AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is where I'll be posting sample chapters of Book Two of THE SCARY TALES. The full text of Book One, THAT RISEN SNOW, is available on Wattpad. If you haven't read it, please do consider reading it first. I likely won't be posting the entire text of THAT WICKED APPLE anytime soon. So, please be aware of that before starting this book. However, if you'd like a free ebook copy of the complete text of THAT WICKED APPLE, I'll email you a free copy in exchange for an honest book review of THAT RISEN SNOW on Amazon.com.
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Okay. Enough yapping. On with THAT WICKED APPLE: A SCARY TALE OF SNOW WHITE & EVEN MORE ZOMBIES!
CHAPTER ONE
Queen Adara
BIRDS CHIRPED AND TWEETED their morning songs when Adara arrived at the seven dwarfs’ meager cottage last summer. Clutching her basket of apples in one hand, she held the cursed apple separately. The birds twittered nervously, their loyalties torn between her and the maiden Snow. Squirrels and bunnies shot her dirty looks.
“Leave us,” she whispered, and the birds took flight. The animals scampered.
A cloud loitered in the sky. It had followed Adara all the way from her capital city Platessa here to the far edge of her Eastern Kingdom. Even using the Soar Pass, the journey had taken several days, as she traveled not as royalty but as an old hag. She suspected the cloud was drawn to the apple that tingled in her palm like a devious cat purring.
She crossed the dwarfs’ yard and cringed at the thought of stumps living on her land.
Behind the kitchen window, Snow was making piecrusts. Her hair was disheveled and her eyes wore heavy lids, yet she was still gorgeous. Humming as she pressed dough, she paused only to drink from a crude ceramic mug.
Reflected in the window, Adara marveled at her own magical transformation: silver hair draping a wrinkled face, teeth crooked and yellowed, skin like rotten fruit. Her eyes, of course, were as beautiful as ever.
From behind the glass, Snow gasped.
Knife in hand, the girl opened the window.
“What the hells are you doing out there?” she demanded, alcohol thick on her breath.
Tsk. And here the dew was still on the leaves. Adara noted Snow’s use of the plural hells. The simpleton had spent too long with these dwarfs.
“Are the boys around?” Adara said. “I brought them some of my best apples.”
She told the foolish girl that she lived in the next valley and sometimes sold fruit to the dwarfs. And though she usually came at sunrise, this morning a twisted ankle had delayed her. Pitying her, the simple Snow invited her inside and offered her a chair at the dining table.
They sat across the table from each other. Snow still held the knife and tapped it nervously against the tabletop. When Adara asked if she was the dwarfs’ maid, Snow laughed, a sound as joyous as wine trickling into a clean glass.
“I’m just a guest,” she said. “I do cook for them, which seems to make them ever so happy. I only wish they’d take the time to chew the food—to enjoy it. When they eat, it’s like a race to the bloody finish.”
Adara let the girl prattle on awhile about the dwarfs. She spoke of the elder dwarf Bones and his wise words. She mentioned a mute dwarf named Dim, who was apparently as hairless as a fish and as swift as a fox. She spoke of the shy Blushful, the dandy Merry, and the anxious Coughy, but when Snow talked of Grouchy, she shook her head.
“I don’t know what to do about him,” Snow said. “He’s been so good to me, like the brother I never had. He’s so surly on the outside but inside his passion burns like a fire. I know my leaving will break his heart.”
Indeed? To think, a lowly dwarf pining over a human – as if such a union could ever be. Still, looking at Snow’s raven black hair and pale skin, it was easy to understand how anyone could be smitten with her. When last she’d seen her, Snow had been just an infant. The girl was truly her mother’s daughter.
Snow offered Adara the mug, an apple whiskey. “Snoozy made it. He’s an odd one, isn’t he? I rarely understand what he’s talking about. He’s truly in his own world.” She slid the mug across the table. “It’s quite strong. And rather lacking in taste.”
“Taste isn’t everything, dear.”
“Shit,” she said. “I’m a chef. To me, taste is everything.”
Adara took a sip and winced. The whiskey burned her tongue, enflamed her throat, and thrashed in her belly. Still, she took another drink to steel her resolve. That’s when she noticed the vase of flowers on the table.
“Do you like picking flowers?”
Snow nodded. “My best friend Lox and I used to pick them all the time back in Platessa.”
