I do not know what manner of thing she is. None of us do. She killed�her mother in the birthing, but that's never enough to account for�it.

They call me wise, but I am far from wise, for all that I foresaw�fragments of it, frozen moments caught in pools of water or in the�cold glass of my mirror. If I were wise I would not have tried to�change what I saw. If I were wise I would have killed myself before�ever I encountered her, before ever I caught him.�Wise, and a witch, or so they said, and I'd seen his face in my�dreams and in reflections for all my life: sixteen years of dreaming�of him before he reined his horse by the bridge that morning, and�asked my name. He helped me onto his high horse and we rode together�to my little cottage, my face buried in the gold of his hair. He�asked for the best of what I had; a king's right, it was.

His beard was red-bronze in the morning light, and I knew him, not�as a king, for I knew nothing of kings then, but as my love. He took�all he wanted from me, the right of kings, but he returned to me on�the following day, and on the night after that: his beard so red,�his hair so gold, his eyes the blue of a summer sky, his skin tanned�the gentle brown of ripe wheat.

His daughter was only a child: no more than five years of age when I�came to the palace. A portrait of her dead mother hung in the�princess's tower room; a tall woman, hair the colour of dark wood,�eyes nut-brown. She was of a different blood to her pale daughter.

The girl would not eat with us.

I do not know where in the palace she ate.

I had my own chambers. My husband the king, he had his own rooms�also. When he wanted me he would send for me, and I would go to him,�and pleasure him, and take my pleasure with him.

One night, several months after I was brought to the palace, she�came to my rooms. She was six. I was embroidering by lamplight,�squinting my eyes against the lamp's smoke and fitful illumination.

When I looked up, she was there.

"Princess?"

She said nothing. Her eyes were black as coal, black as her hair;�her lips were redder than blood. She looked up at me and smiled. Her�teeth seemed sharp, even then, in the lamplight.

"What are you doing away from your room?"

"I'm hungry," she said, like any child.

It was winter, when fresh food is a dream of warmth and sunlight;�but I had strings of whole apples, cored and dried, hanging from the�beams of my chamber, and I pulled an apple down for her.

"Here."

Autumn is the time of drying, of preserving, a time of picking�apples, of rendering the goose fat. Winter is the time of hunger, of�snow, and of death; and it is the time of the midwinter feast, when�we rub the goose-fat into the skin of a whole pig, stuffed with that�autumn's apples, then we roast it or spit it, and we prepare to�feast upon the crackling.

She took the dried apple from me and began to chew it with her sharp�yellow teeth.

"Is it good?"

She nodded. I had always been scared of the little princess, but at�that moment I warmed to her and, with my fingers, gently, I stroked�her cheek. She looked at me and smiled -- she smiled but rarely --�then she sank her teeth into the base of my thumb, the Mound of

Venus, and she drew blood.

I began to shriek, from pain and from surprise; but she looked at me�and I fell silent.

The little Princess fastened her mouth to my hand and licked and�sucked and drank. When she was finished, she left my chamber.

Beneath my gaze the cut that she had made began to close, to scab,�and to heal. The next day it was an old scar: I might have cut my�hand with a pocket-knife in my childhood.

I had been frozen by her, owned and dominated. That scared me, more�than the blood she had fed on. After that night I locked my chamber�door at dusk, barring it with an oaken pole, and I had the smith�forge iron bars, which he placed across my windows.

My husband, my love, my king, sent for me less and less, and when I�came to him he was dizzy, listless, confused. He could no longer�make love as a man makes love; and he would not permit me to�pleasure him with my mouth: the one time I tried, he started,�violently, and began to weep. I pulled my mouth away and held him�tightly, until the sobbing had stopped, and he slept, like a child.

I ran my fingers across his skin as he slept. It was covered in a�multitude of ancient scars. But I could recall no scars from the�days of our courtship, save one, on his side, where a boar had gored�him when he was a youth.

Soon he was a shadow of the man I had met and loved by the bridge.

His bones showed, blue and white, beneath his skin. I was with him�at the last: his hands were cold as stone, his eyes milky-blue, his�hair and beard faded and lustreless and limp. He died unshriven, his�skin nipped and pocked from head to toe with tiny, old scars.

He weighed near to nothing. The ground was frozen hard, and we could�dig no grave for him, so we made a cairn of rocks and stones above�his body, as a memorial only, for there was little enough of him�left to protect from the hunger of the beasts and the birds.

So I was queen.

And I was foolish, and young -- eighteen summers had come and gone�since first I saw daylight -- and I did not do what I would do, now.

