I never expected to be running for my life at only fifteen. I am Princess Deneige—“the snow” in French, if you’re wondering—and though my upbringing wasn’t conventional for royalty, still I never even dreamed that I would become a princess in peril. Actually, make that a princess in mortal danger. I survived two attempts on my life in as many days, and I knew who was behind it, too.
Royalty or not, my life hadn’t been pampered and spoiled. My parents, King Eriik and Queen Arcadia, had told me since I was old enough to understand words that I needed to be a “proper” Princess; that I needed to learn about Life as well as academics so that in the future I could be a good future ruler for my people. But what was “proper” changed with every nanny hired. One thought “proper” was sitting quietly and doing needlework. Her successor thought that “proper” meant learning how to clean my bedroom and make it shine. A long list of nannies came and went over the years, in addition to my tutors, to fulfil my parents’ plans for my education.
I was eleven when that changed. My mother died suddenly after coming down with a sickness, and while we were still in shock, a royal cousin on my father’s side of the family, Elspeth, came to the castle to take care of my father and me. It was nice to have someone to handle social duties for us while we were grieving my mother’s loss, but it wasn’t long afterwards that I’d been told by my father that Elspeth was to become my new stepmother. He’d tried to explain that I needed a mother and the kingdom needed a queen, but I think he just needed to have someone living beside him that wasn’t a daughter.
In short order my older, wrinkled, grey-haired and grey-eyed father and younger, beautiful, blonde-haired and blue-eyed Elspeth were married in a grand royal ceremony. But if I’d thought my life had been difficult before, it became unbearable almost immediately after the wedding reception ended. My stepmother started putting me to work. Real work. My academic tutors and my last nanny were dismissed, and instead I was given a stern “instructor” named Old Johann. His only duty was to oversee me in all kinds of household chores and to “instruct” me in a task when I did something wrong. Those frequently had involved lots of tiresome repetition of a task when I made a mistake, no matter how small; nor did it matter if I quickly corrected it. I had to start again, and do all the repetitions decreed by him. The palace servants, pitying me, had tried to help whenever they could, but they were often blocked in their attempts by Johann.
I’d tried complaining to my father multiple times, but he would only vacantly pat my head and say things like “But if you already know how to do that, what’s the problem?” and “Come come, now, you’re exaggerating,” and stuff like that. He didn’t understand, or maybe didn’t want to understand, that I had become little more than a servant and wasn’t learning anything that I would need to be a future queen.
One positive outcome, though, was that I’d became very fit and slender since I was kept on the run morning, noon, and night. Of course, since I too ate the kinds of foods my father and step-mother ate when I had my meals with them at my father’s request, I also remained healthy. Another positive outcome was that I’d figured out how to balance my work against each other to help myself. For example, the harsh soaps I used in my cleaning were balanced out by the butters and oils I put on my skin from baking and cooking. But I couldn’t understand why my new stepmother, instead of continuing to look at me smugly as I did my chores around her, seemed more and more sour as the years passed.
I found out why the hard way.
Four years later, I’d just had my fifteenth birthday and was sweeping in the throne room when I heard voices coming from the little study that was behind a hidden door in back of the throne. At that time of day no one should have been in there, and we had no visitors in the palace, royal or otherwise. So of course I was curious. I pressed my ear to the thin wooden door to listen. I distinctly heard my stepmother speaking angrily to someone. I almost wish now that I didn’t hear it, but my life would have been very much the shorter if I hadn’t.
“How is it that Deneige continues to thrive?” she’d spat venomously. “I’ve given her all the hardest tasks, and still she looks much the same as she did four years ago, except somehow more beautiful. Ugh! I should be the fairest of them all, not her!”
A male voice rumbled a reply which I couldn’t hear, and she’d said in turn, “No, I can’t put her in with the servants, much as I would like that. Her father would miss her, and the servants would only protect her more than they try to now. Since the King is besotted with me, he doesn’t listen to her complaints, and thinks things are like they have always been in terms of her ‘life lessons.’ But if Deneige weren’t around, her father would look for her. And then maybe actually listen to her.”
Another male rumble, and she said, suddenly sounding pleased, “Yeeesss. It needs to look like an accident. It has been long enough since her mother’s death. But it can’t be connected to me.”
I grew dizzy and leaned against the door. I had always assumed that Elspeth really didn’t like me, from the snide comments about my appearance to her refusal to touch me after she had been crowned Queen. But to hear her actively plot my death was shocking. Footsteps approached the door, and I’d hurried to duck out of sight behind the throne. Peeping up over the gold scrolled arm rest, I saw my stepmother in a set of gorgeous royal purple robes sweep haughtily from the study. She’d been followed by her brown leather-clad huntsman, a harsh man hired by her directly. I gulped quietly, because he was trouble. He was her eyes and ears when in the palace, and had license to go everywhere except the royal bedrooms. If I was to not die, I knew I would need to be on the lookout from now on.
