The Mother of a Monster, A Fairy Tale

Mother (verb): 1 to give birth to

2 to give rise to

Once upon a time, there was a woman, a wife and mother, who was a master of herbs and tinctures. She lived in a small cottage in a small village where superstition filled the air like fog. Her husband, a war hero, succumbed to an infection after returning home with one less appendage. The woman’s potions failed to save him, leaving her a widow and her son fatherless. The villagers began to twist her healing into something sinister. 

X’s were carved in jagged rows along her door, the hollowed wood pricking with splinters. They said it was a mark fit for a witch.

Soon the villagers’ carving ceased; glass bombs smashed against the cottage. When a window shattered, puzzle-piece flecks spraying the woman’s young boy, marking his flesh with red nicks, she vowed to leave. They would find a better place, she promised her son. “I’ll keep you safe,” she said. “Always.”

At dawn, when the villagers trudged drowsily toward their own cottages, the woman and her son slipped into the opening of the woods, its mouth swallowing them, its foliage a cloak.

They were never seen again. Or so the legend says.

Kill or be killed, they learned. So they adapted, teaching themselves to discard identities like clothing at the end of a long day. Stories of a witch and a boy surfaced throughout the continent. In Germany, an ogress was seen leading a boy to her candy-coated cottage, a stream of cotton floss pink smoke streaming from the chimney. Children with sweet tooths, beware, they said. The monstrous woman lures with cakes and pies and cookies, the children fattening like swine until she roasts them on a spit. 

In France, there were tales of a fairy with spiked ears and teeth who had a son, formed from the seed of a human man, who appeared like a human boy. She would stay in the shadows of the woods while he went into the village and befriended its people, offering to do small jobs - washing dishes, mending clothes, patching roofs. He managed to gain the townspeople’s trust, and when they turned away for a moment, he whistled to his fairy mother, who snatched the babe from its crib. The parents would return to find the spitting image of their child gazing up at them, its eyes golden and reptilian. Something inhumane in its place.

In Austria, it was said a woman crafted herbs that could raise the dead. She and her companion, a boy or young man, no one was certain his age, carried a large basket brimming with plants to the charnel house. They would kneel, side by side, their knees in the chalky stone ground before the chosen skeleton. From her basket, she pulled Queen Anne’s Lace, elderberries, turmeric, sage. Her companion would lift the skull with its painted flower crown or cross from its place, handing it to the witch. Words shuffled from her mouth, weaving a spell as she stuffed the herbs into the skull’s open mouth. The companion would then piece the skeleton together, bone by bone.

According to lore, when rosy dawn emerged from its slumber, casting the bone house in sunlight, the skeleton emerged from the small structure, able to roam the world of the living until dawn the following day. In some versions of the tale, the necromancer danced with the skeleton under the stars, her face stretched into a wicked grin.

Stories are like dough, pulled into various directions and molded into all kinds of shapes. Not all of these were pure fiction, dear reader, but many of them stretched the truth.

For the woman and her son it wasn’t a life of stability or happily ever after, yet they were together. That’s what the woman always reminded the boy. “As long as we’re together, my darling, no harm can come to us,” she said. 

When he was young, just after they had left their village, the white stars in his gray eyes had crackled as he smiled at his mother. She swore that through his eyes she could see deep into his soul, the pure radiance of it. But as he grew, years being tacked onto his life, the crackle diminished, as did the stars, his eyes dense with clouds. The woman could no longer read her son, his soul a mystery.

A child needs stability. Education. Connection. The woman knew this. But hadn’t she promised to keep him safe from the dangers of the world and its inhabitants? She told herself she was doing right by him. That the earth nourished him, teaching and grounding the boy in its wonders. He’ll forgive me, she convinced herself. When he’s a man with a family of his own, he’ll understand. 

Sadly, of course, he wouldn’t. 

