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Once upon a time- urgh, those words have caused me so much trouble over the years, but they're such a good way to start a story. Everyone knows what 'once upon a time' is leading up to.
Anyway.
Once upon a time, there was a witch who loved her garden. Unfortunately, people being what they are, she really grew to dislike people who would steal from her garden purely because she was a witch. It didn't matter how many times she explained that no, the peas are ordinary, I just know good techniques for warming the soil early and that's why I'm getting a crop earlier than you, the unscrupulous and the desperate would still assume magic and come and harvest them before her. Moving house didn't help, and anyway it was hard enough work to get beds just right without needing to do it over and over again.
The peas were bad enough, but the number of tomatoes she didn't get to eat was what finally pushed her over the edge.
Now she was, mostly, a good witch, but the mostly was what gave her the edge. A truly good witch would have decided it was meant to be the way of things and encourage people to steal. They might even get a sainthood out of it (being martyred by lack of tomato probably qualified). A mostly good witch though could get creative.
It wasn't easy to slip a little bit of magic into each and every plant - ironically what people had always assumed she'd done - but it was amazing what would take if mixed into liquid fertiliser. The magic had no effect on her, of course, and none on anyone she gave to freely. Onto everyone else, it depended heavily on why…
A minor sleep spell was the start of it - not a hundred years, because despite what stories may tell you sending someone to sleep for a hundred years is as good as killing them, the bedsores alone will do it - combined with a dreaming and a walking.
Someone truly desperate, be it hunger or fear, would dream of a kindly fairy who would aid them - and while they did this their unconscious body would walk them to the front door of the cottage, ring the bell and wait. The witch had a few good fairy outfits and it generally wasn't hard once they awoke to sort them out one way or another - food and shelter in exchange for work for a couple of days, finding them an apprenticeship for the long term, finding them a new home far away from those that would hurt them… A bit of healing here, a bit of good advice there, nothing she wouldn't have given if they'd just come and asked, and entirely not the witch doing it, honest.
The greedy did not get pleasant dreams, and they generally got quite a long way away before they woke up. It's amazing how far someone can run when monsters are chasing them for a day, after all.
Add some rumours on top of that - the taking of a firstborn being her favourite bit of nonsense - and traffic to her cottage dropped to practically nothing.
Which was fine.
Obviously.
Except…
Well…
She got lonely.
Yes, other witches would visit now and again, and that was good, but it was hard to make friends locally when everyone assumed the packs of monsters were ready at the smallest slight. And she was young and romantically inclined, and the lack of anyone willing to be romantically inclined back at her was galling to say the least.
So she did something unwise.
There was that handy rumour, you see. The one about firstborns.
It wasn't too difficult to change it from 'the witch will take your firstborn' to 'the witch has already taken a firstborn and locked the girl away in a tower'.
It made sense at the time, I promise. And as well as the fairy gowns there were a couple of nice dresses that she didn't get to wear often. That no one in the area had lost a child didn't matter - that's the power of a good rumour - and it didn't take long for word to get around.
There was a tower, of course. It was an old grain silo, patched and repurposed with magic, but it was still enough to persuade a certain type of young man to try their luck despite fear of the witch.
Unfortunately, the witch swiftly ran into a problem: those young men were almost to a man deeply boring, and the ones who weren't boring were obnoxious or downright unpleasant ('pushy' wasn't the half of it).
So. More magic, more rumours. "Only a man pure of heart can breach the thorns surrounding the tower" etcetera - and it was good nonsense when backed up with a little more of that dreaming and walking magic slipped into a cup of tea, so each boring young man could feel like he had at least made a good attempt and try to be a better person when he got home.
(The ones too obnoxious or pushy to drink the tea got to meet The Witch, and not a single one of them spotted that the lady they'd been pressing their suit towards only moments ago seemed suddenly very stiff and still. They probably assumed fear, and not that illusions were not the witch's strong suit while she was too busy hamming it up as her alter-ego.)
Which made it all the more surprising, after a week of dealing with some truly tiresome knights and princes, for her to wake up in the comfy armchair in the corner and find someone had draped a blanket over her. This wasn't exactly classic princely behaviour; that being said, the person calmly sitting on the trunk containing her emergency disguises while doing embroidery and drinking tea didn't exactly look like a classic prince either.
For one, she looked a lot more like a princess.
A solidly-built one, easily capable of climbing the rope-and-grapple the witch could see hooked onto the windowsill, with strong hands and a stubborn chin - but that was a divided skirt, not riding trousers, the lace on her collar and cuffs was floral, and the witch had never before heard of a prince taught needlework.
The witch coughed politely. The princess looked up, startled, then broke into an easy smile and waved cheerfully with her needle hand.
"Don't mind me," she said, her voice deep and mellow, "And apologies for breaking into your supplies, but riding and climbing was thirsty work - what's left in the pot is probably still warm if you want some."
The witch was taken aback. This wasn't how it went, any of it, and she wasn't sure whether to be intrigued, put-out, or both. Curiosity won, although it was a close call. "Why are you in my tower?" she asked the princess.
"Oh, it's nothing personal," the princess replied, still working on her embroidery, "But I have a bit of a problem that needs a magical solution, and given your guardian is a great and terrible witch I thought she might be magic enough to help." She took the witch's shocked silence in stride, continuing, "Although it was a nice surprise to find the protection spell was quite so literal - I thought I would wait outside, but when there weren't any obvious thorns I felt I might as well come up in case she was up here already."
