Estimated reading time — 11 minutes

People have always said that I was good.

Not nice, not kind, just good. Like it was just something they told me even before I could talk. People trusted me way too fast. It doesn’t even make sense how fast it happens. They look at me and something just clicks for them. Their face changes and they just stop being careful. Some of them smile like they’ve already decided I’m safe, like I couldn’t do anything bad even if I wanted to. I don’t know why that happens, I never have.

They call me Snow White, and everyone acts like that name explains everything. Like being pale and quiet automatically means you’re good. They say that I look sweet, innocent, and fragile. I hate the word Fragile. Fragile things get handled gently, and I don’t think they should.No one ever asks if I actually am what they think I am.

The castle I grew up in was always cold. Not the temperature cold, but the kind that gets into you and doesn’t leave. Sounds were weird in the castle. You would hear people talking but it would suddenly stop like something cut the noise off. Sometimes footsteps echo behind you even when you know you’re alone. I learned to not turn around right away because of the way you would feel when you saw nobody was behind you.

There were so many mirrors everywhere. Way too many. Big ones, skinny ones, ones that only show part of you so it looked like you were cut in half. I like them, which I know probably isn’t normal. I like to watch my reflection to see if it moves when I’m not paying attention and sometimes I feel like it does.

My stepmother hated the mirrors. Except for one. The big one that is in her room. I used to sit outside her door when I was little and I heard her talk to it. She almost sounded like she was arguing with it. She sounded scared, angry, and desperate.

People kept telling me I was a good kid. That I was quiet and polite and never caused problems. That’s true I guess. I just figured out early that if you don’t react, people don’t know what to do with you. Silence just freaks them out, they just start explaining things that really don’t need to be explained.

I noticed stuff back then. Like how servants didn’t like being alone with me for too long. Or how kids stopped wanting to play after a while. Or how adults watched me out of the corner of their eyes and acted like they weren’t. Oh I noticed. Just nobody wanted to say it outloud though.

It’s weird because then I always knew when something bad was going to happen. And instead of stopping it, I’d just wait. I liked seeing what would happen if I didn’t interfere.I did learn how to smile that made people relax. I practiced it in the mirrors. Soft smile, head tilt, quiet voice. If you do it right, people stop asking questions.

That’s the part no one notices. You don’t have to look scary to be dangerous. You just have to make people stop paying attention. And people have never paid close attention to me.

I remember what I did though.I remember moving my hand when no one was looking. I remember knowing exactly what would happen if I did. I remember stepping back afterward and watching unfold like I wasn’t part of it all.

When they asked what happened, I shook my head and said nothing.And when they said it was an accident, I let them.

_________

When I got older, people stopped calling me quiet and started calling me unlucky.

That’s what they said when things started happening around me. Like it wasn’t me, just something followed me. I was carrying bad weather instead of bad intentions.It started small. A servant fell down the stairs late at night. Someone slipped by the well and didn’t come back up. A child wandered into the forest and never returned. Everyone said the same things everytime. Wrong place. Wrong time. Accidents happen.

They always happened when I was nearby.

People started watching me more after that, but not in the way that the Queen used to. Not carefully. Just nervously. Like they were trying to convince themselves there was nothing to see. When they asked me questions they kept their voices gently like they were scared of breaking me.

“Did you hear anything?”

“Were you with them earlier?”

“Are you feeling alright?”

I always said I didn’t know. I always looked confused. I practiced that face in the mirror. Slight frown, soft eyes, like I was trying really hard to understand something that didn’t make sense.They believed me.

Sometimes I almost believed myself.

The deaths got hard to explain after a while. People didn’t just fall anymore. They didn’t just wander off. They were found in places they shouldn’t have been, like at the bottom of cliffs, locked rooms, in the forest, and lots of other places.

I never watched when they found the bodys. I didn’t need to, I could just feel it when it happened. It felt like something loosened inside me like pressure releasing.

At night, I slept better than I ever had.

People started avoiding me without realizing it. Conversations stopped when I entered the room, chairs scraped back just a little too far, mothers would pull their children closer to them. Still, nobody accused me of anything. No one wanted to be the first to say anything.

It’s hard to call someone a monster when they’re smiling at you.

I kept just acting confused like I had no idea, I kept just asking the right questions. I kept looking scared at the right moments. I even cried once when someone important died. That made them stop looking at me for a while.

The queen noticed though. She always did.

I caught her staring at me again, like she used to when I was little. Like she was counting something, like she was measuring how much damage I have already done.

That is when I knew it wasn’t going to stay quiet forever.

And honestly?

I was getting tired of pretending I didn’t understand what was happening.

_________

I knew it was her the second I saw her.

