"Snow, Mirror, Apple" by Neil Gaiman

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I don't know where she came from. No one knows. She killed her mother at birth, but it is certainly not enough to accuse her of that alone.

Everyone calls me a wise man, but I am not wise at all, because I only see fragmentary images of things to come through the calm waters of the pond, or through my cold mirror. If I were really smart, I wouldn't try to change the future. If I had been smart, I should have killed myself before I met her, or before I got him.

A wise man, a witch, whatever they may say, I have dreamed of his face, and, as far as I live, I can always see his reflection on the water: I have seen him in my dreams for sixteen years before he rode over the bridge and asked for my name. He lifted me onto a tall horse, and we rode to my little hut. His blonde hair covered my face. He's taking away the most precious thing in me, which a king deserves.

His beard was coppery red in the morning light. I didn't know him because he was a king, in fact I didn't know what the kings were like, I just knew him as my lover. He took from me all he wanted—the kings had this privilege, but the next day he returned to me, and since that night his beard had grown redder, his hair was golden, his eyes were as blue as the summer sky, and his skin was a light brown of ripe wheat.

His daughter was still a child: she was not yet five years old when I entered the palace. A portrait of the little princess's dead mother hangs in the tower where she lives: a tall woman with hair as black as the Black Forest and chestnut eyes. There was blood in her veins that was different from that of her pale daughter.

The little girl didn't eat with us.

I don't know where in the palace she eats.

I have my dormitory. The king, my husband, also had his own bedchamber. If he needs to send someone to call me, I will go to him, please him, and share his pleasure with him.

After I had been in the palace for a few months, she came to my dormitory one night. She was six years old. I was embroidering under an oil lamp, and the smoke and fluttering light made me squint from time to time. When I looked up, I saw her standing there.

"Little princess?"

She didn't say a word, her eyes as black as coal, as black as her hair, and her lips redder than blood. She looked up, looked at me and smiled. Her teeth seemed to be pointed, even when she looked under the lamp.

"What are you doing outside the house?"

"I'm hungry." She said, looking no different from any other child.

In the middle of winter, fresh food is as rare as a dream full of warm sun: I have bunches of apples, pitted and dried, hanging from the beams of the dormitory. I took one and handed it to her.

"Take it."

Autumn is the season of drying and pickling, picking apples and feeding geese. Winter is the season of famine, snow, and death: it is also the season of the winter solstice, and at this time we will smear the goose fat on the pig's skin, stuff the pig's belly with autumn apples, and then we will take it to the fire and roast it, fork it with a fork, and while it is still squeaking, we will eagerly eat it.

She took the dried apple from my hand and bit it with her sharp yellow teeth.

"Is it delicious?"

She nodded. I had always been afraid of this princess, but at that moment, a trace of pity welled up in my heart, and I gently stroked her cheek with my hand. She looked at me and smiled—she smiled—and then, her teeth digging into the base of my thumb, sucking the blood desperately at that spot on the mound of Venus.

I was so shocked that I cried out in pain; She stared at me, and I couldn't help but be silent.

The little princess put her mouth close to my palm, licking, sucking, and swallowing. After doing all this, she walked away. When I calmed down and took a closer look, I found that the wound she left behind was slowly healing, scabbing over, and finally returning to its original state. By the next day, the wound had turned into an old scar.

I was stunned, controlled by her, at her mercy. I was scared of it more than I was of her bloodlust. After that night, as soon as it was dark, I closed the palace close, tied the door with an oak rod, and ordered the blacksmith to make iron bars and attach them to the windows.

My husband, my lover, my king, sent less and less to summon me, and even when I did, he looked weak. He could no longer act like a man; I was not allowed to please him with my mouth: once I thought about what to do, he was astonished, and then he began to cry. I removed my mouth and hugged him tightly. Eventually, the sobbing stopped, and he fell asleep, like a child.

When he fell asleep, I groped his body with my hands. On the surface of his skin, there were too many old wounds and new scars to count. But I don't remember any scars on it since the day I fell in love, except for one on the side of my body, which was left by a wild boar when he was a child.

Not long after, the person I met by the bridge and fell in love with at first sight is now only a shell. He was skeletal and pale. I stayed with him until he took his last breath: his hands were cold as stones, his blue eyes were cloudy, and his hair and beard had faded, lost their luster, and became thinner. Before he had time to make his deathbed confession, he died, covered with bruises and purple spots from head to toe.

He's barely a couple of pounds. The ice on the ground was so thick that we could not dig up a grave for him, so we built a mound of rocks and stones on his corpse as a memorial, for he had nothing left of enough and nothing left to protect himself from hungry beasts and fierce birds.

In this way, I became a queen.

But I was so stupid, so young and ignorant—I had seen the sun for the first time, and I had sent away eighteen summers—and now I still couldn't do what I was supposed to do.

If it were today, I would have gone and plucked out her heart, I would have cut off her head, arms and legs, and I would have ordered my men to pull out her heart. Then I will go to the square of the bazaar, and watch the executioner burn the pyre, and see him throw all her limbs into the fire. I will command the archers to surround the square, and to shoot all the birds and beasts that come near, and kill all the ravens, and the dogs, and the eagles, and the rats. I won't blink my eyelids until the little princess burns to ashes, a light breeze can blow her away like snowflakes.

I didn't do that, and because of that, I paid a huge price.

Some people say that I have been fooled; That heart wasn't hers. It was the heart of some animal – maybe a stag's, maybe a wild boar's. They say that, but that's not the case.

Others said (it was she who lied, not me) that I got the heart and ate it. Outright lies, half-truths and half-truths, like heavy snow flying in the sky, obscured the truth in my memory and tampered with the facts I witnessed with my own eyes. Just like the snowflakes that flutter one after another, people can't recognize the original scenery; That's how she storted my life.

My lover - her father was left with scars on his thighs, and when he died, his ** also had scars.

I didn't go with them. They sent her away during the day, when she slept soundly, and that was when she was at her most vulnerable. They took her deep into the forest, where they stripped her of her clothes, dug out her heart, and threw her body in the valley where the forest swallowed her.

The forest was dark and bordered by borders with many countries. No one would be so stupid as to demand justice for the crimes that happened there. The forest is inhabited by criminals, thieves, and wild wolves. Even if you walk for days, you will never see any living thing; You just feel like there's eyes on you all the time.

They gave her heart to me. I knew it was her heart—the heart of a sow or a stag, and it wouldn't beat like her heart, dug out of its chest.

I took it to the dormitory.