she was before, where there was only nothing, where there wasn't this never ending punishment of hers. But the Queen's voice screeched in her empty chest. Stand up! So she tried again to obey her master. Failed again, too.

… … …

"Come along, dearie, do not postpone the inevitable." Rumpelstiltskin sounded bored, none of his mirthful sing-a-song tone. "I. said. Move. Dearie." He punctuated each word with a blast of magic to her body. Queen Snow, her master, must have called upon him. He usually toyed with her a little more before inflicting any real pain. He took her by the arm and lifted her off the mud, excrement and imp carcasses where she lay. Her body protested in agony.

"Please, just leave me here." It was not like her to beg, but just this once she was just weak enough, tired enough. Desperate enough.

"What? To die in peace?" Her silence was acquiescent. "Not bloody likely! Aren't you yet tired of failing, dearie?" She felt magic coursing through the muscles of her arm where his hand was latched onto her arm.

Rumpelstiltskin was cruel to make her only strong enough to trail after him. There were miles to walk to his palace and he made her walk every last one though would have been enough. Rumplestilskin was, after all the last holder of magic.

Once there, he let the spell fade and all that borrowed strength simply bled out of her. She collapsed again, this time on the stone floor, her bones rattling inside the sac of her skin, telling her that it was not over yet. And that was not what she wanted.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

There was a lullaby, mournful and sad and she knew the voice, she'd heard it before. Belle. The stone floor under her was cold, but Regina, the defeated Evil Queen, remained there. Nothing had changed. Neither the pain nor Belle. Twenty-eight years gone and she was still the same young girl that had come to serve Rumpelstiltskin in exchange for respite for her land. Except now her eyes were dead and her body rocked a child that would not come to pass any more than the years would. Her body was as desolate as the land.

As she opened her eyes, Belle stood, acold, vacant stare, and walked away, still lullabying a non-existent child. Regina took stock of her body. The worse of the injuries, the ones that she would not have been able to heal on her own were gone. The poison was gone, nothing but a memory of burning alive. Everything else was still there- to remind her of one more defeat.

"Lookie, lookie, who's awake."Rumpelstiltskin sang tiredly without the usual bounce in his step. "We have to stop meeting likethis,dearie. You have a land to protect and creatures to slay. Her Majesty can't be expected to keep an eye out for you, you know?"

"I wish she wouldn't. I wish she'd just let me―"

"Let you what? Die? That easy? Ah, dearie, if wishes were potatoes we'd all be fat. Have you ever heard the expression Death is too good for you? No? Pity! Tell you what… While we're trapped here, you'll be trapped here with us. Seems like a fair deal…"

"Fair?"

"Now, now, none of the haughty tone, please." He smiled at his own little joke. "Though the time has come for you to do something useful for this land… Just for change of pace..." Again he giggled at his own joke.

"For the land or for you?"

"Dearie, we've had this conversation before: you can't harm this land. Not while Queen Snow White holds your heart in her precious little hands…" The wiggling of his talon like fingers added a dangerous undercurrent to the saccharine tone of his voice. "Not by your own design nor anyone else's. Nothing to worry about. The fate of this land is still your fate. So, on that note… maybe we should come to some… arrangement…"

If the Evil Queen had still had a heart, it would have plummeted to her gut with Rumpelstiltskin's calculating little snicker. "No arrangements. Not with you. Never again."

"Oh, never is such an… impractical little word…" He seemed to ponder his own words and then, in less than a blink he had materialized looming over Regina, invading her personal space. "Well, then, consider it Royal Appointment… Find the Lost Princess. You know the one: the babe the Queen had so send to another world to keep safe from you. Find her and bring her to her land. Bring her to her mother."

"Why?"

"That is none of your concern, dearie."

"Why would I?"

Bring her to me!

The defeated queen's chest squeezed impossibly tight and she heard the voice of Queen Snow White in the hollow of her chest where her heart used to be.

Bring her to me!

Regina slumped to her knees trying to catch her breath. Rumpelstiltskin loomed over her, studying her like a bug. "Now, now, Your Majesty, this requires lighter fingers. There is a fine line between… persuasion… and death." He spoke to the absent Queen Snow.

Regina prayed briefly for Snow White to lose that fine control. The constriction in her chest subsided. Bring her to me!

On her hands and knees, The Evil Queen nodded in agreement. "Why?" She asked when she drew in air. If this Lost Princess had been her daughter, she would have wanted her far, far away from this land. She would keep her away from this dying, toxic land no matter the cost.

"Why not?" Rumpelstiltskin shrugged as if he didn't care either way. And it was a lie.

"Why now? What do you want from her?"

"Because she's ready now, dearie. Certain things take time."

"No."

"No?"

