Mirror

They buried the old Queen without fanfare or headstone. There was no coffin, just a pauper’s shroud, the outline of her twisted legs still visible like the gnarled branches of a tree. The iron shoes, now spitting black rather than red hot, singed the linen to the colour of burnt umber and the earth smouldered as the last sod was cast upon her body.

Snow White watched from a distance under the shade of a weeping willow. Prince Edward – King Edward, she corrected herself - grasped her tightly around the waist.

Snow White thought of her stepmother buried under the earth and shuddered. Might it feel worse than the glass coffin, she wondered. Panic welled inside her at the memory. These days, the castle walls pressed in on her from all sides. If her husband thought it strange that she insisted on spending her time out of doors, he did not say. Even when she chose to sleep in the solarium high in the castle keep and open to the elements, she excused her behaviour by saying that starlight would enchant with great powers the babe growing in her belly.

Those flutterings that she had mistaken for anxiety proved to be the seed of a child planted in her when the Prince had claimed his right to her almost as soon as he had rescued her. His desire for her, however, had turned to disgust as soon as she told him she was with child. Now she found relief that he did not seek out her bed every night. She flinched as he tightened his grip around her waist. Her entire body quivered and it was all she could do to clamp her jaws tightly together to stop her teeth from chattering. With a tight smile that many would have mistaken for affection he hissed that she must stop behaving like a gibbering wreck; that their subjects would begin to question her weak nerves. Perhaps she simply needed more sleep, she thought.

But sleep evaded her at every turn. In every dream, she dreamed of the fire; of the terror in her stepmother’s eyes as the blacksmith had advanced upon her; of the unearthly keening that had escaped her lips as they had clad her feet in red hot iron. This was no dance to the death that her stepmother had performed. It was shrieking animal panic as she had stumbled and clawed at the air, her fingers curled into hooks of pain as her legs began to blister and blacken whilst the Court had looked on in grim satisfaction.

It had been her husband’s idea to have her shod in iron shoes heated in the forge. Snow White tried to banish the thought of the look of…she grasped for a word…pleasure…that had crossed her husband’s face while the old Queen thrashed in agony. She shook her head to dislodge the memory of the delight in his eyes. That same look that passed across his face any time he placed his hands around her neck and squeezed while he took his pleasure – that same look that intensified the more she fought him. These days, she tried to ignore the bruises on the faces and necks of her ladies in waiting, squeezing their hands in sympathy when they wept on her shoulder.

Feigning a headache, she took leave of the King and hurried towards the castle. Inside the walls she fought to quell the panic building inside her as she hurried to the East Wing and her stepmother’s chambers. The room was untouched since her death, her private correspondence still strewn about her writing desk, the ghost of her perfume still lingering in the air. An image flashed again across Snow White’s mind. In her last moments of agony, her stepmother had lurched towards her, her hands reaching, beseeching. Her voice was a husk of nothingness as she looked at her stepdaughter and, with her final breath, whispered ask the mirror.

Uncertain, Snow White stood before the mirror now draped in black silk. Tentatively, she twitched the silk aside and watched its balletic performance as it spiralled to the floor. There was a glow from the glass unlike anything she had seen before. She reached out with a trembling finger and touched its surface. It shimmered and rippled then pooled like mercury, dripping onto the floor until a shining silver figure stood wholly formed before her.

I am the mirror of truth, forged before the time of man. What do you ask of me?

All Snow White could think to ask was why her stepmother had hated her so.

As mirror only truth can I tell but know that she did love you well.

As Snow White watched astonished, a scene unfolded in front of her. Her stepmother stood in front of the mirror.

‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall who is the fairest of them all?’

My lady Queen is fair to see but Snow White is far fairer than thee.

Snow White watched as the image of the Queen paced back and forth, wringing her hands.

‘Would that I could hide her until the bloom of her youth has faded, so that she may be protected from the lecherous advances of the men at Court. I have seen the look in their eyes, and she is still but a child! Would that she were a faded rose, as am I, now frost-kissed in the autumn of my years. Mirror, help me! What must I do?’

With the King of the Mountain’s men she may dwell, they will keep and defend her well.

And so, the Queen sent Snow White to live with the dwarves while she spun a web of protection and forgetfulness around her stepdaughter, allowing stories of combs and corsets and poison and apples to spring up around her.

‘But the glass coffin?’ whispered Snow White. ‘I remember the glass coffin.’

The image shifted, and Snow White watched as the sorcerer Prince – Edward - happened upon her by chance. She watched as he slaughtered her protectors and bound her in a spell. A spell that felt like being trapped in glass. With her as his bride, he would take the neighbouring Kingdom from her stepmother who had fought so hard to protect it from him.

Snow White bowed her head and wept for her stepmother.

She asked the mirror what she must do.

A draught of hemlock in his sleep ensures the Kingdom is yours to keep.

And so it came to pass that the King died violently in the night from a mysterious malady that was detected too late. And Snow White and her daughter ruled benevolently over both Kingdoms for many years. And lived. Happily. Ever. After.