This story starts, as such stories often do, with two separated halves of a whole, searching for each other. Come, settle round Granny now, and let me tell you the story of how the stone heart melted.
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The group's footsteps echoed loud in the cave, mixing with the slow dripping of water from the ceiling. Their laughter and chatter died away as the heavy atmosphere underground atmosphere settled around them. Their leader, a handsome prince, waved the torch in front of his face, trying to see further into the gloom, trying to catch a first glimpse of the legend they'd come to see.
"Come for the story have you, dear?" The old woman's voice from the darkness behind him made him jump, and spin around, almost dropping the torch. Snorts of derision rose from the group behind him, and he bristled, squaring his shoulders.
"Yes, old woman" he said. "We're here for the stone witch – we have travelled many miles to see this statue." He turned and clapped a companion on the back. "This one must get married soon and we thought – who better to break the spell?" Barks of laughter escaped the party, the idea clearly ridiculous: they had come to this cave because it was deemed tradition for those prior to betrothal to chance their arm at freeing the stone beauty. The real purpose of their afternoon, in their minds, came after with an all-night visit to the local tavern and its extraordinarily friendly serving girls.
The old woman shook her head. "So many tourists, and so few saviours, these days." She settled down, onto a flat rock, and motioned for the young nobles to gather around her. "Not many folk remember now how the witch came to be stone, but I do. I was there, see. On this very rock, where I'm sitting now. As a young woman, I used to come up here and watch the water run down the walls and away into the cavern at the back of cave. I used to wonder where it went, and when, if ever, it would come back. There's magic in water, you know, old magic, older than the land, they say.
Well, I was here, watching the water, one day when in came the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Dressed head to toe in black, hair piled high on her head. I recognised her straight away, anyone would. The Evil Queen herself – that banished, reviled witch – destroyer of innocence, curser of worlds, enemy of our own dear King and Queen, here in the flesh. She swept straight in, and called down that cavern for the water spirit within.
Don't look at me like that – I know magic and the faerie folk are rare enough these days – but the spirit rose up out of that hole, a towering great man made of water. They spoke for a time, his voice too loud and rushing for me to hear, but she understood. She told him of her attempt to curse this world, to free herself and everyone else from the unfulfilled promises of happy endings, and how her heart, her weak and feeling womanly heart, had prevented her making sufficient sacrifice. And I heard what she asked for, what she begged the spirit to give her. 'Make my heart stone,' she cried, 'make me as unfeeling as the granite beneath your streams, make me as cool and unfeeling as the water that makes you, and let me rest from the torment of love'.
The water spirit granted her wish, but she had underestimated the price she'd pay for a stone heart. For as her heart turned to stone, so did her blood within it, and the veins that carried it along , and the organs it touched. Soon, all of her was stone, inside and out, as you see her now.
They say, that should someone pure of heart find the cave, and the Queen inside, and fall in love, the spell will be broken. The stone will melt away, and she will be free once again to love and live, as happily as anyone could desire."
Story done, the young visitors behind to drift toward the back of the cave, towards the focus of their visit, catcalling and chattering irreverently as they went, their disbelief in the story clear. The old woman looked sidelong at the last member of the group still standing by her stone. "You don't join them?" she asked, gesturing at the woman's friends. "You don't laugh at an old woman's story?"
The woman shook her head, blonde curls falling about her shoulders. "No," she said, her voice soft and low, gaze fixed on the distant others, "I don't. Your story is about love, and my mother always said, true love is the most powerful force in the world." She looked down at the story teller, and smiled, although it did not reach her eyes. "Not everyone is destined for true love, but I won't mock it." She reached into a purse hanging from her belt, and pushed a coin into the other woman's hand. "For the story," she said.
"Emma!" the prince called, from the half darkness, "Come on! Come and save the Queen!" She nodded at the old woman, still sat on the cold stone, and moved off, further into the cave. Her friends were clustered around the stone woman, kissing her face and making crude motions, laughing and shouting their intent to break the curse. The display disappointed her in a way she couldn't define. The statue itself, cold and unmoving under their lewd onslaught, was finely wrought – each fold of material perfectly carved, each hair distinct, the expression of sadness and longing heartbreakingly expressed on the granite face – and seemed to surge straight out of the cave's bedrock. The sculptor, whoever he was, had created a masterpiece.
Bored now, and cold, the group of young nobles began to head out of the cave, back into the warmth and sunlight of the outside world, feet firmly fixed in the direction of the nearest tavern. Hanging behind for a moment longer, Emma pressed her hand to the cold stone cheek. "Don't worry," she said, "someone will come for you, one day." She pressed her lips to the warm stone where her hand had been before, feeling foolish with the old woman's eyes on her still, and left.
Once their footsteps had receded down the mountainside, and the sound of their voices had faded into memory, the old woman finally stood up from the stone, cracking and stretching her stiff limbs. Moving to the statue, she looked carefully into the face of the queen, as she had every day for almost thirty years. Copying the action of the younger woman, she too placed her hand to the stone, surprised to still feel the remnants of warmth clinging to the white cheek.
"The daughter of Snow White and Prince Charming," she said, laughing softly to herself. "Who'd have thought, your Majesty, who'd have thought." And as she too descended the slope towards her village and home, the stone woman in the cave began to melt, dripping granite into the cavern at her feet, slowly exposing pale skin, dark hair, and red red lips.
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