Dwarfed
or
The Blessed Disaster
Sam Scott
The goddess of justice has left the earth. Be remembered, Marcus, she's gone, she's fled.
William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
or
The consolation of fairy-stories, the joy of a happy ending: or more correctly, the good catastrophe, the sudden joyous "turn" (for there is no true end to any fairy-tale)… It does not deny the existence of sorrow and failure: the possibility of these is necessary to the joy of deliverance.
JRR Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories
The fog lay heavy over the valley and all the lights in the shack of a house burned against the half-dark. The visitor sat at the kitchen table, fingering the gashes in the rough surface. He was telling the old miners about his life until then. The two of them listened intently: one of them was old, and looked far older, his face wrinkled and weatherbeaten. His beard grew grey and tangled down from his chin, and stubbly along the sides of his face. The other was some years younger and a head smaller, with a short beard and a rounded belly. Silence hung between the floor and ceiling for a moment after the stranger's story ended.
"So I suppose you know all about me now," the stranger said at last. "And since I've taken so much of your time, it only seems fair to ask who you are."
"Don't you worry your head about it," said the old miner. He flicked his gnarled, callused thumb under his forefinger and back out again. "We don't get visitors much. Don't hear many stories. Hearing a new one seems to lighten the fog a little."
The young stranger leaned forward in his chair and moved it farther from the table.
"Then what is your story?"
The old miner bowed his head and rubbed a finger against his grimy nose.
"Go on," said the short miner. "Telling can't hurt anything."
"There isn't much to tell," his brother said. "I'm the oldest of my family; I had seven brothers but no sisters. Our father died when I was twelve. He caught something in his lungs, mining. Mother followed close behind him.
"My youngest brother was just a baby when it happened. Folks call him the 'dumb one' now – he never really learned to speak, and some say he's not quite right in his head since then. Back then we lived in the town, but after our parents died, the old house just seemed to weigh on me. I had to get out. I was the man of our family now and I had to provide for my brothers. I decided we'd have to find a new house, somewhere out of town, maybe in the woods. My brothers all did as I said. Some of them may have felt the same way I did, but I think they mostly just wanted me happy.
"All the same, we packed up what little we had and moved into the woods. The younger ones didn't like it at all: said they didn't like the dark in there, they were scared about the wild animals. Said they wanted to turn back."
"I trusted you," said the short miner, looking down at the floor.
"Anyhow," his brother continued, "I would have none of that. I had heard from Mother of how beautiful it was in the open clearings she had been to as a girl. After a week or so of traveling, we found the wide, open field away from the wolves and the vines. After that, my brothers finally agreed I was right.
"We set to work to build a house of our own. Before we had been there long, we hired ourselves out to another mine that operated out of the clearing: dug a tunnel clear through that mountain over there. So we started working to support ourselves and finish the house.
"I was bitter beyond my years. I could not see what kind of world we lived in that children like us could lose our parents and have nothing, just like that. We had done nothing wrong, and yet we were punished for…well, for living. And my heart was never in my work. We would labor from sunrise to sunset, risk our lives against the poison air that killed my father. It got one of my brothers too. He had always been weak – seemed he was coughing and sneezing all the time. And one day he just collapsed as the mines were closing down. We tried to get him out, but the company wouldn't leave the doors open long enough for us to get him out. We either had to leave him or join him. We buried him the next day."
"It was just his time," said the short miner. "He was never afraid to die."
"And all those rich men in their billion-dollar mansions," said the old miner venomously, "why is it never their time? With their expensive doctors, and their good food, and their days sitting in the sun our brother didn't get? But I'm sorry, son. I'm just an old man, and you must think I'm bitter. Just don't think I don't have a right to be. But you're still young, you still need to learn this for yourself. And I suppose you have money too. I never meant to…"
The miner probably had meant to offend the stranger, though. The old man was hardly happy to hear the younger man talk about his trials as if they had actually hurt. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair with a superior grin hiding behind his feigned embarrassment, as if to say "this is real trouble. This is what life is."
"No, no," said the young man. If he took offense at the old miner's spite towards him, he did not show it. Still, he was no fool. There was a look – not a smile, but a kind of warmth – on his face that showed something like indulgence. "Please. Finish your story."
"We kept working after our brother died. Oh, I hated the company, and I would have left if I could. But mining is all I can do, and I couldn't make the dumb one move again. But it was terrible. For all the work we did, we were paid just enough to buy food, while the company owners just sat on their asses and paid themselves well to do so. If we complained, they would just send word down from on high and tell us the company couldn't afford to pay any more. They said if they couldn't turn a profit, they'd have to close down and then how poor would we be?
