Prologue

Once upon a time, in the land of wishes and fairy godmothers and knights in shining armors riding snow-white steeds, there lived a beautiful young maiden by the name of Nymphana.

For the most part, Nymphana's looks and background fall into, what we Fantasyland narrators like to call, 𝑠𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑑𝑎𝑟𝑑-𝑖𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑒. Among her meager possessions are: Long, silky, black hair that falls in waves past her hips, light brown eyes with a distinctive twinkle, smooth, fair skin that never freckles, rosy cheeks, a warm smile, the slowly-fading, treasured memory of her loving (but deceased) parents, a cruel stepmother, and two annoying stepsisters.

Like I said, standard-issue. I wish I could say that she could also count among those possessions an adventurous spirit and a courageous heart. Those things would certainly help her become a worthy heroine of this story, as we are all wishing she would prove herself to be in the following chapters. Sadly, that is not the case.

No, Nymphana, or just Phanny for short, is not particularly clever or spunky or talented in anything. She is only... quite dull.

She does not argue with her stepsisters, or rebel against her stepmother, or run far away to the mountains where she could live with the woodland creatures in a little hut with a mossy carpet and whitewashed wood walls. She does not, though she imagines those things herself, though she has reason enough to.

When her father died five years before the beginning of this tale, the money slowly dwindled away, and the servants left. Since then, every day is (almost) the same. Phanny wakes up at the crack of dawn to the rooster's first crow (tries to, anyway) and starts on her never-ending list of chores.

Feed the chickens, the cow, the mare, the cat, and dog. Cook and serve breakfast. Clean the farmhouse from cellar to attic. Sweep the grounds. Weed the garden. Tend the vegetables. Go to town… and on and on, every single day. If Phanny was a more organized and composed maiden, it would have been more bearable. Except, she wasn't. She was, instead, clumsy and easily distracted.

A few days a week, she would wake up late, falling out of bed to the sound of her stepmother crowing her name. Or sometimes, she would serve cold tea, or crookedly sew torn garments, or get caught washing the laundry the wrong way – by stepping on them. Then, as punishment, she would kneel on the ground, and raise her hands palms up, and her stepmother will beat her hands ten, twenty, fifty times until they are red and raw and tears are quietly streaming down her face.

Yes, a dreary existence, to be sure. But, despite her overall dullness, she has a little secret to help her endure it. A tattered old book of fairytales with falling-apart pages, the only book left from the small family library. Everything else was sold one by one, but Phanny held on to this one, keeps it under the floorboards of her dusty attic room.

At night, she takes it out and curls up in her ratty old blankets and reads one fairy tale by the light of a tiny candle. She's memorized the stories in them word for word, but still manages to be transported every time. This is a kind of magic her Mama taught her when she was a little girl listening to that soft, melodic voice reading bedtime stories from this very same book. The magic of escape.

As long as Phanny had it, could hold onto it at night before sleeping, or even in the afternoon, letting her mind drift away to castles and whirlwind romances in the middle of scrubbing the kitchen floors, she would be okay.

If only things went on just like that, ever after, Phanny would have been quite content. But you know, as well as I do, that you wouldn't be reading this now if such was the case.

As it was, things were about to change.

Thank the gods.