Not because of the way she looked, old, haunted, harmless, it was the way she stood. Too still, too patient like she had been waiting for me to do something I didn’t even know what I wanted to do yet. People think disguises are about what you wear. They’re not. Disguises are fear. And hers was leaking everywhere. I could smell it, it was cold, sharp, and bitter.

She smiled at me like she was scared I wouldn’t. And that made me smile too.

The apple…it glowed red. Not just red it was wrong red perfect red. Like it didn’t belong to this world. Like it had been made to tempt someone who was already bad. Or maybe me. Her hands shook slightly as she held it out to me, like she was offering me something dangerous or deadly. I didn’t care. I wanted it.

I could hear her talking. Probably warnings but I don’t listen. They never meant anything anyways. People talk but it doesn’t matter what they are saying. Their words are just like noise. Her voice was trembling just a little, and I knew she rehearsed this. Practiced every line. Practiced every fear she could try to put into my head. And for what?

I didn’t hesitate. I took the apple. Slowly like I was tasting it before it touched my mouth.

Her eyes went wide. I saw her realizing that it was too late, that I wasn’t afraid. That I wasn’t naive. That I wasn’t going to pretend.

I bit into it.

It was cold, sweet, and sharp. Like I’d been holding myself back for years and the apple was unlocking something that was inside me that I didn’t know that was inside me. I looked at her. And for the first time, I didn’t care if she hated me or if she screamed or if she ran. I didn’t care.

She started breathing faster. She looked at me like she was seeing the real me. She wanted to step back. She wanted to run but I didn’t move, I didn’t have to.

Everything went quiet. The forest felt like it was holding its breath. I closed my eyes for a second and I felt it all. The years of people ignoring me, the times I waited and let things happen, the way I watched people get hurt. It all was sliding into me and I felt complete.

I opened my eyes and I saw her backing away…I didn’t stop her. I let her see. Let her feel the wrongness in me, the things she should have seen when I was little, when she thought I was innocent. She thought that I was still a child, still small and harmless. She was very wrong.

I remember thinking very clearly that this was the first honest thing I had ever done in my life. The first moment I had done what I wanted without pretending. The first time I had looked at someone and let them know exactly who I was, even if they didn’t understand it.

The apple finished in my mouth and something inside me shifted. Not a change in my face or anything like that. Not a magic spell. It was something deeper. I felt eyes on me everywhere pulling in and watching me even though it was just her. I realized that I wasn’t afraid to show her what I am capable of and I don’t have to pretend.

Her hands shook. She wanted to run, say something, anything but it was too late. She could see it in my eyes, in the way I breathed, in the way I held myself. I was not the same child. I was what she feared.

And I smiled.

Really smiled. Not the one I practiced in the mirror, not the soft smile that made people trust me. Not the smile that made the servants or the villagers believe that I was good. This smile…sharp, wide, empty, like it belonged to someone else. Like it belonged to something bigger.

She stumbled back, tripping over a root, and I didn’t stop her. I really didn’t care if she screamed or ran away. I knew she would remember this moment forever.

The apple gave me power. Strong power. It was something that had been waiting for me for all these years. The forest seemed quieter than it has ever been. Even the wind stopped. Even the shadows paused. I look around and I could feel the deaths in the air, the ones that have already happened, the ones that I caused, the ones that no one would ever blame me for.

And I laughed, just a little. Low. Soft. Because it was finally true. Everything I had been, everything I had wanted, everything I had pretended not to know…it was all real now.

I didn’t want to speak. I didn’t answer her questions. I just walked past her, calm, and unstoppable, like I’d been moving this way my whole life.

I was ready.

I was more than I had ever been.

_________

I don’t remember my parents much. Only pieces. A laugh sometimes or a hug here and there. Then they were gone and I was only left with my step mother. The Queen.

She was not kind to me, not even a little. She looked at me like I was already broken. And she made sure that I felt that way.

I remember the first time that she really hurt me. I must have been around seven. She caught me in the nursery room and I was playing pretend and I borrowed one of her dresses and she didn’t like that. She dragged me into her room and locked the door. There were so many mirrors in there like there is all around the castle. She didn’t hit me. Not yet. She didn’t need to.

Instead she made me stand in front of the mirror and look at myself while she whispered any awful things she could think of. “You are useless. You are ugly. You’ll never be anyone’s favorite. Nobody will ever love you.” She circled me, tapped the mirrors, pointing at my reflection, forcing me to watch myself shrink and get mentally and emotionally hurt from her words. Those words stayed with me forever.

I was so small. I was helpless. But she wanted me to feel it. To know that I had no one left to protect me. My heart was racing so fast and my chest felt like it was going to burst, even though I was only seven. I tried to cry and tried to scream, but she held up her hand sharp like a blade. “Quiet,” she said. “You don’t get to make a sound.”

