She stared at the weapon. What had she done? The stark reality of it was like ice in her veins and she tightened her grip on the hilt to stop her hand trembling so obviously. ‘Did she suffer?’
‘No,’ the huntsman answered levelly. He looked so calm. Was he as much of a monster as she? She drew herself up tall and haughty; playing the part that was becoming her. What was done was done and there was no magic that could undo it. She really was the wicked queen now. It was time to live up to that.
‘Where did you put her body?’ She took the filthy knife and resheathed it, not wanting to look too long on the blood that coated it.
‘Ender’s Pit,’ he said and then handed her the pouch. It was heavier than she’d expected. A butcher’s wrap of meat like those she’d carried for her mother when she was small. Blood seeped out through the roughly sewn edges. She didn’t open it. She didn’t want to see.
‘And now if I can have my slippers I’ll be on my way. A deal’s a deal and I have unfinished business elsewhere.’ He didn’t let his eyes, deep and unfathomable, drop from hers. He was rough and handsome and arrogant, this travelling stranger, and she detested him. She wanted to sink the knife into his neck and be done with the whole damned business.
‘Of course.’ Around them, the walls blackened further and the red jagged lines sprouted new crimson branches. This room was her forest of magic and as her heart hardened, her power grew stronger. Her lips tightened into a smile that was as sharp as the murderous blade. It was for the best. All of it was.
‘Are these what he wants, dear?’ The familiar voice cracked like dry forest twigs under children’s running feet. ‘They’re very pretty. In fact, I’m very impressed with your entire collection. You’ve done well.’
Lilith didn’t look round as the old woman shuffled out from the back room. Her great-grandmother had arrived unannounced only an hour earlier and she hadn’t had time to process it yet. The day had been surreal enough without her. As far as Lilith knew or remembered the old woman had never left her candy cottage, and yet here she was. She had trekked across kingdoms and turned up as if she’d been just passing. She was also doing that hunched over, helpless little old lady thing that she slipped into whenever she had an agenda. The huntsman’s face crinkled in disgust at the sight of her and Lilith felt a surge of pride in her bloodline. Women put too much store in beauty as a power to wield over men. There were other powers which were just as valuable. She was learning that.
‘Yes. They’re his. He can have them back.’
‘No need to be hasty.’ The crone placed the shoes on the floor beside the wide cushioned throne, out of reach of the huntsman. ‘You were always in such a hurry. Even as a child.’ She took the pouch from Lilith’s hands and her gnarled hands pulled on the drawstrings.
‘You don’t need to look in there.’ Her heart raced slightly and she flushed, just as she’d done as a child when she’d been caught peeling a strip of liquorice from the walls, black juice smeared around her mouth. There was no need for her great-grandmother to know what she’d done. She didn’t want anyone to know what she’d done.
‘Oh, you should always check the goods before you pay, my dear.’ She tipped the heart into her hand. Glistening meat. The queen felt sick.
‘Oh my,’ the old woman said, turning it over in her hands until they were covered in redness. ‘I see.’ She slid it back into the sopping cloth and then licked her fingers, savouring the taste. Her lips smacked together and her eyes twinkled. ‘But those shoes? For a deer’s heart? It’s not much of a trade.’
‘What? It’s not . . .?’ Lilith stared at her and then at the huntsman, whose eyes darted from the pouch to the old woman and then to the queen again.
‘Did you think it was a human heart?’
‘I . . .’ Heat burned her from the inside. ‘But . . .’
‘I know the taste, dear,’ the old woman said, ‘and this is not to my taste.’ She tutted at the huntsman. ‘I fear you’ve been a little deceptive, young man.’
‘Where is she?’ Blood rushed to the queen’s face and she seized the knife and stepped forward, jabbing it towards him. ‘You let her go?’ A whirl of emotions gripped her and for the first time she saw fear in the huntsman’s face. She liked it. ‘Was it her beauty? Is that what stopped you? Was her beauty worth your own precious life?’ He stepped backwards slightly and her angry glare darted at the vast doors beyond which slammed immediately shut.