Not long afterwards the first of the attempts on my life happened. I’d been scrubbing the cooking utensils in the huge tin tub in the wash room when hard hands shoved me in the middle of my back. I screamed as I went flying into the tub, soapy bubbles filling my mouth, and a sharp knife propped upright but hidden under the soap suds sliced my shoulder as I fell on it. I was quickly pulled up by Wash Mistress Marion; and when it was discovered I was bleeding, she’d bandaged me up.
“There now, Princess. Are you all right?” Marion had asked me with a worried tone, securing the bandage in place. “Perhaps you could sneak up to your room and have a lie-down. Don’t worry, we’ll cover for you with Johann.”
“How could this have happened?” I asked, shaken at my narrow escape. A couple of inches more to the right and it would have gone into my neck, not across the top of my shoulder.
She’d frowned. “I don’t rightly know. It does seem strange, but I guess accidents can happen anywhere.”
Coincidence that this occurred the day after the huntsman talked to my stepmother? Probably not. My stepmother had said it needed to look like an accident. And she had been speaking to her huntsman. And I remembered that I’d seen him leaving the washroom as I was carrying plates inside. It had to have been him who’d set up the knife, and who must have snuck back in to push me.
The second attempt came the day after that. I’d been in the kitchen baking the strawberry tarts my father loved so much, and saw a shadow block the sun from the little window up high in the stone walls behind me. Instinct kicked in, and I’d whirled away from the fireplace as if I had just remembered to get a particular spice when the huntsman “accidentally” stumbled right where I had been. Had I not moved, I definitely would have fallen—or been pushed—into the fire. Instead, he nearly fell into the flames. The cook nearest me rushed to help him stay upright.
“Are you all right?” I’d asked the huntsman, turning to face him with as much wide eyed innocence as I could manage.
He looked at me levelly before replying, “I am fine,” and leaving. That tore it. I knew then he really was going to try and kill me no matter who was around!
After finishing with the tarts and reporting in to Johann, who no longer physically followed me around, I’d gone to my room. I’d paced its thick flowered carpet and tried to decide what I was less afraid of: leaving the castle to save my life but having nowhere to go and no way to take care of myself, or staying and trying to avoid being killed while having a roof over my head, food to eat, and clothes to wear. I knew I couldn’t go to my father, because my stepmother had been right. He wouldn’t listen to me, probably thinking it all some sort of teenaged temper tantrum. But near-deadly accidents twice in two days had left me rattled and scared that a third attempt would be successful.
I decided to leave the castle right away. I packed a small basket, the kind I would use when sent out to gather flowers for the family rooms, and hid a few things in it like soap, a comb, some of the tarts I’d baked, and some gold coins under the light cloak I always took with me. I then dressed in my sturdiest grey work dress, white apron, and black knee boots. I couldn’t avoid castle servants or guards on my way out, but they paid me no notice once they saw the flower basket. I breathed easier when I stepped off the draw bridge, but was also struck with a sudden sadness. I already missed my father and all the people with whom I’d grown up. I didn’t miss the recent additions to the castle, though.
I forced myself into a carefree skip as I headed out to the fields where I often picked flowers because I didn’t want to draw suspicion with any changes in my behavior. As soon as I was out of sight I ran straight for the forest on the far side of the meadows. It was the perfect place for me to hide while I figured out what to do with myself even though I’d always been warned to not go there because it was dangerous.
It may be dangerous there, but being back in the castle was more perilous, I reasoned.
I hadn’t been five minutes in the woods when something prompted me to look back over my shoulder at the meadow. My heart stopped a moment, and then it started galloping wildly.
The huntsman was running towards the forest.
I whirled and sprinted further in, throwing my basket to the ground behind me so it wouldn’t weigh me down. He crashed in among the trees, sacrificing stealth for speed. Since he was full grown with longer legs, he was catching up fast. But I had speed borne of terror, and being smaller I could slip through the tangled places much easier than he could. Thankfully I managed to lose him. Knowing that he would stop and track me I was very glad to soon stumble across a small brook. I jumped in and waded upstream so that he would lose my trail, and stayed walking in the water until I lost feeling in my submerged body parts. I got out by climbing a grey-brown tree whose roots were halfway in the water and went as high in the branches as I dared. I took off my boots and rubbed feeling back into my legs and feet, slumping tiredly against the broad trunk. I closed my eyes for what I thought was just a second, and the next thing I knew it was night.
