delight.
After, he fell asleep in my bed, with his arms around me. I lay awake beside him. When I could see he was in a deep slumber, I unwrapped him from me, gently, and went to the mirror.
I stared right into it.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I said. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
At first nothing happened. My own face stared back at me.
Just when I was about to ask it again, the answer came:
“She is. Snow White.”
Her image flashed across the glass but it was different now, darker. I tried to focus, just as it faded out of view, revealing, once again, my own face.
I nearly cried out with pain and frustration. She was alive yet. Perhaps sitting in the great hall this very moment, next to Gilles and the council.
The look on my face with those thoughts took me aback. My wrinkled forehead and pulled-back lips made me look old, hideous. Quickly I relaxed my face and watched my beauty return.
The sun was beginning to set when the king woke and turned sleepily toward me, grasping me in his arms. He took his leave, as if all were normal, kissing me full on the mouth. I stood and watched the closed door, waiting for them to come for me. Instead, it was my maidservants and ladies who entered to ready me for the night’s revelries.
When Snow White did not appear at dinner that evening, a team of guards was sent to find her. Later, they reported that they could not locate her anywhere in the palace or on the palace grounds. All her ladies were questioned. None of them knew where she was, only that she’d been gone since that morning and that they’d assumed she was wandering the gardens or reading in the library.
When I returned to my chambers, I rushed to the mirror, stared in at my own face, wide open now with desire, with hope.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall,” I said. “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
“She is the fairest of them all. Snow White.”
Her image sparked in the glass.
“Show her to me as she is now,” I said.
Instantly her image disappeared. In its place was a tree with tangled, massive branches, a trunk covered in knots. Above, the sky was darkening with gathering clouds. Then there she was again, with a cloak around her now, a heavy hood, her eyes full of terror. The branches seemed to be reaching out for her on all sides. Eyes stared at her, from the dark woods. I watched, breathless. Was she alone?
I peered in, willed the picture to widen, so I could see more of what surrounded her. I did not recognize her location; she might have been near the tower or on the other side of the forest.
And then he came into focus. Gilles. A horse beside him, walking behind her, as she looked on every side of her, afraid of her own shadow, the trees looming on all sides.
My heart quickened again as I watched and saw the blade gleaming from his belt.
“Is this happening now?” I whispered. “Are you showing me what is happening right now?”
The mirror remained silent, and the image faded out, until my own face appeared again. Softer now, though I could not help but notice the lines stretching from my mouth, the way my eyes sagged.
The council met to plan a course of action. The king and his advisors were convinced that Snow White had been taken by his enemies to ignite a full-blown war between the East and West. Some posited that it was Queen Teresa’s relatives who had taken her, a dissenting group led by her uncle, who wanted to claim Snow White for the East and sever all ties to our kingdom. Everyone had a theory. I sat back and watched, helping each rumor along when I could. Checking the mirror every hour for some sign of her fate.
One day, nearly a week after Snow White had disappeared, a guard came to the door of my chambers and delivered a message to me from Gilles.
“He wants you to know he has captured a gyrfalcon,” the messenger said, “as you asked him to.”
A trembling came over me as I let his words sink into me.
“Thank you,” I said, forcing my voice to stay calm.
“He asked me to deliver this to you.”
And he handed me a small box, with designs forged over the top of it. I took it, with shaking hands. “Thank you.”
He bowed.
I retreated to my bedroom and sat down at the desk. I traced the designs on the box with my fingers. Fittingly, there was a falcon in flight, its wings spanning the length of the box. Under it, birds of every other kind, oblivious to the threat above them.
I breathed in.
I opened the box.
And there, lying in the velvet interior, was a bloody heart.
19
The torches flickered in my dark room, casting monstrous shadows on the wall. I locked the door and slipped out of my dress. I took her heart in my hands, and focused until I could feel her life’s force emanating from it, into me.
I almost loved her then, the way I had when she was a child.
I took her heart and placed it over the fire. I brought my bloody hands to my face as I watched her heart cook, as the smell of meat drifted through the room. I moved my palms down my face, my neck, my breasts, my torso, whispering a spell to take her youth and fertility inside me, to meld her heart with my own.
I thought of the day he first climbed my hair and created a child with me in the tower. The feel of that child kicking in my womb, the boy who should have been king. “My child, my son,” I whispered, with tears running down my face.
I took her heart from the fire, letting it burn my hands as if it really had turned to flame.
And then I ate it.
As the days went by with no sign of Snow White, the whole palace was in turmoil. Josef was beside himself with worry, and met with his council constantly, gathering reports from spies and anyone his guards saw fit to question. Soldiers amassed outside the palace gates, waiting for instructions from the king. Huge numbers of people were brought in for questioning. Some were tortured so thoroughly that they confessed to all kinds of horrible plots. Others spoke about Queen Teresa’s murder nearly a decade before, until the old rumors started up about the king himself. Those caught speaking openly about the king’s guilt were arrested, and soon the gallows filled with their bodies.
Strangely, the mirror went silent, even when I asked who was the fairest of them all. Day after day, my own face stared back at me in the flat glass. But the mirror had always been fickle, and I thought I knew the answer, anyway.
At first I avoided Gilles and the mews, but no one had mentioned his name except to note that he’d caught an especially fine gyrfalcon in the forest.
I made a great show of how much I missed Snow White, and how I worried for her fate. I dressed in black and wore a black veil. I spent hours in the chapel with Father Martin and all the ladies of the court, praying for her safe return. I made sure to always be seen with a prayer book in my hand.
She was the heir to the kingdom, the fate of us all. Though I had not been able to provide an heir in all this time, I felt that Snow White’s heart had changed something in me. My hair was more soft, more shining, my face