If it were today, I would have her heart cut out, true. But then I�would have her head and arms and legs cut off. I would have them�disembowel her. And then I would watch, in the town square, as the�hangman heated the fire to white-heat with bellows, watch unblinking�as he consigned each part of her to the fire. I would have archers�around the square, who would shoot any bird or animal who came close�to the flames, any raven or dog or hawk or rat. And I would not�close my eyes until the princess was ash, and a gentle wind could�scatter her like snow.

I did not do this thing, and we pay for our mistakes.

They say I was fooled; that it was not her heart. That it was the�heart of an animal -- a stag, perhaps, or a boar. They say that, and�they are wrong.

And some say (but it is her lie, not mine) that I was given the�heart, and that I ate it. Lies and half-truths fall like snow,�covering the things that I remember, the things I saw. A landscape,�unrecognisable after a snowfall; that is what she has made of my�life.

There were scars on my love, her father's thighs, and on his�ballock-pouch, and on his male member, when he died.

I did not go with them. They took her in the day, while she slept,�and was at her weakest. They took her to the heart of the forest,�and there they opened her blouse, and they cut out her heart, and�they left her dead, in a gully, for the forest to swallow.

The forest is a dark place, the border to many kingdoms; no-one�would be foolish enough to claim jurisdiction over it. Outlaws live�in the forest. Robbers live in the forest, and so do wolves. You can�ride through the forest for a dozen days and never see a soul; but�there are eyes upon you the entire time.

They brought me her heart. I know it was hers -- no sow's heart or�doe's would have continued to beat and pulse after it had been cut�out, as that one did.

I took it to my chamber.

I did not eat it: I hung it from the beams above my bed, placed it�on a length of twine that I strung with rowan-berries, orange-red as�a robin's breast; and with bulbs of garlic.

Outside, the snow fell, covering the footprints of my huntsmen,�covering her tiny body in the forest where it lay.

I had the smith remove the iron bars from my windows, and I would�spend some time in my room each afternoon through the short winter�days, gazing out over the forest, until darkness fell.

There were, as I have already stated, people in the forest. Theywould come out, some of them, for the Spring Fair: a greedy, feral,�dangerous people; some were stunted -- dwarfs and midgets and

hunchbacks; others had the huge teeth and vacant gazes of idiots;�some had fingers like flippers or crab-claws. They would creep out�of the forest each year for the Spring Fair, held when the snows had�melted.

As a young lass I had worked at the Fair, and they had scared me�then, the forest folk. I told fortunes for the Fairgoers, scrying in�a pool of still water; and, later, when I was older, in a disc of�polished glass, its back all silvered -- a gift from a merchant�whose straying horse I had seen in a pool of ink.

The stallholders at the fair were afraid of the forest folk; they�would nail their wares to the bare boards of their stalls -- slabs�of gingerbread or leather belts were nailed with great iron nails to�the wood. If their wares were not nailed, they said, the forest folk�would take them, and run away, chewing on the stolen gingerbread,�flailing about them with the belts.

The forest folk had money, though: a coin here, another there,�sometimes stained green by time or the earth, the face on the coin�unknown to even the oldest of us. Also they had things to trade, and�thus the fair continued, serving the outcasts and the dwarfs,�serving the robbers (if they were circumspect) who preyed on the�rare travellers from lands beyond the forest, or on gypsies, or on�the deer. (This was robbery in the eyes of the law. The deer were�the queen's.)

The years passed by slowly, and my people claimed that I ruled them�with wisdom. The heart still hung above by bed, pulsing gently in�the night. If there were any who mourned the child, I saw no�evidence: she was a thing of terror, back then, and they believed�themselves well rid of her.

Spring Fair followed Spring Fair: five of them, each sadder, poorer,�shoddier than the one before. Fewer of the forest folk came out of�the forest to buy. Those who did seemed subdued and listless. The�stallholders stopped nailing their wares to the boards of their�stalls. And by the fifth year but a handful of folk came from the�forest -- a fearful huddle of little hairy men, and no-one else.

The Lord of the Fair, and his page, came to me when the fair was�done. I had known him slightly, before I was queen.

"I do not come to you as my queen," he said.

I said nothing. I listened.

"I come to you because you are wise," he continued. "When you were a�child you found a strayed foal by staring into a pool of ink; when�you were a maiden you found a lost infant who had wandered far from�her mother, by staring into that mirror of yours. You know secrets�and you can seek out things hidden. My queen," he asked, "what is�taking the forest folk? Next year there will be no Spring Fair. The�travellers from other kingdoms have grown scarce and few, the folk�of the forest are almost gone. Another year like the last, and we�shall all starve."

