Cursed Page 3

  She took a deep breath and unlocked her bedroom door. The Prince was not lurking in the hallway, waiting to punish her as she’d expected. Snow padded softly down the stairs and found breakfast laid out at the table, but there was no plate for the Prince and he was nowhere to be seen.

  There was a small piece of parchment on her plate, a note written in a beautiful hand:

  My darling wife, I have other duties that I must attend to today, but I will certainly see you this evening.

  Snow thrust the note away from her. To anyone else’s eyes the note might look like the reassurance of a lover but she recognized it for what it was – a threat. And a promise.

  Snow took her place at the table and ate, for she could think better if her stomach was full. She found she was hungrier than expected. She was reaching for another serving of toast when it happened.

  The silver ring flew off her left hand and landed in the butter dish.

  Snow’s heart swelled, for now that the ring was gone she could escape. In fact, she could escape at that very moment. The Prince was not there to stop her, and if any of the soldiers asked she could simply say she was going out for a walk. She was their princess now, and they could not control her.

  She rose from the table with an idea of changing into something more suitable – the white gown was like a flag that would draw all eyes to her in the grey landscape (and perhaps that is what he meant for it to do when he gave it to you).

  That was when she heard the woman crying.

  Snow stopped, arrested by the sound. No, the woman wasn’t crying. She was half-sobbing, half-screaming, and the sound was coming from the east wing.

  Snow only hesitated for a moment. The Prince had said not to go into the east wing, but Snow couldn’t ignore a person in pain.

  But what if the Prince returns, and catches you? What if you miss your chance to escape?

  These were selfish thoughts, and perhaps they would have convinced Snow if the woman’s sobbing hadn’t grown louder.

  “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave her, whoever she is.”

  Snow mounted the stairs to the east wing.

  At least all the Prince can see at the moment is the view inside the butter dish, she thought, and wiped her damp hands on her crumpled gown, and tried not to be afraid.

  At the top of the stairs there was a long hallway, and at the end of the hallway there was only one door.

  The woman’s voice was fading, a thin weak stream emitting from the room beyond.

  Snow ran to it, and tugged on the handle, but the door held fast.

  She took the poisoned key from her pocket and slid it into the keyhole.

  The door swung open.

  In the first room there were boxes on pedestals, boxes made of shining dark wood covered in jewels of every color. In the corner of the room there was a heavy red curtain that must have led to another room.

  There were terrible noises coming from that room, and Snow hesitated, because her stomach and lungs and throat were filled with terror so thick she could hardly breathe. She tiptoed past the boxes until she reached the last one.

  This one was open, as if it were waiting for something. And it was covered all over with red jewels just like the one in her ring.

  For me, she thought with sudden certainty, and then she had to know what was in the others.

  She touched the lid of the box beside the empty one, and it opened.

  Inside was a heart, red and lush and beating.

  Snow opened the next box, her hands shaking, and found another, just as fresh and impossible as the first. She stared at all the boxes, dozens of them, all around the room, and remembered that the Queen had told her of the Prince’s father, and the many wives that had disappeared.

  And the Prince himself had a wife before Snow, and she, too, had disappeared.

  Snow stared at the red curtain, and heard the terrible noises coming from the next room. She did not want to know, but she had to.

  She pulled the curtain aside.

  Her husband’s face was buried in something that might have once been a woman, though all that was left of her now was meat. When Snow pulled the curtain he looked up from his meal, and she saw that his face had overnight grown a thick blue beard, and his eyes were as red as the blood that ran over his chin.

  He smiled, and Snow thought it was a travesty to call such a thing a smile.

  “Naughty, naughty girl,” her husband said. “I told you to stay out of the east wing.”

  Snow ran.

  She heard his laughter echoing behind her as she fled down the hallway, down the stairs and to the front door, but no matter how she tugged on the handle it would not open, and there was no hole for her magic key.

  “Where are you running to, my little bride?” Prince Charming called from the top of the east wing stairs.

  Snow ran for the opposite stair, not knowing what she would do or where she could go, only knowing that she had to escape, to stay out of his grasp.

  As she passed the table she saw the poison ring sunk into the butter. Without really knowing why she grasped the ring (and a handful of butter with it) and kept running, up the west wing stairs.

  “There is no escape, Snow White,” her husband called. He sounded amused and unhurried and far too close behind her.

  “None of my brides have ever escaped, no matter how they scream and cry and run,” he said. “I do like it when they run. Keep running, my little dove. It makes you all the sweeter when I catch you.”

  Snow fled to her room, thinking that she could lock the door on him again, but the magic had gone out of the key and the lock would no longer rebel against its master.

  She backed away from the door as it swung open, her mind repeating the same phrase over and over – What shall I do? What shall I do? Butter seeped through her fingers and her heart hammered so hard she thought it might leave her body.

  But it will leave my body. He will cut it from me and keep it in a box, a prize like all the others.

  He seemed enormous as he pushed through the doorframe, twice as large as he’d been before, and his hands were red and sticky and reaching for her.

  “There is nowhere for you to flee, so you should be a good girl and let me do what I wish to you, Snow White,” he said. “I’m only going to do it anyway.”

