15. Royal revelation

As the morning had come, the mean queen stood in front of her talking mirror. "Tell me again!", she said with a tremendous smile on her face.

"Okay...," the mirror said. If it had been able to, it would have let out a sigh. "Oh, queen, in this land thou art fairest of all."

"Yes!!!", the queen moaned, and pressed another sloppy kiss on the mirror. "I am the most beautiful one again! Down with the competition, I have to remain the fairest..."

She picked up her dress from the bed, held it against her and waltzed with it through her chambers, humming her favourite tunes for a while. Until she reached the wall with the mirror again. "Mirror? Care to tell me who's the fairest in the land? Oh, life is good again."

As the mirror in the castle was getting close to despair, Hilda was gathering her things for the evening. Scary Mountain was up tonight and it all was prepared.

"Babs, are you going in style?", she asked the crystal ball that showed Baba Yaga's hut and the witch that lived there.

"No, Hilly, I want to keep things nice and quiet. Let the action speak instead of the clothes," Baba Yaga replied, "but feel free to make a grand entrance if you care for one. You're more for that kind of thing and I have to admit that the glitzy stuff looks awesome on you."

"Why thank you, girlfriend," Hilda giggled as she looked in her wardrobe. She pulled out a dress and held it in front of her. "How about this one?"

The dress was quite a slinky one, all subdued silver that looked like sparkling lead, with black stars all over it.

"You dare wear that??" Sheer shock streamed from the crystal ball, visible as question marks that floated into the room and then evaporated into puffs of purple smoke.

"Think it is a bit too much for the oldies?" Hilda looked at the dress. She had not worn it very often, she had to admit to herself, and it was kind of revealing indeed. It showed lots of leg and lots of other things that witches usually don't show off.

"What the heck, girlfriend," Babs said in her cackling voice, "put it on and shock them out of their double-knit knickers!" A witchy laughter filled the room that would be the death of a mere mortal. Hilda just had to grin along with it.

"Okee dokee, let's make waves there," the wicked witch laughed, thinking also of the small bit of entertainment she and Babs had prepared.

In the workshop of Johan the mirror-maker, a lot of activity was unfolding. The assignment from the dwarfs was an intriguing one, so the man had shoved all other orders to the side and was working on the glass coffin. The two dwarfs did their best to help him, so the work would progress as quickly as was humanly and dwarfly possible.

Happy had happily used Katrina, Johan's wife, to indicate what the size of the coffin should be. "Just like her, only then with her head off," he had said with a big smile.

Katrina had some objections to that kind of measure-taking, but as long as she was allowed to keep her head where it was, she was fine with it in the end.

Walt was keeping more than his average eye on his wife. She had appeared at the breakfast table, which was rather unheard of already, but she had actually been in a good mood. That was very uncanny.

He had asked why she was in such a good mood, and all she had said was that there was nothing bothering her anymore, and some vague things about competition that now was eradicated. She would not say anymore about it, and Walt was not going to push things. That would make his curiosity too obvious. Instead he went about in a sneaky way: he set up some of his servants to spy on his wife.

The men kept walking along the corridors and in turn went to Walt to report what she was doing. Most of that was quite boring to the king, as that involved woman things, like having another bath, standing in front of the mirror with yet another set of clothes that was not going to be worn that day and more silliness like that.

Then one of the servants came with news that was interesting: "The queen herself is cleaning out Snow-White's room herself. And with each item she throws out she is laughing and making strange remarks."

"Strange remarks? Such as?", Walt asked.

"Things like 'I got you now, sweetie', my king. Or 'My apple got to your core, did it?' Things like that," the servant said.

Walt frowned. "Weird things to say, don't you agree?"

The servant rubbed his nose, unsure what to say to that. "It is what I heard her say, my king... And then there is-" The man slapped a hand over his lips, as his face turned red.

"There is what, my man?", Walt asked. "Come on, say it. You said something and you are bound to tell me the rest now. I declare this, here and now. It's good to be king, you know."

