Hilda - Snow White revisited (16 page)

"Come on, boys, on my mark of three," said
Doc.

"Three what?" Dopey was scared he had missed
something and pulled his hands back from Snow-White's head and
shoulder.

Doc closed his eyes and counted to ten. Twice.
"Dopey, listen. I will count to three and then we lift Snow-White
up to put her in the coffin. Got that?"

"Oh, that, yeah, sure, no problem, just count
fast and be loud on the three!"

Five sighs later and all hands on board, which
in this case should be read as under body, Doc counted.
"One-two-THREE." Snow-White became airborn as the six little men
lifted, putting their muscles they had earned while working at the
mines to good use. As if they had practiced many a time, very
quickly the black-haired, red-lipped, white-skinned princess lay in
the coffin.

"Shame, really, isn't it?", Doc said, his hat in
hand.

"Yeah, she was so good for us," Happy said, his
hat in hand.

"I think we could put another pillow between her
legs," Dopey said, his hat in Doc's hand.

"Hufff...", Sneezy said, his hat in hand and a
finger under his nose.

"I think she liked me," Bashful said, his hat in
hand and red in the face.

"Bunch of whimps," Grumpy said, his hat in hand.
"I sure hope that witch knows what she's doing."

The witch in question was staring at a green
flame that was walking over her table, leaving a green trail of goo
behind it. "This is wrong again," Hilda muttered, as she slapped
the flame into oblivion and took the rag to wipe off the green
smear before it got too attached to the table. "What the hell am I
doing?"

The rag was remarkably green already, from all
the attempts she had made to get this right.

Hilda fell into her chair again and looked at
the red and the yellow flames that were happily walking around the
jars they lived in, without leaving traces. "Damn it, I can't stand
this. I get this fantastic idea to annoy people that use roads and
pathways, and then the green light keeps dribbling all over the
place. That's not going to cut the mustard."

The two goldfish on her cup sat silently in
their place.

"What are you looking at?", Hilda muttered and
turned the cup around.

Carefully two fishfaces crept around the cup,
trying to stay out of sight and yet keep up with the happenings.
Their efforts were in vain, because Hilda extinguished the two
flames that were not drooping and went to her mirror again.

She giggled. "Fire-light, sun-light and
mustard-light. Shiny. Already got the names done." Then she paid
attention to the imagery the mirror had to show. Silently she
praised Johan's craftsmanship in making mirrors. His products with
the best. Simply the best.

"Right. First let's see how the boys are doing
with the coffin." She saw Johan working on mirrors. "Ah, good. The
midgets left. Oh, bad Hilda, calling your co-conspirators midgets.
Oh well, they're small enough for that."

The two fish on the cup looked at each other and
frowned. "No man for far too long," they silently agreed.

Hilda switched channels on her mirror and
checked the proceedings at the dwarfish house. She saw the six-
(six? Oh, of course. The sleepyhead was missing.) -stand around the
glass coffin, hats in hand. "Awwhhh... so sweet... they really
admired her." Hilda's eyes went all dreamy and a smile was on her
face, wondering how the hell it got there. "I wonder if they'd do
that for me too..." Her wand was in her hand and her clothes
changed to pink, with tiny yellow brooms and blue piglets. The tiny
off detail was that each piglet had a broom up its arse.

One of the goldfish tried to cover its eyes. The
other wished it could reach its ears. They were out of luck.

"She looks really cute like that," Hilda
commented as she inspected the sleeping princess in the glass box.
"Maybe I should go for black hair too. And the- nah, no red lips.
Come on, Hilda, that's not you! But still, the black hair looks
spiffy. But perhaps only with the pale skin, and I am not going
there. Been stupid once and I am definitely staying away from
that."

Hilda went on and on, until the dwarfs had put
the cover on the coffin and carried it out of the room. And during
all that time, the fish were trapped on the teacup...

Walt sat outside the castle, enjoying a very
mundane and well-chilled beer. He stretched his royal legs and
rested them on the seat near him, while taking a sip of the golden
liquid. He found that he deserved this. He had been running around
after the queen a good deal of the day, and such strain should be
rewarded. Without overdoing it of course, so he had promised
himself that he would only have two beers.