That night I hid knifes. Small ones. Sharp ones. Small enough that nobody would notice. But I did hold them close enough, imagining what I would do if she ever did something like that again to me. Holding them made me feel safe, felt like I wasn’t alone.

I never stopped watching the mirrors. The big one in her room. She would ask them every morning: “Who is the fairest of them all?” And the mirror would never hesitate when it answered. And when she heard her face would twist, lips tightened, fingers clenched. I realized that she feared me, in a way. Not enough to stop hurting me, but enough to notice when I was growing.

She kept hurting me in small ways so that nobody would notice. She would lock me in the closet for hours, she would give me meals I didn’t like and stared at me until I finished every bite. Sometimes she whispered to the mirror while I was in the room trying to test my limits. And I learned them all. I learned how much she could break me without anyone else knowing.

That’s when I learned to disappear. To watch, to wait, to let the world hurt me while I stayed quiet. And when I couldn’t pretend anymore, I hid the knives, hid the thoughts, hid the parts of me that wanted to survive by being clever, by being ready, by being…dangerous.

Even as a child, even before the apple, I understood something important. Fear can be a weapon, and being silent can be a weapon. That’s why when the apple came I didn’t hesitate. I had always been ready. Everything in my childhood was what caused all of this.

I was ready for what I would become.

_________

After the apple, things changed quietly. The trees leaned in closer, the path twisted just enough that people that walked in them would get lost even though they would say they have walked in them their whole life.

“I swear that tree wasn’t there yesterday.” someone said quietly near the edge of the village. “You’re tired,” another voice said. “thats all.”

But they kept glancing behind them.

Animals stopped coming near the paths. Birds went silent halfway through songs. And when I walked through the village, conversations stopped.

A woman carrying bread froze when she saw me. One piece of bread fell out of her hand and hit the floor but she didn’t pick it up. She just stared.

“Oh…Snow White,” she said forcing a smile that did not reach her eyes. “You…startled me.”

“I didn’t mean to.” I said.

She nodded fast. “Of course not.”

That night, someone didn’t come home. No one said my name, they never do. But I heard it anyway, tucked between whispers and halfwords.

“He went into the forest.”

“Alone?”

“…yes”

The next morning another person went missing. And this time people started looking at me differently. Not accusing though just carefully which feels worse to me.

A servant stopped me near the well. Her voice was low.

“Have you noticed how…quiet it has been?”

I tilted my head. “Quiet can be nice.”

She swallowed. “It feels wrong.”

I smiled.

Later two guards stood at the edge of the forest, arguing quietly.

“We shouldn’t go in,” one said.

“We have to,” the other replied. “The Queen wil…”

“Have you seen what has been happening?”

I stepped closer, and both of them went silent. One of them looked at me then looked away like just having eye contact will cause something bad.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

“No,” he said quickly. “Nothing’s wrong.”

But his hands were shaking.

After that, people stopped talking to me unless they had to. Doors closed when I passed. Again children would be pulled closer to their mother. Servants avoided being alone with me.

I heard whisper once late at night:

“She doesn’t look sick.”

“Then why does it feel like this when she is near?”

Nobody knew who I was, they just knew to stay away. Which was fine. Fear works better that way anyways.

_________

They think I changed.

I hear it in the way they talk about me when they think I’m not listening. In the way my name sounds heavier now like it means something dangerous. They actually blame different things now. They blame the forest, the Queen, they blame anything that lets them sleep at night.

But not me.

And honestly? I don’t understand why they’re scared.

People disappear all the time. People get lost. People make mistakes. That doesn’t mean it’s my fault. I’ve never forced anyone to do anything. I’ve never touched them. I’ve never asked for any of this. I just exist.

Sometimes I stand at the edge of the trees and listen to the wind move through the branches. It sounds like a whisper but that’s normal. Forests do that. Sometimes the ground shifts beneath my feet, but the earth has always moved. None of that means anything anyways.

They keep looking at me like I’m hiding something. Like they’re waiting for me to slip.

I won’t. The queen doesn’t ask the mirror anything anymore. She actually avoids it now. I catch her starting at her reflection though every once in a while, like she is thinking about something. She won’t look at me, that’s fine though. I don’t need her to.

I’ve always been good. I’ve always done what I was supposed to do.

If the forest listens to me, that’s not my fault.

If people feel uneasy when I am near, that’s their problem.

If they don’t come back after walking into the trees…that’s not something that I can control.

I’m just Snow White.

I’m innocent.

And if you don’t believe me…well. That says more about you then it does about me.

Credit: Aulanigirl1