Hello and welcome to Fairy Tale Friday. Are you
sitting comfortably? Good. Then I’ll begin.
This is the tale I have been waiting to share. It is
one of my absolute favourite Snow White tales. It is completely bonkers, and I adore
it. It is a mix of fantasy, horror and religion.
Today’s story is by one of my favourite authors--Tanith
Lee. According to Wikipedia:
Tanith Lee was a British science fiction
and fantasy writer. She wrote more than 90 novels and 300 short stories, and
was the winner of multiple World Fantasy Society Derleth Awards, the World
Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award and the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime
Achievement in Horror. Additionally, she wrote two episodes of the BBC science fiction
series Blake's 7. (Which the Amazing Spiderman informs me were
two of the best episodes.) She was the
first woman to win the British Fantasy Award best novel award for her book Death's
Master in 1980.
This story comes from the marvellous collection of dark
fantasy retellings of fairy tales entitled Red as Blood, or Tales from the
Sisters Grimmer. The story we are looking at today was nominated for a Nebula
Award. You may also remember me mentioning this book a few years ago when
we looked at her story Wolfland when we were exploring Little Red Riding Hood.
You can read about Wolfland {HERE}
This amazing story inverts any version I have ever
read and turns it on its head. We normally see the queen as vain and jealous
and the beautiful daughter as innocent. But not here. Here we have a concerned
stepmother who is very worried about her young stepdaughter Bianca who does not
like the day, refuses to wear a crucifix and crucially: her reflection does not
appear in the magic mirror.
Yup. You guessed it. She is a vampire. Just like her
dead mother.
Here, the good woman- a woman of faith- in an attempt
to save her stepdaughter after a wasting sickness has appeared in land (one
that has not been seen since her mother died) calls on Satan (who is the dark
side of God) to help her disguise herself and help the child. The young woman, having
had sex with the huntsman sent to kill her has now bewitched 7 black gnarled
trees as her protectors instead of dwarfs.
The old crone gives her three gifts the last one being
the scarlet fruit of Eve, the apple red as blood. Bianca chokes on it
for a very surprising reason and the Prince is not the prince you expect. It all
ends with a bit of resetting the clocks and time alteration.
This is a well told story…completely bonkers marrying
the religious imagery with folklore. I really love the idea of Bianca being a
vampire and would loved to have seen more of this and explored it further. Next
week’s graphic novel does just this, so if you are feeling it too—stay tuned.
But the religious ending as a weird sort of redemption doesn’t feel like a let
down either. It makes perfect sense for the 14th century when this tale
is set. I always think it will make me feel let down as I reread it, but it never does. I always feel like the ending is exactly where it should be.
Red
as Blood source
The beautiful Witch Queen flung open the
ivory case of the magic mirror. Of dark gold the mirror was, dark gold as the
hair of the Witch Queen that poured down her back. Dark gold the mirror was,
and ancient as the seven stunted black trees growing beyond the pale blue glass
of the window.
"Speculum, speculum," said the
Witch Queen to the magic mirror. "Dei gratia."
"Volente Deo. Audio."
"Mirror," said the Witch Queen.
"Whom do you see?"
"I see you, mistress," replied
the mirror. "And all in the land. But one."
"Mirror, mirror, who is it you do not
see?"
"I do not see Bianca."
The Witch Queen crossed herself. She shut
the case of the mirror and, walking slowly to the window, looked out at the old
trees through the panes of pale blue glass.
Fourteen years ago, another woman had
stood at this window, but she was not like the Witch Queen. The woman had black
hair that fell to her ankles; she had a crimson gown, the girdle worn high
beneath her breasts, for she was far gone with child. And this woman had thrust
open the glass casement on the winter garden, where the old trees crouched in
the snow. Then, taking a sharp bone needle, she had thrust it into her finger
and shaken three bright drops on the ground. "Let my daughter have,"
said the woman, "hair black as mine, black as the wood of these warped and
arcane trees. Let her have skin like mine, white as this snow. And let her have
my mouth, red as my blood." And the woman had smiled and licked at her
finger. She had a crown on her head; it shone in the dusk like a star. She
never came to the window before dusk; she did not like the day. She was the
first Queen, and she did not possess a mirror.