"Our friend in the company store told me stories about a Court of Kings in the west that would give us better work for better pay. But I didn't want to risk the journey through wild seas and snow packs where you could fall in and never come back out. It's probably just some fairy tale anyway. I had had my fill of life. Then one day a child came to our lives and made me see the wonder that was still in the world.
"She's dead now."
The story stopped. The young man had seemed fascinated when the old miner talked about the far court. But his eyes widened more when the story stopped.
"What happened to her?" the stranger asked.
"I would of thought you had your fill of misery from all the rest of it," said the old miner, turning away.
"Go on," said the short miner, sounding like a lump was in his throat. "He'd like that …that story."
"Well," said the old miner after some time, admitting defeat. "I'll tell it as best as I remember what I heard from her. This girl never told me her name, but I will always remember the way she looked. Her hair was pure black, like a bird. But her skin was so pale it was almost white, no matter how much we fed her.
"She had been the king's only child. Her mother was a terrible woman. What the girl said about her was worse than any of the rumors you've heard, even if I can't believe all of it. She said the queen was a student of the blackest magic. She told me she saw a mirror in her mother's bedroom. There had been a devil enslaved in it, and the queen must have learned some kind of witchery from him. This pale girl said her mother never did a thing without consulting this mirror. Now, the girl was just a child and children will think too much of things. But she said the mirror devil gave her mother control over the weather, or people's thoughts, or her own appearance. I don't much believe in those superstitions. But it would explain some things if the queen had that kind of power.
"The pale girl mentioned something even stranger her mother did with that mirror. Now, I'd always heard that the queen was full of herself. So I could believe when the pale girl told me how every morning, her mother'd ask her mirror if there was anyone in the country as beautiful as her. I've never seen the woman, but from what I heard I guess I can believe that she was satisfied for many years. Pretty outside doesn't say anything about inside, I always said."
"I remember that's what you told the dumb one about his swollen face," said the short miner softly.
The old miner continued as though his brother had never spoken: "Then one day, when the pale girl was no more than eight, the Queen got raging mad. She never said what it was, but the girl knew. The mirror devil had said she was more beautiful than her mother. She says she remembers lying awake in her bed at night, hearing her parents shouting at each other. She says she couldn't sleep, because she knew they were shouting about her. The girl said the queen had tried to fix things so she wouldn't be beautiful anymore, that she had to take poisons and ointments to turn her ugly. Not one of them worked. The pale girl said her mother even took hot coffee and pokers to her face and burned her, and that her face had come back, more beautiful than before. You can believe that if you want, but I'd say the poor girl was just having nightmares. I wouldn't put a nickel behind that talk about goodness being a kind of magic. It never worked for my father.
"Father… The pale girl never said where her father was during all this. Could be he didn't know, or could be he was as bad as his wife. Maybe the mirror devil had him in some sort of… what do you call it, thrall. But it always seemed to me he couldn't run the country without his wife and his ministers. Maybe he couldn't run his own home either. What I do know is that after trying so hard to ruin the pale girl's beauty, the queen finally went over the edge. She decided she'd hire one of the court assassins to kill her daughter – her own daughter. Even worse, the pale girl said the queen intended him to bring back her heart and her liver – that she would fry them up and make her husband eat it. That's horrible, but I've seen enough worse to believe it."
"I can't," said the short miner, shuddering. "Not even that witch could ever do…do something so… depraved… perverted."
"Now this assassin was the top of the top for killing people – merciless and quick. But he saw this pale girl and he completely melted – you would too if you could have seen her."
"I know I did," said the short miner. "We all did."
"So this killer threw down his knife, and told the girl the whole story. He told her she needed to get as far away from her mother as she could. No time to pack any bags or say goodbye to anybody. Just to run. So she did.
"I heard later that the assassin had killed a sheep from the farm and served its heart and liver to the Queen instead. She hanged him for it when she found out. Some justice.
"But that's nothing compared to what the girl got. She thought the only way she could be safe was to hide in the dark woods. But she wasn't safe there at all. The flies and wasps stung her as she stumbled over their nests. The wolves howled at her all night. A big, black bear charged at her by the river. The buzzards and crows swooped low when she walked by. By the time she got to us her clothes were ragged, her hair matted and wild, she had a limp, and she was covered with bruises and gashes, and scars all over her white … her pure white skin.
