Snow White A Rather Fractured Fairy Tale By Suika Roberts It came to pass, long ago in a tiny country that's now, depending on which map-maker you consult, part of Germany, France, Belgeum, or all three, that the Queen's wife of many years died in a hunting accident. The Queen's wife was a Fin, a pretty woman with black hair and green eyes, and skilled at both fishing and hunting, as befits a Finnish noblewoman. The Queen was tall and hatchet-faced, with a long scar down the left side of her face, although she had been very pretty when she was younger. The Queen had flushed the boar by accident, and was slashing rather desperately at it when her wife pinned it with an unbarred spear. It only took a few minutes after that to kill the beast, but it was too late for her, or the Queen's horse. `Look after the girls for me,' she whimpered to her wife, and passed, eyes wide open. After that, the queen couldn't look at any of her daughters without being sad, for though her wife's children resemebled their mother, her own youngest was her father's blue-eyed duplicate. Snow White was nine when her father died, and took it hard, nearly as hard as her mother. She, her sister and her brothers, did what they could, looking after her youngest brother, who was barely weaned when her mother died. After a few months of mourning, the Queen's mother and her wife started to, gently, suggest she remarry. She resisted, for she felt it much too soon, still breaking into tears at the sight of Snow. A few months later, a group of visitors arrived, led by a Spanish prince, a dark-eyed beauty with skin the color of good earth, a narrow face and wide nose, and hair as dark and curly as a Moor's. As a daughter of the Spanish Queen's wife, she was out adventuring, since she was far from likely to succeed her father, who had six daughters of her own body. The prince was equipped in the modern style, slender Italian small sword and rifled German flintlocks, each costing as much as a warhorse, two pistols and a pair of double-barreled side-by-sides, one sheathed on either side of her tall white horse. The Spanish party was greeted with much fanfare, for it was early fall, a couple weeks before the harvest, and everyone was entranced by the colorful clothes, exotic people, and strange equipment. `My Queen,' the prince greets, with a little bow on her horse, her light chain mail half-shirt clinking slightly as she smiles down at the older woman, `I was hoping we could stay in your country a while? One of my ladies is near to term, and would be much more comfortable if we could stop traveling until after the birth.' The Queen agrees readily, and her chatelaine finds them quarters, the prince and her ladies in a single suite, the rest of her party taking up most of the rest of the guest building, but no one was expected to visit, so that was fine. Introductions were made at dinner, and Snow was quite taken with the prince, as was her mother. Casual observation of the party's children and a few careful questions proved the young prince's virility to most everyone who was interested's satisfaction, and, after a little soul-searching Snow's mother asked if she would mind having a step-father. `Well,' Snow asked back, `Does that mean I couldn't have the prince?' Snow's mother half-smiled, her scar a white line on her sunburned face, and ruffled her long, silver-streaked blonde hair, `Probably.' `That's fine, then,' and Snow blushed and smiled that shy little smile of her father's, and her mother gathered her in a hug and broke into tears. The prince's lady had her daughter, a pretty little girl nearly as dark as the prince, and they began to make plans to leave once spring had arrived. Well, most of them did. Several of the ladies had found wives amoung the Queen's people, and a few of the commoners. Members of the Queen's house had petitioned release to go with the Spaniards, so there was no worry about having a large enough party to travel safely, and plans continued apace as the Queen and prince courted each other. They eventually decided that they should be wed on the equinox, as it was a time of new beginnings and fresh young things. A little over a month later the Spanish party, with several new members, and lacking several old ones, set off back to Spain, seen off, after her morning bout of nausea, by the prince. Time went on, and Snow got to feel her new brother kicking in her stepfather's belly, a light, fluttery feeling that she found fascinating, but her mother still broke into tears at the sight of her. `My dear,' the prince brought up one day, `I do fear that what I'm about to say will annoy you.' `Say it anyway,' the Queen said, and hugged her young wife. `I don't think it is good for Snow the way you