By SJ Stevenson

Black-ragged and gray-haired, I stumble through the forest. Brambles bite and long thorns slice through skin. I do not feel them. I think only of the huntsman who had shoved me and called me a “hag.” His torso had been oiled with sweat, and I had only rested my hand upon it for a moment to trace his contours with the tip of a single, withered finger.

But I will see her again soon, my daughter. Then all shall be well.

She is waiting as she always waits. Illuminated in her glade by a single ray of sun that cuts through the canopy. It paints her through glass, in a hundred shades of gold and green.

I step over the first sprawled body. Its fine clothes are rotten. A crust of dried blood remains just visible, along the ragged tear in the back of the once-blue, once-silk shirt.

All around me, bird song withers to silence, and unseen animals fall still. I feel the yellow eyes of the wolves upon me as they watch from their hidden places, and I swallow down the taste of fear of the wolves upon me.

I lick my old, cracked lips. Those who watch are right to be afraid.

Her glass casket is guarded by the last of her shrunken folk. His skeleton is moss-stained and woven with weeds. I laugh to see the scars and fissures that map his pain across his bulging, thickened bones. I had released the demon from the mirror-glass with orders to crush my daughter’s seven protectors, and as is the way of their kind, the demon had obeyed yet failed to obey at the same time. 

But I was not displeased by the demon’s invention here, and I did not torment her overmuch on her return.

I push the bones aside. The shriveled skull hits a stone, like a single beat of a hollowed heart. My own heart beats faster and spittle coats my blackened tongue.

I reach down. I lift the crystal lid.

Not once, but even now and forever. I might look upon her face a thousand times, yet still gasp at and crave her loveliness. Her pale face is unchanged, as fair as snow-blanketed winter. My crooked hands comb her silken hair, still blacker than raven wings at midnight. I curse myself for not bringing bright new ribbons to dazzle and bind the eyes.

Her eyelids flutter as I climb beside her and rest my head upon her chest. All is as it was on that first night from so long ago when I used my blade to trace the shape of her heart across her skin. Before. Before she fled from me! Before she tried but failed to hide. I listen for her heartbeat. It is there. It is slow. Less than one beat to the full turn of a clock, but it wakes as I whisper her name.

Happiness fills me, as for a few entrancing moments her eyes spring open and focus on my age-ravaged face. Then her mouth opens. Perhaps to call out in breathless love at last. Or perhaps only to scream.

It does not matter. It has never mattered. I clamp my mouth to hers and add the theft of her words to all else that I have taken from her.

Her lips still taste of apples when I kiss her. Of apples and promises kept and broken. 

I kiss her for a long time. I kiss until her eyes close again, and her lips are worn red with blood. I feel new strengths and old hungers fill me again.

I kick the shrunken man’s bones as I leave. Then I take the time to dig my fingers into the ragged tear in the fallen prince’s once-blue, once-silk shirt. I feel the tip of my poisoned glass-blade lodged in his bone. The body stirs, and his rotted face turns to look at me with still wild eyes.

“Release me!” he begs. “Release me!”

But I have not yet forgiven him. “Perhaps next time,” I say. “For wolves are always hungry.”

The forest fills again with birdsong as I leave them behind. The shrunken man’s bones abandoned, the prince retching up dry sobs. And my daughter, who sleeps through one nightmare followed by another, so that she both longs and fears to wake.

I take the mirror out, watching the last lines disappear from my face as my gray, matted hair tumbles back to gold.

Tonight I will dance for the huntsman, then dance again atop him, tracing his every length and contour with the trailing tip of a curious tongue.

And when he cries out in all his heat and ecstasy, and when I have him writhing and screaming that I am fairest of all…

Then I will show him my true face and chew out his heart.