"Finally, beaten, and exhausted, not having eaten in days, she found this cabin. She staggered upstairs and fell asleep in the dumb one's bed. When we came home that night and found her there, we didn't know what to think. I've always been a suspicious type, but my brothers trusted so much in this innocent little child. And when I saw her face, I saw they were right."
"I could tell she was starved," said the short miner. "So I got everyone into the kitchen, and we emptied all our cabinets to make dinner for her."
"More than they had to do," said the old miner gruffly. "But still, I can't help but see what they were thinking. The next morning, the pale girl woke up, and we managed to get her downstairs to eat. She gobbled down everything we had set out for her, and she explained everything to us after she had her strength back. More than got her strength back - all that day she was buzzing around the house, cleaning it from top to bottom. She made us a stew better than any we've ever had since our mother died. She did all of this without complaining, without even being asked. I realized that our house had never had a woman's sense to guide it. She was like the sister we never had.
"The strange thing is, she never seemed bitter about what had happened – never angry, and never depressed either. I suppose children can be like that. But there must have been more to it. She seemed like she knew something I didn't. She seemed shaken when she told the story. But only then. Every other moment, the pale girl was filled with some kind of wonder at the world. She would stare wide-eyed at things like trees or mountains or sunsets. She laughed at simple little things: things like a fawn in the trees, or the dumb one trying to entertain her. What I'm trying to say is she loved the world, even after all it had done to her. This girl was full of hope about everything. She told me how she knew her mother would lose her throne, and her father would come back for her, and how we would all live in the palace."
"Forever and ever, she said," the short miner added.
"Her hope gave me hope. I believed all of it, everything she said. While she was here, I started to see a world that maybe I'd left long ago. And it was a world that was more really, truly alive than the one I had made for myself.
"We lived like that for a few days. Then I realized that the queen would find the pale girl sooner or later. None of us wanted to leave her alone, but we had no more sick days, and she would die if we were out of work surely as if she was killed. We told her that she must let no one in. If she was telling the truth anyone could be her mother. So we went off to the mines, and tried to get home as soon as we could. When we came back, she told us about a nice little old lady who had come through. Now I knew that there were no nice little old ladies living around here. I darn near blew up at the pale girl for letting her in.
"You were too hard on her," said the short miner. "She was just a girl."
"I did what I had to do," the old miner said sharply. "No matter what happened I wouldn't let her die. That's why I wanted to stay home from work to watch out for her. But with one more mouth to feed, I couldn't afford to miss a day's wages. I regretted that choice with every swing of the pick.
"As soon as I opened the door that night, I saw it. The window was swung open and a bright red apple lay on the ground. The pale girl lay next to it. Dead as a stone…
"The… the sight felt like a punch to the gut and a blow to the head. It just, just knocked me on my ass. I couldn't stand on my own, and I fell against the wall. I just stood there paralyzed, I don't know how long. My brothers did all they could to save her. But it was too late. I was too late.
"We lay her body to rest the next morning. And I - I don't know what kind of world we live in. That a woman could abuse and murder her own child like this. That this little child, so… pure… so … good could die like this… that she came to me for help and I failed her. And how… how could something so perfect be taken away? And what kind of world do we live in where she dies and her murderer can live in a palace and run this whole country? What kind of world?"
The old miner would never admit it, but the other two could tell he was on the verge of tears.
"You shouldn't talk like that," said the stranger. "I'm sure there's -"
"I shouldn't talk like that? How can you just come here from your rich fucking daddy and your carefree fucking life, and drag the worst times of my life out of me, and then try to tell me I'm the one with illusions about this world? I knew it as soon as I saw you on that stupid white horse—you are nothing but some spoiled rich pansy who thinks that just because he gets every single little thing handed to him that the world's all sunshine and rainbows. Isn't that right? Isn't it?"
A chair squeaked on the wood floor. The short miner got up and hurriedly led the stranger out of the room.
"You shouldn't worry about what my brother says," said the short miner. "His memories can just be too much for him. I'm sure he didn't mean…"
The old miner threw the last of his beer down his throat and marched to his bed. He was through with the stranger. He was through with the day that had been. He fell into a deep, soft, heavy sleep.
The next day was Sunday, so he had no idea how long he had slept. The sun was bright through the window, and the flying dust seemed to shine like snowflakes in the beam of light. His dumb brother was shaking the old miner awake, beaming and nodding his head. The old miner stumbled out of his bed and into his clothes.
