Saving Henri from the Sorceress

A Fun Feminist Fairytale for Grownups

A Fairytale Villainess (public domain, link in alt text)

As a historian and a feminist, I often find it hard to suspend disbelief when reading feminist fairytales that are too modern in outlook. My heroine, Jacqueline, begins with conventional beliefs for her time, although she does not end with them. The story set in France during England’s Regency period, and I hope you find it as fun to read as I found it to write.

Near the village of Morzine, in the foothills of the French Alps, the drizzle lightened and the horizon took on the greyish orange tinge of a healing bruise. Leading the handsome old white ox she’d saved from slaughter, Jacqueline Montagne glanced at the fox she had freed from a snare, impressed it hadn’t run from her already.

“It’s funny how none of the tales ever mentions rain,” she joked.

The fox snickered, “storytellers always lie.”

Jacqueline stumbled to a halt and stared down. She was following the pattern of the conte — she had rescued her first two animal helpers, after all — but she had not believed they would talk. Now, she truly knew that a fairytale villainess held her Henri captive. “How far to the sorceress’s tower, Madame Fox?”

“We’re almost there,” the vixen replied smugly, “we’ll arrive before full dark.”

“But first we must find the owl.” The white ox spoke for the first time, his voice like a great horn.

“Wait” the vixen muttered, shooting off the path.

Jacqueline heard bushes rustling, then a shrill “Aïe!”

The vixen growled “Stupid bird, I’m not trying to eat you.”

With a rush and a thump, a disheveled fledgling owl arrived in the clearing and hooted, “Mademoiselle, I’m starving…”

Jacqueline fed sausages to the owl and the vixen, then ate a bit of cheese herself, giving her bread to the ox.

The owl stretched himself to his full, stubby, height, “You know the tale Mademoiselle: The fox to lead you, the ox to batter down the door of the tower, and I, the owl, to tell you how to defeat the sorceress… First, you must pick violets with your pure maiden’s hands. When you cast them on her, the sorceress will fall motionless, and you can kill her with her own silver dagger.”

Jacqueline spotted violets in the fading light. She felt too old, and far too desirous, to be a “pure maiden” though she and Henri had rarely even clasped hands. Whenever they hunted butterflies, studied Descartes, or argued politics and theology, her heart beat swiftly for him beneath her high-necked gowns. Still, she was unmarried and chaste. Jacqueline had faith that if she could rescue him, Henri would realize how much she loved him, and love her in return, though she was only a schoolmistress and near to thirty.

The tower door fell to the ox’s horns and the violets worked just as the owl predicted. The sorceress lay crumpled in her robes of violet silk, looking so fragile and lovely that Jacqueline trembled as she found and drew the dagger.

“Do it, girl,” the sorceress whispered bitterly, “but you’ll get no joy of him.”

The fear that the sorceress had harmed Henri gave Jacqueline the anger she needed to thrust the dagger into the sorceress’s heart. Instead of bleeding, the unnatural creature dissolved to bitter dust that made Jacqueline sneeze.

She found Henri was sleeping in the highest room, on the sorceress’s bed. He was altogether nude, and smelled of sex and rose water. Jacqueline, blushing, took in his magnificent shoulders, his torso… everything. He had bruises circling his wrists and others, more disturbing, on his chest and thighs that bore the imprint of the sorceress’s small mouth and pearly teeth. He seemed otherwise unharmed, but exhausted, thinner than he’d been only three days before.

Ashamed of her lustful gaze, Jacqueline drew the silken sheet over his loins. Then she called to him, “Henri!”

He started awake, fearful, but once he came to himself, Henri clasped her hands in his, kissing them. “Mademoiselle, you are my guardian angel! Never again will I mock your fascination with my grandmother’s stories!”

“Oh, Hen — Monsieur — ” Jacqueline began.

“When I marry Belle, you shall be the god­mother of our first child, and we will name her after you — Jacqueline — or Jacques if he’s a boy!”

She closed her eyes, almost overcome with blinding rage. At that moment, she realized that the sorceress’s gift had come to her. She could make Henri desire her slavishly, use him up, and send him home after a month, old and broken before his time.

But she would not. “Pater noster” she murmured, clenching her teeth until her jaw hurt, “Hallowed be Thy name … ”

All night, they searched the tower by the light of its magic torches, finding wonders and riches. As dawn lit the sky, she gave Henri a handful of golden Napoleons and old Louis d’or, then sent him back to his Belle.

“But I can’t leave you here,” he clasped her hands again, worried.

Gently, she freed herself, finding new powers of persuasion in her voice.

“I will be well.”

She stalled the ox, brushed his smooth coat, and forked him down a mangerful of fragrant hay. The vixen accepted a caress before going on her way with a chunk of roast beef from the sorceress’s magic kitchen. The owl stayed with Jacqueline in the tower, all the company she needed, as the library contained grimoires, philosophical and scientific treatises, accounts of foreign travel, and storybooks of every kind.

Later, perhaps, she would find a man to steal away. He need not be beautiful, only intelligent and kind, and he would not have a sweetheart to return to.

“The vixen accepted a caress before going on her way” (public domain, link in alt text)