Fairest of All (6 page)

Martha was choking with deep sobs as she spoke. “She’s a horrible, wicked girl—”

“Tricking us into falling into that hole!” Lucinda continued. “She planned it all along, I know—”

“She did, she hates us!” added Ruby, who was trying in vain to pull the twigs from her ringlets.

“Look at what the child did to us! She must be punished!” the odd sisters chimed in unison.

The King looked from his daughter to his cousins and said, “Indeed she shall!” and grabbed his daughter by the arm. “You will go to your chamber and not reappear until I have called for you, do you understand?”

The look on Snow’s face was pure terror. She tried to protest, but the King would not allow for explanations. “Do not argue with me, Snow! I won’t have my daughter acting so wretchedly. You are a
princess
….”

Just then, the Queen stepped in, enraged, and all but pounced upon her husband.

“What in the gods’ names are you doing?” she cried. “Take your hands off her! Take them
off
!”

The King looked shocked. “Excuse me?” he asked.

“Perhaps the battlefield and the cannon blasts have made you hard of hearing. Unhand her. And then explain to me why you are treating your daughter—
our
daughter—in this manner!”

Then the Queen noticed the sisters. She glared in their direction, and they shrunk back, attempting to slink away before the Queen could turn her anger upon them.

“As for you ladies,” the Queen barked, “you will leave this court at
once
! I will have your belongings packed for you and sent along in another carriage as soon as it is convenient. I will
not
have you within these walls one more moment!”

Lucinda’s voice was shrill as ever. “This is an outrage! We are the King’s cousins, and we will not be—”

The Queen didn’t give her, or either of the other two who might have finished her thought, an opportunity to do so.

“Guards, take these women directly to the carriage outside. You are to ride with them in order ensure they arrive home without mishap. Should they get up to any chicanery whatsoever, I will count upon you to put an end to it.

“Now, ladies, I suggest you vacate these premises before my husband hears what you’ve been up to. Cousins or not, you might find he will have less mercy in his heart than I have shown you this evening. Now leave my sight before I think the better of it and have you tossed into the dungeon to rot where you belong.”

The King saw something in his wife he had never seen before, and it seemed to both impress and terrify him. As the guards took the sisters into shackles, Ruby muttered, “Is this absolutely—”

“Necessary? Perhaps there is another way out of this—” Lucinda continued.

“Room? We don’t wish to be paraded through the great hall,” Martha finished.

The Queen smiled at the sisters wickedly and said, “There
is
another way out as a matter of fact…” The sisters look relieved. The Queen continued, “However, I think I’d much rather have everyone see you for the vile, disgraceful women you are.”

The sisters looked defeated and hung their heads low as they were ushered away by the guards. As the sisters were taken away, they were met with reproachful looks from the other guests. Ladies whispered behind their gloved hands as they saw the sisters taken through the hall. Ruby all but fainted, completely overcome with shame, while Lucinda looked resolute with her chin held high as if she weren’t completely besmirched in the eyes of the entire kingdom. The King appeared completely confounded as the Queen’s manner did not seem to change when she addressed him after the odd sisters were removed.

“Kiss your daughter and tell her how much you love her,” the Queen commanded.

The King blinked. He was the King. His word was law. But there was something in his wife’s stern voice—there was a way about her that forced him to obey.

“I don’t have time to explain this to you, husband. You must trust I have done what is right; we will discuss it at some later time.”

“Of course, my darling,” the King said, all but bowing in supplication to his wife.

“Now tell her you’re sorry for treating her so poorly, and let us go into the great hall and greet our guests.”

The King again obeyed, and the Queen spun around, whipping up her cape like a whirling dervish as she stormed from the room and rejoined her uneasy guests at the celebration.

I
t was nearly daybreak on the solstice before all the guests had departed and the King and Queen were able to retreat to their chamber. The Queen, whose countenance had not softened during the evening, directed her anger at her husband once more.

“I can’t imagine what those witches told you to cause you to treat Snow so horribly.”

The King hung his head.

“I’ve talked to Snow and assured her of my love for her. I told her I was deeply sorry and she has forgiven me, why can
you
not do the same?” he said.

The Queen’s eyes filled with tears.

“My darling, what is it? Please tell me,” the King pleaded.

The Queen looked directly into the King’s eyes. “I never thought I would see you lay a hand on our daughter.”

The King looked completely diminished.