Shortly thereafter the boy’s sixteenth birthday, the woman fell ill. Large, red blotches trailed her limbs. A dry cough escaped her cracked lips in hoarse barks. The woman who had traveled across rivers and streams, through thickets and forests, who had healed whole villages, lay curled on her straw mattress, a gutted shell. Her fingers were too weak to grasp her plants, let alone shape them into remedies. 

Her son kneeled beside her, bringing water to her mouth. He begged her to instruct him; he could heal her, if only she was his guide. 

She shook her head. “Not every ailment has a remedy, my darling.”

What he didn’t know was that some souls linger. Contrary to the tales, he had never been allowed to see his mother raise the dead. On each full moon, she bound him to the village they were staying in, tracing its borders with black salt. “For your protection,” she had told him. “This type of magick is dangerous work.” 

What she had wanted to say was, Even mothers need their secrets. 

The woman’s interests weren’t in necromancy alone, but the alchemy of the soul. She had learned it could remain on earth if so determined. But what were the soul’s boundaries? she wondered. And was her witchcraft deathless?

Each cycle of the moon served as research. One night as she knelt in the woods, her knees enveloped in dirt, the answer came. To exist eternally, a soul, like magick, needed a connection, something that bound it to the earth. 

Root to soil. 

Soil to root. 

A tethering. 

On her deathbed, she formed the words with her tongue. Her son heard shallow sucks of breath and a rustling. He thought she was praying. In a way he was right. Witchcraft was her sanctuary, and she embraced it with one last spell. 

Her son didn’t realize any of this, of course. Nor did he notice a pale fog thickening in the room of their cottage, as her heartbeat slowed, the mist flexing into the shape of his mother for just a moment before disappearing. White light streamed in through the window. His mother lay on her back, no longer contorted, her hands on her stomach, resembling a princess under a sleeping curse. The young man had been his mother’s companion for long enough. He knew when a person had left their body, their soul released from its earthbound cage. He made his preparations, too busy with mourning and transforming to notice what his mother had done. 

What she had become.

But we’ll get to that soon enough, dear reader.

The young man sprinkled rosemary, the herb of remembrance, onto his mother before wrapping her body in a quilt, creating a shroud, just as he’d seen her do dozens of times for the recently departed. 

He sat by her side until dawn. Then he went to find work at the nearest village, doing odds and ends for the townspeople. At first, it felt unnatural to be without his mother. The young man wandered through his tasks, his face drawn and gray. He had been her companion, by her side, his entire life. Some asked after her, desiring her tinctures. Some apologized for his loss, and said they would pray for him. It was the ones who didn’t approach him desiring magical herbs, who didn’t offer condolences, that caught his attention. 

Without his mother around, they held themselves taller, their eyes steady and white. He had never realized how people had shrunk from his witch mother, their eyes bloodshot, darting, as though they expected demons to materialize, dragging them to the underworld. The witch’s son realized he found jobs more easily too. 

His witch mother, now a spirit, watched this chapter of the young man’s story unfold, keeping her distance. The freckles unevenly dotting his nose, his light brown hair and soft curls, reminded her of her late husband. He was born of a great man, her son. And she had raised him with the pillars of healing and kindness. He would find his way, she was certain.

It didn’t surprise the woman that soon the townspeople forgot her son’s lineage. In the pub, in front of their houses, in the streets, their tongues loosened, snickers about wicked sorceresses who tricked and poisoned with their magical herbs. 

She wanted to lay a curse on their houses for spreading such vileness. Yet she held back, unsure of her spectral influence. Unsure if she should intervene. Wasn’t it time for her son to shape his own story?

At the pub one evening, she listened as a man said, “I’m glad the hag’s gone. A woman isn’t supposed to have that much power. It’s unnatural.” He spoke these words in front of her son, who sat two seats away. 

Another man answered, “She who takes up with Satan, who seeks beyond her circumstance, be damned.” His cheeks ruddy from liquor. 

