Snow White - Little Red Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

            My stepmother took no more notice of my traveling outside the palace than she had of my isolation.  I waited for some sort of retribution after my day away, but neither blessing nor cursing of my actions came.

            The same girl who had woken me on the morning of my birthday, Abigail, came to me one afternoon later in the week, bearing a lovely dress of sage-and-forest green.  I gawked at it—I had seen no beautiful clothing in so long—and froze, astonished, when she offered it to me.  She misinterpreted my failure to take it from her, not realizing that I was paralyzed by my surprise.

            “Of course you’ll want to wash before you dress,” she said in a rush.  “Would you like assistance?  Reaching your own back can be such a bear.”

            I found my voice at last.

            “That’s for me?”  It came out in almost a whisper.

            “Of course, silly!”  She chortled briefly, then stopped abruptly.  “Princess.”

            “Please,” I said, “there’s no need for my title.”  The words had a bitter edge that startled me.  Abigail nodded.

            “Oh yes, Princess, pardon me, but there is.”  She gazed intently at me.  Uncomfortable, I looked down at the dress.  It was pristine.  Looking at my filthy hands, I addressed the girl.

            “Help washing would be nice,” I said.  Abigail smiled.  “What is this all for?”  I inquired.

            “Oh, didn’t I tell you?  Another town wishes to have you visit.  They sent a missive.”

            “Why?”

            “Well, how else would we have known that they wanted to see you?”  I looked at her, confused for a moment.

            “Oh,” I said, comprehension breaking through.  “No.  Why do they want to see me?”

            “You’re the Princess,” she said matter-of-factly.  I nodded as if this answer explained anything.

            This town was further from the palace than the previous one, and my rump was already sore from the ride I had taken earlier in the week.  Still, the surroundings were so beautiful that I endured my soreness with a good will.  I was getting better at riding, I thought—I could focus on more things as we rode slowly past them.  I was still stunned by the lovely simplicity of things: trees, grass, houses, and even insects flying nearby.  The sounds were at times overwhelming, but in a good way.

            Abigail had opted to ride along on this journey, and she chattered to me the whole way.  I said little, nodding when she paused.  This must have been all that she expected, for she did not try to elicit responses from me often.  Instead, she answered my unasked questions.

            “The people have been preparing for your visit for weeks,” she told me confidentially.  “Your birthday, your coming-of-age, has stirred up quite a bit of excitement among the common folk.  They requested your visit through the Queen first, but when they heard nothing, they appealed to the staff.  Everyone knows that the Queen has treated you—“ she glanced around nervously, dropping her voice to a whisper.  “—ambominably.”

            “She’s not the Queen,” I replied, my tone even.  “She hasn’t earned the name.”  Abigail looked sideways at me.

            “Then who is she?”

            “Stepmother.”  The girl nodded thoughtfully, quiet for the first time in many minutes.

            “Are you the Queen, then?”

            “Certainly not.”

            “Then who are you?”

            “I don’t know yet.”

            “How can you not know?”

            “I haven’t thought about it.  Not in a very long time.”

            Abigail continued to look at me, curiosity in her eyes, after I made this comment, but said nothing more about it, turning the conversation instead to the relationships among palace servants whose names I had never heard.

            So it was that the shape of my name, of Snow White, began to change.  I still cannot say exactly what that shape was in those days, but it was no longer defined by isolation.

            When the excuse of my birthday had passed well beyond out-of-sight, the people found other reasons to invite me to their hamlets.  Start-of-Summer, Harvest, Solstice, End-of-Harvest, First Snow; I was brought to a new village at least three times in every week.  And while there was always a celebration upon my arrival, as the people became more accustomed to my appearances, my relationship with them, like my name, changed shape.

            Instead of celebrating with them in the streets for hours, I was fed and cared for in the people’s homes.  They became my friends, the first true ones of my life, and more dear to me that my own existence had ever been.

            My truest and dearest friend, however, was Abigail.  Within a shorter time than a month after my birthday, we had become so beloved and loyal to one another that we were rarely separated for any significant length of time.  I even took to accompanying her while she worked at her chores.  Yet, despite this closeness, she never treated me as a woman of lowlier station than I was.  I can easily recall the day I attempted to assist her in scrubbing at the palace steps—gently, but certainly, she told me that I was not to do something so far below myself.  “Your place is at the head, Princess,” she said.  “It is I who must prepare the ground for the coming of your feet.”  I wanted to object, but the new shape of my name had already begun to change the way I viewed myself.  I only nodded and began to sing.  Abigail joined me in her stunning alto, and I trilled out the melody of a song I had heard a mother sing to her baby days before.

Whispers of the wind, child,

Coming from the sea:

Change is blowing nearer, child,

For you and for me.

Battles may yet rage around

And we not in the lee,

But faith and strength in what you are

Will teach you who to be.

            “I don’t remember the rest,” I told Abigail.  I marveled inwardly that I spoke so easily now; had it been only a month past that I had been so reticent with this same young woman?

            “It seems strange that you know so little of songs,” she replied.  I considered this.

            “I know little of anything but what my father the King taught me,” I answered her at last.  “And what I have read in my books.  I have much to learn about everything, when you come to the truth of it.”  Abigail sat up slowly.  I watched her, confused by her dramatic posture and sudden silence. 

“What is it?”

            “Princess, you must know—but no.  We cannot talk here.”  She glanced around at the now-clean stones.  “Will you walk with me, Princess?  I know some beautiful woods not a mile hence.”

