The Fairest

They told me they found him at the Inn in Pumilius when his heart stopped. The mirror told me he had been with her…with her for months! A temptress with no mercy. A siren from which he could not steer. Jezebel! May the Lord God have no compassion on you! For all of eternity may you feel the same pain I did when they handed me your bastard spawn to raise.

It was winter when they brought me the child, wrapped tightly in his royal cloak. I was accustomed to his gifts but it was the first time he had gave me something for which I had actually prayed. She was a beautiful baby, if that's how you should describe a child her age. Adorable, I would say was a better word, and in every way lovely to look at. She looked as though she was made of fine china, just as frail and precious too. A small porcelain doll, fragile and fair with painted-on lips, red as a rose… red as blood.

I looked in the child's eyes, half expecting them to be glass. Instead, I saw his eyes, his cloudy blue eyes like the sky on the day of the first snow. This delicate, beautiful child, the child I always wanted but could never have, was theirs and now mine. I felt a sting of pain inside me. It burned in the pit of my stomach and climbed through my chest. It formed a lump in my throat and made my vision blurry.

"Take it away," I cried. "I don't want this abhorrent thing."

The baby began to wail. My nails left moon prints in her skin. Unnatural red lips made a perfect circle. A soft pink tongue rolling slightly. Her cries almost sounded musical. The C sharp found the spot where the sick feeling had been in my chest, cracking my heart like glass. The child became loose in my arms. I saw myself letting go. She drops to the floor. Cracks like my heart. Like the fragile doll she was. My lips pressed together and my nails dug deeper. A young maid pulled her from me and ran, covering the child's face with her blanket to muffle the teary melodies

"What is it my Mistress? What is wrong?" another maid ran to my side as my knees gave in and I collapsed to the floor.

"I never want to see that demon again." I felt the streaks the tears left on my cheeks, hot and poisoned from hate.

"But Mistress… what shall I do with her?"

"Send it to hell to be with its mother!" The words burned in my mouth as I thought about the porcelain angel with blood to match her lips.

The maid bowed and went to find where the child was taken. I could tell she had begun to fear me. I had begun to fear myself. She arranged for some others to put me to bed and call a doctor. He spoke to me in wet silk words, touched my forehead with just picked cotton hands.

"The baby reminded her that she will never have one of her own and that she will never see her husband again." He stood in the doorway whispering slightly. My ears, the only thing not pained by truth. "Her grief will subside eventually, until then keep the child away from her." I leaned over the oak bed frame, carved to look like the trees it had once been, and vomited.

I realized another gift from my beloved king, may he rest in peace, had found its way to my room. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite my bed. I found myself in front of it at once, a hand at each of its gilded, ornate sides. It probably was another belonging of his vile mistress. I had meant to throw it against the ground. I had planned on seeing my lovely broken reflection scattered across the marble. I would watch the servants clean the glass shards and the dried vomit in the morning.

"Why would you leave me here alone?" I cried. I had raised the mirror above my head. More poison tears filled my eyes. The question had been for my king but the mirror had heard.

"You are not alone." It said. Its voice like wrong notes played on a church organ.

"I am," I said. I held the mirror in front of me. "I was sent away from my family, friends and everything I know to be with him. He was all I had. I gave him everything." The tight, sick feeling was choking me, closing my throat up as I spoke. I was broken and ruined inside.

"And now you have me. Now please my fair queen, place me back on the wall, for… you have much to ask, and I have much to tell."

It was right of course, for if something that was not meant to speak does, it might as well speak the truth. I placed it back on the wall where it had been before and examined it better.

Gold coiled into the frame like snakes after the same prey. Between their long bellies, emeralds like the backs of green June bugs surfaced. In the middle was my reflection. Perfection.

The mirror added to my beauty. The jewels matched my own green eyes and I was as gorgeous from left to right as I was from right to left. I had one flaw however, the forth tooth from the back on the right. It overlaps another slightly and it was hideous. I had tried to push it down several times when I was younger but now I have come to realize I look even more beautiful when I smiled without showing them. The mirror agreed.

"Oh, Mirror!" I would say, "Am I not beautiful?"

"No other can compare my queen" it would reply.

"What man wouldn't want me, Mirror?" I would ask.

"No male for miles that have laid eyes on you, could resist their want for you," He daily answered and I knew it was true. I would smile and the mirror would smile back. Neither of us would show our teeth.

Fifteen years of silent shadows and quiet questions passed. I turned away all visitors and gentleman callers. I needed no one but the mirror. It succeeded where all others failed. The truth.

I would spend hours in front of it. Questions and compliments lingered in the air like a never ending fog. Servants would squint with confusion when they came for me. I breathed it in like the first day of spring. I always loved the answers I was given… until now.

I opened the window wide and let the first snowflakes of the year dance in and disappear before ever finding the marble floor.

"My dear Mirror" I said, "What shall I wear?"

"You look exquisite in anything you wear" It said.

"Am I not the fairest woman in the land?" I said.

There was a pause and I turned to look at my reflection, startled and waiting. "You are fair indeed my queen, your beauty is known far and wide."

This was not what I wanted to hear.

"Am I not the fairest Mirror?!" I repeated. I ran my tongue over my crooked tooth.

