（外文电子版资料）Neil Gaiman - Snow, Glass, Apples.pdf

SNOW, GLASS, APPLES by NEIL GAIMAN [first published by DreamHaven Books, March 1995] I do not know what manner of thing she is. None of us do. She killed her mother in the birthing, but thats never enough to account for it. They call me wise, but I am far from wise, for all that I foresaw fragments of it, frozen moments caught in pools of water or in the cold glass of my mirror. If I were wise I would not have tried to change what I saw. If I were wise I would have killed myself before ever I encountered her, before ever I caught him. Wise, and a witch, or so they said, and Id seen his face in my dreams and in reflections for all my life: sixteen years of dreaming of him before he reined his horse by the bridge that day, and asked my name. He helped me onto his high horse and we rode together to my little cottage, my face buried in the gold of his hair. He asked for the best of what I had; a kings right, it was. His beard was red-bronze in the morning light, and I knew him, not as a king, for I knew nothing of kings then, but as my love. He took all he wanted from me, the right of kings, but he returned to me on the following day, and on the night after that: his beard so red, his hair so gold, his eyes the blue of a summer sky, his skin tanned the gentle brown of ripe wheat. His daughter was only a child: no more than five years of age when I came to the palace. A portrait of her dead mother hung in the princesss tower room; a tall woman, hair the colour of dark wood, eyes nut- brown. She was of a different blood to her pale daughter. The girl would not eat with us. I do not know where in the palace she ate. I had my own chambers. My husband the king, he had his own rooms also. When he wanted me he would send for me, and I would go to him, and pleasure him, and take my pleasure with him. One night, several months after I was brought to the palace, she came to my rooms. She was six. I was embroidering by lamplight,