Princess Christabel
"Well, my pretty," said the witch with a smirk, "your time is up. The child is six months old, and I have come to claim him."
She waited for the screams, the tears, the incoherent pleading. But Princess Christabel did none of these things. She frowned, rather primly, and rocked the cradle with one dainty foot.
"I seem to remember," she said, "that there is some precedent for negotiation in these cases."
The witch looked at her askance. This particular princess had been awkward from the start. For one thing, she didn't look like a princess. All the witch's previous dealings had been with raven-haired ladies of high degree who tended to speak in rhyme and express the wishes of their hearts in the form of starkly beautiful haiku, or improbably slender blonde milkmaids elevated to royal estate due to their credulous generosity and good fashion sense, or the occasional redheaded hoyden addicted to romantic novels and horse-riding. Princess Christabel, on the other hand, was short and brunette, and though she was pretty she was far from ravishingly beautiful. In her flowing robes of embroidered velvet she looked like an overdressed moppet.
And for another, she had never behaved with the proper humility. The witch was accustomed to be treated with anxious fawning, or at least with a healthy dread. This girl had been ... businesslike. She was in dire straits -- she would have to have been, to ask the witch for help -- but for all you could tell from her attitude, she might have been dickering with the plumber.
"Negotiation?" the witch echoed.
"Yes. I ask if you would possibly reconsider your terms, you set me an astronomically difficult condition, et cetera."
Et cetera?
But at least this was known ground. "If I agree to that," the witch said grumpily, "we both know what happens next. You play for time until you can charm some strapping ploughboy into saving you. Princesses cheat."
"Oh, no," said Christabel composedly. "If I can't do it by myself, then I forfeit. That's only fair."
This was so. And the witch was in favor of fairness, as long it was to her advantage. She eyed Christabel again.
"Promise?" she said.
"Promise."
"All right." The witch drew herself up. "If you want to keep your brat, you must tell me... before the sun sets..."
"Your name is Medea von Frostheim," said the princess briskly.
The witch blinked.
"It's quite easy to work out. For one thing you have that pronounced Schwindleburgian accent. And if you want to go about incognita--"
Incognita?
"--you really oughtn't brag about charming the Beast of Ferzen Fell and all that, as you did when I first came to see you."
"Bah!" said Medea, a little irked. None of the princesses she had ever met had even heard of Ferzen Fell. Bother the wench! "But that isn't what I was going to ask you."
Christabel raised her eyebrows, as though she knew perfectly well that this was a lie. "Oh?"
"You must tell me, before the sun sets--"
"Yes, I heard you."
"--WHAT," Medea continued, growing testy, "was my mother's--"
"Olga Falkwing."
Medea spluttered.
"It's a matter of public record," said Christabel mildly.
"You are the most exasperating girl it has ever been my misfortune to eat -- to meet," Medea said, gathering her ebon draperies around her like the feathers of an outraged black hen. "Would you kindly allow me to finish before piping up with your helpful information?"
"Very well."
"Thank you."
"And I have your word that, if I answer your question in its entirety, you will run along and find some other young mother to terrorize?"
"Certainly," said Medea stiffly. "I'm a witch, not a telemarketer."
"Very well."
Medea drew a deep breath. "Very well," she repeated. "If you would save your son, you must tell me--"
"Before the sun sets, yes, I know."
"DON'T INTERRUPT. What was my mother's great-aunt Prunella's favorite color?"
There was a pregnant pause.
"And that's all?"
The witch smirked. "That's all."
Christabel thought about it for a little while. She looked out the window at the late afternoon sunshine, and then down at the baby, who, oblivious, was sucking his thumb.
"Puce," she said at last.
Medea gaped at her.
"She was known as Prunella the Red," Christabel went on gravely, "but she is quoted as saying that that was only because Prunella the Puce was insufficiently awe-inspiring. So I made an educated guess."
Medea stared.
"Am I right, or not?" said Christabel.
"....yes," Medea admitted. "But how in the name of all the devils did you know that?"
And then Princess Christabel smiled. No, she grinned: a wide, perfectly ordinary, but somehow entrancing grin. "Before the Prince married me," she said, "I was a librarian."
And that was how Christabel the Learned defeated the Witch of Ferzen Fell.