They pushed their small beds together and laid Snow White out across them, the apple still gripped in her cold fingers. They lit candles around her. They sang some more. They discovered that dwarves could cry. Over the next few days they worked long, dangerous shifts for extra gold and then Dreamy spent everything they had saved on a beautiful pink and white dress, bought from a passing merchant on his way to the fine ladies of the city.
In the clearing the deer stank and mouldered in the heat, but Snow White neither breathed nor rotted. Grouchy worked through the night forging a glass coffin, and on the third day they washed and gently redressed her, curling her long hair and rouging her lips and cheeks. When she was ready, they carried the coffin to the mound on the other side of the thicket where it was rare for anyone but a dwarf to pass. Bluebells grew on the banks and the sun caught the space all year round. They would not put her underground. They knew better than any how harsh and brutal the earth’s grip could be. She would lie in the sun, just as she had loved to do.
Some of the dwarves thought that perhaps she should have been dressed in the breeches she’d loved too but Dreamy was so distraught that they let him make a proper princess of her. She was a princess, after all. They would guard her until her father returned, and then perhaps one day a cure for the curse would be found.
They sat with her when their long, bone-tiring shifts were done, but it was always Dreamy who stayed with her the longest. Her sadness was over – his had begun.
Dreamy was sitting alone, tossing small pieces of old cheese to a small brown field mouse, when the prince stumbled through the trees that guided him up onto the mound. Dreamy should have been in the mines. He should have been there all week, but Grouchy had told the supervisor that he had lungflu and no one had questioned it. He wasn’t getting paid, but then they’d all lost their appetites and less food was required. Why bother trying to cook something tasty when it felt as if all the joy had been drained from the world? They were grieving and weighed down with guilt, but it was generally acknowledged that Dreamy, so much more sensitive than the average dwarf, was suffering the most.
He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t hear the young man until he had staggered up the other side of the mound and was almost beside the coffin. The mouse scurried into the bushes. Dreamy reached for his knife. The stranger was tall and broad and framed in late-afternoon sunshine that danced on his dirty blond hair. He was handsome. He was also injured. Dreamy got to his feet, and moved forward quickly to catch his arm as he fell.
‘Thank you,’ the stranger mumbled, as Dreamy lowered him carefully to the ground. He wasn’t a soldier, not from this land at any rate, and although his clothes were dirty they were made from fine fabrics. Both the hilt of his sword and his red cloak carried the same insignia. A lit torch shining through a golden crown. He was royal this one; a prince perhaps. But not of this kingdom.
‘Here. Drink.’ He handed over his flask and the prince drank greedily from it, not caring that it was heady beer and not water. His pale skin glistened with sweat; a thick sheen that had nothing to do with the warm summer’s day.
‘I must find my companion,’ he said, eventually. ‘He’s been gone for days. I think.’ He frowned. ‘I’m losing track of time.’
‘You’re injured,’ Dreamy said. It was clear the man had a fever. His eyes were brilliant blue, but flecked with red and his whole body trembled. Dreamy pulled the cloak back slightly and the young man winced. A bandage of sorts was wrapped around his middle but blood had leaked through and dried, mixed with mud, on the once-white linen shirt. Whatever injury lay beneath was festering. It would need attention or the dwarves would have a second lifeless royal body on their hands.
‘You should come back to my cottage,’ he said. ‘We can—’
‘What is this?’ The prince’s eyes narrowed as he pulled away from the dwarf and leaned over towards the glass coffin containing Snow White’s perfect form. ‘She’s beautiful,’ he said. His voice was as dry as whispering baked autumn leaves and, hearing a strange nervousness in his tone, Dreamy wondered when he’d last drunk or eaten properly. Had he lost his way to the river? How long had he been wandering?
The prince’s face was so close to the glass that his sickly breath condensed on it and Snow’s beautiful face was almost lost from view. He frowned again.
‘Yes, she is,’ Dreamy said, simply. ‘She was cursed by a crone. She seems to be neither completely dead nor alive.’ His heart broke all over again saying the words aloud.
‘Cursed?’ The prince’s head darted round. Why did he look so wary? ‘In what way, cursed?’
