Snow White’s petulance darkens. “They were meant to keep their queen in the eternal youth that suits her best.” Eva makes a small noise of understanding beside me, and Snow White’s long-lashed gaze transfers to her. “It was my mother—well, stepmother—who first learned the trick of it.” She says it like a secret, although there are huntsmen all around, their ivory necklaces chattering with every tiny movement. “I don’t know how old she really was when she married my father, but she looked only a year or two older than me. I think.” A doubtful look, as if it’s been so long that she can’t quite remember. “She might have carried on forever if she hadn’t tried to steal the wrong heart.” Snow White’s fingers tap the white hyphen of her clavicle.
“Look.” I wet cracked lips. “That’s super awful and traumatizing, and I’m sure you need therapy, but like… Why did you turn into the exact same kind of monster? Why couldn’t you just chill and live happily ever after?” I’m mostly talking at random, trying to give Charm a few extra seconds to pull off a miracle and rescue me, like she always has before. I wonder if, sometime over the last six months, she stopped sleeping with her ringer on.
Snow White’s head tilts, nose scrunching. “It’s not really a happily ever after if itends,is it?”
I think I say something here—it’s not like thatoryou don’t understand—but I can’t hear it over the rising noise in my head, the sudden bile in my mouth. Is that what I’ve been doing, these last five years? Trying to outrun my own ending? Throwing away every chance at happiness just because it was fleeting?
I swallow acid. “Every story ends,” I whisper. I don’t even know which of us I’m trying to convince. Eva shifts beside me so that her shoulder is pressing hard against mine.
Snow White is looking at us like we’re very young children; maybe we are, to her. “Well,yourswill. But I have a few questions before it does.” She withdraws something slim and silver from her skirts and turns it to face us. For a confused second I think she’s showing us a picture on a phone screen—I see two faces, two sets of desperate eyes—before I understand that I’m looking at a mirror.
My mouth goes dry and sandy. My mind goes perfectly blank. Eva goes very, very still.
Snow White strokes the mirror’s surface with one pale fingernail. “This mirror of yours. It has shown me things. Other lands. Other worlds, perhaps.” I see the future with helpless, ugly clarity: an immortal cannibal wandering from world to world, plucking princesses from their tales like ripe fruit from the trees. She’s warped her own story into a gory horror flick; what could she do to the multiverse?
She asks sweetly, “How do I get there?”
“W-why would you ever want to leave your own world?” Other than the perpetual twilight and freakshow fauna. “You’ve got a great setup here. A lovely, um, lair, and loyal henchpeople.”
Snow White makes a moue. “The villagers are getting restless. They’re a tiresome bunch, alwaysfomentingandresisting. It’s harderand harder to get what I need.” She pinches the flesh of her throat, where the skin has sagged almost imperceptibly. (I have the unhelpful thought that Dr. Bastille would have an absolute field day with this version of Snow White. “The Fear of Age in the Age of Fear: Representations of the Crone in Modern Folk Horror.”)
Snow White smiles her sweet, springtime smile. “They’re nothing at all like the littlelambsI see in other worlds. So I will ask you again: How do I get there?”
I don’t answer and neither, somewhat to my surprise, does Eva. Her silence fills me with a weird, reckless pride. “Sorry, I’m just getting the most intense déjà vu, you know? I feel like I was just questioned under torture by an evil queen like, yesterday.”
This provokes a brief, whispered argument with Eva (“Torture is a strong word.” “Well, if the shoe fits.” “If the shoe fits what?” “God, never mind.”), at the end of which she clears her throat and says audibly, “I’m sorry I hurt you. I shouldn’t have.”
It feels like the sort of apology you make because you’re pretty sure it’s your last chance. I move my hand so that my fingers cover hers, because I’m pretty sure she’s right. “It’s cool,” I say inadequately.
Snow White is watching us closely, looking from our faces to the place where our hands touch. She makes a resignedtsk. “I can see you’re both terribly stubborn. I’ll find my own way. I certainly have the time.” She makes an imperious gesture and one of her huntsmen steps forward, drawing his sword with a sound like scraping bone as he comes for us. It’s all happening way too fast. I thought I could burn more time bullshitting—I thought Charm would still find her way across the universe for me, even without the mirror, because the rules don’t apply to us—
But the huntsman doesn’t impale either of us. He steps around us to the edge of the fire and reaches into the coals with the tip of hissword. He extracts an ugly tangle of iron. It looks like the kind of thing you’d see in a museum, a mass of old metal with an obscure, chilling label readingScold’s bridle, 17th c.orPear of anguish, 18th c.
Then Eva sobs, harsh and sudden, and I realize that I’m looking at two pairs of iron shoes, the metal straps glowing a dull, hellish red.
I curl my fingers tight around Eva’s, but her hand is limp and damp in mine. I turn to face her, kneeling, speaking in a desperate rush. “It’s okay, I’m sorry, we’re going to be alright.” But Eva isn’t looking at me, or even at the shoes. Her eyes are on Snow White, who has already forgotten us and is now staring into the mirror’s surface with a chilling, predatory patience.
Eva’s expression as she looks at the queen is not one of panic, or loathing, or even despair. Her face has an eerie coolness to it, a carved-marble quality that makes my chest hurt for no reason. “Hey, listen, Charm knows we’re here. She could still save us, okay?”
Eva’s eyes move to mine slowly, squinting as if the two of us are standing on opposite sides of a very wide river.
“I hope she does,” she says softly. Then, just as softly, she kisses me.
It’s dry and gentle. It feels like an apology, or a farewell. “Thank you.” She whispers the words against my lips.
The very small part of my brain that isn’t occupied by the imminent approach of my own painful death or the salt-sweetness of her mouth manages to say, “For what?”
“For showing me I do not have to be the villain, the evil stepmother, the Wicked Witch of the East Bro. For giving me…” Her eyes move back to Snow White, and her lip curls, revealing a slim white line of bared teeth. “Agency.”
It’s at this point that Eva begins unlacing the front of her dress. My brain splits into two competing factions, one of which is cheering and sounds a lot like Charm on girls’ night at the gay bar, and the other ofwhich is thinking how sad it is that Eva has endured so much, only to lose her mind now. “Eva, babe, what are you doing?”
She doesn’t answer, drawing the ribbon slowly out of her shift. Except it’s not a ribbon, is it? It’s a bodice lace.
A syrupy weight settles over my limbs. I notice small things: the minute tilt of Eva’s body away from mine. The taut cord of muscle in her neck, the divot in her cheek as she clenches her jaw, bracing herself to do something terrible and brave and stupid. I reach for her. Too late. Eva has already launched herself across the courtyard, knifing through the air like a falcon with dirty white feathers. She collides with Snow White, and then there’s a splintering, shattering sound, like a dropped wineglass. Something sharp slices across my cheek.
The courtyard falls into a numbed silence as every eye looks at the ground, at the place where the magic mirror lies in broken shards. I see our faces reflected in the shards, split and doubled, frozen in shock.
There’s a large sliver of glass right beside me, close enough to touch. The face reflected in this piece does not belong to the huntsmen, or either of the queens, or even myself. It’s a face framed by a long wing of bleached blond hair, with a septum piercing and an expression suggesting homicidal intent, or at least serious bodily harm. The lips of the face are moving, repeating the same name over and over, interspersed with swears:Zinnia, Zinnia, goddammit Zinnia.
