Bronwyn walked wearily down the forest road for several hours, wondering if the Mare would return or if there was yet another adventure in store for her. Robbie Longfellow ranged their path from side to side and ahead, chasing birds and small animals for the sheer doggy joy of it. When he returned to her abruptly, pacing before her with his hackles up.

They came upon a man and a small wagon. The pony was panicked, the wagon's rear axle broken and the man trying to soothe the animal and prevent it from further damaging the wagon. He looked up, and his frustration and concern dissolved into a smile. "M'lady Bronwyn, if you would be so kind, would you hold his head while I get us out of this mess?"

"Dale?" She was astonished that he recognized her so quickly, though he was not much changed from the young constable who had taken her to his cousin so long ago. She limped forward and took the pony's bridle, hugging his head close to her breast and covering his eyes with her cloak. He quieted, trembling. Dale bent to look over the animal's legs and found a wire snare around a rear fetlock. The pony groaned as his master carefully loosened and removed the snare, the smell of his own blood almost sending him over the edge of panic again.

Bronwyn pulled a small jar of healing salve from her pouch and handed it wordlessly to her friend. Dale nodded his thanks and applied it to the wound, accepting a length of bandage afterwards. As he worked and she held the beast's head, the witch heard the soft sound of the Mare's hooves on the dirt of the track, and the horse draped her head across the pony's withers, comforting him with the touch and presence of herd. She was only slightly taller than him at the shoulder, and he leaned into both of them as the wound was bandaged.

Dale unhitched the pony from the broken wagon. "Well, that's just grand." He surveyed the damage, and then the sacks and boxes in the bed of the wagon. "And the day was going so well. If my luck holds, Aodhan will come a day early this month."

Robbie Longfellow looked up from his examination of the cart and the discarded snare and Dale's sturdy shoes. The dog marched stiff legged to the middle of the road and started barking, excited. The pony and the Mare pricked their ears and the Mare turned her head to look down the road to see what her friend was going on about.

Clear sweet bells tinkled in the distance. Dale listened for a moment and then grinned. "I take that back. On the day my axle broke and my pony was lamed by some idiot hunter, I am rescued by a witch and a tinker." He straightened and strode out into the road to stand and wait with Robbie. Bronwyn released the pony's head and ran her hands down the injured leg, whispering a healing over it. The bandage fell away in ashes, the fetlock snowy white but completely healed.

"Aodhan, brother, I could kiss you," Dale exclaimed as the heavy hoofbeats of an ox drew closer, the hissing grind of massive wagon wheels on the packed dirt of the road. The tinker’s wagon was still tall and brightly painted, hung about with scores of wares, all tied up with silver and brass bells to announce the tinker’s coming and alert him to thieves. The ox was massive, taller than Bronwyn at the shoulder and as wide as the wagon it pulled.

"Now that's the warmest greeting I've had in a bit. Broken axle?" Bronwyn looked over the pony's back and saw the man himself, startled. The tinker was still a very average man, of average height, and passably handsome, merry eyes and a slightly rounded paunch. Age had creased his face and faded his hair, but otherwise he was as vigorous as he had been so many years before, when he gave a girl shoes and petticoats simply because she needed them at the beginning of her journey. He hopped off the seat and looked through at the assorted axles and spindles and wagon wheels hung off one side of the wagon. He pulled one down and carried it over one shoulder to Dale's cart.

"Madam Witch, I assume you've cared for the beast?" he said casually, not looking at Bronwyn as she watched.

"Yes, he's sound again," she replied, startled.

Dale and Aodhan Tinker shifted the load off the wagon and Dale held the bed steady while the other man deftly unpinned the broken axle and slid the new one in place.

"I'm glad you had one to spare," Dale said, relieved as they reloaded the boxes and sacks and bags of grain.

"I had a notion you might be needing one, so it was simple enough." He mopped his forehead with a kerchief and then turned to Bronwyn, taking her hand in both of his and bowing with a flourish. "Madam Bronwyn, it is a pleasure to meet you yet again. I have heard much of your adventures! I hope you remember me, for I am Aodhan Tinker, crafter, merchant and occasional convenient miracle producer, at your service."