I woke up hungry and thirsty. Thirsty I fixed by cupping water into my hands from the stream, but eating was another story. A faint aroma of meat being cooked came from somewhere and I was hungry enough to want to find its source. I put my boots back on and followed my nose to a hidden little glen with a small house with a kitchen garden and a little pond. The delicious smell came from the chimney’s smoke. Taking my courage in both hands I walked up to the door and knocked.
A gruff voice from inside called out, “Who’s there?”
“A lost traveler who has lost her belongings and is in need of charity.” I crossed my fingers and prayed that the gruff voice was paired with a kind soul.
Abruptly the door was flung open. The people inside and I gaped at each other. I saw seven little men about three feet high with long beards of differing colors standing in the doorway, and beyond them was a rather chaotic, messy-looking house.
“You’re young to be a-travelling alone, missy,” the one in front, who was probably the leader, finally said.
“But pretty as a princess!” sighed a voice in the back. “With hair as black as night, lips as red as blood, and skin as white as snow.”
I froze. Those were the words my mother had used in the explanation of my name to me when I was little. Did they somehow know who I was? And if so, how?
“Quiet, Arrik,” scoffed another. “No princesses would be wandering around the woods at night dressed like that and without bodyguards. Idjit.”
“Please?” I begged, mentally breathing a sigh of relief that they didn’t really know who I was. “I would be willing to do work in exchange for a meal and a place to stay for tonight.”
“Where are your parents?” asked the leader.
“My mother’s dead,” I said, which was the truth.
“Aww, let her in, Garrin. She can’t possibly harm us,” said another voice.
“Yeah!” the others chorused.
Garrin sighed. “All right. You can come in. What’s your name?”
“Umm, Snow—Snow, uh, White,” I invented.
“All right, Snow. Can you cook?”
“I can.”
“Good. You can finish up the dinner we’ve started. Help yourself to any ingredients you find in the pantry in the kitchen.”
From what I could find, I decided to make a spicy meat and vegetable stew from the meat turning by itself on the magical spit in the fireplace, and serve it up with toasted day-old bread with the help of one knife that cut the bread by itself and another that spread butter on contact.
How much easier my castle chores would have been if I’d had some of these magical tools, I thought enviously.
The seven little men—introduced to me as Arrik, Kort, Frantz, Berg, Jarman, Garrin, and Hanz—enjoyed my meal so much that after dinner an arrangement was struck between us: I could stay as long as I wanted in exchange for cooking and cleaning. I immediately accepted.
The next morning, after the little men had left to work in the mine they owned, I got to work. I had just begun on the amazing pile of dirty dishes in the sink when a pounding sounded on the front door. Afraid, I immediately dropped to the floor and crawled under the kitchen worktable.
“Open up in the name of the Queen!” came a harsh voice from outside.
My heart raced. The huntsman!
How did he find me? I wondered.
He pounded some more but finally stopped. I stayed hidden. A shadow crossed the floor of the kitchen, and I realized he was peering in the windows. I held very still, hardly daring to breathe. The shadow disappeared but I didn’t move for a good hour or more. I only came out when my muscles protested their cramped position. I snuck over to each of the windows of the house and peeked out, breathing a sigh of relief when I didn’t see anyone anywhere outside. I went back to work and managed to make a decent dent in the household chores before the little men came home to the dinner I had ready on the table.
Halfway through the meal, Garrin asked me between bites, “Anything unusual happen today?”
“Ummmm…”
He raised a red eyebrow kindly at me, and for some reason that was enough for the floodgates to open. They all listened, astonished, as I put down my fork and knife and poured out my story from the time my mother died right up to the time I knocked on their door, and then broke down sobbing. They gathered around trying to soothe me, and eventually I was able to stop crying.
“Don’t worry, Princess Deneige. Our bargain will still hold. And what’s more, we will make sure that you’ll be protected from your stepmother,” Garrin assured me as the others chimed in, agreeing.
At that moment a pounding started up on the door again. I put my hands to my mouth, eyes wide, as I heard the huntsman’s voice order angrily, “Open in the name of the Queen!”
“Quick, under the table,” whispered Hanz to me, and I scurried under it as most of the little men seated themselves again to help hide me. Only Garrin went to answer the door.
“Have you seen a young runaway serving girl?” the huntsman demanded as soon as the door was open.
Garrin just looked at him. “Why should I tell you?”
“I am the Queen’s personal servitor, and I order you to tell me if you have seen a young, black-haired runaway servant!”
