I initially wrote this microfiction in response to a prompt that asked for a fairy tale without magic. I added part II after deciding that this would be part of a larger collection focusing on the inhabitants of a cottage in the woods over a period of centuries. Once finished, the collective works will be made into a chapbook called “Tea and Vengeance.”
I
Olivia knelt in the clearing and spread the blanket on the ground. Her mother’s quilt, on top of which she placed her mother’s picnic basket, from which she removed her mother’s travel tea pot.
As she arranged the apples, carrots, and sandwiches around her, she said, “I know you’re there. Might as well come have a snack.”
The centaur stepped forward. “Children don’t usually wander these woods alone,” she said.
“Because there’s ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties?” Olivia asked.
“Because you could get bit by a snake or trip in a hole and break your leg and no one would know where you went so you’d die of exposure.” The centaur knelt on the edge of the quilt.
Olivia shrugged. “I could also get hit by a car crossing the street. Dead is dead. What do centaurs eat?”
“Anything humans or horses do. I have two stomachs.” She patted her human torso, then the side of her horse body. “If the first can’t digest it, it just moves on to the second.”
“Are there other magical creatures in the forest?” Olivia asked.
“There are no magical creatures at all. Magic isn’t real,” the centaur replied.
“Said the centaur,” Olivia quipped, rolling her eyes.
The centaur swallowed a bite of turkey sandwich. “Mythical and magical are not the same thing. Why do you spend so much time in the woods?”
“I can’t be around my father,” Olivia replied.
“You don’t get along?” asked the centaur.
“Not since he killed my mother.”
The centaur looked astonished. “Have you told the human authorities?”
“They say she killed herself. I guess technically she did. But I lived in that house, too. I heard the things he said, I saw the way he treated her. I saw how he tore her down, bit by bit, every single day until she was just a ghost of a person.” Olivia looked at the centaur, eyes blazing with bitterness and rage that did not belong on the face of a twelve-year-old. “If he had behaved differently, she would still be alive.”
The centaur ate in thoughtful silence. “There are things in this forest,” she said slowly, “that can make people see the truth of a situation.”
“Like demons?” Olivia asked, excitedly.
“Like herbs,” the centaur said, exasperated.
“You mean I could make a potion?”
The centaur rolled her eyes. “Or just use them to season food.”
“Will you show me what I need?”
II
Olivia’s father was delighted when he found her in the kitchen making stew. She greeted him with a smile and asked him if they could have dinner together that night. She hadn’t spoken so kindly toward him since the day of her mother’s funeral
Olivia stayed in the house that day, painting, reading, doing all the things she used to do before her mother was found hanging from a tree behind the cottage. He was relieved to see the picture she painted was of a sunny meadow filled with wildflowers. There were trees around the edges of the meadow that struck him as sinister, but he chose to focus on the brightness of the flowers.
Perhaps his daughter was finally starting to heal. He wondered if it would help if he began slowly getting rid of her mother’s belongings. After some consideration, he decided the attachment she had shown to some of the items was possibly a good thing, and to take them away might make her revert to her formerly icy behavior. One good day was enough for now.
That night they sat down to eat together for the first time in months. Olivia had set the table nicely and prepared a salad to go with her stew. She had always loved helping her mother make dinner. His relief at seeing her begin to return to her former self returned.
Toward the end of the meal, he began to feel odd. Strange thoughts were creeping into his head, thoughts of Olivia’s mother, of how she must have felt on that day, trapped and alone, no way out of a life that had come to feel like a prison. Memories flooded his mind, a constant barrage of scenes that had seemed instructional, or even funny at the time, but that now filled him with guilt and despair.
I killed her, he thought. One small cruelty at a time. I destroyed her soul to the point that she felt the need to destroy her body.
He clutched his head, unable to bear the weight of the pain. He felt what she felt, swirling together with guilt and self-loathing so intense he thought his mind would crack. He fell to the floor, writhing in agony that soon went from mental to physical.
He placed his hands on the floor, watching in horror as the fingers twisted and elongated. He felt his face contorting, all humanity leaving his expression, his legs bending, the knees now facing the wrong direction.
The transformation seemed to take hours, but for Olivia the entire episode was over in minutes. She smiled as she saw what was left of her father crouched on the floor, a hideous monster mewling piteously in fear. Now his outside matched his inside, and the world would know him for the fiend he was. Olivia was filled with peace for the first time since she lost her mother.
The centaur was wrong. Magic was real, after all.
