Reawakened: A Once Upon a Time Tale (20 page)

Grumpy’s eyes lit up when he spoke of a woman he’d once loved, and how he regretted letting her slip through his fingers.

“But doesn’t love cause too much pain?” she said. “To be worth it?”

“It causes pain, indeed,” Grumpy said. “But it’s worth it. It’s a good pain.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Yes,” he said. “I guarantee that.”

“I could forget my love if I chose,” she said, and told him about the potion she’d gotten from Rumplestiltskin.

He seemed impressed by the idea, but after a moment, he shook his head. “No. It’s not right,” he said.

“Why not free yourself?”

“Because that wouldn’t be real,” he said. “Because it would always be deep down in you somewhere, eating at you. You can’t pretend that what is true is not true. Regardless of what you remember. Give me the pain, and what’s honest. I’ll take that any day.”

“Huh,” Snow White said, and resumed her attempts at finding a way out of the cell a bit more frantically.

That is, until Grumpy explained to her that she’d be wise to conserve her energy.

“If you really want to get out,” he said, “just relax. Give it ten minutes.”

“How would that help me?” Snow White asked.

“You’ll see,” he said. “I got good friends.”

She was exhausted, not only from her furtive search for an escape but from the days and days of travel… the deal with Rumplestiltskin, the flight to the castle… She allowed herself to sit down and close her eyes. She fell into a deep sleep almost immediately.

• • •

“Hey. sister!”

She woke to see Grumpy and another dwarf standing in her cell, both of them smiling at her.

“She’s pretty,” said the second dwarf. The one she didn’t know.

She rubbed her eyes, got to her feet.

“What’s going on?” she said. “Who’s this? How did you open the doors?”

“This is Stealthy, my friend,” Grumpy said, pointing at the other dwarf with his thumb. “He came to spring me and now we’re springin’ you. Come on.”

She looked over their heads and saw a guard lying on the ground, apparently unconscious.

“But why would you do that for me?” she asked, hurrying out of the cell behind the two dwarfs. She stepped nimbly past the guard, wondering how the two of them had managed it.

“Because I sympathize with your story of heartbreak,
sister,” said Grumpy, not looking back. “We’ve all been there. God I hate love. But I love it.”

“Quiet, you two!” whispered Stealthy. He led them to a grate in the floor and pointed down at a ladder. “Come on. Down into the catacombs. Let’s go.”

She hurried down behind the two, wary of guards spotting them. Soon, though, they were below the castle, in the winding tunnels of the crypts, Stealthy out in front, guiding Snow and Grumpy with a torch.

They ran until Snow White could no longer breathe; she had no idea where they were going. But she trusted them, trusted Grumpy to come back for her. They could have left her there in the cell, sleeping, for all of eternity.

They reached an intersection, and Stealthy stopped. “You’re trying to find the Prince?” he asked her, and she nodded.

“Go that way,” he said, pointing down a long tunnel. “You’ll see a ladder at the end. Take it up. You’ll be at the tower you need.” He patted his companion on the shoulder. “We’re heading this way,” he said. “Out of the castle. Come on!”

Grumpy smiled at her.

“Good-bye, sister,” he said. “Good luck!”

The two dwarfs ran away, leaving her alone, in the dark.

“Good-bye,” she said, into the darkness.

She didn’t waste any more time.

• • •

The rain stopped in the awkward moment after Mary Margaret said that Kathryn was pregnant. David looked shocked. Mary Margaret regretted her indiscretion, but there was something good, at least, in that David hadn’t known, that he hadn’t continued pursuing her nevertheless. He was not very aware of
himself, but he wasn’t a monster; she had to give him that. He was confused, too.

She picked up the birdcage. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go get her back to her flock.”

They walked in silence back to the same field Mary Margaret had been in before she fell. She looked warily at the ravine and the muck and mud where she’d nearly gone over. He’d found her. He’d found her and saved her. There was that….

“Mary Margaret,” he said. “We have to—”

“Shh. Do you hear that?” she said. They both looked up at the same time. “The flock!” she cried. “They must have waited for the storm to end! They’re here!” Excited, she knelt in the wet grass and opened up the cage. She brought out the dove, stroked its head once more, and held it up so its beak was skyward.