She could feel Snow White's dark fury in her body. She revelled in it. She pushed at the edges of that fury, poked it, cajoled it. "This is where I am needed." She tried for it, for the foregone conclusion of this little game of theirs: her death. If the queen finally passed that fine line, if her fingers squeezed, if her small hands tightened in anger around her heart, the Evil Queen would finally be free.

Besides, she couldn't help herself: Rumpelstiltskin wanted the Princess bad enough, Snow White wanted her bad enough that they would release her from the eternal punishment that had promised her twenty-eight years ago and the Evil Queen was not defeated enough to not relish that little defiance. She was ready. She was ready to be gone from the world, but she would cherish doing so in her own terms. "I am bound to this land, to defend it, to suffer with it. This is where I must be."

"Oooooh! Such dedication! Then, you'll be happy to know that the Princess will come to save this land. She is the Saviour. The Saviour of the prophecy. You should like her to come… She will end ReulG'horm and, by virtue of your covenant with this Land, you as well."

"No saviour is enough for this land…" The Evil Queen wanted to surrender. Why was it that after so many years of not belonging to herself, she had yet to learn how to keep her head low.

"Thank you kindly for that, dearie by the way, but no, you're quite wrong."

The Saviour will come and deliver the land from evil! Queen Snow screamed at her heart.

Rumpelstiltskin nodded his head mockingly because Queen Snow could not see him. "You should be happy,dearie. Bringing her home should be your heart's fondest wish. When she comes, we will no longer require your… huh… assistance. You shall be free… in manner of speaking... Didn't you just spend the whole way back moping and wishing for just that?"

"I have no heart to wish with."

"Ah… so, so dramatic! It's a figure of speech, is it not? Do you not wish it every day?"

Regina didn't admit to it. She was weak, yes, but she would not show it. She would die standing. He moved closer and held her chin in his hand to look deep into her eyes. "I have heard your wish. You have no heart in you to keep it a secret but you wish, still."

"No."

"Oh yes!" The glee in Rumpelstiltskin seemed to unfold from some recondite place in him at the thought of bringing the Princess home. "The Queen will let you go. Bring the Princess home and the Queen will lose interest in keeping you alive. She'll have... a new toy."

"She won't." The words came out a whisper. For a moment, hope was more than Regina could fight, and with it the bone deep knowledge that it was a doomed hope. If she'd had a heart in her chest, it might hurt knowing that she had been, for the last twenty-eight years, nothing but a place holder for this princess. All the blood, all the pain had been hers and yet, even in her disgrace, she was, once again nothing but a place holder.

"Bwaaaaaah!"He mock cried. "Of course she won't let go, let go, dearie. Don't think for a moment you're getting a manumission certificate for your efforts. I was thinking more of let go as you wished when that imp dug his claws in your arm- that kind of let go, yes. Yes, she will. Especially because I am tired of babysitting your failures. As far as I'm concerned, once you bring the Princess home, you will have outlived your- rather patchy- usefulness."

"Die?" The words were dispassionate, unemotional. She wanted that outcome but, somehow, there was still something in her that feared it, that fought it.

"Well, you didn't really expect a happy ever after in your castle with a prince of your choice, now, did you? Not after what your ineptitude brought upon this land." His hand squeezed her chin painfully and brought her eyes back to his. "It's not a trade I'm quite in the mood for. I had a schedule to meet and you failed me. For your pathetic excuse of a father," He spat out the word, "who could not be arsed to defend you from your own mother or your husband... Tell me, dearie, was it worth it? I do not forgive easily. I would have you fight ReulG'horm's army forever."

"Why don't you?"

He pushed her face away from him, his reptilian fingers squeezing, nails digging painfully into the soft flesh of her jaw. "Do not test me. Do not push at me. I have never discussed my intentions with anyone and will not start now."

What was one princess to her? Snow White's daughter might have a worse fate mapped out than Snow imagined. Rumpelstiltskin was too interested in the whelp. One Princess for her freedom. What did she care?

"Your word."

"A contract, then."

"No. Your word. If I bring you the princess, you and Snow White will let me die."

"So dramatic! So be it: if you bring the princess home, Queen Snow and I will let you die. I'll even throw in swift and painless as an incentive."

Rumpelstiltskin wanted this princess too much. He was impatient and offering too much. And yes, she found that she didn't have the will to play any longer. She was bone tired, defeated. "Your word." Her one wish was not be no more.

"Cross my heart, hope to die." He giggled. "Oh, wait… that's you." And he cackled in glee, sensing victory. "Now, now, no time for moping, dearie. Collect yourself and get going. There are trolls to catch and ogres to to bring home." He flapped his arms as if he was shooing chickens.

"Indeed."

"There are worse fates than the one you have been given, never you forget about that. Now go, before I change my mind."

