Chapter 2 ; Everything’s gone, but the pain carries on
Perhaps she was now far enough… Maybe she could stop running.
Red Riding Hood took the deepest breath she ever had in her entire life and sat on the nearest rock she could find in the forest. It was getting dark. Red glanced at the dried blood on her hands. She didn’t regret what she’d done. Not even one bit. She’d done it to protect the people she loved.
But that didn’t stop her from breaking into tears in the dark forest.
Snow White had wandered around the woods for weeks. She knew the forest by heart, since she had gone there often when she was a child, but it was much larger than she remembered. It covered at least three Kingdoms. But Snow didn’t care. As long as she was far away from her sister’s fury, she was okay.
But what had become of Charming? Or his father? Would Becca really have thrown them out, or could it be that Becca was walking down the aisle right now to marry Charming?
As she walked, she didn’t even notice she stumbled onto something, and tripped and fell, face first, to the ground.
“Hey, watch it, princess!” she heard a cranky voice, and looked up to see a very short man staring down at her.
“I’m… sorry? Sorry, I didn’t notice you”, Snow said as she stumbled up. She was a bit taller than the man, standing up. And Snow wasn’t that tall. The man was a dwarf.
“You didn’t notice me? Well, maybe you should start watching the road when you walk, lady!” the man groaned, and was about to be on his way, but Snow called him back by asking: “What’s your name?”
“What’s it to you?” the man asked as he turned around.
“Oh, come on”, Snow chuckled.
“Grumpy.”
“Grumpy?” Snow smiled just a little. Who gets named Grumpy?
“Yeah. Grumpy. How about you, then?”
“Snow White.” Snow regretted it as soon as she’d said it. What if Becca had sent her men looking for her?
Grumpy looked shocked for a split second, and then he took his bag from his shoulders and opened it, and as Snow waited, he went through the stuff in it, and then fetched a piece of paper and handed it to Snow.
Snow’s eyes widened as she looked at the paper. It was a drawing of her face, with the text: “Wanted: Snow White” above. But no reason why below.
“What is this?”
“The Queen’s men were passing them around all over the villages”, Grumpy said and observed Snow’s reactions.
“The Queen? My Stepmother?” Snow kept staring at the paper.
“Aren’t you her sister?”
“What?” Snow, once again, looked up quickly from the paper.
“The Queen… Oh, you really don’t know, do you? How long have you been out here alone?” Grumpy asked.
“Days, weeks”, Snow said as she handed the paper back to Grumpy. “What has happened?”
“I think you better come with me”, Grumpy hesitated, then gestured for her to follow him. As Snow knew she had no place to go, the curiosity got the best of her and she followed.
Red was walking through the forest. It was the middle of the day, so the sun was up high. She was holding the knife she had used just a few weeks ago. You could still see small traces of blood on it.
Her father had taught her how to walk in the woods without getting hurt, how to be quick and smarter than her enemies.
Red suddenly remembered the one sunny day, just like this one, when she’d been just a little girl. But it hadn’t been just an ordinary day. That was the day Red had walked in on her grandmother doing sorcery. She remembered how her dear grandmother had been crouching over an old, dusty book. How she’d had ingredients around her on the table, and how she had a cattle burning. Red didn’t remember how she’d felt when she’d seen this. Maybe she had thought it was just her grandmother cooking dinner. Yes. It had been the words coming out of her mouth that had given her grandmother away. She’d whispered words Red had never heard her entire life, and once her grandmother noticed her presence, that was the first time Red remembered feeling genuinely afraid for her life.
“Snow, I would like you to meet my family. Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, meet Snow White”, Grumpy led Snow into his small home. And in the kitchen were all standing around a table, 6 other dwarfs much like Grumpy.
“Hello”, Snow smiled at them.
“Who is this?” Doc asked suspiciously.
“This is Snow White. I met her in the forest.”
“The Snow White?” Dopey asked in awe.
“I’m famous now?” Snow kept smiling, even though she started to question her judgment even more every second.
“Well, Your Highness, what with the tragedy in your family-“Doc started.
“What tragedy? Are you talking about my father’s death?”
“No, no, no. We’re talking about… well, you know…” Sneezy muttered before sneezing. After doing so he looked at Snow again. “Where have you been for the last month?”
Snow said nothing. For all she knew, they could be working for her Stepmother and Becca.
“Snow, we’re not going to hurt you. We are against your sister”, Grumpy assured her.
“What are you talking about? Will someone just tell me what happened?” Snow couldn’t hold her anger any more.
“Certainly, certainly... Sit down”, Doc gestured at one of the empty chairs, and Snow sat down, and Grumpy sat next to her.
“It all started when King Robert and his son came to your Court. You were still there then, weren’t you?” Grumpy asked.
“Yes… How do you know all this?” Snow asked.
“We’ve been hearing it every time we go to the village to get supper. It’s the main subject these days, your Kingdom”, Sleepy said and yawned.