It didn’t take anything beyond that, just showing the dove. It burst from her hands and gained altitude quickly, flapping hard (and with what seemed like joy) as it rejoined its family.

Mary Margaret had a beaming smile on her face. She hadn’t felt this happy in a long time.

David, watching too, stepped close and tried to put his arm around her.

“David, no,” she said. “Don’t. Please.” She stepped away and hugged herself. “We can’t. It’s not right.”

“How can you say no after we both just admitted it? I don’t understand.”

“Because you chose her even so, David,” she said. “Why haven’t you left her if you love me so much?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Because I had a life with her, too. Because both paths seem right.”

“You don’t get to take both paths.”

“It feels like one is real and the other isn’t, whichever way I go.”

“No matter what, somebody is going to get hurt,” she said. “There’s no way you’re going to not hurt somebody, David. You’re not accepting that.”

He hung his head in thought, then looked up at the sky. “I can’t stop thinking about you,” he said flatly.

“I can’t stop thinking about you, either,” she said. “But we have to forget each other. We have to. There’s no other way.”

• • •

Snow White moved through the dark catacombs as quickly as she could, groping her way without a torch. In a matter of minutes she found the end of the corridor and the ladder, just as Stealthy had said she would, and was hauling herself up toward the light of another grate before she even bothered to test the rungs for rot. For all she knew the wedding was happening right now. There was no time for safety.

At the top of the ladder, she pushed aside a heavy wicker grate and climbed up into a courtyard. She bolted across the open area, intent on entering through a large door at the base of the tower she knew to hold the Prince’s chambers. Before she could, though, she heard some yelling far across the open area. She turned just in time to see something heartbreaking: three hundred yards away, Grumpy and Stealthy had apparently been cornered by the castle guards. As she looked on in horror, Stealthy made a break for the castle’s entrance.

He didn’t make it.

An arrow, shot from high atop a guard tower, sailed down
and struck him in the chest. Grumpy’s scream was loud enough to give her chills, even where she was.

Snow White did not hesitate to make her way to the scene, where Grumpy was still in danger, kneeling beside the body of his fallen friend. She pulled a torch from the wall as she ran, leaping over a pile of toppled barrels, and made her way behind the group of men who’d cornered her new friend. Just as she heard the captain of the guard order his men to kill Grumpy, she reached the first mounds of hay beside the stables. Eyes wide, she cried out to them and held the torch above the hay.

“LET HIM GO!” she demanded, once they’d turned to see her.

Silence.

“I SAID LET HIM GO,” she repeated. “OR I WILL BURN THIS CASTLE TO THE GROUND.”

It must have been convincing, because the captain, with the flick of a wrist, told Grumpy to leave the castle and never return. His eyes red with tears and rage, Grumpy took another look at his fallen friend, then looked up to Snow White and gave a simple, subtle nod. Thank you. He turned and ran.

“A nice gesture,” said the captain of the guard, walking toward her. “But something of an empty threat, don’t you think?” He raised an arm, and Snow White frowned, unsure of what he meant.

She understood when she heard the screech of another arrow coming down from the tower. She braced herself for death, only to feel the torch ripped from her hand. The arrow had knocked it away from her and the hay, carrying with it her leverage, and any hope she had of survival.

“I believe King George would like to have a word, dear
girl,” said the captain of the guard. “Would you mind coming with me?”

• • •

“You will tell him you do not love him,” said King George, “and that you never did. Those are my terms. They are simple. Do you agree?”

Snow White stood before the man, defiance and courage draining out of her. They’d dragged her up the stairs to the king’s private chambers, where he awaited, already dressed for the wedding. He was haughty, distant. Indifferent. She hated him. She hated everything he stood for. And she could see already that he had won.

“And if I refuse?” she said.

He shrugged, pulling on a decorative gauntlet. “Then I will kill him,” he said. “It makes little difference to me.”

“Your own son?” she said, incredulous. “Just for spite? And politics?”