The witch was, as you might expect, a bit flabbergasted by this. She muttered something about how she never knew when 'her guardian' was going to show up, but if the princess wanted to waste her time coming to visit then she wasn't going to stop her. The princess shrugged and got on with her embroidery.
The witch fretted and worried and watched the princess until several hours passed by, at which point the princess sighed and put away her needlework. "I have to return home," she said, "But if your guardian comes by, let her know that I came, and that I'll be back?"
"You will?" squeaked the witch, dismayed.
"Of course," replied the princess, "I still need that magical help, after all."
The witch watched her climb expertly down the rope and loosed the grapple for her when she reached the bottom, deeply conflicted about the whole affair.
True to the princess's word, she came back; not every day, as being a princess meant she had duties that sometimes precluded riding to a magical tower, but often enough. The witch at first watched her warily, not sure what to make of this interloper, but it was hard to shun someone who kept making her tea and otherwise being pleasant, so by the time the moon had made a full turn of the sky the two had become friendly enough to chat and to bicker and to tease almost as siblings. Especially about the young men who still turned up - luckily the dull sort, during that month, and no one that the witch couldn't persuade to leave without obvious magic.
They were also friendly enough that the witch could see the princess starting to turn grim and pale at the end of that month, and she finally dared to ask what was the matter.
"Oh," said the princess, reluctant, "That problem that I need your guardian's help for, if I don't get it soon no one will be able to help," and she refused to say any more.
While she would be sad at losing her friend - and the witch entirely expected the princess to stop visiting as soon as her problem was solved - she resolved to finally have The Witch make a visit while the princess was present in the hope that she could help.
Of course, the princess wasn't like all of those inattentive young men.
It took approximately a minute after The Witch's Grand Entrance before the princess gave both The Witch and the silent young woman sitting behind her a side-eye worthy of her royal title. "Really?" she said, justifiably incredulous.
The witch dropped the illusion and sat down heavily in the armchair, evil robes billowing around her. "Really. I'm sorry, for what it's worth, but it's complicated."
The princess looked like she was about to have equally complicated emotions, but instead settled for dropping down heavily onto the chest (that had acquired a padded top). "So. I suppose I should tell you my problem…"
The witch listened attentively, but her heart fell as the story progressed. You see, the princess's family wasn't as good at seeing what was under their noses as the princess, and they were under the mistaken belief that she was actually a prince as that was how they'd brought her up; what the princess needed was a full physical transformation to make it clear beyond all unreasonable doubt that she was now and always a princess.
"I'm sorry," the witch said reluctantly, "But transformation spells are godmother territory if you want something that sticks. The best I could do would be a curse, but as it's something you want to happen I'm not sure it would work…"
"The royal godmother is as blinkered as the rest of them," muttered the princess darkly and stood up. "I'm going to have to go - my parents are threatening to find me a wife and I can't keep putting them off forever, so I have to find a solution soon."
"Wait…" the witch said thoughtfully, "...I would guess from what you're saying that they're the sort of people who believe that a prince should marry a princess and no other options exist, right?"
"Yes, that's right," the princess replied somewhat peevishly.
"Then," said the witch with cautious enthusiasm, "I think I might have an idea…"
It was a risky idea, being that it relied on the aforementioned tendency for people not to see things clearly, and it was an idea that meant that the princess would no longer be able to live at home - although the princess did not feel this was a particular hardship in the circumstances, and when the witch rather shyly offered her use of the spare room in her actual house while she found her feet the princess uncharacteristically shyly accepted.
It wasn't much long after that the king and queen were rather surprised by the arrival of the princess and her rather boyishly handsome prince. That said, there had been those rumours, those handy handy rumours, going around once more, even as far as royal ears… That the story of the wicked witch and the imprisoned princess was at least partly a metaphor, and that the 'tower' and the 'thorns' were nothing more than the weight of expectations and beliefs of her parents.
It didn't hurt either that the royal godmother declared the princess to have been "turned to her true self by true love's kiss" - although that may have been because a certain witch had sent her a note, and professional courtesy demanded that she follow through regardless of her feelings if she didn't want to have to deal with cursed firstborns for the next umpteen generations.
What was undeniably true, then, was that the princess had by some measure been rescued by the prince and was now betrothed. They were determined to return to his home country and be married as soon as possible - although in the circumstances a grand party to see the happy future couple off would not go amiss. The king and queen were perhaps a little bit put out by the haste, but as the princess was clearly the happiest she had been in years (and as the royal godmother was leaning on them rather hard) they had no choice but to agree. Besides, the princess's younger brother (who perhaps, by the twinkle in his eye, had worked out something wasn't quite right but wasn't going to spoil it for his sister for the world), was perfectly well-trained in being the next in line, and far less likely to kick up a fuss as the princess had.
The party was indeed very grand, and at the end the prince and princess drove their carriage off into the sunset, as was only right and proper. Inside the carriage, once they were far enough away to be safe, the witch finally dropped the illusion she'd placed on herself to appear more manly; one of the more obnoxious young men that visited her tower after the plan had been hatched had been close enough in size to provide a sufficiently princely outfit, so it was mostly the addition of strategic stubble and contouring.
The princess declared, "I cannot believe we pulled that off," and laughed so heartily the witch joined in too.
The pair of them returned to the witch's house - the tower now declared their holiday home - and settled into quiet domestic life. And if, perhaps, the witch stopped looking for romantic company now she had the princess to joke and bicker with every day, and if, perhaps, the princess stopped worrying if she was princess enough for other people now she had the witch to tell her so every day, that is between the two of them.
And, unless you have heard differently - and if you have, both the princess and I would urge you to be careful about listening to rumours - they have lived contentedly to this day.