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I will search every face for Lucinda’s

And she will go off with me down to hell

—Tom Waits, “Lucinda”

My mothers, Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha, are by definition odd, and they are sisters Identical triplet sisters, to be exact

Many have remarked on their appearance over the years The Dark Fairy, Maleficent, thought they were thecreatures she had ever seen Others have colected dolls left out in the wind and rain to crack and fade The reat and terrible sea witch Ursula She said the odd sisters’ beauty was so entirely out of proportion it rotesque

I always found thery Even now, disappointed and heartbroken by the just how cruel, destructive, and foul they really are I still love them

In reading my mothers’ journals, Snow White and I have learned there is no witch alive who is more powerful than my mothers—except for one Me

If you are acquainted with the odd sisters’ story, then you know long ago they had a little sister naically killed when the Dark Fairy, Maleficent, destroyed the Fairylands in a fit of rage on her sixteenth birthday This was a secret they kept from Maleficent Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha were so desperate to bring their little sister back to life that they gave up the very best parts of themselves to create a new Circe A replacement for the sister they had lost

Me

I was no longer their sister, but their daughter, a daughter created byto protect es They’ve wreaked havoc and chaos, destroying everyone and everything in their path all in the na me Their Circe

All my life I believed them to beht they were just doting and protective older siblings because they were forced to raisehorrible happened to our parents, so up, Lucinda, Ruby, and Martha refused to tellme from the truth But the truth was they were my mothers

Growing up with such protective ness to share their spell craft ic that older witches could not, and ifts were stronger than even their own As I got older I realized they ht, because I was constantly surprised by ic so effortlessly The problem is that it never occurs toit to ic, or the fact that I’ve just perfor it My mothers were always there to reht come to me

It wasn’t until I was a bit older and found myself in love with the Beast Prince that my mothers’ overprotectiveness became brutal and vindictive The Prince broke my heart, and my mothers, well, they wanted to destroy him in return

I remember the day I told them I had fallen in love, and how they flew into a panic They convinced me to partake in a ruse that would prove tobecause I trusted his devotion toto convince the farhter, and I mucked around with the beasts and waited fora beast He reacted exactly as the odd sisters had expected He was disgusted by me and withdrew his love He was so vile and so cruel to me I cursed him