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But a stepmother had to do what a stepmother had to do. She squared her shoulders, opened the door, and let the huntsman out. The shape of poor Snow White wriggled in the bag, letting out inhuman shrieks.
The queen put one hand on the bag, a single tear in her eyes. But the queen couldn’t let Snow White be the fairest in the land. It had to be done.
She pulled the blindfold off the huntsman.
“WHAT DO I DO NOW?” HE SHOUTED, BECAUSE HE COULDN’T HEAR ANYTHING AND DIDN’T REALIZE THE QUEEN COULD HEAR PERFECTLY WELL. THIS IS WHAT YOU DO, TOO, WHEN YOU HAVE HEADPHONES ON AND FORGET NO ONE ELSE DOES. SEE HOW ANNOYING IT IS?
Sighing in exasperation, the queen grabbed a quill and ink and scribbled instructions as quickly as she could. They were running out of time.
“Do not look at the creature. Do not listen to the creature. Take the bag to the meadow. Untie it and leave it in the sun.”
The huntsman took the note and nodded, smiling big to show off several chipped and missing teeth. He really did need to learn how to say no to dares. He also really, really needed to learn how to read. But he was too embarrassed to tell that to the pretty queen. So he took the note, slung the bag over his shoulder, and set off.
The queen stood in her tower, silently crying. Her time as queen was over. She’d go to the next kingdom and resume her work there. At least there was still some good she could do for others. She watched out the window as the huntsman carried Snow White out of the village and out of her life forever.
Or so she thought.
Once upon the same time, in the other castle we saw at the beginning of the book—the one with a tower—a king and a queen had a rather musical problem.
They sat together on matching thrones. They were wrapped in silk and fur and dripping with jewels. Even though no one was there to see them, they acted very royal. Their spines were as straight as rulers because, as rulers, their spines could not possibly be any other way.
“How are we ever going to marry off our son? There aren’t any good princesses anymore,” the king said with a scowl.
“Back in my day,” the queen said, holding a perfumed handkerchief beneath her nose because even the air wasn’t fancy enough for her, “princesses were serious, proper things. Nowadays they’re all insane.”
“You can’t get through a single conversation with them before they break into song!”
The queen nodded. “Just the other day I was trying to talk to a princess and she started singing midsentence! She kept pausing, like I should join in. How would I possibly know what to sing back? How does she even know the words? I had her thrown in the dungeon.”
“As well you should have, my queen. I refuse to run a kingdom where everyone has to constantly be ready to break into a musical number. Think of the cost! All the lost hours of work. The shoes worn out by elaborate dance routines. Not to mention the voice lessons we’d have to buy. No singing princesses for us. I want a good old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill, needlework-loving princess.”
“I want her to be stuffy and uptight. No enormous, sparkling eyes and exuberance for life. She should be frequently ill, look as though she always has a bad taste in her mouth, and be extremely delicate to the point of ridiculousness.”
The king sighed, patting his large, velvet-clad belly. “Where will we find such a creature?”
“We should have a test. Perhaps some sort of obstacle course, and whichever princess throws the most proper tantrum over being asked to perform physical labor wins.” The queen sighed, rubbing the deep, dark circles beneath her eyes. “I can’t think of anything else. I’m too tired. There was a cricket outside last night, so I couldn’t sleep.”
“I didn’t hear a cricket.”
“Neither did I, but I was sure that somewhere out there a cricket was making noise, and it bothered me so much I didn’t get any rest. You know how difficult it is for me to sleep.”
It was true. She needed a mattress made from precisely 10,000 feathers of newborn geese. If the geese were teenagers, or there were 9,999 feathers, she could not sleep.
The room had to be exactly the temperature of a jellied eel dish. However, not one of the servants could decide at what temperature jellied eel could possibly taste good. So they had to constantly bring in ice and remove it, stoke the fire and smother it, and finally employ several handmaidens to sit at her bedside and gently blow on her face all night long. The handmaidens, of course, were permitted to eat nothing but honey so that their breath wasn’t offensive.
r /> For some reason, handmaidens kept quitting.
“My queen, I know what we should do! A true princess, one as royal as you, will be an equally sensitive sleeper. We shall invite them, one by one, to spend the night in our castle. And beneath their mattress we will place a single pea.”
The queen gasped in horror. “Why, I won’t be able to sleep for a week just imagining the discomfort!”
“Precisely! So if the princess comes out in the morning refreshed and alert, we’ll know she’s not a true enough princess for us.”
The queen nodded, pinched eyes shining beneath her enormous crown. “And if she’s exhausted and has not slept, we’ll immediately marry her to our son!”
The king suddenly looked nervous. He darted his eyes around the imposing throne room, with its soaring ceilings and gold-trimmed pillars. Everything in there was fancy and breakable and flammable. It felt like a museum. It had not been a very fun place for the prince to grow up. And, even worse, every time the prince tried to sing a song about it, he was sent back to his tower. He had stopped singing, but ever since the unfortunate escape, they never let him out at all.
“Where is our son?” the king asked, sweat beading on his wrinkled forehead.
