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Exspecto
Blanche is a girl who lives in the woods. She is beautiful; her reflection tells her so. But of what good is beauty when your mother, who is a powerful witch, hates you and determined to kill you? What good is beauty when the only people you see are seven little men, their grotesque bodies twisted and misshapen? How is beauty supposed to save you then?
The craft she has inherited from her witch mother are of little comfort to her. She has scryed the future so many times she can see it clearer than her present. She sees the handsome prince, sees him lift her on his horse and take her away to his castle to live happily ever after. She knows it will happen; she just doesn’t know when.
The charmed forest animals bring her food; the dwarfs she had magicked into being have built her this cottage, heaped shining jewels at her feet. They bring her all she desires except what she wants most; a future. One safe from the venomous gaze of her mother.
Every time she sees her reflection – on the surface of the copper kettle, or the cloudy silverware – she is half-tortured by hope and anticipation. She is beautiful, she knows. She only has to wait for her prince to come riding by and he will fall in love with her and rescue her from her lonely existence. But it is because she is beautiful she is trapped in this lonely cottage to begin with; living in exile because of her beauty and the jealous hatred it inspires in her mother.
And so, time passes. As the seasons change, and months of waiting turn to years, she grows from a rosebud of a girl into a woman in full bloom. Her ruby lips remain unkissed, her white skin and ebony hair, untouched. She begins to grow tired of waiting, begins to grow tired of seeing a future she can only dream of.
And as time passes, she begins to forget what it is she is waiting for.
…o…
The witch queen inspects her face carefully in the mirror, wary of any change. The heart the woodman gave her had tasted bitter and dry, like smoke and ash, not the sweet revenge she had imagined. But she had savoured the taste anyway; after all, it was Blanche's heart. When you consume a thing's heart you consume its power, and Blanche's power had always been her beauty.
It takes her years to realise that it was not her witch daughter's heart she had eaten; years of wondering at the emptiness gnawing at her, when she ought to have felt sated – after all, she had her revenge hadn’t she? It takes a strand of hair – frost white and wiry – amongst her raven locks before she realises she has been fooled, and Blanche remains alive and full of power. She confirms this with her witchcraft, spies the witch girl still young, still alive and still more beautiful than her, living in the woods. The faithless woodcutter she kills for deceiving her.
It doesn't take long for her to discover her daughter's whereabouts, and when she does, she sets out, determined to kill the girl once and for all.
…o…
It is winter when the two meet. The falling snow is not fresh and white, but ash grey, like their hearts.
The old woman, a hag really, with her back bent over with age and bitterness holds out a basket of apples with spotted, twisted hands. Each fruit is so red the young woman cannot help but think of blood.
She recognizes her mother, even with the illusion of age the witch queen has draped around herself. She can smell the bitter poison in each impossibly red apple, and even without the smell and colour, of course she would know they are magicked – after all, whoever has heard of winter apples? The witch did not think through her plan very carefully; she must have been desperate.
They gleam with the promise of release, for herself and for the witch queen.
The young woman reaches out a slender hand, and without a trace of hesitation, takes a large bite. The smell of poison is choking, and the flesh of the apple is warm, it slides down her throat like a chunk of bloody meat. In moments, she has collapsed on the floor, her hair spread around her like a black star, a dying one. The witch queen leaves, satisfied.
This is what they have been waiting for all along.
End.
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