burst into tears every time you see her,' the prince said, and nuzzled into her wife's neck, her frizzy hair tickling the Queen's neck. `I could send her to Prussia, my sister could foster her a while,' the Queen said, bursting into tears at the thought. And so it was that Snow White went to live at the court of the Queen of Prussia. Years later, her stepfather asked her mirror, a magic item of minor vanity, her favorite question, `Mirror Mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?' The mirror thought a while, for it had taken it quite a while to understand that, far from herself, its mistress wanted her answer to be that her old, scarred, sunburned, hatchet-faced wife with no bosom to speak of was the fairest, and that, despite the fact that they looked much the same, that Iroquoi prince and the Japanese princess were too far away, even though they were, in her words, "quite nice." However, it found itself in a quandry, for it had found someone a little less scarred, a little more sunburned, equally bosomless, much younger, and not, yet, hatchet-faced. It decided to risk it. At worst, the wicked woman would put it in a chest for another month to "think about" its answer, at best, well, it would be funny, `My lady, I do believe Snow White is the fairest of them all.' The Spanish prince blinked in surprise, `Let me see.' The mirror clouded, then cleared again, and showed her young stepdaughter, now a strapping young lass of nearly seventeen, wrestling with a blonde-haired giant, who topped her by more than a head. It was obviously just friendly, for they were being gentle, well, gentle as two puppies at play, anyway, stopping, after Snow locked her friend in a rear mount, and turning to their teacher for a critique. `This is happening right now?' `Yes.' `I didn't know you could do that.' `You didn't ask.' `Nope,' she studied the young women before her, and eventually shook her head, `She's still the fairest. Good try, though,' and, with a pause to check on her two year old daughter, and the girl who was supposed to be watching her, but was instead asleep with a firm arm around the normally rambunctious youngster, went to see the Queen. `Come see, come see,' she greeted the Queen, a big smile on her face. `Oh?' `My mirror showed me a new trick, today.' The Queen turned to the Chatelaine, `Anything else?' `No, my lady,' the Chatelaine smiled, `Have fun.' `Sure,' the Queen suddenly smiled, `I'll let you know if it's something you can show Rebecca.' The Chatelaine's smile got bigger at the mention of her Spanish wife. `How is her eldest doing?' Snow's stepfather smiled, carefully not mentioning that she was the father of that eldest daughter. `She's doing fine, almost eight years old, now,' the Chatelaine answered, smiling, `You could come over, Rebecca would like to see more of you, as would I.' A cast of the eyes to the Queen, and a gentle shake of the head, `Not right now. Maybe if the invitation was a little broader?' `Maybe,' the Queen answered instead. `Mirror mirror, on the wall, Show us who you thought was fairest of them all.' `Right, right,' and a tiny young woman with hair the color of snow and skin as dark as night appeared, poking something brown-furred and twitching with a spear. `She's cute as a button, I'm sure,' Snow's stepfather growled in frustration, `The one you just showed me a little bit ago.' `Oh. The other Snow White, right, right,' the mirror answered, and Snow White's muscular form appeared instead. She was arm-wrestling with one of the Prussian princesses, a short burly girl with red hair. `Oh, Snow's all grown up,' and the Queen smiled, instead of sobbing. Her wife took it as a good sign. `And that's my cousin's daughter, I think, she looks just like her.' `Maybe we should go visit, or see if she wants to come home now?' `Iris needs the practice,' the Queen agreed, `We should go visit.' And so Iris, the Queen's eldest daughter, was left in charge of the country, and the Queen took her consort and twenty-five others besides to visit the Queen of Prussia, who was her cousin, once or thrice removed. - Two weeks of liesurely saddle time brought them to the Prussian Queen's fortress, a square-towered inner keep surrounded, in those modern times, by several layers of earth and timber bulwarks, the road serpentined through them to prevent easy access by cannon or siege engine. A messenger had ridden ahead, so they were greeted by the Queen, her wife, Snow White, and about twenty others. The Queen of Prussia greeted Snow's mother with a big hug, and lead them into her fortress. --- 2006/Nov/14: Strange things come to mind while wandering around Adhamiyah in the gunner's hatch of a HMMVW. This is one of them. Started writing. 2007/Jan/5: A tiny edit