The second Queen, the Witch Queen, knew
all this. She knew how, in giving birth, the first Queen had died. Her coffin
had been carried into the cathedral and masses had been said. There was an ugly
rumour—that a splash of holy water had fallen on the corpse and the dead flesh
had smoked. But the first Queen had been reckoned unlucky for the kingdom.
There had been a strange plague in the land since she came there, a wasting
disease for which there was no cure.
Seven years went by. The King married the
second Queen, as unlike the first as frankincense to myrrh.
"And this is my daughter," said
the King to his second Queen.
There stood a little girl child, nearly
seven years of age. Her black hair hung to her ankles, her skin was white as
snow. Her mouth was red as blood, and she smiled with it.
"Bianca," said the King, "you
must love your new mother."
Bianca smiled radiantly. Her teeth were
bright as sharp bone needles.
"Come," said the Witch Queen,
"come, Bianca. I will show you my magic mirror."
"Please, Mama," said Bianca
softly, "I do not like mirrors."
"She is modest," said the King.
"And delicate. She never goes out by day. The sun distresses her."
That night, the Witch Queen opened the
case of her mirror.
"Mirror, whom do you see?"
"I see you, mistress. And all in the
land. But one."
"Mirror, mirror, who is it you do not
see?"
"I do not see Bianca."
The second Queen gave Bianca a tiny
crucifix of golden filigree. Bianca would not accept it. She ran to her father
and whispered: "I am afraid. I do not like to think of Our Lord dying in
agony on His cross. She means to frighten me. Tell her to take it away."
The second Queen grew wild white roses in
her garden and invited Bianca to walk there after sundown. But Bianca shrank
away.
She whispered to her father: "The
thorns will tear me. She means me to be hurt."
When Bianca was twelve years old, the
Witch Queen said to the King, "Bianca should be confirmed so that she may
take Communion with us."
"This may not be," said the
King. "I will tell you, she has not even been christened, for the dying
word of my first wife was against it. She begged me, for her religion was
different from ours. The wishes of the dying must be respected."
"Should you not like to be blessed by
the church," said the Witch Queen to Bianca. "To kneel at the golden
rail before the marble altar. To sing to God, to taste the ritual bread and sip
the ritual wine."
"She means me to betray my true
mother," said Bianca to the King. "When will she cease tormenting
me?"
The day she was thirteen, Bianca rose from
her bed, and there was a red stain there, like a red, red flower.
"Now you are a woman," said her
nurse.
"Yes," said Bianca. And she went
to her true mother's jewel box, and out of it she took her mother's crown and
set it on her head.
When she walked under the old black trees
in the dusk, the crown shone like a star.
The wasting sickness, which had left the
land in peace for thirteen years, suddenly began again, and there was no cure.
The Witch Queen sat in a tall chair before
a window of pale green and dark white glass, and in her hands she held a Bible
bound in rosy silk.
"Majesty," said the huntsman,
bowing very low.
He was a man, forty years old, strong and
handsome, and wise in the hidden lore of the forests, the occult lore of the
earth. He would kill too, for it was his trade, without faltering. The slender
fragile deer he could kill, and the moonwinged birds, and the velvet hares with
their sad, foreknowing eyes. He pitied them, but pitying, he killed them. Pity
could not stop him. It was his trade.
"Look in the garden," said the
Witch Queen.
The hunter looked through a dark white
pane. The sun had sunk, and a maiden walked under a tree.
"The Princess Bianca," said the
huntsman.
"What else?" asked the Witch
Queen.
The huntsman crossed himself.
"By Our Lord, Madam, I will not
say."
"But you know."
"Who does not?"
"The King does not."
"Or he does."
"Are you a brave man?" asked the
Witch Queen.
"In the summer, I have hunted and
slain boar. I have slaughtered wolves in winter."
"But are you brave enough?"
"If you command it, Lady," said
the huntsman, "I will try my best."
The Witch Queen opened the Bible at a
certain place, and out of it she drew a flat silver crucifix, which had been
resting against the words: Thou shalt not be afraid for the
terror by night… Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness.
The huntsman kissed the crucifix and put
it about his neck, beneath his shirt.
"Approach," said the Witch
Queen, "and I will instruct you in what to say."
