The Mirror Said Poison Read online

  The Mirror Said Poison

  A Psychological Twist on Snow White

  By Annabel Ames

  Table of Contents

  1: Dania

  2: Getelenna

  3: Rhafe

  4: Snowy

  5: The Most Horrible Moment

  6: Trust

  7: Blackout

  8: Nighttime Visit

  9: The Forest

  10: A Little Shopping

  11: Brunch

  12: Something in Here

  13: Peace

  1: Dania

  “The King didn’t even notice you left, did he?”

  The Mirror asked this question almost before she was in the room. Dania had, as she often did, elected to enter her private chambers by means of the secret passage. This corridor, unlighted save for what candles she brought into its damp interior, was hidden within the castle walls. She felt much like a mouse—small and humble, an ignoble interloper—when she trod its length.

  Sometimes she wondered, only while she was in the passage, whether that mouse part of her was the only real part. Maybe when she pushed aside the heavy tapestry and entered the queenly chamber, she used the visions of silk and gold, of marble floors and busts, to repress that part of herself. To pretend she was a queen. A real and worthy person.

  Dania pretended she had not heard the Mirror speak. She walked to the stand where the marble bowl of crystalline water sat in elegant fingers of carved ebony. Holding her hair back, she bent, shut her eyes, and pushed her face into its refreshment. She savored the sensation. First, only the tip of her nose broke the cold surface. Then her cheeks, her brow, her chin, her lips, until she was submerged to the sapphires clinging to her earlobes.

  She held her breath and counted: one, two, three, four—

  “Do I hear him at the doors?” the Mirror asked. “Do I hear him in the passageway? No.”

  There was no silencing It. She hated the feeling of water in her ears.

  Dania came up, taking quick, gasping breaths. She pulled her fingers hard down her face to clear it of water, and she cringed.

  “You made the wrinkles worse,” said the Mirror.

  “Yes,” she admitted in a whisper. She stared at her palms as though incriminating them. Then, curiously and with a familiar sense of apprehension, she turned them over and examined the pattern like snake-skin, intricate diamonds of aged skin on her knuckles. She counted the blue veins growing knobbier by the day and deemed them innumerable. “Oh . . . My nails. They’re filthy.”

  She pushed them back into the bowl and swished them. There was a small, silver brush on the stand beside the bowl. She took it and worked the stiff bristles beneath her nails. She scrubbed until there was no dirt left to put a barrier between her skin and the pain, and only then did she deem herself clean.

  She returned the brush to the stand. The silver clinked prettily, but her eyes focused on the bristles. She imagined the terrible sight: the boar, great, brutish beast borne down, arrows jutting from its bleeding hide. She heard its squeal—truly heard it, and pushed the heels of her hands over her ears until the sapphire earrings hurt her head. She saw a huntsman’s broad back as he bent to finish the kill. The knife rasped in metallic cruelty, and then the hunter rose from his crouch to turn and level ice blue eyes on her. A beautiful, rough man with blood on his jaw.

  “Why are you wearing that cloak?” the Mirror asked. Her hands did not even muffle Its voice, so she dropped them heavily against her thighs.

  The bloody scene disappeared and took her huntsman with it.

  Arms limp, Dania shambled toward the Mirror. She stopped a foot from It.

  “I’m cold,” she said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I am.”

  “So get the King to keep you warm.”

  Dania merely shook her head. She took great fistfuls of the cloak and wrapped herself tighter in it. As she did so, she let her eyes wander over the Mirror’s ornate frame. It was gilded oak, carved by some craftsman she had never seen and who was probably dead now. The top of the frame billowed into the King’s crest and contained a coronet of rubies.

  Why make a mirror beautiful? she wondered, reaching out to touch the frame. A mirror should be a plain thing, its very coarseness serving to augment the loveliness of whoever looked into it.

  She took her fingers back and examined them for dust.

  “Ask me,” the Mirror said, rather imperiously.

