Snow White Learns Witchcraft

by Theodora Goss

  “Your children will never need dental work,” said Dad.

  Rosie was mortified. They hadn’t gotten to that stage yet. I don’t think she’d even kissed him good night.

  She’ll kiss him now, certainly, and I wait to see how it will happen: whether she will be swallowed by that enormous and powerful jaw. But he kisses her on the cheek. I can see his whiskers tickling her ear. I suppose the devouring will begin later.

  VI. The Photographs

  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he’s going to eat her. Bears don’t eat people, remember?

  But I know the facts of life. When Mom married at eighteen, Grandma told her, “Just close your eyes and pray for children.” When I was fifteen, Mom taught me what happens between men and women. Though I have to admit, she never said anything about bears.

  When our photographs are taken, I stand next to the best man—or bear, Catcher’s younger brother. He looks at me and grins, unless he’s just showing his teeth. He’s not as tall as his brother and only a few inches taller than me, so maybe he’s not fully grown. Bears take five years to grow to maturity. I wonder where he goes to school, then decide he probably doesn’t go anywhere. Bears probably home school. Otherwise, they’d have to go through several grades in a year, to make it come out right. I wonder how old I am in bear years, and if he’s older than me.

  VII. The Reception

  Before she met with the caterer, Mom asked me, “For goodness’ sake, what do bears eat?”

  There are ham biscuits for the people and honey biscuits for the bears, melon soup for everybody. Trout with sauce and au naturale, as they say in French class. Raspberries. She didn’t take my suggestion to serve the honey biscuits with dead bees. I’m sure the bears would have appreciated that.

  The bears drink mead, which is made from honey. I try some. It feels like fire going down my throat, and burns like fire in my stomach. Like a fire on the altar of the Bear Goddess. Her name is Callisto. Once, by accident when she was hunting in the forest, she killed her son, Arcas. So she put him in a cave for the winter, and when spring came again, he emerged healed. That’s why bears sleep through the winter.

  This isn’t what it says in Bullfinch’s Mythology. But Catcher says Bullfinch got it all wrong. He says Bullfinch is a bunch of bull—. You know what I mean. He doesn’t curse often, but when he does, Mom clutches the hem of her dress, as though trying to hold it against a wind that will lift it over her knees.

  VIII. The Dancing

  Dad doesn’t remember how to dance, so he and Rosie sway back and forth, like teenagers at prom. The bears know how to dance, of course. They begin a Virginia Reel, whirling down the line in each other’s arms, then go into figures I don’t recognize. To punctuate the rhythm, they growl and stamp their feet.

  Frog Biter asks me to dance. I guess he was checking me out, too, when the photographs were taken. I’m worried about following the bear dances, but he swings me out in a waltz. I never knew anyone could be so strong.

  Yeah, he tells me. And I’m only four and a half. Wait until I’m fully grown. I’ll be taller than Catcher.

  Hearing this makes something burn in the pit of my stomach, which may be the mead.

  IX. The Cake

  Catcher cuts the cake, which is shaped like a beehive.

  “What a charming couple they make,” says Mrs. Ashby.

  “I’m surprised she wore white,” says Mrs. Coates. “I heard her relationship with the lawyer was pretty hot and heavy.”

  He feeds a slice to Rosie, then licks frosting from the corner of her mouth. His tongue is the color of raspberry ice cream.

  “Do you think their children will be black?” asks Mrs. Mason, the minister’s wife. She walks with a cane and must be over eighty.

  “There are bears in the ladies’ room,” says Mrs. Partlow. “Do you know they go just like a man?”

  “I think he’s sexy, with all that fur,” says Alison Coates. She’s in my French class.

  “I don’t know how she caught him,” says Mrs. Sutton. “All that real estate, and I never thought she was pretty in the first place.”

  She feeds him a slice. Her hand disappears into the darkness between his teeth.

  X. The Honeymoon

  Biter promises to stop whenever I want to.

  When Rosie left on her honeymoon, everyone threw rose petals. They stuck to Catcher’s fur. I could see her brushing them off through the limousine window.

  It’s nothing like when Eddie Tyler felt me up under the bleachers. His fur smells like rain, his mouth tastes like honey. I run my tongue over his incisors, and he laughs—or growls, I don’t know which. And suddenly we’re rolling around in the vestry, my fingers gripping his fur, trying to pull out brown tufts. It doesn’t hurt him a bit.

  I want to sleep with you, I say, and I mean through the winter, with the snow above us and branches covered with ice, creaking in the wind. While the deer are starving, searching for grasses under the snow, we’ll lie next to each other, living off our fat, sharing body heat. I’ll even cook him deer guts.

