Mirror Mirror

            A long time ago, there was a beautiful Queen who ruled in far off land without a king by her side.   She came from a line of women who had dappled in the arts of sorcery and magic by herbal remedies and potions of drastic strength.  But these women and the families they lived in had always been poor and even outcast because of their special skills, despite the beauty that that only magnified with each new generation of females.  The Queen herself had been an absolutely beautiful child with deep violet eyes like the color of ink and luscious, perfectly curled hair the color of a strong mahogany.  Her skin was fair and soft like the silk her mother dressed her in as an attempt to gain the attention of a wealthier man that she could be married off too.  Her mother’s wish came true when the King’s son fell in love with the young girl upon first glance as he strolled through her small village, paying respects to the people he was going to rule soon.  The beauty this girl radiated, enhanced through generations of potions and remedies, had trapped the Prince in a trance of adoration until the day he died.

            By the time the Queen had married and been swept off the live in the castle miles away from her home, she had mastered the art her ancestors so feverously practiced and studied.  After the King’s death and her ascension to Queen, she began practicing her family’s magic devoutly and obsessively, searching for away to preserve her youth and beauty so that the new King, her husband, would remain entranced and under her control. 

She could find no herbal remedy or potion that would do the trick until one day; she stumbled across an old mirror hidden away in the bowels of the castle.  She cast aside the grey tarp that covered the reflective glass and examined her reflection admiringly at first, but then mournfully when she realized that this was not the face she was to forever retain.  Suddenly, a ghostly figure appeared in the glass before her eyes and spoke in a deep and menacing voice that was quiet and calming all at the same time.

“My Queen, you are the fairest of them all.”  The voice seemed to thunder around the entire room yet remain soft and quiet as if only the Queen could hear.  She stared; perplexed at the figure in the mirror whose features was only a mere silhouette of a human face. 

“My Queen, my Queen,” the figure in the mirror began again.  “Mount me on the wall and you will remain the fairest of them all until your world crumbles and falls.”

“My dear Mirror, but what do you mean when you say “your world?””  The Queen asked curiously.  Her thoughts were spinning around the idea that this mirror could be the key to her eternal beauty if her assumptions were true.

“The Kingdom, my Queen, is “your world”, and until it crumbles and falls, you will remain the fairest of them all.”

With her thoughts confirmed she hastily mounted the mirror on the wall in the small and hidden away room that she found it.  Every day, for the next century, the Queen would go to the mirror and ask, “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”  Everyday the reply would be the same: “You, my Queen are the fairest of them all.”  Even a century later, the Queen remained and beautiful and youthful as the first day she discovered the magical mirror and because of this the people she ruled both loved and feared her: entranced by her beauty but fearful of the power that she must hold to maintain her life much longer than others can.  But nonetheless, she ruled strongly and productively, expanding her control and wealth to almost double the size of her kingdom.  She produced no heir for her King.  Intent on ruling the kingdom forever, she fed herself a potion that prohibited her body from being able to bear a child in fear that this child might try to usurp her thrown when it came of age to take the crown.

One day, the Queen felt a disturbance.  She looked out her window and all across the sky was a perpetual grey wall of clouds that seemed to threaten to break into a violent storm at any moment.  The Queen hurried back inside, chilled by the wind, and happened to catch a glance of her reflection in the mirror.  She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to examine her reflection more closely after noticing a slight change in her appearance.  Her eyes widened for only a moment before she took off and ran down into the bowels of the castle to the mirror.

“Mirror, mirror,” she said, gasping for breath. “Who is the fairest of them all?”

The ghostly face in the mirror remained unchanged since the first day she had found it.  Its lips had uttered the same words everyday for over a hundred years, the Queen could almost see them shaping the words before she was startled by the loudest crack of thunder she had ever heard before and felt the castle tremble beneath her.  And then the man in the mirror spoke.

“Snow White.”

The Queen stood frozen with the only one thought on her mind: the heart of this Snow White in a box.