Hilda - Snow White Revisited by Paul Kater

Author:Paul Kater
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Paul Kater

13. Riding with the king

The wicked witch set course for the castle. She did not want the queen to notice her, so she put on the invisibility-shield as soon as she came near. She landed in the garden, put her broomstick against a tree and started walking around. Hilda was looking for a specific someone.

After a few minutes, she heard him before she saw him.

"That's good lads, I want the roses there, the blue whatever their names are there, and then the berry-bushes around it."

"You mean the lilacs, my king?", another voice said.

"Yes, them." Walt the king was designing the new flowerbed for his wife, the queen.

Hilda looked at the scene from a distance. Walt was wearing his long red royal robe rolled up and tied around his impressive belly. His legs were hidden in big boots as he was walking around the gardeners in a wide circle, gesturing and directing. The witch grinned. Then she walked up to the small group of garden-improvers, dropping the shield as she approached.

One of the gardeners saw her fade into existence, shrieked and fell into a rosebush. The others turned their heads into the direction the unfortunate man's finger was pointing.

"Hi, king," Hilda said. "Can you spare me a moment?"

Hilda asked. And she called the king by his title. Even wicked witches have to draw a line. Sometimes.

"Grimhilda," Walt acknowledged her. When facing wicked witches, kings drew lines too. "I'm sort of busy here, telling these men how to make the flowerbed look nice, you see." His face was so serious that Hilda had to bite her tongue not to laugh.

"I see," the wicked witch said, whipping up her wand and temporarily petrifying the gardeners. "My information is sort of important though. It involves your wife. And your daughter."

"My-" Walt stared at Hilda. "Snow-White is dead. Everybody knows that by now," he then said, shaking his head.

"I'm sorry to contradict you, king, but she's not. Have you seen a body? Have you gotten any real evidence of that?"

Walt twitched his lips. "Erh... no. But... my little girl had been gone since many days! Disappeared in the forest. She can't survive there on her own, the little innocent one."

"Tell you what," Hilda said, hooking her arm around on of Walt's. "Let's take a walk and we'll talk. In the meantime we'll have the gardenboys do their thing, and if they screw up you have a reason to yell at them. How's that?"

Walt looked at Hilda. "I don't like to yell at them."

With a slightly disappointed look Hilda shrugged. "Whatever you like, king."

"Walt. Call me Walt. When you say 'king' it creates such a distance," Walt said. "Okay. Let's walk."

Hilda unpetrified the gardeners and strolled off with Walt after throwing a spell that their conversation could not be overheard by others.

"Right then. Walt. First off, Snow-White is not dead."

This news made the walk come to a standstill. "She is! My wife told me, and so did Humbert the huntsman!"

"Walt, my man, when I tell you the sky is purple, do you believe that without looking?"

The king peeked up for a moment.

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