​NOTHING SPEAKS EVIL MORE THAN EVIL ITSELF

The Last Page of Mother Thorn

Dark Lore Digest Prompt #49

Cover image: Generated with ChatGPT. Image by Vipul Maurya

The letter arrived before dawn, folded into quarters and sealed with dark green wax. Harriet turned it over before breaking it. Outside, the forest still held night in its roots. A faint scent of wet bark hung in the air alongside the grassy smell from the ground beneath her feet. A chukar called from the trees, its cluck and noisy, laughing chatter echoed through the valley.

She read.

“Esteemed Mother Thorn, your picture manuscript has been accepted for the Spring Catalogue of Children’s Instruction. Send the completed ending before sunset. No extensions shall be granted.”

She smiled. At the bottom sat the publisher’s mark: a silver spindle wrapped in briars.

Harriet folded the letter and tucked it into her sleeve. Only the ending remained. Endings had always been her specialty.

She crossed the cottage to her writing table. Bundles of drying herbs hung from the rafters. Teacups sat stacked. Shelves overflowed with painted books bound in soft cloth.

Children’s stories. At least that was what people called them. In nearby villages, mothers read Harriet’s tales aloud beside hearth fires. Children learned patience. Kindness. Obedience.

What nobody knew was that stories did not teach children. Stories taught the world. Harriet had discovered it long ago. Write a coward, and somewhere a boy would hesitate. Write a greedy baker, and a village would suffer poor bread. Write a cruel woman, and eventually someone would become her. Small things at first. But stories accumulated in listeners’ lives. They took root. And Harriet learned to prune. People called her gifted. Only Harriet knew she was gardening.

Her newest manuscript lay open. The Little Girl and Mother Thorn. Illustrations glimmered across the pages. Dark forest. Crooked cottage. An old woman. A child with black braids. But the ending remained unfinished. Harriet dipped her pen.

In her stories, the witch always won. Not openly. Never. Children disliked cruelty. No. She persuaded. She offered gifts. She made the child choose wrongly.

Harriet wrote: "Mother Thorn smiled and invited the girl to stay forever."

The ink trembled, then disappeared. Harriet frowned. She wrote again. Again, words dissolved.

A new sentence appeared: "The girl said no."

Harriet sat still. Her fingers tightened around the pen. She crossed it out. New words emerged: "The girl had learned enough."

The cottage changed, as though it had inhaled all the air outside through its doors and windows. Harriet turned the page. The illustrations had changed. The girl looked slightly older. Harriet flipped backward.

Page one. Older. Page three. Older. Page eight. Her expression had changed, too. No longer frightened. Her sparkling innocence absent. A cruel grin. Watching.

Harriet pressed the book shut. When she opened it again, the girl was standing. Inside the illustration.

The girl tilted her head. “No,” she said.

Her low-pitched, raspy voice came from the room. Harriet looked up. The chair opposite her table was occupied. The girl sat there with her hands folded. Her dress was patched. Her shoes muddy. She looked exactly as drawn. Except her eyes.

Harriet stood. “That's impossible."

The girl looked around the cottage. “So many endings.”

Her gaze moved over the shelves.

“You made many versions of me.”

Harriet frowned. “What?”

The girl rose and approached a shelf, removing book after book. Each opened itself. Children ran. Children cried. Children entered forests. Children trusted old women.

Harriet’s breath shortened. The girl touched one page. A child inside looked up. At Harriet. Then another. Then another. Hundreds. Thousands. All turning. All seeing.

The girl looked at Harriet. “You rewrote us whenever we escaped.”

Harriet opened her mouth to speak, but closed it.

The cottage now exhaled, and pages began turning. Like breathing. Harriet backed toward the door. The books opened wider. No children stepped out. Only witches. Old women. Clever women. Smiling women. Cruel women. All slight variations. Different dresses. Different noses. Different hands. Same eyes. Harriet’s eyes.

She understood. Every villain she had ever written. Every selfish thought. Every secret cruelty. Every satisfaction. She had placed herself inside them. And stories remembered.

The girl lifted Harriet’s pen. Dipped it. Opened the unfinished final page. Harriet lunged, but roots of dark briars erupted from the floorboards, tearing through the leather of her shoes. They wrapped around her ankles and calves, dragging her down. Desperate, she dragged herself forward, fingernails clawing the floorboards, leaving bloody tracks behind her. She crawled, panting, reaching for the desk — but her limbs stiffened, turning flat as pressed pulp. Black veins bled across her skin.

The girl wrote: "Mother Thorn sat quietly while the world continued without her."

Harriet felt her very being loosen, like thread slipping from cloth as she bled into the page. The shelves dimmed. The room faded. The girl closed the book. Looked at Harriet. Finality.

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