Fairest of All

by Disney Book Group

  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.

  The girl—a woman now—was so beautiful. But something was wrong, she didn’t seem her vibrant self, something within her had changed. In that moment, the Queen understood. She had taken her heart. Not physically. No, she still lived. But the Queen had taken her daughter’s spirit when she had forsaken her. Snow was talking to stray animals; she seemed to have many of them about the cottage and within. She wondered if the ordeal had made Snow’s mind unsound; the thought crushed her heart. The Queen wondered if even in this state—looking like an old hag and Snow White delirious with fear and grief—the girl might recognize her. Something in Snow’s eyes told her she did.

  But it wasn’t possible.

  Holding a little bird in her hand, Snow smiled at the old woman with that little smile of hers. She looked like a child again. A beautiful child. A beautiful woman. Surely, more beautiful than the Queen.

  “Hello, my dear, how are you today?”

  Snow White just stood there staring at her as if mesmerized. “I have a gift for you, my sweet,” said the Queen, handing the apple to her daughter. Snow looked into her mother’s eyes as she took the apple.

  Snow White took a bite almost absentmindedly and then quickly fell to the ground, the apple still in her hand.

  And just before she closed her eyes she said, “But my dream has already come true, Momma. You came for me as I knew you would. I love you….”

  The Queen bent down and kissed her daughter and whispered in her ear, “Oh, I love you, too, my little bird. I love you so much.”

  The Queen rose from her bed feeling better than she had in a long while. She felt strength, power—a surge of confidence. True, her dream proved that she was conflicted and that she had lost her way. But the memory of Snow as she looked in the dreams—sickly, pale, dead—stuck with her. But instead of warming her heart to rush to her daughter and embrace her, happy that she lived, the images served only to renew the Queen’s spirits.

  How could such a child—one with hollow black eyes, one without a heart—possibly rival the Queen’s beauty?

  She began to wonder how her mind could have been so plagued with such weakness and sentiment. She had been ill. Simple. She got up from her bed for the first time in many da
ys, opened her curtains, and saw Snow White at the wishing well, scrubbing away in her rags. She was fair, no doubt. But nowhere near as fair as the Queen.

  She called on her attendants to draw a bath, and was soon refreshed and outfitted in her finest gown. Her crown sat neatly upon her covered raven hair, and her favorite purple-and-black cape was fastened to her gown with a gold-and-ruby pendant.

  She examined herself in the Magic Mirror and smiled. Truly, she had never looked more beautiful.

  “Slave in the Magic Mirror,” she began, “come from the farthest space, through wind and darkness, I summon thee—speak! Let me see thy face!”

  Flames filled the mirror, then subsided, revealing the face in the Magic Mirror.

  “What wouldst thou know, my Queen?”

  “Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”

  “Famed is thy beauty, Majesty, but hold! A lovely maid I see! Rags cannot hide her gentle grace—alas, she is more fair than thee,” the Slave said.

  “A lash for her!” the Queen shouted, incensed. Who could this woman be? “Reveal her name!” the Queen ordered.

  “Lips as red as a rose, hair black as ebony, skin white as snow…”

  The Queen felt faint. The room began to sway, and she nearly lost her footing. She clasped her hand around her brooch and recoiled in horror.

  “Snow White!” she said.

  She rushed to the window. Snow was still scrubbing away at the steps by the well. While she did this she sang and danced, and the Queen felt something very near hatred for the girl. Nothing, it seemed, could dampen Snow White’s spirits. How could the girl have recovered so well from the loss of her father? Did she not remember all the happy times they had had together? How could she find it in her heart to smile—to laugh and to sing?

  To love?

  The Queen noticed the young Prince step up beside Snow White. Snow quickly jumped up and ran from the Prince, no doubt fearing the wrath of the Queen, who warned her against cavorting with the boy. This satisfied the Queen briefly, until Snow White quickly reappeared on the balcony below her and began to sing along with the Prince, who was now sickeningly serenading her. Not only was the girl surpassing the Queen as the fairest in the land, but she had found herself in love. An insult to both her father and the Queen!

  The Queen quickly closed the curtains and started when she turned to find the three sisters standing in her chamber.

  “You three! How have you come to be here?”

  “We have our ways, Majesty—” Lucinda said.

  “And you have yours,” Ruby finished.

  “What do you want?” the Queen asked bitterly.

  “The question is—” Martha asked.

  “What do you want?” Lucinda finished.

  “I think you already know the answer, dears,” the Queen said.

  The sisters began speaking, picking up one another’s sentences.

  “The power is yours, Majesty—the answers you seek are in—the volumes we left here long ago—tomes on the Black Arts—poisons and potions—disguises. If you know where they reside—you will have your answer—after all—you come from a long line of witches—the power is not only in those books—it is in your blood—as it was in—your mother’s.’”

  “Liars!” the Queen said, hurling a delicate vase at the sisters.

  “Oh dear me,” Lucinda said.

  “You’ve developed a temper,” Martha finished.

  “That could come in handy in your current circumstance,” Lucinda said.

  “See, there is an easier way to reclaim your post as fairest,” Ruby continued.

  “And what would that be?” the Queen asked skeptically.

  “Kill the girl,” the sisters said in tandem and broke into their sickly cackle.

  “Kill Snow White? You are mad!” the Queen said. But part of her had already been contemplating the same fate for the girl.