“Okay… What exactly happened?”
“We don’t know what got the king to change his mind, but the prince was set to marry you in the end, wasn’t he?”
“Charming. Yes”, Snow nodded and felt a sting of guilt at this. She shouldn’t have just left them there like that.
“Well, your sister got furious about that, we hear, and that’s when you went missing. Everyone thought you were either dead or captured. But that was before the Wanted-posters started to be handed out”, Grumpy explained.
Snow waited.
“Your disappearance was just the beginning. Your sister got so furious that she murdered King Robert to avenge his decision”, Doc said.
“What?” Snow gasped so loud that it even woke Sleepy up, who’d just fallen asleep. “Not Becca!”
“This is true, I’m afraid. We heard the Queen’s men bragging about it.”
Snow was still so confused, and now also shocked. “What happened then?”
“Well, that wasn’t all for your sister. I guess she wanted the crown so bad that she even murdered your stepmother for it”, Bashful said.
“Becca killed Stepmother?” Snow whispered under her breath. She couldn’t believe this. Becca, her wonderful big sister would do this? Snow’d always assumed that Becca’s attempt to kill her had just been a moment of anger. She’d always assumed she could one day return. “Oh my God”, Snow sobbed and buried her head in her hands.
The dwarfs waited silently for her to get over the shock.
“Charming”, Snow suddenly spoke out after a while.
“What?” Doc asked.
“Charming. What happened to Prince Charming?”
“We don’t know”, Happy said. Though he didn’t look so happy.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Snow asked angrily. “Haven’t you gotten all your gossips from those damn villages?”
“We don’t know. No one outside the castle knows. The Queen, your sister, I mean, hid that quite well. We suspect that he’s d-“
“Shh”, Grumpy interrupted Dopey. “He was her fiancé.”
“He wasn’t my fiancé”, Snow said. “He wasn’t. I left right after the engagement was represented. I never said yes.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s fi-“
“How could my sister do this?” Snow muttered and got up. She walked to the window and looked out. All she could see was the darkening sky and the trees. “Oh, Becca, what have you done?”
Becca was waltzing in her castle. Her cold, dark castle. And the worst part about it? She didn’t care. Becca was the Evil Queen now. There was no humanity left in her, and she didn’t care.
“Becca!” Eric called after her as she passed his chambers. As she was Queen now, she had invited him to live with her in the castle as her personal… Magician.
“Eric, dear, I’ve told you to call me Your Highness”, Becca said as she walked.
“What, like your Stepmother wanted?” Eric asked. He was the only one in the Kingdom who wasn’t afraid of her. Or who didn’t hate her.
Becca chuckled. “I’ve always loved the fact that you’re my very own conscience”; she said as she opened the door to the dungeons, and Eric followed.
“With all due respect, Your Highness”, Eric said with a slightly sarcastic tone, “I don’t think conscience can help you now.”
Becca smiled at this. “Yes, I believe you are correct.”
“Where are we going?” Eric asked as they entered the cold cell area.
“To visit my very special prisoner”, Becca said, and Eric needed not ask who she meant.
Even though Becca had not come to visit Charming herself even once, she’d made sure he got everything he wanted. And when Eric asked why, Becca answered: “So that he actually thinks he’s going to be alright before I give him the end he deserves.”
They reached Charming’s cell. They could see through the bars that he had not touched the food that had been brought to him. The guards brought food for the prisoners once a week. Perhaps Charming, unlike the other prisoners, was smart enough not to waste all the food at once.
He was sitting on his bed, if you could call it that. It was merely a bench with a blanket and a hard pillow.
“Prince Charming”, Becca called to get his attention. Charming turned to look at the visitors, but said nothing.
“I just wanted to come and see personally that you are treated correctly.”
“I am. Now please leave”, Charming said. He hated Becca with everything in him for what happened to his father.
“Well, I am surprised at this treatment. I thought you would have liked to know how my sister is doing.”
That worked, just as Becca had suspected. Charming looked up at her, got up from the bed and walked to stand right in front of Becca and Eric.
“Snow White?”
“You’re wasting your breath. None of my men have found her. She’s most likely lying dead in the woods somewhere”, Becca said coldly.
“Yeah, that’s what you’d want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Charming. But even better would be to deliver that faith to her myself. But you can’t have everything”, Becca smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’re heartless”, Charming said quietly.
“Finally catching up, are we?”
Charming chuckled darkly. “I can promise you this. I will get out of here, and I will avenge my father’s death. That is, if Snow doesn’t beat me to it. Because I can assure you, Your Highness, that your sister is not dead.”
Becca stayed silent for a little bit. As did Eric, but he observed her reaction. Then Becca broke into another heartless smile. “We’ll see about that”, and with that she started to walk back upstairs, and Eric had no choice but to follow her.
Charming watched them leave. But he had faith in everything he had just said. The next step now would be to get out of the cell…
Perhaps she was now far enough… Maybe she could stop running.
