The Pale Cheek of the Apple
I could hear his heart, beating quietly inside his perfect chest. Thump… thump… thump… He was carrying me across a green field. I could see the manor on the knoll. Its turrets shone in the morning sun. The beating of the horse's hooves on the ground made a terrible ear shattering noise. I had to squint to see his hair, rusty brown with hints of golden yellow, rustling in the wind. It had been so long since I had seen the morning so bright. In the forest the sun had barley a chance to break through the thick canopy provided by the oaks. I remembered the day that I first found the forest.
It had been fall, cold and damp. My twelfth anniversary. The snow would have fallen any day. I had left with the hunting party. It was the perfect day for me to kill my first stag. Sir Alkmore was on his hazelnut horse beside me on my white mare. When we separated he thought it best to travel alongside me, a twelve-year princess. He took me along the side of the mountain that my father's castle lay on. We trotted, our horses growing weary in he day's ride. Then was when I had first ventured into the dark pathways of the great wood. There were rabbits and some other small animals, but I wanted a stag, white as the morning snow on a cold December day. I saw finally, through the brush, the pale body. Its great head was bent beside a tree; it had found a thick patch of emerald grass. When I dismounted I had completely forgotten Sir Alkmore, who followed close to me. I had not even the time to raise my great bow before I felt the cold blade run through my backside. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to blank- out the sharp pain. I pulled away from his mighty grasp. The throbbing pain singed through my body. I had no time to turn, I just ran. He followed after, racing through the mighty oaks blood trailing down my backside. I ran for hours, my breath was harsh and raspy and the wound had stopped bleeding by the time I saw the shack on the edge of the clear blue stream.
When I had entered I found a table, not small like in the stories, but long and messy. On the table there were no plates, just the cold vegetables and meat lying on the russet wooden surface. The ale pints were full to the brim, from one of these I drank from. The awful taste filled my mouth, yet it warmed my cold body. I pushed at the dying fire in the hearth until the flames roared with the jolly laughter of the gods. I found on the table a bowl of meat, cooked nights before. I tore into the meat with my hands; I ate like a starved wolf. When I had my fill from the meal on the table I opened another door. I found beds, yes there were seven of them. I didn't care how the bed felt under my back so I hopped onto the sizable pile of straw that was lying on the ground. With a cotton blanket under me, and one over my bare shoulders I drifted off into an untroubled sleep. Or, it was untroubled until the small tapping of thick dirty fingers on the floor brought my eyes open to the light of a new day.
When I first saw them, I knew I would die. They would kill me I knew it. Their long beards were covered with food crumbs and dried dead leaves. They were not small as the stories say they were enormous. Huge, burly monsters. I was at a complete loss for words. Why had these men waited to kill me whilst I was awake? Why not in my slumber? Then I heard their first words to me, a cowardice little girl. "You are beautiful." The first thing they noticed about me was the same thing that had gotten me there in the first place. Beauty is highly over-rated.
I did accept to live with them; they had taken pity on my beauty and me. I did not have to keep house for them, none of the cooking or cleaning. I would sit and read a vast variety of books. They were thieves, you see, so the would go about on their daily lives and in return they would each bring back one book from the house that they had, most unfortunately for the owner, visited that day. I read the great studies of science and mathematical philosophies, but my favorite thing to read was a book without a name. It was a collection of stories, folktales to be correct. Stories of princesses locked in diamond caskets, stories like mine.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into seasons. Seasons turned into years. It was a year exactly when I heard a sharp pound on the door. The soft mahogany wood shook with each fierce blow. The light that seeped through the cracks was distorted and split down the middle because of the woman's cloaked shadow. I opened the door, careful not to open it to wide. When I saw her face I knew in an instant, no makeup could hide the face of the woman the bore me in her womb. There was a cold silence as we stared into each other's eyes. We sat starring she knew that she fooled know one, and I knew that I would not live to see the sun fall behind the snow topped trees of the forest. I accepted her gifts, laces and a warm leather bodice. I wanted more than life to feel her slender hands wrapping around my thin waist to tie of a crimson bow. I tightened my eyes shut, locked as my last breathe fluttered from my chest. She ran a hand through my tangled tresses. When her hand traced the scar on my back was all that I can remember. All went black. But I did wake. The little men always found some way to open my eyes.
