The Real Snow White

Have you ever asked yourself what will happen to the villain right after “happily ever after”?  What turns a villain into a villain? No one bothers to know the other side of the coin but this is the story that is never being told. It is never being handed from one generation to another. This is the other side of the coin. My darling friends, this is my story.

I was raised in a small village where the men worked as woodcutters and the women were mostly shepherdesses. It was a very beautiful and tranquil village. The men will go to the wood and the women will look after their healthy lamb. And every Saturday, all of them, I mean most of them will gather around a bonfire and sang their heart out. They will clink their glasses and drink their famous ale until dawn. The welcoming village was also blessed with beautiful nature. Breath taking with green glade stretched from the nearest valley into the woods. Mother Nature really blessed the place with brimming fortune and wonders! The glade, for example, will smell of sweet honeysuckles as the spring approached.  The butterflies on the other hand, will fly from one flower to another, helping in the process of cross pollination, spreading the love seeds to the entire village in summer. Such symbiosis will leave everyone in complete contentment. I would.

My mum was a seamstress. My dad went missing when I was five. Mum always told me to keep faith in him and believe that my dad was still alive. He just got some hard times during the droving. He might return once the things were all cleared up. But it was already passed ten years and he was never here. No sign of him at all. Some of the villagers started to speak ill of him. They said my mum was foolish to trust him. He was a cheater. He ran away with another woman. However, I refuse to believe in any of them. Not them and not even my mum. For me, he was nobody. A deceased, a dead husband of a poor wife and a father who failed to learn what had become to his daughter.

I grew up in more or less a very dull life. I was rather exanimate even though the flowers kept blossoming each year. It was really a tough life. Mum was getting old, her hair was mostly white as snow and her skin wrinkled like the bark of a tree. Sometimes I could not hold back my tears when I saw her thin skin that revealed bulging bones near her chest. She was so frail yet she always forced herself to do all the sewing and refused my help all the time. She did not want me to be like her – illiterate. She chose to send me to neighbouring school so that I could learn to write and read. She believed that only education will ensure my future. It was then when I was walking back from the school that my life had changed forever.

There was a spring that spouted glistening gold water. It was an enchanted spring. Water nymphs were seen playing near the lapping clear water. I really could not believe my eyes that such thing like this could exist. That day was very strange. I was about to run for I was scared that my mum will be very angry for my lateness that my left leg was accidentally pricked by sharp thorny vines. I yelped in pain and was terrified when the spring suddenly disappeared, out from the view and what was left was only a small mirror. That was then and I lost sight of what had happened next, only to find myself the next day proposed by a man, who I believed as my prince charming.

I knew this was a sign for a happy ending. Wait hold on a minute. My husband was not a prince charming. He was not the knight in shining armour. He was only a king, an old crackpot king who required all his might to even stand on his two feet. One of his servants found me near their forbidden garden and the king was immediately delighted to find me and without a second thought proposed me for he was indeed in need of someone to look after his only daughter. I was at first reluctant for it was obviously did not make any sense for me to leave my sick mum alone in the village.

“I refuse, your majesty. I am only a peasant; a daughter of a seamstress…I know nothing of such…of how a woman…”

“What I need is for someone to look after Snow White…she’s a good girl.”

Nevertheless, the king promised to take care of my mum’s medication and he will ensure that she will get the best treatment from the royal physician with only one condition –I must agree to marry him.

Days were gone and the king was no longer fit to even take his own food. I was not allowed to return to the village and see how my mum was doing. It was a lamenting life. How could I succumb to a pain of a daughter who can’t ever meet her own mum? I was overwhelmed by my melancholic life. Tears never stopped streaming down my cheeks. I had the wealth but my heart was still empty until one day. I found the mirror’s biggest secret. It was the mirror that I found near the spring that had helped to cure the itch in my heart.

“Mirror, mirror that is shining, can you tell me how my mum is doing?”

The mirror will immediately spin wild and later project the picture of my mum. She was looking better now. I spent most of my time with the mirror and the day came. The king was dead from a mysterious illness. He was pale and his eyes were sunken into the sockets. He really looked like a living zombie when he was alive. Snow White stood behind me. I embraced her and kissed her on her forehead. Poor kid. I understood how she might feel right now, seeing her father leaving her and she had no one to cling too. I held her tighter. I promised her that I will look after her and will never leave her behind. Never!

She was already fifteen that time and soon her coronation will take place when she will turn eighteen and that will be the time when I will ask her a permission to let me go. I wanted to return and live once again with my mother. I wanted to feel the cold mountain breeze wash against my cheeks and sing the folk song with villagers every Saturday. How I missed all the memories. I knew Snow White will help me. She smiled at me and dimples formed near her cheeks.

“We will go through this together,” she said under her breath.

There was something strange about Snow White. She was pale as ice just like her father. It might run in her blood. The blue blood always amazed me of how complicated their family tree was. There was one night when I was hardly able to sleep that a knock came on my door. My mind was still clouded of what I just seen through my mirror, mum coughed out blood. I tied my robe and turned on the doorknob.

“Mother, can I sleep with you?” Snow White was pleading. I was possessed by her beautiful puppy eyes. She was the most beautiful girl that I ever since but she looked paler these days. She must have had been missing his father.

“Sure, why not? A fifteen year old girl is not too old to sleep with her mother, right?” I patted a kiss on her forehead lovingly and showed her to my room.

I could have sworn, something was wrong with her. She smiled and I knew something was glistening between those white teeth. That night and the following night, Snow White kept asking me whether I could let her sleep with me and the next day, she will appear more youthful, ripe and animated. She looked robust while I found myself feeling more distressed. I ate a lot but I hardly ever gained weight. I kept losing my weight and I easily collapsed whenever I tried to move from one place to another.

That one very night, I purposely let my retriever, Windy to sleep in the room.  He howled that night very loudly and barked when the clock stroke 3 in the morning. I was woken up by the loud noise. I searched for Snow White and she was beating Windy with a chair. Windy growled and tried to bite Snow White but she was too quick for Windy and she grabbed Windy by the neck and crushed Windy’s skull with her bare hands. She licked the carrion and devoured what was Windy’s. I felt sick of the noise when she chewed the slimy gross fresh flesh. I forced myself to sleep. I was shivering. It was the longest night ever and Snow White slept beside me and the revolting smell of Windy’s blood choked me silently.

I was determined to get away from her. I told my servant what I had seen that night but no one believed me. I had no other way but to kill her or else, I will be killed.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who will help me to get rid of that fairest of all?”

The mirror showed me a man. He was a huntsman. This could be the answer…

The rest, I think you would know the answer but I am still here wishing that everyone will know the real story of me; the evil stepmother and the graceful Snow White. 


P/S: this is still a draft. i will improvise it one day.