I commanded my maidservant to bring me my looking-glass. It was a�simple thing, a silver-backed glass disk, which I kept wrapped in a�doe-skin, in a chest, in my chamber.

They brought it to me, then, and I gazed into it:�She was twelve and she was no longer a little child. Her skin was�still pale, her eyes and hair coal-black, her lips as red as blood.

She wore the clothes she had worn when she left the castle for the�last time -- the blouse, the skirt, -- although they were much�let-out, much mended. Over them she wore a leather cloak, and�instead of boots she had leather bags, tied with thongs, over her�tiny feet.

She was standing in the forest, beside a tree.

As I watched, in the eye of my mind, I saw her edge and step andflitter and pad from tree to tree, like an animal: a bat or a wolf.

She was following someone.

He was a monk. He wore sackcloth, and his feet were bare, and�scabbed and hard. His beard and tonsure were of a length, overgrown,�unshaven.

She watched him from behind the trees. Eventually he paused for the�night, and began to make a fire, laying twigs down, breaking up a�robin's nest as kindling. He had a tinder-box in his robe, and he�knocked the flint against the steel until the sparks caught the�tinder and the fire flamed. There had been two eggs in the nest he�had found, and these he ate, raw. They cannot have been much of a�meal for so big a man.

He sat there in the firelight, and she came out from her hiding�place. She crouched down on the other side of the fire, and stared�at him. He grinned, as if it were a long time since he had seen�another human, and beckoned her over to him.

She stood up and walked around the fire, and waited, an arms-length�away. He pulled in his robe until he found a coin -- a tiny, copper�penny, -- and tossed it to her. She caught it, and nodded, and went�to him. He pulled at the rope around his waist, and his robe swung�open. His body was as hairy as a bear's. She pushed him back onto�the moss. One hand crept, spider-like, through the tangle of hair,�until it closed on his manhood; the other hand traced a circle on�his left nipple. He closed his eyes, and fumbled one huge hand under�her skirt. She lowered her mouth to the nipple she had been teasing,�her smooth skin white on the furry brown body of him.

She sank her teeth deep into his breast. His eyes opened, then they�closed again, and she drank.

She straddled him, and she fed. As she did so a thin blackish liquid�began to dribble from between her legs...

"Do you know what is keeping the travellers from our town? What is�happening to the forest people?" asked the Head of the Fair.

I covered the mirror in doe-skin, and told him that I would�personally take it upon myself to make the forest safe once more.

I had to, although she terrified me. I was the queen.

A foolish woman would have gone then into the forest and tried to�capture the creature; but I had been foolish once and had no wish to�be so a second time.

I spent time with old books, for I could read a little. I spent time�with the gypsy women (who passed through our country across the�mountains to the south, rather than cross the forest to the north�and the west).

I prepared myself, and obtained those things I would need, and when�the first snows began to fall, then I was ready.

Naked, I was, and alone in the highest tower of the palace, a place�open to the sky. The winds chilled my body; goose-pimples crept�across my arms and thighs and breasts. I carried a silver basin, and�a basket in which I had placed a silver knife, a silver pin, some�tongs, a grey robe and three green apples.

I put them down and stood there, unclothed, on the tower, humble�before the night sky and the wind. Had any man seen me standing�there, I would have had his eyes; but there was no-one to spy.

Clouds scudded across the sky, hiding and uncovering the waning moon.

I took the silver knife, and slashed my left arm -- once, twice,�three times. The blood dripped into the basin, scarlet seeming black�in the moonlight.

I added the powder from the vial that hung around my neck. It was a�brown dust, made of dried herbs and the skin of a particular toad, and from certain other things. It thickened the blood, while�preventing it from clotting.

I took the three apples, one by one, and pricked their skins gently�with my silver pin. Then I placed the apples in the silver bowl, and�let them sit there while the first tiny flakes of snow of the year�fell slowly onto my skin, and onto the apples, and onto the blood.

When dawn began to brighten the sky I covered myself with the grey�cloak, and took the red apples from the silver bowl, one by one, lifting each into my basket with silver tongs, taking care not to�touch it. There was nothing left of my blood or of the brown powder�in the silver bowl, save nothing save a black residue, like a�verdigris, on the inside.

I buried the bowl in the earth. Then I cast a glamour on the apples�(as once, years before, by a bridge, I had cast a glamour on�myself), that they were, beyond any doubt, the most wonderful apples�in the world; and the crimson blush of their skins was the warm�colour of fresh blood.

