And who’s to help us now the old Queen’s dead? | Robert Coover

My sweetheart and I had sealed our commitment at high noon. My father had raised a cup to our good fortune, issued a stern proclamation against peddlers, bestowed happiness and property upon us and all our progeny, and the party had begun. Whole herds had been slaughtered for our tables. The vineyards of seven principalities had filled our casks. We had danced, sung, clung to one another, drunk, laughed, cheered, chanted the sun down. Bards had pilgrimaged from far and wide, come with their alien tongues to celebrate our union with pageants, prayers, and sacrifices. Not soon, they’d said, would this feast be forgotten. We’d exchanged epigrams and gallantries, whooped the old Queen through her death dance, toasted the fairies and offered them our firstborn. The Dwarfs had recited an ode in praise of clumsiness, though they’d forgotten some of the words and had got into a fight over which of them had dislodged the apple from Snow White’s throat, pushing each other into soup bowls and out of windows. They’d thrown cakes and pies at each other for awhile, then had spilled wine on everybody, played tug-of-war with the Queen’s carcass, regaled us with ribald mimes of regicide and witch-baiting, and finally had climaxed it all by buggering each other in a circle around Snow White, while singing their gold-digging song. Snow White had kissed them all fondly after-wards, helped them up with their breeches, brushed the crumbs from their beards, and I’d wondered then about my own mother, who was she?—and where was Snow White’s father? Whose party was this? Why was I so sober? Suddenly I’d found myself, minutes before midnight, troubled by many things: the true meaning of my bride’s name, her taste for luxury and collapse, the compulsions that had led me to the mountain, the birdshit on the glass coffin when I’d found her. Who were all these people, and why did things happen as though they were necessary? Oh, I’d reveled and worshipped with the rest of the party right to the twelfth stroke, but I couldn’t help thinking: we’ve been too rash, we’re being overtaken by something terrible, and who’s to help us now the old Queen’s dead?

From “The Dead Queen” by Robert Coover.