Rose Black

A Dark Retelling of a Fairy Tale

Image by Luana Cappon from Pixabay

Blood blossomed on the snow, staining the perfect white, as it dripped from the lips of the Queen. Icy tears from a dim, melancholy sky caught in her raven hair as she fell to her knees, an apple, scarred with a large bite, tumbling from her fingers and onto the snow. The world swooned, the crumbling walls of the old stone courtyard touching both earth and sky, swimming in and out of focus like the dark shapes of fish in a murky pond.

With crimson fingers, she grasped at her chest as another fit of coughing overtook her and convulsed her body. She closed her eyes, trying to keep the rising panic pressed down. Poison, her thoughts screamed. Poison!

Away from her, lying on the ground under the naked oak tree, was her husband. He was facing away from her. He had succumbed much more quickly to the lethality of the bushel of apples that they had stumbled upon. When they came here, they had hoped to find some remnant of their former kingdom. Something that showed that they had not always been the wretched vagabonds that they were now. A jewel, an old piece of parchment bearing the royal seal, something. But all they found, sitting on an old sundial, was a basket of bright apples, and their hunger, far from being sated that day from the small rabbit that they had shared, compelled them to eat the fruit, as red as rubies, as precious as water in a blistering desert.

The Queen grabbed a handful of snow in desperation, but the sharp cold did little to relieve the burning in her throat, the blood bubbling up from the core of her chest. She could not die here. Her husband was gone, but no, she could not die. She had survived the siege on the castle, six months in the wilderness, fleeing from rebels and bounty hunters. She would not die here.

She did not want to die. Here, or anywhere.

The soft padding of boots on snow drew her eyes from the blood on her hands to an approaching shadow. The world twisted at a sick angle, disorienting the coming of the figure garbed in a dark cloak. She could not seem to focus on its face, hidden by a deep hood that billowed gently in the falling snow.

The weight of her own head was too much for the Queen to bear and she rested it on a pillow of snow. The cold seeped into her mouth and brought her some comfort as the footsteps stopped beside her.

A withered rose fell by her head. Grayish-black, so decayed that its original color could not be guessed. The hooded figure spoke.

“It’s time I returned this to you, my Queen.” It was a woman’s voice, as smooth as a marble goddess. The Queen did not stir but continued to stare at the dead flower before her. When had she given someone a rose?

After a moment, the figure knelt down and pulled at the Queen’s hair. She cried out as her face was lifted by a cold hand to look into the hood and see nothing but a wooden mask the color of old mahogany, with slits so narrow that she could not make out the woman’s eyes. The masked woman stared at the Queen, snowflakes catching on the fringes of her hood.

“Do you remember me?” she asked.

The Queen gave a slight shake of her head. Warm blood continued to dribble down her chin. The woman made a noise in her throat; a kind of a chuckle. “How unfortunate. How can you not remember me, dear Stepmother?”

The Queen’s eyes went wide. Words struggled to escape her lurid lips. “Y-you…” she rasped.

“You told the huntsman to bring me into the woods to carve me up. And oh, he did so.” The mask came away. The girl’s face whom she once knew, that despicable child of another woman who she had so dearly wished to be dead, was terribly incised and butchered. Scars snaked down her face in curved, black-red rivers. The once rosy cheeks were now lumps of lacerated flesh, her soft lips now held together by scar tissue. This child, this woman, was not the beautiful thing she had once been.

“I wanted you…dead…not…this…” the Queen whispered.

The mask hid the disfigured face once more. “The huntsman suffered a similar fate before he died; he was dealt with several weeks ago. My loving father has met his end. And now, so will you.”

“Please,’ the Queen uttered. “Please …have mercy.”

The masked woman released her hold on the Queen’s head. It fell with dead weight back onto the snow as the woman stood. “Sin must be paid with blood,” the masked woman said as she turned and walked away. “And now we have all paid it.”

The Queen looked at the rose she had given to the girl, the same girl that she feared had been fairer than she. It had once been a stunning, beautiful red, deeper than the color of the sky as the sun fled from the approach of night. She remembered that pleasant spring day, now just the echo of a dim memory there in the hard chill of winter, as she had placed the flower in the hand of the child as she was lifted into the saddle with the huntsman. “A rose for a Rose,” she had told her with a deceitful smile.

The child had smiled back, her eyes sparkling at the beauty of the flower.

“Please…” the Queen was dying. “Snow…White.”

The masked woman continued to walk away. “My name is Rose Black,” she said to the corpse.