  “I asked you yesterday,” she reminded It. “I asked you this morning.”

  “Ask me.”

  Dania looked at her feet for a moment as though checking the security of the stitching on her silk slippers. The Mirror was patient, waiting for the moment when she raised her eyes. The moment came.

  “Who is the fairest in the land?” she asked her own lined, slump-shouldered reflection.

  “Take off your cloak,” the Mirror responded.

  She pushed the heavy thing off her shoulders and let it slip to her heels.

  “Take off your dress,” It said.

  “Fine,” she whispered. Her fingers, newly scrubbed and sore, worked dozens of fine, multifaceted buttons through tight buttonholes. The dress, too, fell with a heavy, fabric thump atop the cloak. She kicked back, sliding them away on the marble floor.

  There was nothing left now but her slippers, her knickers, and her corset. She took hold of her hair and pulled it around her shoulders, draping it on either side over the corset’s boning. She knew and dreaded what was coming.

  “Now the corset,” the Mirror said.

  “I can’t do the corset without my girl,” she told It.

  “I’ve seen you.”

  “It hurts.” She rubbed at her upper arm. “It feels like my shoulder will dislocate.”

  “Has it ever?”

  “Shit,” she whispered. She took several steps away from the Mirror and pushed her back against the wall. If she bent her elbow and twisted her arm sharply as though someone was trying to force a confession from her—like so—and then heaved her body back into the wall, her fingers could just manage to undo the lacing.

  “Uh,” Dania wheezed. She stretched her arm to its full length and circled her hand on the end of her wrist, clenched and opened her fingers. The corset joined the pile of apparel. She returned to her place before the Mirror.

  “Happy now?” she asked It. “What if someone comes in?”

  “Who’s coming in?” It returned. “The King’s barely touched you since you gave him a daughter. How many years has that been? Fourteen? Fifteen?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Fifteen years . . . Your skin never got its shape back, did it? Stretched out like an old wineskin.”

  Dania dropped her gaze to that portion of her reflection, the skin which sagged over the border of her knickers. She cupped her hands over it and felt its soft, formless sag. If she squeezed her fingers together, she could pinch it together, crumpling it around the stretch marks until it looked like an accordion.

  This done, she tested the depth of her navel with her finger. Too deep. Obscenely deep, really. Had it been so deep when she tested it this morning?

  “No point in worrying,” said the Mirror. “Another year or two, and you can cover it all up with your breasts.”

  She observed herself from head to toe. From the lines on her forehead to the hollowing around her eyes to the spreading of her formerly taut hips. There was not much left of the woman she once was.

  “I was beautiful once, wasn’t I?” she said softly.

  “You were the fairest in the land,” the Mirror said. “Now look at you. The polar opposite. If your daughter is a pure winter snow, you’re muddy sludge after the thaw. All squish and decay.”

/>   “Why do you say such cruel things to me?”

  “Why do you keep me hanging here?” It returned.

  She found she had no ready answer. The Mirror helped her:

  “Isn’t it because you know I’m honest? I won’t ever lie to you, Dania. I can’t. I can only show you what’s there. Not like the others. Not like your horny huntsman who knows what you want to hear.”

  “Oh, stop,” she said. But her tone was defeated, and so was her stance. She donned her dress once more, leaving the corset on the marble. Having fastened the final button, she collected her cloak and pulled it around her frame. Her dainty slippers whispered over the floor. The tapestry fell heavy against her shoulder as she slipped into the secret passage.

  There was someone she needed to see.

  2: Getelenna

  She was out of the castle before she remembered her traveling slippers. She should never have come out in good ones. Not because she would dredge them through the muddy street or tear the silken strands. For the passage-mouse pretending to be a Queen, there was no end to slippers. But suppose someone noticed her doing it—that was the danger. Her cloak was fine, but anyone might wear a fine cloak abroad in the night. Only a spendthrift queen with no regard to her shoes would wear such fine ones.

