Child, have you lost your way? You will not find it here. This is the very end of all ways, as dry of ways as a desert is of water, as desolated of ways as a tree in winter is of leaves, and I would not be here myself if I had not lost my way.
Child, won’t you come a step closer? I am only an old harmless woman, and no visitors find their way to me, although the queen herself used to visit me. I sing and no one hears; I call and no one answers; I scream and no one cares. See these iron bars before me? I cannot leave, cannot reach out and grasp you with my wasted hands to drink your life away. You are safe.
Come closer, child. What a beautiful child you are, such dark hair and pale skin. Come closer, for my eyes are old and have been clouded by age; let me feel with gnarled fingers the fine satin of your tresses. Let me hear with deadened ears the clear music of your young voice. What beauty used to be mine I see now in your face.
Do not go, child! I beg of you. Stay with me for a moment before picking up again your way. I am lonely, for no one talks to me, and my voices have left.
Yes, silly child. Do not be alarmed. Voices. All children hear voices, of the dead, of the trees, of the animals, before adults can convince them that they are deaf and hear nothing. They forget that they hear those voices, as did I, as have you. But my voices returned to me. Softly at first, quiet voices murmuring indistinctly on the other side of a wall, slurring separate words into flowing strands of sounds. I tried to ignore them, yes, I went on as though I heard nothing but the obvious voices all but deaf hear. You’ve heard voices, you know how they are. They grew louder, more persistent, and I could soon no longer deny that I heard them. They whispered to me in my ear as I brushed out my hair—once, shining dark locks like yours, child—in front of my mirror, teased me with their murmurs as I embroidered fine stitches with colored silks, lingered in my mind as I sat in judgment.
Child, you must know the difficulty of not listening to the meaning of voices around you. I suppose it can be done, although such concentration as it takes could not be done minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day. Fearfully, hesitatingly, I began to listen to them. What things these voices told me! I began to see what they whispered; shadowed images of tiny figures in mirrors, in still water, in well polished leather. They told me of my daughter, my fine, beautiful, dark-haired, raven-eyed daughter; I saw her tearing the wings off birds as they shrieked in pain. I saw her playing her suitors against each other, toying with them and manipulating their jealousy. I saw her send a poisoned apple to me, oh! such a beautiful apple you never did see. Redder than your lips or cheeks, smooth and flawless as marble, sweetly shaped and rounded. But my voices whispered to me of the venom in which it had been bathed, and of the one who had done such a thing.
I could not eat it, though I almost desired to, so despairing was I that I had such a daughter. You cannot have known such despair. My voices formed a plan for me, by which I could cure my daughter so that she might be a worthy queen some day. I mixed a draught, by their instructions-- and child, my voices never lied-- by which to purge the poison from her veins.
She did not drink it. She declared it poison, and hired an apothecary to testify to its venom. She turned the court against me, for they believed her when she cried out to them, asking what mother would poison her only daughter.
Child, they fastened these thick chains on their queen, declared her mad, and allowed her daughter the throne. And so, here I stay, at the end of all ways, with no way to escape these iron bars. These bars! I can taste the salt of my blood from torn fingers on these bars, but I cannot leave, cannot stop the evil the queen must be spreading in my realm. I failed. The voices, the sweet voices that never lied, left me, and I am left in silence, at the end of all ways.
You shrink from me, child. Go! Run back to your mother and see if she does not grow pale and cold when you tell her what she has done to me. Run, child, but allow your way to curve around to see me again. I am so alone, and old, and tired, and my voices have left me and I have lost my way.
So, is the old queen mad, or the new queen wicked? Or both? Or neither?
