Six-Gun Snow White - By Catherynne M. Valente Page 0,30

and stuck with the plum stupidity of being alive, I’m here to tell you not to go around opening your nice new door. Because eventually someone comes for us. All of us. Sometimes it’s a husband who forgot why he beat you into running to begin with, sometimes it’s a boss or a pimp looking to lay money on your belly, sometimes it’s your mother come to drag you home. And pretty much we all open the door to them because it’s natural. But we got a nice thing going here. Life’s still stupid but we got free of story out here under the beeches and the Big Dipper. We had enough of it, of things happening one after another and no end in sight. Of reversals and falling in love and tragic flaws and by God if I see another motif in my business I will shoot it dead. The stories that happen to people like us aren’t worth my back teeth. So if you want it you can have a nice life here. You can wake up next to Jackson til the end of days and the raising of the glorious dead. You can eat squirrel pancakes out of Ephie’s pan and watch the moon go up and down. It’s a kind of magic, but then most things are. But story is an eager fucking beaver and someday soon someone will come knocking for you and you’d better just say no thank you is all I’m saying. Whatever’s on the other side of that let me in will burn you hollow and lick the ash for the last of you. The worst thing in the world is having to go back to the dark you shook off.”

Snow White turns the floor to milk. Back and forth she sweeps her brush.

“My babies came knocking for me,” whispers Witch Hex Watson. “Near grown up and crying for their ma. We never believed what they said, no how. We brought you combs for your hair and ribbons for your dresses. Come home, Papa’s not mad. Come back and be Mary-Grace again. Witch Hex ain’t no kind of name for somebody’s mother. And I watched them crying with snot in their faces and I couldn’t say no to my boys, I opened my door and everything they had for me was tainted because the land of Used-To-Be is just full of ghosts starving for your breath. What’s east is hungry. What’s west is hard. Just hunker down. Let it pass you by.”

Snow White turns the floor to bone. Back and forth.

Snow White

Calls the

Animals Together

for a Meeting

Out in the forest, Snow White finds a kit whose mother probably sizzled up on Ephie’s pan some night that week. He’s half-blind and barely as big as her hand. Little fella mews and yelps when he sees her. Not-screaming, not-crying. He’s afraid but he’s hungry. Any girl in a storm.

The kit is red. Snow White takes him home. He sleeps next to her stove and pisses in the corners. His piss smells hot and sour. He bites her. Snow White bites back. They understand each other.

A while later, Snow White sees a bear in the woods. She’s old and stiff. She has a patch of bald on her rump where she’s worried the fur away. The bear follows Snow White and watches her dress a raccoon. The blood makes the dirt damp and black. Snow White does not shoot the bear, even though she could. The bear is very slow. They never come too close but they like to look at each other. The bear grabs a fish out of the crick and the way she glances at Snow White it’s like the old girl wants to be praised. Snow White leaves trout guts for her and keep the red fox from gobbling them up.

The trees stand green as summer, all in a line.

The red fox gets big. He likes to keep watch with the night-sister and her three guns. But when thunderstorms belly up to the Joyful bar, he comes running to Snow White. He pisses on her bed. She knows that he means to indicate that he considers it his bed. That’s fine.

Snow White stops letting her noise out at night. It fears the bear too much.

Red Deer

and the Bird

from Heaven

Deer Boy is not a tracker. His deer half is the wrong half. His human nose is as dumb as anyone’s. Besides, deer have the drive to run away, not seek out. They get