"Just give … me… a moment," said the old miner, struggling with his mud-caked coat. He followed his dumb brother down into the basement. He saw the rest of his brothers standing with the stranger around a coffin with a clear glass lid.
"Who..." he growled, "who said he could see this?"
"Well," said the short miner. "It was the dumb one's idea to make the glass coffin, and he was very proud of it. So he wanted to show it off. "
"Well, he should've known better," said the old miner. "She belongs to us. It's none of this stranger's business."
"She…" the stranger began, with a self-conscious cough. "You said she was just a girl when she died?"
"Yes," said the old miner through locked teeth. "Far too young for all the pain she suffered."
"It's just," said the stranger. "Just to look at her, I'd say she's no younger than me."
"What of it? I've heard that bodies stretch as they decay."
"But that's just it. She looks like she died just yesterday."
"Mummified then. What do you care? You think she's some kind of circus freak?"
"Actually," the stranger said, "I think she might still be alive."
The room went as silent as if it had been empty.
"Alive?" the old miner growled. "I saw her die! We don't need any of your magical… your optimist… your bullshit."
"Well…" said the stranger. "You could call it magic. That apple was cursed... she's in something like a coma. Now, I know people who could bring her back-"
"You're even crazier than I thought."
"Where I come from, there's people who study this stuff. If I could just take her home…"
"You touch her over my dead body!"
"Why on earth would want to stop him?" said the short miner. "He wants to bring our angel back from the dead!"
The old miner snorted scornfully.
"This isn't about the magic, is it?" the short miner asked. "You just want to hold on to her. You think he'll take her from you. It's been ten years. You need to let go."
"What else am I supposed to hold on to? Our ratty house? Our crummy job? When that dandy asshole takes her out the door, I'll probably never see her again. He'll probably put her on display like a stuffed peacock!"
"We.. well, we have each other."
"Fine." That was no consolation to him. He would have been happier to get rid of them than the pale girl. "But no one was ever anything like the girl."
"Listen to yourself. You've become obsessed. You're stuck in the past."
"And what's so great about the present? I had one time in my life when I was anything like happy, and you try to take it from me."
"Well, what kind of present can you hope to make if you won't live there? This could be your chance to start over."
"I'm too old to start over. I hardly have any life left."
"Exactly. Why waste it?"
"Fah."
The short miner sighed in defeat. His brother would never give up. Then he realized what he had to say.
"If the pale girl were here," he said, "She would want that… just that."
The old miner's eyes shot open.
"What did you say?"
"She… she would want you to let her go. She'd want you to put the past behind you, the way she did. That's how you'll 'on, honor her memory."
There was a long hush. The old miner's eyes began to flood, but no tear left them.
"You're right," he said slowly, sounding choked. "Go on with it."
The stranger and three of the brothers picked up the coffin and carried it upstairs. The dumb one insisted on helping despite the old miner's objections. Once the coffin was out in daylight, the sun reflected in all colors in the glass and shot up from the surface. The pale girl truly was beautiful, lying there with a look of perfect calm on her red lips. As they entered the woods, the dumb one stumbled and the coffin rattled. The girl's dead mouth drooped open and a piece of red apple fell out.
A finger twitched. An eye flickered open.
"I told you not to come along," grumbled the old miner, his words raspy with choked-back tears. "What if you, you broke something?"
They heard the sound of air entering the girl's long-unused lungs.
"Anyone else hear that?" the short miner asked.
"Shee… s'alive!" the dumb one said. It was the first words he had spoken since the girl died. His brothers were so shocked they dropped the coffin and glass flew everywhere.
The girl brushed the shimmering splinters off her arms and sat up.
"I…it can't.. can't…" the old miner stammered in his shock.
The pale girl stepped out of the coffin. The old miner finally burst out crying. He was past the point of pretending he had glass in his eye.
"It's okay," she said, wrapping his tanned head in her smooth arm. "It's okay. What happened?"
"I thought... thought you were dead," said the old miner.
"Dead?" said the pale girl. "Well… I suppose I did too. But… I guess I must have been wrong then?"
The old miner began to cough. Then he began to laugh. Then, though the miners hardly knew why, their laughter filled the whole clearing. It seemed to wipe away the years of grieving.
