Chapter 5

“Well, well, so it is you who would finally restore me to my human form. I had hundreds of maidens killed by the wild beasts that roamed this forest, to seek my freedom from the spell of a wicked sorcerer who dared to take my beauty away.”

The enchanting woman spun around in jubilation, radiating happiness that illuminated her like a goddess. As I gazed in absolute astonishment at her bewitching transformation, a sense of disbelief washed over me. When I dared to glance at my reflection in the water, a shocking revelation awaited me - I had morphed into the haggard witch who had inflicted harm upon me earlier. In a twist of fate, the once-cursed sorceress had regained her beauty, while I had become the hideous witch.

Blinking in disbelief, uncertainty clouded my mind as fear gripped me tightly. My gaze involuntarily returned to the stunning lady standing behind me, her presence captivating and mysterious. Unfazed by my transformation, she continued speaking, revealing still the desire to taste my blood, hinting at my unwelcome intentions of being in her garden. Her laughter, though more human this time, carried an undertone of malice. Overwhelmed, I began screaming at my altered reflection in the water, my hands feeling aged and worn like the old woman's. Clad in the witch's dark attire instead of my once beautiful dress, I was consumed by despair.

Amidst my distress, the White Rose's laughter echoed, taunting me with a curse of captivity - a life bound to bloom only once a year, with freedom promised through the nectar of the flower, or the blood of a maiden. Desperation fuelled my cries for release, but my voice was now hoarse and strained, a cruel reminder of my entrapment by the captivating sorceress.

My bones ached and as I arched to get up from the rock, I felt my whole body stiffen and my shoulders hunched.

My fingernails were hideous and claw-like. I tried to hold on to the rock to steady myself but kept slipping into the water. I couldn’t walk properly. I looked down at my feet, and they were webbed with only three toes on my feet.

Shocked, I turned to look at White Rose, who had disappeared somewhere deep into the forest.

I felt choked once more. The lump in my throat was hard to swallow. When I touched my throat, the sagging skin made me shudder and I imagined how bizarre I looked at that moment.

I couldn’t cry anymore.

Any sound that came out of me sounded like the howl of the wolves in the forest.

I went inside the garden to look at the rose bush, only to find that the white rose plant had withered and died.

The petals lay discoloured and crumpled on the ground. Even the leaves of the plant looked jaded and drooped. The stem of the plant looked diseased. There were black spots on it, and the whole rose plant smelled of rotting flesh.

No more was it the sensation that it was when it ruled as the beauty of the kingdom of the forested garden.

My insipid mind thought about what my grandmother said.

She warned me about the sorcerer that lived within that rose bush.

I wanted to return to my mansion, but surely it would terrify my grandmother to see me in this condition. She would be traumatised, just as my mother's death had done.

She wouldn’t recognize me for a start, and she would probably die seeing the repugnant appearance that had taken my form.

I knew that she would be frantic since I hadn’t returned home.

There would surely be a search party, and even if they were close, I couldn’t show myself to them, could I?

They might kill me at first sight, thinking that I was the sorceress instead.

As I wandered, consumed by a sense of hopelessness, the fear of being mistaken for the sorceress loomed over me like a dark cloud. Despite my appearance resembling a sorceress, I couldn't cast spells or inflict harm like one. The weight of this clouded my thoughts, leaving me confused and uncertain, as I grappled with the implications of being perceived as a sorceress.

Each passing moment only deepened my sense of isolation and despair. The thought of suspicion and fear seemed to echo around me. I knew that they would avoid me.

The realization that my appearance alone could condemn me to a fate I did not deserve filled me with a profound sense of injustice and helplessness.

Lost in a labyrinth of doubt and self-doubt, I struggled to find a way to prove my innocence and dispel the shadows of mistrust that clung to me like a shroud. The weight of this misunderstanding threatened to suffocate me, leaving me adrift in a sea of uncertainty and fear. I clung to a glimmer of hope that somewhere, somehow, the truth of my nature would shine through the veil of suspicion that enveloped me. I suddenly felt tired and fell asleep under one of the trees.

I fell into a restless sleep as if I fell into a murky abyss, where the boundaries between wakefulness and dreams blurred into a hazy realm of uncertainty.

As fatigue washed over me like a heavy shroud, each breath became a struggle, weighed down by the weariness that seeped into my bones.

The world around me faded into a distant murmur, the sounds of the night merging into a haunting symphony lulling me to a restless slumber.

Shadows loomed in my obscured mind, and half-formed thoughts and fragmented images flickered and faded like distant memories.

In this liminal state, I lost time in a disorienting way that defied logic. The boundaries of reality dissolved, giving way to a mysticism where the familiar twists into the unfamiliar, and turns bizarre.

As I drifted further into sleep, a sense of unease lingered at the edges of my mind, a nagging awareness that I was teetering on the brink of something unknown and unsettling. The darkness that enveloped you was suffocating. I coughed and sneezed.

I then heard the voices of people calling my name.

The search party had arrived.