“I didn’t hurt her, my love, I swear to you.”

“You hurt her
heart
,” the Queen said, breaking down completely. “I know that look, that pained brokenhearted little face. It is the same one—the same face—I would stare at over and over again in my father’s mirrors as a child. Oh, he was a cruel man. A real beast. To think my mother, my lovely, beautiful mother, was married to him. He hated me. Oh yes, he did, and he told me as much. ‘Ugly, useless, senseless girl,’ he would say. The words wounded deeper than the bruises and the scars from any physical pain he inflicted on me. At least those wounds healed.”

The Queen collapsed to the floor, sitting there in the paradise of the castle with her face buried in her hands.

She looked up at the King, who gazed down upon her pitifully.

“Please, forgive me, dear,” said the King. “You mentioned the battlefield earlier. You were correct, it does change you. It turns you into something more than a man…and at the same time something less. I was not myself.”

The Queen saw this was true. She saw it in his eyes, and written on the scars on his face, and in the wildness of his unkempt hair.

“I will go check on Snow,” the King said, clearly processing everything he had just learned of the Queen’s early life.

“Of course, my darling, kiss her for me. I’m going to change for bed.”

The King kissed the Queen, leaving her sitting on the edge of the massive four-poster bed. He kissed her again and went off to lay eyes on his sleeping girl, no doubt with the hope of easing his guilt-ridden conscience.

The Queen was utterly spent. She lay back on the feather bed, without the energy to change into her nightclothes. She heaved a deep sigh, rubbing her temples.

“Good evening, my Queen.”

She sat bolt upright, expecting one of the guards with news of the sisters. But no one had entered the room, at least it didn’t seem so.

“Over here, my Queen.”

She directed her gaze to the opposite end of the room, where the voice seemed to be coming from.

“Hello? Is someone there?”

“Yes, my Queen.”

“Show yourself then. And state your business, man.”

She approached the hearth.

“Up above you, my Queen. There is no need to fear, my Queen.”

The Queen looked above her, all around the chamber, even within the fiery hearth, but she could not see anyone.

“I am your slave,” the voice said.

“My slave? This kingdom keeps no slaves.”

“It is my duty to deliver you news of the kingdom, anything you wish to know; I see far, I can show you anything you desire.”

“Can you?”

“I see all, my Queen, into the hearts and minds of every last soul in the kingdom.”

“Tell me then, where is the King?”

“With his daughter.”

“You just heard him say as much before he left the room. What is happening now?”

“He is crying. He is deeply shamed by his treatment of the girl and how profoundly it hurt you.”

The Queen felt dizzy.

“What is this lame trickery? You must have been in the room the whole while. Heard everything the King was saying. Now show yourself!”

“Please don’t be frightened, my Queen, I’m here to assist you in all things. I am not the man you perceive me to be in your dreams, I cannot hurt you.”

“You know of my dreams?”

“Indeed, my Queen. And though you have been looking all about the room, you have not looked in the one place where you know you can find me.”

The Queen’s heart seemed to stop and all the blood in her body felt as if it were rushing to her head. She whipped around and tore the curtain from her father’s mirror. Though she already half expected what she would find there, she was not prepared for the shock of seeing a living, moving face, hovering before her in the mirror. Her eyes grew wide with terror, her mouth gaped. It was a petrifying apparition—a disembodied head that looked like some sort of grotesque mask. Plumes of mystical smoke whirled around its hollow eyes and its long drooping mouth; its macabre face seemed forlorn.

“Who are you?” the Queen gasped.

“Do you not recognize me? Dear, has it been so long? Have the years that separated us caused you to forget me…enchantress?”

And in that moment, the Queen’s face blanched.

She recognized the face in the mirror, promptly lost all ability to steady herself, and collapsed.

But before she had fallen into blackness, she heard two final words ushered from the mouth of the visage in the mirror: “My daughter…”

H
earing the crash, the King rushed to the Queen’s chamber. He found the Queen awake but shaken, lying on the cold stone floor. The Queen was trembling, clutching the curtain she had torn from the mirror.

She looked up, but the man in the mirror was no longer there.

The King reached out to her, but she recoiled in horror.

“What is it, woman? Speak to me!”

“I’m, so sorry…my love…I didn’t mean to…frighten you,” the Queen said groggily, attempting to catch her breath. “I just…I must have fainted.”

