The Queen went directly to her dungeon without a word to anyone she passed, her rage fueling a supreme sense of power. She descended the winding stone staircase, and the chamber grew darker and darker as she descended. At the deepest depths of the dungeon was the room where she kept the sisters’ books and practiced the Black Arts. She slammed the dungeon door with a resounding clank.

“The heart of a pig! The blundering fool!” the Queen snapped.

The crow that had flown in months before had remained there and was perched on a skull near the odd sisters’ spell books. His wings fluttered as the Wicked Queen stormed about the dungeon.

The Queen decided that if she wanted Snow White dead, she must do it herself. But she was known far and wide. She would need to hide herself somehow if she were to travel over the Seven Jeweled Hills, beyond the seventh waterfall to Snow White. She darted over to the shelf where she kept the sisters’ volumes on all kinds of magic—the Black Arts, witchcraft, alchemy, poisons…disguises.

She removed the large dusty old book, and set it upon a table. She would transform her regal, queenly appearance into that of an old peddler woman. She flipped impatiently through the stained, tattered pages until she found the one labeled “Peddler’s Disguise.”

The Queen prepared her beakers and set her potions to a boil. Then, carefully following the instructions set forth in the recipe for the potion, she added a pinch of mummy dust, to make herself old, followed by other ingredients to shroud her beautiful clothes, to age her voice, and to whiten her hair.

When the formula was complete, she poured it into a crystal goblet and raised it to an open window where it was mixed well by the fierce wind and elements. She raised the glass to her lips and drank.

She had never mixed such a powerful potion—and she had never felt a sensation like this before. The room began to spin, and the Queen was sure she would die. Colors swirled all around her, and she grasped her throat, which felt as if it were closing up. Then her hands began to tingle. She held them out before her and looked at them. They began to transform, withering into bony old hands with clawlike fingers.

Her throat began to burn. “My voice!” she said. But the voice that issued from her was not regal and bold—it was cracked and hoarse.

After a while the strange sensation subsided. She gazed into a well-polished beaker and caught sight of her reflection. She was a haggard old woman—like the one from her dream. Her chin was sharp. A wart adorned the tip of her hooked nose. Her eyebrows had grown thick, black, and bushy. And her ragged yellow-gray hair blew into her face as the wind ushered through the window grate. Her clothes, too, had changed.

She was no longer dressed in her regal gown, but in an old black sackcloth with a hood to cover her ratty hair. She was the antithesis of everything she had been. A perfect disguise.

She could not help but laugh to herself. And now she would formulate a special sort of death for one so fair. What would it be? She felt around in her cloak, which still contained the apple Snow White had brought her. A poisoned apple! The Queen remembered back to when Snow White was a child, and the tale she told the Queen in which the sisters had mentioned enchanted fruit.

She flipped frantically through the sisters’ book of potions and found it at last. One taste of the poisoned apple and the victim’s eyes would close forever in the Sleeping Death. The Queen rummaged through the vials and canisters that were stored about the dungeon. She filled her cauldron with a healthy amount of skunk stock, and then added the rest of the formula—mostly herbs like foxglove and wolfsbane—with a dash of things much less ordinary, things found in mortuaries rather than forests.

Before long, her cauldron was bubbling with a green-gray liquid. The Queen considered the apple and smiled. Then she tied a thread around its stem so that she would be able to lower it into the elixir without touching the deadly potion. All she need do now, according to the sisters’ book, was recite the incantation and lower the apple into the cauldron. Then the spell would be complete.

“Dip the apple in the brew, let the Sleeping Death seep through!” she recited.

And with that, she dipped the apple into the cauldron. When she did so, the green liquid turned a sickly blue, and as the now-black apple emerged from its bath, an ominous mark appeared upon it—the death’s-head. This was confirmation that the spell was a success—just as the sisters’ book said it would be. She need only recite one more incantation, and the spell would be sealed. “Now turn red to tempt Snow White—to make her hunger for a bite!”

The apple quickly turned from black to the brightest red the Queen had ever seen. She threw her head back and cackled insanely. She was well-armed now. But then she hesitated—what if there were an antidote? She rushed back to the sisters’ book and flipped frantically through the pages. Yes, there was an antidote—the victim of the Sleeping Death could be awakened, but only by Love’s First Kiss. For a moment the Queen was crestfallen and enraged. After all, the Prince would be searching for Snow White. What if he found her, lying there, and kissed her corpse in sorrow. She would awaken. The Wicked Queen quickly put the thought out of her mind. There would be no chance of that. Snow White was in the forest with the Seven Dwarfs. They would find her body and think she was dead. And they would bury the girl alive.

The Queen laughed, startling the crow that inhabited the dungeon.

The Wicked Queen had only one thing left to do—deliver the apple.

She would soon once again be fairest of all.