All three of us take off, running across the forest towards the dragon. Red Riding Hood is far ahead already, her gait loping and quick. Emma, too is fast, but unused to the rough and terrain, and in her awkward avoidance of roots, logs and stones, I find myself able to keep pace. As I run, that feeling returns, pulling me down, slowing my steps. I shake it off, force myself to keep moving forward, focus my will and surge onwards. I feel as if an invisible cord is pulling me, stretching under the pressure, preparing to recoil with vigour, like a child's bungee at a fair.
Even Emma, now, is almost disappearing from sight, her back retreating into the distance. As the trees take her, closing around her, hiding her from view, I find that I can go no further and stop, resignedly. From here, I can see nothing, hear nothing, of the fight I know is happening ahead, and I stand, straining my senses, before turning, and giving into the pull of my body.
This time, there is no undignified slip and slide, no crashing through the undergrowth unwillingly. Instead I find myself sat back beside myself, and am unable to recall the intervening space. I look down at myself, as if at a stranger, tracing the lines of my features, so heavily underscored with makeup, the miles of lace around my throat, the plunging neckline and wide, full skirts. I contrast it to my own attire, the clean lines of my trousers, the flattering fit of my shirt. Both, I think, are costumes, designed to intimidate and impress, to cast myself as the authority, someone to be respected and feared. The many faces of the evil Queen Regina. I say it to myself, out loud and bitterness rises in my throat. After all that I've done, after all I suffered, I am reduced to little more than a bit actor, spewing someone else's lines, moving as directed. I thought for a long time that I played the game, the game of power and revenge, rather well, that I had mastered the rules and the pieces. Too late, far too late, did I realize how little I knew, how much I had been deceived.
The self-pity sits uncomfortably on my shoulders, and I stand, pacing beside my body. I look more closely at the woman beneath me, at her wounds, and assess her chance of recovery. The wound is deep, and ragged at the edges. The skin is inflamed, infected probably, from a knife left too long uncleaned. Had she been anyone else, I know, the body would have died long ago, but perhaps some residual magic lingers, protecting her, for as my fingers probe and search, trailing over skin, she groans. A matching noise slips from my own throat, unbidden, and as I press the wound more firmly, I feel it too, the lancing pain, the heat of infection.
There must be a spell to reunite body and soul, but I do not know it. When I looked as she does, the very image of a cruel and unkind witch, I cared more for separating the two, wrenching hearts and souls free of their fleshy confines, and delighting as the bodies stumbled, pliant and willing, as they searched for their missing parts. The memories are clear, vivid in my mind, and I can almost feel the weight of a beating heart as it sits, helplessly, in my open palm. I remember the way they clung to the bodies, tethered to their owners, and the force it required to remove them.
I remember the feel of my hand, pushing into a chest, and I allow myself, for a moment, to imagine ripping out the heart of Snow White, as I should have done so many years ago. The picture does not delight me as it once have, and in my mind I turn to see the faces of Emma and Henry, staring at me hurt and disappointed. I try to exalt, to revel in my victory, but the weight of their disapproval settles across my shoulders, and the biting edge of revenge is blunted to a dull, and unsatisfactory ache. I could let the image go, let it dissolve into the air, but, for reasons I cannot explain, I choose to see myself once again plunging my hand into her chest, this time returning her heart, withdrawing empty and tired.
I know, in that moment, what I must do.
I move my hand to my chest, holding it above my shirt, above my breast. It is harder to do, knowing the pain that will come, and I pause, gathering courage. Just do it, I tell myself, in a tone I have always reserved for servants before. My hand is in my chest, fingers squeezing, and then my heart is in my hand, glowing in the dim forest light. The effort and the feeling leave me weak, retching, and I have to sit heavily on the floor, one hand out for support, until I am clear enough to look at my heart. I had thought, had always imagined, that it would be a blackened, shriveled organ, diseased and dying, but it looks just as any human heart I have seen before. Red and pulsing, covered in golden threads, the ties of affection and emotion, beating strongly and healthily against my palm. I raise it, watching as it catches the falling light, and then bring it down, holding it above my body. I have never done this before, never reversed the procedure, yet I cannot afford to doubt myself. This is powerful magic, and I breathe, filling myself with images of Emma, magic crackling through my hair, down through my fingers, causing the heart in my hand to speed up, beating faster and more wildly, fluttering with desire.
This is the moment. This is the precise moment, when I can change my fate, change the destiny thrown on me by the cruelty of my mother, by the fear of my people, by of hatred of a small child. My heart, filled with love, burns bright as I thrust down, my body presenting no resistance, no fight or protest at the invasion. I remove my hand, hang still, watching and waiting as if expecting to be suddenly, magically, pulled into this body. When nothing happens, I lean back, feeling the breeze brush my hair into my eyes. I move my hand to secure it, to tuck it behind my ear, but not a hair is out of place. Without a heart, I think, I must be going mad.
The wind blows again, and I feel the tickling brush of hair on my nose. I drag my hand against my face, pressing hard, but the sensation continues. Movement catches my attention, and my eyes flick down to rest on my body, face obscured by hair, blowing with the breeze. I stand up, back, and stumble away. I pick up a rock, a smooth edged pebble, and throw it at myself, wincing as I feel it connect with my leg and stay there, the weight pressing on my thigh despite the fact I am feet away, and standing.
The pulling feeling is returned, stronger now, insistent, curling around my limbs, clutching at my ribs. I am short of breath, panting against the restraint, each rise and fall of that other chest laboring my own. I feel the weight of the cloth around my neck, feel the press of the cold earth underneath me, damp seeping into my skin, a stone hard and uncomfortable under my hip.
My vision swims, soft yellowness creeping in from the sides. I know this feeling, this loss of sight. It feels like the moment before fainting, the moment before dying. I remember how Emma hung above me, that night in the town hall, how my arm pulled her unerringly to me, pressing our lips together in final communion. I remember desperation and longing I saw in her eyes, and I give myself over to the darkness, gone before I hit the floor.