‘The apple,’ Dreamy nodded at the perfect fruit still gripped tightly in her small palm. ‘She ate the apple.’ They both stared at the frozen girl a little longer, lost in their individual thoughts.
‘What was she like before?’ the prince asked. ‘Did you know her?’
‘She was beautiful,’ Dreamy said. He could barely get the words out. ‘And always kind.’ He wasn’t ready to talk about her yet; her wild charm, her skill on horseback, the way she swam free and naked in the lake. Those were his memories. They’d be razor blades on his tongue if he spoke of them so soon.
‘She was a princess,’ he said. That much he could be truthful about. There were many princesses in the stories he’d read. Maybe none quite like Snow White, but many he could draw on. ‘A pure girl with a kind and delicate disposition. She excelled at dancing and music. She sewed the most ornate tapestries with silk threads. Her laugh was like sunlight on dappled water.’ He choked a little at that. It was almost true. Her laugh was richer though; molten ore in the heart of the rocks they battled daily. But her smile, her smile was all nature and sunlight, and when he remembered it she was always splashing in the pond, gently mocking them for not coming in.
‘She sounds perfect.’ The prince had laid down alongside the coffin, staring in. ‘A true beauty.’
‘She was.’ Dreamy wiped away his tears and then dipped into his fictions to tell more stories of the beautiful princess who’d been cursed for her kindness. The sun slowly set, but he didn’t stop. The prince didn’t interrupt him, but it was only when he began to twitch and mutter that Dreamy snapped back to reality and realised how much time had passed. The stranger had fallen into a fever, no doubt caused by his wound and, collapsed on the grass, he tossed and turned in the grip of a nightmare, his eyes moving rapidly behind their lids. Dreamy tried to wake him and pull him to his feet, but he was too far gone and too heavy.
‘Beauty,’ the prince mumbled urgently, the rest of his sentence lost in hot breath and half-words. ‘Beauty.’
7
‘A princess is missing’
The dwarves made him a makeshift bed beside the coffin. The cottage was too cramped and they decided the fresh, warm air would be good for him. Stumpy built him a fire and they dressed his wounds and fed him broth as the fever slowly broke. It wasn’t just him who slowly recovered; the dwarves did too. They had someone to care for, someone to mend, and in doing so their hearts too mended a little as the days passed into weeks.
The prince made his home by the glass coffin and the dwarves returned to work. Each day they came back and brought bread and stew up to the mound and would sit in the dying light and talk and sometimes even sing. They would sing to Snow White and the prince would join in. Every day he grew stronger, and after a while they’d come back to find he’d fetched wood and water and caught animals in the forest for them to eat. He never left the mound for long though, and hardy as the dwarves were, they could see that he was falling in love with their frozen princess.
He talked to her. They heard him sometimes, his voice low and full of good humour, recounting stories of battles and jousts and balls and a glittering castle of light. He smiled and touched the glass, as if hoping she would lift her own hand and touch his from the other side. Sometimes Dreamy would just watch from the trees. The handsome prince regaling the frozen beauty with his stories, or just sitting qui
etly beside her and looking at her. He willed her to breathe, just as they all did. But her eyes remained lifeless and staring skywards. As the world turned and the days passed, she did not change.
‘You’re nearly recovered,’ Dreamy said, one evening as the fire embers died down and the dwarves headed back to their cottages. ‘You’ll be able to return to your land soon. You must be pleased.’
‘I’m not quite well enough yet,’ the young prince replied, and Dreamy thought he’d never seen such a sad and handsome face as that upon which the fading firelight danced. His own heart felt heavy. Perhaps they should have made his bed inside the small cottage. Perhaps giving him so much time with their cursed princess had been stupid. Now there was more heartache ahead when the young man would have to leave her.
He didn’t read before sleeping that night. There was too much tragedy and romance already surrounding them. Instead, he lay awake on the wooden table outside the cottage and stared at the stars and wished for happy endings.
It was perhaps a week later, as the cool breath of autumn swept through the forest, that they first noticed the ravens. They were sitting on the fences at the bottom of the mountain on the Dwarf Path.