“He’s not my son,” said King George cryptically, not bothering to look her in the eyes. “And besides, yes. With matters of this scale, politics trump love. Every time. I’m surprised you don’t understand that, considering your pedigree.”

There was nothing Snow White could do—no trick, no special gambit. She could not give the Prince a secret code, some hidden signal, because that would simply mean he would come for her, and that would mean his death. She not only had to reject him, she had to convince him to stay away. She had to hurt him.

And she did. The king “allowed” her to sneak into Charming’s chambers, where the Prince prepared for his wedding. She went sadly. She slipped into his room without a noise and,
concealed behind a curtain, watched him for a minute or two, her heart breaking into tiny shards as each second passed. He was moving slowly. He was looking out of the window, sighing, waiting. Waiting for her.

“Prince James,” she heard herself saying.

He spun, and Snow White revealed herself.

“You came!” he cried, going to her. He tried to embrace her, and she allowed it, for a moment, but stood stiffly in his arms. Eventually he stepped back and looked at her, confused. “You got my letter, then?” he said.

“I did.”

“Then you came to tell me that you love me, too,” he said. “Why else would you come? What is the matter?”

“No, James,” she said, not allowing herself to use her name for him. Even that was painful. “I came to do the opposite. I came to tell you that I don’t love you, and that I never did. You are… confused.”

It was as though she were again witnessing the arrow striking Stealthy in the chest, only this time she had been the one to shoot. He crumpled at her words. He took a step back, looked at her.

“I feel nothing for you,” she said. “Marry Abigail. Be happy with her. Forget about me. I don’t love you.” All of it in a monotone.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, finally, failing to contain the anger and pain he was obviously feeling. “You—If you believed that, you wouldn’t have come.”

“It’s true,” she said, stepping toward the door. “Believe me, it’s true. I didn’t want you to waste your life thinking otherwise.”

She turned and left the room.

She was out the door, and a safe distance away, before she burst into tears.

• • •

On her way back into the forest, Snow White traveled slowly, again caught in the same loop of vacillating about the potion. It hurt much worse now, it did. She did not think she could bear it for long, even if it was more “real” to live with the pain. Whenever she imagined that the wedding would soon happen, that it would be over, that she would never see him again—well, she cried as she walked away from the castle.

Over her own sniffling, she heard a deep voice in the trees off the path: “Hey, sister.”

Startled, distracted by her thoughts, she jumped back. She watched as a number of moving forms emerged from the cover of the forest and slowly surrounded her.

It was only after a moment of panic that she realized she recognized a face. Grumpy’s. The two hugged. She was relieved to see anyone she knew.

“And did you find him?” Grumpy asked her. “Did you set the record straight?”

“I found him,” she said, “but I didn’t say what I should have said.”

“You’ll be all right, won’t you?” he asked, smiling warmly, putting an arm around her. “It’ll be okay.” When he saw that she was about to cry again, he said, “Here, here. Meet my friends. All six of ’em. Let me introduce you and get your mind off this. If we don’t start laughing about something soon, we’re all gonna start crying.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Stealthy. I—I’m so wrapped up in my own—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” he said. “We’ll remember him and pay our respects. There’s a lot of time for that. Let’s say hello for now.”

She smiled at them all, and they each in turn smiled back. Then Grumpy went through the names, one by one.

• • •

He took her to the spacious hovel of the seven dwarfs—a place with friends, a place with companions. The days passed, and she tried to adjust to her new life, but each night, she would think of him, and imagine his new life. The pain got worse and worse.

And then one morning, Grumpy ran toward her room, elated with the news he had received. The wedding hadn’t happened! The Prince had left the castle, presumably in search of Snow White, and had left Abigail at the altar. George had issued a bounty on his head. The kingdom was in an uproar! Prince Charming, her true love, was at that moment searching for her!

“He left!” Grumpy cried, a smile on his face as he looked at her. She was in her bed, just waking up. He went to her bedside. “The Prince has left Abigail and searches for you! Come on! You can be together!”

Snow White frowned.

“Is it not what you wanted?” Grumpy asked, confused. But then he saw the vial on her small bedside table.