Bloody Valentine

The Bloody Valentine

The queen stalked up and down the length of her chamber. Her face was taught with rage. Where was that stupid woodsman? He was supposed to be back hours ago! How long did it take to kill one simple girl? She should have done it herself.

“The longer he takes, the longer Blanche is alive,” she muttered.

On the wall, her magical mirror ventured an opinion. “Perhaps he has…taken pity on her, my lady. Who would want to kill such a sweet, innocent little girl? Except yourself of course.”

The mirror’s sarcasm was lost on the furious queen. She threw a vase at it. The priceless object hit the wall just next to the mirror, which swung itself out of the way just in time.

“How dare you!” she screamed. “You’re on her side! You’ve been on her side all along! I should have smashed you long ago!"

The mirror didn’t say anything. It knew when to shut up. After all, Queen Margo was sour to the core, like a bad apple. She had always been jealous of her stepdaughter, Princess Blanche, for reasons the mirror didn’t quite understand.
Blanche and Margo were not all that different. They were both pale, with dark hair and blue eyes. Neither of them was very nice, either.

Blanche had been sixteen when Margo married her father. She was defiant and angry. She refused to obey her new stepmother. After her father’s death, shortly after his wedding, Margo made the girl a servant. Blanche did everything she could to aggravate her and Margo got her back. But it all came to a head when Blanche was twenty-three. They fought over the one thing two women shouldn’t fight over: a man.

Giles the carpenter was a simple man of about thirty. He had worked in the castle for most of his life, as had his father before him and his father before him. He had blond hair and blue eyes. He was handsome, muscular, and charming. Both women fell for him. Thus began a terrible contest.

Blanche, who was outside more, spent hours watching Giles work. Margo got her back by confining her to the palace then sending Giles flowers and jewels. Blanche deliberately snuck out to visit him at night. Margo had a workshop built next to her chamber for Giles and insisted he work in there, with the door locked. Blanche climbed in through the window. That was when Margo had lost it. She opened the door of the workshop and found Blanche and Giles embracing passionately. With a scream of rage she had torn them apart and dragged Blanche from the room. After locking her stepdaughter in the highest tower of the palace, she ordered a huntsman to take Blanche out into the forest and kill her.

“Bring me her heart as proof that you have done the deed,” she had said. The huntsman had nodded and taken the girl away.

The mirror had heard all of it. It was magical, after all. Blanche and the huntsman had been gone for half the day and Queen Margo was in a rage. She wouldn’t even go in to see Giles. It seemed she had forgotten all about him. The mirror hoped the poor man had had the sense to go out the window and run for his life.

A knock sounded on the door. Margo rushed to open it. There stood the huntsman, a small box in his hands. He gave it to Margo and left without a word. Margo opened it. There was the heart. With a girlish squeal, Margo shut the lid again. She unlocked the door of Giles’s workshop. The carpenter was sitting on the floor, his head in his hands. He looked dazed. Margo handed him the box.

“From Blanche,” she said, her lips curving in a wicked smile. “She sends her love.”