“Sure. Take three! Since the mines shut down, I’m drowning in dwarf labor. Three can fit on one horse, and I’ll throw the horse in at no charge.” They shook hands, and the door to the fireplace opened up again. As Gwendolyn walked through, the Godmother called after her. “If you ever need a job, come find me.” She grinned. “We always got work for a Wicked.”
8.
Elsinora was not happy about the dwarfs. “What are they doing here?” she hissed when Gwendolyn returned.
“The Godmother loaned them to me. I thought they’d help us create more of a distraction when we get to the princesses.”
“As if they’d ever do anything to jeopardize their precious Snow White,” Elsinora said. “They’re completely on her side.”
“We don’t know these are even the same dwarfs Snow White lived with,” Gwendolyn said.
“But if any of them are loyal to Snow White, they could double-cross us,” Marguerite warned.
“How about this? When we stop for the night, we’ll pour drink into them and get the real story out,” Gwendolyn said. “They’re so small, it won’t take much.”
“Well, I won’t ride with them,” Elsinora said. “I won’t even speak to them.”
“You can ride ahead with me,” Jack said, placing a gloved hand gently over Elsinora’s wrist.
She and Jack set off down the path, followed by the dwarfs, with Marguerite and Gwendolyn bringing up the rear. When they arrived at the Raven’s Nest, Elsinora stayed behind with Jack to settle the horses. Not just to avoid the dwarfs but because she found his company soothing. He asked simple questions of her and listened intently to her answers.
After they had unsaddled the horses, cleaned their hooves, and brushed their flanks and withers, Elsinora pulled a bright ruby apple from her satchel, sliced it in two, and handed half to Jack. He did not hesitate, lifting the fruit to his lips. “Have you not heard the rumors about me? How I tricked Snow White into eating a poisoned apple?” As soon as the words were out, Elsinora realized she had just given herself away.
But perhaps not. For Jack did not seem at all surprised to discover who she was. He looked her in the eye as he bit into the apple, holding her gaze. “I judge by what I see, not what I hear.”
Inside the pub, Gwendolyn and Marguerite waved Elsinora and Jack over to a corner table where the dwarfs were already visibly drunk. Gwendolyn prodded awake the one with a wart on the edge of his nose. “He knew Snow White,” she told Elsinora.
The dwarf belched and said, “More like Schnorrer White.”
“Schnorrer?” Elsinora asked.
“Means mooch,” the bespectacled dwarf said.
“Mooch?” Elsinora said.
“Freeloader, parasite, squatter, sponger,” the bald dwarf clarified.
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither did we. We came home from work one day, and there was this girl, asleep in our house,” the warty dwarf said. “We tried to get her to leave, but she refused. Just sat around all day, pining for some boyfriend who never showed.”
“We tried to tell her that guys don’t dig desperate girls,” the bald dwarf said. “They like ’em unattainable, so you gotta play hard to get.”
“She wouldn’t listen. So we poisoned her so she’d seem dead,” the bespectacled dwarf added. “And wouldn’t you know it, as soon as the prince saw her in that glass coffin, he was all into her again. And she was out of our hair.” The three dwarfs high-fived each other.
Elsinora stared at them agog. Could this be true?
“There’s more,” Gwendolyn said, sliding over the takeout scroll the Godmother had given her. “Take a look.”
Elsinora scanned the menu: gold-lending, security services, enchantments. And there, two-thirds of the way down, was this: “Magic mirror manipulations.”
“What are magic mirror manipulations?” she asked.
The bespectacled dwarf reached for another pint of ale, downing it in one gulp before replying. “You know, making a mirror say any old stuff.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Sometimes it’s affirmations, for self-esteem. ‘I’m good enough. I’m smart enough.’ That kind of thing. But other times, it’s nastier business.” He hiccupped. “People believe anything a mirror tells ’em.”
“I knew it!” Gwendolyn said. “Your mirror was gaslighting you.”
“Gaslighting?”
“Messing with your head. Making you believe things that weren’t true.”
Could this be true? And if so, who had commissioned the enchantment? Was it the petulant Snow White, the so-called fairest of them all? Or her faithless husband, who wanted a divorce so he could marry his sidepiece? When exactly had the mirror stopped singing her praises and started whispering her doubts?
And why had she gone back to it day after day? Why had she asked a mirror—or anyone for that matter—to tell her who she was?
But then again, why do any of us?
The dwarfs fell into a stupor, and Jack carried them upstairs, putting them to bed in the room he’d reserved. The innkeeper said there were no other vacancies, on account of all the travelers heading to the fayre.
“I can sleep in the stable,” Jack offered. He seemed tranquil about this, unconcerned about where he slept, incapable of discomfort or offense or deceit or cruelty or any of the qualities Elsinora had learned to accept as the price of companionship.
“You can stay with me,” she said. “If you like.”
Jack bowed his head. “I would be most grateful.”
The room was small and unadorned: a straw bed, a wood chest, a dusty mirror hanging on the wall. Elsinora gazed at herself for a long time.
“What do you see?” Jack asked.
She turned to him. “That’s just it. I don’t know how to see myself. Am I beautiful or ugly? Loving or vicious? Generous or stingy? Wicked or good?”
“I can answer that for me,” Jack said, “but not for you.”
She turned to the mirror. “What am I?” she asked not the mirror, but the woman whose reflection it bore.
The answer that came to her was a surprise. She was neither beautiful nor ugly. Neither loving nor vicious. Neither wicked nor good. She was all of those things.
We all are.
9.
The next morning, they traveled amid the revelers to the palace grounds, carried along in a river of anonymous peasants and merchants and swindlers. The Wickeds were dressed for battle, swords sheathed, daggers hidden, resolve set.
When they arrived at the wood next to the fayregrounds, they located the tent where the princesses would be sequestered before the ceremony. Only then did they pay Jack and the dwarfs and give them their instructions, sparing them details to preserve their deniability.
“Make a distraction,” Gwendolyn said. “Shout fire. Pretend to brawl. Urinate in the middle of the green. Whatever works.”
“What about throwing a stink bomb?” the warty dwarf asked.
“Do you have a stink bomb?” Marguerite asked.
He rolled his eyes. “What respectable dwarf doesn’t?”