  But he takes it another way, and that’s all right too. His curved claws are good at climbing trees, and unbuttoning dresses. And I finally understand why my sister is marrying a bear. Maybe if Eddie Tyler had been a bear, I would have let him get to third base.

  XI. The Announcement

  Our June brides include Miss Rosalie Barlow, who was married in the First Methodist Church to Mr. T.C. Ursus. The new Mrs. Ursus has a B.A. from Sweet Briar College. Mr. Ursus manages his family’s extensive property in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The maid of honor was Miss Blanche Barlow, the bride’s sister. The best man was the groom’s brother, Mr. F.B. Ursus. The bride carried white lilies and wore her mother’s wedding dress of peau de soie decorated with seed pearls. The bride’s mother, Mrs. Elwood Barlow, is the former Miss Buckingham County, 1965.

  The Stepsister’s Tale

  It isn’t easy, cutting into your feet.

  Years later, when I had become a podiatrist,

  I learned the parts of the feet. Did you know your feet

  contain a quarter of your bones? Calcaneus, talus, cuboid, navicular.

  Lateral, intermediate, and medial cuneiform.

  Metatarsals and then the phalanges, proximal, middle, distal.

  They’re beautiful on the tongue, these words from a foreign language.

  My sister cut into her heels, which are in the hindfoot.

  I cut into my big toes, called the halluces.

  She cut into flesh and tendon and sinew.

  I cut into bone, between the phalanges,

  through the interphalangeal joint.

  That’s in the forefoot, which bears half the body’s weight.

  To this day, both of us walk with a slight limp.

  The problem is you do desperate things for love.

  We loved her, the woman who wanted us to be perfect:

  unblemished skin, waist like a corsetier’s dream,

  feet that would fit even the tiniest slipper.

  And so we played the aristocratic game

  of identify-the-princess.

  Sometimes it’s a slipper, sometimes a ring.

  Oh mother, love me without asking me to scrape

  my fingers like carrots, cut off my heels and toes.

  Eventually, she became your favorite daughter,

  the cinder-girl, the princess-designate.

  She was the best at being perfect, but abuse

  will do that to you.

  A woman comes into my office, asking me

  to cut off her little toes so she can wear

  the latest fashion. I sit her down and say

  did you know your feet provide the body

  with balance, mobility, support?

  Come, let me show you a model: here’s the toe,

  metatarsal and phalanges. You can see

  how elegantly they move, as in a waltz,

  surrounded by your blood vessels and nerves,
/>   the ball gown of your soft tissue,

  a protective coat of skin, the delicate nail.

  Look, underneath, how beautiful you are…

  The Clever Serving-Maid

  Here are the things your mother did not give you:

  a chest filled with linens for your marriage bed,

  a casket of jewels to wear on your wedding day,

  a handkerchief spotted with her own red blood,

  a talking horse named Falada.

  Here are the things she did: your life, of course,

  a tendency to get in and out of trouble

  since you were a scullion. And now here you are,

  so grand, a lady’s maid, but you are thinking

  you could be grander still. So you tell the princess

  to put on your plain brown linen while you dress

  yourself in her sky-blue silk. It suits you better

  anyway. And then you get on Falada.

  The prince doesn’t even notice the substitution.

  Why should he? You’ve been in service since you were twelve.

  You can sound as articulate as a duchess,

  or more so, the way the butler is somehow always

  more impressive than the king.

  But you have to shake your head when you look out the window

  and see her in the courtyard—the princess is hopeless

  at tending geese. She’d make a terrible queen.

  If she can’t control a flock of geese, how can she

  control a household, a diplomatic mission,

  troops sent into battle? Queens have to know

  these sorts of things, not just embroidery.

  And look at the stable-boy pestering her! You would stick

  your knife into him—then he’d stop being obnoxious!

  You’re sad when Falada dies, which wasn’t your doing.

  He was an old horse—what did anyone expect?

  But the princess is inconsolable, cries all day,

  her soft white hands are developing blisters, her nose

  is getting freckled. All right you say, let’s end

  this charade. I’m not the princess.

  The problem is, the prince has already fallen

  in love with you, but he has a weak chin and eyes

  like gooseberries. So you decide there’s adventure

  out there somewhere, countries you have not heard of,

  seas that have not been sailed, another future

  than either the one reserved for serving-maids

  or princesses. As you walk through the castle gates

  (the king is threatening to put you in a barrel

  filled with nails and have you dragged through the streets

  as punishment, the prince is begging you

  to stay, the princess is looking confused, as always),

  the head of Falada calls from above the gates,

  “Where will you go, false maid?” You answer, “Anywhere

  I please, and nowhere in particular.”

  The air is cool, the way it usually is

  after a night of rain, the birds cacophonous.

  The road winds through the town, then into forest.

  Where should you go? East, you decide, where ahead of you

  the sun has risen and shines on the dusty road,

  making it seem, just for a moment, golden.