‘Very nice, Lilith dear,’ her great-grandmother said, approvingly.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said.
‘Why?’ The dark snakes in her soul writhed. ‘Because I don’t have her charm? Her beauty? Because I’m filled with poison?’ Her words were the dry hiss of a trapped animal. Fear was eating at her anger. If Snow White was still alive then where was she? Already sending messages to her father? Was the executioner’s block all her own future now held? The people wouldn’t mourn their cold, unfriendly queen. Would the king call her a witch for real and burn her? Were the flames that haunted her finally going to claim her?
‘Did she give herself to you to set her free?’
A nerve twitched in his cheek as the arrow of truth in her words struck home. Her anger burned brighter, a white heat that could turn a city to dust.
‘You think you’re such a righteous man,’ she sneered, not caring that it made her ugly. ‘You’re not. You’re nothing but a mouse.’ She spat the last word out and a jolt of energy shot through her arm.
The huntsman vanished.
For a moment she couldn’t understand what had happened, and then, as her great-grandmother cackled and clapped applause, she heard the tiniest of squeaks. A small brown field mouse was scurrying across the floor.
‘Much better!’ the crone said. ‘A mouse. Very good. A fitting punishment for a double-crossing huntsman. Let’s see how he survives the forest now.’ She snapped her fingers and the mouse was gone. Lilith stared at the empty patch of floor and then looked over at her great-grandmother. The old woman was smiling.
‘Don’t worry, dear. He’ll be back one day.’ She patted the throne. ‘Have a sit down.’ Lilith did as she was told and the old woman looked into the pouch once again. ‘Cutting out a heart. I do sympathise with the sentiment, but death is so . . .’ she paused. ‘Final. No magic can change it.’
Lilith looked at her great-grandmother and thought of all the small bones that littered her garden. ‘And you should know.’
‘I only want what’s best for you, dear. Don’t be irritable. It doesn’t suit you.’
‘What am I going to do?’ She just wanted to cry.
‘A curse is always the thing, you know.’ Her great-grandmother nudged her along the seat and squeezed her bony hips into the throne to share it. ‘Death is a last resort. Curses, well, they give you power.’
‘Then I’d like to curse her to sleep forever,’ Lilith said. She was aware that her voice had taken on the slightly surly tone of her youth.
‘Forever is a long time,’ her great-grandmother said. ‘Aside from death, the only thing that lasts forever is true love.’ She rummaged in the folds of her raggedy clothes and pulled out a rosy apple. ‘Eat this. They’re good for you.’
Lilith took it and bit in, chewing the crisp, sweet flesh, hoping it could cleanse the bitter remnants of hate that filled her mouth. ‘Then I want her to sleep until true love’s kiss wakes her.’
‘Now you’re getting the hang of it.’ The old lady nodded approvingly. ‘That one’s always a winner.’
Lilith leaned her head on the bony shoulder beside her. It was good to be with someone who loved her.
‘Leave it with me.’ Her great-grandmother patted her leg affectionately. ‘I’ll take care of it on my way home. It’ll all work out in the end. I’m like your fairy godmother, eh?’
Lilith shut her eyes and let the old woman soothe her. ‘It’s good to see you, Granny,’ she said, quietly. ‘It really is.’
6
‘No good c
an come from a crone’
They didn’t speak much as they came down the mountain from the mine. Despite the hardiness that came from their nature and a lifetime of working underground, it still took a while to recover any energy after a full shift. Even as they reached the edge of the forest the three dwarves didn’t sing as the hot metal in their lungs was cooled by the fresh open air. Their minds were occupied with the secret they shared and as soon as their feet marched in steady rhythm onto the soft grass, their eyes were darting this way and that for evidence of soldiers. They had a princess to protect. Dwarf honour was second to none – as was so often the way with people so long subjugated – and they had vowed to keep their friend safe. If they failed in their promise, a terrible fate would befall them. Dwarves never broke an oath.
