The Fairest of them All

So... here we are again. I do hope you're enjoying these dark, macabre tales from the Realm of "What if...?", because I so enjoy telling them. Here is another that you may be familiar with, a tale as old almost as the concept of the Fairytale itself: it involves a lovely young maiden, a jealous, vain queen... and, of all things, an apple.

The young maiden central to our story was, in fact, a princess. She was most exceedingly lovely, with hair as black as night, lips as red as blood, and skin whiter than the bosom of a dove. Although she was beautiful, she was a rotten, spoiled child within. To try and humble the bratty princess, her stepmother - the queen - put her to work a few hours every day helping the palace servants with their chores. The princess did as she was told, but not without incessant whining and complaint.

As the child grew into a young woman, so too grew her beauty and haughtiness. The queen became outraged that her stepdaughter could be so fair without and yet so ugly within, which caused her to resent the girl more and more each and every day. When she could stand the sight of the princess no longer, the queen cast her out of the palace, and instructed the guards to abandon her in the forest on the farthest edge of the kingdom. No amount of begging or pleading from the princess could sway the guards to disobey the queen once their task was done, both because they were equally annoyed by the shrewish girl and were too afraid of what the queen would do should she learn of their disobedience. When she realized the guards would not bend to her demands, the princess sat in the dirt and wept as she watched them depart.

She sat there weeping for almost an entire day before a band of good-natured dwarves found her in her distress. They took pity on the poor girl, and quickly offered her food and lodgings for the night. The princess reasoned that any place was better than spending the night in the cold, dirty forest, so she took them up on their offer. The dwarves then led her merrily to their quaint little cottage in the midst of the woods, where they cooked her a fine supper and gave her a warm bed to sleep in. They treated her very kindly because she was so fair, something that the princess quickly took full advantage of. After only staying with the little men for a few days, she was already barking orders at them as if they were her servants, which she delighted in greatly.

It wasn't long before the dwarves began regretting opening up their home to her, but every time they tried to throw her out she would weep pitifully again to regain their sympathy. By the time the dwarves realized they couldn't get rid of her, it was too late. They spent almost every hour of the day and night waiting on the princess hand and foot, which left hardly any time at all for them to mine jewels from the mountain for the queen. When the shipment they sent to the palace was less than a quarter the size of the previous shipment, the queen summoned them immediately. The head dwarf appeared before her posthaste, and offered his sincerest apologies to the angered queen. "We have not cheated you, Majesty," he explained desperately, "it is just that we haven't the time to mine anymore, due to our new Lady we tend." He explained then about finding the princess in the woods, and how awfully she had treated them since. The queen was sympathetic to their plight, and offered a solution to help them and get mining operations back on track.

The queen, you see, was learned in the ancient Mystic Arts. Mostly she used her magic for the good of her people, but when the occasion called for it, she used it for more selfish purposes. Seeing as she had tried exiling the princess and failed, she concocted a new plan to imprison her in Everlasting Sleep. The queen spent an entire night brewing the potion, then to conceal the bitter brew in a form that the princess would readily consume, she poured it into a hollowed out apple. The queen then wrapped herself in an enchanted cloak so that she would appear as a kindly old woman, and headed out to the dwarves' cottage on horseback.

When she arrived, the situation was just as she'd been told. The little men were slaving away until they were puffing and red in the face for the wicked princess, who was watching them at their toil with the smuggest of smug grins. The queen tapped on the open door to get their attention, then took the apple from the basket she carried and offered it to the nearest dwarf, "Fresh apples for sale. Wouldst thou like to sample them, Good Sirs?"

The dwarf looked to his leader - who nodded encouragement - before reaching hesitantly to take the ripe, red fruit, but the princess shrieked for him to stop. "I want to eat a bite first," she demanded, "before you cover it in spit and beard hairs! Bring it to me, now!!" The dwarf yelped in fear when a slipper barely missed his head, then hurried to ferry over the fruit to the princess. She snatched it from his hand eagerly and took a very large bite, humming with satisfaction as apple juice ran down her slender chin. When she tried to swallow however, her eyes bulged in a panic. The outline of the piece of apple she had bitten off could be seen through her pale neck, which refused to budge up or down. She began to gag and retch, spurring the dwarves closest to her to pound on her back to help her dislodge the bit of apple. When the apple chunk finally flew from her lips, it was coated in the green film of the potion. Before the princess had the chance to collect her breath or hurl the apple back at the queen, she collapsed onto the floor.

The queen threw off her disguise then, and rushed to check on the girl. Relief washed over her face when she realized the potion had indeed worked, and the princess was sleeping peacefully. All but the lead dwarf were astonished and flummoxed to see the queen, but when she assured them that their suffering was ended, they rejoiced. To ensure that the Everlasting Sleep would never be broken, the queen had the dwarves create a specialized coffin of glass and gold to seal the princess within. They carried the princess within the coffin to the peak of the mountain they mined, where the queen cast protective sigils all around to keep the site hidden from view. The queen, dwarves and kingdom thrived in harmony then for many, many decades, until the old queen passed away and a new queen took her place. The kingdom had all but forgotten about the girl they'd dubbed "The Snow Princess", but the legend of her still persisted in the lands surrounding it.

Almost sixty years after the princess had been imprisoned in her Everlasting Sleep, a nobleman traveling from a distant kingdom heard her story in a tavern. The idea of a maiden frozen in time under a plate of glass for so long intrigued him, and he wondered if she was as beautiful as the legend claimed. He was going to pass by the mountain on his way back home, so he planned to take a detour to the top to see if the legends were true. It took nearly three days to reach the top of the dwarves' mountain, but when the nobleman got to the peak he stopped in his tracks at the sight of the princess. The glass had frosted over but held strong, preserving the beautiful young maiden perfectly inside. Moved by her beauty, he acted against his servants' advice and ordered them to chisel the lock off the coffin, so that he could look upon her face more easily.

Their tools were not designed to dismantle dwarven craftsmanship though, and the old queen's spells still held strong even after so many years. After breaking several chisels and hammers, the frustrated nobleman insisted that they shatter the glass instead. The icy glass was thick and sturdy, but eventually yielded after a few strong blows from a hammer. The nobleman unlocked the coffin from the inside then, and thrust up the lid, rendered breathless by the young woman before him. Unable to resist the compulsion, he pressed a delicate kiss onto her succulent, ruby lips. As soon as their lips parted however, something happened that he did not expect. The princess's eyes flew open with a ragged gasp, and she lashed out at him viciously.

The nobleman fell into the snow in utter shock, then began scrambling backward as the princess's appearance began to change before his very eyes. In mere moments, her soft, white skin withered like old, yellowed parchment, and her raven hair faded to thin grey strands. Her vibrant blue eyes clouded over with a thick film as well, and sank so deep into her skull it almost appeared that she had no eyes at all. She couldn't speak because her throat had never healed from having the piece of apple lodged in it, so all she could produce were hoarse, gurgling shrieks. The nobleman and his company mounted their horses immediately and fled, screaming in terror at the monstrous hag they'd unleashed.

No one believed the nobleman's tale when he returned home. A few curious souls ventured to the top of the mountain to see for themselves if the princess-turned-monster was actually there, but all they found was the destroyed remnants of the glass and gold coffin. For years after, rumor spread like wildfire of an old hag, hideous and uttering bone-chillingly feral shrieks, wandering about the forest near the dwarves' old cottage, but none were brave enough to prove or disprove the rumors for themselves.