  She saw all her terrors reflected in his eyes. The breeze from the open window behind her ruffled her white gown. His fingers curled, ready to tear it from her.

  No, Snow thought. I will not. I will not be a good girl ever again.

  He opened his mouth and bent toward her throat – to kiss? To bite? Snow never knew – and she took the fistful of butter and the poisoned ring inside it and shoved it all inside his maw.

  He choked, then reflexively swallowed, and the butter made the ring slide down his gullet.

  “What have you done?” he said, clawing at his own throat, tearing away long bleeding strips of skin. Smoke rose from his mouth and seeped out the corners of his eyes, and blackened veins rose under the surface of his face. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE, SNOW WHITE?”

  He lunged for her and she darted out of his grasp, revealing the open window.

  Snow pushed him as hard as she could.

  He screamed as he fell, and she heard his terror and his fury, and she was glad.

  After a while he stopped screaming, and she was able to look out. Far below she saw his broken body on the rocks that surrounded the castle.

  Off in the distance there was dust rising from the road. As Snow watched three figures emerged, riding fast – her brothers, coming to take her home.

  TROLL BRIDGE

  NEIL GAIMAN

  They pulled up most of the railway tracks in the early sixties, when I was three or four. They slashed the train services to ribbons. This meant that there was nowhere to go but London, and the little town where I lived became the end of the line.

  My earliest reliable memory: eighteen months old, my mother away in hospital having my si
ster, and my grandmother walking with me down to a bridge, and lifting me up to watch the train below, panting and steaming like a black iron dragon.

  Over the next few years they lost the last of the steam trains, and with them went the network of railways that joined village to village, town to town.

  I didn’t know that the trains were going. By the time I was seven they were a thing of the past.

  We lived in an old house on the outskirts of the town. The fields opposite were empty and fallow. I used to climb the fence and lie in the shade of a small bulrush patch, and read; or if I were feeling more adventurous I’d explore the grounds of the empty manor beyond the fields. It had a weed-clogged ornamental pond, with a low wooden bridge over it. I never saw any groundsmen or caretakers in my forays through the gardens and woods, and I never attempted to enter the manor. That would have been courting disaster, and besides, it was a matter of faith for me that all empty old houses were haunted.

  It is not that I was credulous, simply that I believed in all things dark and dangerous. It was part of my young creed that the night was full of ghosts and witches, hungry and flapping and dressed completely in black.

  The converse held reassuringly true: daylight was safe. Daylight was always safe.

  A ritual: on the last day of the summer school term, walking home from school, I would remove my shoes and socks and, carrying them in my hands, walk down the stony flinty lane on pink and tender feet. During the summer holiday I would put shoes on only under duress. I would revel in my freedom from footwear until the school term began once more in September.

  When I was seven I discovered the path through the wood. It was summer, hot and bright, and I wandered a long way from home that day.

  I was exploring. I went past the manor, its windows boarded up and blind, across the grounds, and through some unfamiliar woods. I scrambled down a steep bank, and I found myself on a shady path that was new to me and overgrown with trees; the light that penetrated the leaves was stained green and gold, and I thought I was in fairyland.

  A little stream trickled down the side of the path, teeming with tiny, transparent shrimps. I picked them up and watched them jerk and spin on my fingertips. Then I put them back.

  I wandered down the path. It was perfectly straight, and overgrown with short grass. From time to time I would find these really terrific rocks: bubbly, melted things, brown and purple and black. If you held them up to the light you could see every color of the rainbow. I was convinced that they had to be extremely valuable, and stuffed my pockets with them.

  I walked and walked down the quiet golden-green corridor, and saw nobody.

  I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. I just wondered where the path was going. It traveled in a straight line, and was perfectly flat. The path never changed, but the countryside around it did. At first I was walking along the bottom of a ravine, grassy banks climbing steeply on each side of me. Later, the path was above everything, and as I walked I could look down at the treetops below me, and the roofs of occasional distant houses. My path was always flat and straight, and I walked along it through valleys and plateaus, valleys and plateaus. And eventually, in one of the valleys, I came to the bridge.

  It was built of clean red brick, a huge curving arch over the path. At the side of the bridge were stone steps cut into the embankment, and, at the top of the steps, a little wooden gate.

  I was surprised to see any token of the existence of humanity on my path, which I was by now convinced was a natural formation, like a volcano. And, with a sense more of curiosity than anything else (I had, after all, walked hundreds of miles, or so I was convinced, and might be anywhere), I climbed the stone steps, and went through the gate.

  I was nowhere.

  The top of the bridge was paved with mud. On each side of it was a meadow. The meadow on my side was a wheatfield; the other field was just grass. There were the caked imprints of huge tractor wheels in the dried mud. I walked across the bridge to be sure: no trip-trap, my bare feet were soundless.

  Nothing for miles; just fields and wheat and trees.

  I picked an ear of wheat, and pulled out the sweet grains, peeling them between my fingers, chewing them meditatively.

  I realized then that I was getting hungry, and went back down the stairs to the abandoned railway track. It was time to go home. I was not lost; all I needed to do was follow my path home once more.

