To Both Sanity and Madness

To Both Sanity and Madness

It started with simple things, so subtly that she almost missed it herself.

After her husband’s, the king’s, death his young daughter, barely a young girl at the time, started having these… peculiarities. She talked to herself and then answered, thinking it was the animals that replied.

It was just a childish game, the queen thought. She’d be fine, with time.

Time, however, only seemed to make matters worse, and soon Snow White was talking not only to mice and birds, but to inanimate objects as well, like brooms and hairbrushes. Also, she would refuse to change into clean clothes, arguing that her father would not recognize her if she wore a different dress, even when the one that had been her favorite in the past didn’t really fit her anymore and the color of the fabric had faded.

The grief had made her lose her mind, the queen dwelled on sorrowfully. That young girl, her stepdaughter, was no longer the innocent child her father had left behind when he’d died, but a different, darker version of herself that could not process any information that did not please her and preferred to fool herself into thinking that she didn’t know about it.

She had to do something, the queen decided. She was getting old herself and would soon pass away, while the only heir to the throne was Snow White. The king and she had never been able to conceive a child of their own, and although she had learned to love the little princess as her own daughter, taking the place of a mother that had died before time, at the moment Snow White was in no condition to make any important decisions, let alone rule a whole country.

She had to do something, save her kingdom and her stepdaughter, at the same time. She owned the deceased king that much.

The queen was widely known as ‘the fairest if them all’, for she bore an undeniable beauty in every step she took and every blink of her green eyes. However, that title wasn’t nearly as superficial as it sounded.

She was the fairest, that was a statement, but ‘fairest’ had two different meanings. Sure, she was beautiful and regal, but she too was kind and thoughtful and she treated her subjects like she would have her family.

The queen could not risk let the people in her kingdom take note of how bad their beloved Snow White’s illness was, for she feared that they panicked or worried, and so the only thing that she was sure about was that she needed to save her stepdaughter from everyone, including herself.

She asked the huntsman, her most trusted servant, who also professed a deep fondness for the princess and was efficient in every work he was given to take Snow White to the woods and hide her away from anyone until she came up with a cure for the girl’s disease.

Her mother had once made use if the dark arts, and meanwhile the queen had decided to not follow her steps, she had kept the woman’s books and magical devices. There had to be something to help Snow White there, and if there was, she would be sure to find it.

However, luck was not on her side again, and the young girl, thinking God knew what had run away from the hunter, entering the woods, with a very low possibility of not getting lost and returning home safely.

The queen felt herself die—her Snow White, her baby, lost in the woods, scared and alone.
Nevertheless, fate was not so cruel either, she discovered a couple of weeks later, when she finally had news of her stepdaughter. Although that did not mean that fate didn’t try to put as many trials and tribulations as it could on one’s way.

She didn’t even want to imagine what her girl would be going through, living only with seven men, unable to even remember her own name due to the state of her mind, alone. She wanted to believe that no one would hurt a poor, confused girl, but those were just childish thoughts and she was blocking away the truth just as much as Snow White was, the queen grasped suddenly. For all she knew, they could be forcing her to work on a mine or physically abuse her. Or worse, much, much worse.

The queen had tried different spells, she’d gone to the cottage Snow White now lived on and tried to convince her of going back home, but the girl never opened the door, and no amount of magic seemed to be able to break through the walls of fright she hid behind. Maybe she really was lost forever.

Relief finally flooded the blue eyes of the queen when she found the spell she had been looking for so long. Just a bite of anything sprinkled with that concoction and her girl would have the memories she had shut away back and she would return home.

The queen decided to try the potion on an apple, Snow White’s favorite fruit and once again entered the woods, heading to that dirty shack.

This time, this one time, Snow White opened the door for her, hunger being stronger than fear for once when she saw the juicy treat the queen offered to her.

She was too thin, and her arms were bruised, the queen noted. She had a broken lip and by the way she kept turning from one side to the other, as if expecting something to attack her, she reminded more of a caged animal than a princess.

And reality hit the young princess too strongly, too violently once she bit the apple, and her already frightened eyes filled with realization of something she didn’t want to know and her heart started beating faster and she held her stepmother’s hands pleadingly and tears climbed to her eyes before she passed out.

The queen, with a heart heavy as lead, took the princess and made sure she was washed and her wounds were treated once they got to the palace, calling the best doctor ten kingdoms radius to take care of her.

She was just in shock, the doctor said. A deep pain weighted her heart and exhaustion had left her weak, but it was really not as serious as it seemed.

She’d be fine, she’d be fine. She had to be fine. Or at least that was the hope to which the queen clung to.

However, one thing was to be physically fine and another one was to be really, entirely fine.

Snow White was not mentally ‘fine’. The knowledge of the pain she’d endured, first with the loss of her father and then with whatever had happened while she was lost in the woods had washed away her sanity and her madness at once, impossible as that sounded, and now the queen was left wondering if returning the young girl those horrid memories was that much of a good idea.
The princess didn’t talk now, not even to herself. She rarely ate anything, and her black eyes had no light of their own anymore. Her features had become ash-gray instead of that pure marble-white that had characterized her in what now seemed another life.

She had lost her, the queen thought, both to madness and to sanity, to both life and to herself.

When only some weeks after her return to the palace Snow White took a bottle of arsenic in her shaky hands and swallowed it with no thoughts —or mind— of the consequences, the queen was forced to recognize that she had made the wrong decision, that she had chosen wrongly. That she had lost her daughter.

Because sometimes, sometimes, oblivion really was all that a broken heart could handle.