“I used to do the same with my sister,” Adara said. “Of course, that was a long time ago. Believe it or not, I was quite the looker in my day.”
“I’m not surprised.” Snow slouched forward so that her cleavage pressed on the tabletop. “You have beautiful eyes. That’s where beauty starts, with the eyes.”
Adara studied her and wondered how this stupid, vulgar girl could possibly be the fairest in the Land. Adara placed the cursed apple on the table in front of Snow. “In my day, we had a saying, ‘An apple each morn keeps your beauty untorn.’”
Snow rolled the apple back and forth across the table. It made a wobbly drumming noise across the wood, like fingers tapping expectantly. “Where’s your sister now?” she said.
“She died, dearie, when we were near your age. Giving birth to a baby girl.”
“I’m sorry.” Snow took her hand off the apple and patted Adara’s palm. The girl’s hands were as rough as a leather belt. “What happened to the baby?”
“The child did not survive. I have no family.”
Snow said, “My only family is the staff at the kitchen back home—in the Chamber House at Platessa. I was an orphan in the public houses, but I ran away as a girl and found work at the Chamber. I grew up in the kitchen. I’d been there ever since, until I had to leave.”
“What made you leave?”
Snow stared at the apple. “I shouldn’t say.”
“Is that why you’re drinking so early in the day?”
She shrugged. “Partly just to comb the hair of the bear, if you catch my meaning. I tipped a glass or two last night. I’ve got mud in the blood. But also because I must leave here—today. It’s not fair to the dwarfs to put them in danger.”
Adara hadn’t even considered what to do with the stumps. “They’ve been good to you, these dwarfs?”
“Like family. That’s why I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye. I was planning to leave each of them a blueberry pie.”
Adara nodded. “Blueberries are wonderful, my dear, but why not apple pies, if you want to leave them a worthy memory?”
Snow put her hand over the cursed apple, and Adara placed a hand over hers. The apple tingled even through Snow’s hand.
“Where will you go from here?” Adara said.
Snow shrugged. “I thought about heading to the Western Kingdom. I met a man from there. I think he loves me, but I don’t know if I love him. It probably wouldn’t work out.”
Adara squinted at the foolish girl. Was she talking about that royal brat Prince Mikael? Surely not.
“Do you believe in true love, my dear?” Adara said.
Snow considered the apple, now just a few inches from her mouth. “Bones told me once that in the dwarf tongue, love and hate were the same word. The meaning of it came from the context, from how it was used.”
“Indeed.” Adara thought this typical of dwarf simplicity. “And what do you think?”
“I’m not sure that I have much use for either.”
And with that, she bit into the apple.
For one horrible moment, the only sound was the girl’s teeth crunching that bite. Dread squirmed in Adara’s stomach, fearful that the spell wouldn’t work and somehow terrified that it would.
“Hmmm,” Snow said, bits of apple visible between the girl’s teeth. “This is delicious.”
She swallowed then, and her entire body went rigid like she’d been doused in ice-cold water. She opened her mouth as if to say something. For a moment, her eyes flashed as red as the apple. She collapsed face-down on the table. Her forehead knocked politely—just once—upon the wood.
The whiskey fell to the floor with a splash.
Instantly, Adara’s vision quivered, as if a stiff wind were jostling her eyes from her lovely face. Pain like a hornet’s sting crackled inside her brain, only gradually subsiding. When she opened her eyes, the light coming through the windows was as pale as twilight.
The cloud that had followed her from Platessa was gathering into a storm.
She stared at the cursed girl, now face-down on the table, and told herself it had to be this way. The Mirror was right.
Looking around the room, she briefly debated baking the dwarfs a cursed apple pie with the remaining apple. She didn’t know how to cook, but if that semi-retarded orphan could do it, how hard could it be? Propping Snow up, Adara placed a hand on the girl’s chest. Her young heart throbbed sluggishly. As Adara took her hand away, Snow tumbled to the floor and struck her head.
Adara gasped.
The fall left a huge gash on Snow’s temple, but no blood poured out. Rather, the blood pooled at the wound’s surface while the surrounding skin sewed itself back together.
Magic truly is a naughty beast.
Soon, the seven dwarfs arrived and pursued her into the woods.[WS2] In the ensuing chase, Adara fell off a cliff and tumbled into a ravine. The impact shattered her bones and split her flesh. The wreck of her body was the worst horror she ever had to face.
Until now.