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The Queen kissed her daughter on the cheek. She was ill at ease with the sisters for ruining this day, but for some reason could not quite muster up the anger she so desired. Perhaps it was the joy of the celebration. The Queen’s father had stopped celebrating the solstice after her mother had died. How lovely it would have been to experience this as a little girl. Part of her envied Snow, really.
“Look, my darling bird, see how lovely the castle looks, your father is going to be so pleased,” said the Queen in an attempt to distract the girl from her wicked cousins.
Snow looked toward the castle. Phantom streams of light were floating through its many windows. Snow gasped.
“How is the castle doing that, Momma?” the child asked.
“A very special mirror,” the Queen replied, “My father made it from beveled pieces of glass. It’s a cylinder containing a candle within that projects the shapes upon the wall.”
“Oh, can I go into the ballroom and see it?” the child said excitedly.
“Of course, little bird, you can sneak in for a moment before we go into the great hall for dinner, but be sure to be quick about it.”
“I will, Momma, I promise. Oh, but look, Momma, look! Father is here!”
The Queen and Snow beamed with delight when they saw the King approach. His eyes welled up with tears as he dismounted his steed and embraced them both, first kissing his wife, and then taking Snow into his arms, lifting the girl into the air and kissing each of her plump little cheeks.
“Oh, I’ve missed you both terribly,” he said. He again seemed different. Each time he returned from battle he was a little less himself—and a little bit more at the same time. The experience seemed to both harrow his soul and enrich his understanding of the evils the world held.
The family entered the castle together hand in hand and walked into the great hall, which was adjacent to the ballroom. Snow, remembering that her mother had granted her permission to peek into the ballroom, slipped her hand out of her father’s and entered what seemed to be another world. She stood at the center of the room near the stone table which had the mirrored cylinder perched upon it. Tilley, one of Snow’s favorite ladies at court, was standing nearby, spinning the cylinder when it started to slow its cycle.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Tilley.
“It is!” Snow said, captivated by the images of suns, moons, and stars gliding across the ballroom walls. She imagined how lovely all the ladies in their dresses would look later that evening, spinning in circles along with the music.
Then suddenly the doors of the ballroom burst open and the King entered. He looked enraged. Snow had never seen him the least bit angry, and now—this.
“Snow! What is the meaning of this?” he spat.
“Momma said I could see the ballroom before the feast…” Snow said, her sad eyes pleading with her father for understanding.
His anger did not subside.
“I would have never suspected you of such cruelty, Snow!”
Then, peeking from the large arched doorway, Snow saw them—Lucinda, Martha, and Ruby, their dresses covered in mud, tattered and torn, their hair a frightful mess with little bits of twigs and leaves. There were bright patches of pink skin showing where the white paint had been scraped off their faces, sometimes through to the flesh. And Martha had lost one of her shiny black boots, revealing a green-and-silver striped stocking that had a large hole in the big toe, which she was desperately trying to hide with her other foot.
“I can’t believe you would do such a thing!” said the King.
Martha was choking with deep sobs as she spoke. “She’s a horrible, wicked girl—”
“Tricking us into falling into that hole!” Lucinda continued. “She planned it all along, I know—”
“She did, she hates us!” added Ruby, who was trying in vain to pull the twigs from her ringlets.
“Look at what the child did to us! She must be punished!” the odd sisters chimed in unison.
The King looked from his daughter to his cousins and said, “Indeed she shall!” and grabbed his daughter by the arm. “You will go to your chamber and not reappear until I have called for you, do you understand?”
The look on Snow’s face was pure terror. She tried to protest, but the King would not allow for explanations. “Do not argue with me, Snow! I won’t have my daughter acting so wretchedly. You are a princess….”
Just then, the Queen stepped in, enraged, and all but pounced upon her husband.
“What in the gods’ names are you doing?” she cried. “Take your hands off her! Take them off!”
The King looked shocked. “Excuse me?” he asked.
“Perhaps the battlefield and the cannon blasts have made you hard of hearing. Unhand her. And then explain to me why you are treating your daughter—our daughter—in this manner!”