Red Riding Hood took the deepest breath she ever had in her entire life and sat on the nearest rock she could find in the forest. It was getting dark. Red glanced at the dried blood on her hands. She didn’t regret what she’d done. Not even one bit. She’d done it to protect the people she loved.
But that didn’t stop her from breaking into tears in the dark forest.
Snow White had wandered around the woods for weeks. She knew the forest by heart, since she had gone there often when she was a child, but it was much larger than she remembered. It covered at least three Kingdoms. But Snow didn’t care. As long as she was far away from her sister’s fury, she was okay.
But what had become of Charming? Or his father? Would Becca really have thrown them out, or could it be that Becca was walking down the aisle right now to marry Charming?
As she walked, she didn’t even notice she stumbled onto something, and tripped and fell, face first, to the ground.
“Hey, watch it, princess!” she heard a cranky voice, and looked up to see a very short man staring down at her.
“I’m… sorry? Sorry, I didn’t notice you”, Snow said as she stumbled up. She was a bit taller than the man, standing up. And Snow wasn’t that tall. The man was a dwarf.
“You didn’t notice me? Well, maybe you should start watching the road when you walk, lady!” the man groaned, and was about to be on his way, but Snow called him back by asking: “What’s your name?”
“What’s it to you?” the man asked as he turned around.
“Oh, come on”, Snow chuckled.
“Grumpy.”
“Grumpy?” Snow smiled just a little. Who gets named Grumpy?
“Yeah. Grumpy. How about you, then?”
“Snow White.” Snow regretted it as soon as she’d said it. What if Becca had sent her men looking for her?
Grumpy looked shocked for a split second, and then he took his bag from his shoulders and opened it, and as Snow waited, he went through the stuff in it, and then fetched a piece of paper and handed it to Snow.
Snow’s eyes widened as she looked at the paper. It was a drawing of her face, with the text: “Wanted: Snow White” above. But no reason why below.
“What is this?”
“The Queen’s men were passing them around all over the villages”, Grumpy said and observed Snow’s reactions.
“The Queen? My Stepmother?” Snow kept staring at the paper.
“Aren’t you her sister?”
“What?” Snow, once again, looked up quickly from the paper.
“The Queen… Oh, you really don’t know, do you? How long have you been out here alone?” Grumpy asked.
“Days, weeks”, Snow said as she handed the paper back to Grumpy. “What has happened?”
“I think you better come with me”, Grumpy hesitated, then gestured for her to follow him. As Snow knew she had no place to go, the curiosity got the best of her and she followed.
Red was walking through the forest. It was the middle of the day, so the sun was up high. She was holding the knife she had used just a few weeks ago. You could still see small traces of blood on it.
Her father had taught her how to walk in the woods without getting hurt, how to be quick and smarter than her enemies.
Red suddenly remembered the one sunny day, just like this one, when she’d been just a little girl. But it hadn’t been just an ordinary day. That was the day Red had walked in on her grandmother doing sorcery. She remembered how her dear grandmother had been crouching over an old, dusty book. How she’d had ingredients around her on the table, and how she had a cattle burning. Red didn’t remember how she’d felt when she’d seen this. Maybe she had thought it was just her grandmother cooking dinner. Yes. It had been the words coming out of her mouth that had given her grandmother away. She’d whispered words Red had never heard her entire life, and once her grandmother noticed her presence, that was the first time Red remembered feeling genuinely afraid for her life.
“Snow, I would like you to meet my family. Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, meet Snow White”, Grumpy led Snow into his small home. And in the kitchen were all standing around a table, 6 other dwarfs much like Grumpy.
“Hello”, Snow smiled at them.
“Who is this?” Doc asked suspiciously.
“This is Snow White. I met her in the forest.”
“The Snow White?” Dopey asked in awe.
“I’m famous now?” Snow kept smiling, even though she started to question her judgment even more every second.
“Well, Your Highness, what with the tragedy in your family-“Doc started.
“What tragedy? Are you talking about my father’s death?”
“No, no, no. We’re talking about… well, you know…” Sneezy muttered before sneezing. After doing so he looked at Snow again. “Where have you been for the last month?”
Snow said nothing. For all she knew, they could be working for her Stepmother and Becca.
“Snow, we’re not going to hurt you. We are against your sister”, Grumpy assured her.
“What are you talking about? Will someone just tell me what happened?” Snow couldn’t hold her anger any more.
“Certainly, certainly... Sit down”, Doc gestured at one of the empty chairs, and Snow sat down, and Grumpy sat next to her.
“It all started when King Robert and his son came to your Court. You were still there then, weren’t you?” Grumpy asked.
“Yes… How do you know all this?” Snow asked.
“We’ve been hearing it every time we go to the village to get supper. It’s the main subject these days, your Kingdom”, Sleepy said and yawned.
“Okay… What exactly happened?”
