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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.
The Huntsman left without a word, and the Queen went directly to the mirror. She had been waiting for this.
“Magic Mirror on the wall, who now is the fairest one of all?” she asked, with a smirk on her lips and the box containing the heart in her hands.
The Slave appeared and spoke. “Over the Seven Jeweled Hills, beyond the seventh fall, in the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs dwells Snow White—the fairest one of all.”
The Queen could not suppress a wicked smile.
“Snow White lies dead in the forest. The Huntsman has brought me proof. Behold, her heart!”
The Queen opened the box and lifted it to the Magic Mirror.
“Snow White still lives,” the Slave said. “The fairest in the land. ’Tis the heart of a pig you have in your hand.”
“The heart of a pig! Then I have been tricked!” the Queen said.
The Queen flew into a rage so violent the servants below thought the castle might be coming down around them. She stormed down the stairs, through the front doors, into the courtyard and the stables, where the Huntsman was unsaddling his horse.
“You didn’t kill her!”
“No, Your Majesty, I couldn’t. I’m sorry, but I feared you would regret the choice had I followed your orders.”
“You have made a grave mistake.” And from her belt she took out her dagger and slipped it into his gut, then twisted it violently. He fell to the ground as she pulled it out, blood dripping from the dagger. His blood felt warm. She looked at her hands for a moment, and then at the man who was writhing in agony on the stable floor. She should stab him again, she thought, to finish the deed. But then the blood dripping from the dagger caught her eye. Red and glistening.
Shiny.
Like an apple.
The Queen went directly to her dungeon without a word to anyone she passed, her rage fueling a supreme sense of power. She descended the winding stone staircase, and the chamber grew darker and darker as she descended. At the deepest depths of the dungeon was the room where she kept the sisters’ books and practiced the Black Arts. She slammed the dungeon door with a resounding clank.
“The heart of a pig! The blundering fool!” the Queen snapped.
The crow that had flown in months before had remained there and was perched on a skull near the odd sisters’ spell books. His wings fluttered as the Wicked Queen stormed about the dungeon.
The Queen decided that if she wanted Snow White dead, she must do it herself. But she was known far and wide. She would need to hide herself somehow if she were to travel over the Seven Jeweled Hills, beyond the seventh waterfall to Snow White. She darted over to the shelf where she kept the sisters’ volumes on all kinds of magic—the Black Arts, witchcraft, alchemy, poisons…disguises.
She removed the large dusty old book, and set it upon a table. She would transform her regal, queenly appearance into that of an old peddler woman. She flipped impatiently through the stained, tattered pages until she found the one labeled “Peddler’s Disguise.”
The Queen prepared her beakers and set her potions to a boil. Then, carefully following the instructions set forth in the recipe for the potion, she added a pinch of mummy dust, to make herself old, followed by other ingredients to shroud her beautiful clothes, to age her voice, and to whiten her hair.
When the formula was complete, she poured it into a crystal goblet and raised it to an open window where it was mixed well by the fierce wind and elements. She raised the glass to her lips and drank.
She had never mixed such a powerful potion—and she had never felt a sensation like this before. The room began to spin, and the Queen was sure she would die. Colors swirled all around her, and she grasped her throat, which felt as if it were closing up. Then her hands began to tingle. She held them out before her and looked at them. They began to transform, withering into bony old hands with clawlike fingers.
Her throat began to burn. “My voice!” she said. But the voice that issued from her was not regal and bold—it was cracked and hoarse.
After a while the strange sensation subsided. She gazed into a well-polished beaker and caught sight of her reflection. She was a haggard old woman—like the one from her dream. Her chin was sharp. A wart adorned the tip of her hooked nose. Her eyebrows had grown thick, black, and bushy. And her ragged yellow-gray hair blew into her face as the wind ushered through the window grate. Her clothes, too, had changed.
She was no longer dressed in her regal gown, but in an old black sackcloth with a hood to cover her ratty hair. She was the antithesis of everything she had been. A perfect disguise.