Presently, the huntsman entered the
garden, as the stars were burning up in the sky. He strode to where Bianca
stood under a stunted dwarf tree, and he kneeled down.
"Princess," he said.
"Pardon me, but I must give you ill tidings."
"Give them then," said the girl,
toying with the long stem of a wan, night-growing flower which she had plucked.
"Your stepmother, that accursed,
jealous witch, means to have you slain. There is no help for it but you must
fly the palace this very night. If you permit, I will guide you to the forest.
There are those who will care for you until it may be safe for you to
return."
Bianca watched him, but gently,
trustingly.
"I will go with you, then," she
said.
They went by a secret way out of the
garden, through a passage under the ground, through a tangled orchard, by a
broken road between great overgrown hedges.
Night was a pulse of deep, flickering blue
when they came to the forest. The branches of the forest overlapped and
intertwined like leading in a window, and the sky gleamed
dimly through like panes of blue-coloured glass.
"I am weary," sighed Bianca.
"May I rest a moment?"
"By all means," said the
huntsman. "In the clearing there, foxes come to play by night. Look in
that direction, and you will see them."
"How clever you are," said
Bianca. "And how handsome."
She sat on the turf, and gazed at the
clearing.
The huntsman drew his knife silently and
concealed it in the folds of his cloak. He stopped above the maiden.
"What are you whispering?"
demanded the huntsman, laying his hand on her wood-black hair.
"Only a rhyme my mother taught
me."
The huntsman seized her by the hair and
swung her about so her white throat was before him, stretched ready for the
knife. But he did not strike, for there in his hand he held the dark golden
locks of the Witch Queen, and her face laughed up at him and she flung her arms
about him, laughing.
"Good man, sweet man, it was only a
test of you. Am I not a witch? And do you not love me?"
The huntsman trembled, for he did love
her, and she was pressed so close her heart seemed to beat within his own body.
"Put away the knife. Throw away the
silly crucifix. We have no need of these things. The King is not one half the
man you are."
And the huntsman obeyed her, throwing the
knife and the crucifix far off among the roots of the trees. He gripped her to
him, and she buried her face in his neck, and the pain of her kiss was the last
thing he felt in this world.
The sky was black now. The forest was
blacker. No foxes played in the clearing. The moon rose and made white lace
through the boughs, and through the backs of the huntsman's empty eyes. Bianca
wiped her mouth on a dead flower.
"Seven asleep, seven awake,"
said Bianca. "Wood to wood. Blood to blood. Thee to me."
There came a sound like seven huge
rendings, distant by the length of several trees, a broken road, an orchard, an
underground passage. Then a sound like seven huge
single footfalls. Nearer. And nearer.
Hop, hop, hop, hop. Hop, hop, hop.
In the orchard, seven black shudderings.
On the broken road, between the high
hedges, seven black creepings.
Brush crackled, branches snapped.
Through the forest, into the clearing,
pushed seven warped, misshapen, hunched-over, stunted things. Woody-black mossy
fur, woody-black bald masks. Eyes like glittering cracks, mouths like moist
caverns. Lichen beards. Fingers of twiggy gristle. Grinning. Kneeling. Faces pressed to the earth.
"Welcome," said Bianca.
The Witch Queen stood before a window of
glass like diluted wine. She looked at the magic mirror.
"Mirror. Whom do you see?"
"I see you, mistress. I see a man in
the forest. He went hunting, but not for deer. His eyes are open, but he is
dead. I see all in the land. But one."
The Witch Queen pressed her palms to her
ears.
Outside the window the garden lay, empty
of its seven black and stunted dwarf trees.
"Bianca," said the Queen.
The windows had been draped and gave no
light. The light spilled from a shallow vessel, light in a sheaf, like the
pastel wheat. It glowed upon four swords that pointed east and west, that
pointed north and south.
Four winds had burst through the chamber,
and three arch-winds. Cool fires had risen, and parched oceans, and the
gray-silver powders of Time.
The hands of the Witch Queen floated like
folded leaves on the air, and through dry lips the Witch Queen chanted.
"Pater omnipotens, mittere digneris
sanctum Angelum tuum de Infernis."
The light faded, and grew brighter.