What happened next was all a joyous, dreamlike blur. The stranger told them all that his father was really High Judge in the Court of Kings, and that he had traveled through their countryincognito to find evidence against the queen. And now he had it. Now that he had met the beautiful pale girl, he wanted to marry her, and he would take the seven miners to his palace as well. They set out across the wide, sapphire-colored sea in a sleek and gleaming ferry. After some days (no one knew how many) they put ashore on the white sands. They climbed through the boulder fields until they could see the palace on the highest mountain. They hiked up to its almost-invisible peak, sometimes breaking out into a run like children.
At sunset, they reached the gleaming marble palace. Every color of banner hung from the high walls, and ivy and lilies and bright red roses climbed to the top. Standing at the gateway, the old miner thought it looked just as tall as the peak. He entered into a pale-walled throne room, blanketed in green velvet, and saw the great kings and queens of the Court. They looked like Greek statues come to life, more than merely human. The prince introduced all of them. The High Judge appeared almost as happy to see the miners as he would any great head of state.
The seven miners stayed in the palace the whole time the pale woman and prince courted. When spring came, they set a date for their wedding. They would have the old miner for the best man. He received the first clean suit he had ever worn in his life, and had many more to wear before the wedding day. He watched as rulers came from countries as far as the opposite coast. And he saw one that he never wanted to see at all. The pale woman's mother had been invited. She walked in with her head held high. But she was wary when she heard that the prince was marrying her stepdaughter. So she carried her mirror-demon everywhere she went.
The pale woman's wedding was the most beautiful ceremony the old miner had ever seen. He no longer knew what would happen to him, nor did he care. From that moment, her happiness was the same as his.
The hours after the ceremony, the band played music that could have come from an angel's harp. And the bride and groom: they seemed like they belonged to the immortals, like their love would stand after the castle fell to the ground. It took some work, but his brothers finally got the old miner to dance. He hadn't thought it could happen, but the rhythm infected his whole body. The old miner discovered something he would never have guessed – he loved to dance, and the women even loved dancing with him. He felt years fall off him with every step he took.
As the crowd began to thin, the High Judge stopped the witch queen at the door. She still held her head high and her lips pursed, but the old miner could tell she was hiding more fear than ever. She clutched the mirror tightly.
"The verdict from your trial is in," said the judge.
"And?" said the stepmother, her face suddenly unreadable.
"Guilty as sin. You die tomorrow."
A knowing smile crawled over the queen's face. She pulled out her mirror and called the demon's name. But she saw nothing except her own reflection. The attendants had to tackle the queen and led her, still screaming the demon's name, down the long hall to the dungeon.
"You have escaped justice all your life," said the judge. "And denied it to countless others. But in this Court, everyone receives what they have earned."
She was buried the next day and mourned by few. No one knew if her husband would have come to see her lowered into the ground; he had died years before. This left the pale queen the heir to her kingdom. So she and the prince became the most beloved rulers that country had seen in many generations.
The day after the wedding had ended, the new king and queen knocked on the door of the old miner's room. They found him packing his new clothes and some travel food into a black knapsack.
"What are you doing?" the pale queen asked.
"Packing," the miner answered, "what do you think? I'm glad to see the old queen finally got what she deserved. And I'm very happy I got to see you get what you always deserved. You really are good for each other. But I've got to get back to work."
The newlyweds looked at each other and smiled.
"You really think I could send you back after everything you said?" the prince asked.
"My mother's land is mine now," said the pale queen. "I need to give some of it to people I can trust. We were wondering what you would think if you and your brothers had a farm of your own?"
The old miner later decided that he had really lived two lives. His second began the day the glass lid had shattered. The evening he moved into his new farm, he looked out over his land from the front deck of his house. The fields glowed gold in the setting sun. He could hear the fiddles of the workers below, playing songs that sounded like he had learned them on his mother's knee. He saw the high mountains rise on all sides like pale cathedrals. And beyond them, the great, jewel-blue sea.
"It must have always been there," he said to the dumb one, "but I feel like I'm just now having my eyes opened to see."
He even enjoyed the fog now, the way it sat above the valleys and dissolved as he walked into it it, always staying ahead of him. He enjoyed the summer, the fall, and the winter's pale snow, and then spring as it returned. What he said was true: he had come back to life the same day as the pale girl.
And so the old story ends. The good received their reward, and the wicked their punishment. Life came out of death, and victory from defeat. Lovers united. The hopeless found hope. The comfortable were afflicted, and the afflicted found comfort. Joy multiplied from one girl to all around her. A man found happiness in a life he thought was no longer worth calling a life.
Or as a wiser man than I once put it:
They all lived happily ever after.