Snow wondered how much worse it would be for her later, for she knew in some way that she was only staving off the inevitable. But she could not bring herself to open the door. She could not invite the wolf inside.
After a time the rattling of the doorknob ceased. She heard him laugh, low and dark.
“There’s always tomorrow, my darling,” he said.
Snow did not sleep again that night.
* * *
The next morning, she took the last bite of the apple. There was hardly any magic left in it at all, for it didn’t burn with the same fire when she swallowed it. She knew some of the charm had come off on the key.
Snow parted the curtains and opened her window wide. The outside air was thin and chill but a weak sunlight filtered through the clouds. She turned the ring this way and that in the sun. The silver had a fine dark vein running through it that hadn’t been there at the start, and she thought the eye appeared cloudy, but it might have been wishful thinking.
She took a deep breath and unlocked her bedroom door. The Prince was not lurking in the hallway, waiting to punish her as she’d expected. Snow padded softly down the stairs and found breakfast laid out at the table, but there was no plate for the Prince and he was nowhere to be seen.
There was a small piece of parchment on her plate, a note written in a beautiful hand:
My darling wife, I have other duties that I must attend to today, but I will certainly see you this evening.
Snow thrust the note away from her. To anyone else’s eyes the note might look like the reassurance of a lover but she recognized it for what it was – a threat. And a promise.
Snow took her place at the table and ate, for she could think better if her stomach was full. She found she was hungrier than expected. She was reaching for another serving of toast when it happened.
The silver ring flew off her left hand and landed in the butter dish.
Snow’s heart swelled, for now that the ring was gone she could escape. In fact, she could escape at that very moment. The Prince was not there to stop her, and if any of the soldiers asked she could simply say she was going out for a walk. She was their princess now, and they could not control her.
She rose from the table with an idea of changing into something more suitable – the white gown was like a flag that would draw all eyes to her in the grey landscape (and perhaps that is what he meant for it to do when he gave it to you).
That was when she heard the woman crying.
Snow stopped, arrested by the sound. No, the woman wasn’t crying. She was half-sobbing, half-screaming, and the sound was coming from the east wing.
Snow only hesitated for a moment. The Prince had said not to go into the east wing, but Snow couldn’t ignore a person in pain.
But what if the Prince returns, and catches you? What if you miss your chance to escape?
These were selfish thoughts, and perhaps they would have convinced Snow if the woman’s sobbing hadn’t grown louder.
“I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave her, whoever she is.”
Snow mounted the stairs to the east wing.
At least all the Prince can see at the moment is the view inside the butter dish, she thought, and wiped her damp hands on her crumpled gown, and tried not to be afraid.
At the top of the stairs there was a long hallway, and at the end of the hallway there was only one door.
The woman’s voice was fading, a thin weak stream emitting from the room beyond.
Snow ran to it, and tugged on the handle, but the door held fast.
She took the poisoned key from her pocket and slid it into the keyhole.
The door swung open.
In the first room there were boxes on pedestals, boxes made of shining dark wood covered in jewels of every color. In the corner of the room there was a heavy red curtain that must have led to another room.
There were terrible noises coming from that room, and Snow hesitated, because her stomach and lungs and throat were filled with terror so thick she could hardly breathe. She tiptoed past the boxes until she reached the last one.
This one was open, as if it were waiting for something. And it was covered all over with red jewels just like the one in her ring.
For me, she thought with sudden certainty, and then she had to know what was in the others.
She touched the lid of the box beside the empty one, and it opened.
Inside was a heart, red and lush and beating.
Snow opened the next box, her hands shaking, and found another, just as fresh and impossible as the first. She stared at all the boxes, dozens of them, all around the room, and remembered that the Queen had told her of the Prince’s father, and the many wives that had disappeared.
And the Prince himself had a wife before Snow, and she, too, had disappeared.
Snow stared at the red curtain, and heard the terrible noises coming from the next room. She did not want to know, but she had to.
She pulled the curtain aside.
Her husband’s face was buried in something that might have once been a woman, though all that was left of her now was meat. When Snow pulled the curtain he looked up from his meal, and she saw that his face had overnight grown a thick blue beard, and his eyes were as red as the blood that ran over his chin.
He smiled, and Snow thought it was a travesty to call such a thing a smile.
“Naughty, naughty girl,” her husband said. “I told you to stay out of the east wing.”
Snow ran.
She heard his laughter echoing behind her as she fled down the hallway, down the stairs and to the front door, but no matter how she tugged on the handle it would not open, and there was no hole for her magic key.
“Where are you running to, my little bride?” Prince Charming called from the top of the east wing stairs.
Snow ran for the opposite stair, not knowing what she would do or where she could go, only knowing that she had to escape, to stay out of his grasp.
As she passed the table she saw the poison ring sunk into the butter. Without really knowing why she grasped the ring (and a handful of butter with it) and kept running, up the west wing stairs.
“There is no escape, Snow White,” her husband called. He sounded amused and unhurried and far too close behind her.
“None of my brides have ever escaped, no matter how they scream and cry and run,” he said. “I do like it when they run. Keep running, my little dove. It makes you all the sweeter when I catch you.”
Snow fled to her room, thinking that she could lock the door on him again, but the magic had gone out of the key and the lock would no longer rebel against its master.
She backed away from the door as it swung open, her mind repeating the same phrase over and over – What shall I do? What shall I do? Butter seeped through her fingers and her heart hammered so hard she thought it might leave her body.
But it will leave my body. He will cut it from me and keep it in a box, a prize like all the others.
He seemed enormous as he pushed through the doorframe, twice as large as he’d been before, and his hands were red and sticky and reaching for her.
“There is nowhere for you to flee, so you should be a good girl and let me do what I wish to you, Snow White,” he said. “I’m only going to do it anyway.”
She saw all her terrors reflected in his eyes. The breeze from the open window behind her ruffled her white gown. His fingers curled, ready to tear it from her.
No, Snow thought. I will not. I will not be a good girl ever again.