Misfit Trials

Chapter 33

As soon as Rose Red has recovered from her journey, she begins to help Snow White with her daily tasks around the house. Washing dishes and clothes. Cooking and cleaning. Mending clothing, gathering food, and gardening.

As much as she fought with Snow White to get her to keep up their farce with the dwarves, she hated them and serving them. Couldn't stand how they spoke in broken German. Couldn't stand their high pitched voices. Or how they were always underfoot. Or just the fact that she had to do all of the chores for them.

"If Quee tries to hug me one more time, I will burn him alive!" she nearly screams as soon as the dwarves have left the house for the morning. "I can't stand his disgusting touch!"

Snow White gives a smug smile. "You will have to do what is required of you, sister mine."

"Shut it!" Rose Red growls. "Hurry and get the ingredients. We need to make these golems to do our work so that we can go out to the meadow."

Snow White doesn't wipe the smile off her face as she walks to the shelf under the sink and grabs out a bowl filled with materials. The women move outside, Snow White with her bowl and Rose Red with changes of clothing.

After the dwarves went to sleep, the women had gone outside and shaped the soil they would use into humanoid shapes. This morning, they had to purify themselves so that nothing unwanted would go into the golems. Any stray thought, stray hair or dirt, anything unintended could change the nature of the spell and cause changes in the spell.

Once, a witch didn't purify herself thoroughly enough and a stray cat hair got into the spell. The golem reverted back to the most feral form of a cat. It turned on the witch and killed her, along with the majority of her village before an elder was able to put it down.

So, Rose Red and Snow White had to ensure that they were completely purified.

First, the women washed with strong soap and the water that they kept in the cottage. They had to scrub away all the dirt and grime from cleaning the house for the loathsome worms that they lived with.

Then they had to dry themselves and make their way to the stream where they formed their clay women. The women generally didn't wear shoes around the woods or the house, but they did today to reduce the likelihood that they would bring along something to the third and final stage of the purifying.

Rose and Snow had to bathe themselves in "living water" that would completely immerse their body. There was a stream about a mile from the cottage that was fed from an underground spring through a water fall. Bathing beneath the waterfall, each girl took their turn beneath the freezing cold water in the bitingly cold winter air. Rose, who was always stoic and stubborn, bore it without outward discomfort. Snow, though, couldn't hide the fact that her lips trembled and turned blue beneath the water.

After the purification, they wrapped themselves up in towels that they had purified the day before and left covered on top of the golems, and then began the verbal ritual. It was a long and involved chant in Hebrew. The consonant and vowel combinations were difficult to get their tongues to form, the syllables rolling around like marbles in their mouths. It took them months to practice the words, but they were finally fluent in the spell. The spell was reciting the 72-part name of God. Any mispronounciation, any stumble, would allow a demon from the underworld to take over the golem and bring it's power into the human realm. Not a good thing to contemplate.

The final piece was to write the activation word on the golem's head: "emet," meaning "truth." It's funny that this word is used to activate the golem, when Rose and Snow were going to use the golems to trick the dwarves.

Soon, there are four women standing beside the riverbank, two sets of identical twins: one pair of sisters in flesh and blood and their identical counterparts made of clay and magic.