Little did he know that at that time the dwarfs
were lifting his little girl up and depositing her into a glass
coffin. He was unaware of their grief and Sleepy's snoring. Unaware
of the goldfish that wanted to get away from the cup and Hilda's
fluffy-bunny babbling.

The thing that worried him was the rapidly
receding level of beer in his pitcher, and that the first pitcher
was already on the ground, empty. Only two beers. Walt frowned and
tried to find a way to get around his self-imposed limit...

The mean queen sat in her room and stared at the
mirror. She did not want to ask, did not need to ask. She wanted
and needed something else, but she was afraid to go out and get it.
Walt was a seriously inhibiting factor in her life all of a sudden,
and she did not like that one bit. She stared at the door of her
hidden room. Perhaps she had to go in and think of something
queenly constructive that would also be kingly destructive...

Hilda had returned the mirror to its reflective
state and sat thinking for a while. Things were all going according
to plan, more or less. Walt had done what he could. She could not
expect a flabby king to turn into a skilled spy within the
timeframe of a talk.

The mean queen was getting nervous, and that was
good. The coffin was done, and that was good too. She got up for
the next step in her plan and caught her image in the mirror. Pink.
Piglets. Brooms in strange places. "Oh... I should change
that."

A fair amount of minutes later she was dressed
as the witch she was. The burgundy dress always looked good on her.
She had also put on a long black cloak made of velvet, flowing
around her like a liquid in slow motion. She admired herself in the
mirror for a while and had the feeling that something was missing.
Her necklace was there, so that was not the problem.

The wicked witch wiggled her eyebrows.
"Shouldn't be a biggy..."

Dressed up as she wanted to appear, she got her
broom and walked out. She turned at looked at her house. "Hey, you
awake?"

"Do I ever sleep?", the house asked.

"Right. Well, I saw Baba Yaga's hut and that is
still talking to her in the normal way. Unlike you. And the hut is
not painted at all, so there." Hilda folded her arms over her
chest, the broom floating next to her.

"That is the difference between a hut and a
house," the house argued. "Magical huts are hardly ever painted, so
feel free to change me into one if you want. Huts get nice
decorations at the Solstices, so I would not mind being a hut."

"Smart-ass," Hilda spew and turned around to
walk off.

"Smart-house, you mean."

"Oh, shut up!"

"Bad loser," the house threw at her.

Hilda ignored it, trying to carry her defeat
with dignity. She walked over to the floating cage, mounted her
broom and went up.

The four people were lying sprawled over the
bottom of their elevated prison.

"Good morning, guys. Had a good time so
far?"

At the sound of Hilda's voice, four heads rose.
The people attached to them felt wretched. "Let us off this thing,"
Ribaldo demanded. "We are all seasick. This cage wobbles worse than
a boat!"

Hilda giggled. This was a bonus she had not
anticipated. Good to know, though. "You know, guys, I am in a
splendid mood at the moment, so I am going to be very gentle with
you and let you go. See you downstairs!"

She dropped to the ground like a brick and made
a soft landing. There she made the cage come down slowly and made
sure it did not make a soft landing. The fourfold 'oompf' was
highly satisfying. "Now, do me a favour, guys. Go. Go away. Far
away. And do not come back. Ever."

The four broom-making gyspies did not fall on
deaf ears. They stumbled over each other in their haste to get away
from this crazy bitch witch, and soon they had gone from view, as
they ran into the forest, to where they had left their wagon.

"Nice job, Hilda," she praised herself. "Nothing
overdone. Very slick." Then she took her wand and turned the cage
back into chains that then disappeared.

She turned to the house. "I'll be back. We'll
talk later."

"I'll be here," the house said as she took off,
"I'm not going anywhere."

"Welcome to the club," one of the fish on the
cup said.

Somewhere in the forest, a man got off his
horse. "Oh, man," he said as he started to take the pressure off
his bladder. The man grinned at the horse. "I hope you are not in a
hurry, this is going to take a while."

The horse couldn't care less.

