“A pity,” said the queen, turning back to her mirror.
The steward informed her two days later than the footman had died of infection from the stump. The huntsman had, in fact, ridden out with him a day earlier and left him — hands very much intact — at the crossroads leading away from the kingdom.
“A pity,” said the queen again, and continued to brush her hair.
Another way that the servants defied the queen was in the matter of Snow.
Snow was largely kept from the queen’s sight, because it was easier for everyone. The midwife lived in a little detached cottage — one of a number of small buildings that straggled about the castle like lost goslings. The cottage fronted onto the herb garden, because in addition to delivering babies, the midwife brewed a great many potions and possets for the people of the kingdom. The head gardener had been trying for years to get her to marry him and move into the bigger house on the other side of the garden, which had stone floors and real glass in the windows. But the midwife preferred to stay in her own cottage and tend the herb garden, although she was not above spending the night at the gardener’s house once or twice a week.
Snow grew up in the little cottage. The steward carefully set aside a room in the castle for her, as far from the queen’s bower as possible, and suggested that Snow consider moving into it, for appearance’s sake. Snow smiled and thanked him, and continued to live in the little cottage by the herb garden.
What she did not say was that she could not sleep in the castle, that laying in the large, richly appointed room made her skin itch crazily over her muscles and her mind run in ragged little circles all night long. There was no rest for her in the castle. Her mother was mad — the servants all said so — and her father was gone and had not noticed her even when he was present.
So the maids changed the linens weekly and straightened non-existent clutter, and Snow learned to weed an herb garden, and the queen gazed into the mirror and ordered her servants killed.
Snow was seventeen when things changed.
She had lately outgrown her clothes. Her skirts came up so high that she could have waded a stream bone-dry, and her shirts did not want to close on top without extra lacing. Winter was beginning in earnest, and there was not a single jacket that could fit her across the shoulders. The midwife went to the steward and informed him of this, and the steward went to the seamstress and ordered new clothing made.
Most of it was good solid peasant stuff, as the midwife had demanded, but the steward had not forgotten that Snow was a princess, and he knew that the day might come when she was required to look like one. So among the skirts and kirtles and underclothes, there was a gown with a blue bodice and puffed sleeves. (The seamstress had always had a great desire to sew something with puffed sleeves, and the fact that Snow stared at them with great astonishment and mild indignation did nothing to diminish her moment of glory.)
“Try it on,” said the seamstress. “Oh please, Snow, try it on.”
Snow sighed. It was an absurd dress and she was certain that she would look ridiculous in it, but if it would make the old woman happy … well, it was little enough. And the other skirts had been very good. She bowed her head like a horse to the harness, and allowed the seamstress to pin her into the dress.
“Ohhhhh,” said the old woman, pulling the last pin out of her mouth. “Oh, Snow, you look like a queen!”
“Ha!” said Snow. She turned to look in the mirror and found that the dress made her look much more ridiculous than she feared — what was going on with those sleeves?
“Of course, your hair should be longer … ” the seamstress said, pulling Snow’s thin, flyaway white hair back against her neck. “Perhaps with a dark blue ribbon … ”
Snow sighed heavily. She supposed the color was all right. She didn’t look quite so wretchedly pink, and since it was winter, she had not been out in the sun all day and her last sunburn had faded, and at least her awful white eyebrows had started to darken a bit in the last few years.
But the sleeves were regrettable. There was no getting around that.
“You’re beautiful,” said the seamstress firmly, picking up another handful of pins.
“Can I go now?” asked Snow.
It was sheer bad luck that at this moment, the queen sat in front of her mirror and asked “Who?”
The mirror yawned. It was bored. The queen’s vanity was only occasionally amusing. “I hear the goosegirl is very lovely,” it said.
The queen tapped the bone handle of her hairbrush on the table. “Don’t waste my time, mirror. The goosegirl is pretty, but she is simple, and will spread her legs for anyone who brings her a sugar cookie. I am not concerned about the goosegirl.”
The reflection in the mirror looked more or less like the queen, but it seemed to have a great many more teeth, and they were longer and narrower, although the demon would have considered it quite gauche if they were actually pointed. It also seemed to have rather more tongue than was normal, so that its smile was a mass of crimson and ivory.
The demon cast its mind out, searching for a way to needle the queen’s vanity … and came back with something unexpected.
“Snow,” it said, sounding a little surprised itself. “Snow is fair.”
“Snow?” said the queen. For