Whatever Rumpelstiltskin had in mind it was important enough for him to let go of her to grab hold of the Princess. She crushed the pity for Snow's whelp under her worn boot. This would be over and that was all she should care about. It would all be over soon.

"How will I find her?"

She heard his sardonic giggle, but with a flick of his wrist, the castle was gone. Or Regina was. Whichever. She was starting to forget what it felt like to have magic of her own, to feel magic course through her limbs. Of course Rumpelstiltskin would have been the one being to keep some of his magic.

She found herself back at the village, back in the same sty, with nothing but seconds having passed her by, as if time had rewinded itself just to ensure that every morsel of it was hers to live through. It was still just after dawn and the thin pig was still to finish dying from being fed upon by the imp. There was still the smell of brimstone rising from the decapitated imp and its black blood on the ground.

She walked in shame, knowing what she would find on her way out of the village- the dead, the tormented, the fed upon. Adults and children. She was the Evil Queen and yet she was all that stood between them and ReulG'horm's army. Soldiers had long ago died out as a profession, a race, a vocation. Now there were only people, barely human, trying to survive out of the crumbs left behind by ReulG'horm's army.

A child scurried ahead of her. She was feared as much as the imps, the trolls, the kelpies, the ogres. The fact that she was their last- their only- defender was an irony that did not escape her. She had no magic left but meagre spurts of what was needed to tend to her own wounds. She could do nothing for them. She could nothing for herself. But what mattered was that she was the one that had brought this upon them. What mattered was that she had once been the Evil Queen.

There was no one to offer solace, a drink of water, a caring hand when she fell wounded, a word of encouragement when she needed to keep going, a helping hand, a bowl of warm soup. As alone as she had been then, it was worse now. And she could not leave any of it behind. Not even her own body. Her life was the Queen's whim.

Rumpelstiltskin's offer was light at the end of the tunnel.A life for a life. When had she ever cared about anyone else?

A door opened and an old woman in an incongruent almost shimmering green dress beckoned her into her miserable hut.

She wanted to give it a pass. In each of the huts of the village there was someone that had died because she had failed to prevent the attack today. There was only so much she could pretend to not affect her. But her reluctance was more than that: it was a tingling at the back of her neck as if trouble was near, just hiding in wait. And yet, no matter how she tried to force her feet away from the village, she was still going to go into that hut because such was her punishment.

The old woman in the green dress moved aside franking her entrance. "Do not fear, Your Majesty. I am but an old woman."

What was there to fear? A slip of a woman starved to an inch of death? And fear for what? For her own miserable life? "What would you have of me? Bury your dead?"
"I have no dead left to bury."

"Than what would you have of me?"

"I will have nothing of you, Your Majesty. But I do wish to give you something." Regina wondered not what the old woman would have to offer her when she lived in such squalor, but why would she want to give her anything at all.

The woman studied her with hooded eyes. She moved with difficulty to the hearth and served a bowl of thin stew which she placed in front of Regina. "There is no bread, I'm afraid."

Regina studied the old woman looking for signs of treachery. She was used to being refused at the market, she had long ago stopped even trying and now this woman gave her food, requesting nothing in return? There had to be a catch. The stew looked thoroughly unappealing, just a few bits of whatever it was floating about in a murky water. But it was much more than she could have done herself. Treachery or not, she took a spoon and ate, forgetting to question the woman's motives as the warmth of the food spread through her. Why would someone feed the one that had brought all of this upon their land? The trolls, the hags, the imps, the giants, the wraiths, the goblins… all lose on the land, all preying on the bodies of the fallen and on those that still survived, the locusts that were never extinguished.

The stew warmed up her belly, gave her a semblance of comfort. It relaxed her muscles and made her sleepy, her mind hazy. "Thank you."

"No need…" Regina's eyes drooped closed. How long had it been since she had slept? The old woman touched her hand over the table top and there was nothing she wanted more than just to lean her head on her arms and close her eyes, to rest, to enjoy the forgotten sensation of a full belly, of warmth on her skin. "Just sleep."

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

The mirror did not return her image. The genie was long gone, allegiancesworn to another master, so she was notreallyexpecting to see him there. But whatever it was she expected, this was not it: paths covered in black, forests of stone and glass, people climbing in and out of horseless carriages, gigantic gleaming birds crossing the skies and the rivers enclosed by walls of stone. It was a strange world she was having a glimpse of. A very strange one.

