Read Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer: Expanded Edition for Free Online

evil’s sake, which I do not, comprehending your true nature, son of God, brother of The Son.”
    “You recognize me, then. I will grant what you ask.”
    And Lucefiel (by some named Satan, Rex Mundi, but nevertheless the left hand, the sinister hand of God’s design) wrenched lightning from the ether and cast it at the Witch Queen.
    It caught her in the breast. She fell.
    The sheaf of light towered and lit the golden eyes of the Angel, which were terrible, yet luminous with compassion, as the swords shattered and he vanished.
    The Witch Queen pulled herself from the floor of the chamber, no longer beautiful, a withered, slobbering hag.
    * * * *
    Into the core of the forest, even at noon, the sun never shone. Flowers propagated in the grass, but they were colorless. Above, the black-green roof hung down nets of thick green twilight through which albino butterflies and moths feverishly drizzled. The trunks of the trees were smooth as the stalks of underwater weeds. Bats flew in the daytime, and birds who believed themselves to be bats.
    There was a sepulcher, dripped with moss. The bones had been rolled out, had rolled around the feet of seven twisted dwarf trees. They looked like trees. Sometimes they moved. Sometimes something like an eye glittered, or a tooth, in the wet shadows.
    In the shade of the sepulcher door sat Bianca, combing her hair.
    A lurch of motion disturbed the thick twilight.
    The seven trees turned their heads.
    A hag emerged from the forest. She was crook-backed, and her head was poked forward, predatory, withered and almost hairless, like a vulture’s.
    “Here we are at last,” grated the hag, in a vulture’s voice.
    She came closer and cranked herself down on her knees and bowed her face into the turf and the colorless flowers.
    Bianca sat and gazed at her. The hag lifted herself. Her teeth were yellow palings.
    “I bring you the homage of witches, and three gifts,” said the hag.
    “Why should you do that?”
    “Such a quick child, and only fourteen years. Why? Because we fear you. I bring you gifts to curry favor.”
    Bianca laughed. “Show me.”
    The hag made a pass in the green air. She held a silken cord worked curiously with a plaited human hair.
    “Here is a girdle which will protect you from the devices of priests, from crucifix and chalice and the accursed holy water. In it are knotted the tresses of a virgin, and of a woman no better than she should be, and of a woman dead. And here—” a second pass and a comb was in her hand, lacquered blue over green—“a comb from the deep sea, a mermaid’s trinket, to charm and subdue. Part your locks with this, and the scent of ocean will fill men’s nostrils and the rhythm of the tides their ears, the tides that bind men like chains. Last,” added the hag, “that old symbol of wickedness, the scarlet fruit of Eve, the apple red as blood. Bite, and the understanding of Sin, which the serpent boasted of, will be made known to you.” And the hag made her last pass in the air and extended the apple, with the girdle and the comb, towards Bianca.
    Bianca glanced at the seven stunted trees.
    “I like her gifts, but I do not quite trust her.”
    The bald masks peered from their shaggy beardings. Eyelets glinted. Twiggy claws clacked.
    “All the same,” said Bianca, “I will let her tie the girdle on me, and comb my hair herself.”
    The hag obeyed, simpering. Like a toad she waddled to Bianca. She tied on the girdle. She parted the ebony hair. Sparks sizzled, white from the girdle, peacock’s eye from the comb.
    “And now, hag, take a little bit bite of the apple.”
    “It will be my pride,” said the hag, “to tell my sisters I shared this fruit with you.” And the hag bit into the apple, and mumbled the bite noisily, and swallowed, smacking her lips.
    Then Bianca took the apple and bit into it.
    Bianca screamed—and choked.
    She jumped to her feet. Her hair whirled about her like a storm cloud. Her face turned blue, then