‘Ravens don’t come out here,’ Stumpy said. He didn’t break his pace, but his eyes darted upwards and his voice was low. Dreamy remembered when Stumpy had been a merrier soul who’d laughed and chatted as they’d worked, but four hours stuck beneath a rock slide, his hand crushed beside him and the dead bodies of four dwarves around him in the dark had changed him. Dreamy had been part of the rescue team. It was a day he would never forget. Stumpy had been screaming for at least an hour before he passed out. When he’d woken up, he was not the same. There were some things that changed you. This was as true as a first breath and a last, and that day had killed the dwarf who had been Dreamy’s best friend, even if he still walked, and talked, and mined. Perhaps one day the old Stumpy would return, but those shadows would never be entirely shaken free. Just as Dreamy would never shake off the sound of his screams.
‘What are they doing here?’ Stumpy kept his voice low. They were on the mountain now, and the guard would be watching. There was no love lost between those who mined and those who supervised. The men were nearly all there on punishment duties and they envied the dwarves their good health amid the dust.
‘Queen’s birds,’ a voice came from a team marching beside them. Dreamy looked round. The leader was rough-skinned and his face had a long scar running down one side. Belcher, Dreamy thought his name was. He’d been a warrior dwarf, a city dwarf. His songs were different to theirs and his team never smiled or broke ranks when they dug. Belcher’s team would not have got separated and allowed one of their own to lose a hand. Had the words come from any dwarf but him, Dreamy would have laughed them off. Instead, his guts chilled.
‘How do you know?’ Stumpy asked. Dreamy stayed quiet. Belcher respected Stumpy. He respected how he’d changed. Dreamy wondered what Belcher might have been like decades ago before the wars and then the mines changed him.
‘I hear talk. I still have friends among the soldiers. Those are charmed birds.’ His mouth barely moved as he grunted out the words and all of them kept their eyes ahead. ‘She sees through them. Watches the city. They’ve never left its limits before.’
‘What’s she looking for, do you reckon?’ Dreamy was impressed with Stumpy’s casual tone. He gripped his axe hard to stop his hands trembling. There was only one thing – one person – the queen could be looking for, and that was Snow White.
‘You tell me, Stumpy lad,’ Belcher said, wryly. ‘You tell me.’
Their shift passed interminably slowly. Dreamy found a moment to tell Grouchy what had been said, but it was nothing that could be talked about in the hot, close confines they worked in. Ears were everywhere and Dreamy didn’t know if it was his imagination or not, but it seemed as if here and there hooded eyes turned his team’s way. Was their secret safe? Snow White had been friends to all the dwarves, but it was their cottage she had come to when the drinking and singing was done. Would the other teams pass that information on to the soldiers if asked? How strong was dwarf honour – and what would happen to them if Snow White was discovered? He fought the rising panic. He would take whatever fate passed their way. They had vowed to protect the princess. They had failed once – they would not fail again.
There were no ravens in the forest; that much at least was a relief. Rain was pouring heavily through the trees as they trudged home and the drops were cold and had no summer scent as they turned their faces upwards into it and scanned the branches for silent birds.
The prince had a fire lit for them and a fresh rabbit was roasting on a spit, but as the water dripped from the dwarves to the cottage floor, the meaty scent did nothing to entice them to eat.
They sat in silence for a while, sipping beer.
‘Maybe it’s nothing to do with us,’ Breezy said. ‘Maybe she just wants to make sure we’re all working?’
Grouchy barely snorted in response.
‘A princess is missing,’ Stumpy said. ‘Even if the queen thinks she’s dead, she’s got to make a show of looking for her. We didn’t think of that.’
‘Is there anything I can do?’ The prince had stayed out of their conversation, but he’d been listening from the fireside.
‘You should go,’ Grouchy said. ‘Your land needs its prince and these are our troubles. Plus, winter is coming. You can’t sleep out there forever.’
Dreamy’s heart stung at the words, and the thought of Snow White out on the mound in the dark in her glass coffin, the rain hammering on it. At least the prince stayed with her. At least while he was here she was rarely alone.
