I can’t stop myself from picturing the slideshow Charm would assemble for the occasion: So There’s Something Fucky Happening to the Multiverse: Ten Implausible Theories. Or maybe, So You’re a Little Bit Hot for the Villain: We’ve All Been There but This Isn’t the Time, Babe.
But Charm stopped answering my texts six months ago, over basically nothing. The last message I have from her is two paragraphs long and calls me “a pretty shitty friend” and “an irresponsible lackwit,” among other things. Prim must be rubbing off on her.
Just about the time my wrists are chafed bloody and my tendons are cramping, the manacles pop open. I rub the numbness out of my fingers, shove my stuff back into my pack, and tuck the mirror carefully on top. Its surface is a perfectly mundane reflection, but it feels heavier than mere silver and glass should.
The door isn’t locked, which means the queen underestimated me after all. I feel a fleeting, embarrassing twist of disappointment.
I’m three steps into the hall when a heavy hand falls on my shoulder and a cheery voice says, “Pardon, miss.”
There’s a man standing just outside the workroom door. He has a generic, uncomplicated handsomeness, like one of the lesser Hemsworths, and I’d guess from his callouses and clothes that he’s a woodcutter, or—aha!—a huntsman.
I raise my chin to an aristocratic angle. “Unhand me, sir! I am the Lady Zinnia of Ohio, and the queen herself invited me to—”
But he’s shaking his head earnestly. “Sorry, miss. Back in you go.” He tugs politely at my shoulder as if I’m a pet trying to escape her crate.
“You are mistaken.” I keep my voice shrill and disdainful, but my hand is already in my back pocket.
“Her Majesty said if I saw a skinny wastrel in men’s trousers I was not to let her escape—”
The huntsman stops because I’ve driven my fist toward his throat with the long splinter sharp between my knuckles. He catches my wrist in a hand roughly the size and shape of a baseball mitt. He gives my arm a shake that makes my bones creak, and the splinter falls from my nerveless fingers.
He shakes his head again, tsking as he picks up the splinter. “None of that, now. Her Majesty also said I was to whip the flesh from your ribs and leave you hog-tied, awaiting her pleasure, if you gave me any difficulty.”
I try to wrench my hand away, but I have the upper body strength of a wet paper doll. I’m not even sure the huntsman notices. “That—okay, that is definitely not necessary.” I soften, letting my lashes fall and my lip tremble. “Please, sir, don’t hurt me.” This seems like a fairly traditional retelling of Snow White, which means the huntsman is a giant softy with a track record of disobeying his queen.
He looks visibly torn, like a good kid thinking about breaking curfew. “Well, let’s just get you locked back up, eh? Then she’ll be none the wiser.” He lays a conspiratorial finger along his nose, which isn’t something I thought anyone ever did in real life.
“No, that’s not—”
But it’s too late. He hauls me back into the queen’s work room and snaps the manacles back over my wrists. He must not be quite as stupid as he looks （which is, to be clear, a very low bar）， because he searches me, confiscating the bobby pins, and tosses my backpack out of reach. He pats me clumsily on the head as he leaves, pausing only to flick something into the fireplace. A matchstick, maybe, or a long wooden splinter.
And then I’m all alone, except for the ashes of my spindle and the questions I can’t answer, and the coldly comforting thought that the queen didn’t underestimate me after all.
* * *
YOU WOULDN’T THINK a person could fall asleep with their arms cuffed above their head and their neck dangling at a sickening angle, but I’m here to tell you they can.
I wake some hours later to find the light slanting long and heavy through the window and the queen sitting once more in her chair. She’s fiddling with something in her lap, and her face looks different in the absence of hunger or hatred: younger, softer.
I try to move my fingers and make a tiny wheeze of pain.
She doesn’t look up. “Good morning. Or rather, good evening.” I guess she’s switched to good cop mode. She holds a little golden object up to the light before setting it gently on the floor beside me. It’s my mockingbird, dented and battered but whole once more. “It’s a clever little device. Took me the whole afternoon to put it right.”
I got that mockingbird from a twelfth-level artificer in a steampunk version of Sleeping Beauty; I doubt very much that a short-tempered medieval witch could repair it. I attempt a sneer, but my lip cracks and bleeds. “If you fixed it, how come it isn’t singing?”