That Risen Snow: A Scary Tale of Snow White and Zombies (Wattys 2014 Award Winner)

Chapter Four

Dim

SOME DAYS—ESPECIALLY TODAY—Dim resents his heightened senses.

Snow and Bones’ intermittent hammering at the front and rear doors makes his brain throb. Their raspy hissing grates like a rusty blade scraped over leather, but what’s loudest is the silence left by Bones. The elder dwarf was a mouth breather, and his breath whistled between his whiskers—a noise that always reminded Dim of a mouse wiggling its nose.

When Blushful and Grouchy return from upstairs, Grouchy wraps strips of drape around Dim—makeshift padding. Grouchy smokes his pipe as he works. Though Dim usually enjoys the smoldering scent, it smells foreign here in the cottage. Still, it almost masks the stink of dried gore from outside.

“Must you smoke that in here?” Merry says.

“Would you prefer I step outside, smiles?” Grouchy returns his attention to Dim. “Just the drapes? No armor?”

Dim shrugs, holds up a hand, and finger-sprints through the air. It’ll only slow me down.

Grouchy’s eyes narrow. “Maybe you figure you might as well get it over with.”

Ah, so Blushful told Grouchy what Dim had really said earlier.

Grouchy pats Dim’s belly. “You’d be surprised what a dwarf can survive.”

Dim nods. It was hard to say what terrible things Grouchy survived in Planchette Prison.

Grouchy holds up his tobacco pouch. “Join me for a smoke?”

Dim shakes his head and smiles. He’s the only dwarf besides Grouchy who keeps a pipe, but he never smokes his. No, his pipe serves as a reminder of the terrible debt he owes.

Awhile later, the six dwarfs stand over the dining table—a round cross-section of an evergreen tree—and enjoy a quick snack. Ring after ring, the tree’s long life ripples from its core at the table’s center. The scents of cheese, venison, and seasoned bread with sunbutter and tomato sauce permeate the cottage. The dwarfs’ beards—except for Dim, who has no beard, and Snoozy, who isn’t eating—are heavily dusted with crumbs. Dim pops a cracker into his mouth. His disfigured tongue tastes only the slightest hint of the rich sunbutter, but his nose savors the scent. He swallows and rubs his meager belly.

Blushful pops a cracker piled with meat and cheese into his mouth and clears his throat. “We have three teams. Dim and I will duck out the kitchen window. Merry and Coughy, you’ll make a ruckus at the back door to aggravate Bones.”

“Perfect job for you,” Grouchy says around a mouthful of bread.

“What’d I do?” Coughy says, munching on an apple.

“Wasn’t talking about you.”

“That’s enough, Grouchy. You and Snoozy distract Snow at the front, so that Dim and I can unlock the shed, get the gem sacks, and head to the front door. We’ll bag Snow first, then Bones.”

Snoozy stares at the ceiling and works his jaw. He’s chewing something, but not swallowing. Dim doesn’t know the extent of Snoozy’s horrors, but he worries that Snoozy is not dealing well with the day’s troubles.

Horrors was Bones’ term for the problems that plagued each of them. Some of the dwarfs have obvious horrors, such as Grouchy’s quick temper, Blushful’s shy anxiety, Merry’s depression, or Coughy’s fear of illness. Snoozy’s horrors remain a mystery to Dim, but whatever horrors haunt Snoozy are somehow linked to the herbs Bones gave him each morning.

Bones forbade the dwarfs from discussing their pasts with each other. Instead, he met privately with them—their alone time, he called it—on a rotating basis each evening to discuss their horrors. Except Bones never discussed Dim’s horrors. Indeed, Dim wasn’t sure if he had horrors, other than the fact that he was physically different from the others. In fact, sometimes he felt like he was there to hear about Bones’ horrors.