‘Maybe in a day or two.’ He turned back to the fire. ‘I still need to rest.’ His jaw locked and although no one would argue with Grouchy, and he was right, they knew what really kept the handsome prince in their poor cottage and up on the mound.
‘A day or two longer,’ Grouchy said. ‘And then, my friend, you must leave. I will not have more on my conscience.’
The prince nodded and as something unspoken passed between the two, a thought dawned on Dreamy that hadn’t occurred to him before. This prince’s land might not be one of the allied kingdoms. Dwarves and politics did not mix, but had Grouchy recognised the prince’s crest? Would he become a prisoner, if the queen knew about him? Would they all end up in the dungeons for harbouring him? Suddenly it was all clear. And suddenly their present danger increased tenfold.
Eventually, they filled their plates with food and forced themselves to eat, but every mouthful of meat made Dreamy want to be sick. He wished he was braver. He’d always imagined himself as the hero in the adventures he’d read, but he was starting to realise that adventures in real life were far more fear than excitement. The wicked queen was coming.
And come she did.
It was as if the weather could sense the dark magic that was spreading across the forest. The temperature had dropped overnight and rain hung in half-frozen droplets across the branches. Autumn had been crushed by an early winter, the browning leaves killed by the sudden cold.
Dreamy was alone when he heard the heavy wheels of a carriage on the other side of the thick trees and bushes, followed by the sharp shouts of soldiers coming to a halt. He had been building the fire so it would last all day, and was about to race to catch the others up when he stopped, his stomach turning to water, in the clearing. The prince had gone up to the mound only minutes before, a pot of hot stew to keep him warm during his vigil, and Dreamy willed him to stay away. He stared at the trees. Maybe they wouldn’t find the cottage – maybe they—
‘It’s here somewhere.’ A woman’s voice; quiet but commanding. ‘Cut your way through. I will speak to them all.’ It was her. The queen. Snow White’s step-mother.
More shouted commands and axes and swords cut into the veins of the forest, determined to clear a pathway to the cottage door. Dreamy wanted to cry. Why was he the last one here? Why
not Grouchy? Or Stumpy? They were braver. They would not be so afraid. He looked around at the small tracks leading to the pond and the mound. He wanted to run. His short, thick legs trembled with the urgency. He could make it, he was sure, and be clear and at the mine before the soldiers found their way to the Dwarf Path. The soldiers would never know the ways through the forest like the dwarves did and fear concentrated the mind.
And his mind concentrated as the axes beat out a steady rhythm towards him, branches creaking as they were torn free. He could run. But what would happen then? They’d search the cottage. He tried to remember if there was anything incriminating in there? Something of Snow’s from times gone by? Her breeches were kept somewhere. Maybe they’d find them. Chances were they’d then search the surrounding areas. The mound was well-hidden but nowhere near well enough to escape a determined queen. He thought of the ravens. How much did she know already?
Ahead of him, a gap formed in the butchered trees and he glimpsed the soldiers coming forward. The Queen’s Guard. He couldn’t run. He knew that much. He was the only one who could save himself and his friends.
‘Hello?’ he called, and stepped forward, his voice innocent and wary. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Her Majesty the Queen!’ a soldier barked.
Dreamy fell to one knee and bowed his head. He waited. Finally the axes fell silent and there was only the cool breeze rustling in the trees and the clank of soldiers’ metal.
‘Get up, dwarf.’
‘Your Majesty.’ He paused for a moment in deference before standing with his head bowed. ‘What an honour. What can I do for you? I live to serve.’ He’d been worried that, not being a natural liar, his face would give his guilt away; but instead, as he finally glanced up, his mouth dropped open and all thought was momentarily gone. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. A monster? A crone?
She was beautiful. He’d heard she was beautiful, of course. Snow White had said as much and the soldiers at the mines made plenty of lewd jokes about the old king’s luck, but Dreamy hadn’t been part of the birthday ball joke – his balance hadn’t been good enough to stand on another’s shoulders without causing them all to collapse – so he had never seen her for himself. He hadn’t thought that there could ever be anyone as beautiful as Snow White, but here was proof otherwise.