“We don’t know what got the king to change his mind, but the prince was set to marry you in the end, wasn’t he?”
“Charming. Yes”, Snow nodded and felt a sting of guilt at this. She shouldn’t have just left them there like that.
“Well, your sister got furious about that, we hear, and that’s when you went missing. Everyone thought you were either dead or captured. But that was before the Wanted-posters started to be handed out”, Grumpy explained.
Snow waited.
“Your disappearance was just the beginning. Your sister got so furious that she murdered King Robert to avenge his decision”, Doc said.
“What?” Snow gasped so loud that it even woke Sleepy up, who’d just fallen asleep. “Not Becca!”
“This is true, I’m afraid. We heard the Queen’s men bragging about it.”
Snow was still so confused, and now also shocked. “What happened then?”
“Well, that wasn’t all for your sister. I guess she wanted the crown so bad that she even murdered your stepmother for it”, Bashful said.
“Becca killed Stepmother?” Snow whispered under her breath. She couldn’t believe this. Becca, her wonderful big sister would do this? Snow’d always assumed that Becca’s attempt to kill her had just been a moment of anger. She’d always assumed she could one day return. “Oh my God”, Snow sobbed and buried her head in her hands.
The dwarfs waited silently for her to get over the shock.
“Charming”, Snow suddenly spoke out after a while.
“What?” Doc asked.
“Charming. What happened to Prince Charming?”
“We don’t know”, Happy said. Though he didn’t look so happy.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Snow asked angrily. “Haven’t you gotten all your gossips from those damn villages?”
“We don’t know. No one outside the castle knows. The Queen, your sister, I mean, hid that quite well. We suspect that he’s d-“
“Shh”, Grumpy interrupted Dopey. “He was her fiancé.”
“He wasn’t my fiancé”, Snow said. “He wasn’t. I left right after the engagement was represented. I never said yes.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s fi-“
“How could my sister do this?” Snow muttered and got up. She walked to the window and looked out. All she could see was the darkening sky and the trees. “Oh, Becca, what have you done?”
Becca was waltzing in her castle. Her cold, dark castle. And the worst part about it? She didn’t care. Becca was the Evil Queen now. There was no humanity left in her, and she didn’t care.
“Becca!” Eric called after her as she passed his chambers. As she was Queen now, she had invited him to live with her in the castle as her personal… Magician.
“Eric, dear, I’ve told you to call me Your Highness”, Becca said as she walked.
“What, like your Stepmother wanted?” Eric asked. He was the only one in the Kingdom who wasn’t afraid of her. Or who didn’t hate her.
Becca chuckled. “I’ve always loved the fact that you’re my very own conscience”; she said as she opened the door to the dungeons, and Eric followed.
“With all due respect, Your Highness”, Eric said with a slightly sarcastic tone, “I don’t think conscience can help you now.”
Becca smiled at this. “Yes, I believe you are correct.”
“Where are we going?” Eric asked as they entered the cold cell area.
“To visit my very special prisoner”, Becca said, and Eric needed not ask who she meant.
Even though Becca had not come to visit Charming herself even once, she’d made sure he got everything he wanted. And when Eric asked why, Becca answered: “So that he actually thinks he’s going to be alright before I give him the end he deserves.”
They reached Charming’s cell. They could see through the bars that he had not touched the food that had been brought to him. The guards brought food for the prisoners once a week. Perhaps Charming, unlike the other prisoners, was smart enough not to waste all the food at once.
He was sitting on his bed, if you could call it that. It was merely a bench with a blanket and a hard pillow.
“Prince Charming”, Becca called to get his attention. Charming turned to look at the visitors, but said nothing.
“I just wanted to come and see personally that you are treated correctly.”
“I am. Now please leave”, Charming said. He hated Becca with everything in him for what happened to his father.
“Well, I am surprised at this treatment. I thought you would have liked to know how my sister is doing.”
That worked, just as Becca had suspected. Charming looked up at her, got up from the bed and walked to stand right in front of Becca and Eric.
“Snow White?”
“You’re wasting your breath. None of my men have found her. She’s most likely lying dead in the woods somewhere”, Becca said coldly.
“Yeah, that’s what you’d want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Charming. But even better would be to deliver that faith to her myself. But you can’t have everything”, Becca smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’re heartless”, Charming said quietly.
“Finally catching up, are we?”
Charming chuckled darkly. “I can promise you this. I will get out of here, and I will avenge my father’s death. That is, if Snow doesn’t beat me to it. Because I can assure you, Your Highness, that your sister is not dead.”
Becca stayed silent for a little bit. As did Eric, but he observed her reaction. Then Becca broke into another heartless smile. “We’ll see about that”, and with that she started to walk back upstairs, and Eric had no choice but to follow her.
Charming watched them leave. But he had faith in everything he had just said. The next step now would be to get out of the cell…
Chapter 2 ; Everything’s gone, but the pain carries on
Perhaps she was now far enough… Maybe she could stop running.
