Evil Queen holding a red apple

She ruled the far side of the pass when the mule trains still came over in autumn. Her orchard was walled with slate, and every tree in it was grafted from a single stock her grandmother carried up in a wet sack. The fruit was so red it looked lit from inside. She kept a looking glass in her solar that told her the truth whenever she asked, and the truth, my own grandmother used to say, was the dearest thing a woman could buy.

One October a carter's girl called Wenna came up the switchbacks with a broken axle and a sack of salted fish. The queen gave her bread and a bed by the stove. By morning the girl was gone, and so was the best apple from the top row, the one the queen had been saving for the first hard frost. Two days later it was found on the chapel step below the pass, bitten once, and Wenna was never seen on the road again.

Here is the part the carters leave out. That winter the queen walked down the mountain herself, in her thin boots, and sat on that same step until the snow had covered her feet. When the priest came out with his lantern and asked what brought her, she said she had come to see how a red thing looks against white. Then she set the last apple on the stone, and it did not rot. Mind your own fruit on the way down, friends. The pass keeps its own accounts.