“Don’t swear in the name of mirrors.” He warned me, unable to raise a finger from the pain.
“Why, Jacob?” I leaned a little forward, enchanted by the smell of death on his breath. Believe me, I know about the dying smell. I had it linger on my blood-bathed skin too many times for too many years. “Are you afraid of who is in my mirror? Are you afraid of her?” I wasn’t talking about Snow White. I was talking about the woman in the mirror. The woman I fear uttering her name sometimes.
“She is pure evil. You know that. And maybe if you have never met with her, things would have changed.”
“Can you say her name?” I leaned closer and closer, amused by the glimmer of fear in his eyes. Fear had that paradoxical quality in people’s eyes. It made the eyes glimmer and the hearts flutter, but for the wrong reasons. “Are you afraid to utter the name of the woman in my mirror, Jacob?” I laughed and leaned back as I knew he wouldn’t dare to say her name. “Don’t you wonder why they will never mention the name of the woman in the mirror in the Disney movie when it comes out?”
Jacob stared with appalled eyes at me. She really scared him, that woman in my mirror whom I love and hate equally. “No one cares anymore,” I sighed. “It’s all about Snow White, and the rest are merely second-hand actors in a bedtime tale. That woman in the mirror played a pivotal role in the story, Jacob. Let me utter her name, only once. I promise I will not utter it three times.” I teased him again. It really made me feel good when I teased the dying on their bed. You have to admit that I am more entertaining than that Grim Reaper. I’d like to consider myself the Grimm Reaper.
“Not in my house,” Jacob said finally. “Don’t you ever dare mentioning her in my house.”
“Wow. The cottage is your house now? You know whose house it is, Jacob. It’s their house—”
I couldn’t finish my sentence as he finally managed to raise an old and stiff finger at me. For a mortal, Jacob could be intimidating sometimes.
“Ok. As if we really know who the seven of them are.”
“I figured out three of them.” Jacob teased me now, for he knew how I’d die to know the identities of those we call the Lost Seven whom Jacob and his brother turned into dwarfs in the book – dwarves my fairy butt. And what really bugged me is that people believed it.
“You can’t handle not knowing who they are, can you?” Jacob grinned at me. I still liked it when the dying grinned. Cute. “Besides, we don’t want anyone to know your real name,” Jacob eyed me daringly, even on his bed of death. “Don’t you agree?”
I nodded. Why would I want the world to know my name after all these years? Leave my name alone. Let it pass by their reading-eyes whenever they come upon it in books or hear it in movies without them knowing that she is me. I didn’t see those movies myself by then, but the fact that world will advance was foretold to us.
“I agree. Look at what happened to Rumpelstiltskin when they knew his real name,” I sighed. “Which reminds me, Jacob. Why didn’t you alter Rumpelstiltskin’s story? The idea that knowing one’s real name can kill him might have drawn suspicions and conclusions that the fairy tales were forged.”
“That was my brother Wilhelm’s idea.”
“I am not following,” I shook my head. “Why would he want to tell a story as it really is while all the rest was forged?”
“You know him. He was big on giving hints in the books,” Jacob explained. “Wilhelm was never sure that forging the fairy tales was the right thing to do, so he left hints and clues intentionally for it might help if there was ever someone who would read between the lines and uncover the truth.”
“And what kind of hint did Rumpelstiltskin’s story give?”
“Can’t you get it?”
“Sorry. I am a queen. I am spoiled. I am evil. I am bad. And I am dumb and an airhead. Spit it out, Jacob.” I played with my mirror coins.
“The fact that Rumpelstiltskin is not called something like an evil troll like you were called the Evil Queen should make one the reader question why the names of the characters were never mentioned in fairy tales – true tales have true names. Since in the story, if someone had known Rumpelstiltskin’s name, he would be exposed, Wilhelm thought this would make the readers think about the real names of the characters. There was a time when he wanted to mention the Faerie Godmother’s real name but I persuaded him otherwise.”
“Gah! Don’t even mention her to me. I hate her guts, that silly giggling woman.”
“She hates you as well, you silly evil queen.” For a dying man, Jacob’s humor was as bitter as the taste of the afterlife on his tongue.