  There was a troll waiting for me, under the bridge.

  “I’m a troll,” he said. Then he paused, and added, more or less as an afterthought, “Fol rol de ol rol.”

  He was huge: his head brushed the top of the brick arch. He was more or less translucent: I could see the bricks and trees behind him, dimmed but not lost. He was all my nightmares given flesh. He had huge strong teeth, and rending claws, and strong, hairy hands. His hair was long, like one of my sister’s little plastic gonks, and his eyes bulged. He was naked, and his penis hung from the bush of gonk hair between his legs.

  “I heard you, Jack,” he whispered in a voice like the wind. “I heard you trip-trapping over my bridge. And now I’m going to eat your life.”

  I was only seven, but it was daylight, and I do not remember being scared. It is good for children to find themselves facing the elements of a fairy tale – they are well equipped to deal with these.

  “Don’t eat me,” I said to the troll. I was wearing a stripy brown T-shirt, and brown corduroy trousers. My hair also was brown, and I was missing a front tooth. I was learning to whistle between my teeth, but wasn’t there yet.

  “I’m going to eat your life, Jack,” said the troll.

  I stared the troll in the face. “My big sister is going to be coming down the path soon,” I lied, “and she’s far tastier than me. Eat her instead.”

  The troll sniffed the air, and smiled. “You’re all alone,” he said. “There’s nothing else on the path. Nothing at all.” Then he leaned down, and ran his fingers over me: it felt like butterflies were brushing my face – like the touch of a blind person. Then he snuffled his fingers, and shook his huge head. “You don’t have a big sister. You’ve only a younger sister, and she’s at her friend’s today.”

  “Can you tell all that from smell?” I asked, amazed.

  “Trolls can smell the rainbows, trolls can smell the stars,” it whispered sadly. “Trolls can smell the dreams you dreamed before you were ever born. Come close to me and I’ll eat your life.”

  “I’ve got precious stones in my pocket,” I told the troll. “Take them, not me. Look.” I showed him the lava jewel rocks I had found earlier.

  “Clinker,” said the troll. “The discarded refuse of steam trains. Of no value to me.”

  He opened his mouth wide. Sharp teeth. Breath that smelled of leaf mold and the underneaths of things. “Eat. Now.”

  He became more and more solid to me, more and more real; and the world outside became flatter, began to fade.

  “Wait.” I dug my feet into the damp earth beneath the bridge, wiggled my toes, held on tightly to the real world. I stared into his big eyes. “You don’t want to eat my life. Not yet. I-I’m only seven. I haven’t lived at all yet. There are books I haven’t read yet. I’ve never been on an airplane. I can’t whistle yet – not really. Why don’t you let me go? When I’m older and bigger and more of a meal I’ll come back to you.”

  The troll stared at me with eyes like headlamps.

  Then it nodded.

  “When you come back, then,” it said. And it smiled.

  I turned around and walked back down the silent straight path where the railway lines had once been.

  After a while I began to run.

  I pounded down the track in the green light, puffing and blowing, until I felt a stabbing ache beneath my ribcage, the pain of stitch; and, clutching my side, I stumbled home.

  * * *

  The fields started to go, as I grew older. One by one, row by row, houses sprang up with roads named after wildflowers and respectable authors. Our home
– an aging, tattered Victorian house – was sold, and torn down; new houses covered the garden.

  They built houses everywhere.

  I once got lost in the new housing estate that covered two meadows I had once known every inch of. I didn’t mind too much that the fields were going, though. The old manor house was bought by a multinational, and the grounds became more houses.

  It was eight years before I returned to the old railway line, and when I did, I was not alone.

  I was fifteen; I’d changed schools twice in that time. Her name was Louise, and she was my first love.

  I loved her gray eyes, and her fine light brown hair, and her gawky way of walking (like a fawn just learning to walk which sounds really dumb, for which I apologize): I saw her chewing gum, when I was thirteen, and I fell for her like a suicide from a bridge.

  The main trouble with being in love with Louise was that we were best friends, and we were both going out with other people.

  I’d never told her I loved her, or even that I fancied her. We were buddies.

  I’d been at her house that evening: we sat in her room and played Rattus Norvegicus, the first Stranglers LP. It was the beginning of punk, and everything seemed so exciting: the possibilities, in music as in everything else, were endless. Eventually it was time for me to go home, and she decided to accompany me. We held hands, innocently, just pals, and we strolled the ten-minute walk to my house.

  The moon was bright, and the world was visible and colorless, and the night was warm.

  We got to my house. Saw the lights inside, and stood in the driveway, and talked about the band I was starting. We didn’t go in.

  Then it was decided that I’d walk her home. So we walked back to her house.

  She told me about the battles she was having with her younger sister, who was stealing her makeup and perfume. Louise suspected that her sister was having sex with boys. Louise was a virgin. We both were.

  We stood in the road outside her house, under the sodium yellow streetlight, and we stared at each other’s black lips and pale yellow faces.

  We grinned at each other.

  Then we just walked, picking quiet roads and empty paths. In one of the new housing estates, a path led us into the woodland, and we followed it.