Red Riding Hood took the deepest breath she ever had in her entire life and sat on the nearest rock she could find in the forest. It was getting dark. Red glanced at the dried blood on her hands. She didn’t regret what she’d done. Not even one bit. She’d done it to protect the people she loved.
But that didn’t stop her from breaking into tears in the dark forest.
Snow White had wandered around the woods for weeks. She knew the forest by heart, since she had gone there often when she was a child, but it was much larger than she remembered. It covered at least three Kingdoms. But Snow didn’t care. As long as she was far away from her sister’s fury, she was okay.
But what had become of Charming? Or his father? Would Becca really have thrown them out, or could it be that Becca was walking down the aisle right now to marry Charming?
As she walked, she didn’t even notice she stumbled onto something, and tripped and fell, face first, to the ground.
“Hey, watch it, princess!” she heard a cranky voice, and looked up to see a very short man staring down at her.
“I’m… sorry? Sorry, I didn’t notice you”, Snow said as she stumbled up. She was a bit taller than the man, standing up. And Snow wasn’t that tall. The man was a dwarf.
“You didn’t notice me? Well, maybe you should start watching the road when you walk, lady!” the man groaned, and was about to be on his way, but Snow called him back by asking: “What’s your name?”
“What’s it to you?” the man asked as he turned around.
“Oh, come on”, Snow chuckled.
“Grumpy.”
“Grumpy?” Snow smiled just a little. Who gets named Grumpy?
“Yeah. Grumpy. How about you, then?”
“Snow White.” Snow regretted it as soon as she’d said it. What if Becca had sent her men looking for her?
Grumpy looked shocked for a split second, and then he took his bag from his shoulders and opened it, and as Snow waited, he went through the stuff in it, and then fetched a piece of paper and handed it to Snow.
Snow’s eyes widened as she looked at the paper. It was a drawing of her face, with the text: “Wanted: Snow White” above. But no reason why below.
“What is this?”
“The Queen’s men were passing them around all over the villages”, Grumpy said and observed Snow’s reactions.
“The Queen? My Stepmother?” Snow kept staring at the paper.
“Aren’t you her sister?”
“What?” Snow, once again, looked up quickly from the paper.
“The Queen… Oh, you really don’t know, do you? How long have you been out here alone?” Grumpy asked.
“Days, weeks”, Snow said as she handed the paper back to Grumpy. “What has happened?”
“I think you better come with me”, Grumpy hesitated, then gestured for her to follow him. As Snow knew she had no place to go, the curiosity got the best of her and she followed.
Red was walking through the forest. It was the middle of the day, so the sun was up high. She was holding the knife she had used just a few weeks ago. You could still see small traces of blood on it.
Her father had taught her how to walk in the woods without getting hurt, how to be quick and smarter than her enemies.
Red suddenly remembered the one sunny day, just like this one, when she’d been just a little girl. But it hadn’t been just an ordinary day. That was the day Red had walked in on her grandmother doing sorcery. She remembered how her dear grandmother had been crouching over an old, dusty book. How she’d had ingredients around her on the table, and how she had a cattle burning. Red didn’t remember how she’d felt when she’d seen this. Maybe she had thought it was just her grandmother cooking dinner. Yes. It had been the words coming out of her mouth that had given her grandmother away. She’d whispered words Red had never heard her entire life, and once her grandmother noticed her presence, that was the first time Red remembered feeling genuinely afraid for her life.
“Snow, I would like you to meet my family. Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, meet Snow White”, Grumpy led Snow into his small home. And in the kitchen were all standing around a table, 6 other dwarfs much like Grumpy.
“Hello”, Snow smiled at them.
“Who is this?” Doc asked suspiciously.
“This is Snow White. I met her in the forest.”
“The Snow White?” Dopey asked in awe.
“I’m famous now?” Snow kept smiling, even though she started to question her judgment even more every second.
“Well, Your Highness, what with the tragedy in your family-“Doc started.
“What tragedy? Are you talking about my father’s death?”
“No, no, no. We’re talking about… well, you know…” Sneezy muttered before sneezing. After doing so he looked at Snow again. “Where have you been for the last month?”
Snow said nothing. For all she knew, they could be working for her Stepmother and Becca.
“Snow, we’re not going to hurt you. We are against your sister”, Grumpy assured her.
“What are you talking about? Will someone just tell me what happened?” Snow couldn’t hold her anger any more.
“Certainly, certainly... Sit down”, Doc gestured at one of the empty chairs, and Snow sat down, and Grumpy sat next to her.
“It all started when King Robert and his son came to your Court. You were still there then, weren’t you?” Grumpy asked.
“Yes… How do you know all this?” Snow asked.
“We’ve been hearing it every time we go to the village to get supper. It’s the main subject these days, your Kingdom”, Sleepy said and yawned.
“Okay… What exactly happened?”