The six dwarfs had left Sleepy where he was.
They had carried the glass coffin out of their house and were on
their way to a very nice clearing in the forest, close to their
house. They knew that Snow-White loved that spot.

"I didn't know she was that heavy," Grumpy said.
He felt that he had put this very nicely, considering his mood.

"Shut up," the others said.

They walked on, maneuvering the coffin among the
trees and avoiding treestumps that invited the dwarfs to fall over
them.

"Are we there yet?", Grumpy asked. He was in the
back so he could not see clearly where they were.

"Shut up," the others said.

"Hey, I'm only asking!" Grumpy felt bad about
their remark: he had not used any foul language.

Finally the six reached the nice spot. They put
the coffin down and looked around if there was a better place for
it to stand.

"This is fine with me," Grumpy said, sweat on
his face.

"Perhaps it is better over there, near the oak,"
Happy pointed.

"No way, as soon as it starts dropping its
acorns, do you know what that will do to the glass cover? Are you
up for fixing that?", Doc said.

"Then how about there?", Sneezy said.

"Ants. Too many ants."

Each dwarf had another idea for the best spot.
In the end they agreed that the place where the coffin was now
would be the best place.

"Someone for beer?", Dopey asked, having one of
his superior moments.

They all voted in favour, so they sent him on
his way and urged him to hurry back.

"So what are we going to do while he's on his
way?", asked Bashful.

"Hope he's not losing his friggin' way like last
time?", Grumpy shared his sentiments.

Doc shook his head. "Boys, boys, remember why we
are together, okay? After all, this is still Snow-White who is
lying in this coffin, so a little respect would be called for."

"Perhaps we should sing our song for her again,"
Happy offered. "She loved to her us sing."

The others could only agree, so the five of them
sang their "hi ho, hi ho" a few times. After three times however
they got fed up with the lyrics. Happy tried to brighten things up
a bit by adding some lines that were not exactly appropriate so Doc
slapped him on the head. That settled the singing.

Dopey returned at the coffin space, to find his
mates sitting in the grass around the coffin, all looking rather
miffed. "Hey guys, look what I found!"

Hilda had landed her broom in front of the
dwarfish house. "Yo, people," she said as she rapped on the door.
The door swung open slowly. Hilda drew her wand, as this was not
standard operational procedure. The door should be closed. Dwarfs
were reliable with that.

A rasping sound came to the wicked witch from
inside the house, so with her wand ready to strike, she entered the
room.

"Crap. I should have known." The wicked witch
put her wand away and walked over to the bed where Sleepy was
snoring his dwarfish heart out. "He's getting worse every week, it
seems," Hilda muttered.

A short spell later, the bed rose up a bit and
tilted sideways. With a solid thud Sleepy hit the hardwood floor.
The snoring stopped.

"Don't tell me...", Hilda started, but nobody
had to tell her.

"Ouch." Sleepy sat up. "Who the- oh, it's you."
He cleanly ignored his floating bed. "Whassup?"

"Where's the coffin? And Snow-White?"

Sleepy scratched his head. "Gosh, dunno really.
I just nodded off for a second..." He gazed around the room,
finding his mates gone. "Looks like it's gone, eh?" He got up and
looked around again. "Yup, it's gone. And it took the boys with
it."

Hilda closed her eyes, breathed in and breathed
out. "I could swear I am hearing Dopey..."

"Nope, he's gone too," Sleepy informed the
wicked witch.

"Shut up, you fool! I love it when a plan comes
together, but this is seriously getting out of hand." Hilda was
tempted to do something very nasty to Sleepy. And why not, she
thought. She grabbed her wand, pointed it at Sleepy and said
something in Latin.

"Uhm?" Sleepy frowned. "Am I supposed to be
scared now? Or green and hop around the room?"

"Do what you like. I am going to find these
little twats and see what they're upto." Hilda turned and walked
out of the house. Lacking witchful attention, Sleepy's bed banged
onto the floor again.

"Yikes, I wonder what bug crawled up her ass,"
Sleepy said as he lovingly eyed his bed. He sighed as he lay down,
a blissful smile all over his face.