Gravelhand Cane

I have been called many things in my long life in the mountains. But I will tell you my name first because names matter in the word especially when the world has forgotten yours. I am called Gravelhand Cane, because the palms of my hands are as rough as a river filled with rocks and as dusty as the mountain bones I live near.

I was already old when I met Snow White when she showed up at my door. I was still older when she left although I didn’t know I would be when she left.

We dwarfs don’t count time the way everyone else does. Our days are measured in the weight of ore, in the ring of a hammer and in the ache behind our eyes when the torch-like smoke lingers too long. Yet I remembered that morning clearly when we found her because the forest was unusually cold and seemed to be holding its breath. I had gone out early before the others woke up. I wanted to check the traps near the stream. The birds were even quiet that day and when they are quiet that is never a good sign. When I saw her lying there she was as pale as milk. At first I thought that she was dead. Her hair was dark and spread against the leaves like ink drops in the water. Her lips were too red for a living girl.

I stood there frozen and my heart was pounding hard in my chest, harder than any pick. We dwarfs know the mountain's moods but a human child abandoned in the woods is a different kind of danger. They bring stories with them. They bring Kings and Queens. And sometimes blood.

She moved. Then she breathed and we both let out a sound halfway between a prayer and a curse. Snow White woke up afraid as anyone would, waking up to a bearded stranger looming over them. I stepped back quickly and told her my name and the names of the others. I pointed to the cottage through the trees and I spoke very gently to her as if I were talking to a wounded bird.

When she smiled at me, truly smiled, as if kindness were her first language I felt something loosen in my chest that I had not known was tight. The others were hesitant. We all were. Our homes were small and our lives were even smaller. We worked, we ate and we slept. We did not invite the wide world in. But she swept through the hearth and sang while she did it. She even laughed when soot smudged her cheek.

The cottage sounded different with her inside as if the walls themselves leaned in a little closer to listen to her when she spoke. I did not love her as a father loves a child, nor as a man loves a woman. It was something stronger and different. Snow White reminded me of sunlight in a mine shaft, beautiful, yes, but also a little dangerous because you forget that the dark exists until it is too late.

She told us pieces of her story in fragments, like broken stones. A queen, a mirror, a command to kill. We did not ask more. We knew enough to be scared.

When the old woman came the first time I felt it in my bones long before I even saw her. The mountains have a way of whispering to those who listen. Her footsteps were too light for her shape. It was like she was trying to walk convincingly. I warned Snow White but kindness is also sometimes deaf. The laces tightened. Her breath failed and for the first time since I was carved from the mountain's patience I cried.

We laid her on a glass bier because we could not bury her. Stone understands stillness but the earth demands endings and I could not accept that. Day after day I sat beside her telling her stories about my life and how I lost my brother in a cave-in many years ago and about how the mountain sings sometimes. I told her these things because someone must carry these stories even if the listener never wakes up.

When the prince came I did not like him. He was too bright and too certain of himself as if the world existed for him to come along to claim it. Yet when Snow White stirred and when the color returned to her cheeks and breath to her lips my dislike of the prince cracked. Love will do that to you. It will make room where you thought none existed.

She left with him because of course, she had to. Stories move forward; they do not linger in the small cottages where we live. She kissed my cheek before she left and her tears fell into my long beard. “Thank you.” She said as if gratitude could fill the hole in my heart she left behind.

The forest was much quieter after that. It felt smaller and emptier. We returned to our old lives and our old rhythms but something had shifted like a fault in the earth settling. I took walks further into the mountains looking and listening more carefully. I learned that grief can be shaped like a stone sometimes.

Years passed. Then decades. Then the idea of years itself became soft around the edges. One winter evening as the snow pressed against the windows there was a knock at the door. I opened the door half expecting someone who was perhaps lost to be there or noone at all.

It was Snow White. She was older, yes. A queen now with silver threaded through her dark hair. The prince, who was now a king, waited behind her at a respectable distance. She hugged each of us in turn. She hugged me a little longer than the rest.

“I never forgot.” She said simply.

She did not stay long. Queens rarely do. They are busy. But when she left she gave me a small mirror. Not a cursed one but an ordinary one framed in wood. “So you will remember what kindness looks like.” She told me.

I kept it on the wall of the cottage. Sometimes in the flicker of the firelight I think that I see not my own face but the face of a young girl singing as she sweeps the floors turning a dark place into light.