“We don’t know what got the king to change his mind, but the prince was set to marry you in the end, wasn’t he?”
“Charming. Yes”, Snow nodded and felt a sting of guilt at this. She shouldn’t have just left them there like that.
“Well, your sister got furious about that, we hear, and that’s when you went missing. Everyone thought you were either dead or captured. But that was before the Wanted-posters started to be handed out”, Grumpy explained.
Snow waited.
“Your disappearance was just the beginning. Your sister got so furious that she murdered King Robert to avenge his decision”, Doc said.
“What?” Snow gasped so loud that it even woke Sleepy up, who’d just fallen asleep. “Not Becca!”
“This is true, I’m afraid. We heard the Queen’s men bragging about it.”
Snow was still so confused, and now also shocked. “What happened then?”
“Well, that wasn’t all for your sister. I guess she wanted the crown so bad that she even murdered your stepmother for it”, Bashful said.
“Becca killed Stepmother?” Snow whispered under her breath. She couldn’t believe this. Becca, her wonderful big sister would do this? Snow’d always assumed that Becca’s attempt to kill her had just been a moment of anger. She’d always assumed she could one day return. “Oh my God”, Snow sobbed and buried her head in her hands.
The dwarfs waited silently for her to get over the shock.
“Charming”, Snow suddenly spoke out after a while.
“What?” Doc asked.
“Charming. What happened to Prince Charming?”
“We don’t know”, Happy said. Though he didn’t look so happy.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Snow asked angrily. “Haven’t you gotten all your gossips from those damn villages?”
“We don’t know. No one outside the castle knows. The Queen, your sister, I mean, hid that quite well. We suspect that he’s d-“
“Shh”, Grumpy interrupted Dopey. “He was her fiancé.”
“He wasn’t my fiancé”, Snow said. “He wasn’t. I left right after the engagement was represented. I never said yes.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s fi-“
“How could my sister do this?” Snow muttered and got up. She walked to the window and looked out. All she could see was the darkening sky and the trees. “Oh, Becca, what have you done?”
Becca was waltzing in her castle. Her cold, dark castle. And the worst part about it? She didn’t care. Becca was the Evil Queen now. There was no humanity left in her, and she didn’t care.
“Becca!” Eric called after her as she passed his chambers. As she was Queen now, she had invited him to live with her in the castle as her personal… Magician.
“Eric, dear, I’ve told you to call me Your Highness”, Becca said as she walked.
“What, like your Stepmother wanted?” Eric asked. He was the only one in the Kingdom who wasn’t afraid of her. Or who didn’t hate her.
Becca chuckled. “I’ve always loved the fact that you’re my very own conscience”; she said as she opened the door to the dungeons, and Eric followed.
“With all due respect, Your Highness”, Eric said with a slightly sarcastic tone, “I don’t think conscience can help you now.”
Becca smiled at this. “Yes, I believe you are correct.”
“Where are we going?” Eric asked as they entered the cold cell area.
“To visit my very special prisoner”, Becca said, and Eric needed not ask who she meant.
Even though Becca had not come to visit Charming herself even once, she’d made sure he got everything he wanted. And when Eric asked why, Becca answered: “So that he actually thinks he’s going to be alright before I give him the end he deserves.”
They reached Charming’s cell. They could see through the bars that he had not touched the food that had been brought to him. The guards brought food for the prisoners once a week. Perhaps Charming, unlike the other prisoners, was smart enough not to waste all the food at once.
He was sitting on his bed, if you could call it that. It was merely a bench with a blanket and a hard pillow.
“Prince Charming”, Becca called to get his attention. Charming turned to look at the visitors, but said nothing.
“I just wanted to come and see personally that you are treated correctly.”
“I am. Now please leave”, Charming said. He hated Becca with everything in him for what happened to his father.
“Well, I am surprised at this treatment. I thought you would have liked to know how my sister is doing.”
That worked, just as Becca had suspected. Charming looked up at her, got up from the bed and walked to stand right in front of Becca and Eric.
“Snow White?”
“You’re wasting your breath. None of my men have found her. She’s most likely lying dead in the woods somewhere”, Becca said coldly.
“Yeah, that’s what you’d want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Charming. But even better would be to deliver that faith to her myself. But you can’t have everything”, Becca smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’re heartless”, Charming said quietly.
“Finally catching up, are we?”
Charming chuckled darkly. “I can promise you this. I will get out of here, and I will avenge my father’s death. That is, if Snow doesn’t beat me to it. Because I can assure you, Your Highness, that your sister is not dead.”
Becca stayed silent for a little bit. As did Eric, but he observed her reaction. Then Becca broke into another heartless smile. “We’ll see about that”, and with that she started to walk back upstairs, and Eric had no choice but to follow her.
Charming watched them leave. But he had faith in everything he had just said. The next step now would be to get out of the cell…
Perhaps she was now far enough… Maybe she could stop running.
