Little Green Apples
by Jenny
Author's Note: This story was inspired slightly by a dream I had, but mostly by the mini-series "The Tenth Kingdom". I fact, it's a lot less creative then I thought it was going to be when I first started writing it. Anyway, the first part (what's in italics) is directly from the mini-series. The rest is what I wrote, but it's based on the history given in the storyline of 10K. This story was written for fun, so please don't sue me; I'm poor, so you won't get anything but debts anyway.
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"…my mother was a queen, and every day she would sit by the window sewing, staring at the falling snow, longing to have a baby girl. And one day, she pricked her finger on a needle, and onto the snow fell three drops of blood, and she knew then that she would die giving birth to me.
"My father was sad for a very long time, but he remarried eventually because he was lonely, and my new mother brought no possessions to the castle except for her magic mirrors. And every day she would lock her bedroom door, she would take off all her clothes, and she would look in the mirror and say, 'Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?'
"And the mirror would reply, 'My lady is the fairest of them all,' and this would satisfy her for she knew that mirrors spoke the truth.
"But I was growing older, and by the time I was seven, I was as pretty as you. And one day, when the queen asked her mirror, the mirror replied, 'My lady queen is fair to see, but Snow White is fairer far than thee.'
"And my step-mother called her huntsman and said, 'Take this child into the forest, I am sick of the sight of her!'
"Can you imagine that moment, Virginia? When you realize that you're so awful that your own mother wants you murdered?
"When the huntsman raised his knife I fell to my knees and I begged him, 'Let me live, please! Let me live!" and he put his knife away. I was so terrified I ran straight into the darkness. I ran until I was exhausted and then, right in front of me, was this little cottage…
"I told the dwarves about my step-mother and they became very paranoid about her. They told me never to go into town and never to open the door to strangers. Her mirrors found me, eventually. She dressed as an old peddler and climbed over the Seven Hills to my house. Twice she came, once with a corset to crush my ribs, and then with a poisoned comb, to drug me.
"But the last time she came, she brought the most beautiful basket of apples that I ever saw. And this time she stayed to watch me die, and to be sure, she held me in her arms until I died in front of her, choking on a piece of poisoned apple…"
She had tried to kill Snow White, the little bitch who had dared to be more beautiful than she was. Three times she had tried, and three times she had failed. Even her own huntsman had turned on her. She had been furious, brimming with rage at her own failure, at the fact that she could possibly fail at anything, especially this, especially with her power. How did this happen? She didn't know the answer to her own question.
Then, the fourth time she had tried, the third time she had attempted murder since Snow White had escaped the huntsman, she had succeeded. It had taken persistence, sheer stubbornness, but she held the brat in her arms and watched her gasping, choking for breath as the poison set in, her pale skin turning whiter with the effort of trying to breathe, her full crimson lips slowly taking on a blue tinge. Finally, the bitch had taken her last breath, and the queen was supreme again.
Or at least, that was what happened until those dwarves found out and that thrice-damned prince woke the brat.
That was how she'd ended up here, at Snow White's wedding.
The men took something out of the fire with a pair of tongs. The queen didn't even look; she already knew what was being carried toward her. She was not going to give them the satisfaction of knowing she was afraid. She was not going to show them that she had any weaknesses. No matter how badly it hurt, she wouldn't show them. They had already beaten her; she was damned if they were going to break her, too.
And so the queen didn't let on how much it hurt. Not even when they made her dance in those red-hot, searing shoes. Not until she was finally shoved out of what was once her own castle to die in the snow.
At least the snow kept her feet from burning for a while.
***
The day had started out normally. Christine had had a lot of bad days lately, but today had gone smoothly. She pulled her mind away from that line of thought, as though she might attract the sickness again by thinking about it.
She hummed as she ran the bath water, testing it to be sure it was neither too hot nor too cold. "Virginia! Hurry up, you have school in the morning." Christine loved her daughter dearly, but sometimes she had regrets. Regrets about wedding Tony, regrets about getting pregnant. Regrets about a lot of things. Once again, Christine's mind shied away from unpleasant thoughts, as her beautiful young daughter came into the bathroom.