The leader of the little men frowned. “How do I know that you are who you say you are? Have you any proof?”
The huntsman towered over Garrin threateningly. “I am bigger and stronger than you are, little man, so tell me what I want to know or you’ll feel my wrath.”
I was instantly afraid. I didn’t want Garrin or any of the others getting hurt on my account, but I also knew what would happen if I revealed myself. I saw the huntsman raise a fist aggressively in the air. That decided me.
“Stop!” I shrieked. “Don’t kill him!” I scrambled out from under the table between Frantz and Berg’s chairs. Though I knew it would mean my death, I also knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if any of the little men sacrificed their lives for mine.
“Ah-ha! There you are!” he said triumphantly. He glanced at Garrin. “And for harboring a wanted runaway, you little men will be taken into custody!”
“You mean ‘harboring a princess’, don’t you?” Garrin said dryly.
The huntsman scowled, realizing I had told them everything and had been believed. He pushed forward to grab me, but Garrin stuck his foot out and the huntsman went crashing to the wooden floor. Immediately all the little men leapt up from their seats and dog-piled on him, pinning him down.
“Get off me,” he bellowed, struggling against their weight.
“Princess! In the washroom down the hall there is a white cabinet. Get the purple ceramic jar out and bring it back here! Hurry!” Garrin commanded.
I ran to bring back the requested jar, and Garrin rubbed some of the orange goop inside it on the back of the huntsman’s neck. His struggles immediately started getting weaker, and within a couple of minutes he was snoring on the floor. The little men got off him, and Garrin bent down to whisper something in his ear. Then he stood to answer the silent questions written on my face.
“This is a jar of magic ointment that was given to us in barter for some of our ore. That’s how we’ve gotten all of the magical tools we have. He will wake with the memory of what I whispered: that he found you and killed you. That will spare you from being hunted again.” Garrin smiled.
I couldn’t help but smile back as Jarmann, Kort, Frantz, and Hanz picked up the sleeping huntsman and took him to dump him far away in the woods.
A year passed, and I lived very happily with the seven little men. All the training that my parents had given me really paid off during this time. I cooked, and cleaned, and sewed while they worked their mine and brought in supplies. One crisp fall day, not long after my sixteenth birthday, I was out in the woods about a mile from the house gathering berries to make a berry pie. A crunching of underbrush startled me, and an old woman came out from behind a bush with a basket of apples over her arm.
“Oh, dearie! I am a poor apple peddler that has lost her way in the woods. Can you show me how to get to the road again?”
There was no road for several miles from the bushes’ location. She would have had to force her way through some pretty rough terrain to get to where we were. This made me suspicious.
“Actually, I’m not sure,” I lied. “And I don’t want to get lost myself, so I will have to wish you luck on your own. I’m sorry.”
The old woman frowned, then tried again. “Oh, but dearie, I am such an old bag of bones. It would be sweet of you to help me. I’ll even give you an apple from my basket as payment?”
She reached in and then held out the most delicious looking apple I’d ever seen. Apples were my favorite, and apple trees didn’t grow in those woods. Plus it had been some time since the little men had brought any apples home from the closest village’s market day. My mouth watered.
“Go on, take it!” she urged, but something about her face made me think about Elspeth for the first time in months. I looked closer at the old woman. It was my stepmother in disguise!
“No!” I screamed, and dropped my burlap berry bag as I fled into the woods.
“You won’t escape me, Deneige! I too have magic now! That’s how I knew you’d enchanted my huntsman and that you were still alive! But I’ll change that!” she yelled angrily, throwing away her basket to chase me.
I ran as hard as I could towards the center of the forest where the foothills leading to the mine was located, knowing the little men would help me. I dashed up the steep path beside the deep-pooled waterfall with her right behind me and screaming that she was going to make me die.
Then the fact that she hadn’t even shown me a weapon before I started running caught up with my brain. I screeched to a halt and whirled around to face her, suddenly angry at myself; angry at her; angry at the whole situation.
“What in the world is the matter with you!?” I yelled.
Elspeth stopped short three feet away, confusion replacing the maniacal anger on her face for a moment.
“Why are you even here? You’ve driven me from the castle, and from my father, to live deep in the forest away from people. Nobody outside of this forest even knows I’m still alive! Can’t you be content with that? Why do you even care? Why do you have to kill me now?” I shouted at her.
“Because as long as you are alive, you are the fairest of them all! And that’s not fair!” she yelled back, stamping her foot in a temper tantrum.
My mouth dropped open. “What?” I finally managed to gasp.
“I want to be the fairest of them all! I want everyone to look at me, and be awed at my beauty, and do anything I ask of them just because I am beautiful!”