Red Riding Hood took the deepest breath she ever had in her entire life and sat on the nearest rock she could find in the forest. It was getting dark. Red glanced at the dried blood on her hands. She didn’t regret what she’d done. Not even one bit. She’d done it to protect the people she loved.
But that didn’t stop her from breaking into tears in the dark forest.
Snow White had wandered around the woods for weeks. She knew the forest by heart, since she had gone there often when she was a child, but it was much larger than she remembered. It covered at least three Kingdoms. But Snow didn’t care. As long as she was far away from her sister’s fury, she was okay.
But what had become of Charming? Or his father? Would Becca really have thrown them out, or could it be that Becca was walking down the aisle right now to marry Charming?
As she walked, she didn’t even notice she stumbled onto something, and tripped and fell, face first, to the ground.
“Hey, watch it, princess!” she heard a cranky voice, and looked up to see a very short man staring down at her.
“I’m… sorry? Sorry, I didn’t notice you”, Snow said as she stumbled up. She was a bit taller than the man, standing up. And Snow wasn’t that tall. The man was a dwarf.
“You didn’t notice me? Well, maybe you should start watching the road when you walk, lady!” the man groaned, and was about to be on his way, but Snow called him back by asking: “What’s your name?”
“What’s it to you?” the man asked as he turned around.
“Oh, come on”, Snow chuckled.
“Grumpy.”
“Grumpy?” Snow smiled just a little. Who gets named Grumpy?
“Yeah. Grumpy. How about you, then?”
“Snow White.” Snow regretted it as soon as she’d said it. What if Becca had sent her men looking for her?
Grumpy looked shocked for a split second, and then he took his bag from his shoulders and opened it, and as Snow waited, he went through the stuff in it, and then fetched a piece of paper and handed it to Snow.
Snow’s eyes widened as she looked at the paper. It was a drawing of her face, with the text: “Wanted: Snow White” above. But no reason why below.
“What is this?”
“The Queen’s men were passing them around all over the villages”, Grumpy said and observed Snow’s reactions.
“The Queen? My Stepmother?” Snow kept staring at the paper.
“Aren’t you her sister?”
“What?” Snow, once again, looked up quickly from the paper.
“The Queen… Oh, you really don’t know, do you? How long have you been out here alone?” Grumpy asked.
“Days, weeks”, Snow said as she handed the paper back to Grumpy. “What has happened?”
“I think you better come with me”, Grumpy hesitated, then gestured for her to follow him. As Snow knew she had no place to go, the curiosity got the best of her and she followed.
Red was walking through the forest. It was the middle of the day, so the sun was up high. She was holding the knife she had used just a few weeks ago. You could still see small traces of blood on it.
Her father had taught her how to walk in the woods without getting hurt, how to be quick and smarter than her enemies.
Red suddenly remembered the one sunny day, just like this one, when she’d been just a little girl. But it hadn’t been just an ordinary day. That was the day Red had walked in on her grandmother doing sorcery. She remembered how her dear grandmother had been crouching over an old, dusty book. How she’d had ingredients around her on the table, and how she had a cattle burning. Red didn’t remember how she’d felt when she’d seen this. Maybe she had thought it was just her grandmother cooking dinner. Yes. It had been the words coming out of her mouth that had given her grandmother away. She’d whispered words Red had never heard her entire life, and once her grandmother noticed her presence, that was the first time Red remembered feeling genuinely afraid for her life.
“Snow, I would like you to meet my family. Doc, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Sneezy, Dopey, meet Snow White”, Grumpy led Snow into his small home. And in the kitchen were all standing around a table, 6 other dwarfs much like Grumpy.
“Hello”, Snow smiled at them.
“Who is this?” Doc asked suspiciously.
“This is Snow White. I met her in the forest.”
“The Snow White?” Dopey asked in awe.
“I’m famous now?” Snow kept smiling, even though she started to question her judgment even more every second.
“Well, Your Highness, what with the tragedy in your family-“Doc started.
“What tragedy? Are you talking about my father’s death?”
“No, no, no. We’re talking about… well, you know…” Sneezy muttered before sneezing. After doing so he looked at Snow again. “Where have you been for the last month?”
Snow said nothing. For all she knew, they could be working for her Stepmother and Becca.
“Snow, we’re not going to hurt you. We are against your sister”, Grumpy assured her.
“What are you talking about? Will someone just tell me what happened?” Snow couldn’t hold her anger any more.
“Certainly, certainly... Sit down”, Doc gestured at one of the empty chairs, and Snow sat down, and Grumpy sat next to her.
“It all started when King Robert and his son came to your Court. You were still there then, weren’t you?” Grumpy asked.
“Yes… How do you know all this?” Snow asked.
“We’ve been hearing it every time we go to the village to get supper. It’s the main subject these days, your Kingdom”, Sleepy said and yawned.
“Okay… What exactly happened?”