There, between the hilts of the four
swords, stood the Angel Lucefiel, somberly gilded, his face in shadow, his
golden wings spread and blazing at his back.
"Since you have called me, I know
your desire. It is a comfortless wish. You ask for pain."
"You speak of pain, Lord Lucefiel,
who suffer the most merciless pain of all. Worse than the nails in the feet and
wrists. Worse than the thorns and the bitter cup and the blade in the side. To
be called upon for evil's sake, which I do not, comprehending your true nature,
son of God, brother of The Son."
"You recognize me, then. I will grant
what you ask."
And Lucefiel (by some named Satan, Rex
Mundi, but nevertheless the left hand, the sinister hand of God's design)
wrenched lightning from the ether and cast it at the Witch Queen.
It caught her in the breast. She fell.
The sheaf of light towered and lit the
golden eyes of the Angel, which were terrible, yet luminous with compassion, as
the swords shattered and he vanished.
The Witch Queen pulled herself from the
floor of the chamber, no longer beautiful, a withered, slobbering hag.
Into the core of the forest, even at noon,
the sun never shone. Flowers propagated in the grass, but they were colourless.
Above, the black-green roof hung down nets of thick, green twilight through
which albino butterflies and moths feverishly drizzled. The trunks of the trees
were smooth as the stalks of underwater weeds. Bats flew in the daytime, and
birds who believed themselves to be bats.
There was a sepulchre, dripped with moss.
The bones had been rolled out, had rolled around the feet of seven twisted
dwarf trees.
They looked like trees. Sometimes they
moved. Sometimes something like an eye glittered, or a tooth, in the wet
shadows.
In the shade of the sepulchre door sat
Bianca, combing her hair.
A lurch of motion disturbed the thick
twilight.
The seven trees turned their heads.
A hag emerged from the forest. She was
crook-backed and her head was poked forward, predatory, withered, and almost hairless,
like a vulture's.
"Here we are at last," grated
the hag, in a vulture's voice.
She came closer, and cranked herself down
on her knees, and bowed her face into the turf and the colourless flowers.
Bianca sat and gazed at her. The hag
lifted herself. Her teeth were yellow palings.
"I bring you the homage of witches,
and three gifts," said the hag.
"Why should you do that?"
"Such a quick child, and only
fourteen years. Why? Because we fear you. I bring you gifts to curry favour."
Bianca laughed. "Show me."
The hag made a pass in the green air. She
held a silken cord worked curiously with plaited human hair.
"Here is a girdle which will protect
you from the devices of priests, from crucifix and chalice and the accursed
holy water. In it are knotted the tresses of a virgin, and of a woman no better
than she should be, and of a woman dead. And here—" a second pass and a
comb was in her hand, lacquered blue over green—"a comb from the deep sea,
a mermaid's trinket, to charm and subdue. Part your locks with this, and the
scent of ocean will fill men's nostrils and the rhythm of the tides their ears,
the tides that bind men like chains. Last," added the hag, "that old
symbol of wickedness, the scarlet fruit of Eve, the apple red as blood. Bite,
and the understanding of sin, which the serpent boasted of, will be made known
to you." And the hag made her last pass in the air and extended the apple,
with the girdle and the comb, toward Bianca.
Bianca glanced at the seven stunted trees.
"I like her gifts, but I do not quite
trust her."
The bald masks peered from their shaggy
beardings. Eyelets glinted. Twiggy claws clacked.
"All the same," said Bianca.
"I will let her tie the girdle on me, and comb my hair herself."
The hag obeyed, simpering. Like a toad she
waddled to Bianca. She tied on the girdle. She parted the ebony hair. Sparks
sizzled, white from the girdle, peacock's eye from the comb.
"And now, hag, take a little bite of
the apple."
"It will be my pride," said the
hag, "to tell my sisters I shared this fruit with you." And the hag
bit into the apple, and mumbled the bite noisily, and swallowed, smacking her
lips.
Then Bianca took the apple and bit into
it.
Bianca screamed—and choked.
She jumped to her feet. Her hair whirled
about her like a storm cloud. Her face turned blue, then slate, then white
again. She lay on the pallid flowers, neither stirring nor
breathing.