The Queen was dizzy. She couldn’t find her own voice to further explain what had just happened, all she could manage was, “The mirror…”

The King looked to the mantel.

“Your father’s mirror. Of course. This is why you have had such an aversion to it. Had I known everything you just told me, I never would have brought it into our home.”

The Queen struggled to speak again. “Break it, please,” she managed to mutter.

Without hesitation the King tore the mirror from the wall and smashed it into the mantel. Shattered glass littered the chamber floor like stardust sprinkled over a moonless sky.

The Queen sighed, relieved, though not entirely convinced that the mirror was destroyed for good. She gathered all her strength to speak.

“Before the day I met you, my lord, I dreaded visiting my father in his workshop. Seeing my face reflected back at me again and again only reminded me of how unsightly I was—a fact of which I didn’t need reminding. A day of my childhood didn’t pass when my father didn’t tell me how unattractive I was, how ugly, and that is how I saw myself.

“My mother was beautiful; I knew that from the portrait that hung in my father’s dingy little house. The one source of beauty in my life was that portrait, and I would stare at it for hours wondering why I wasn’t beautiful like her. I didn’t understand why my father was content to live in a rundown hovel of a house, when he could afford to live anywhere he desired. No matter how much I scrubbed, I couldn’t rid the house of its stale, musty scent. I couldn’t imagine my mother—so beautiful—living in that house, and I fancied that somehow the house, too, must have been mourning my mother’s death. I fancied that while she was alive it was probably a pleasant little cottage where birds would alight to feed on the windowsills, and flowers bloomed all around. But after her death, everything within the house was moldering and distressed, all except for my mother’s things, which my father kept locked away. Sometimes I would go through her trunks and adorn myself with her old dresses and jewelry. Lovely dresses with intricate beadwork and jewels that sparkled like the stars. She seemed to love beautiful, delicate things, and I wondered if she had lived, would she have loved me, too, ugly as I was?

“Stories of my father’s love for my mother were known throughout the lands. Tales of the maker of mirrors and his beautiful wife were told throughout every kingdom like an ancient myth woven with strands of love and sorrow. My father made beautiful mirrors of all shapes and sizes, lovely mirrors that inspired the great kings and queens to travel over hill and dale just to purchase one of his gorgeous and enchanting treasures.

“My mother loved the winter solstice, and my father would make the grandest spectacle of the occasion. He made tiny mirrors in the shapes of suns, moons, and stars and hung them in all the trees on their grounds. Candles, too, decorated the trees, casting the most magnificent light reflected in the mirrors, so that their home could be seen for miles around—a tiny magical city illuminated and glowing in a sea of wintry darkness. He was heard to remark upon the gorgeous glow he created around his home every winter, saying it was pale in comparison to the beauty of his wife: her raven hair, fair skin, and sparkling onyx eyes—the sort that tilt up at the corners, adding a catlike quality to them. How I wished someone would love me the way my father loved his wife; so inspired by her beauty, he created intricate treasures so she could see her grace reflected back at her. I thought I would never know that love, or know what it was to be beautiful. And then I met you in my father’s mirror shop.

“When you ventured off promising to return, leaving me alone and bewildered, my father’s reaction sent my heart racing into panic. ‘Clearly you have bewitched him, daughter. Soon enough he will see you for the vile hag you are,’ he told me. I attempted to convince him I was no witch. I knew no enchantments. But he persisted. ‘Do not think a man such as he would have you as a wife. You are too old, daughter, and unsightly; you are unremarkable in every way.’

“My mother’s death was a result of my birth, and I am sure my father blamed me for it, seeing my resemblance to her as a taunting insult added to the injury of his loss. My father never talked about the night my mother died, but I heard tiny shards of the story and pieced them together in my imagination, like reflections in one of his broken mirrors.

“I imagined my mother writhing in terrible agony. In my mind I saw her clutching her bulging stomach in pain, crying out to her husband for help as the midwife tended to her. My father helpless, his face white and ghastly, filled with fear as my mother lay there lifeless after giving birth, and his eyes filled with revulsion when he looked upon the little creature that ripped his dearest love from his life. My father must have hated me from that day. Whenever he looked upon my face, it was with disgust.

“Once—I must have been five or six years of age—I was standing in our yard, the sun streaming through the canopy of trees. I was holding a bunch of wildflowers when my father came upon me.