“We don’t know what got the king to change his mind, but the prince was set to marry you in the end, wasn’t he?”
“Charming. Yes”, Snow nodded and felt a sting of guilt at this. She shouldn’t have just left them there like that.
“Well, your sister got furious about that, we hear, and that’s when you went missing. Everyone thought you were either dead or captured. But that was before the Wanted-posters started to be handed out”, Grumpy explained.
Snow waited.
“Your disappearance was just the beginning. Your sister got so furious that she murdered King Robert to avenge his decision”, Doc said.
“What?” Snow gasped so loud that it even woke Sleepy up, who’d just fallen asleep. “Not Becca!”
“This is true, I’m afraid. We heard the Queen’s men bragging about it.”
Snow was still so confused, and now also shocked. “What happened then?”
“Well, that wasn’t all for your sister. I guess she wanted the crown so bad that she even murdered your stepmother for it”, Bashful said.
“Becca killed Stepmother?” Snow whispered under her breath. She couldn’t believe this. Becca, her wonderful big sister would do this? Snow’d always assumed that Becca’s attempt to kill her had just been a moment of anger. She’d always assumed she could one day return. “Oh my God”, Snow sobbed and buried her head in her hands.
The dwarfs waited silently for her to get over the shock.
“Charming”, Snow suddenly spoke out after a while.
“What?” Doc asked.
“Charming. What happened to Prince Charming?”
“We don’t know”, Happy said. Though he didn’t look so happy.
“What do you mean you don’t know?” Snow asked angrily. “Haven’t you gotten all your gossips from those damn villages?”
“We don’t know. No one outside the castle knows. The Queen, your sister, I mean, hid that quite well. We suspect that he’s d-“
“Shh”, Grumpy interrupted Dopey. “He was her fiancé.”
“He wasn’t my fiancé”, Snow said. “He wasn’t. I left right after the engagement was represented. I never said yes.”
“Well, I’m sure he’s fi-“
“How could my sister do this?” Snow muttered and got up. She walked to the window and looked out. All she could see was the darkening sky and the trees. “Oh, Becca, what have you done?”
Becca was waltzing in her castle. Her cold, dark castle. And the worst part about it? She didn’t care. Becca was the Evil Queen now. There was no humanity left in her, and she didn’t care.
“Becca!” Eric called after her as she passed his chambers. As she was Queen now, she had invited him to live with her in the castle as her personal… Magician.
“Eric, dear, I’ve told you to call me Your Highness”, Becca said as she walked.
“What, like your Stepmother wanted?” Eric asked. He was the only one in the Kingdom who wasn’t afraid of her. Or who didn’t hate her.
Becca chuckled. “I’ve always loved the fact that you’re my very own conscience”; she said as she opened the door to the dungeons, and Eric followed.
“With all due respect, Your Highness”, Eric said with a slightly sarcastic tone, “I don’t think conscience can help you now.”
Becca smiled at this. “Yes, I believe you are correct.”
“Where are we going?” Eric asked as they entered the cold cell area.
“To visit my very special prisoner”, Becca said, and Eric needed not ask who she meant.
Even though Becca had not come to visit Charming herself even once, she’d made sure he got everything he wanted. And when Eric asked why, Becca answered: “So that he actually thinks he’s going to be alright before I give him the end he deserves.”
They reached Charming’s cell. They could see through the bars that he had not touched the food that had been brought to him. The guards brought food for the prisoners once a week. Perhaps Charming, unlike the other prisoners, was smart enough not to waste all the food at once.
He was sitting on his bed, if you could call it that. It was merely a bench with a blanket and a hard pillow.
“Prince Charming”, Becca called to get his attention. Charming turned to look at the visitors, but said nothing.
“I just wanted to come and see personally that you are treated correctly.”
“I am. Now please leave”, Charming said. He hated Becca with everything in him for what happened to his father.
“Well, I am surprised at this treatment. I thought you would have liked to know how my sister is doing.”
That worked, just as Becca had suspected. Charming looked up at her, got up from the bed and walked to stand right in front of Becca and Eric.
“Snow White?”
“You’re wasting your breath. None of my men have found her. She’s most likely lying dead in the woods somewhere”, Becca said coldly.
“Yeah, that’s what you’d want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is, Charming. But even better would be to deliver that faith to her myself. But you can’t have everything”, Becca smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“You’re heartless”, Charming said quietly.
“Finally catching up, are we?”
Charming chuckled darkly. “I can promise you this. I will get out of here, and I will avenge my father’s death. That is, if Snow doesn’t beat me to it. Because I can assure you, Your Highness, that your sister is not dead.”
Becca stayed silent for a little bit. As did Eric, but he observed her reaction. Then Becca broke into another heartless smile. “We’ll see about that”, and with that she started to walk back upstairs, and Eric had no choice but to follow her.
Charming watched them leave. But he had faith in everything he had just said. The next step now would be to get out of the cell…