“Hear, hear,” the first man replied. He slugged back his pint of frothy beer. The amber liquid spilled onto the bar, unnoticed by the men.

The witch snorted, allowing herself to imagine what they’d look like if she turned them into swine. She crossed her arms, waiting for her son’s response. He would crush them with words; witch’s children always have a way with language, you know.

The young man went to open his mouth, to defend his mother’s honor. She could almost hear the words he would weave. But then his tongue paused, floating in between his teeth. She watched as his brow furrowed and his jaw stiffened. She imagined memories unspooling. His father’s body, limp and pale, buried in a timber box, a lopsided cross in the dirt the only sign of his existence. Spine-tingling scrapes as the wood of their cottage was gutted with knives, marked with X’s. Glass smashing, splintering the window. A shard tearing into the flesh of his arm. Dark red drops dripping from the wound to the dusty earth. “I’ll keep you safe, my darling,” his mother’s voice echoed. Quick footsteps crunching in the leaves, pointed toward the woods. Running, always. 

And for what? What had she given him, really? A life of adventure and magick didn’t foster safety or stability. Remorse took root in her gut. A mother does not simply give birth to a child, but gives rise to one. She is tasked with teaching her children about the world, its beauty, its temptations, and its dangers. The seeds of regret bloomed in the hollows of her phantasmal frame.

Her son’s tongue curled, air bubbles popping, as he formed the words she never thought she’d hear him say. “Witchcraft. Trickery. Forbidden, unnatural knowledge.” 

She wondered how he pictured her in that moment, if he imagined his mother rolling in her shroud, her decaying body hitting the floor with a clatter and squish.

“Hear, hear,” the men said in unison.

They slid a pint in front of the witch’s son. The young man nodded, his gray eyes darkening to coal, a grin stretching his face. He craned his neck then, his gaze landing on his mother. His eyes glowed with destruction. She imagined him a hunter, sniffing out his prey. The flowers inside the woman wilted, their petals and stems shriveling. For all her sorcery and knowledge, darkness had followed her son since boyhood. Every time the people in a village had turned on her, casting them out, shadows had reached for him, swallowing more and more over time. Like most humans, he wasn’t immune to the hatred that fear breeds. 

The witch didn’t recognize this man. Her boy with the starry eyes had vanished. Visions of the future danced before her. A wedding. A funeral. A second wedding. A second funeral. It went on and on, until…

A woman lay on the ground before a dying fire. The blade of a knife clattered against the stone floor. A man’s laugh echoed. He slapped his knees, leaving bloody handprints. 

Her son snickered, his grin widening with delight. 

Could he see it? His future? The many brides in his bloody chamber.

Her son turned back to the men at the bar and lifted his glass. “Hear, hear,” he said.

The witch shuddered, feeling herself slip away, like the river rushing through the rocks, evading its grasp. She hadn’t foreseen this. Her love for her son had left her blind to the rotten seeds of his humanity. 

She was weightless now, rising toward the sky. In death, a soul is eternal as long as it remains tethered to a living soul. The woman watched her son with his newfound comrades, and as the men’s connection strengthened, she felt hers withering, the cord disintegrating. Her soul floated through the thatched roof of the pub. What had she created? she wondered. What darkness had she allowed to be unearthed? A mother is supposed to keep her child safe from the dangers of the world, even, and especially, dear reader, if he’s the danger. The witch needed a plan, a new connection to the world of the living, a new source of power, if she were to cage the monster brewing in her son. 

If she were to change his bloodstained future.

Christina Rosso is a writer and bookstore owner living in South Philadelphia with her bearded husband and rescue pup. She is the author of SHE IS A BEAST (APEP Publications, 2020), a chapbook of feminist fairy tales. Her first full-length collection CREOLE CONJURE is forthcoming from Maudlin House. Her writing has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. For more information, visit http://christina-rosso.com or find her on Twitter @Rosso_Christina.