It was a warm day, but the swarms of tiny flies that filled the damp air stayed clear of them as they made their way past the hot pool and towards the path home, hovering high above the short-statured dwarves. The rest of the team would follow soon, but these three, whose real names hadn’t been used in so long they’d almost forgotten what they were, had earned themselves an early finish. Grouchy took the lead, Dreamy behind him, and Stumpy, his nickname earned after he’d been pulled screaming from beneath a rock slide, his crushed hand missing, followed behind them. They were lost in their own thoughts for most of the journey until they reached the crossroads. Dreamy paused, his feet breaking their marching rhythm and his companions stopped beside him.
A figure was shuffling along the worn path. Even with her head bowed the glaring warts that covered her nose and chin were visible and her hair hung in grey strings. Her dress, a mixture of worn rags cobbled together into some kind of shroud-like garment had perhaps once been black but was long faded to grey. ‘A crone,’ Dreamy muttered, his eyes narrowing. ‘No good can come from a crone.’
The old woman raised a hand in greeting and hobbled closer. She smiled and Dreamy shivered at the blackness in the gaps where so many missing teeth should have been. ‘Travel safely, ma’am.’ Grouchy nodded to her, tipping his hat as if he were a gentleman of the court rather than a dwarf with black mine dust so ingrained on his skin that he could no longer scrub it off.
‘I thank you, young man.’ The words were weak and came out in a hiss of air that whistled through her gums. She was carrying a basket and under the checked cloth, Dreamy could just make out a large, perfectly red and waxy apple. His mouth watered slightly. She started to hobble away from them and then paused, her wizened head creaking round on her brittle shoulders until she’d fixed them with one watery eye.
‘I saw a thing,’ she said, ‘that might be useful to you. A deer. Dead a little way back in the shade of a great willow. Straight from here as the crow flies. Looked fresh.’ She paused. ‘You look hungry.’
‘We have to get back to our cottage,’ Dreamy said. His skin tingled warily even though she was an old woman and he was a hardy dwarf with thirty years mining under his belt and an axe hanging across his back.
‘Fair enough. Something in the forest will have it. Fresh meat rarely goes to waste.’ He raised a hand to say farewell, but she’d already turned and continued her slow shuffle along the path. The dwarves didn’t move.
‘A deer.’ Stumpy licked his lips loudly. ‘A fresh one.’ Dreamy knew how he felt. His stomach had rumbled at the mention of the animal. Tonight, all seven dwarves would be home and most of what they’d eat would be boiled potatoes and cabbage, flavoured with a few herbs and the juice of a boiled scrawny rabbit carcass all the meat of which had been eaten days before. Now they also had Snow White to feed – a royal princess. The small forest animals who weakened at the mountain’s edge were not good enough for her, no matter how she protested that their generosity in hiding her was banquet enough.
As Grouchy and Stumpy muttered between themselves, Dreamy watched the old woman slowly making her way along the path that they should have been taking home instead of lingering here. ‘No good comes from a crone,’ he repeated.
‘You can’t judge a book by its cover,’ Grouchy snorted with mild amusement. ‘She might just be an old grandmother visiting nearby.’
‘What would you know about books?’ Dreamy said. ‘You’ve never even read one.’
Grouchy was their unofficial leader, his rank in the mine granting him the same authority in the cottage and it was rare for any of them to snap at him, least of all Dreamy, the gentlest of them all. But there was something about this crone that unsettled him.
Snow White had brought Dreamy books, slim volumes of adventures that she’d sneaked out of the vast library in the castle. They had changed Dreamy’s world and he would always love her for that alone.
‘Don’t need to read one to see how they’ve addled your brain,’ Grouchy said. ‘But then, your head’s always been in the clouds.’
‘The stories keep me sane while my body is in the mines,’ Dreamy said. The old woman was almost out of sight now.
‘Music should do that,’ Stumpy said. ‘Music is the dwarf way.’ He spat on the ground. ‘We should at least look for that deer. I’m fucking starving.’