  Dania was too near the road to turn back now and gather the well-worn, dirt-besmirched pair she kept concealed beneath her feather bed. So she pulled the hood of her cloak a bit lower over her face and took small, quick steps, keeping the toes of her slippers concealed behind the cloak’s roomy, swishing hem.

  Dania met few passersby, anyway. Most people were indoors, having their simple dinners. A red sun was dipping behind the treetops in the thick, vast forest which ringed the land like a green ocean. It was in there that the massive boar had been shot with arrows to supply the bristles of her nailbrush. Blood spilled to beautify her fingers, and to what purpose?

  She slipped one hand from within her cloak. Even in the waning light, she could clearly make out the advancing age of her skin.

  Just before she reached the close gathering of cottages and houses, she left the road and walked toward the forest. Its border was closer near the town, less pruned and more wild than that which bordered the castle grounds.

  Wild grass clutched her cloak with nimble, dewy fingers as she followed the thready path. It entered the woods like a curved needle, and Dania pierced the border with it, sharp with purpose. She was not afraid of wolves. A rough, blue-eyed man had hunted them out. He’d lost two dogs and gained a series of scars on his bicep for his trouble. True, there were still the wild boars, and a goring from them was twice as bad as a wolf’s bite. Now that she was concealed by the cover of trees, she pushed her hood back and kept an ear out for the heavy rustle, clump, and snort of a pig. A thrill of fear climbed her chest with each false-alarm of quail flight, but she would not be put off her mission. The Mirror’s words, all too real, were more fearsome than the potential of tearing tusks.

  Getelenna’s hut might have been an especially thick, squat tree at first glance. It was cobbled together with mud and rough, wooden planks. Its roof, shingled with slivers of bark, was crawling with various fungi and mosses, rising to a sharp, turret-like peak. There were no windows, but a trail of smoke wound from a thin pipe of a chimney in the bark-shingled roof. Dania watched the smoke for a long moment, picking out patches of violet and brilliant orange amid the white billow. Hard to tell how much of the effect was owed to the sunset filtering through the clearing and how much to the old woman’s art.

  Dania stopped at the splintery door. Inside, a low, cracked voice hummed an arrhythmic chant. There was something lulling, benevolent about it, which gave the queen the impression that any wild creature straying near the hut would find its brutish nature dozing.

  Taking a fistful of cloak, she knocked.

  Inside, the humming ceased. The smoke ran ashy and colorless.

  “Who braves the tusk to come at dusk?” a low, cracked voice asked from within. “Speak, if you come in friendship.”

  “It’s me, Getelenna,” Dania called, rather annoyed with the process. “I’ll be quick, I need—”

  The door rattled and swung inward.

  “I need more,” Dania finished.

  Getelenna stood before her, stooped on her doorstep. As always, Dania was struck with a notion that the being before her was not quite human. Her frame might have been nothing more than a cross bent at its center and draped with numerous ratty shawls. Long, uncombed hair the color of clay straggled in yarn-like ropes from the top of a too-small head to swing in the air before a bowed torso. The old woman’s face was entirely concealed, and Dania would have thought her blind had her head not turned as though she perceived color and motion. Perhaps she only perceived scent. But no—that could not be, for the hut was heavy with scent and would have covered lesser odor.

  “Yes,” the old woman said pensively, directing her tangle of hair at Dania’s face. “Yes, I see that you do.”

  She shuffled back from the door. Dania entered and pulled it to behind her.

  “Oh, it’s stuffy,” said the queen. She almost removed her cloak and realized there was nowhere to put it down. The hut was a storage shed of magic art, full of hangings and tables laden with jars and dried, dead things. Over by the grate, where a cauldron was simmering above a wood fire, was the only resting place: a nest of forest detritus covered over in a cast-off shawl where Getelenna must have lain herself down to sleep when she rested. Dania merely fanned herself with each side of the cloak’s length.

