Poison (10 page)

‘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 occasion 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.

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.’

‘A princess is missing’

T
he 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 quietly 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.