The distorted dreams of shadows and monsters haunted me each time she came. The second time I saw her she had ventured to my seven father's house with a golden comb, long and slender like our very own bodies. Of course I let her in a second time. She was my mother, after all. It was like days of yore when her pale hands twisted my ebony hair into a long braid. The comb didn't even hurt when it touched my skin, but I knew that it was poisoned when my eyes hung, thick and heavy.
When life had come back to me I wept for days. Nothing comforted me.
The seven men gathered around. I only found sorrow. My mother hated me for something that I had no control over. I tore at my dresses, scratching my face, longing for my mother to return (even if it was with some deadly gift) to see my ugly face as it cowered in her radiant beauty. The seven men began their old routine. First they left the house in the soft light of the dawn and returned long after the sun fell behind towering mountains, they still gave me one warning, "Trust no one, and let no one in". Oh but had I listened to their silly ramblings. The gashes on my face grew in number, but I still retained a hint of that god like beauty I was cursed with.
She came.
Her hands aged in the years that I had not seen her. I was now eighteen. Six years had passed and I had seen my mother thrice. Now she returned… I knew not to accept this gift of poison apples, but the enticing red of the apples lured me. Begged me. Took me. Like a sweet memory of cider cooking in the kitchen.
The bite of red and white. The cooled chunk sweet on my tongue. Logging in my thin throat. My eyes wouldn't close this time. They remained open.
I lay on the floor when the men came in. The picked me up and tossed my body over and over… searching frantically for some item that was not there whence they left. I was still alive. Frightened, but alive. I will never forget the day that they placed my in a large oak coffin with a glass window above my head. I saw the clumps of dirt that flew at my head. The dark overcame the small hole where I lay.
My eyes were also opened for when the heaving arms of "my prince" ripped me from the earth. He stole me from my seven fathers, and he never brought me back. His idiotic servants dropped me… jolting my head. Releasing the apple from my gullet.
Now I sit with him. His sturdy stead galloping below us. I have lived my life in fear… A princess alone in the woods with her lucky seven. Now I will be queen… now I will receive revenge on my horrid mother. I know now that no gift is poison. No kiss should be a bite. No love should be for beauty…
I could hear his heart, beating quietly inside his perfect chest. Thump… thump… thump… He was carrying me across a green field. I could see the manor on the knoll. Its turrets shone in the morning sun. The beating of the horse's hooves on the ground made a terrible ear shattering noise. I had to squint to see his hair, rusty brown with hints of golden yellow, rustling in the wind. It had been so long since I had seen the morning so bright. In the forest the sun had barley a chance to break through the thick canopy provided by the oaks. I remembered the day that I first found the forest.
It had been fall, cold and damp. My twelfth anniversary. The snow would have fallen any day. I had left with the hunting party. It was the perfect day for me to kill my first stag. Sir Alkmore was on his hazelnut horse beside me on my white mare. When we separated he thought it best to travel alongside me, a twelve-year princess. He took me along the side of the mountain that my father's castle lay on. We trotted, our horses growing weary in he day's ride. Then was when I had first ventured into the dark pathways of the great wood. There were rabbits and some other small animals, but I wanted a stag, white as the morning snow on a cold December day. I saw finally, through the brush, the pale body. Its great head was bent beside a tree; it had found a thick patch of emerald grass. When I dismounted I had completely forgotten Sir Alkmore, who followed close to me. I had not even the time to raise my great bow before I felt the cold blade run through my backside. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to blank- out the sharp pain. I pulled away from his mighty grasp. The throbbing pain singed through my body. I had no time to turn, I just ran. He followed after, racing through the mighty oaks blood trailing down my backside. I ran for hours, my breath was harsh and raspy and the wound had stopped bleeding by the time I saw the shack on the edge of the clear blue stream.
When I had entered I found a table, not small like in the stories, but long and messy. On the table there were no plates, just the cold vegetables and meat lying on the russet wooden surface. The ale pints were full to the brim, from one of these I drank from. The awful taste filled my mouth, yet it warmed my cold body. I pushed at the dying fire in the hearth until the flames roared with the jolly laughter of the gods. I found on the table a bowl of meat, cooked nights before. I tore into the meat with my hands; I ate like a starved wolf. When I had my fill from the meal on the table I opened another door. I found beds, yes there were seven of them. I didn't care how the bed felt under my back so I hopped onto the sizable pile of straw that was lying on the ground. With a cotton blanket under me, and one over my bare shoulders I drifted off into an untroubled sleep. Or, it was untroubled until the small tapping of thick dirty fingers on the floor brought my eyes open to the light of a new day.
