They called her Snow (1,189 words)
The branches rip at her dress, her hair, the delicate skin of her hands, yet she does not feel the tearing.
Then, the cottage, a small thing so worn it seemed part of the underbrush. The door was rotted, giving way with a soft push, and the room smelled of forests, vines tangled over the furniture.
She tore them away, ripping more streaks into her palms, revealing once well-varnished wood and a mattress on the bed, eaten by moths and time. It had padding enough, so she crawled onto it, broke the skeletons of mice embedded within and rested her head.
They called her Snow, she remembers, with hair so dark and skin so white and lips as red as blood, like the shadows in the corners and the smears on her hands. Contradictions, pieces that shouldn’t have fit, but they did (like a painting, though she looked in the mirror and saw only jagged edges).
Her father had been a king, but he was dead, like all things came to be, like her mother. (hair so white and skin so grey and lips as blue as the sky). The mother-who-was-not had cried and fainted, a vision of mourning.
Snow did not cry, but stood silent and solemn, and people whispered that she was drugged, magicked, not herself to hide the grief. Oh, but she was, and thick white flakes fell onto her lashes, for when you make a daughter of only three facets things tend to be left out.
(Maybe if her mother had said a heart as fair as a spring day there would have been more love in little Snow.)
The mother-who-was-not became hard with a lack of love, for the king had been like summer and his daughter was only winter. She had served the girl a boar’s heart, red and raw, because the witch had said. Eating hearts and having one were different, though, and still Snow blinked her lush dark lashes and felt nothing.
Eventually, it came to be that Snow (like all little girls) became a woman, blood darker than her lips thick on her thighs. She stood in her room and waited for the mother-who-was-not to come, letting the blood drip like shame onto the carpet.
She should have married then, sent off to bear heirs and sit on a throne like a prize, but the mother-who-was-not saw beauty where there should not have been, and was afraid of it. Her hard heart became jealous, for the people called her most beautiful, even in grief, and she would not lose that last thing to a child with no heart.
The question to answer, of course, was if Snow truly did have an unused heart, or if instead there was a hollow place. So the mother-who-was-not asked her huntsman for proof, the same huntsman who had brought the boar’s heart, and she gave him an ebony box to be filled.
Her huntsman had seen little Snow grow beautiful, and he loved her for it, so in the middle of the forest he bid her to run from him, and she blinked her lashes and nodded (she felt no love but did not lack a mind).
So Snow ran, and did not feel the tearing, or the bones of mice that broke beneath her body on the mattress.
When she woke, the light was orange and she was hungry, but it would do no good to be lost in the forest again at night, so she closed her eyes and let the hunger lull her back asleep.
The next morning it was dim, it seemed, like only the brightest sunbeams had dared to reach into the trees, and even then they could not light the darkest places.
She went into the forest, but did not stray far to find her food; nor did she need to, for it was summer and the bushes teemed with berries. Birds picked at the food until Snow shooed them off to get her own feast.
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The little cottage became like a home, but the vines stayed, for her palms were still raw and crossed with lines (palms and lips as red as blood). She could open the windows, though, and would sit on the bed and let the breeze play in her hair.
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She fought the birds for berries.
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When her palms had healed, and she could tear away the vines properly from their grip on the floor, a man came.
He had an axe and a wolf-skin on his shoulders, and questioned why a woman was in his cabin. She was taught to bow, to speak courtesies, but there was no use for them here.
I am a little wolf-girl, and this is my den.
Snow sat in the chair still covered with vines, like a queen on a throne.
No, for I am the wolf-hunter, and should kill little wolf-girls like you.
And she looked him in the eye, and he saw that where there had been no heart a wild thing was growing, bound no longer by stone walls. It did not frighten him, not yet, for it was a pup of a wolf in her heart, with pup teeth and jaws.
They shared dinner that night.
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He asked her why she was in his home, and she said she had killed her mother (at birth). There was only a nod, and the wolf-hunter went back to carving his stick, as if he could smell the lie.
That made her angry, that she did not seem the type to kill. The mother-who-was-not had tried, and the huntsman could not, and did that not seem to prove her capable?
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Snow grew into a creature of bough and light, dirt and vines, and her wolf-hunter was her claim. She did not mark her claim by piss, like common creatures, but with scratches and bites. A woman with a heart might have fallen in love, but Snow did not need a heart to fuck.
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The mother-who-was-not went riding on her black stallion one fall day, the huntsman as her guide.
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The wolf-hunter came back to the cottage and told Snow of a queen riding towards, and she smiled as she reached for the small cupboard.
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An orphan girl with a basket of apples stood in the middle of the road, face obscured under her wolf-skin cloak. The huntsman had ridden on to relieve himself.
An apple for your majesty?
The mother-who-was-not did so love apples, and had a heart for orphans (when they were not her own), so she tossed a coin to the cloaked girl and took the best-looking of the basket.
It was juicy, and sweet, and the queen swallowed in order to ask the girl where her orchard was, so that she could pick more, but the girl was gone, and instead a ghost.
And the mother-who-was-not then felt the poison wrap its way around her heart, and Snow smiled, the heartless smile of a wolf with fangs.
The huntsman rode back to a face so grey and eyes so scared and apple as red as blood.