She began to hum again as she helped Virginia, making sure she got all the shampoo out of her hair, when the thought surfaced. You could drown her right now and no one would imagine it was murder. You could have the life you wanted before. Shocked by this thought, Christine tried to act normally, but she could feel her desire to test the idea's truth growing, as it usually did. Every time, she found it harder to control herself. This time, she found it impossible.
She wrapped her hands, wrinkled by water, around Virginia's throat and shoved her under the bathwater.
Virginia's struggle was the outward representation of the battle that raged within Christine herself. What am I doing? I'm fixing a mistake. I should have done it- she's my daughter! With a strangled cry, Christine let go of Virginia's neck and jumped to her feet. Her daughter rose to the surface, gasping for breath, but before she could turn her frightened, confused gaze to her mother, Christine was out the door.
The queen had lived in the swamp for several years now. She'd come here to heal her feet and stayed, preferring to let those idiots that fawned upon her stepdaughter lull themselves into complacency. She had only made one foray back into the kingdom, to hide all of her mirrors but one. This she had brought back with her to the swamp, and it was this mirror, her last vestige of power, that she now gazed.
No longer beautiful, the queen knew that with her ruined feet and lost power, she would not succeed in her goals. She would have to find someone else who would destroy the house of White. She hoped that this mirror, this portal to the legendary 10th Kingdom, would be the key.
Christine dodged a car as she sprinted across the street from the apartment, the horror of what she had almost done still reverberating through her brain. What if it wasn't so wrong?
It was thoughts like those that only reinforced the fact that she had lost her sanity.
She continued to run, hoping to put as much distance as she could between herself and the ones she loved before something like that happened again. Or before her wretched mind decided that her actions had been satisfactory after all and directed her to go back and finish the job.
Catherine never noticed when she subconsciously changed directions.
The queen saw someone running. People who ran like that usually had a good reason, she reflected idly as the woman dodged around some kind of moving object. It wasn't until she skimmed the woman's thoughts, though, that she became convinced that this was the woman who was to become her successor. Someone who had that much in common with the queen herself deserved the kind of power the queen could give her.
She subtly turned the woman onto a fairly empty path, and activated the mirror.
Christine stopped running, shock threatening to overwhelm her, when a hand came out of a shimmering patch of air…and no owner within sight.
"Come with me, child." The imperious voice offered no alternative, but Christine stopped her hand an inch from the disembodied one.
"Why should I?"
"Because I can make everything right again."
Christine hesitated a moment longer, then threw caution to the wind. She was just having some insane hallucination anyway. Why fight it anymore? She took the hand and was pulled through to the other side, finding herself in a small cottage. She turned around to see Central Park framed in an ornate mirror. "What…" She trailed off, turning to study her…rescuer?
An elderly woman, with traces of faded beauty and an aura of remembered power, looked back with dark eyes. "I suppose you're wondering why it is I've brought you here." At Christine's nod, the old woman went on, exerting power so that her words would be believed. "I once had great power. I was a queen. My throne was stolen from me by my ungrateful stepdaughter and her brainless benefactors, and they exiled me here. I'm no longer in any position to try and take my rightful place back." The queen paused for a moment to let this sink in, and see Christine's reaction. Then she made her offer. "I have the ability to rid you of your madness, and to give you power beyond your wildest dreams. If you will take up my revenge, I will make you my successor."
Christine studied the queen. Something about her story didn't quite sound…Don't be paranoid, Christine. Of course she's telling the truth. Why would she lie? Christine could actually think of several reasons the woman would lie, but what she offered was far too tantalizing to ignore, especially as the queen described the power she had held before. "All this will be yours," the old queen ended triumphantly. Even as she spoke, Christine inexplicably found herself trusting the woman more and more, and finding her plan for revenge less and less horrific.
She watched the woman for a long moment. These people have done wrong. Anything you do to them is justified.
Finally, Christine nodded. "I'll do it."
The old queen smiled slowly, a frightfully determined smile that was echoed on the face of her successor.