When I first saw them, I knew I would die. They would kill me I knew it. Their long beards were covered with food crumbs and dried dead leaves. They were not small as the stories say they were enormous. Huge, burly monsters. I was at a complete loss for words. Why had these men waited to kill me whilst I was awake? Why not in my slumber? Then I heard their first words to me, a cowardice little girl. "You are beautiful." The first thing they noticed about me was the same thing that had gotten me there in the first place. Beauty is highly over-rated.
I did accept to live with them; they had taken pity on my beauty and me. I did not have to keep house for them, none of the cooking or cleaning. I would sit and read a vast variety of books. They were thieves, you see, so the would go about on their daily lives and in return they would each bring back one book from the house that they had, most unfortunately for the owner, visited that day. I read the great studies of science and mathematical philosophies, but my favorite thing to read was a book without a name. It was a collection of stories, folktales to be correct. Stories of princesses locked in diamond caskets, stories like mine.
Days turned into weeks. Weeks turned into months. Months turned into seasons. Seasons turned into years. It was a year exactly when I heard a sharp pound on the door. The soft mahogany wood shook with each fierce blow. The light that seeped through the cracks was distorted and split down the middle because of the woman's cloaked shadow. I opened the door, careful not to open it to wide. When I saw her face I knew in an instant, no makeup could hide the face of the woman the bore me in her womb. There was a cold silence as we stared into each other's eyes. We sat starring she knew that she fooled know one, and I knew that I would not live to see the sun fall behind the snow topped trees of the forest. I accepted her gifts, laces and a warm leather bodice. I wanted more than life to feel her slender hands wrapping around my thin waist to tie of a crimson bow. I tightened my eyes shut, locked as my last breathe fluttered from my chest. She ran a hand through my tangled tresses. When her hand traced the scar on my back was all that I can remember. All went black. But I did wake. The little men always found some way to open my eyes.
The distorted dreams of shadows and monsters haunted me each time she came. The second time I saw her she had ventured to my seven father's house with a golden comb, long and slender like our very own bodies. Of course I let her in a second time. She was my mother, after all. It was like days of yore when her pale hands twisted my ebony hair into a long braid. The comb didn't even hurt when it touched my skin, but I knew that it was poisoned when my eyes hung, thick and heavy.
When life had come back to me I wept for days. Nothing comforted me.
The seven men gathered around. I only found sorrow. My mother hated me for something that I had no control over. I tore at my dresses, scratching my face, longing for my mother to return (even if it was with some deadly gift) to see my ugly face as it cowered in her radiant beauty. The seven men began their old routine. First they left the house in the soft light of the dawn and returned long after the sun fell behind towering mountains, they still gave me one warning, "Trust no one, and let no one in". Oh but had I listened to their silly ramblings. The gashes on my face grew in number, but I still retained a hint of that god like beauty I was cursed with.
She came.
Her hands aged in the years that I had not seen her. I was now eighteen. Six years had passed and I had seen my mother thrice. Now she returned… I knew not to accept this gift of poison apples, but the enticing red of the apples lured me. Begged me. Took me. Like a sweet memory of cider cooking in the kitchen.
The bite of red and white. The cooled chunk sweet on my tongue. Logging in my thin throat. My eyes wouldn't close this time. They remained open.
I lay on the floor when the men came in. The picked me up and tossed my body over and over… searching frantically for some item that was not there whence they left. I was still alive. Frightened, but alive. I will never forget the day that they placed my in a large oak coffin with a glass window above my head. I saw the clumps of dirt that flew at my head. The dark overcame the small hole where I lay.
My eyes were also opened for when the heaving arms of "my prince" ripped me from the earth. He stole me from my seven fathers, and he never brought me back. His idiotic servants dropped me… jolting my head. Releasing the apple from my gullet.
Now I sit with him. His sturdy stead galloping below us. I have lived my life in fear… A princess alone in the woods with her lucky seven. Now I will be queen… now I will receive revenge on my horrid mother. I know now that no gift is poison. No kiss should be a bite. No love should be for beauty…