  “Heat is cleansing,” Getelenna said. Hair and scarves swung like a multitude of legs carrying her across the room. “The body gives up bad things with its sweat. You could stand to sweat more, my dear Queen Dania, if you don’t mind an honest woman’s opinion.”

  Dania ran her fingers over her face. She lingered just below her eyes, pushing her fingertips gently over the ridge of bone she felt. The hollows felt deep enough to hold all the shadows in the forest.

  “If your potions worked, I wouldn’t need to sweat,” she said.

  Getelenna’s bowed form appeared to stiffen.

  “When applied properly, my potions work miracles,” Getelenna replied.

  “Really?” Dania demanded. She was getting huffy. The heat was heavy in her nose, and still she had not even broken a sweat. It was as if her body was fighting her, determined to hold onto the bad things. “Because I’ve been using them for a while now. First, you said I wasn’t applying them often enough. So I started applying them morning and night, never mind the smell.”

  “Scent of sandalwood and summer maidenhead never hurt anyone,” Getelenna opined.

  “All that happened is they ran out quicker. Then you said I needed to get aggressive,” Dania continued, ignoring her, “so I started with the internal concoction. Every morning before breakfast, and it makes me queasy, which is bad enough before my girl comes in to do up my corset. Then I get lightheaded, too. Now, be honest with me, Getelenna, has anything changed? Do I look any better than I did before?”

  She knew she didn’t. The Mirror was quick to point out counter-progress. Still, she waited, almost desirous of catching the old woman in a lie.

  “Time, my dear Queen,” Getelenna said. “Look. Come here, by the fire.”

  The old woman’s hands, clad in gloves devoid of fingertips, emerged from the mass of hair and shawls. With tremulous precision, she stripped off the gloves and tucked them inside her shawls. Holding her hands in the light of the fire, she bade Dania examine them.

  Dania sighed. She took hold of one of the woman’s hands and turned it, surpassing scrutiny, filled with envy and admiration.

  “They look wonderful,” she admitted. “You’re saying you use the potions yourself?”

  “Yes, dear Queen. But, as you know, I’m an old, old woman and have given them time.”

  Dania released her hands with a rueful purse of her lips.

  “How much time?” she asked.

/>   “It’s different for every individual,” Getelenna told her. She wandered slowly, shuffling away, gathering a jar from her shelf, pausing to add a scoop of dried things and swish the contents. “It depends on your structure, for one thing—physical and internal. Then, of course, if one is resistant to the effects—”

  “Resistant!” Dania blurted. “I’m desperate for it to work! Did you not hear me just now, what I go through every morning—”

  “But there, you see,” Getelenna interrupted. “You can’t be too eager, either. If you want it too badly, then your energy is used up that way, and the potions need your energy to revitalize. My spells give them life, but they do age—as we all do.”

  Dania could not help but feel the old woman added this last part while directing the tangle of matted hair toward her. The queen ran her fingers over the hollows beneath her eyes again, and then over the patch of loose skin where her queenly white throat joined her chin.

  “Just give me the things, then,” Dania said.

  “Things? My Queen, I plead with you . . . Respect me in my humility, as I respect you in your grandeur. If not me, then my art. It has life.”

  “The potions, then, Getelenna. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Here.” The old woman placed the jar beside another within a hand-woven basket. She selected a small vial from a shelf, and then paused. She added another. “A dose at night might hasten the effects of the internal concoction.”

  “Oh, no,” Dania groaned. “I told you, it makes me queasy. I won’t sleep.”

  “But you must sleep,” Getelenna said. “Your energy will deplete entirely if you don’t.”

  “So maybe I shouldn’t take it at night.”

  “Or, you might chew a sprig of this,” Getelenna advised. She pulled a bunch of dried twigs from the hangings overhead, wrapped them in a bit of string, and placed them in the basket.

  “What is it?”

  “If I told you that, you might be tempted to gather it yourself. What would I do if you picked the wrong thing and made yourself ill? For my dear Queen’s sake, I keep my secrets. Here you are.”