The servant looked as if Hilda herself had attached his hand to his face: it did not want to come off. Behind his fingers he mumbled something inunderstandable.

"Get your fingers out of your face, man," Walt ordered, "and talk in a way that I can understand you!"

The servant tore his hand from his mouth with obvious difficulty. "They say," he said, as quietly as he could, "that the queen is uhfuffel."

"The queen is what?"

"Uhfuffel, my king."

"One more time, and now out loud, if you want to keep your ears, okay?" Walt was getting slightly annoyed by the mumbling servant.

The servant drew a deep breath and stuck all his courage in it. "Unfaithful, my king. They say that the queen is unfaithful. Cheating on you. You know the deal, doing the hokey-pokey with other men, doing the wild thing with people that she should not do it with." As the words came out of the man's mouth, the blood drew away from his cheeks, leaving him standing there as a ghost.

"Oh. Is that so..." Walt, the king, frowned for a moment. "And who, pray tell, are 'they'?"

The servant battled with his conscience. He could hardly say that just about everyone in the castle was aware of the queen's nighttime (and also daytime) escapades. "Uhm, well, several people say so. Many people here, I forgot the names. And the faces too."

"Right...", Walt nodded. "So the queen is sleeping with other men..."

"Well, I wouldn't call that sleeping, my king. Afterwards, perhaps, but she has quite a lot of energy to burn befo-" The hand flew to the mouth again.

"Is that so..." Walt looked at the servant. "You seem to know an awful lot about all this, my man. Now, come on, be a real guy. You are not going to lose your ears over this, I promise you." The smile on Walt's face did not hold much good in store for the servant.

The king waved, and two guards that were ever present stepped up and took the servant by the arms. "Take him to the physician, guards. And tell the physician to make sure he will not be able to do the wild thing again. Ever."

"Very well, sire," said one of the guards. The other one went extremely pale behind his metal mask. Together they dragged the servant off, while Walt was reconsidering his views and ideas about what he had until now considered to be his loving wife.

Hilda had all her gear in order and stacked in one place in the room. It was a rather amazing amount of material she intended to take along for the evening.

"Hilly, are you still there?", a voice came from the crystal ball that was doing overtime these days.

"Babs, baby, I hear you. What's teasing?"

"I have a bit of a problem here," Baba Yaga said. "I can't get the bloody kettle folded up the way I want and I'm already in need of a spare broom to take my things along. Is there a possibility that you swing by and help me out?"

"Oh, sure, I'll drop in with you. Maybe there's time for tea and a chat, if I pack up and leave now," Hilda said. "I have another strong broom here that can hold your cauldron without a hitch."

"You're the best, Hilda! If you care to drop by, please do to. I'll put the kettle on and have tea and gingerbread cookies ready."

"I hear you, girlfriend," Hilda grinned, "are those the same ones that you got from the stupid hag that tried to get to Hanzel and Gretel?"

"No way, Hilly, they'd gone stale and hard. I don't know what recipe Bruni used but that was definitely a bad on her end. Well, she got toasted in her own oven and she took her secret with her. Good riddance, I think."

Hilda laughed at the memory. "Oh yeah. She never was good at cooking something up. Hey, I'm loading up and brooming my way over to you, Babs!" The wicked witch waved over the ball and ended the chat that way. She brought out her wand and looked at her small, elegant purse. Usually it would be big enough for a small hanky and a few coins, but Hilda was not made of usual. She waved her wand, picked up the dice that remained of her mountain of things and dropped it in the purse.

"Right, packing done," she nodded. She snipped her fingers and two brooms lazily floated through the room towards her, and they followed her as she walked to the front door. Just before leaving, she hesitated for a moment. Should she have a last look at things in the kingdom? Hilda shook her head. If things were to go wrong, then they would also go wrong without her watching. There was something more interesting coming up this evening. The world would have to get by without this wicked witch for a while.

Once outside, Hilda locked up her house. It looked quite impressive, with hundreds of yards of big iron chains and padlocks around it. She took a small sign out of the air and hung that on one of the padlocks. It read: "The witch is out."