Long Ago, Far Away...

Once upon a time, in a land not so very different from our own, three sisters lived alone in an old house in the woods. The oldest sister was called Vanesse, the middle sister was called Clarine, and the youngest sister was called Gisette.
Now it just so happened, as it often does in these kinds of tales, that Vanesse and Clarine were the children of their father's first wife, who had turned out to be a terrible and nasty witch. He had made her leave the moment he found out, but had allowed their daughters to remain with him, because everyone knows that a witch makes a terrible mother.
In time he married again, a woman who was kind and gentle and not at all like the witch. She was generous and loving to everybody, and treated the witch's daughters like they were her own. After a little while she did have a daughter of her own, who she called Gisette, and whom she would have loved more than anything in the world if she had not, tragically, died not long after her baby was born. The girls' father was overcome with grief, and scarcely had he arranged for the baby to be cared for than he died of a broken heart.
Vanesse and Clarine were not fond of their sister. They blamed her for her mother's death, and hated her because everything their father had possessed he had left to the helpless baby. Perhaps he had recognised the jealousy in his eldest children's hearts, and thought that this would improve the girl's chances of life under her sisters' ravenous gaze.