  The sisters continued their sniggering. “Madness is in the mind of the beholder, Queen.

  “It is the only way. She must die either by your hand or someone else’s. Wouldn’t you want to be the apple of your father’s eye again? Do you not want to hear the Slave tell you that you are fairest?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Your Uncle Marcus’s friend, the Huntsman. Order him—” Lucinda said.

  “To do the deed,” Ruby finished. “Your husband—”

  “Will be avenged of his daughter’s rebuking his memory for happiness with that other royal man, and you will again have your rightful—”

  “Place as fairest in the lands.”

  “And best of all, her blood won’t be on your hands.”

  The sisters broke into a cackle again.

  The Queen shook her head. It might have looked as though she were disagreeing with the sisters, but in truth, she was fighting the urge within herself to submit to their suggestion.

  “It seems as if you need—” Lucinda said.

  “A bit of help,” Ruby finished.

  Martha opened her pouch and produced an empty teacup.

  Lucinda said, “Metal and ore, goodness no more.”

  She bent down and spat into the cup.

  “Love and tenderness, flee; instead, here, have a piece of me,” Ruby said, leaning over Martha’s shoulder and also spitting into the cup.

  “From a queen in pain, to a queen who reigns,” Martha said, lifting the cup to her shriveled lips and spitting in it as well.

  The sisters then each waved a hand over the cup, and when the Queen could see it once again she noticed it was filled with steaming liquid.

  “Drink, ” Lucinda said.

  The Queen looked skeptical, but took the cup. If it would help strengthen her, which is what she gathered from the incantation, then she would happily accept it.

  As the liquid moved down her throat into her body, she felt an unbelievable rage. But it was a strange, focused kind of rage that she felt could be wielded as a weapon. It seemed that her body had been completely taken over by the part of her she’d been fighting for so long. And she found that she loved it.

  “Sisters…” the Queen said evilly, “leave me. Now. Or I will see to it that each of you is disemboweled and your entrails hung in the trees that flank this castle. The rest of your remains will be fed to the beasts in the castle moat.”

  Lucinda smiled darkly, and Ruby and Martha followed suit.

  “Call us if you need us, dear,” Lucinda said. And the three disappeared as mysteriously as they had arrived.

  “Has the Huntsman returned?” the Queen asked Tilley, who she had ordered to her room.

  “No, Your Majesty, not yet. However he should be back anytime now, I should think. It is approaching midday,” the servant replied.

  “Send him to me the moment he arrives; tell him not to bother making himself presentable. I understand he will want to after a long day of stalking, but it is of the gravest importance I see him at once.”

  “Yes, my Queen.”

  And with that, Tilley left the chamber. The Queen was too nervous to eat. She wanted desperately to approach the mirror again—to ask who was fairest, to hear her father say it was she, but she knew that would not be the answer. The thought of once again hearing Snow White was fairest ground her stony heart to dust. She paced. She waited. Soon, she would once again be the fairest in the land…once Snow White was dead. Time went slowly; she looked at the faces of the beastly women on either side of her hearth; she imagined herself transformed into a dragon and killing Snow White herself—if only her power was that great.

  She sat down on her throne and awaited the Huntsman’s arrival.

  And then there came a knock on her chamber door.

  “Come!” she called.

  It was the Huntsman. He looked rugged and dirty, with earth sticking to his sweaty brow.

  “You called for me, my Queen?”

  “Indeed. I would like you to take Snow White away from here. Take her far into the forest. Find some secluded
glade where she can pick wildflowers—”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the Huntsman said.

  “And there, my faithful Huntsman, you will kill her,” the Queen said.

  “But, Your Majesty! The little princess!” the Huntsman pleaded.

  “Silence! You know the penalty if you fail!” the Queen said.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the Huntsman said, dropping his eyes to the floor. It was the child’s life—or his own. Or worse, the lives of his family.

  The Queen went on, “But to make doubly sure you do not fail, bring back her heart in this.”

  The Queen lifted an ornately carved wooden box and thrust it forward to present it to the Huntsman. It was the beautifully decorated one—with a heart pierced by a sword as a lock. A testament to just how much the Queen had transformed, how much she had lost sight of the things that were once dear to her, was that she did not even recognize it as the dowry box of the King’s first wife. The very box that once contained the letters from Snow’s mother.

  “Do not fail me!” the Queen commanded.

  “I would not, Your Majesty.”

  The Huntsman left the chamber and the Wicked Queen watched from the window as Snow White was led happily away. The Queen grinned evilly. Then the waiting began.

  She paced in her room for hours. She thought she might approach the Magic Mirror, but did not want to do so prematurely. She couldn’t bear to hear once more that she was not the fairest one of all.

  It was now twilight, and the Huntsman still had not returned. She feared he had lost his nerve and ran off with the child in tow. And then the Wicked Queen heard a knock at the door.

  The Huntsman stood there, looking stunned. He handed the Queen the box. He had brought Snow White’s heart, just as the Queen had demanded. The Queen felt a perverse thrill of excitement. The old fears and weaknesses did not disturb her thoughts, didn’t temper this elation. She had made the right choice in killing the girl. It was for the good of all their family. It felt liberating. And most important, she was once again the most beautiful maiden in all the land.

  “Thank you, my loyal man; you will be rewarded greatly for this, I assure you. Now leave me,” the Queen said.