The general imp materialised in front of her, wings spanning the width of the alley. Its eyes gleamed with hunger and its cocky smile invited an attack. She felt around for her daggers and found none. She took in her surroundings. Surely there would be something she could use as a weapon. Imps could not kill her, her covenant with the land protected her, but it did nothing about the considerable torture when they actually wounded her. This strange world offered nothing she could use as a weapon. Fear reared its ugly head. The imp trotted to her, its hooves clanking on the black path and stopped in front of her. When it spoke, it was not the voice of an imp, but something bigger. ReulG'horm. "Will you follow me to this new world? I can kill you there. Don't you wish for it? For the respite of it? Follow me, Queen. Let me help you find this Princess of yours. Let me offer you death."

Its claws gleamed the light of the strange lamps and it made a swipe at her, at her face. Not really to kill, just to wound, just to inflict pain. Imps could not kill her. Nothing could kill her. Rumpelstiltskin had made sure of that. But the pain was real. The poison in its claws radiated through her flesh, spreading, spreading, spreading the agony through her body, seizing, spasming. And still not a dagger in sight.

The imp smiled, mocking her and to drive its point home, sharp claws again lunged at her. She braced for the feeling of flesh being ripped but in its stead, the imp fell to the floor, a hole the size of a pea in its red skinned chest from where black oily blood trickled out.

When it finished falling to the black ground, it revealed behind it a head of wild blonde hair. Regina couldn't quite make out the features, her vision swam and swayed, but it was a Princess. The Princess. What was a princess doing in a dirty alley?

"What the hell was that?"

Hell was appropriate. My hell, she thought. That was my hell. And as the venom in the imp's claws made its way through her blood, she slid to the floor in agony, unable to stand. The princess grabbed her arm and cushioned her fall. "A fainter. I had to get a damned fainter. Come on, lady, give me a break here."

She came to and the first sensation was the foul smell of rotting food and urine. There were blackened walls and the ground was sticky. And the same princess sitting on the floor, propping her head on her pants clad legs, brushing hair from her face and rambling on about not being good with blood.

"Lady, we need to get you to a doctor. You're hurt. And then maybe you can tell me what the hell was that thing, because I'm a little freaked out and I don't like the feeling of being freaked out. Can you get up?"
It might as well have been a foreign language. She was hearing the words but none of them made sense. Except for the final command. That was the one thing she understood. Yes. Yes, she could. She always did. She moved her legs and her feet and her arms and hands to get up. She did so with some measure of success, swaying, vision doubling, the venom spreading in her body, wave upon wave of fire and pain and nausea. "Princess... I was sent to get you."

The woman held her, helped her stay on her feet. "I'm no princess, Lady, and I'm not going anywhere."

And Regina believed her.

~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~SQ~

She dragged herself from sleep, painstakingly, decisively waking up from whatever spell, whatever enchantment had been placed upon her.

Her mouth was swollen inside, tasted of bile and her body was sluggish. Poison or potion, but not natural sleep from exhaustion or loss of blood or injury caused by imps. She tried to get up but her body would not cooperate, not even to raise her head from her arms where she lay at the table in the miserable hut.

She bit down the panic, the helplessness. She was not helpless and fear was a commodity. She had to rescue herself because no one else would. She concentrated on each part of her body and found, as she did, that she could indeed move.

"You are awake." The old woman spoke from her stool by the fire where she was calmly spinning green wool. Regina did not reply. She had to get out. She had to get out now. "You had a vision."

"There was no vision. What did you put in the food?"

"You had a vision. A gift. You must follow your vision."

"There was no―"

"Whether you want it or not, whether you believe it or not, Your Majesty, you saw. You saw. You must let it guide you. ReulG'horm is no longer satisfied by our world and moves on, like a locust, devastating everything in its path. Consuming, devouring, devastating. He knows the prophecy about the saviour Princess and he seeks to destroy her before she knows of it, before she is prepared for it.

"There is nothing left of our world. There is not much more you can do for the people you have cursed. But you have set ReulG'horm free with your curse. Your curse unleashed that which was contained. And as it goes into another world to destroy and feed, so it is your responsibility to protect them as much as it was to protect this world. What you have set free, Your Majesty, it is your burden to stop. No matter how many lifetimes it takes you to achieve. As long as it moves, so will you. Your curse has melded your destinies. Whatever it is of ReulG'horm, it is of you."

"When it is defeated, so am I." Regina inferred.

"Yes." The woman agreed with a sadness Regina could not understand.

"So she comes to defeat it. And when she does I shall die."

"Do you want to?" What an odd question. When had her wishes ever mattered?

The Evil Queen thought of her father, of Graham, both dead. She thought of a life that was not hers to live nor hers to die. "I want to be free."

"Then find the Princess. Fight the monsters. Guide her home." There was a momentary pause and then she continued, an afterthought. "Trust her. No matter what, trust her. And above all, trust yourself."

The Evil Queen sighed. "How will I find her?"

"With your heart."

"Snow White has my heart."

The old woman stopped spinning and her smile was kind. "Quite the conundrum, dear."