Excerpt: The Fairest

The mirror is cracked, a thousand little lines of shatter spreading from the broken center like the thin, splintered threads of a spider web. The beautiful frame has lost its shine, its luster, over the years; the brilliance has faded to a dull rustiness, tarnished and decayed. It can no longer support its own weight. Frail and simply ordinary now that all its magic has fled, it is propped up against the far wall of this, my jail cell. Useless, a mere relic of who I’d been and how I’d become, it was my only companion these last few long months. I should hate it but now, here at the end, I can’t find it in me to think of the fractured looking glass with anything more than regret.

I dare a glance at its shattered surface but the reflection is distorted. Hundreds of tired old women stare back at me and I swear that that is no reflection of mine. Only the striking grey eyes, weighed down by sadness, grief and wickedness I can no longer deny, are familiar.

They’ll be coming for me soon—in fact, I can already hear the spit and sizzle of the red hot slippers they intend to clasp on my tired feet. The sounds travel to my solitary tower, drowning out the laughter and the rejoicing of the wretched farce of a wedding below.

It’s a wrong placed sense of justice, a sense of duty, that will lead the blacksmith (and, no doubt, a mob behind him) up the spiral staircase. Tongs gripping the cursed iron contraptions, they will all delude themselves into thinking that I deserve this. In answer for a life I thrice tried to take they will gladly destroy everything I am and was. But they do not see that I was only trying my best to even the score.

From the moment I first known she’d been alive, this daughter of Imogene and Robert, I had been slowly dying. The mirror’s last response had delivered that final blow. That sweet and innocent girl child had killed me but I was the one would be martyred in the end.

They all say, the wayward gossips of the kingdom, that the heroine has earned her happiness and that the wicked must pay for their sins. And I do. With every breath that Imogene’s daughter takes, I suffer. From madness, true, from jealousy and from loss. Oh, yes. I’ll suffer always.

My lips curve into a forgotten and almost wistful smile. They’ll be coming soon but I do not fear them. I pity them all: Snow White, her incompetent Prince Charming, the townsfolk they had bamboozled to see solely a wicked old queen whenever my name, a curse in its own right, is viciously uttered. I pity them in a way they’ll never feel for me and, for that above all else, I leave behind me thoughts, my memories and my beliefs.

They’ll be coming soon to make me dance at my silly little stepdaughter’s fairy tale wedding. And yet, there’s still time for one last—

“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”

For a few moments I wait, but there is no response. I am not surprised.