"What do you know of me?" Drawing her cloak tighter, she shivered with a sudden pull of fate, but it was from behind her, not from the cheerful brown haired man standing before her with mischief in his eyes.

"What do I know of you? My dear, you are the stuff of legends, or at least more than one tavern story. Bronwyn Firehand, mistress of salamanders, witch and Queen Mother, wife to the giant Grahme Mountainfist and villain of more than one bedtime story to frighten children from playing in the hearth or disobeying their parents, or stealing from their neighbors. Known by her crimson cloak, hair like the blackest midnight with a lightning streak of white, limping from where a great bear caught her foot as she climbed a tree to rescue a small child from being eaten. Oh, yes, I do know you."

"But some of that isn't even true!" She was astonished, and the Mare bumped Bronwyn's back with her nose, whickering a horsey laughter. "Shut up, you," she snapped at the horse. "The thing about the bear was totally wrong, I broke my ankle running down a path to arrive where I was needed in time."

"Perhaps you did, m'Lady Witch, but I prefer the bear story. So tell me, was it a very large bear?"

"There was no bear!" she withdrew her hand from his, exasperated. Magic and fate jerked against her again.

"As you say. Modesty is a good quality in a witch for sure. Are you quite all right?" Dale turned to her also, concern in his eyes.

"Yes, of course, I just -" the pull came again, sharp now, and she heard a girl weeping and the thunder of wings. "The children!" She didn't remember mounting the Mare, but they were gone back towards the Deep Woods Monastery even before the tinker and the former guardsman could exclaim or demand explanation.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The cloister seemed to come into view in precious minutes. Lisbet knelt over Rebeka's still body, her mother's head pulled into her lap as she keened and rocked. An apple lay on the ground nearby, half eaten.

Bronwyn all but fell off her mount. She knelt beside them, gently examining the girl's mother. Rebeka's lips and skin were blue, her eyes bloodshot. Her heart was still and she did not breathe. Bronwyn found the apple, and it smelled faintly bitter, like a drought from the flask. She bowed her head, tears spilling down her cheeks. "Where are your brothers?"

"Flown away, all flown away as swans, bright gods what shall I do, they're all swans and mother won't wake," Lisbet sobbed uncontrollably.

"Where is the princess?" Dread settled into Bronwyn's belly, a heavy weight that made her gorge rise.

"In the kitchen, I don't think she knows."

"First thing's first, I'm going to try to wake your mother." Bronwyn hesitated for half a moment and brought out the flask. She wet her fingertips and pressed them to Rebeka's lips. The stricken woman remained still in their arms, and Bronwyn waited until the pull of fate became unbearable again. "Your father and Aodhan Tinker will be here shortly. Keep watch over her, she may yet wake."

Bronwyn left them there, limping as quickly as she could into the cloister. An ancient woman in a tattered black cloak and ragged dress opened the kitchen door just as Bronwyn reached it herself. The hag hissed and recoiled from the witch, her face warped and rumpled, toothless with glaring yellow eyes. A wolf pushed past her, snarling. Bronwyn staggered as she was herself shoved to the side, the basso rumble of a mastiff vibrating in her chest. The beast was striped black and gold brindle with white feet and a white patch on the crown of his head. He was as massive as the direwolf, but his legs were shorter by half, his body longer by half.

The hag flung herself to the side and rushed Bronwyn as the wolf and dog engaged, storm clouds gathering overhead as she muttered an incantation to draw down lightning. As quickly, Bronwyn called the salamanders to her, fire elementals flying in like sparks and fingerlings of flame. Far overhead, thunder rumbled and the raptor screech of a dragon pierced the sky. The earth shook for a moment and then heaved, knocking them all to the floor. The yellow eyed hag looked beyond Bronwyn and pushed onwards, her rags catching fire as the salamanders and drakes swarmed over her. Bronwyn tripped her and they went sprawling together, but the hag was astonishingly strong and kicked her way free. With a sharp cry she called her wolf to her and leapt to his back as they fled the cloister.

