Fairest of All (12 page)

T
he Queen rose from her bed feeling better than she had in a long while. She felt strength, power—a surge of confidence. True, her dream proved that she was conflicted and that she had lost her way. But the memory of Snow as she looked in the dreams—sickly, pale, dead—stuck with her. But instead of warming her heart to rush to her daughter and embrace her, happy that she lived, the images served only to renew the Queen’s spirits.

How could such a child—one with hollow black eyes, one without a heart—possibly rival the Queen’s beauty?

She began to wonder how her mind could have been so plagued with such weakness and sentiment. She had been ill. Simple. She got up from her bed for the first time in many days, opened her curtains, and saw Snow White at the wishing well, scrubbing away in her rags. She was fair, no doubt. But nowhere near as fair as the Queen.

She called on her attendants to draw a bath, and was soon refreshed and outfitted in her finest gown. Her crown sat neatly upon her covered raven hair, and her favorite purple-and-black cape was fastened to her gown with a gold-and-ruby pendant.

She examined herself in the Magic Mirror and smiled. Truly, she had never looked more beautiful.

“Slave in the Magic Mirror,” she began, “come from the farthest space, through wind and darkness, I summon thee—speak! Let me see thy face!”

Flames filled the mirror, then subsided, revealing the face in the Magic Mirror.

“What wouldst thou know, my Queen?”

“Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

“Famed is thy beauty, Majesty, but hold! A lovely maid I see! Rags cannot hide her gentle grace—alas, she is more fair than thee,” the Slave said.

“A lash for her!” the Queen shouted, incensed. Who could this woman be? “Reveal her name!” the Queen ordered.

“Lips as red as a rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow…”

The Queen felt faint. The room began to sway, and she nearly lost her footing. She clasped her hand around her brooch and recoiled in horror.

“Snow White!” she said.

She rushed to the window. Snow was still scrubbing away at the steps by the well. While she did this she sang and danced, and the Queen felt something very near hatred for the girl. Nothing, it seemed, could dampen Snow White’s spirits. How could the girl have recovered so well from the loss of her father? Did she not remember all the happy times they had had together? How could she find it in her heart to smile—to laugh and to sing?

To
love
?

The Queen noticed the young Prince step up beside Snow White. Snow quickly jumped up and ran from the Prince, no doubt fearing the wrath of the Queen, who warned her against cavorting with the boy. This satisfied the Queen briefly, until Snow White quickly reappeared on the balcony below her and began to sing along with the Prince, who was now sickeningly serenading her. Not only was the girl surpassing the Queen as the fairest in the land, but she had found herself in love. An insult to both her father and the Queen!

The Queen quickly closed the curtains and started when she turned to find the three sisters standing in her chamber.

“You three! How have you come to be here?”

“We have our ways, Majesty—” Lucinda said.

“And you have yours,” Ruby finished.

“What do you want?” the Queen asked bitterly.

“The question is—” Martha asked.

“What do
you
want?” Lucinda finished.

“I think you already know the answer, dears,” the Queen said.

The sisters began speaking, picking up one another’s sentences.

“The power is yours, Majesty—the answers you seek are in—the volumes we left here long ago—tomes on the Black Arts—poisons and potions—disguises. If you know where they reside—you will have your answer—after all—you come from a long line of witches—the power is not only in those books—it is in your blood—as it was in—your mother’s.’”

“Liars!” the Queen said, hurling a delicate vase at the sisters.

“Oh dear me,” Lucinda said.

“You’ve developed a temper,” Martha finished.

“That could come in handy in your current circumstance,” Lucinda said.

“See, there is an easier way to reclaim your post as fairest,” Ruby continued.

“And what would that be?” the Queen asked skeptically.

“Kill the girl,” the sisters said in tandem and broke into their sickly cackle.

“Kill Snow White? You are mad!” the Queen said. But part of her had already been contemplating the same fate for the girl.

The sisters continued their sniggering. “Madness is in the mind of the beholder, Queen.

“It is the only way. She must die either by your hand or someone else’s. Wouldn’t you want to be the apple of your father’s eye again? Do you not want to hear the Slave tell you that
you
are fairest?”

“Of course, but—”

“Your Uncle Marcus’s friend, the Huntsman. Order him—” Lucinda said.

“To do the deed,” Ruby finished. “Your husband—”

“Will be avenged of his daughter’s rebuking his memory for happiness with that other royal man, and you will again have your rightful—”

“Place as fairest in the lands.”

“And best of all, her blood won’t be on your hands.”

The sisters broke into a cackle again.

The Queen shook her head. It might have looked as though she were disagreeing with the sisters, but in truth, she was fighting the urge within herself to submit to their suggestion.

“It seems as if you need—” Lucinda said.

“A bit of help,” Ruby finished.

Martha opened her pouch and produced an empty teacup.

Lucinda said, “Metal and ore, goodness no more.”

She bent down and spat into the cup.

“Love and tenderness, flee; instead, here, have a piece of me,” Ruby said, leaning over Martha’s shoulder and also spitting into the cup.

“From a queen in pain, to a queen who reigns,” Martha said, lifting the cup to her shriveled lips and spitting in it as well.

The sisters then each waved a hand over the cup, and when the Queen could see it once again she noticed it was filled with steaming liquid.

“Drink, ” Lucinda said.