  Seven Shoes

  The witch said, “I will give you what you want.

  All you have to do is wear through seven

  pairs of shoes.” “Which shoes?” she asked. “Oh, any.

  But the number is important.”

  The first pair, she was wearing that day in the woods:

  red Keds. In them, she would ride her bike down the road,

  hike along the top of the ridge to a tree

  where an owl was nesting, wade through the rocky stream,

  until her mother declared they were beyond help.

  But each time, they revived in the washing machine.

  She would wear them to go hunting for dragonflies

  and minnows, or up to the attic where she kept

  her favorite books. Finally, the soles split

  while she was climbing over slick, wet rocks.

  She almost fell into the muddy water,

  not that she would have minded.

  By then, they had faded to a dusty pink.

  The second was a pair of flip-flops bought

  for a dollar at the bait and tackle shop

  next to the lake while visiting her father.

  By the end of summer, they were getting moldy

  from all the times she had worn them in the canoe,

  rowing along the banks through lotus flowers,

  leaving a path of dark water in her wake.

  Finally, on a fishing trip, the strap

  broke, and she walked back barefoot,

  carrying the trout in a basket, almost sorry

  it would be her dinner that night,

  with butter and parsley.

  The third was a pair of silver sandals, worn

  to the spring formal with a long blue dress

  the color of the sky that reminded her

  of both Amelia Earhart and a princess.

  They only lasted an hour: the buckle snapped.

  After that, she danced barefoot in the gym,

  holding hands with her friends under basketball hoops

  decorated with paper streamers.

  The fourth was a pair of black patent pumps she wore

  to her law firm internship, running up and down

  the internal staircase, taking notes at meetings,

  sitting in on conference calls, making copies.

  One day, while she was hurrying to the deli

  to pick up sandwiches, her left heel caught

  between two bricks of an ancient city sidewalk.

  She twisted her ankle and laddered her pantyhose.

  The patent leather cracked.

  The fifth was a pair of sensible boots that lasted

  through four New England winters while she trudged

  along a familiar track from dorm to classrooms

  to library, and back.

  By the time she graduated, the leather tops

  had separated from the rubber soles,

  so water seeped through and soaked both layers of socks.

  But the degree was worth wet feet.

  The sixth pair were white satin and cost as much

  as her dress, which she had found in a second-hand store,

  real silk, probably from the 1950s.

  She danced in them carefully, they felt so delicate,

  and made her feel delicate too. Later, she wrapped them

  in tissue paper and stored them beside the veil

  of antique lace, the bouquet of silk roses.

  They were shoes for just one day. As in a fairy tale,

  they had served their purpose.

  The seventh was a pair of bedroom slippers.

  She wore through the soles by walking back and forth

  in the apartment until her daughter was sleeping.

  Then she would sit at her desk beside the crib

  and work on her dissertation while the words

  swam in front of her eyes, she was so tired.

  Like minnows in a stream... She wondered where

  that image had come from. One day, she realized the slippers

  had worn right through: there were holes under her toes.

  She had not even noticed.

  By then, she had forgotten the witch in the woods.

  One day, as she was walking through the campus

  where she was now a professor, she met a woman

  who asked, “So, have you started writing your stories?”

  “Sort of,” she said, wondering how this person,

  dressed in a raincoat, with a colorful kerchief

  over her head, very Eastern European,


  knew that late at night when the papers were graded

  and her daughter had gone to bed after finishing homework,

  she would sit at her computer, trying to write.

  That morning she had put on a pair of red Keds

  that for some reason always made her happy,

  even though the weather channel had forecast rain.

  “I’m working on a novel,” she replied.

  “I’ve always wanted to be a writer, since

  I was a little girl.” “Good,” said the woman,

  patting her on the arm. “You’re ready now.”

  The Other Thea

  Thea stared out the train window. Forest, more forest, and then a small town would flash by. And then more forest. She had taken this route many times while she was in school, although then she’s traveled with a large trunk filled with the clothes and books she would need for a semester at Miss Lavender’s. This time she had a backpack, with just enough for a day or two. How long would it take? She hadn’t really known what to bring. Should she even be going, in the middle of Winter Break?

  But she hadn’t known what else to do. She checked the text on her phone: Of course. Always pleased to see you, Thea. Let us know when your train gets in. Love, Emily

  Then a smiling black cat emoji. It was not one of the regular iPhone emoji, but Thea was not surprised that Miss Gray had somehow gotten into her phone. After all, she taught Magic and Technology. Thea remembered her standing in front of the classroom: “Manipulating technology is no different from manipulating any other aspect of reality,” she had said. And then she had put some complicated equations up on the board. Math was Thea’s least favorite part of magic. The poetry part had always come more naturally to her.