I pulled the hood of my cloak low over my face, and I took ribbons�and pretty hair ornaments with me, placed them above the apples in�the reed basket, and I walked alone into the forest, until I came to�her dwelling: a high, sandstone cliff, laced with deep caves going�back a way into the rock wall.

There were trees and boulders around the cliff-face, and I walked�quietly and gently from tree to tree, without disturbing a twig or a�fallen leaf. Eventually I found my place to hide, and I waited, and

I watched.

After some hours a clutch of dwarfs crawled out of the cave-front --�ugly, misshapen, hairy little men, the old inhabitants of this�country. You saw them seldom now.

They vanished into the wood, and none of them spied me, though one�of them stopped to piss against the rock I hid behind.

I waited. No more came out.

I went to the cave entrance and hallooed into it, in a cracked old�voice.

The scar on my Mound of Venus throbbed and pulsed as she came�towards me, out of the darkness, naked and alone.

She was thirteen years of age, my stepdaughter, and nothing marred�the perfect whiteness of her skin save for the livid scar on her�left breast, where her heart had been cut from her long since.

The insides of her thighs were stained with wet black filth.

She peered at me, hidden, as I was, in my cloak. She looked at me�hungrily. "Ribbons, goodwife," I croaked. "Pretty ribbons for your�hair..."

She smiled and beckoned to me. A tug; the scar on my hand was�pulling me towards her. I did what I had planned to do, but I did it�more readily than I had planned: I dropped my basket, and screeched�like the bloodless old pedlar woman I was pretending to be, and I�ran.

My grey cloak was the colour of the forest, and I was fast; she did�not catch me.

I made my way back to the palace.

I did not see it. Let us imagine though, the girl returning,�frustrated and hungry, to her cave, and finding my fallen basket on�the ground.

What did she do?

I like to think she played first with the ribbons, twined them into�her raven hair, looped them around her pale neck or her tiny waist.

And then, curious, she moved the cloth to see what else was in the�basket; and she saw the red, red apples.

They smelled like fresh apples, of course; and they also smelled of�blood. And she was hungry. I imagine her picking up an apple,�pressing it against her cheek, feeling the cold smoothness of it�against her skin.

And she opened her mouth and bit deep into it...

By the time I reached my chambers, the heart that hung from the�roof-beam, with the apples and hams and the dried sausages, had�ceased to beat. It hung there, quietly, without motion or life, and

I felt safe once more.

That winter the snows were high and deep, and were late melting. We�were all hungry come the spring.

The Spring Fair was slightly improved that year. The forest folk�were few, but they were there, and there were travellers from the�lands beyond the forest.

I saw the little hairy men of the forest-cave buying and bargaining�for pieces of glass, and lumps of crystal and of quartz-rock. They�paid for the glass with silver coins -- the spoils of my�stepdaughter's depredations, I had no doubt. When it got about what�they were buying, townsfolk rushed back to their homes, came back�with their lucky crystals, and, in a few cases, with whole sheets of�glass.

I thought, briefly, about having them killed, but I did not. As long�as the heart hung, silent and immobile and cold, from the beam of my�chamber, I was safe, and so were the folk of the forest, and, thus,�eventually, the folk of the town.

My twenty-fifth year came, and my stepdaughter had eaten the�poisoned fruit two winters' back, when the Prince came to my Palace.

He was tall, very tall, with cold green eyes and the swarthy skin of�those from beyond the mountains.

He rode with a small retinue: large enough to defend him, small�enough that another monarch -- myself, for instance -- would not�view him as a potential threat.

I was practical: I thought of the alliance of our lands, thought of�the Kingdom running from the forests all the way south to the sea; I�thought of my golden-haired bearded love, dead these eight years;�and, in the night, I went to the Prince's room.

I am no innocent, although my late husband, who was once my king,�was truly my first lover, no matter what they say.

At first the prince seemed excited. He bade me remove my shift, and�made me stand in front of the opened window, far from the fire,�until my skin was chilled stone-cold. Then he asked me to lie upon�my back, with my hands folded across my breasts, my eyes wide open -�but staring only at the beams above. He told me not to move, and to�breathe as little as possible. He implored me to say nothing. He�spread my legs apart.

It was then that he entered me.

As he began to thrust inside me, I felt my hips raise, felt myself�begin to match him, grind for grind, push for push. I moaned. I�could not help myself.

His manhood slid out of me. I reached out and touched it, a tiny,�slippery thing.

