Peel and Core

I always knew it was you.

You don’t know how beautiful you are. You think no one would look at you without the kohl on your face, the gold in your hair, the corset cinched around your vanishing center. You thought coming here with a cloak on bent shoulders would make me see a crone, as if your unpainted skin held one single wrinkle. If you walked through the village instead of the wood, men would fight for the right to propose to you. Without any of the trappings and rituals you feel forced to maintain, you would still be the most beautiful thing any of them had ever seen.

Any of us.

I knew it was you when I opened the door. I knew you had found me, what you came here to do. Of course I invited you in. I wanted to be found.

That’s what I told the huntsman when he begged me to run away. He did not want to cut out my heart and feed it to you. If I had any skill with a blade, I’d have put it on the platter myself.

I know what the mirror said.

The mirror lied.

It hurt my eyes to look at you, like staring into the sun. Could barely hear you over the warm splendor of your voice, the hypnotic movement of your mouth. I breathed in the swish of your skirts, your elegant glide, just like dancing. I longed for your touch, the caress of your skin, the beat of your heart against mine.

Enchantress. That whisper has followed you all your life. And I was under your spell.

The dwarves asked me why I didn’t keep running. Why I didn’t keep moving, as far as I could from your murderous obsession. I told them I couldn’t leave my father.

I couldn’t leave his wife.

We played pretend, you and I. Me, wide-eyed and trusting. You, putting a ridiculous limp into your graceful gait. Now that I’ve lived with working-class men, I can tell you’ve never, ever met one. That caricature of a dialect would have fooled nobody. I let you make a fool of me.

“What a beautiful girl,” you called me. You touched my face.

I let you tie the laces around my waist.

Tighter.

And tighter.

I didn’t say, ‘Stop’.

“Why did you let her in?” the dwarves asked me. “Didn’t we tell you? Didn’t you know? Why did you let her in?”

Seven bachelors, you see.

You must have known I knew. You came back in the same disguise.

We said we were happy to see each other. Didn’t mention that the last time, one of us died. We both pretended it never happened. We gave ourselves a blank slate.

I knew the comb was lethal, and I didn’t care. You ran your gentle fingers through my ebony hair.

Soothing.

Intimate.

Poison.

I know, although I love you, I'm one of many. My own father among the ranks, I never flattered myself that I could turn your head. Women of our station have prescribed romances, roles we are obliged to play. But I hoped to earn your friendship.

Your tolerance?

Your trust.

I grew up in your shadow, longing, pining for your touch. Just a pat. A hug. A dance.

Too young to know how torturous that beauty could be. The deep, paranoid dread of relentless age, the effects of gravity. Hideous vigilance for any spot, any blemish, any hair out of place. Seeing every pretty face as one more threat. You thought beauty was all you had. And, with singular focus and determination, you were right.

I saw you completely. Not just the blithe mask you wore as my father’s accessory. I saw the ache of knowing you would never be enough. The acid burn of depreciating worth. The helpless agony as time just slips away. I saw how desperate you were for somebody to make you feel safe. Someone to value you beyond youth and pleasure. Someone to hold you, cherish you unconditionally. Someone to love.

That was always your wish.

You’d just given up on fairytales.

Every day, every single person saw that you were beautiful. But you only ever believed what the mirror had to say. And one day, the mirror named me.

If you had asked any human who they preferred, they would have said, “What? Between you and a literal child? What kind of sick pervert do you think I am?” But mirrors don’t have the same standard sensitivities.

I’m not angry that you wanted to murder me.

I’m angry you sent me away.

Sent me off into the woods with a servant to do it for you, instead of watching the life drain away with your own eyes. Even killing me, couldn’t we have shared some connection? Were you so determined not to know me, you couldn’t even make it personal?

When the huntsman failed, I wondered if you’d send another impartial assassin. But I knew you cared when you came to finish me off yourself.

“Do. Not. Let. Anybody. In.”

The dwarves are allowed to make the rules; it is their house, after all. But never letting anybody in is no way to live. And I’m determined to live, if I have to die trying.

Really, I wish you’d get gory with it. I wish you’d rush me with a hatchet, take a sickle to my limbs, slash a razor up and down my arteries. I wish you’d wrap a garotte around my neck and squeeze, drag me to the stream and hold me under, wait for my breath to stop bubbling. I wish you’d lift up a cudgel and bash in my skull, stamp down on me with your dancing shoes, and spend weeks picking bits of me out of your hair. I wish you’d look me in the eye as it stopped looking back. I wish you’d kiss away my last breath.

And in that moment, that brief flicker, when I’m just on the threshold of life and death, I wish you’d hold me in your arms and tell me everything. I wish you’d rock my broken body and spill all your secrets, every inch of ugliness you tried to bleach away. I wish you’d whisper all the things you’ve never put to words, secure in knowing I will never, ever tell them. In that moment, when we are smeared together with no beauty in between, I wish you’d tell me who you are, and know I love you all the same.

Now, give me the apple.

I want to take a bite.

And watch you watch me choke.