by Neil Gaiman
PRINCE
I want her. I want her now.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Did they take his gold willingly? Or did they look up to see his men on their horses, with their sharp swords and their spears, and realize they had no alternative?
I do not know. I was not there; I was not scrying.
I can only imagine…
Hands, pulling off the lumps of glass and quartz from her cold body.
Hands, gently caressing her cold cheek, moving her cold arm, rejoicing to find the corpse still fresh and pliable.
Did he take her there, in front of them all? Or did he have her carried to a secluded nook before he mounted her?
I cannot say.
Did he shake the apple from her throat? Or did her eyes slowly open as he pounded into her cold body; did her mouth open, those red lips part, those sharp yellow teeth close on his swarthy neck, as the blood, which is the life, trickled down her throat, washing down and away the lump of apple, my own, my poison?
I imagine; I do not know.
SFX: THE HEARTBEAT HAS BEGUN AGAIN DURING THIS SPEACH, REALLY, REALLY QUIETLY. NOW IT’S SLOWLY GETTING LOUDER.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
This I do know: I was woken in the night by her heart pulsing and beating once more. Salt blood dripped onto my face from above. I sat up. My hand burned and pounded as if I had hit the base of my thumb with a rock.
SFX: A BANGING ON A DOOR.
SOLDIER
Open up! Open up in there!
QUEEN—INTIMATE
There was a hammering on the door. I felt afraid, but I am a queen, and I do not show fear. I opened the door.
SFX: MANY FOOTSTEPS. SCUFFLING. THE HEARTBEAT IS CONTINUING …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
First his men walked in to my chamber, and stood around me, with their sharp swords, and their long spears.
Then he came in; and he spat in my face.
SFX: WE HEAR A SPIT, AND THE PRINCE’S CHUCKLE.
PRINCE
There. You old witch.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
Finally, she walked into my chamber, as she had when I was first a queen, and she was a child of six.
PRINCESS
Hello, stepmother.
QUEEN
Hello, stepdaughter. You have not changed.
PRINCESS
Thank you, stepmother. Neither have you.
SFX: THE HEARTBEAT IS THUDDING AND THUMPING THROUGH THIS SPEECH.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
She pulled down the twine on which her heart was hanging. She pulled off the dried rowan berries, one by one; pulled off the garlic bulb—now a dried thing, after all these years; then she took up her own, her pumping heart—a small thing, no larger than that of a nanny-goat or a she-bear—as it brimmed and pumped its blood into her hand.
Her fingernails must have been as sharp as glass: she opened her breast with them, running them over the purple scar. Her chest gaped, suddenly, open and bloodless. She licked her heart, once, as the blood ran over her hands, and she pushed the heart deep into her breast.
SFX: THE HEARTBEAT STOPS.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I saw her do it. I saw her close the flesh of her breast once more.
I saw the purple scar begin to fade.
PRINCE
My darling? Are you… ?
QUEEN—INTIMATE
He put his arm around her nonetheless, and they stood, side by side, and they waited.
PRINCE (CONT’D)
(horny)
You’re… still… very cold.
PRINCESS
Yes. Very cold.
SFX: HE LAUGHS WITH DELIGHT, AND THEY KISS …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
And the bloom of death remained on her lips, and his lust was not diminished in any way.
QUEEN
So. You’ve made your alliance, then.
PRINCE
Our joint kingdom will stretch from the mountains all the way to the sea. I fancy we will marry at the midwinter feast.
PRINCESS
And you will be with us, stepmother, on our wedding day.
SFX: CROSSFADE THIS INTO HER SAYING …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
They told me that I would be with them on their wedding day.
(Pause)
It is starting to get hot in here. They have told the people bad things about me; a little truth to add savour to the dish, but mixed with many lies.
SFX: THE FURNACE CRACKLES.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I was bound and kept in a tiny stone cell deep beneath the palace, and I remained there through the autumn. Today they fetched me out of the cell; they stripped the rags from me, and washed the filth from me, and then they shaved my head and my loins, and they rubbed my skin with goose grease.
SFX: INSIDE A CELL, FEET CRUNCHING ON STRAW, THE QUEEN BACKING AWAY …
QUEEN
Don’t touch—don’t you try to touch me—don’t you dare!
SOLDIER
All right. Get her legs. You two, get her arms. And up with her!
SFX: OUTSIDE, THE HOWL OF THE WIND, A DISTANT CROWD
QUEEN—INTIMATE
The snow was falling as they carried me—two men at each arm, two men at each leg—utterly exposed, and spread-eagled and cold, through the midwinter crowds; and brought me to this kiln.
SFX: A LOW HUBBUB, THE HOWL OF THE WINTER WIND …
CROWD
Witch!—Monster!—Murderess!—Poisoner! —Bitch!
PRINCE
Into the kiln with the old monster!
PRINCESS
(whispers)
Goodbye, stepmother.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
My stepdaughter stood there with her prince. She watched me, in my indignity, but she said nothing more.