"Please," he said, softly. "You must neither move, nor speak. Just�lie there on the stones, so cold and so fair."

I tried, but he had lost whatever force it was that had made him�virile; and, some short while later, I left the Prince's room, his�curses and tears still resounding in my ears.

He left early the next morning, with all his men, and they rode off�into the forest.

I imagine his loins, now, as he rode, a knot of frustration at the�base of his manhood. I imagine his pale lips pressed so tightly�together. Then I imagine his little troupe riding through the�forest, finally coming upon the glass-and-crystal cairn of my�stepdaughter. So pale. So cold. Naked, beneath the glass, and little�more than a girl, and dead.

In my fancy, I can almost feel the sudden hardness of his manhood�inside his britches, envision the lust that took him then, the�prayers he muttered beneath his breath in thanks for his good�fortune. I imagine him negotiating with the little hairy men -�offering them gold and spices for the lovely corpse under the�crystal mound.

Did they take his gold willingly? Or did they look up to see his men�on their horses, with their sharp swords and their spears, and�realize they had no alternative?

I do not know. I was not there; I was not scrying. I can only�imagine...

Hands, pulling off the lumps of glass and quartz from her cold body.

Hands, gently caressing her cold cheek, moving her cold arm,�rejoicing to find the corpse still fresh and pliable.

Did he take her there, in front of them all? Or did he have her�carried to a secluded nook before he mounted her?

I cannot say.

Did he shake the apple from her throat? Or did her eyes slowly open�as he pounded into her cold body; did her mouth open, those red lips�part, those sharp yellow teeth close on his swarthy neck, as the�blood, which is the life, trickled down her throat, washing down and�away the lump of apple, my own, my poison?

I imagine; I do not know.

This I do know: I was woken in the night by her heart pulsing and�beating once more. Salt blood dripped onto my face from above. I sat�up. My hand burned and pounded as if I had hit the base of my thumb�with a rock.

There was a hammering on the door. I felt afraid, but I am a queen,�and I would not show fear. I opened the door.

First his men walked in to my chamber, and stood around me, with�their sharp swords, and their long spears.

Then he came in; and he spat in my face.

Finally, she walked into my chamber, as she had when I was first a�queen, and she was a child of six. She had not changed. Not really.

She pulled down the twine on which her heart was hanging. She pulled�off the dried rowan berries, one by one; pulled off the garlic bulb�- now a dried thing, after all these years; then she took up her�own, her pumping heart -- a small thing, no larger than that of a�nanny-goat or a she-bear -- as it brimmed and pumped its blood into�her hand.

Her fingernails must have been as sharp as glass: she opened her�breast with them, running them over the purple scar. Her chest�gaped, suddenly, open and bloodless. She licked her heart, once, as�the blood ran over her hands, and she pushed the heart deep into her�breast.

I saw her do it. I saw her close the flesh of her breast once more.

I saw the purple scar begin to fade.

Her prince looked briefly concerned, but he put his arm around her�nonetheless, and they stood, side by side, and they waited.

And she stayed cold, and the bloom of death remained on her lips,�and his lust was not diminished in any way.

They told me they would marry, and the kingdoms would indeed be�joined. They told me that I would be with them on their wedding day.

It is starting to get hot in here.

They have told the people bad things about me; a little truth to add�savour to the dish, but mixed with many lies.

I was bound and kept in a tiny stone cell beneath the palace, and I�remained there through the autumn. Today they fetched me out of the�cell; they stripped the rags from me, and washed the filth from me,�and then they shaved my head and my loins, and they rubbed my skin�with goose grease.

The snow was falling as they carried me -- two men at each hand, two�men at each leg -- utterly exposed, and spread-eagled and cold,�through the midwinter crowds; and brought me to this kiln.

My stepdaughter stood there with her prince. She watched me, in my�indignity, but she said nothing.

As they thrust me inside, jeering and chaffing as they did so, I saw�one snowflake land upon her white cheek, and remain there without�melting.

They closed the kiln-door behind me. It is getting hotter in here,�and outside they are singing and cheering and banging on the sides�of the kiln.

She was not laughing, or jeering, or talking. She did not sneer at�me or turn away. She looked at me, though; and for a moment I saw�myself reflected in her eyes.

I will not scream. I will not give them that satisfaction. They will�have my body, but my soul and my story are my own, and will die with�me.

The goose-grease begins to melt and glisten upon my skin. I shall�make no sound at all. I shall think no more on this.

I shall think instead of the snowflake on her cheek.

I think of her hair as black as coal, her lips as red as blood, her�skin, snow-white.