The Queen looked skeptical, but took the cup. If it would help strengthen her, which is what she gathered from the incantation, then she would happily accept it.

As the liquid moved down her throat into her body, she felt an unbelievable rage. But it was a strange, focused kind of rage that she felt could be wielded as a weapon. It seemed that her body had been completely taken over by the part of her she’d been fighting for so long. And she found that she loved it.

“Sisters…” the Queen said evilly, “leave me. Now. Or I will see to it that each of you is disemboweled and your entrails hung in the trees that flank this castle. The rest of your remains will be fed to the beasts in the castle moat.”

Lucinda smiled darkly, and Ruby and Martha followed suit.

“Call us if you need us, dear,” Lucinda said. And the three disappeared as mysteriously as they had arrived.

“H
as the Huntsman returned?” the Queen asked Tilley, who she had ordered to her room.

“No, Your Majesty, not yet. However he should be back anytime now, I should think. It is approaching midday,” the servant replied.

“Send him to me the moment he arrives; tell him not to bother making himself presentable. I understand he will want to after a long day of stalking, but it is of the gravest importance I see him at once.”

“Yes, my Queen.”

And with that, Tilley left the chamber. The Queen was too nervous to eat. She wanted desperately to approach the mirror again—to ask who was fairest, to hear her father say it was she, but she knew that would not be the answer. The thought of once again hearing Snow White was fairest ground her stony heart to dust. She paced. She waited. Soon, she would once again be the fairest in the land…once Snow White was dead. Time went slowly; she looked at the faces of the beastly women on either side of her hearth; she imagined herself transformed into a dragon and killing Snow White herself—if only her power was that great.

She sat down on her throne and awaited the Huntsman’s arrival.

And then there came a knock on her chamber door.

“Come!” she called.

It was the Huntsman. He looked rugged and dirty, with earth sticking to his sweaty brow.

“You called for me, my Queen?”

“Indeed. I would like you to take Snow White away from here. Take her far into the forest. Find some secluded glade where she can pick wildflowers—”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Huntsman said.

“And there, my faithful Huntsman, you will kill her,” the Queen said.

“But, Your Majesty! The little princess!” the Huntsman pleaded.

“Silence! You know the penalty if you fail!” the Queen said.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Huntsman said, dropping his eyes to the floor. It was the child’s life—or his own. Or worse, the lives of his family.

The Queen went on, “But to make doubly sure you do not fail, bring back her heart in this.”

The Queen lifted an ornately carved wooden box and thrust it forward to present it to the Huntsman. It was the beautifully decorated one—with a heart pierced by a sword as a lock. A testament to just how much the Queen had transformed, how much she had lost sight of the things that were once dear to her, was that she did not even recognize it as the dowry box of the King’s first wife. The very box that once contained the letters from Snow’s mother.

“Do not fail me!” the Queen commanded.

“I would not, Your Majesty.”

The Huntsman left the chamber and the Wicked Queen watched from the window as Snow White was led happily away. The Queen grinned evilly. Then the waiting began.

She paced in her room for hours. She thought she might approach the Magic Mirror, but did not want to do so prematurely. She couldn’t bear to hear once more that she was not the fairest one of all.

It was now twilight, and the Huntsman still had not returned. She feared he had lost his nerve and ran off with the child in tow. And then the Wicked Queen heard a knock at the door.

The Huntsman stood there, looking stunned. He handed the Queen the box. He had brought Snow White’s heart, just as the Queen had demanded. The Queen felt a perverse thrill of excitement. The old fears and weaknesses did not disturb her thoughts, didn’t temper this elation. She had made the right choice in killing the girl. It was for the good of all their family. It felt liberating. And most important, she was once again the most beautiful maiden in all the land.

“Thank you, my loyal man; you will be rewarded greatly for this, I assure you. Now leave me,” the Queen said.

The Huntsman left without a word, and the Queen went directly to the mirror. She had been waiting for this.

“Magic Mirror on the wall, who
now
is the fairest one of all?” she asked, with a smirk on her lips and the box containing the heart in her hands.

The Slave appeared and spoke. “Over the Seven Jeweled Hills, beyond the seventh fall, in the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs dwells Snow White—the fairest one of all.”

The Queen could not suppress a wicked smile.

“Snow White lies dead in the forest. The Huntsman has brought me proof. Behold, her heart!”

The Queen opened the box and lifted it to the Magic Mirror.

“Snow White still lives,” the Slave said. “The fairest in the land. ’Tis the heart of a pig you have in your hand.”

“The heart of a pig! Then I have been tricked!” the Queen said.

The Queen flew into a rage so violent the servants below thought the castle might be coming down around them. She stormed down the stairs, through the front doors, into the courtyard and the stables, where the Huntsman was unsaddling his horse.

“You didn’t kill her!”

“No, Your Majesty, I couldn’t. I’m sorry, but I feared you would regret the choice had I followed your orders.”

“You have made a grave mistake.” And from her belt she took out her dagger and slipped it into his gut, then twisted it violently. He fell to the ground as she pulled it out, blood dripping from the dagger. His blood felt warm. She looked at her hands for a moment, and then at the man who was writhing in agony on the stable floor. She should stab him again, she thought, to finish the deed. But then the blood dripping from the dagger caught her eye. Red and glistening.

Shiny.

Like an apple.