Bronwyn heard the thunder of steel shod hooves and the scream of a war horse, a knight's challenge shouted across the field. Ignoring the uproar and the sounds of combat, the witch crawled into the hallway, past the mastiff and into the kitchen.

Janette lay on the floor, an apple in her hand, lips and face blue. Bronwyn could smell the bitterness of poison on the fruit as she crept painfully to her stepdaughter, fear caught in her throat. She groped for the flask, and as she lifted Janette's head into her lap the bitten piece of apple fell from the princess's mouth. Hope surged, and Bronwyn threw the apple and the bitten piece into the fire, and salamanders swarmed after it, growing as they devoured the ensorcelled fruit.

"Heart of my heart, sister of my son and daughter of a king, I pray you have the strength to survive what has gone before and what I must do, and if you do not, I pray I may forgive myself after." She tipped the flask to Janette's bluish lips, giving her the barest sip of the draught.

After a moment, and then another, the flush of life returned to the princess' lips and cheeks. Bronwyn bent over her and felt the faintest breath on her cheek, a slow weak pulse beneath her fingertips. She held the girl to her breast, weeping in relief.

Silence fell over the monastery, and Bronwyn looked over at the mastiff as it stood clumsily. It came to her and drew its tongue across her face, and then shook itself from head to tail, shivering smaller and smaller until finally Robbie Longfellow looked at her smugly. He sat before them, and his tail thumped three times on the stone floor of the kitchen. "You've learned a lot more than play from the Mare, have you?" The tail thumped again.

A small noise made her look up, and seven pairs of elderly eyes peered out of the hallway at her, the monks roused from their work by the battle raging outside.

"What's happened to our Janette?" Friar Seco asked faintly.

"She was poisoned by an evil hag," Bronwyn replied simply.

"What happened to our house?" another one of the brothers asked.

"I don't know. I missed that part."

"Will our Janette live, do you think?" The youngest asked, only slightly less stooped and wrinkled than the others.

"Yes, but she might sleep a while."

"But how long? Her prince should arrive at any moment," another one of them fretted, wringing his hands anxiously.

Bronwyn shrugged. "Who knows? A night, a hundred years, depends on her."

"Will anything wake her?" The light baritone voice came from the kitchen door. The knight's armor was bloody and dented, and he'd lost his helm. His jaw was strong, but he was not handsome, and the fine lines around his eyes were from kindness and a ready smile.

"Are you Sir Poitr?" Bronwyn asked, holding Janette a little closer.

"Yes, your Grace." He knelt and bowed his head to her briefly.

Half remembered, the answer came back to Bronwyn from a dream. "The usual, I'd imagine. Mix a potion made of the powdered horn of a unicorn, an apple from the tree of knowledge and follow it with True Love's kiss, that sort of thing." She kissed Janette's brow and offered the princess's still form to the knight. "Leave the quests and the beasties alone, though, I think."

"She is so very beautiful," Poitr murmured, brushing the hair away from her brow and cradling her gently for a very long moment. "Princess Janette, please forgive me for my impertinence," he whispered, kissing her eyelids and her lips in turn.

After a moment, she stirred a little, and then her eyelids fluttered. She opened her eyes and met his gaze. "Sir Poitr?" she asked.

"Yes, your Highness. I'm so sorry to touch you uninvited, but I could not wait a hundred years to see you wake." He would have set her down, but she put her hands over his and smiled shyly.

"I forgive you, Sir Knight. Perhaps we could discuss the matter at length, and if we are both agreeable, we could repeat the experiment." His breath caught, and Bronwyn witnessed the first moment of love dawning in his eyes. Janette smiled like the sunrise in spring, and Bronwyn felt the snap and release of the cord of fate binding them together. The witch had dreamed that moment over and over again for all the years she remembered, the sweet echo of a kiss on her own lips that had never quite faded.

"Mistress Bronwyn," Lisbet's voice broke the tableau. Bronwyn looked up, wiping tears from her face.

Lisbet was very pale, her hands shaking. "Could you come and see my mama?"