Chapter 2

As the Queen’s family arrived for the funeral, Snow rolled her mother’s last words around in her mind. Watching her aunts bumble from their carriages, Snow wondered which one was the snake.

Most of them resembled her mother. Fat, slow, exhausted from the strain of standing, with bellies that sagged past their knees, and limbs made useless from their encumbrance of flesh.

But as the seventh sister stepped down, Snow White knew. This was the one. The woman’s eyes glinted with triumph, the sombre funeral black made indecent as it hugged her lithe form. Even married men stared as she strolled up the courtyard, eyes betraying their cravings. Amidst her panting, wobbling sisters, the woman appeared even more beautiful and radiant than she would have otherwise.

As her father descended the castle steps to greet their visitors, Snow ran to stop him. “Father, I want to see Mother one last time,” she said. “Before everyone else comes.”

Her father’s eyes filled with tears and he kissed the top of her head. “Of course, my love.”

As he took her head and led her into the chapel, Snow felt a tingle behind her ears, the sense of being watched. She risked a glance back. The slender aunt glared at her, eyes narrowed.

∻∻∻

Of course, she could not keep her father distracted forever. Once the pallbearers had heaved her mother’s enormous coffin into the ground, there were formalities to be observed and guests to be grieved with. Snow sat forgotten on the sidelines, the pain and grief of a young girl dim in the eyes of those who only saw a political opening.

“I know it’s hard,” her old nurse maid said as they watched the slender sister run a shameless finger up the King’s chin. “But a kingdom needs a Queen.”

∻∻∻

The new Queen’s army of chefs outdid themselves for the wedding feast. Jellies, syrups, stuffed chicken, gilt sugar plums, bread rolls slathered in honey, candied figs, crisp vegetables swimming in butter, hard-boiled eggs flavoured with saffron and cloves, a roast pig, fresh caught sturgeon… and an apple for each and every guest. “Grown in my own garden,” the new Queen said with a coy wink.

Curiously, the dance floor stayed empty the whole night. The guests were unusually ravenous, hovering close to the tables, sampling all the dishes and talking about how wonderful and generous the new Queen was. While the guests mingled and chatted, the fat aunts spent the entire evening stuffing themselves at breakneck speed until their great bellies quivered with fullness and the chairs creaked under their weight.

Snow White pushed her apple aside. She was not hungry.

∻∻∻

Apples began to appear at every meal. Fresh apple wine, geese stuffed with apples, apples delicately folded into pastries…
The King ate it all, complimenting his wife with every bite, and insisting that Snow try. But she stubbornly refused, remembering her mother’s warning. She ate around the apples, watching her father pour praise on his new wife.

The Queen even had her apple orchard transported from her old kingdom, carefully packed to keep the delicate trees healthy and whole. Snow watched the gardeners from a distance, hugging her pale shoulders. The trees’ dark branches seemed to her a thing of evil, a sign of her stepmother’s intrusion on their lives.

On a whim, she tasted a dewdrop from its leaves. It held the metallic tang of blood.

∻∻∻

Beauty has power. And over time, it became evident that Snow White did not possess this power. Her face was too round, her nose too squished, and her pale skin made her look more like a ghost than an ethereal beauty. And although she never grew as heavy as her mother, Snow certainly spent more time growing outward than upward.

By contrast, her stepmother grew more lovely each day, and so held more and more sway in the castle. She invited all the beautiful noble ladies to be her personal ladies-in-waiting, giving each of them a homegrown apple as a sign of friendship and devotion. And then each lady changed.

Their hunger grew insatiable, and the Queen, ever the dutiful host, made sure their plates were always full. Servants stood by, always ready with second helpings, and then eventually third and fourth helpings. Enterprising tailors flocked to the castle as the women outgrew their fashionable dresses at an alarming pace.

Even the servants were growing hefty, as one by one they fell to temptation and tasted the Queen’s apples in secret. She did not seem to mind, and in fact encouraged such behaviour. The more oversized rear ends surrounding her, the more her trim figure was set to advantage.

The King ate more than anyone. He’d always had a voracious appetite, but now it was different. He no longer went out to hunt. Instead, he stayed home, indulging in the never-ending feasts provided by the horde of castle chefs. His square jaw melted into flabby jowls, and his broad belly made the arms of every chair creak under the pressure.

Hunger and greed reshaped his mind. It became hard to even speak to him. His mouth was always too full for more than a grunt, his eyes glassy with overconsumption. He spent his days in a haze, becoming less and less involved in the kingdom’s affairs, focused only on cramming more and more food into his ever widening belly.

His young wife seemed untroubled by these changes. In fact, if she ever found him without food in his hand, she made sure to provide him with another helping as quickly as possible. “My dear husband works so hard,” she purred, patting his flabby breast as the King, barely conscious, still continued to shovel roast quail into his mouth. “He needs to keep up his strength.”

∻∻∻

One morning, the King did not come down to the breakfast table. “Where is my father?” Snow demanded.

The Queen examined her perfect nails. “The King has decided to stay in bed today,” she said. “He gets so tired these days. We agreed that some rest would do him good.”

Snow ran to her father’s chambers, praying that her stepmother was lying. But there he was, a moaning, immobile lump of a man, surrounded by food-bearing servants, his swollen belly pinning him down like a lead weight, too fat to even turn his head.

The bed was barely holding together, the headboard creaking under the weight of his hindquarters, the footboard splintering under the pressure of the bloated belly that expanded ever outward. His flabby rolls poured over the edges, burying his massive thighs, dripping downward like too much dough rising out of its bowl.

Snow tried to speak to her father, to make him see her, but her father was too dazed to respond, too overwhelmed with gluttony to do anything but open his mouth over and over for the next bite.

“It’s so sad,” the servants muttered to each other.

“Just like his late wife.”

“You’d think he’d have learned.”

“The Queen is a saint for standing by him.”

Snow’s fists clenched at the servant’s gossip. All of them had doubled in girth since she had arrived, their bellies straining at the seams. Couldn’t they see that their beloved Queen was sending them down the same path?

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