She laughed gently, and set her fiddle to one side, "There\'s always time for work, lad, but there never seems to be time for jest, does there?"
The bard smiled at them enigmatically from her cell, leaning back against the wall as she spoke, "Now, you\'ve most likely heard this tale before," she grinned, "But I guarantee you haven\'t heard it as I tell it." She laughed, "Now, I must warn ye, in this version, there are certain elements unfitting for a lady to speak of." She grinned, "But, seein\' as to how I\'m no lady, it\'s nothin\' to me. Any complaints?" When no issues were voiced immediately, she began her tale, "So begins the life and death of the snow-white maid."
She got to her feet, and paced the length of the cell as she spoke, "Once, in a land far from here, long time ago, there lived a duchess. She lived alone, in a huge, drafty old castle, with servants aplenty."
In this story, there is no magic mirror, and the duchess – she\'s not exactly evil, no more than most people, anyway, nor even that comely, so far as looks go," The bard chuckled, then continued.
"Comin\' back to the story, though, one of her servants had a child. A little girl, with the palest white skin you ever saw, just like fresh fallen snow. Her eyes were black, like little pieces of stone, and her tiny lips were an unnatural, bloody red. She never cried, not when she as born – not ever. When one of the maids would strike the girl for being naughty, she\'d just look at them with those little black eyes, and they\'d be frightened, deep down to the core of their soul."
The child, o\'course, didn\'t escape the notice of her mistress, who grew more and more wary of the girl with each passin\' year, watchin\' \'er grow. When the child grew to be sixteen, a creature of unspeakable beauty, with that milk-white skin and bloody lips. She\'d grown out of smilin\', by now, just as she never cried. There was an eerie silence, about her, and the duchess was unnerved."
So she told her huntsman," as Pheobe spoke for the noblewoman, she drew herself up, standing with the regal bearing of a queen, and stopped her pacing. Even her words changed timbre, taking on an aristocratic accent and a commanding tone, "\'Take the child into the woods, and bring me back her heart.\'" She dropped the commanding tone as she continued with the narration, "Now, the huntsman was a loyal man, and he, too, was uncomfortable about the girl, so he did as she asked. He took the girl into the woods, where no one could hear her screamin\', and he cut out her heart."
The bard\'s voice went eerily quiet, as she spoke the next lines, "Only, the child didn\'t scream, nor did she cry, nor beg for her life. She just looked at him with those black eyes as he cut into her chest. She didn\'t blink, even once. She didn\'t say one word."
The huntsman was afraid. He took the heart, still beating, and placed it in the box that the duchess had given him to carry it in. And still, the girl watched him with those black eyes. As he turned to go, she stood up, with that gapin\' hole in her chest, dress stained black with blood, and she walked toward him. Still, the dead maid didn\'t utter so much as a sigh."
The huntsman dropped dead of right there, and she just stepped over his corpse, leavin\' her heart there, still thump-thumpin\' away in that box."
First house she came to, she knocked on the door. a misshapen little man answered, and she asked for work. Adora only knows why, but he opened the door for the girl – covered in blood, with a gapin\' hole in her empty chest, and she stayed there, and she worked, just as she said she would, for that man and his brothers. She was there for a few months, \'fore the duchess started thinkin\' that maybe her huntsman hadn\'t just run off with th\'maid."
She sent a messenger to each of the four corners of the wood, each with a basket of poisoned apples, to give to any woman of surpassing beauty they found in the woods. Many young women died this way, but the plan worked. The maid with the pale skin accepted her gift, and took it home. She bit into it\'s luscious red hide with her white, white teeth, and dropped to the floor, dead."
The little men, who were miners, made a coffin for her out of the finest crystal, and carried the coffin deep into the forest. Not out o\'respect, mind, but because they wanted her to be as far from her as possible. Even they had feared her strange gaze – and they remembered the day she came to them, bloody, without a heart. The dressed her in the finest silk, so the hole in her chest was hidden, finally, for she had never changed out of the dress she wore when she came to them. They never spoke to her, even when he ate with them each night."
After they left her, a prince from a neighboring kingdom, came a-hunting through the forest, on his horse, and he came upon the lovely maid in her crystal coffin."
He did not notice that there was no birdsong in the clearing, nor anything stirrin\' in the undergrowth. He dismounted, and approached.\'
Now, this prince was not a nice man, he was in fact rather disgusting. Upon seeing the maiden layin\' as if asleep under the clear lid of the coffin, he shoved the lid to the ground, and climbed atop her, reachin\' under her skirts. He placed his mouth over her cold lips, and kissed her roughly."
The maid woke, the bit of apple in her throat being dislodged by his violent kiss. She opened to him, in that coffin, under his hands, and her dress was stained by something foul and black, at the place of their joining."
She told him, after, with the voice of a ghost, of the evil woman who had bewitched her, and he sent his men to the castle of the Duchess. The Prince took the Maid to wife, and at their wedding, he had the duchess brought in chains to his palace, where his men took a pair of iron shoes, red hot from the kiln, and forced her to dance in them."
"The bard grinned wickedly, "Some say you can hear the Maid\'s black heart still beatin\', deep in the secret places of the world, locked in that box."