“You know that you are considered lovely by everyone. And you’ve been the Queen for four years. You have both beauty and power,” I said, no longer shouting. “People already do anything you ask because of both of those things. And even if I was more beautiful, what does it matter? There are no villagers, castle servants, guardsmen, or anyone like that out here to see me and compare me to you. Why would they even do that, anyway?”
Elspeth opened her mouth, and then closed it. I pressed on.
“Is beauty really the be-all and end-all for you? Looks fade, you know. My father, when he was young, was a very handsome man. Or so the portrait of him in the Great Hall shows. He is still good-looking, but he doesn’t look the way he used to anymore. What people care about from him, and will remember him for, is that he has been a just and fair ruler. Wouldn’t it be better for you to become known for something like kindness, or being a really good falcon hunter, or a great embroiderer, or something else that lasts beyond looks?” I asked.
She cocked her head to the side, then said in a cold voice, “You do have a point. Yes, you live out here where no one sees you. But someone may come into the forest, or you might leave it. Even if you swore to me that wouldn’t happen, still I will know that you live and are more beautiful than me.”
I was stunned that she completely dismissed all the rest of my arguments. Was she really that single-minded? Elspeth advanced towards me, fingers shaping themselves into claws as if she was already anticipating them wrapped around my neck. I saw, however, that there was still no weapon in either hand.
“Do you really expect me to let you kill me without a fight?” I asked, falling into a copy of a defensive position I’d seen guardsmen do in the castle practice yard.
“Yes!”
She rushed at me, and we grappled there on the path beside the waterfall. She maneuvered me closer and closer to the edge, and I understood that she was going to try and push me over it. I tried to stop it from happening, but her magic made her stronger than me. The nearer we got to the edge, the more the ground grew slick under our boots. I was frantic. I didn’t want to die! Elspeth’s boots suddenly shot out from under her and she slipped halfway over the cliff, her legs dangling above the waterfall’s gorge. I dug my feet into the ground and leaned back, not wanting her to take me with her if she fell. Elspeth growled and gripped frantically at my sleeves, but the shoulder lacings that fastened my sleeves to my blouse ripped through the fabric and she fell out of sight with a scream. I collapsed to my knees to catch my breath before I was brave enough to look over the edge. I discovered she’d fallen only about fifteen feet, still holding my sleeves, down onto a rock outcropping below. But she wasn’t moving. Just then the little men came running down the path.
“Princess!” “What are you doing here?” “Are you all right?” “Jarmann told us he heard screaming while on guard duty!” they shouted in worried tones as they crowded around me.
I told them what had happened, and then I started crying. All the stress of running for my life, and loathing of my stepmother, and fear of being killed caught up with me. Half of them stayed to comfort me and let me cry myself out, and the other half climbed down to check on Elspeth.
“She’ll be fine,” Garrin called up to me after looking her over. “She’s just knocked out cold.”
It was kind of weird, but I was relieved she wasn’t dead. She may have wanted to kill me, but she was my father’s wife after all. And I didn’t want him to be lonely. But I also didn’t want to have her continuing to try and kill me once she woke up. A brilliant idea popped into my head at that, which stopped my crying.
“Hey, Garrin? I know she’s unconscious right now, but is there a way to keep her unconscious for a little while longer?” I called down to him.
Garrin looked at me with raised eyebrows but unquestioningly took out a dagger from his leg sheath and carefully hit Elspeth on the lower back part of the skull with its pommel.
I jumped to my feet. “Wait here. I’ll be back in about half an hour!” I said gaily to the little men, who all stared at me in astonishment.
I raced to the cottage, got from the medicine cabinet the jar of magical orange goop that had been used on the huntsman, and raced back again.
“Here! Catch!” I said, tossing the ceramic container down to Garrin.
The little men all smiled, now understanding. Garrin opened the jar, swiped the ointment across the back of Elspeth’s neck and said something in her ear before pocketing the container again. I knew that he’d whispered pretty much the same thing that he’d told the huntsman: that she’d caught me and killed me. That, plus the ripped sleeves from my blouse left behind as a kind of proof, would put an end to her looking for me.
“That’s that, Snow,” Garrin said, as he and the rest of the little men gathered around me. “Let’s go home, where you are welcome to stay forever if you wish.”
I sighed with relief. I knew I could never go back to the castle and my father now, but at least I would always have a secure home
Susan Bianculli wears the titles “Mother” and “Wife” most proudly. Another is “Author” for The Mist Gate Crossings series, as well as several short stories in several other anthologies. Check out susanbianculli.wix.com/home for more information.