The seven dwarf trees rattled their limbs
and their bear-shaggy heads, to no avail. Without Bianca's art they could not
hop. They strained their claws and ripped at the hag's sparse hair and her
mantle. She fled between them. She fled into the sunlit acres of the forest,
along the broken road, through the orchard, into a hidden passage.
The hag reentered the palace by the hidden
way, and the Queen's chamber by a hidden stair. She was bent almost double. She
held her ribs. With one skinny hand she opened the ivory case of the magic
mirror.
"Speculum, speculum. Dei gratia. Whom
do you see?"
"I see you, mistress. And all in the
land. And I see a coffin."
"Whose corpse lies in the
coffin?"
"That I cannot see. It must be
Bianca."
The hag, who had been the beautiful Witch
Queen, sank into her tall chair before the window of pale, cucumber green and
dark white glass. Her drugs and potions waited, ready to reverse the dreadful
conjuring of age the Angel Lucefiel had placed on her, but she did not touch
them yet.
The apple had contained a fragment of the
flesh of Christ, the sacred wafer, the Eucharist.
The Witch Queen drew her Bible to her and
opened it randomly.
And read, with fear, the word: Resurcat.
It appeared like glass, the coffin, milky
glass. It had formed this way. A thin white smoke had risen from the skin of
Bianca. She smoked as a fire smokes when a drop of quenching water falls on it.
The piece of Eucharist had stuck in her throat. The Eucharist, quenching water
to her fire, caused her to smoke.
Then the cold dews of night gathered, and
the colder atmospheres of midnight. The smoke of Bianca's quenching froze about
her.
Frost formed in exquisite silver
scroll-work all over the block of misty ice that contained Bianca.
Bianca's frigid heart could not warm the
ice. Nor the sunless, green twilight of the day.
You could just see her, stretched in the
coffin, through the glass. How lovely she looked, Bianca. Black as ebony, white
as snow, red as blood.
The trees hung over the coffin. Years
passed. The trees sprawled about the coffin, cradling it in their arms. Their
eyes wept fungus and green resin. Green amber drops hardened like jewels in the
coffin of glass.
"Who is that lying under the
trees?" the Prince asked, as he rode into the clearing.
He seemed to bring a golden moon with him,
shining about his golden head, on the golden armour and the cloak of white
satin blazoned with gold and blood and ink and sapphire. The white horse trod
on the colourless flowers, but the flowers sprang up again when the hoofs had
passed. A shield hung from the saddle-bow, a strange shield. From one side it
had a lion's face, but from the other, a lamb's face.
The trees groaned, and their heads split
on huge mouths.
"Is this Bianca's coffin?" asked
the Prince.
"Leave her with us," said the
seven trees. They hauled at their roots. The ground shivered. The coffin of
ice-glass gave a great jolt, and a crack bisected it. Bianca coughed.
The jolt had precipitated the piece of
Eucharist from her throat.
Into a thousand shards the coffin
shattered, and Bianca sat up. She stared at the Prince, and she smiled.
"Welcome, beloved," said Bianca.
She got to her feet, and shook out her
hair, and began to walk toward the Prince on the pale horse.
But she seemed to walk into a shadow, into
a purple room, then into a crimson room whose emanations lanced her like
knives.
Next she walked into a yellow room where
she heard the sound of crying, which tore her ears. All her body seemed
stripped away; she was a beating heart. The beats of her heart became two
wings. She flew. She was a raven, then an owl. She flew into a sparkling pane.
It scorched her white. Snow white. She was a dove.
She settled on the shoulder of the Prince
and hid her head under her wing. She had no longer anything black about her,
and nothing red.
"Begin again now, Bianca," said
the Prince. He raised her from his shoulder. On his wrist there was a mark. It
was like a star. Once a nail had been driven in there.
Bianca flew away, up through the roof of
the forest. She flew in at a delicate wine window. She was in the palace. She
was seven years old.
The Witch Queen, her new mother, hung a
filigree crucifix around her neck.
"Mirror," said the Witch Queen.
"Whom do you see?"
"I see you, mistress," replied
the mirror. "And all in the land. I see Bianca."
That’s all for this week. Stay tuned for a graphic
novel that was definitely influenced by this story.
