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by Peri Fae Blomquist
Some fairytales don't get told. The best, the darkest, the truest, never do. Because telling them means hurting somebody. It means taking the risk that the story grows up with legs and ends up out in the world somewhere, singing it's head off, until the wicked queen hears it carrying on and knows it's about her.
And some little girls, raised by wicked queens, know the truth about things. Like that, a talking-glass isn’t good for anything. Hell, it doesn't even tell the truth.
Lies. Lies. Lies. That's all.
And some of us still love our wicked queens.
Yes, we do.
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I'LL TELL THE STORY, right? Because I can tell you're desperately curious, and I've always been a sucker for positive attention. But I'm only telling it to you and only if you make me a promise: Sit on it. Take it home and sit on it like an egg and wait till I'm good and dead before you hatch it. You swear? Okay, good.
It goes like this:
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A LITTLE GIRL GREW up in a white house, with big windows, like eyes. And a crooked porch, sagging on one side like rotting teeth in a smile. And a long, long hallway beginning at the front door, covered in a red, red rug.
Red like a tongue.
And at the end of the rug, at the end of the hall, hung a dark, circular mirror that never reflected anything back, not even the morning sun.
And sometimes, at night, the house rumbled, and the walls shifted, and from the back of the house, from the end of the hallway, the little girl could hear sounds that went crunch, crunch, crunch, like teeth on broken glass, followed by a wet gulping sound.
In the morning, things would be missing. Dishes and wine glasses and portraits from the walls. The rocking horse went missing that way, and the last of grandma's Pyrex.
The red, red rug would be wet, and the front door would be hanging open like a gasp, while the watered-down sunrise trickled in.
And there would be Mama, sitting out there on the front steps, having been coughed up by the house again, wearing sweatpants dark with dew. She would look up, brushing her tangled hair back from her face to smile and say, "Breakfast?" And the little girl would nod, and Mama would get up and squish down the wet rug to the kitchen to put eggs on the stove.
And all day long, the white house would be still.
In the afternoons, when Mama went out on errands, the little girl would tiptoe down the red rug-tongue to look into the glass, which was like looking into a well in the wall, and ask it the same question:
"Glass, why do you eat my mother every night, and then spit her back up every morning?"
Because little girls aren't stupid, and even they recognize the sounds of chewing.
And the glass always said: "Little girl, though I'm forever hungry, I would never eat your mother. Though my stomach is so empty, I eat even the light that shines in through the front door, and so have lost my reflection. I would never eat your mother."
"You are a liar," the little girl always replied. "I hear you swallow her every night."
"Little girl," said the glass, "Don't you know how quiet are my empty, starving chambers? Don't you know how dark I am inside, and pleasantly warm?"
And then the girl would always grow afraid. And run outside to play until Mama came home.
Eventually, as always happens with children, the little girl gave in to the desire to know. She stayed up one night, peaking through a crack in her door, looking down the length of the rug, waiting for the mirror to strike. And while she watched, the hall began to ripple up and down like a throat, and her mother came out of the kitchen swaying like someone on the deck of a ship. Mama leaned into the glass and made a funny, tired sound.
And climbed right in.
Well, the girl was furious. What kind of mother fed herself to an evil glass every night? What if some morning the glass decided not to spit her out again?
So the girl took her backpack, and ran down the red, tongue-rug to the kitchen, and from beneath the sink dug out an old cookie tin. From inside, she took all the money she found. From the pantry, she took as much food as she could carry. Then she ran back down the rug, and threw open the door, and tumbled out into the night.
The little girl stayed away for a whole year and one day. And while she was gone, she learned to sleep in houses that never chewed or vomited or disappeared childhood toys. She taught herself to cook her own eggs. To haggle with the grocer for bruised fruit at the end of the day. But eventually the money ran out, and she had to go home.
She made sure to arrive while it was still dark, so that Mama would be in the glass and the little girl would have time to think of what to say. The white house looked the same. Windows like eyes, sagging porch like a sad smile. But as her foot hit the first brick step, the windows started to rattle in their frames, and the walls of the house convulsed. The door flew open like a gasp. And from the very back of the house, at the very end of the hall, came a horrible crash, and a crunch, crunch, crunch, and the girl looked and saw her mother crawling out of the mirror. Her slippered feet crushed and cracked the lightless shards that fell to the floor. The red tongue-rug thrashed, lifting up and down and trying to throw Mama back in. But Mama dug her nails into the walls and the baseboard. She pried up old picture frames and threw them into the hungry thing behind her. She wrenched wallpaper down in great, continent-shaped scabs, and threw those back too. Inch-by-inch, Mama clawed her way to the door, and the porch, and the front step, where she collapsed, and whereupon the house grew still.
Mama sat with her head low and her hair in damp tendrils over her face. Swaying like someone just come off a ship trying to remember how to be still.
The little girl sat down next to her mother. She was a little taller now, so that they were almost the same height, and so she guessed not so little anymore. Dew collected on the stone of the steps, and on their bodies, turning their clothes dark and wet. The door hung open and creaked in the breeze.
"Eggs for breakfast?" Mama asked before the girl could speak.
"I'll make them," answered the girl. "Come in and we'll light the fire."