As they thrust me inside here, jeering and chaffing as they did so,
I saw one snowflake land upon her white cheek, and remain there without melting.
SFX: THE CROWD NOISE AND THE BOOM OF THE KILN DOOR FROM THE OPENING SEQUENCE.
QUEEN—INTIMATE
They closed the kiln-door behind me… It is getting hotter in here, and outside they are singing and cheering and banging on the sides of the kiln…
She was not laughing, or jeering, or talking. She did not sneer at me or turn away. She looked at me, though; and for a moment I saw myself reflected in her eyes.
SFX: THE MUFFLED NOISE OF THE CROWD BECOMES LOUD FOR A MOMENT. THEN IT FADES … UNDER IT SLOWLY THE CRACKLING OF THE FIRE BECOMES AUDIBLE …
QUEEN—INTIMATE
I will not scream. I will not give them that satisfaction. They will have my body, but my soul and my story are my own, and will die with me.
The goose-grease begins to melt and glisten upon my skin. I shall make no sound at all. I shall think no more on this.
(pause)
I shall think instead of the snowflake on her cheek.
(beat)
I think of her hair as black as coal, her lips, more red than blood, her skin, snow-white.
(A beat. Then she whispers, finally, ending it all,)
Snow-white.
SFX: AN ECHOING SILENCE. CLOSING MUSIC, CRYSTALLINE AND DARK.
THE ARTIST’S NOTES
When first exploring the task of creating this book we imagined a work like the first Gaiman Play for Voices we created, Murder Mysteries. Plays are not the easiest things to read and always present a design challenge. However after a careful study we began to believe we could do a better job of creating a text that was easier to follow and had a little more life to it on the page. We tried a number of different layouts and designs before we settled on what my wife Michelle came up with. “Why not centre the text and change the colour of the type for the Queen’s voice so that the reader gains a better sense of the change from the past and present voice of the Queen.” We tried this and I think you’ll agree that it has a natural flow that is easy to read and makes for a lively rubinicated pag
e design.
The early monk scribes described their pages as textus meaning cloth they saw ‘thought’ as a thread, and the narrator as a spinner of yarns and the true storyteller, the poet, as a weaver. Our goal in creating a fine book is to create a cloth for the story so fine that you forget the cloth altogether and are immersed in the story. Of course it is especially alluring when we get to work with a master weaver.
The Snow White Fairytale has a rich history of famous illustrators such as Walter Crane (1882), Arthur Rackham (1909), and Maurice Sendak (1973) to name a few of my favourite artists and their Snow White book publication dates. Their vision of the delicate girl has shaped the visions of thousands of young minds and set the story of Snow White into the collective unconscious of popular culture. In the forward to this book Jack Zipes has pointed to a plethora of elaborations on Snow White’s Grimm origins. These permeantations provide a wealth of opportunity to envision the complexities of this story which at first may seem as innocent as air. It is always wise to hear both sides of a story before we cast judgement: this is something that is greatly lacking in our culture of one sided views. Snow White always appeared to me as unbelievably innocent and naive. Consequently, I relished the thought of exposing the myth in pictures from a new direction. I leapt at this chance to tell the story through the medium of wood engraving, which seemed fitting since the first attempt on Snow White’s life takes place in the forest. My second goal for the artwork was to free the Queen from the injustices and biases that have dogged her. I wanted to empower her so that she could reclaim her humanity as Gaiman has artfully woven into the text.
I’ve been asked why I don’t use colour in my wood engravings. It’s simply because I prefer the stark truth of black and white. Let the colour be in the fabric of the story and I’ll cast dramatic shadows with bold blacks and thin white lines. Black and white has a rich tradition in relation to storytelling as the wood blocks of Albrect Durer, John Tennial, Frans Masereel and Lynd Ward can prove. Alfred Hitchcock’s black and white films are another example of the black art that I admire.
Barbara Walker writes in Feminist Fairy Tales, “Snow White’s stepmother seems to have been vilified because (a) she resented being less beautiful than Snow White, and (b) she practiced witchcraft.” Barbara Walker also sees the injustice the Queen receives when she is labeled ‘witch’. She states,“As for witchcraft, the last bastion of female spiritual power fell when the church declared its all-out war on witches, the name they gave to rural mid-wives, healers, herbalists, counselors, and village wisewomen, inheritors of the unraveling cloak of the pre-Christian priestess. A queen who was also a witch would have been a formidable figure, adding political influence to spiritual mana. Snow White’s stepmother therefore seems to me a projection of male jealousies.” I think Gaiman has captured this point in his retelling of the tale. With the engravings I’ve created for this book I hoped to capture some of the feeling and history that surrounds Snow White. I wanted to portray a beauty in the Queen and a sense of the demonic in the Princess. I prepared each block with a vigour that would have made the Queen proud. I polished each end grain maple surface and carefully incised my lines with purpose. I can only hope they do justice to Snow Glass Apples and the mythos of Snow White.
George Walker