CHAPTER ONE: DEATH BECOMES HER
In which a princess departs this life, and returns.
“Just a single bite, my dear,” the old woman says sweetly, holding out the apple. “It’s a rare breed, most juicy and bursting with taste! If you were to cook your Prince a pie from these apples, he would surely run to be back by your side again! No more waiting … No more tears…”
Snow White looks at the shiny, smooth surface of the red apple. She can see the distorted reflection of her pale, beautiful face, and the rustic simplicity of the cottage around her. Her reflection is smiling, but her face does not feel like it holds a smile. But she knows that she wants her Prince to finally come and rescue her.
Maybe this haggard old visitor is right? She might only be selling simple apples, but her reasoning is sound. Snow White will have to do something if she wants to be rescued from this little cottage in the Deep Forest.
Snow White accepts the polished apple. It even smells delicious! She lifts it to her ruby-red lips – and takes a bite.
The witch is laughing even before the sound of the crunch has faded.
Seven little men stand around the pale body of the girl. They have been out all day working in the diamond mine, and returned home only to find that their beloved Snow White had collapsed on the kitchen floor.
“My lady?” calls Hawthawn with tears in his eyes. “My lady? Oh, please wake up!”
Hawthawn is normally such a happy little man. It is his defining characteristic. But seeing the beautiful girl like this, as white as ash and stone cold, drives his heart to despair.
“Where’s the Doc?” shouts Griff in his rough voice. “Where’s the damned Doc? Bring him here!”
“He’s washing his face in the river – I’ll fetch him!” replies Bostor. He runs from the cottage and comes back with the Doc, who is just as short and fat as the rest of the old friends.
The Doc kneels by Snow White and feels for a pulse. There is none. Her skin is as cold as ice.
He looks up into the faces of his comrades. Each of them – Hawthawn, Griff, Bostor, Daer,
Sorfius and Sion – wait expectantly for his diagnosis. Will she recover? Will she live?
The Doc shakes his head. “I’m sorry, my lads … Oh, God … She’s gone … She’s gone…”
Her last words before she died had been: “My Prince will come … My … Prince will … come…”
FOUR DAYS AGO:
‘Mirror, Mirror, on the wall: Who is the fairest of them all?”
Such were the words that the Queen had asked of the Magic Mirror every day for years. The Sorcerer trapped behind the glass knew all; and he was bound by magic to tell the truth. The Queen had trapped him there the day that she stole his power, siphoning it from his body by sexual means whilst disguised as a common harlot.
It was using similar techniques that she had seduced the King, and as such leapt in social stature from a poor alchemist’s apprentice – abused and ill-treated in all ways possible – and became Queen of a whole country. The King had often lamented, in times gone by, how such a damaged young girl had worked her way up to a position where she held sway over the life and death of every person in Everedge. He rued the day he allowed her to cast her first spells, which happened in secret when he was asleep. Later, once he was too spellbound to resist, she had woven dark magic around him until he was under her complete control.
The King, like the Sorcerer, had no choice but to do the Queen’s bidding. But those days were long past, and the King dead having not once been able to provide her with royal offspring.
But the Witch Queen was working on that…
Meanwhile, her vanity compelled her to ask the same question of the Magic Mirror: “Who is the fairest of them all?”
And always the Sorcerer in the Mirror would say, “My Queen, the truth is plain to see: no-one
Learning to Kill: Stories