“Bye Doc! Bye Happy, Sneezy, Bashful, Sleepy, and Dopey!” Matilda called each dwarf’s name as he left. “And a special goodbye to you Grumpy. Have a wonderful day!”
“See you soon, Snow!” Doc shouted back. “Remember to not open the door to strangers!”
Once the little men had disappeared on the horizon, Matilda returned to the kitchen to work on her newest deGrumpification project: a pie.
Matilda had started the deGrumpification process in an effort to make Grumpy feel more emotional once she was “dead.” As far as she knew, all the other dwarves would miss her and thus, when she came back to life, would be happy to see her. Grumpy, however, wouldn’t show as much emotion. Matilda figured that in order for her resurrection to be as meaningful as possible, she would need to have the seven people she had been closest to in life to be mortified at her death, and awestruck at her revival. Therefore, by a process of giving gifts and special treatment, she would make Grumpy feel like his soon-to-be queen appreciated him more than the others. The only problem was balancing this out with appreciation of the other dwarves.
To be clear, Matilda had her reasons for making her friends love her more in her second life than her first. She planned to make the dwarves a kind of royal advisory. If such a Cabinet was to be successful, she would need to encourage cooperation between them and herself, which would be even more important than collaboration among them. So, it is in this way that she justified making herself the center of attention.
Matilda assembled a team of woodland creatures to create a pie for her. She rolled some dough, got out a pan, and sang to the animals to make them place the dough over the pan, then she put the task on autopilot so she could sit on a stool in the corner and ran over the plan in her mind once more.
Her part was simple. She was to wait for Grimhilde to arrive, be handed an apple that would make her sleep, and be awoken in the arms of her true love (whoever that was). Meanwhile, Grimhilde would escape into the woods, never to be seen by anyone again. Three days later, after a “thorough” search, the queen would be pronounced dead and Matilda would become Queen Snow White Charming, and thenceforth would live happily ever after.
She got off of the stool and checked on her pie. Some birds had sealed the dough to the pan with their claws. She chirpily said, “Oh, silly me! I forgot to put a filling into the pie. Well, I don’t think we have anything to fill the pie with, so we’ll just have to–”
“Just a minute, young lady.” Matilda looked up and saw the ugliest woman she had ever seen in her life standing in the window. The hag had a big, bumpy nose; white, straw-like hair; sunken eyes; and several warts and wrinkles. Her raisined smile revealed exactly five teeth. The look was finished by her greasy black robe.
“There’s no need to waste a perfectly good dough like that! Why, I could sell you a couple apples to make your filling with.” Apples. Matilda overcame her disgust when she realized that the repulsion before her was Grimhilde.
Matilda could sense the fear in the animals around her. She cut off the connection between them and herself before they found out what was going on. She knew that from now on, she was acting, and would be acting for the rest of her life. “Why, ma’am, I couldn’t possibly afford the delicious apples I’m sure you’ve collected with those long…dirty… really gross fingers. Besides, the dwarves told me to not accept anything from strangers in this area.”
“Why, my dear, I clean my hands before I pick my apples. And did those little men really tell you not to buy anything from me?”
“Well, technically, they only said I couldn’t open the door…”
“Well, you haven’t opened the door, have you? You’ve not even opened the window!” Grimhilde smiled inwardly at her cleverness. “Now, I’ll tell you what: I’ll offer you the first apple for free, and if you like it, you can buy some more.”
Matilda was terrified. She thought about how well she really knew Grimhilde. The woman before her had never told her anything about herself. What if this apple was really poisoned, and Matilda would actually die from this? But she remembered that she had to take over the throne. Even if Grimhilde was trying to kill her, she wasn’t exactly the most effective ruler. Matilda had to take a risk. “Alright. I’ll try your apples.”
At this point, the animals surrounding the house sensed that something bad was going to happen. The deer were growing restless; the birds flew frantically in circles; the chipmunks hid behind leaves and roots. The entire forest seemed to be watching in horror as Grimhilde reached into her basket and grabbed the apple with the Sleeping Death. Upon the handing off of the fruit, a few animals actually cried out. Then the whole area grew silent as a hard crunch rang from out of the house. The evil hag ran away, cackling wickedly, and a deer ventured to open the door of the small house. The apple that had been given to Snow rolled outside, while a pale hand fell onto the floor. Every organism in the forest bowed its head as understanding swept over them: Snow White was dead.