            “Yes,” I said, curiosity in my tone.

            Abigail continued uncharacteristically silent as we made our way to her woods, eyes sweeping around and, at times, behind us.

            “What are you watching for?”  I asked.  She only shook her head and placed her arm in mine.

            When we at last reached the woods, I was thoroughly perplexed.  I looked to my friend for answers.  She sighed a great sigh, as though some terrible weight had left her.

            “Princess,” she began, “you are right that there are many things of which you are ignorant.  Important things.”

            “What of it?”  I asked.  “You call me Princess, but it seems unlikely that I shall ever be in a position to truly tend my nation.”  Abigail sighed again, and glanced at the nearby trees.

            “Princess, you must understand, we must never speak of these things outside of this wood.”

            “But why ever not?  What things?”

            “Because these trees, from border to border, are shielded by the magic of—of the good witch who inhabits the heart of the forest.  Here, your Stepmother can see and hear nothing of you.  Here you are safe.”

            “Safe from what?  Stepmother does me no harm.”
            “Not yet, but—oh, I hate to say it, even of her.”  I seized Abigail’s arm, frightened by her strange reserve.

            “Say what?  Dear friend, if there is a truth that I must know, you must tell it to me.”

            “Yes,” she agreed, “I must.  It is the way of friendship.  But it is hard, for I must frighten you with the truth, and I would not wish fear upon you.”

            “I am not so easily frightened as you might think,” I said, aware of the contrast between the courage of my words and the nervousness of my voice.

            “Perhaps not,” she said, “but were I you, I would be frightened.”

            “Of what?  You have not told me.”

            “No,” she said.  She sat on a nearby rock, and I followed, sitting beside her.  I waited, feeling that anything I said now would cause only further delay.  “It’s this, Princess: the Queen—that is, your Stepmother—despises you far beyond what you see.”

            “Despises me?  I think not; she thinks little about me at all, I guess.”

            “I wish it were so,” Abigail said, “but it is not.  The Queen rants and rages with hatred of you.  She seethes with fury.  She suffers every day knowing that you even exist.”

            I considered my friend’s words as they broke into a point, like a needle snapping.  My Stepmother might not think well of me, but hatred?

            “Why do you say these things?”  I asked, and was surprised to find that there was a heavy sadness of belief in my voice.  “Why would she hate me?”  Abigail laid a hand of comfort on my shoulder.

            “She hates you because she envies your power.”

            “Power?  I have none.”  Abigail laughed, a darker laugh than I had ever heard from her.

            “Princess, you have the power of the nation—or you will.  A ruler’s ability, her right, to rule comes from the fealty of the people of the land.  Any loyalty to the Qu—your stepmother—is fading from the people’s hearts with each passing day.  She sees this, but she does not understand it.  She does not, cannot, conceive of the idea that the only way to earn the loyalty of the nation is to love her people.  She knows so very little of love that she has no way to understand.”

            I contemplated Abigail’s speech, the meaning of it, for a very long time.  At last I asked, slowly, “Why should she know little of love?”

            “Dark magic is at work in her heart,” my friend replied.  “She long ago traded her ability to love for physical beauty, to bewitch the King your father and gain power.  She could undo the spell if she wished, but she has grown deeply attached to her gorgeous appearance.  She will not let it go, even to regain the nation.”

            “But Abigail,” I asked, “what should any of this have to do with me?”

            “Why, everything, of course,” she answered.  I blinked at her a few times, and she continued.  “You are the only hope of the people, the natural rival to your Stepmother’s wickedness.”

            “Rival?  For what?”  Abigail looked into my eyes, disbelieving, and then jumped to her feet.  She began to pace.

            “Everything, Princess!  For the crown!  The country!  The rule of the nation for now and for posterity.  She hates you because you, you¸can bring an end to her reign, can take from her the only thing she loves—her power!  As the nation crumbles under her tyranny, the people turn to you as a beacon of hope.  And you must rise to the occasion, Princess!  You must take the steps that will lead you, one day, to the throne!”  She sat abruptly down beside me, looked into my face again, pleading with her eyes.  “This is why we are here.  To see that your education begins, that when the time comes for you to rule, you will do it well.”

            I was stunned.  Never had I heard my friend so passionate—she was almost angry—but raging against my stepmother—a thing I could never have imagined had it not transpired before my eyes.  The words Abigail had spoken shocked me, too.  I had not truly considered that being the Princess meant one day, perhaps, deposing my Stepmother and taking the throne, as was my right under the law.  In that moment, I understood for the first time that my Stepmother had a truer name than the one I had so long given her.  Usurper was her real title, a thing that her subjects—my subjects—had known, but that I had not.

            I was, naturally enough, afraid.  And yet somehow, there was another feeling in my heart.  I did not recognize it until later, but the feeling was a love for my people.  And more than that, it was a willingness to give my life for them—not just to die for them, if events so demanded, but to live each day for them, as my father the King had.  Unaware that I was doing so, I got to my feet, standing straighter than the surrounding trees.

            “You are right, Abigail,” I said.  “The people are my people.  I owe it to them, to my dear departed father the King, to myself, to you, and yes, to my people, to save this land from the Usurper’s poisoned touch.”  I looked back to my friend, color rising in my cheeks as a passion for my nation, a strength that I had never known I possessed, took hold of me.  “Tell me what I must do.”