3 Wishes

Chapter IX: Dwarfs

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Bright lights like hundreds of fireflies spun around me, and then I found myself in a completely different forest. Only silvers of light penetrated the canopy here and there, testifying that it was still day. What time of day, I wasn't sure.

"I didn't mean that I wanted Snow White!" I called out.

Only the sound of birds and tree branches rustling answered back.

"Cherly?" I called. "Cherly?" It had suddenly become very clear to me why she was only a fair godmother.

I called her name for a few more minutes, then wandered through the forest, frustrated and wondering if there was any way to get out of this. I did not like the idea of biting into a poisoned apple and lying unconscious until a prince showed up. How long would that take? Days? Years? I mean, yes, I sleep in but if I was lying around in the Middle Ages for years, my parents would notice I was missing.

Fairies really ought to give you some directions before they plop you down into the middle of a forest and take off to go shoe shopping. The only thing Cherly had given me was new clothes. I now wore a simple crimson dress.

As I wondered which way to go, a little man with a long gray beard and a brown cap on his head burst through the trees.

His eyes zoomed in on me, anxiety etched into the wrinkles on his face. "Snow White," he said, "are you all right?"

"Yes."

He knew who I was, which meant I must have come into the fairy tale after Snow White had found the seven dwarfs' house. I had no idea which of the dwarfs this was, and come to think of it, I wasn't sure I could recall all of their names. There was, um...Happy, Sleepy, Bashful, Boring—no wait, Boring wasn't actually a dwarf. I was getting the dwarfs confused with my schoolteachers.

"Are you hurt?" The dwarf asked, still worried. "Why are you out in the forest?"

I knew I wasn't supposed to lie, but I couldn't very well tell him that I'd mistakenly been sent here from the twenty-first century.

"I, um, was out walking," I said. Which was true, if not vague.

"What?" he said indignantly. "You went wandering about when you know full well Queen Neferia is out to kill you?"

"I...guess."

He broke into a language I didn't understand but figured was dwarf cursing. He crossed over to me, took my hand, and none too gently towed me along beside him as he pushed his way back through the trees. "Have you not a lick of sense anywhere in your body? Did the good Lord spend so much time crafting your pretty head that he forgot to put anything inside? Do you not listen to anything we ever say?"

For someone so small he had a tight grip and moved incredibly fast. I tried not to stumble on rocks and tree roots as he pulled me along. "Let me guess—you're Grumpy?"

He let out a humph. "And you would be too, if you'd just spent the last hour searching the forest for your wayward charge." He walked even faster. "We tell you to stay inside, we tell you not to talk to strangers. But oh no, you must be out singing to the animals as if the birds didn't do a fine enough job of it. And this after Queen Neferia has already tried to kill you thrice."