Triquetra: A Tor.com Original by Kirstyn McDermott
My rating: 4/5 cats
I will lay you naked upon the snow, stretched between four iron stakes. Before your skin can chap too badly, I will take a keen-edged blade and peel it from you as someone might peel an apple. Blood will pool rich and red around your body. I will leave your fingernails until last and spit them into the snow when I am done.
THANK YOU FOR THIS!
there’s nothing i love more than a story that goes beyond the “happily ever after” curtainfall of a fairy tale. this most excellent free tor short is a glimpse into snow white’s life a few years after all the dust has settled. “dust,” in this case being “when a man became so enamored of a dead child he found in a glass coffin that he kissed her back to life, whereupon she demanded that her stepmother be forced to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she fell down dead.”
well, turns out that stepmother didn’t die, but she has been snow white’s horribly scarred prisoner for many years, and once a month, the two meet to share an enchanted apple and exchange flowery death threats. typical mother-daughter stuff.
meanwhile, the prince has been a real disappointment, and all snow white really cares about is the daughter they created together, who is now seven—the same age she was when her husband kissed her without consent and made her snow wife.
which fact her stepmother is pretty quick to bring up at their most recent apple-feast.
and which ticks in snow’s brain, where growing suspicion and maternal protectiveness drive her to find out the truth from an old talking mirror that once caused everyone a heap of trouble.
this does all the things i love to see in fairytale retellings/reversals, and i just loved it. i would be thrilled to read a whole collection of similar stories from this author, if we’re putting wishes out there. my wishes do not involve anyone having the skin melted off their feet, which makes me less vicious than a seven-year-old girl.
short review for a short story!
read it for yourself here:
https://www.tor.com/2018/09/05/trique…