Dreamy didn’t argue. Two to one said they should try, and his own stomach was turning against him in the argument. Venison was a strong meat. A delicious meat. And a whole deer would last them a while.
They found the carcass barely ten minutes along the path the old woman had been following and she hadn’t lied. It lay beneath a willow tree on cool ground. The meat was in good condition. More than that, with its heart cut out, it was clearly the deer the huntsman had killed to trick the queen. ‘We have to take it,’ Grouchy said. ‘It’s evidence that Snow White is still alive. We can’t have the Queen’s Guard finding it, and find it they will before long.’ They roped its legs with vines and Dreamy used his axe to hack down a long branch from a tree which they could strap it to. When the dead animal was secured, Grouchy took one end and Dreamy the other, leaving Stumpy to carry their tools as best he could, and by the time they were back at the crossroads and heading home Dreamy’s misgivings about the crone had passed. She’d been a blessing as it turned out. They would all eat well and the princess’s survival would stay secret. He smiled and even joined in as the other two began to hum a working tune.
Finally a thin, barely visible line of worn ground branched off from the main path and the dwarves turned on to it. Their cottage was only twenty feet or so away but was still completely invisible to the naked eye. Even if the crone had been of wicked intent she’d have walked right past it. He shook his head slightly and laughed at his own nervousness. No one ever found dwarf cottages, and theirs had become considerably better protected in the past twenty-four hours. The forest had a tendency to wrap itself around dwarf cottages. Bushes and trees were thicker and heavy roots broke the ground’s surface ready to trip any passer-by who came too close. Branches hung so low that anyone taller than a young child would have to duck to find their way through, and Snow White aside – because everyone, even the forest, could see the goodness in her – would then find themselves tangled in and stabbed at by errant twigs they hadn’t noticed were there. Brambles would creep out and dig into skin until finally any curiosity would be overwhelmed and the interloper would back away, no longer interested in the hints of life they’d spotted through the bushes. It wasn’t that the dwarves wanted to hide, it was just that they liked what little privacy they had, and nature respected that. Nature was a magic in itself. It took care of those who loved it.
As they passed under the last of the thick branches, the clearing opened up in front of them and their cottage, bathed in golden sunshine, came into view. Dreamy smiled. Grouchy had been right. He was too caught up in his world of stories. Snow White, dressed in her riding breeches and shirt, was sitting on the heavy wooden table where they all ate outside in the summer. A bowl of peeled potatoes was to her right and a tankard sat to her left. Dwarf ale, of course. She could drink the heady mix with the best of them and sing along until dawn when the occa
sion arose, her beautiful face shining with earthy joy. The thought stabbed at his insides.
He wished she could shake this terrible sadness that was on her. She’d refused to send a message to her father. She’d cried. A lot. They hadn’t really known what to do about that. Dwarves didn’t cry that much and as far as they’d known neither did Snow White. They’d brought her drink and forced her to eat something and left her to work it out of her system. That had been Dreamy’s suggestion. There were lots of women in the stories he’d been reading and he’d learned that sometimes they just needed to be left alone to think. More of the stories would have turned out better if the men had seen that as clearly as Dreamy did.
At least today she was up and keeping busy. Maybe it would all work out all right. He grinned and waved and she gave them a soft smile in return before raising something to her mouth. Dreamy froze as he saw what it was. An apple; large and impossibly red and waxy. He tried to cry out – to stop her taking a bite – but the words choked in his throat.
No good can come of a crone.
Her eyes widened as she took the first crisp bite and as the dwarves dropped the deer and started to run, she was on her feet and clawing at her neck. Her legs buckled and, with the rest of the apple still gripped tightly in her hand, she fell lifeless to the forest floor.
With shattered hearts they searched the forest for the crone but there was no sign of her. She had vanished, leaving them no outlet for their anger. When the other four marched back to the cottage and discovered the awful events, the dwarves mourned, singing low songs into the moonlight and through until dawn. The deer began to rot where it had been dropped, a symbol of their stupidity that they taunted themselves with.