Snow Glass Apples: A Play For Voices Read Online Free Page A

to touch it.
    There was nothing left of my blood or of the
brown powder in the silver bowl, nothing save a black residue, like
a verdigris, on the inside.
    I buried the bowl in the earth.
     
    SFX: MAGIC SOUNDS …
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    Then I cast a glamour on the apples (as
once, years before, by abridge, I had cast a glamour on myself),
that they were, beyond any doubt, the most wonderful apples in the
world; and the crimson blush of their skins was the warm colour of
fresh blood.
     
    SFX: FOR A MOMENT WE HEAR THE BEAT OF THE
PRINCESS’S HEART …
    WHICH FADES INTO THE FOREST …
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    I pulled the hood of my cloak low over my
face, and I took ribbons and pretty hair ornaments with me, placed
them above the apples in the reed basket, and I walked alone into
the forest, until I came to her dwelling: a high, sandstone cliff,
laced with deep caves going back a way into the rock wall.
    There were trees and boulders around the
cliff-face, and I walked quietly and gently from tree to tree,
without disturbing a twig or a fallen leaf.
    Eventually I found my place to hide, and I
waited, and I watched.
     
    SFX: THE SOUNDS OF DWARFS COMING OUT OF THE
CAVE, CURSING AND CLAMBERING. THEY DO NOT SING HI HO HI HO.

     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    After some hours a clutch of dwarfs crawled
out of the hole in the cave-front -ugly, misshapen, hairy little
men -the old inhabitants of this country. You saw them seldom
now.
    They vanished into the wood, and none of
them saw me, though one of them stopped to piss against the rock I
hid behind.
    I waited. No more came out.
     
    QUEEN (AS OLD WOMAN)
    Hullo? Is anybody there? I’ve got ribbons,
pretty ribbons and combs…
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    The scar on my Mound of Venus throbbed and
pulsed as she came towards me, out of the darkness, naked and
alone.
    She was thirteen years of age, my
stepdaughter, and nothing marred the perfect whiteness of her skin
save for the livid scar on her left breast, where her heart had
been cut from her long since.
    The insides of her thighs were stained with
wet black filth.
     
    QUEEN (AS OLD WOMAN)
    Ribbons, goodwife. Pretty ribbons for your
hair..
     
    PRINCESS
    (whispering)
    Come to me…
     
    QUEEN (AS OLD WOMAN)
    (a screech, then)
    Keep away from me!
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    I dropped my basket, and screeched like the
bloodless old pedlar woman I was pretending to be, and I ran.
    My grey cloak was the colour of the forest,
and I was fast; she did not catch me.
    I made my way back to the palace.
     
    SFX: THE HEARTBEAT BEGINS IN THE BACKGROUND.
IT GETS LOUDER OVER THIS …
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    I did not see it. Let us imagine though, the
girl returning, frustrated and hungry, to her cave, and finding my
fallen basket on the ground.
    What did she do?
    I like to think she played first with the
ribbons, twined them into her raven hair, looped them around her
pale neck or her tiny waist. And then, curious, she moved the cloth
to see what else was in the basket; and she saw the red, red
apples. They smelled like fresh apples, of course; and they also
smelled of blood. And she was hungry. I imagine her picking up an
apple, pressing it against her cheek, feeling the cold smoothness
of it against her skin.
    And she opened her mouth and bit deep into
it…
     
    SFX: AND SILENCE. THE HEARTBEAT STOPS.
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    By the time I reached my chambers, the heart
that hung from the roof-beam, with the apples and hams and the
dried sausages, had ceased to beat. It hung there, quietly, without
motion or life, and I felt safe once more.
     
    SFX: WINTER WINDS HOWL. …
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    That winter the snows were high and deep,
and were late melting.
    We were all hungry come the spring.
     
    SFX: MARKET SOUNDS ONCE MORE …
     
    QUEEN—INTIMATE
    The Spring Fair was slightly improved that
year. The forest folk were few, but they were there, and there were
travellers from the lands beyond the forest.
     
    QUEEN
    Well?
     
    LORD OF THE FAIR
    Better, your