"Once upon a time, a long time ago, (the 1920's) in a land reasonably
far away, (Paris, France, to be exact) there was beautiful young girl
named Cindy. Her hair shone like polished gold, her eyes sparkled like
sapphires and her lips were the color of rubies. She wasn't really a
princess (unless you count her mother's half-brother's sister-in-law,
Gladys who was a great grandniece-in-law to Louis Philippe, Duke of
Orleans).
"Cindy was a talented, career-minded, young girl, who kept a busy professional schedule and didn't want to be bothered with dating. But in those days, a girl's reputation was judged by the quality of her date at the season's social functions."
Serena, the witch, paused in her tale and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. She wasn't really cold. Any witch worth her snuff could control her own body temperature, otherwise she'd freeze her bum off dancing naked in the forest on Halloween.
No, she paused and adjusted her shawl because the break created tension. And in storytelling, as in witchcraft, timing is everything.
"Did she fall in love with a prince and live happily ever after?" Jenna, Serena's granddaughter asked, hopefully.
"Bet you turned her boyfriend into a frog!" Jenna's older brother, Jason said, upsetting his sister.
"Cindy was my client. Back in the olden days they would have called me a fairy godmother. But I've never gone in for any of that highfalutin stuff. I'm a witch plain and simple."
"Whenever one of the palaces held a royal ball, Cindy always showed up with the most dashing, handsome, mysterious prince in all the land.
"The other girls wondered how Cindy could attract such fine men, coming from a respectable, but middle-class background as she did. But Cindy had inherited brains from her mother -- and that's far more important than inheriting wealth.
"I had a little shop on the south end. We had a good business relationship for years, until that one time..."
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