“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
The beautiful Queen showed no emotion as she uttered the familiar words for the thousandth time. The mirror replied in an instant:
“My Queen, you are the fairest here so true. But Bianka is a thousand times more beautiful than you.”
“Show me Bianka,” the Queen demanded.
The surface of the magic mirror quivered, and in the very next moment it showed a picture of soldiers fighting in the palace so crystal clear as if the Queen had been standing in the great hall as well. Amongst the myriad of swords and shields appeared an astonishingly beautiful girl. She was armored – in one hand she clutched a shining blade, with the other she held a shield strapped to her forearm. She seemed unstoppable as she marched forward, vigorously pushing away anybody who dared to cross her path.
The Queen heaved a deep sigh. She knew Bianka was coming for her.
Even in the highest room of the tallest tower she heard the shrill sound of metal hitting metal. The whole palace was overrun by those strange soldiers, and people were fighting even on the stairwells leading to the tower. The Queen knew what sort of creatures attacked her home: she saw Bianka visiting the graveyards and raising the fallen soldiers with her blood.
It took only a few moments before someone started hammering at the locked door. The Queen did not move; she was standing at the window taking in the view. She was very young when she was brought to the palace, and she grew fond of the steep mountains surrounding her new home.
The door shuddered rhythmically, and after enduring the increasingly loud and fierce strikes it opened with a deafening thud.
“Look at me,” the intruder demanded.
The Queen turned slowly. Her eyes widened slightly when she caught a glimpse of the slender girl: her hair was black as ebony, her skin white as snow, and her lips red as blood.
“Bianka,” she whispered.
“Your final day has come,” the girl said, her face distorted with fury.
Her voice trembled with emotions.
“I know that you are upset,” the Queen started her long-planned speech. “But you must understand—”
“I don’t want to hear your filthy lies!”
“I’m only telling the truth, Bianka. You have to listen to me.”
“I don’t have to do anything. I could kill you this instant.”
“Then why don’t you?” the Queen straightened her back. She waited for a few seconds but the black-haired beauty did not reply. In the end she answered her own question: “You want to know what happened.”
“Since you know me so well, please, enlighten me. What could have happened that would make a mother throw away her child?”
“I was protecting you.”
“By sending me into the woods? By sentencing me to a life of misery and filth? I lived as an outcast!”
“But you stayed alive.”
Bianka took a step closer to the woman dressed in exquisite fabrics. She did not have to glance at her own garment to know how she looked: shabby armor, threadbare pants, her boots so often resoled, yet holey.
“I should have grown up here. I belong here.”
“I had to send you away. Had the king seen you, he would have realized—”
“Realized what?”
A long silence enveloped them, full of unsaid words. And then the girl whose beauty was unrivaled understood everything. A cruel, sneer laugh escaped her mouth.
“He is not my father, is he?”
The Queen did not answer; she merely shook her head, her eyes full of tears.
“Who is it then?” Bianka shouted, startling the Queen.
“I entrusted him with you…”
“The hunter?” Bianka laughed again.
She threw her shield onto the floor, and then sent her sword after it. With a slow, gentle move she slid her dagger out of its sheath.
“Bianka, please… You don’t have to do this.”
“You are wrong,” the girl said coolly. “You have lived your life in fear. Well, you don’t have to be afraid anymore, Mother.”
“I was never afraid for myself” replied the Queen sternly. “And this occasion is no different.”
“You cannot help me, not anymore. No one can help me.”
“It’s not too late, Bianka. We can still figure this out.”
Deep in her thoughts, the girl walked past her mother, stopping in front of the window. She glanced over the land she craved so much. From high up there, it almost looked insignificant.
“You cannot back out of the deal you made with the devil.”
The dagger sank easily into the Queen’s chest. She gasped as her strength left her. Going down on one knee, Bianka slowly, almost gently laid her mother down onto the cold stone floor.
With the last of her strength the Queen grabbed the golden apple pendant hanging from the chain around her neck, and shoved it into her daughter’s hand.
“I forgive you, Bianka.”
A single teardrop slid down on the girl’s face, but she didn’t even realize it. She threw her dagger onto the floor, rose, and unarmed she draped the necklace around her neck. She turned her back to the Queen and stepped in front of the enormous, gold-framed mirror.
The words escaped her mouth involuntarily:
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”
The mirror answered without hesitating even for a second:
“Countless are the hearts that you are to enthrall, for you, my Queen, are the fairest of them all.”