Dear Prince Florian
I have always loved retellings. Specifically, I have always loved retellings with dark or unexpected twists that still manage to fit within the bounds of the original work. That was what I aimed to accomplish in this piece. I wanted to explore the possible holes in the story of Snow White while injecting increasingly suspenseful elements into the tale. As a result, I wrote “Dear Prince Florian.” I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
by Hailey Yunker
Dear Prince Florian:
I am terribly, terribly sorry about this, so I will explain, to the best of my ability, our actions.
When I met the girl she stared at me, red mouth parted in a sweet smile as she waited to hear my answer.
I glanced at my brothers. They shrugged. I sighed.
“You may stay,” I said, already regretting the decision.
The girl, Snow White, she called herself smiled wider, skin pulling tight across plump lips.
“Wonderful,” she said. “I’ll begin dinner straight away.”
Snow White grew on me slowly, like Deepwood moss. The house cleaning was nice, the dinners were excellent, and her temperament impeccable. She made my brothers happy too, which was a point in her favor. I quickly became accustomed to coming home to a house glowing with sugary candles and spotless floors. There were always animals about too, in the early days: rabbits, blue jays, chipmunks. There was a little fawn that took to following at her heels. She bottle-fed it, and we called it Radish, because it couldn’t keep its nose out of the garden. She curried its coat every night, and it would rest its head on her thigh while she read. Its dark eyes followed me around the room. When winter came, she let it sleep next to the hearth, firelight draping across its dapples.
Snow White was lovely, we all agreed.
And that was, of course, when the first rabbit showed up.
We found it out back, splayed wide with its limbs pinned down. The portions of its ribcage made convenient pegs, and their removal had the added benefit of exposing the little creature’s innards.
We stared at it, then each other, for a long moment.
It was probably nothing.
We buried it behind the shed, and didn’t mention it again.
One night, a week later, I woke from a nightmare, sheets soaked with sweat. I blinked in the dark, but couldn’t quite remember what it had been about.
Come mid-winter, we were finding more ore and jewels than ever. The house remained spotless, and even our dusty boots couldn’t seem to make a mark on their gleam. When we visited town, we repaired our tools and bought a rug for the hearth. Snow White began sitting on it during the evening, combing out her hair until it lay dark and damp down her back. She hummed to the rhythm of the wind, stroking Radish when she permitted the deer to lay across her skirts.
Bats kept flying into the windows. We found their little bodies beneath the windowsills every morning.
The squirrel showed up next, closer to the house this time. Grumpy found it first, and the look he shot me was dark.
“Who’d you think did this?” he asked.
I rubbed my temples. “Probably some kid.”
Grumpy’s forehead wrinkled, and I could tell he didn’t completely believe me. He didn’t argue, though.
Before we could clean it up, Snow White saw it. She gasped, with a hand over her mouth, and insisted on blessing it before we buried it.
We obliged.
That night, I woke up screaming and soaked with sweat.
The nightmares continued, until I stumbled through the days like a zombie. I noticed my brothers possessed the same dark circles I did.
The next animal was a rabbit, young and muscled, and it was right outside the house door.
I turned to Dopey.
“We’re going to see the witch,” I declared.
Dopey didn’t argue. He only wiped his eyes, yawned, and nodded.
The witch, or Queen, I suppose, stared down at us with ice-chip eyes.
“You are having problems with what?” she demanded.
I bowed my head slightly. “Dismembered animals. And nightmares, though I suppose those might be unrelated. The animals are our primary concern.”
The Queen’s eyes narrowed, and she spoke, “The animals, what do they look like?”
I curved my fingers to demonstrate. “Their chests are ripped open, with the ribs pinning the skin open.”
The Queen sat bolt upright. “You idiot,” she hissed. “You found the girl, didn’t you?”
“Girl?” I asked politely, feigning ignorance.
“Don’t play coy, creature,” she said, rising to her feet. “The girl. Fourteen years old, black hair, pale skin, brown eyes.”
I tilted my head.
The Queen snorted in disgust. “She’s a changeling child. Her fool father and idiot mother decided to use magic to conceive.”
Oh. Oh. That explained things.
“It’s not that she means harm,” the Queen continued. “She’s just insane, following her instincts.”
I swallowed and interrupted her tirade. “What do we do about it, your majesty?”
Her attention snapped back to me. “Well,” she said, “considering that she survived having her heart ripped out, I’m not completely sure. However, I do have a few ideas.”
The Queen supplied us with a round, red apple, without blemish of any sort.
Snow White almost purred when we gave it to her. She collapsed a moment later, juice still clinging to her lips.
We buried her miles away, in a glass coffin draped with iron locks. We made sure she was six feet under. A weeping willow draped over her grave, and the roots cradled the coffin like prison bars. Radish lay listless in the surrounding grass.
It didn’t help.
The nightmares got worse. I started remembering them when I woke, grasping at my chest. Red lips always played prominently, parted to display a wet tongue, lapping across white teeth.
A week after the fake burial, we found Radish, now a handsome young buck, draped across the hearth. His blood blended into the stones, and if it weren’t for his gaping chest I would have thought he was sleeping.
A week after that, Grumpy, dizzy from lack of sleep, impaled his hand with his pickaxe.
We went to the Queen again. She looked at us.
“Fools,” she muttered. “She likes you. That never ends well.”
“Can you help us?” I asked.
She thought, then shook her head slowly. “Try to pass her on to someone else.”
That was no help, but I bowed my head in thanks anyway.
The bluebirds started dying next, their little bodies drained of blood. My dreams began incorporating mushrooms, growing from my stomach. In the mines, I kept seeing glinting eyes, winking from the shadows. As we marched home, I heard bell laughter echoing from the trees.
And the floors were always, always clean.
My brothers saw things as well, but never the same things and never at the same time.
Somehow, that made it worse.
One month later, we found you, you darling, naive prince. I’m sure by this point you can guess the story we spun about a kind girl with a wicked stepmother was false. I don’t expect you to forgive us, but I hope you know you have our gratitude. We were desperate, but I am still sorry.
By the time you open this, you should be well into your sea journey. It’s too late to return, and we have moved house anyway. I will tell you this: We have enclosed another apple in the wedding gift. Its magic will hold, even if its form is changed. Disguise it, feed it to her, then throw her overboard and continue on.
It is too late to turn back, but it's not too late to save yourself.
Good luck and godspeed,
Doc