"There is another who lives within your gates. She is fresh a woman, not but 16. She lives among your servants. Untold beauty is wrapped in rags not fit to wash your floors." My face burned red hot and my reflection turned a lovely pale pink.

"She is nothing still compared to you my queen, your beauty is power and hers is delicate. Easy to break." My reflection twisted and wilted. In its place was the girl he spoke of. She was indeed as lovely as the mirror had said. Pale and soft with my dead lover’s cloudy winter sky eyes.

The mirror’s words stuck to me like chestnut burs to a wool jacket. Break. Yes… break. I repeated it often and asked the mirror where she was at all times. Many times I would watch her in the orchard. She found comfort in the trees and treated them as though they were family. For someone so fine skinned she loved the sun and the sun seemed to love her back. Finally I had had enough! Broken.

I sent for Actaeon, who had been a friend of the kings and had served him for many years. One of his bravest and most loyal men. He was the first to bring the news of my husband's death to me. First to comfort me. First to say he would be there if I needed him. Not the first to stare. Hungry wolf eyes. Faithful puppy eyes. I had not seen him since.

He was late, as I had expected, but he bowed and showered me with apologies. His large face was red and his forehead glistened with sweat.

"I am at your service your Majesty;" He stated simply.

I ran a hand down the side of his prickly face and the natural red of his skin burned brighter. He had never once held a woman. The mirror had revealed this. It was easy to believe as he was not the sightliest of men.

The left side of his beard grew faster than the right which made his cheeks look lopsided. His long hair curled at the bottom in different directions making him seem even more oddly shaped.

I bid him to sit as I paced in front of him. I began to babble on about the king's wishes and how loyal Actaeon had always been to the royal family. His expression was blank, for all he knew I was speaking in bird calls, but he cocked his head to the side and watched me, waiting for clear instructions.

"Actaeon," I spoke gently and slowly, "I need your help."

He was malleable clay and I was a Master of Art. I threw myself at his feet and wept a puddle of counterfeit tears into his lap. He stiffened. I thought hard about every slight move I made. I felt his eyes upon me. Inside me. I stood and went to look out the window and he followed me; his beast breaths on my neck.

"I would do anything for you my Queen." He said.

He was mine.

I had asked for three things from him. I wanted the knife he used to pierce her perfect skin; her heart to replace the one of mine she had broke sixteen years ago; and her fourth tooth from the back, on the right. In return, I promised him three nights with me.

It took five days for him to return with the items he promised. What he did not know was that I had been impatient, imbedded with glee to finally be released and had told the mirror what I had ordered.

The mirror had quivered and knocked against the stone wall. "Have you learned nothing of men and their deceit my queen? Have you not learned that I am the only one you can trust?" It was the first time he had ever questioned me and I had no answers. "A farm boy lost his favorite mongrel, and HE plans to deceive you with such."

He came that night and laid the three items before me. The knife, not fully wiped clean, wrapped in a silken cloth. A small tooth, round and porcelain, lay in a tiny box. Then came the heart… the dead piece of flesh…rotting. A cruel smile of contempt pulled at my lips as I looked at the three fraudulent pieces.

"Well done." I purred as I brushed his long hair that was damp with sweat. I could smell his fear and his desire, mixing. I knew that she was now in Pumilius, that she had made friends with mining dwarfs. Seven brothers who had set tribute before the King himself, prior to his death. She was being kept underground for protection, and that he, Actaeon, had taken her there himself. He had told her everything, had warned her.

The muscles in my body tightened and my jaw clenched so hard my teeth threatened to split in half as I poured him a glass of wine. I pressed it in his hand and with a voice so soft he could barely hear it unless he leaned in close, I said, "Drink darling, then you will bathe in the warm tub before joining me." My eyes looked to the bed chamber and back into his.

He nodded and raised the glass to his lips and swallowed. His eyes were locked with mine. I watched as his Adam's apple bobbed then constricted. His eyes grew large and the glass dropped to the floor, he stumbled then joined the broken glass. I stepped over him, and made my way to the warm tub, it had been a long day.

A thought began to eat away at me. It had been a month and I refused to speak to the mirror for fear of the answers I would receive. I paced my bed chamber and could concentrate on nothing else as the obsession grew.

Another month passed and I closed my world in farther still, speaking to no one. I wasn't even sure if my voice worked. Maids shared worried looks and would bring me tokens and gifts to try and cheer me up. I rarely ate as my appetite waned and my desires took over. Then one young maid, not older than 5 or 6, brought me an apple. She was a pretty little thing. She smiled a wide loose tooth smile before she skipped out the door. I recognized her innocence and smiled back.

The apple was perfectly sun ripe and sweet. Its skin a brilliant, unnatural red. I was impatient to sink my teeth into it, to pierce its flesh.

I thought of the adorable baby wrapped in my lover's coat. I thought of the lovely maiden running barefoot in the sun. I thought of the tragic beauty trapped in the dark underground with only roots that hung like chandeliers from the ceiling to remind her of the palace she once called home.

"Oh that poor Beauty, she must be sick of eating potatoes and beets," I spoke to the mirror. "She must miss the rich orchards." The pleasure I felt in that moment, I had not felt since the day the child was handed to me, as I rolled the apple in my hand.

I smiled at the mirror, showing every tooth I could. The mirror smiled back.