‘What are you doing with those flowers, girl?’ he asked; his face was screwed up in controlled anger. I told him that I wanted to bring the flowers to my mother. He stared at me blankly and cruelly. ‘You didn’t even know her! Why would she want flowers from you?’ I remember being too sad, too shocked, to cry as I responded, ‘She was my momma, and I love her.’

“He just looked at me in that way I had become accustomed to—that way that told me if I said anything more he would strike me. Sometimes he would strike me even if I remained silent. That day, I just stood there and held out the flowers, looking up at him with my lip quivering, my eyes on the verge of tears, but too overcome with so many different emotions to express them by crying outright. He tore the flowers from my tiny hand. Then he turned his back on me and walked out of the courtyard. I hoped that he would place the flowers on my mother’s grave, but I am all but certain he never did.

“I promised myself I wouldn’t let my father’s demons taint my soul. I swore that I was starting a new life with you. I wanted to forget him and be happy with you and my beautiful little bird. I vowed I would make Snow my own daughter and love her the way I wished my father had loved me—that I would tell Snow White how beautiful she was every day of her life, and we would dance together and laugh. And unlike my father, I would take Snow to visit her mother’s grave and use the letters you entrusted me with to tell her what her mother was like.

“I resolved to never think of the maker of mirrors ever again. He belongs to the darkness now. The day my father died it was as if my life was set ablaze, as if his descent into darkness brought me into a shining world where I was finally able to find love and happiness. That very hour, I brought every one of his mirrors outside our home and hung them from a giant tree on the grounds. It was the most remarkable spectacle I’d ever seen, the mirrors swaying in the breeze, catching the sunlight and reflecting it in the most magnificent way. The sight of it took my breath away. The townsfolk thought it was beautiful too. They believed it was a tribute to my father, and I let them believe that. They needn’t know what a horrible man he was, they needn’t know I was for the first time coming out into the light, that I was no longer lingering in darkness and in doubt.
That
was the true reason I had celebrated.

“No one knew how much he hated me, how cruel and utterly inhuman his soul was. A soul—ha! I wonder if he ever had one. He must have at some point. His love for my mother was so great. Perhaps his soul died with her the night she left this world.

“Still, whatever was left of him was pure evil. I had sat by his deathbed, caring for him, trying to keep him alive because, in my heart of hearts, I knew that it was right—to treat the blood of your blood that way. Still, he had nothing but hatred and bitter words for me, ‘He will never come for you, you know. You’ve always been an ugly child. What would a
king
want with the likes of you?’ I was there as he left this world. Right by his side. Holding on to his hand so that he would not need to journey into that great unknown alone. And the moment before he died, his near-lifeless eyes looked up at me. I was full of folly, ready to believe that he was going to thank me. Instead he said ‘I have never loved you, daughter.’ And then he closed his eyes and left this world.”

The King sat silently. He rested his chin on his folded hands as he rocked back and forth, contemplating all he had just learned. Then he knelt down next to the Queen and took her into his arms.

“I wish he were alive today,” the King said, “so I could slay him with my own hands for all he has done.”

The Queen looked up at her husband, who she had known only to be filled with love. To love even his enemies. Did he truly care for her so much that he would even betray his own beliefs?

This was the man she loved above all others. She touched his hand, callous with battle scars and the weight of artillery and wielding of swords. She locked her hands in his, crawled into his arms, then kissed him lightly on the lips. His once-soft mouth was now chapped and chafed from exposure to the elements. He tasted like sweat and, the Queen thought, blood.

Why, she wondered, must things change? Why could she not have frozen time the day she was married, lived happily ever after with Snow and the King? Why could she not create peace on earth so that her husband would not ever need to leave her again?

She wondered this very thing for the next month, while she still had the King with her. But on the twenty-third day of January, the King left again.

“Papa, I’m going to miss you,” said Snow.

“I promise to come home to you soon, my Snow. I always do, don’t I?”

The little girl nodded.

“I love you, and I will miss you, dear,” the King said with a deep sigh.

“I love you too, Papa!”

The King kissed his daughter and spun her around, which made her giggle. “I will miss you both with all my heart. You’ll both be with me.”

The Queen and Snow stood in the courtyard and watched as the King and his men ventured over snow-covered mountains on horseback. Their torches glowed in the dark winter afternoon, and the air was the kind of cold that glassed your eyes over—a type of cold you can practically see. The King’s army grew smaller and smaller, like ants climbing piles of sugar.

Then they dipped below the horizon and the King was gone.