The trees grew together so close and tall that I couldn’t see the sky. Only slivers of light penetrated the canopy here and there, testifying that it was still day. What time of day, I wasn’t sure.
“I didn’t mean that I wanted to be Snow White!” I called out.
Only the sound of birds and tree branches rustling answered back.
“Chrissy?” I called. “Chrissy?” It had suddenly become very clear to me why she was only a fair godmother.
I called her name for a few more minutes, then wandered through the forest, frustrated and wondering if there was any way to get out of this. I did not like the idea of biting into a poisoned apple and lying unconscious until a prince showed up. How long would that take? Days? Years? I mean, yes, I sleep in but if I was lying around in the Middle Ages for years, my parents would notice I was missing.
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off to go shoe shopping. The only thing Chrissy had given me was new clothes. I now wore a simple crimson dress.
As I wondered which way to go, a little man with a long gray beard and a brown cap on his head burst through the trees.
His eyes zoomed in on me, anxiety etched into the wrinkles on his face. “Snow White,” he said, “are you all right?”
“Yes.”
He knew who I was, which meant I must have come into the fairy tale after Snow White had found the seven dwarfs’ house. I had no idea which of the dwarfs this was, and come to think of it, I wasn’t sure I could recall all of their names. There was, um . . . Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Boring—no wait, Boring wasn’t actually a dwarf. I was getting the dwarfs confused with my schoolteachers.
“Are you hurt?” The dwarf asked, still worried. “Why are you out in the forest?”
I knew I wasn’t supposed to lie, but I couldn’t very well tell him that I’d mistakenly been sent here from the twenty-first century.
“I, um, was out walking,” I said. Which was true, if not vague.
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“What?” he said indignantly. “You went wandering about when you know full well Queen Neferia is out to kill you?”
“I . . . guess.”
He broke into a language I didn’t understand but figured was dwarf cursing. He crossed over to me, took my hand, and none too gently towed me along beside him as he pushed his way back through the trees. “Have you not a lick of sense anywhere in your body? Did the good Lord spend so much time crafting your pretty head that he forgot to put anything inside? Do you not listen to anything we ever say?”
For someone so small he had a tight grip and moved incredibly fast. I tried not to stumble on rocks and tree roots as he pulled me along. “Let me guess—you’re Grumpy?”
He let out a humph. “And you would be too, if you’d just spent the last hour searching the forest for your wayward charge.” He walked even faster. “We tell you to stay inside, we tell you not to talk to strangers. But oh no, you must be out singing to the animals as if the birds didn’t do a fine enough job of it. And this after Queen Neferia has already tried to kill you thrice.”
“Thrice?” I repeated.
“Three times,” he said as though I didn’t know what thrice meant. Which I didn’t, but still—in the movie 101/431
there was only the time with the woodcutter and the poisoned apple.
“We already explained to you that the old lady peddler was Queen Neferia in disguise,” he said slowly. “She tried to kill you with the poisoned comb and with the belt. Which is why you are not to go shopping anymore, no matter how pretty the wares, remember?”
“Oh, right.” Now that he mentioned it, I vaguely remembered that in the Grimm version of Snow White, the queen had come twice before her trip with the apple and nearly killed Snow White with other deadly items.
And when you looked at it that way, Snow White had to be pretty idiotic to keep falling for the same trick.
I took a few steps in silence and realized what this meant. In this wish, apparently I was stupid. Or at least the dwarfs thought I was. I was going to have to set them straight about that right off.
We came to a clearing in the woods where not only one house stood but an entire village, complete with a church, a mill, stables, and a well.
“Go into the house,” the dwarf told me. “I’ll ring the church bell to let the others know you’re safe.” He let go of my arm and headed toward the church. I stood there staring at a row of cottages and wondering which one was the dwarfs’ home.
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He turned back to check on me and when he noticed I hadn’t moved, he said, “Well?”
“Which one is our house?” Okay, so this wasn’t the best way to impress him with my intelligence, but what else could I do? He rolled his eyes, let out a sigh, and took me by the hand again.
“This way,” he said and led me toward a large cottage in the middle of the street.
Oh. I should have guessed it was the biggest one since it had seven men living in it.
He might have said more, but just then two more dwarfs appeared out of different cottages as though going on a door-to-door search. One wore a gray cap, the other a black one, but both had long gray beards and wore the same baggy brown clothes that the first dwarf had on. They hadn’t seen us yet, so the dwarf beside me waved at them. “I found her! She’s fine.” The one in the black cap let out a relieved sigh. “I’ll go ring the church bell to let the others know.” He turned and trotted off toward the church. The one in the gray cap walked toward me, smiling.
I tried to guess his name. “Happy?”
“Of course we are,” he said. “We were worried that the queen had taken you someplace.” He took hold of my other hand and the three of us went into our cottage.
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The dwarf in the brown cap took on the frustrated tone of a parent as he spoke to me. “You’re far too trusting, Snow White. You’d like to help every stranger and animal that comes your way—and that’s admirable—but there are things to fear in the forest: bears, and thieves, and your stepmother. So you mustn’t go walking there by yourself again, agreed?”
Instead of answering him I looked around at the cottage. A rough-hewn table and benches sat before me, nothing like the intricately carved furniture in the Cinderella manor. Large beams spread across a low ceiling. If I stood on tiptoes I’d probably bang my head.
Everything seemed narrow and cramped. How could I promise them to stay inside all the time? Stairs in the corner of the room must lead to the bedrooms. I wondered if I had my own room. Even as Cinderella I had my own room. Okay, it was a hovel off the kitchen with a straw mattress, but at least I didn’t have privacy issues.
“Agreed?” the dwarf prompted.
I couldn’t answer him for fear that lizards would drop out of my mouth. Instead I said, “Can we talk later? I’m a little hungry right now.”
“Yes,” the first dwarf said. “It’s past time for our supper. We’ll wash up while you see to the porridge.” 104/431
“Oh.” I’d forgotten that in this fairy tale, Snow White did all the cooking and cleaning for the dwarfs. Great.
Just great. More chores.
I walked out of the main room and into the kitchen.
Off in the distance, I heard the church bell ring. To me it sounded like a scolding parent. Ring! Ring! Our beautiful but idiotic charge has been found wandering around the forest for no apparent reason! Ring!
In the kitchen I found a pot of split-pea soup already hanging in a kettle over the fire. I’d learned from my stint as Cinderella that the cook never took the soup off the fire. They didn’t have refrigerators to store it, so they just left it there cooking day after day and kept adding more beans and vegetables to it. Of course my WSM and stepsisters never ate the soup. It was just for the servants. The nobility ate meat, wheat bread, and all sorts of pies that, trust me, after three weeks of eating porridge and rye bread, smelled fabulous.