“Momma?” The Queen turned with a start.
Standing there was Snow, a child once more. Her face whiter than death, her eyes black holes, and her white dress covered in blood. “Momma, can I please have my heart back?”
The Queen screamed. What had she done?
“Your Majesty, please wake up! You’re having a nightmare,” Tilley insisted.
“My little girl needs me. She came here last night…because she needs me! The forest took her heart!”
Her chambermaid just looked at her, bewildered.
“No, my Queen, Snow White is in the courtyard; she’s fine.”
“But the blood on the floor! It’s there, see!”
“You must have broken something in the night and stepped on the glass. Majesty, you’ve been ill.”
“No, it is Snow White’s blood. She came here in the night, I swear!”
“Look at your feet, Majesty, they’re filthy and bleeding. You’re sick, please go back to sleep, you need your rest.”
“Leave me alone, you idiotic wench.”
“But, Your Majesty, I should tend to your—”
“I said leave!”
The Queen stared at the blood and glass on her chamber floor. Snow had come to her in the night—she knew it! Her little girl was lost and alone and searching for her heart. Although she had been doing little more than sleeping these past few days, she passed out from exhaustion once more.
* * *
“You must kill Snow White if you want to survive, if you desire your beauty back.”
She would rather rid herself of the mirror and let herself die.
“If Snow White lives, it will be slow and painful, daughter. You would linger unto death for many years, your soul rotting away within you, withering your body to a husk; everyone will look upon you with pity and disgust. You will wish for death and feel no release even after they have buried you deep within the ground. The magic of the mirror—the spells of the sisters—will keep you alive even in the darkness. You will suffer for death, feel the need for it, want to seek it out, but your body will not be able to enforce your will. You will be trapped within yourself, alone and in agony.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I’ve hated you from the day you came into this world.”
“All of this was lies then? Why?”
“Revenge, for your mother’s death, for the breaking of my soul.”
The Queen woke again, remembering her father’s words from her dream. She remembered saying similar words to Verona about the loss of her husband. She was feverish and ill, and her mind wasn’t her own. Why were these thoughts invading her? She fought against them but couldn’t help but feel that she had wasted her life, for vain wishes and a love her father never had for her. And now she was going to be forced to kill her daughter.
No, that was a dream. The mirror had no hold over her.
Her mind was muddled; she couldn’t determine reality from nightmares and found that she was unable to keep herself awake, instead falling back into her fevered dreamscape.…
She was looking into her mirror, “I am like you, Father. I have forsaken my daughter. I despise her beauty.”
“You have always been like me. A part of me lives within you; you share my blood. We are bound by that and by the magic of the mirror. Part of my soul is in you.”
“We own your soul,” the sisters’ voices came. “If your soul is in her, she is ours as well. Just as your wife was, before we took her!”
“No one owns me!” the Queen shouted.
The sisters laughed, then faded away.
The Queen stumbled out of her chamber feeling numb and walked the familiar path she and Snow White used to wander when Snow was still a little girl. Time had completely gotten away from her and she ended up walking much farther than she had intended. She was in the Dead Wood again. Everything was blackened and it reeked of sulfur. She had done this. Her hate and fear not only ruined this forest but the entirety of her life. Everything was lost to her now. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something green and red in the black emptiness. It was a bright, shiny apple hanging from a tree in this Dead Wood. She wondered how she hadn’t noticed it right away—it looked remarkable and uncanny among the dead trees. Something about it gave her hope. She took the brilliant apple from the dead tree, put it into the folds of her simple dress, and pulled her shawl over her head and made her way to a tiny cottage deep within the woods.
As the Queen woke from her feverish dream, Tilley was putting a cool washcloth to her head.
“I need something to eat. An…an apple,” the Queen muttered through parched lips.
Tilley took the cloth from the Queen’s forehead and placed it in a bowl of cool rosewater.
“You’ve been dreaming, my Queen.” And she went on, “Snow is outside and would like to see you.”
The Queen almost turned her away, but then thought better of it.
“Yes, ask her to come in.”
Tilley called to the attendant by the door and Snow White entered the room. She was so beautiful. The sun seemed to follow her wherever she went. The rags she wore only accentuated her beauty by contrasting it with their raggedness. She was so young, so sweet, so fair.
“I’m sorry you’re so ill, Mother. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“There is. Please, would you please find me an apple? The reddest and shiniest you can find?” the Queen asked, as Tilley continued to wipe down her forehead.
Snow looked to the chambermaid who returned her weary look.
“Of course, Mother, I will pick you an apple if you’d like,” Snow White said.
“Thank you, my little bird,” replied the Queen, drifting in and out of her dream state.
The Queen came to a large moss-covered tree where she knew a sleep-inducing root would grow, because it thrived in dark and dampness. Feeling icy and wicked, she dug in the earth. The root was there as she had thought. She took out her little dagger and cut the root open; its oils spilled out all over her hands, reminding her of blood. She felt evil—a chill coming over her. What had caused her to commit such foul acts? She rubbed the oily substance from the root onto the apple. It would make Snow sleep, a deathlike sleep. Perhaps the Queen should take a bite of the apple, too, and then she could be with her daughter without fear of hurting her.
She ventured through the forest and came to a clearing in the wood, and there were gathered the sisters.
“So—”
“You have discovered—”
“The poison apple, have you?”
Then, the sisters took the Queen by her arms and dragged her to the far end of the clearing. The Magic Mirror was there, and Lucinda held the Queen in front of it, while Martha and Ruby stood alongside, gawking at the Queen’s reflection.
Her face—her beautiful face—melted into a wrinkled old mess, lined with the marks of age and dotted with warts. She could smell her own breath and it was foul, befitting her rotting teeth. She was a hag—an old, vile, disgusting witch.
The sisters laughed as the Queen tore away from them. It was difficult for her to run, since her back was now hunched in this new body.
She ran and ran through the forest, as fast as her legs would carry her. And then she came to a cottage. Snow was there. But she would not recognize her now.